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What is Realism in Art? Definition, Artists, & Examples.

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What is Realism in Art? Definition, Artists, & Examples.

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What is Realism in Art? Definition, Artists, & Examples | Sparks Gallery

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Learn about what realism art is and see examples of the movement with this comprehensive guide.

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American Realism in Visual Arts: Themes & Artists

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Read about American Realism, the movement that captured the American landscape and urban spaces through visual arts and beyond.

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Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that emerged in the late 18th century and peaked in the 19th century. It was a reaction against the rationalism and order of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, emphasizing emotion, imagination, nature, individualism, and the sublime. Romantic artists and writers sought to capture intense feelings, celebrate the beauty and power of nature, and explore themes of heroism, rebellion, and the supernatural. Key figures include poets like William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and John Keats, as well as artists like Francisco Goya and composers like Ludwig van Beethoven.

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As the Romanticism period dominated the first half of the 19th century and Realism dominated the second half.

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Realism art has less to do with the photorealistic painting of images and has more to do with the realistic subject matter. Photorealism does play a part, but it is not always present in the paintings of Realism art. This article features the most famous 25realism paintings.

Nighthawks

Through the large glass window, you can see a small group of people seated in a downtown dinner in somewhat a later time of the night.

Inspired by a Greenwich Avenue restaurant, Edward Hopper crafts out an art gem that induces the viewer into awareness. Like a puzzle, the piece is incomplete and Edward coveys the gloomy aftermath of the Second World War in the streets of Manhattan, where he grew up.
Isolation, depravity, and a dark sadness is all you can see when your eyes feed on its details.

The art ultimately reflects the hard life, struggle, and hustle of individuals (both men and women) during one of the darkest days in American history and that is why the famous piece has been
recognized and appreciated throughout the country and beyond.

The Gross Clinic

Much like Edward, Thomas Eakins was indeed famed for individuality in his works and that is why The Gross Clinic is termed as " one of the best American paintworks ever created. " Eakins depicts famous and respected American surgeon Samuel D. Gross displaying one of his surgery sessions to a group of Jefferson Medical College students in Philadelphia.

The surgery happens to be an orthopedic one and Thomas himself can be sighted in the top left corner of the portrait. The painting oozes realism and taut detailing the forming of the most highly regarded artworks by Thomas Eakins.

Burial at Ornans

In Ornans France, great-uncle Gustave Courbet is dead and all the townspeople are present to witness the burial of one of the most recognized American are works in history.

The realism and shocking narratives of the work is what has made is a classic piece of art not only in America but across the globe.

Standing at a majestic 10 by 22 ft (about 3 t0 6m), Gustave Courbet makes a statement about the Realist movement, thereby almost single-handedly causing public mayhem on Romanticism in 185o eventually bringing about a turning point in both art and religious movements alike.
Do you know how Gustave Courbet buried Romanticism and gave birth to modern art?
Christina's World

A little more recently into the 20th century, Christina's World reaches the heights of being one of the most favorite realism paintings just before the turn of the millennium.

Andrew Wyeth grew up in South Cushing in Maine close to a mysterious lady called Christina Olson who was the woman on his 1948 painting who was crawling helplessly across the field in the address. Miss Christina happened to have suffered degenerative muscular disorder which restricted her movement while she wanted to see the world but instead, it was limited to just a plain horizon.

Despite getting a rather sluggish reception, it has eventually grown a reputation for being one of the most important realism artworks.

The Elder Sister

William -Adolphe Bougeureau created the astonishing 130.2cm x 97.2 cm painting.

The Elder Sister, one of the famous realism paintings, that shows a girl seated comfortably on a boulder carrying a little child who was fast asleep. The name of the girl painted was his daughter Henriette and her little brother and the painter's son, Paul. Behind Henriette, is a beautiful horizon with the greenest landscape to create from the mind.

His work, however, had a permanent collection and was placed amongst the &quot; Arts of Europe&quot; sections. According to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the painting was first gifted to the institution which has now made it one of the most respected and cherished in European museums.

Interior

In 1968, Realism artist Edgar Degas came one of his most intricate and puzzling are exhibitions.

The painting clearly shows what looks like a marital dispute between two couples where the woman is barely dressed with a mischievous man behind her in the shadows. Almost everything about this art is unclear and that has caused a lot of uncertainties amongst scholars over the years.

These scholars claimed that the painting was inspired by a stage play, confronting its lack of logic if not deeper meaning buried in there.

Despite this, a renowned writer-journalist then reflects this otherworldly powerful scene by matching the scene in one of his books Therese Raguin.

Gustave Courbet, Bonjour Monsieur Courbet

It is no surprise the Gustave Courbet appears again in this list as he has already proven to be certainly one of the most influential artists of the 19 th century with immaculate French Realism.

Standing at an astonishing 129 x 149 cm, the French painting - Gustave Courbet, Bonjour Monsieur Courbet - was one of the first art pieces that contrived the words "Avant" (forward) and "garde" (an English troop). It was a greeting amongst war troops who were advocates of risk, flair, and fearlessness and had the rare ability to push ahead of the enemy lines and conquer battles. Gustave made sure the message was passed; depicting himself as a traveling man meeting two noblemen on a gentle afternoon, &quot;avant-garde&quot; he greets.

The Frenchman explores the visual expression of an artist in breaking boundaries with their new ideas and setting the pace for the masses.

The Gleaners by Jean François Millet

The Gleaners is a painting produced by Jean François Millet in 1857. The Gleaners was a manufacturing company and the name for this painting was inspired by it. In this painting, three women shown are gleaning the grains of wheat. One of the reasons why Realism art movement has gained a lot of attention because of the artists who started creating artworks about day to day life.

"Beauty does not lie in the face. It lies in the harmony between a person and his or her industry. Beauty is an expression. When I paint a mother I try to render her beautiful by the mere look she gives her child". - Jean Francois Millet

The Stone Breakers by Gustave Courbet

The Stone Breakers is a painting produced by Gustave Courbet between 1849 and 1850. The french painter exhibited this painting in the Paris Salon in 1850. In this painting, two peasants are shown breaking rocks as they were constructing a road.

Olympia by Édouard Manet

Olympia is a famous realism painting produced by Edouard Manet in 1863. The french painter exhibited the painting at the Paris Salon in 1865. A nude young woman is depicted named Olympia with a black servant who brought her some flowers. Victorine Meurent was the girl who modeled for this painting as Olympia.

Woman with a Parrot by Gustave Courbet

Woman with a Parrot is a painting produced by Gustave Courbet in 1866. Another painter Manet started working on his own version of Woman with a Parrot in the same year. Paul Cezanne, another artist carried a small photograph of this painting in his wallet.

La Nymphe surprise by Édouard Manet

La Nymphe surprise is a realism artwork produced by Édouard Manet in 1861. This painting is also known by the name "Nymph Surprised". This painting can be viewed at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires and considered as one of the highest collection.

The Spanish Singer by Édouard Manet

The Spanish Singer is a painting produced by Édouard Manet in 1860. This painting was completed in Manet's studios and the props used in this painting were used in atleast one other painting. This painting can be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York.

Lise with a Parasol by Pierre Auguste Renoir

Lise with a Parasol is a artwork painting produced by Pierre Auguste Renoir in 1867. The model posing in a forest was Lise Trehot in this full length painting. This painting was one of Renoir's first critically successful works.

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Ivan Kramskoi

Portrait of an Unknown Woman is a famous painting produced by Ivan Kramskoi in 1883. This painting is also widely known by the name "The Unknown Woman" , "An Unknown Lady". This painting by the Russian artist is one of Russia's best-known artworks.

The Wheat Sifters by Gustave Courbet

The Wheat Sifters is a painting produced by Gustave Courbet in 1854. This painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1855 and then at the ninth exhibition of the Society of Friends of the Art of Nantes in 1861. It is assumed that the two women are Courbet's sister.

Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette by Vincent van Gogh

Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette is a famous artwork painting produced by Vincent van Gogh between 1885 and 1886. This painting can be viewed at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. This painting depicts a skeleton with a cigarette.

Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire by Ilya Repin

Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire is a realism artwork painting produced by Ilya Repin between 1880 and 1891. This painting is also known as "Cossacks of Saporog Are Drafting a Manifesto".

The Balcony by Édouard Manet

The Balcony is a painting produced by Édouard Manet in 1868 and 69. This painting depicts four figures on a balcony, one sitting and all others standing. This painting was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1869. This painting can be viewed at Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

The Bellelli Family by Edgar Degas

The Bellelli Family is a painting produced by Edgar Degas between 1858 and 1867. This painting is also widely known as the "Family Portrait". This painting can be viewed at Musée d'Orsay in Paris. In this painting, Degas's aunt, her husband, and her two young daughters are depicted.

Whistler's Mother by James McNeill Whistler

Whistler's Mother is a painting produced by James McNeill Whistler in 1871. The American artist's mother, Anna McNeill Whistler is the subject of this painting. This painting can be viewed at Musée d'Orsay in Paris as it was bought by the French state in 1891.

The Absinthe Drinker by Édouard Manet

The Absinthe Drinker is a painting by Édouard Manet in 1859. The Absinthe Drinker is the first major and admired original work of Manet. It is a full-length portrait depicting an alcoholic rag and bone man named Collardet who frequented the area around the Louvre in Paris.

Conclusion

We live in a modern world with so many urgent issues including the neglect of true art.

Realism art proves to be what we all need to go back to reflect these issues given its power to document contemporary culture while transmitting the basic details and consequences of the actions and decisions we make. Realism art strengthens and hones the skills of a true artist and it is what the world needs today.

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25 Most Famous Realism Paintings and Artworks - Artist PopLab

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Realism art has less to do with the photorealistic painting of images and has more to do with the realistic subject matter. Photorealism does play a part, but it is not always present in the paintings of Realism art. This article features the most famous 25realism paintings.

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12 minutes youtube video introducing what the Dada movement is.

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Summary of Realism

Though never a coherent group, Realism is recognized as the first modern movement in art, which rejected traditional forms of art, literature, and social organization as outmoded in the wake of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Beginning in France in the 1840s, Realism revolutionized painting, expanding conceptions of what constituted art. Working in a chaotic era marked by revolution and widespread social change, Realist painters replaced the idealistic images and literary conceits of traditional art with real-life events, giving the margins of society similar weight to grand history paintings and allegories. Their choice to bring everyday life into their canvases was an early manifestation of the avant-garde desire to merge art and life, and their rejection of pictorial techniques, like perspective, prefigured the many 20 th-century definitions and redefinitions of modernism.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

Realism is broadly considered the beginning of modern art. Literally, this is due to its conviction that everyday life and the modern world were suitable subjects for art. Philosophically, Realism embraced the progressive aims of modernism, seeking new truths through the reexamination and overturning of traditional systems of values and beliefs.

Realism concerned itself with how life was structured socially, economically, politically, and culturally in the mid-19th century. This led to unflinching, sometimes "ugly" portrayals of life's unpleasant moments and the use of dark, earthy palettes that confronted high art's ultimate ideals of beauty.

Realism was the first explicitly anti-institutional, nonconformist art movement. Realist painters took aim at the social mores and values of the bourgeoisie and monarchy upon who patronized the art market. Though they continued submitting works to the Salons of the official Academy of Art, they were not above mounting independent exhibitions to defiantly show their work.

Following the explosion of newspaper printing and mass media in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, Realism brought in a new conception of the artist as self-publicist. Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, and others purposefully courted controversy and used the media to enhance their celebrity in a manner that continues among artists to this day.

Overview of Realism

Artworks and Artists of Realism

Artist: Gustave Courbet

Artist: Jean-François Millet

Artist: James Whistler

Artist: Jules Breton

Beginnings of Realism

Before Realism: History Painting and the Academy

Established in 1648 by Louis XIV, the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture or Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture governed the production of art in France for nearly two centuries. Given France's prominence in European culture during that time, the Academy set standards for art across the continent, providing studio training for young talent and recognizing artistic achievement at its semi-regular Salon exhibitions.

The "highest" form of art, established by the Academy in a 1668 conference, was history painting: the large-scale depiction of a narrative, typically drawn from classical mythology, the Bible, literature, or the annals of human achievement. Only the strongest painters were allowed to paint in this genre, and their works were the most celebrated by the Academy. Descending in importance in the hierarchy of genres were portraiture (the depiction of important persons), genre scenes (the depiction of peasants, or "unimportant" persons), landscape (the depiction of living nature), and still life ( nature morte, or "dead nature").

Spurred by archaeological discoveries in Greece and Italy in the mid-18 th century and Enlightenment ideals of reason and order, Neoclassicism became the mode par excellence for history painting in the late 1700s. Neoclassical history painting, exemplified in the work of Jacques-Louis David, used classical references, compositional techniques, and settings to comment upon contemporary events. His famous Oath of the Horatii (1784), for example, communicated the civic value of patriotism in the guise of a story from the Roman historian Livy.

In response to Neoclassicism, the Industrial Revolution, and the Enlightenment's rationalization of life and society, Romanticism embraced irrational, intense emotion and exotic subject matter as more authentic sources for artistic creativity. Rather than beautifully ordered outdoor scenes, Romantic landscapes became arenas for the sublime conflict between man and nature. In place of David's praise of civic virtue were history paintings like Eugène Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus (1827): a turbulent, chaotic scene inspired by a Lord Byron play wherein the titular king of Assyria commands his possessions destroyed and his terrified, beseeching wives massacred in the face of final military defeat.

Revolution, the Rejection of Tradition, and the Importance of Photography

While Romanticism might have rejected certain tenets of Neoclassicism, it did not drastically change the 17 th- and 18 th-century institutions of art and society. The near-perpetual state of revolution in France in the 19 th century provided an impetus to enact a more radical change. After the initial 1789 Revolution, France went through the First Republic, the First Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte, the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, the 1830 Revolution, the July Monarchy, the 1848 Revolution, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Franco-Prussian War and institution of the Paris Commune of 1871, and the establishment of the Third Republic.

Challenging Neoclassicism and Romanticism as escapist in the face of the larger societal issues brought by the turbulent 19 th century, Realism began in France in the 1840s as the cultural aspect of a larger response to ever-changing governance, military occupation and economic exploitation of the colonies, and industrialization and urbanization in the cities. Realism, more than the simple representation of nature, was an attempt to situate oneself in the "real": in scientific, moral, and political certainty.

In the 1830s, this push toward scientific positivism manifested itself in the advent of photography. Louis Daguerre publicly demonstrated the daguerreotype in 1839, mechanically fixing an image from nature onto a metal support by the use of a camera. Simultaneously in England, William Henry Fox Talbot accomplished the same with the calotype, which fixed the image onto paper coated with silver iodide. In turn, the photograph fueled Realism. While Realist artists rarely worked from photographs (some did), the photograph's biggest conceptual strength was its claim to veracity. If the right to rule had traditionally been supported by art that idealized the powerful, the photograph suggested the possibility to literally show rulers' real flaws. In the midst of a revolutionary century, Realist painters sought to adapt photography's truth value to their art.

Honoré Daumier and an Art of Social Critique

Another major influence on Realism was the explosion of socially critical journalism and caricature at the beginning of the July Monarchy (1830-48). Though the authoritarian reign of Louis Phillippe I would end in overthrow, the first five years of his rule allowed greater freedom of the press. It was in this moment that Honoré Daumier began publishing caricatures critical of the monarchy, such as the lithograph Gargantua (1831), in which he mockingly depicted the king as the gluttonous giant of François Rabelais's 1534 novel.

Engraving, which could be reproduced and disseminated in the press, enabled Daumier to circulate his critical compositions. Despite being imprisoned for six months for his negative depiction of the king as Gargantua, he continued to create the Realist lithograph Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril 1834 (1834), which showed the brutal aftermath of a massacre of working-class innocents by the French government. The work was considered so powerful and dangerous to the monarchy that Louis-Philippe sent men to purchase as many copies as possible to be destroyed. Daumier would continue painting and engraving for several decades, producing socially focused works such as Third-Class Carriage (1862-64).

Gustave Courbet, the Revolutions of 1848, and the Origins of Socialism

When the July Monarchy came crashing down in France in 1848, ushering in the Second Republic (1848-51), it was as part of a larger wave of European revolution that brought wide-ranging social changes in Germany, Italy, the Austrian Empire, the Netherlands, and Poland. These events, combined with the publication of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty in 1846 and Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto in 1848, cast a new light on the margins of society, and Realism became the visual language for their representation.

A friend of Proudhon and Realism's main proponent, Gustave Courbet led a multifaceted assault on French political power, bourgeois social mores, and the art institution. His exhibition of A Burial at Ornans (1849-50) at the Salon of 1850-51 marked the debut of Realism as a significant force in the European art scene, causing a scandal with its matter-of-fact depiction of a rural funeral on a scale traditionally reserved for allegory and history painting. The Stone Breakers (1849-50), exhibited in the same year, represented two anonymous, lower-class workers participating in poorly compensated, backbreaking labor, a scene that carried uncomfortable associations with Socialism for the Salon's middle-class audience. Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer) (1856) caused a similar sensation at the Salon of 1857 with a frank depiction of two prostitutes lazily reclining on a riverbank with their garments in disarray that offended bourgeois taste.

Realism: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

Challenging the Norm and Courting Scandal: Courbet and Manet

If in the 1850s Courbet painted large works with subject matter that questioned the values of French society, Édouard Manet pushed Realism even further in the 1860s. Having made a name for himself at the Salon of 1861 with his exhibition of The Spanish Singer (1860), he submitted Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) to the Salon of 1863. Though the painting was rejected, it was shown in the Salon des Refusés ("Exhibition of Rejects"). There, Manet's frank depiction of two young dandies dining in a forest with a fully nude woman offended the sensibilities of its salon-going audience, especially middle-class men who participated in exactly those sorts of dalliances with Parisian prostitutes and who did not like to be reminded of this when out at art exhibitions, potentially with their families. Manet built upon and fed into all of these scandalous charges when he submitted Olympia (1863) to the Salon of 1865. Olympia, which places the viewer in the position of a bordello visitor attempting to procure a disinterested prostitute, made Manet's intervention even more obvious.

The critics, however, were playing directly into Courbet's and Manet's hands: the notoriety they commanded from their works was intentional, turning them into celebrities within the art world. Beside muddying the traditional categories and subjects of academic painting, Courbet, and Manet in his turn, would challenge the state art institution itself. When three of his fourteen submissions to the Exposition Universelle of 1855 were rejected for size considerations, Courbet rented space adjacent to the Exposition to construct his own Pavilion of Realism, in which he housed forty of his own works for free public view. When Manet was excluded from the Exposition Universelle of 1867, he too exhibited independently. Beyond drawing attention away from government exhibitions and creating publicity for their work, Courbet's and Manet's interventions emboldened future artists (most notably the Impressionists of the following generation) to exhibit their art independently.

Realism's Visual Revolution

While the Realist painters' manipulation of controversy through their subject matter is an obvious manifestation of their anti-authoritarian goals, their technical innovations may be less obvious to eyes conditioned by 150 years of modern art. At the time, however, the artistic distance between a canvas by Courbet and a traditional history painting were obvious and confrontational.

When Courbet debuted The Stone Breakers, critics accused him of purposeful ugliness and complained of the "flatness" of his composition, which was enhanced by the bold outlines surrounding his two key figures. A year later, his painting Young Ladies of the Village (1851-52) was attacked as clumsy, lacking in correct perspective, and disregarding scale in its portrayal of a trio of women who dwarf the cattle that stand near them. Eleven years later, Manet's painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe was attacked on nearly the same grounds, with critics commenting negatively on Manet's coarseness of paint handling, the flatness of his composition, and the stark, contoured whiteness of his female figure. When critics correctly connected Manet's composition of the three-person figural group to High Renaissance works by Marcantonio Raimondi and Giorgione, their outrage heightened at his indecorous treatment of the Old Masters.

The follow-up exhibition of Olympia (coarser, flatter, more starkly contoured, and based on Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538)) proved that these manipulations to traditional academic painting were not the mistakes of a young, clumsy artist. Unwittingly, the critics had stumbled onto what would become the groundbreaking visual achievement of Realism: Courbet and Manet each made an artistic choice to move away from the Renaissance conception of a canvas as a "window onto the world" toward a flatness that revealed the canvas as a two-dimensional support to be creatively covered with pigment. This first step away from painting as a mere representational format was a crucible for generations of modern artists and a major reason for the continued popularity of Realism today. While Courbet was outspoken in his conviction that art could never be wholly abstract, his and Manet's nontraditional painting empowered future artists to move further away from the direct pursuit of naturalism.

The Ennobled Peasant: Jean-François Millet, Rosa Bonheur and Jules Breton

Despite Courbet's insistence that socialism informed his Realist painting, not every Realist artist pursued his political goals. They did, however, share an interest in the life of the lower class and desire to represent it in high art. Jean-François Millet completed a trio of works, The Sower (1850), The Gleaners (1857), and The Angelus (1857-59), that represented the hard work of the rural peasant class with dignity, but with a less confrontational air than Courbet's canvases. The female painter Rosa Bonheur, whose progressive-minded parents allowed her to study animal anatomy in barns and slaughterhouses at a young age (while dressed as a boy!), first achieved fame for Plowing in the Nivernais (1848), a government-commissioned painting that depicts four farmhands driving steer to plow a field. As it was thought to reference a scene from George Sand's La Mare au Diable, this early example of Realism was spared the criticism cast on Courbet's large works. The Horse Fair (1852-55) further demonstrated her focus on blue-collar work and her ability to create dynamic compositions through close observation.

However, even Millet's seemingly innocuous celebration of France's rural backbone was received as potentially dangerous socialist content by conservative critics in the wake of the 1848 Revolution, which granted greater rights to provincial men. Jules Breton's paintings were considered a safer alternative, and has been referred to as "popular Realism." Breton's The Gleaners (1854) depicts the same practice as Millet's painting, wherein poor rural women are allowed to pick up bits of grain left behind after the harvest. However, Breton imagined the scene as one happening within a strict order: despite gleaning being "women's work," a man with a dog dominates the scene, overseeing the fieldwork. A steeple on the horizon would have communicated both the pious nature and Christian values of the peasantry as well as another form of governance to Parisians concerned about the growing equality they shared with their rural counterparts.

Realism Outside of France

Though Realism was first a French phenomenon, it obtained adherents across Europe and in the United States. The American James Abbott McNeill Whistler befriended Courbet in the 1860s and painted in a Realist style. Yet Whistler was an advocate for "art for art's sake" and rejected the idea of painting as a moral or social enterprise a la Courbet. Nonetheless, his Symphony in White, no. 1: the White Girl caused controversy at the same Salon of 1863 where Manet courted scandal, because critics argued that it contained connotations of a bride's lost innocence.

Thomas Eakins became the United States' most prominent Realist painter, integrating photographic study into his works and revealing the character of his subjects through close observation. The Gross Clinic (1875), a portrait of the doctor Samuel Gross performing invasive surgery in an operating theater is rendered in unflinching detail. His choice of a contemporary subject (modern surgery) follows the Realist belief that an artist must be of his own time.

The German Realist Wilhelm Leibl met Courbet and saw his work when the French painter visited Germany in 1869. Recognizing his abilities, Courbet lured him back to Paris, where Leibl achieved considerable success, also meeting Manet before returning to Munich to establish himself as his country's premier Realist painter. He is best known for his images of peasant scenes such as Three Women in Church (1881), which brought the frank naturalism of the Dutch and German Old Masters into the modern era. Though the somewhat dated outfits that the three women wear indicate their low economic status (the new trends of the city have passed them by), Leibl ennobles them in their patience and humility.

The Realist Ilya Repin was the most prominent painter of his country in the 19 th century, responsible for bringing Russian visual art to the attention of European audiences. His large canvas Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870-73) celebrated the strength of Russia's lowest-ranking physical laborers. The novelist Leo Tolstoy would write of Repin that he depicted "the life of the people much better than any other Russian artist." Having traveled to Paris and become aware of the nascent movement of Impressionism, Repin chose to continue painting in a Realist vein, because he felt that Impressionist painting lacked the social motivations necessary to modern art.

Realism in Literature

The Realist painting movement ran parallel to the Realist movement in literature, exemplified in the work of writers like Honore de Balzac, Champfleury, and Emile Zola. Realist authors recognized in the artistic movement the shared desire to divorce from tradition and celebrated it, contributing to its success. Balzac's witty and incisive representation of society in the early-19 th century contrasted with the emotional grandeur of his Romantic counterparts much as Courbet's painting would in the visual arts.

Champfleury promoted Courbet's work as early as 1848, continuing to do so for decades, and Courbet painted him among his supporters in the 1855 masterwork The Painter's Studio (1854-55). Of Courbet's Pavilion of Realism, Champfleury wrote: "It is an incredibly audacious act, it is the subversion of all institutions associated with the jury, it is a direct appeal to the public, some are saying it is freedom."

Zola was one of Manet's earliest and most devoted defenders, recognizing his importance to modern art and declaring him a master of the future. By 1868, Zola could write: "I don't need to plead for modern subjects here. This cause was won a long time ago. After those remarkable works by Manet and Courbet, no one would dare now say that the present day is unworthy of being painted."

Later Developments - After Realism

There was no defined "group" in Realism, as we might conceive of the later Impressionists as a coherent group who exhibited together: the Realist movement comprised of a number of artists working independently among similar lines. Though they knew each other, and the artists and writers were mutually supportive friends, there was no "breakup" or dissolution of the group. Thus, the historical and artistic motives that led to Realism's genesis and development continued in the art and ethos of painters across the globe for generations to come.

As the enfants terribles of the 19 th-century art world, Courbet and Manet are often invoked as the first avant-garde artists, and their mixture of art and critique laid groundwork for every socially engaged artist in their wake. Moreover, their visual trajectory into flatness had widespread ramifications for painting without which Manet's next step into Impressionism could not have happened. Their use of contour lines to structure form and separate it into panes of color were also an inspiration to the Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne and his followers, as well as the Cubists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

Even artists with drastically different goals than Realism named their debt to the movement. Giorgio de Chirico, the head of the Metaphysical Painting movement, wrote about his reverence for Courbet, who he acknowledged as an artistic father figure. Surrealism founder André Breton would celebrate Courbet's mixing of the artistic with the political; Surrealist dissident Georges Bataille named Manet the father of modern art for being the first to "destroy" the subject of painting, in Olympia.

The Ashcan School of the late-19 th and early-20 th century in the U.S. derived from the sometimes gritty, matter-of-fact depiction of city life was partially based on the figurative language and social awareness of Realism. Similarly, Social Realism, less an art movement than a cultural phenomenon, took Realism's relation to social justice as a given and made figurative works to combat the abstract art in vogue in the early part of the century. The Mexican muralists, American art workers in Depression-era New Deal programs, and French and German painters in the years leading up to World War II worked in this mode to create straightforward, legible works to transmit messages to their audiences. Social Realism should not be confused with Socialist Realism, decreed by Joseph Stalin as the state art of the Soviet Union in 1934. Though both shared a commitment to the education and edification of a lower-class, uneducated populace, the Soviet variant - a visual mélange of Repin's Realism and a sunnier Impressionism - became an official, academic art, supporting the regime and remaining largely unchanged until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In Weimar Germany (1918-33), the artists of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) took lessons from the matter-of-factness of Leibl's Realist canvases to move beyond the distortions and abstraction of German Expressionism. Photorealism in the 1960s was born of a similar relationship to Abstract Expressionism, and though its artists did not always share the social motivations of Realism (preferring to link themselves to the example of contemporary Pop art, also a figurative language), their debt to the movement is visually apparent.

Useful Resources on Realism

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Born in a chaotic era marked by revolution and social change, Realism revolutionized painting, expanding conceptions of art. Manet, Courbet, Whistler, Millet+

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Photography’s early evolution, c. 1840–c. 1900

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Photography’s early evolution, c. 1840–c. 1900

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Daguerre’s process rapidly spread throughout the world. Before the end of 1839, travelers were buying daguerreotypes of famous monuments in Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Spain; engravings of these works were made and then published in two volumes as Excursions daguerriennes between 1841 and 1843. Although Daguerre’s process was published “free to the world” by the French government, he took out a patent for it in England; the first licensee was Antoine-François-Jean Claudet. The first daguerreotypes in the United States were made on September 16, 1839, just four weeks after the announcement of the process. Exposures were at first of excessive length, sometimes up to an hour. Newhall, B. and Robert, E. (2000). History of photography | History, Inventions, Artists, & Events. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/technology/photography/Photographys-early-evolution-c-1840-c-1900 [Accessed 28 Feb. 2025].

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The revolution of technique

Daguerre's process rapidly spread throughout the world. Before the end of 1839, travelers were buying daguerreotypes of famous monuments in Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Spain; engravings of these works were made and then published in two volumes as Excursions daguerriennes between 1841 and 1843. Although Daguerre's process was published "free to the world" by the French government, he took out a patent for it in England; the first licensee was Antoine-François-Jean Claudet. The first daguerreotypes in the United States were made on September 16, 1839, just four weeks after the announcement of the process. Exposures were at first of excessive length, sometimes up to an hour. At such lengthy exposures, moving objects could not be recorded, and portraiture was impractical.

Experiments were begun in Europe and the United States to improve the optical, chemical, and practical aspects of the daguerreotype process to make it more feasible for portraiture, the most desired application. The earliest known photography studio anywhere opened in New York City in March 1840, when Alexander Wolcott opened a "Daguerrean Parlor" for tiny portraits, using a camera with a mirror substituted for the lens. During this same period, József Petzval and Friedrich Voigtländer, both of Vienna, worked on better lens and camera design. Petzval produced an achromatic portrait lens that was about 20 times faster than the simple meniscus lens the Parisian opticians Charles Chevalier and N.M.P. Lerebours had made for Daguerre's cameras. Meanwhile, Voigtländer reduced Daguerre's clumsy wooden box to easily transportable proportions for the traveler. These valuable improvements were introduced by Voigtländer in January 1841. That same month another Viennese, Franz Kratochwila, freely published a chemical acceleration process in which the combined vapours of chlorine and bromine increased the sensitivity of the plate by five times.

The first studio in Europe was opened by Richard Beard in a glasshouse on the roof of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London on March 23, 1841. Unlike the many daguerreotypists who were originally scientists or miniature painters, Beard had been a coal merchant and patent speculator. Having acquired the exclusive British license for the American mirror camera (he later also purchased the exclusive rights to Daguerre's invention in England, Wales, and the colonies), Beard employed the chemist John Frederick Goddard to try to improve and accelerate the exposure process. Among the techniques Goddard studied were two that Wolcott had tried: increasing the light sensitivity of the silver iodide with bromine vapours and filtering the blindingly bright daylight necessary for exposure through blue glass to ease the portrait sitter's eye strain. By December 1840 Goddard had succeeded well enough to produce tiny portraits ranging in size from 0.4 inch (1 cm) in diameter to 1.5 by 2.5 inches (4 by 6 cm). By the time Beard opened his studio, exposure times were said to vary between one and three minutes according to weather and time of day. His daguerreotype portraits became immensely popular, and the studio made considerable profits the first few years, but competition soon appeared, and Beard lost his fortune in several lawsuits against infringers of his licenses.

The finest daguerreotypes in Britain were produced by Antoine Claudet, who opened a studio on the roof of the Royal Adelaide Gallery in June 1841. He was responsible for numerous improvements in photography, including the discovery that red light did not affect sensitive plates and could therefore be used safely in the darkroom. The improvements that had been made in lenses and sensitizing techniques reduced exposure times to approximately 20 to 40 seconds.

Daguerreotyping became a flourishing industry. Practitioners such as Hermann Biow and Carl Ferdinand Stelzner worked in Germany, and William Horn opened a studio in Bohemia in 1841. It was the United States, however, that led the world in the production of daguerreotypes. Portraiture became the most popular genre in the United States, and within this genre, standards of presentation began to develop. Certain parts of the daguerreotype portrait, usually the lips, eyes, jewelry, and occasionally the clothing, were hand-coloured, a job often done by women. Because of their fragile nature, daguerreotype images always were covered with glass and encased in a frame or casing made of leather-covered wood or gutta-percha, a plasticlike substance made from rubber.

In the late 1840s every city in the United States had its own "daguerrean artist," and villages and towns were served by traveling photographers who had fitted up wagons as studios. In New York City alone there were 77 galleries in 1850. Of these, the most celebrated was that of Mathew B. Brady, who began in 1844 to form a "Gallery of Illustrious Americans," a collection of portraits of notables taken by his own and other cameramen. Several of these portraits, including those of Daniel Webster and Edgar Allan Poe, were published by lithography in a folio volume.

In Boston, Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes opened a studio in 1843 that was advertised as "The Artists' Daguerreotype Rooms"; here they produced the finest portraits ever made by the daguerreotype process. The partners avoided the stereotyped lighting and stiff posing formulas of the average daguerreotypist and did not hesitate to portray their sitters unprettified and "as they were." For example, in his portrait Lemuel Shaw, a judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, stands with a crumpled coat and unruly locks of hair under a glare of sunshine; in her portrait Lola Montez -adventurer, dancer, actress-lolls over the back of a chair, a cigarette between her gloved fingers.

Cities and towns, as well as their inhabitants, were also photographed by American daguerreotypists: the rapid growth of San Francisco was documented month by month, and the first history of the city, published in 1855, was illustrated with engravings made from daguerreotypes.

Daguerreotyping spread throughout the world during the 1850s as photographers from England, France, and the United States followed colonialist troops and administrators to the Middle East, Asia, and South America. Army personnel and commercial photographers portrayed foreign dignitaries, landscape, architecture, and monuments in order to show Westerners seemingly exotic cultures. Particularly notable were daguerreotypes made in Japan by the American photographer Eliphalet Brown, Jr., who accompanied the 1853-54 mission led by Matthew C. Perry to open Japan to Western interests.

While most of the initial photographic work in these places was by Westerners, by the 1860s local practitioners had begun to open studios and commercial establishments. Marc Ferrez in Brazil, Kusakabe Kimbei in Japan, the (French-born) Bonfils family in Lebanon, and Kassian Céphas in Indonesia were among the international photographers who set up studios to supply portraits and views during this period.

Development of the calotype

The popularity of the daguerreotype surpassed that of the photogenic drawing, but Talbot, convinced of the value of duplicability, continued to work to improve his process. On September 21-23, 1840, while experimenting with gallic acid, a chemical he was informed would increase the sensitivity of his prepared paper, Talbot discovered that the acid could be used to develop a latent image. This discovery revolutionized photography on paper as it had revolutionized photography on metal in 1835. Whereas previously Talbot had needed a camera exposure of one hour to produce a 6.5-by-8.5-inch (16.5-by-21.6-cm) negative, he now found that one minute was sufficient. Developing the latent image made photography on paper as valued as the daguerreotype, although the image still was not as clearly defined. Talbot named his improved negative process the calotype, from the Greek meaning "beautiful picture," and he protected his discoveries by patent.

The first aesthetically satisfying use made of this improved process was in the work of David Octavius Hill, a Scottish landscape painter, and his partner, Robert Adamson, an Edinburgh photographer. In 1843 Hill decided to paint a group portrait of the ministers who in that year formed the Free Church of Scotland; in all, there were more than 400 figures to be painted. Sir David Brewster, who knew of Talbot's process from the inventor himself, suggested to Hill that he make use of this new technique. Hill then enlisted the aid of Adamson, and together they made hundreds of photographs, not only of the members of the church meeting but also of people from all walks of life. Although their sitters were posed outdoors in glaring sunlight and had to endure exposures of upward of a minute, Hill and Adamson managed to retain a lifelike vitality. Hill's aesthetic was dominated by the painting style of the period in lighting and posing, particularly in the placement of the hands; in many of Hill's portraits, both the sitter's hands are visible, placed in a manner meant to add grace and liveliness to a dark portion of an image. Indeed, many of his calotypes are strikingly reminiscent of canvases by Sir Henry Raeburn and other contemporary artists. Proving the calotype's artistic qualities, William Etty, a royal academician, copied in oils the calotype Hill and Adamson made of him in 1844 and exhibited it as a self-portrait. In addition to their formal portraiture, the partners made a series of photographs of fishermen and their wives at Newhaven and in Edinburgh, as well as architectural studies.

The calotype, which lent itself to being manipulated by chemicals and paper, was used in the 1850s to create exceptionally artistic images of architectural monuments.

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history of photography - Photography's early evolution, c. 1840-c. 1900

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Daguerre's process rapidly spread throughout the world. Before the end of 1839, travelers were buying daguerreotypes of famous monuments in Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Spain; engravings of these works were made and then published in two volumes as Excursions daguerriennes between 1841 and 1843.

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"Roughly 10 million soldiers lost their lives in World War I, along with seven million civilians. The horror of the war and its aftermath altered the world for decades, and poets responded to the brutalities and losses in new ways. Just months before his death in 1918, English poet Wilfred Owen famously wrote:

This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War.

To mark the WWI centenary, we’ve put together a sampling of poems written in English by both soldiers and civilians, chosen from our archive of over 250 poems from WWI. We’ve also compiled a collection showcasing the poets who served and volunteered in World War I.

While many of these poems do not address a particular war event, we’ve listed them by year, along with a selection of historical markers, to contextualize the poems historically. You may notice that more poems in 1914 and 1915 extoll the old virtues of honor, duty, heroism, and glory, while many later poems after 1915 approach these lofty abstractions with far greater skepticism and moral subtlety through realism and bitter irony. Though horrific depictions of battle in poetry date back to Homer’s Iliad, the later poems of WWI mark a substantial shift in how we view war and sacrifice."- THE EDITORS

Originally Published: August 04, 2014.

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Servais Grivel (2015). Romanticism - Wikipedia. [online] Pinterest. Available at: https://za.pinterest.com/pin/573927546243467447/ [Accessed 28 Feb. 2025].

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Romanticism has had a lasting impact on modern culture, shaping literature, art, music, and even philosophy. Its emphasis on individual expression and emotion continues to influence contemporary storytelling, from novels and poetry to film and music. The movement’s celebration of nature has also contributed to modern environmental consciousness, inspiring a deep appreciation for the natural world. Additionally, Romantic ideals of personal freedom and rebellion against societal norms are reflected in today’s social and political movements, where self-expression and challenging authority remain central themes.

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Over the years our approach, as photographers, to taking pictures has changed. The history of photography movements is a rich and interesting subject to discover.

In this article and podcast video below, you’ll learn how particular styles of photography altered over the decades. We’ll talk about the genesis of these movements, the pioneers behind them and how society’s views on photography changed too. Walton, S. (2023). The History of Photography Movements. [online] Online photography courses from iPhotography. Available at: https://www.iphotography.com/blog/the-history-of-photography-movements/ [Accessed 28 Feb. 2025].

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Online photography courses from iPhotography

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Learn how the history of photography movements altered over the decades. Discover the pioneers and how society changed photography.

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Texts Images Other Resources Subject essay: James von Geldern Socialist realism was declared the reigning method of Soviet literature at The First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writer…

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Dada Movement Overview

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Dada’s mockery, wit, and absurdity powerfully criticized European culture and opened new ways to make art. Revolutionary ideas by Duchamp, Ray, Hoch, Tzara+

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Photography was introduced to the world in 1839. When the new medium arrived in the United States that year, it first established itself in major cities in the East. Photographers based in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston recorded the scenic vistas of tourist destinations such as the White Mountains and Niagara Falls, first photographed by Hugh Lee Pattinson in April 1840. Many early practitioners came to the medium from scientific or mechanical backgrounds, drawn to its seemingly magical ability to reproduce nature. And most - including Pattinson - adopted the daguerreotype, named after its French creator Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. This process fixed an image onto a silver-coated copperplate. Characterized by a mirrorlike surface and precise detail, the daguerreotype dominated photography in the United States for the next decade and a half.

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The Early Decades: Photography in the 1840s and 1850s

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Photography was introduced to the world in 1839. When the new medium arrived in the United States that year, it first established itself in major cities in the East. Photographers based in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston recorded the scenic vistas of tourist destinations such as the White Mountains and Niagara Falls, first photographed by Hugh Lee Pattinson in April 1840.

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Table of Contents

history of photography, method of recording the image of an object through the action of light, or related radiation, on a light-sensitive material. The word, derived from the Greek photos ("light") and graphein ("to draw"), was first used in the 1830s.

This article treats the historical and aesthetic aspects of still photography. For a discussion of the technical aspects of the medium, see photography, technology of. For a treatment of motion-picture photography, or cinematography, see motion picture, history of, and motion-picture technology.

General considerations

As a means of visual communication and expression, photography has distinct aesthetic capabilities. In order to understand them, one must first understand the characteristics of the process itself. One of the most important characteristics is immediacy. Usually, but not necessarily, the image that is recorded is formed by a lens in a camera. Upon exposure to the light forming the image, the sensitive material undergoes changes in its structure, a latent (but reversed) image usually called a negative is formed, and the image becomes visible by development and permanent by fixing with sodium thiosulfate, called "hypo." With modern materials, the processing may take place immediately or may be delayed for weeks or months.

The essential elements of the image are usually established immediately at the time of exposure. This characteristic is unique to photography and sets it apart from other ways of picture making. The seemingly automatic recording of an image by photography has given the process a sense of authenticity shared by no other picture-making technique. The photograph possesses, in the popular mind, such apparent accuracy that the adage "the camera does not lie" has become an accepted, if erroneous, cliché.

This understanding of photography's supposed objectivity has dominated evaluations of its role in the arts. In the early part of its history, photography was sometimes belittled as a mechanical art because of its dependence on technology. In truth, however, photography is not the automatic process that is implied by the use of a camera. Although the camera usually limits the photographer to depicting existing objects rather than imaginary or interpretive views, the skilled photographer can introduce creativity into the mechanical reproduction process. The image can be modified by different lenses and filters. The type of sensitive material used to record the image is a further control, and the contrast between highlight and shadow can be changed by variations in development. In printing the negative, the photographer has a wide choice in the physical surface of the paper, the tonal contrast, and the image colour. The photographer also may set up a completely artificial scene to photograph.

The most important control is, of course, the creative photographer's vision. He or she chooses the vantage point and the exact moment of exposure. The photographer perceives the essential qualities of the subject and interprets it according to his or her judgment, taste, and involvement. An effective photograph can disseminate information about humanity and nature, record the visible world, and extend human knowledge and understanding. For all these reasons, photography has aptly been called the most important invention since the printing press.

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Inventing the medium

Antecedents

The forerunner of the camera was the camera obscura, a dark chamber or room with a hole (later a lens) in one wall, through which images of objects outside the room were projected on the opposite wall. The principle was probably known to the Chinese and to ancient Greeks such as Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. Late in the 16th century, the Italian scientist and writer Giambattista della Porta demonstrated and described in detail the use of a camera obscura with a lens. While artists in subsequent centuries commonly used variations on the camera obscura to create images they could trace, the results from these devices depended on the artist's drawing skills, and so scientists continued to search for a method to reproduce images completely mechanically.

In 1727 the German professor of anatomy Johann Heinrich Schulze proved that the darkening of silver salts, a phenomenon known since the 16th century and possibly earlier, was caused by light and not heat. He demonstrated the fact by using sunlight to record words on the salts, but he made no attempt to preserve the images permanently. His discovery, in combination with the camera obscura, provided the basic technology necessary for photography. It was not until the early 19th century, however, that photography actually came into being.

Early experiments

Nicéphore Niépce, an amateur inventor living near Chalon-sur-Saône, a city 189 miles (304 km) southeast of Paris, was interested in lithography, a process in which drawings are copied or drawn by hand onto lithographic stone and then printed in ink. Not artistically trained, Niépce devised a method by which light could draw the pictures he needed. He oiled an engraving to make it transparent and then placed it on a plate coated with a light-sensitive solution of bitumen of Judea (a type of asphalt) and lavender oil and exposed the setup to sunlight. After a few hours, the solution under the light areas of the engraving hardened, while that under the dark areas remained soft and could be washed away, leaving a permanent, accurate copy of the engraving. Calling the process heliography ("sun drawing"), Niépce succeeded from 1822 onward in copying oiled engravings onto lithographic stone, glass, and zinc and from 1826 onto pewter plates.

In 1826/27, using a camera obscura fitted with a pewter plate, Niépce produced the first successful photograph from nature, a view of the courtyard of his country estate, Gras, from an upper window of the house. The exposure time was about eight hours, during which the sun moved from east to west so that it appears to shine on both sides of the building.

Niépce produced his most successful copy of an engraving, a portrait of Cardinal d'Amboise, in 1826. It was exposed in about three hours, and in February 1827 he had the pewter plate etched to form a printing plate and had two prints pulled. Paper prints were the final aim of Niépce's heliographic process, yet all his other attempts, whether made by using a camera or by means of engravings, were underexposed and too weak to be etched. Nevertheless, Niépce's discoveries showed the path that others were to follow with more success.

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history of photography | History, Inventions, Artists, & Events

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history of photography, method of recording the image of an object through the action of light, or related radiation, on a light-sensitive material. The word, derived from the Greek photos ("light") and graphein ("to draw"), was first used in the 1830s. This article treats the historical and aesthetic aspects of still photography.

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3 minutes video explaining what socialist realism is

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“The Great War” and “The War to End All Wars,” left more than 16 million soldiers and civilians dead, destabilized the European economy, and caused a large-scale shift of power on the international stage that would ultimately become one of the causes of World War II.

Among the great figures of the war were its documentarians—the poets who served in the war as soldiers or witnessed its effects in their time and responded with their personal accounts.

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Realism was an artistic and literary movement that emerged in the mid-19th century as a reaction against the idealism of Romanticism. It focused on depicting everyday life and society with accuracy, rejecting exaggeration and fantasy. Realist writers and artists sought to portray ordinary people, real-world struggles, and social issues in an honest and unembellished manner. The movement influenced literature, theater, and visual arts, with notable figures including novelists like Gustave Flaubert and Charles Dickens, painters like Gustave Courbet, and playwrights like Henrik Ibsen.

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Photographers at the Chicago Old Town Art Fair in 1968

Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed in many fields of science, manufacturing (e.g., photolithography), and business, as well as its more direct uses for art, film and video production, recreational purposes, hobby, and mass communication.

Typically, a lens is used to focus the light reflected or emitted from objects into a real image on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a timed exposure. With an electronic image sensor, this produces an electrical charge at each pixel, which is electronically processed and stored in a digital image file for subsequent display or processing. The result with photographic emulsion is an invisible latent image, which is later chemically "developed" into a visible image, either negative or positive, depending on the purpose of the photographic material and the method of processing. A negative image on film is traditionally used to photographically create a positive image on a paper base, known as a print, either by using an enlarger or by contact printing.

Several people may have coined the same new term from these roots independently. Hércules Florence, a French painter and inventor living in Campinas, Brazil, used the French form of the word, , in private notes which a Brazilian historian believes were written in 1834. This claim is widely reported but is not yet largely recognized internationally. The first use of the word by Florence became widely known after the research of Boris Kossoy in 1980.

The German newspaper of 25 February 1839 contained an article entitled , discussing several priority claims - especially Henry Fox Talbot's - regarding Daguerre's claim of invention. The article is the earliest known occurrence of the word in public print. It was signed "J.M.", believed to have been Berlin astronomer Johann von Maedler. The astronomer John Herschel is also credited with coining the word, independent of Talbot, in 1839.

The inventors Nicéphore Niépce, Talbot, and Louis Daguerre seem not to have known or used the word "photography", but referred to their processes as "Heliography" (Niépce), "Photogenic Drawing"/"Talbotype"/"Calotype" (Talbot), and "Daguerreotype" (Daguerre).

A camera obscura used for drawing

Photography is the result of combining several technical discoveries, relating to seeing an image and capturing the image. The discovery of the camera obscura ("dark chamber" in Latin) that provides an image of a scene dates back to ancient China. Greek mathematicians Aristotle and Euclid independently described a camera obscura in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. In the 6th century CE, Byzantine mathematician Anthemius of Tralles used a type of camera obscura in his experiments.

The Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (965-1040) also invented a camera obscura as well as the first true pinhole camera. The invention of the camera has been traced back to the work of Ibn al-Haytham. While the effects of a single light passing through a pinhole had been described earlier, Ibn al-Haytham gave the first correct analysis of the camera obscura, including the first geometrical and quantitative descriptions of the phenomenon, and was the first to use a screen in a dark room so that an image from one side of a hole in the surface could be projected onto a screen on the other side. He also first understood the relationship between the focal point and the pinhole, and performed early experiments with afterimages, laying the foundations for the invention of photography in the 19th century.

Leonardo da Vinci mentions natural camerae obscurae that are formed by dark caves on the edge of a sunlit valley. A hole in the cave wall will act as a pinhole camera and project a laterally reversed, upside down image on a piece of paper. Renaissance painters used the camera obscura which, in fact, gives the optical rendering in color that dominates Western Art. It is a box with a small hole in one side, which allows specific light rays to enter, projecting an inverted image onto a viewing screen or paper.

The birth of photography was then concerned with inventing means to capture and keep the image produced by the camera obscura. Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) discovered silver nitrate, and Georg Fabricius (1516-1571) discovered silver chloride, and the techniques described in Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics are capable of producing primitive photographs using medieval materials.[citation needed ]

Daniele Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1566. Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals (photochemical effect) in 1694. The fiction book , published in 1760, by French author Tiphaigne de la Roche, described what can be interpreted as photography.

In June 1802, British inventor Thomas Wedgwood made the first known attempt to capture the image in a camera obscura by means of a light-sensitive substance. He used paper or white leather treated with silver nitrate. Although he succeeded in capturing the shadows of objects placed on the surface in direct sunlight, and even made shadow copies of paintings on glass, it was reported in 1802 that "the images formed by means of a camera obscura have been found too faint to produce, in any moderate time, an effect upon the nitrate of silver." The shadow images eventually darkened all over.

Earliest known surviving heliographic engraving, 1825, printed from a metal plate made by Nicéphore Niépce.[27] The plate was exposed under an ordinary engraving and copied it by photographic means. This was a step towards the first permanent photograph taken with a camera.

View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826, the earliest surviving camera photograph. Original plate (left) and colorized reoriented enhancement (right).

The first permanent photoetching was an image produced in 1822 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce, but it was destroyed in a later attempt to make prints from it. Niépce was successful again in 1825. In 1826 he made the View from the Window at Le Gras, the earliest surviving photograph from nature (i.e., of the image of a real-world scene, as formed in a camera obscura by a lens).

View of the Boulevard du Temple, a daguerreotype made by Louis Daguerre in 1838, is generally accepted as the earliest photograph to include people. It is a view of a busy street, but because the exposure lasted for several minutes the moving traffic left no trace. Only the two men near the bottom left corner, one of them apparently having his boots polished by the other, remained in one place long enough to be visible.

Niépce died in 1833 and Daguerre then redirected the experiments toward the light-sensitive silver halides, which Niépce had abandoned many years earlier because of his inability to make the images he captured with them light-fast and permanent. Daguerre's efforts culminated in what would later be named the daguerreotype process. The essential elements-a silver-plated surface sensitized by iodine vapor, developed by mercury vapor, and "fixed" with hot saturated salt water-were in place in 1837. The required exposure time was measured in minutes instead of hours. Daguerre took the earliest confirmed photograph of a person in 1838 while capturing a view of a Paris street: unlike the other pedestrian and horse-drawn traffic on the busy boulevard, which appears deserted, one man having his boots polished stood sufficiently still throughout the several-minutes-long exposure to be visible. The existence of Daguerre's process was publicly announced, without details, on 7 January 1839. The news created an international sensation. France soon agreed to pay Daguerre a pension in exchange for the right to present his invention to the world as the gift of France, which occurred when complete working instructions were unveiled on 19 August 1839. In that same year, American photographer Robert Cornelius is credited with taking the earliest surviving photographic self-portrait.

A latticed window in Lacock Abbey, England, photographed by William Fox Talbot in 1835. Shown here in positive form, this may be the oldest extant photographic negative made in a camera.

In Brazil, Hercules Florence had apparently started working out a silver-salt-based paper process in 1832, later naming it Photographie.

Meanwhile, a British inventor, William Fox Talbot, had succeeded in making crude but reasonably light-fast silver images on paper as early as 1834 but had kept his work secret. After reading about Daguerre's invention in January 1839, Talbot published his hitherto secret method and set about improving on it. At first, like other pre-daguerreotype processes, Talbot's paper-based photography typically required hours-long exposures in the camera, but in 1840 he created the calotype process, which used the chemical development of a latent image to greatly reduce the exposure needed and compete with the daguerreotype. In both its original and calotype forms, Talbot's process, unlike Daguerre's, created a translucent negative which could be used to print multiple positive copies; this is the basis of most modern chemical photography up to the present day, as daguerreotypes could only be replicated by rephotographing them with a camera. Talbot's famous tiny paper negative of the Oriel window in Lacock Abbey, one of a number of camera photographs he made in the summer of 1835, may be the oldest camera negative in existence.

In France, Hippolyte Bayard invented his own process for producing direct positive paper prints and claimed to have invented photography earlier than Daguerre or Talbot.

British chemist John Herschel made many contributions to the new field. He invented the cyanotype process, later familiar as the "blueprint". He was the first to use the terms "photography", "negative" and "positive". He had discovered in 1819 that sodium thiosulphate was a solvent of silver halides, and in 1839 he informed Talbot (and, indirectly, Daguerre) that it could be used to "fix" silver-halide-based photographs and make them completely light-fast. He made the first glass negative in late 1839.

Wilson Chinn, a branded slave from Louisiana-per The New York Times, "one of the earliest and most dramatic examples of how the newborn medium of photography could change the course of history."[33]

Advertisement for Campbell's Photograph Gallery from The Macon City Directory, c. 1877

In the March 1851 issue of The Chemist, Frederick Scott Archer published his wet plate collodion process. It became the most widely used photographic medium until the gelatin dry plate, introduced in the 1870s, eventually replaced it. There are three subsets to the collodion process; the Ambrotype (a positive image on glass), the Ferrotype or Tintype (a positive image on metal) and the glass negative, which was used to make positive prints on albumen or salted paper.

Glass plates were the medium for most original camera photography from the late 1850s until the general introduction of flexible plastic films during the 1890s. Although the convenience of the film greatly popularized amateur photography, early films were somewhat more expensive and of markedly lower optical quality than their glass plate equivalents, and until the late 1910s they were not available in the large formats preferred by most professional photographers, so the new medium did not immediately or completely replace the old. Because of the superior dimensional stability of glass, the use of plates for some scientific applications, such as astrophotography, continued into the 1990s, and in the niche field of laser holography, it has persisted into the 21st century.

Undeveloped Arista black-and-white film, ISO 125/22°

Hurter and Driffield began pioneering work on the light sensitivity of photographic emulsions in 1876. Their work enabled the first quantitative measure of film speed to be devised.

Although cellulose acetate or " safety film" had been introduced by Kodak in 1908, at first it found only a few special applications as an alternative to the hazardous nitrate film, which had the advantages of being considerably tougher, slightly more transparent, and cheaper. The changeover was not completed for X-ray films until 1933, and although safety film was always used for 16 mm and 8 mm home movies, nitrate film remained standard for theatrical 35 mm motion pictures until it was finally discontinued in 1951.

Films remained the dominant form of photography until the early 21st century when advances in digital photography drew consumers to digital formats. Although modern photography is dominated by digital users, film continues to be used by enthusiasts and professional photographers. The distinctive "look" of film based photographs compared to digital images is likely due to a combination of factors, including (1) differences in spectral and tonal sensitivity (S-shaped density-to-exposure (H&D curve) with film vs. linear response curve for digital CCD sensors), (2) resolution, and (3) continuity of tone.

Originally, all photography was monochrome, or black-and-white. Even after color film was readily available, black-and-white photography continued to dominate for decades, due to its lower cost, chemical stability, and its "classic" photographic look. The tones and contrast between light and dark areas define black-and-white photography. Monochromatic pictures are not necessarily composed of pure blacks, whites, and intermediate shades of gray but can involve shades of one particular hue depending on the process. The cyanotype process, for example, produces an image composed of blue tones. The albumen print process, publicly revealed in 1847, produces brownish tones.

The first color photograph made by the three-color method suggested by James Clerk Maxwell in 1855, taken in 1861 by Thomas Sutton. The subject is a colored, tartan patterned ribbon.

Color photography was explored beginning in the 1840s. Early experiments in color required extremely long exposures (hours or days for camera images) and could not "fix" the photograph to prevent the color from quickly fading when exposed to white light.

The first permanent color photograph was taken in 1861 using the three-color-separation principle first published by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1855. The foundation of virtually all practical color processes, Maxwell's idea was to take three separate black-and-white photographs through red, green and blue filters. This provides the photographer with the three basic channels required to recreate a color image. Transparent prints of the images could be projected through similar color filters and superimposed on the projection screen, an additive method of color reproduction. A color print on paper could be produced by superimposing carbon prints of the three images made in their complementary colors, a subtractive method of color reproduction pioneered by Louis Ducos du Hauron in the late 1860s.

Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii made extensive use of this color separation technique, employing a special camera which successively exposed the three color-filtered images on different parts of an oblong plate. Because his exposures were not simultaneous, unsteady subjects exhibited color "fringes" or, if rapidly moving through the scene, appeared as brightly colored ghosts in the resulting projected or printed images.

Implementation of color photography was hindered by the limited sensitivity of early photographic materials, which were mostly sensitive to blue, only slightly sensitive to green, and virtually insensitive to red. The discovery of dye sensitization by photochemist Hermann Vogel in 1873 suddenly made it possible to add sensitivity to green, yellow and even red. Improved color sensitizers and ongoing improvements in the overall sensitivity of emulsions steadily reduced the once-prohibitive long exposure times required for color, bringing it ever closer to commercial viability.

Autochrome, the first commercially successful color process, was introduced by the Lumière brothers in 1907. Autochrome plates incorporated a mosaic color filter layer made of dyed grains of potato starch, which allowed the three color components to be recorded as adjacent microscopic image fragments. After an Autochrome plate was reversal processed to produce a positive transparency, the starch grains served to illuminate each fragment with the correct color and the tiny colored points blended together in the eye, synthesizing the color of the subject by the additive method. Autochrome plates were one of several varieties of additive color screen plates and films marketed between the 1890s and the 1950s.

Kodachrome, the first modern "integral tripack" (or "monopack") color film, was introduced by Kodak in 1935. It captured the three color components in a multi-layer emulsion. One layer was sensitized to record the red-dominated part of the spectrum, another layer recorded only the green part and a third recorded only the blue. Without special film processing, the result would simply be three superimposed black-and-white images, but complementary cyan, magenta, and yellow dye images were created in those layers by adding color couplers during a complex processing procedure.

Agfa's similarly structured Agfacolor Neu was introduced in 1936. Unlike Kodachrome, the color couplers in Agfacolor Neu were incorporated into the emulsion layers during manufacture, which greatly simplified the processing. Currently, available color films still employ a multi-layer emulsion and the same principles, most closely resembling Agfa's product.

Instant color film, used in a special camera which yielded a unique finished color print only a minute or two after the exposure, was introduced by Polaroid in 1963.

Color photography may form images as positive transparencies, which can be used in a slide projector, or as color negatives intended for use in creating positive color enlargements on specially coated paper. The latter is now the most common form of film (non-digital) color photography owing to the introduction of automated photo printing equipment. After a transition period centered around 1995-2005, color film was relegated to a niche market by inexpensive multi-megapixel digital cameras. Film continues to be the preference of some photographers because of its distinctive "look".

Kodak DCS 100, based on a Nikon F3 body with Digital Storage Unit

The first digital camera to both record and save images in a digital format was the Fujix DS-1P created by Fujfilm in 1988.

Digital imaging uses an electronic image sensor to record the image as a set of electronic data rather than as chemical changes on film. An important difference between digital and chemical photography is that chemical photography resists photo manipulation because it involves film and photographic paper, while digital imaging is a highly manipulative medium. This difference allows for a degree of image post-processing that is comparatively difficult in film-based photography and permits different communicative potentials and applications.

Photography on a smartphone

Digital photography dominates the 21st century. More than 99% of photographs taken around the world are through digital cameras, increasingly through smartphones.

Angles such as vertical, horizontal, or as pictured here diagonal are considered important photographic techniques.

A large variety of photographic techniques and media are used in the process of capturing images for photography. These include the camera; dualphotography; full-spectrum, ultraviolet and infrared media; light field photography; and other imaging techniques.

The camera is the image-forming device, and a photographic plate, photographic film or a silicon electronic image sensor is the capture medium. The respective recording medium can be the plate or film itself, or a digital magnetic or electronic memory.

Photographers control the camera and lens to "expose" the light recording material to the required amount of light to form a " latent image" (on plate or film) or RAW file (in digital cameras) which, after appropriate processing, is converted to a usable image. Digital cameras use an electronic image sensor based on light-sensitive electronics such as charge-coupled device (CCD) or complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The resulting digital image is stored electronically, but can be reproduced on a paper.

The camera (or ' camera obscura') is a dark room or chamber from which, as far as possible, all light is excluded except the light that forms the image. It was discovered and used in the 16th century by painters. The subject being photographed, however, must be illuminated. Cameras can range from small to very large, a whole room that is kept dark while the object to be photographed is in another room where it is properly illuminated. This was common for reproduction photography of flat copy when large film negatives were used (see Process camera).

As soon as photographic materials became "fast" (sensitive) enough for taking candid or surreptitious pictures, small "detective" cameras were made, some actually disguised as a book or handbag or pocket watch (the Ticka camera) or even worn hidden behind an Ascot necktie with a tie pin that was really the lens.

The movie camera is a type of photographic camera that takes a rapid sequence of photographs on recording medium. In contrast to a still camera, which captures a single snapshot at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images, each called a "frame". This is accomplished through an intermittent mechanism. The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a specific speed, called the "frame rate" (number of frames per second). While viewing, a person's eyes and brain merge the separate pictures to create the illusion of motion.

Photographs, both monochrome and color, can be captured and displayed through two side-by-side images that emulate human stereoscopic vision. Stereoscopic photography was the first that captured figures in motion. While known colloquially as "3-D" photography, the more accurate term is stereoscopy. Such cameras have long been realized by using film and more recently in digital electronic methods (including cell phone cameras).

An example of a dualphoto using a smartphone based app

Dualphotography consists of photographing a scene from both sides of a photographic device at once (e.g. camera for back-to-back dualphotography, or two networked cameras for portal-plane dualphotography). The dualphoto apparatus can be used to simultaneously capture both the subject and the photographer, or both sides of a geographical place at once, thus adding a supplementary narrative layer to that of a single image.

Full-spectrum, ultraviolet and infrared

This image of the rings of Saturn is an example of the application of ultraviolet photography in astronomy.

Modified digital cameras can detect some ultraviolet, all of the visible and much of the near infrared spectrum, as most digital imaging sensors are sensitive from about 350 nm to 1000 nm. An off-the-shelf digital camera contains an infrared hot mirror filter that blocks most of the infrared and a bit of the ultraviolet that would otherwise be detected by the sensor, narrowing the accepted range from about 400 nm to 700 nm.

Replacing a hot mirror or infrared blocking filter with an infrared pass or a wide spectrally transmitting filter allows the camera to detect the wider spectrum light at greater sensitivity. Without the hot-mirror, the red, green and blue (or cyan, yellow and magenta) colored micro-filters placed over the sensor elements pass varying amounts of ultraviolet (blue window) and infrared (primarily red and somewhat lesser the green and blue micro-filters).

Layering is a photographic composition technique that manipulates the foreground, subject or middle-ground, and background layers in a way that they all work together to tell a story through the image. Layers may be incorporated by altering the focal length, distorting the perspective by positioning the camera in a certain spot. People, movement, light and a variety of objects can be used in layering.

Digital methods of image capture and display processing have enabled the new technology of "light field photography" (also known as synthetic aperture photography). This process allows focusing at various depths of field to be selected after the photograph has been captured. As explained by Michael Faraday in 1846, the " light field" is understood as 5-dimensional, with each point in 3-D space having attributes of two more angles that define the direction of each ray passing through that point.

These additional vector attributes can be captured optically through the use of microlenses at each pixel point within the 2-dimensional image sensor. Every pixel of the final image is actually a selection from each sub-array located under each microlens, as identified by a post-image capture focus algorithm.

Devices other than cameras can be used to record images. Trichome of Arabidopsis thaliana seen via scanning electron microscope. Note that image has been edited by adding colors to clarify structure or to add an aesthetic effect. Heiti Paves from Tallinn University of Technology.

Besides the camera, other methods of forming images with light are available. For instance, a photocopy or xerography machine forms permanent images but uses the transfer of static electrical charges rather than photographic medium, hence the term electrophotography. Photograms are images produced by the shadows of objects cast on the photographic paper, without the use of a camera. Objects can also be placed directly on the glass of an image scanner to produce digital pictures.

Amateur photographers take photos for personal use, as a hobby or out of casual interest, rather than as a business or job. The quality of amateur work can be comparable to that of many professionals. Amateurs can fill a gap in subjects or topics that might not otherwise be photographed if they are not commercially useful or salable. Amateur photography grew during the late 19th century due to the popularization of the hand-held camera. Twenty-first century social media and near-ubiquitous camera phones have made photographic and video recording pervasive in everyday life. In the mid-2010s smartphone cameras added numerous automatic assistance features like color management, autofocus face detection and image stabilization that significantly decreased skill and effort needed to take high quality images.

Commercial photography is probably best defined as any photography for which the photographer is paid for images rather than works of art. In this light, money could be paid for the subject of the photograph or the photograph itself. Wholesale, retail, and professional uses of photography would fall under this definition. The commercial photographic world could include:

Advertising photography: photographs made to illustrate and usually sell a service or product. These images, such as packshots, are generally done with an advertising agency, design firm or with an in-house corporate design team.

Architectural photography focuses on capturing photographs of buildings and architectural structures that are aesthetically pleasing and accurate in terms of representations of their subjects.

Event photography focuses on photographing guests and occurrences at mostly social events.

Fashion and glamour photography usually incorporates models and is a form of advertising photography. Fashion photography, like the work featured in Harper's Bazaar, emphasizes clothes and other products; glamour emphasizes the model and body form. Glamour photography is popular in advertising and men's magazines. Models in glamour photography sometimes work nude.

360 product photography displays a series of photos to give the impression of a rotating object. This technique is commonly used by ecommerce websites to help shoppers visualise products.

Concert photography focuses on capturing candid images of both the artist or band as well as the atmosphere (including the crowd). Many of these photographers work freelance and are contracted through an artist or their management to cover a specific show. Concert photographs are often used to promote the artist or band in addition to the venue.

Crime scene photography consists of photographing scenes of crime such as robberies and murders. A black and white camera or an infrared camera may be used to capture specific details.

Still life photography usually depicts inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made. Still life is a broader category for food and some natural photography and can be used for advertising purposes.

Real Estate photography focuses on the production of photographs showcasing a property that is for sale, such photographs requires the use of wide-lens and extensive knowledge in High-dynamic-range imaging photography.

Example of a studio-made food photograph

Food photography can be used for editorial, packaging or advertising use. Food photography is similar to still life photography but requires some special skills.

Photojournalism can be considered a subset of editorial photography. Photographs made in this context are accepted as a documentation of a news story.

Paparazzi is a form of photojournalism in which the photographer captures candid images of athletes, celebrities, politicians, and other prominent people.

Portrait and wedding photography: photographs made and sold directly to the end user of the images.

Landscape photography depicts locations.

Wildlife photography demonstrates the life of wild animals.

Classic Alfred Stieglitz photograph, The Steerage (1907) shows unique aesthetic of black-and-white photos.

During the 20th century, both fine art photography and documentary photography became accepted by the English-speaking art world and the gallery system. In the United States, a handful of photographers, including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, John Szarkowski, F. Holland Day, and Edward Weston, spent their lives advocating for photography as a fine art. At first, fine art photographers tried to imitate painting styles. This movement is called Pictorialism, often using soft focus for a dreamy, 'romantic' look. In reaction to that, Weston, Ansel Adams, and others formed the Group f/64 to advocate ' straight photography', the photograph as a (sharply focused) thing in itself and not an imitation of something else.

The aesthetics of photography is a matter that continues to be discussed regularly, especially in artistic circles. Many artists argued that photography was the mechanical reproduction of an image. If photography is authentically art, then photography in the context of art would need redefinition, such as determining what component of a photograph makes it beautiful to the viewer. The controversy began with the earliest images "written with light"; Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre, and others among the very earliest photographers were met with acclaim, but some questioned if their work met the definitions and purposes of art.

Clive Bell in his classic essay Art states that only "significant form" can distinguish art from what is not art.

There must be some one quality without which a work of art cannot exist; possessing which, in the least degree, no work is altogether worthless. What is this quality? What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions? What quality is common to Sta. Sophia and the windows at Chartres, Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpets, Giotto's frescoes at Padua, and the masterpieces of Poussin, Piero della Francesca, and Cezanne? Only one answer seems possible - significant form. In each, lines and colors combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions.

On 7 February 2007, Sotheby's London sold the 2001 photograph 99 Cent II Diptychon for an unprecedented $3,346,456 to an anonymous bidder, making it the most expensive at the time.

Conceptual photography turns a concept or idea into a photograph. Even though what is depicted in the photographs are real objects, the subject is strictly abstract.

Josef H. Neumann: Gustav I (1976)

In parallel to this development, the then largely separate interface between painting and photography was closed in the second half of the 20th century with the chemigram of Pierre Cordier and the chemogram of Josef H. Neumann. In 1974 the chemograms by Josef H. Neumann concluded the separation of the painterly background and the photographic layer by showing the picture elements in a symbiosis that had never existed before, as an unmistakable unique specimen, in a simultaneous painterly and at the same time real photographic perspective, using lenses, within a photographic layer, united in colors and shapes. This Neumann chemogram from the seventies of the 20th century thus differs from the beginning of the previously created cameraless chemigrams of a Pierre Cordier and the photogram Man Ray or László Moholy-Nagy of the previous decades. These works of art were almost simultaneous with the invention of photography by various important artists who characterized Hippolyte Bayard, Thomas Wedgwood, William Henry Fox Talbot in their early stages, and later Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy in the twenties and by the painter in the thirties Edmund Kesting and Christian Schad by draping objects directly onto appropriately sensitized photo paper and using a light source without a camera.

Photojournalism is a particular form of photography (the collecting, editing, and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast) that employs images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term also refers to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (e.g., documentary photography, social documentary photography, street photography or celebrity photography) by complying with a rigid ethical framework which demands that the work be both honest and impartial whilst telling the story in strictly journalistic terms. Photojournalists create pictures that contribute to the news media, and help communities connect with one other. Photojournalists must be well informed and knowledgeable about events happening right outside their door. They deliver news in a creative format that is not only informative, but also entertaining, including sports photography.

Wootton bridge collapse in 1861

The camera has a long and distinguished history as a means of recording scientific phenomena from the first use by Daguerre and Fox-Talbot, such as astronomical events ( eclipses for example), small creatures and plants when the camera was attached to the eyepiece of microscopes (in photomicroscopy) and for macro photography of larger specimens. The camera also proved useful in recording crime scenes and the scenes of accidents, such as the Wootton bridge collapse in 1861. The methods used in analysing photographs for use in legal cases are collectively known as forensic photography. Crime scene photos are usually taken from three vantage points: overview, mid-range, and close-up.

In 1845 Francis Ronalds, the Honorary Director of the Kew Observatory, invented the first successful camera to make continuous recordings of meteorological and geomagnetic parameters. Different machines produced 12- or 24- hour photographic traces of the minute-by-minute variations of atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, atmospheric electricity, and the three components of geomagnetic forces. The cameras were supplied to numerous observatories around the world and some remained in use until well into the 20th century. Charles Brooke a little later developed similar instruments for the Greenwich Observatory.

Science regularly uses image technology that has derived from the design of the pinhole camera to avoid distortions that can be caused by lenses. X-ray machines are similar in design to pinhole cameras, with high-grade filters and laser radiation. Photography has become universal in recording events and data in science and engineering, and at crime scenes or accident scenes. The method has been much extended by using other wavelengths, such as infrared photography and ultraviolet photography, as well as spectroscopy. Those methods were first used in the Victorian era and improved much further since that time.

The first photographed atom was discovered in 2012 by physicists at Griffith University, Australia. They used an electric field to trap an "Ion" of the element, Ytterbium. The image was recorded on a CCD, an electronic photographic film.

Wildlife photography involves capturing images of various forms of wildlife. Unlike other forms of photography such as product or food photography, successful wildlife photography requires a photographer to choose the right place and right time when specific wildlife are present and active. It often requires great patience and considerable skill and command of the right photographic equipment.

Photography may be used both to capture reality and to produce a work of art. While photo manipulation was often frowned upon at first, it was eventually used to great extent to produce artistic effects. Nude composition 19 from 1988 by Jaan Künnap.

There are many ongoing questions about different aspects of photography. In her On Photography (1977), Susan Sontag dismisses the objectivity of photography. This is a highly debated subject within the photographic community. Sontag argues, "To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting one's self into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge, and therefore like power." Photographers decide what to take a photo of, what elements to exclude and what angle to frame the photo, and these factors may reflect a particular socio-historical context. Along these lines, it can be argued that photography is a subjective form of representation.

Modern photography has raised a number of concerns on its effect on society. In Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), the camera is presented as promoting voyeurism. 'Although the camera is an observation station, the act of photographing is more than passive observing'.

The camera doesn't rape or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate - all activities that, unlike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment.

Digital imaging has raised ethical concerns because of the ease of manipulating digital photographs in post-processing. Many photojournalists have declared they will not crop their pictures or are forbidden from combining elements of multiple photos to make " photomontages", passing them as "real" photographs. Today's technology has made image editing relatively simple for even the novice photographer. However, recent changes of in-camera processing allow digital fingerprinting of photos to detect tampering for purposes of forensic photography.

Photography is one of the new media forms that changes perception and changes the structure of society. Further unease has been caused around cameras in regards to desensitization. Fears that disturbing or explicit images are widely accessible to children and society at large have been raised. Particularly, photos of war and pornography are causing a stir. Sontag is concerned that "to photograph is to turn people into objects that can be symbolically possessed". Desensitization discussion goes hand in hand with debates about censored images. Sontag writes of her concern that the ability to censor pictures means the photographer has the ability to construct reality.

One of the practices through which photography constitutes society is tourism. Tourism and photography combine to create a "tourist gaze" in which local inhabitants are positioned and defined by the camera lens. However, it has also been argued that there exists a "reverse gaze" through which indigenous photographees can position the tourist photographer as a shallow consumer of images.

Photography is both restricted and protected by the law in many jurisdictions. Protection of photographs is typically achieved through the granting of copyright or moral rights to the photographer. In the United States, photography is protected as a First Amendment right and anyone is free to photograph anything seen in public spaces as long as it is in plain view. In the UK, a recent law (Counter-Terrorism Act 2008) increases the power of the police to prevent people, even press photographers, from taking pictures in public places. In South Africa, any person may photograph any other person, without their permission, in public spaces and the only specific restriction placed on what may not be photographed by government is related to anything classed as national security. Each country has different laws.

Barrett, T 2012, Criticizing Photographs: an introduction to understanding images, 5th edn, McGraw-Hill, New York.

Bate, D. (2009), Photography: The Key Concepts, Bloomsbury, New York.

Berger, J. (Dyer, G. ed.), (2013), Understanding a Photograph, Penguin Classics, London.

Bright, S 2011, Art Photography Now, Thames & Hudson, London.

Cotton, C. (2015), The Photograph as Contemporary Art, 3rd edn, Thames & Hudson, New York.

Heiferman, M. (2013), Photography Changes Everything, Aperture Foundation, US.

Shore, S. (2015), The Nature of Photographs, 2nd ed. Phaidon, New York.

A New History of Photography, ed. by Michel Frizot, Köln : Könemann, 1998

Tom Ang (2002). Dictionary of Photography and Digital Imaging: The Essential Reference for the Modern Photographer. Watson-Guptill. ISBN 978-0-8174-3789-3.

Lynne Warren (Hrsg.): Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography, 1719 p., New York: Routledge, 2006

The Oxford Companion to the Photograph, ed. by Robin Lenman, Oxford University Press 2005

"The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography", Richard Zakia, Leslie Stroebel, Focal Press 1993, ISBN 0-240-51417-3

Stroebel, Leslie (2000). Basic Photographic Materials and Processes. et al. Boston: Focal Press. ISBN 978-0-240-80405-7.

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Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed in many fields of science, manufacturing (e.g., photolithography), and business, as well as its more direct uses for art, film and video production, recreational purposes, hobby, and mass communication.

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The history of Russian animation is the visual art form produced by Russian animation makers. As most of Russia's production of animation for cinema and television were created during Soviet times, it may also be referred to some extent as the history of Soviet animation. It remains a nearly unexplored field in film theory and history outside Russia. to, C. (2004). aspect of history. [online] Wikipedia.org. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russian_animation [Accessed 28 Feb. 2025].

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History of Russian animation - Wikipedia

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The history of Russian animation is the visual art form produced by Russian animation makers. As most of Russia’s production of animation for cinema and television were created during Soviet times, it may also be referred to some extent as the history of Soviet animation. It remains a nearly unexplored field in film theory and history outside Russia.

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Soviet Art (Avant-Garde Art and Socialist Realism)

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Soviet Art (Avant-Garde Art and Socialist Realism)

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An 18 minute YouTube video on Soviet Art (Avant-Garde Art and Socialist Realism)

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Dada artists felt the war called into question every aspect of a society capable of starting and then prolonging it - including its art. Their aim was to destroy traditional values in art and to create a new art to replace the old. As the artist Hans Arp later wrote:

In addition to being anti-war, dada was also anti-bourgeois and had political affinities with the radical left.

The founder of dada was a writer, Hugo Ball. In 1916 he started a satirical night-club in Zurich, the Cabaret Voltaire, and a magazine which, wrote Ball, 'will bear the name "Dada". Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada.' This was the first of many dada publications. Dada became an international movement and eventually formed the basis of surrealism in Paris after the war.

Leading artists associated with it include Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Kurt Schwitters. Duchamp's questioning of the fundamentals of Western art had a profound subsequent influence.

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Tate glossary definition for dada: Art movement formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war often satirical and nonsensical in nature

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More Than Kiddie Cartoons: Russian Animation in the 21st Century - The Moscow Times

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The history of Russian animation dates back to 1906, when the choreographer of the Mariinsky Theater in St.

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World War I: Poetry by Year by The Editors | Poetry Foundation

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World War I: Poetry by Year by The Editors | Poetry Foundation

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Roughly 10 million soldiers lost their lives in World War I, along with seven million civilians. The horror of the war and its aftermath altered the world for decades, and poets responded to the brutalities and losses in new ways. Just months before his death in 1918, English poet Wilfred Owen famously wrote:

This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War.

To mark the WWI centenary, we've put together a sampling of poems written in English by both soldiers and civilians, chosen from our archive of over 250 poems from WWI. We've also compiled a collection showcasing the poets who served and volunteered in World War I.

While many of these poems do not address a particular war event, we've listed them by year, along with a selection of historical markers, to contextualize the poems historically. You may notice that more poems in 1914 and 1915 extoll the old virtues of honor, duty, heroism, and glory, while many later poems after 1915 approach these lofty abstractions with far greater skepticism and moral subtlety through realism and bitter irony. Though horrific depictions of battle in poetry date back to Homer's Iliad, the later poems of WWI mark a substantial shift in how we view war and sacrifice.

1914
Archduke Ferdinand assassinated. Outbreak of war in July/August. Germany invades Belgium. First Battle of the Marne, First Battle of Ypres. United States remains neutral. Trench warfare begins. The Siege of Antwerp. The Christmas truce.

" Channel Firing" by Thomas Hardy
" On Receiving News of the War" by Isaac Rosenberg
" Peace" by Rupert Brooke (published in Poetry)
" The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke (published in Poetry)
" The Dead" by Rupert Brooke
" Joining the Colours" by Katherine Tynan
" Men Who March Away" by Thomas Hardy
" War Girls" by Jessie Pope
" On Heaven" by Ford Madox Ford (published in Poetry)
" To Germany" by Charles Sorley
" For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon
" Phases" by Wallace Stevens (published in Poetry)
" Iron" by Carl Sandburg (published in Poetry)
" The Bombardment" by Amy Lowell (published in Poetry)
" War Yawp" by Richard Aldington (published in Poetry)
" Fallen" by Alice Corbin Henderson (published in Poetry)
" August 1914" by Mary Wedderburn Cannan
" August 1914" by Isaac Rosenberg
" August, 1914 " by Vera Mary Brittain

1915
Germans sink RMS Lusitania. The Dardenelles campaign. Battle of Gallipoli. Second Battle of Ypres. First use of poison gas.

" In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae
" Absolution" by Siegfried Sassoon
" Home" by Edward Thomas
" Champagne, 1914-15" by Alan Seeger
" Belgium" by Edith Wharton
" Before Marching and After" by Thomas Hardy
" In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)" by Edward Thomas
" The Owl" by Edward Thomas
" A Lament" by Katherine Tynan
" The Spring in War-Time" by Sara Teasdale
" Into Battle" by Julian Grenfell
" On Being Asked for a War Poem" by William Butler Yeats
" Rouen" by Mary Wedderburn Cannan
" Marching" by Isaac Rosenberg (published in Poetry)
" Such, Such is Death" by Charles Sorley
" The Falling Leaves" by Margaret Postgate Cole
" When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead" by Charles Sorley
" This is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong " by Edward Thomas

1916
Battle of Verdun, Battle of the Somme. President Wilson re-elected with campaign slogan, "He kept us out of the war." Rasputin is murdered.

" Rain" by Edward Thomas
" Break of Day in the Trenches" by Isaac Rosenberg (published in Poetry)
" The Troop Ship" by Isaac Rosenberg
" The Kiss" by Siegfried Sassoon
" The Poet as Hero" by Siegfried Sassoon
" As the Team's Head Brass" by Edward Thomas
" Sonnet 9: On Returning to the Front after Leave" by Alan Seeger
" In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'" by Thomas Hardy
" Easter, 1916" by William Butler Yeats
" The Trumpet" by Edward Thomas
" The Messages" by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
" The Death Bed" by Siegfried Sassoon
" Lights Out" by Edward Thomas
" The Night Patrol" by Arthur Graeme West
" The War Films" by Henry Newbolt
" The Twins" by Robert Service
" Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France" by Alan Seeger
" At the Movies " by Florence Ripley Mastin

1917
Germans issue Zimmerman Telegram to Mexico, United States declares war on Germany, draft begins. U.S. troops land in France. Third Battle of Ypres. Bolshevik uprising in Russia, led by Lenin, headed by Trotsky.

" Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen
" I Have a Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger
" Blighters" by Siegfried Sassoon
" Two Fusiliers" by Robert Graves
" Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen
" Returning, We Hear the Larks" by Isaac Rosenberg
" The Dead Kings" by Francis Ledwidge
" Servitude" by Ivor Gurney
"from Battle of the Somme: The Song of the Mud" by Mary Borden
" Dead Man's Dump" by Isaac Rosenberg
" Counter-Attack" by Siegfried Sassoon
" Sergeant-Major Money" by Robert Graves
" The Work" by Gertrude Stein
" To His Love" by Ivor Gurney
" After the War" by Mary Wedderburn Cannan
" To Any Dead Officer" by Siegfried Sassoon
" Photographs" by Ivor Gurney
" Breakfast " by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

1918
U.S. President Wilson issues Fourteen Points to peace. Germany launches Spring Offensive, bombs Paris. United States launches attacks at Belleau Wood and Argonne Forest. Bolsheviks murder Tsar Nicholas II and Romanov family. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates, Germany signs armistice on November 11. Paris Peace Conference.

" Strange Meeting" by Wilfred Owen
" Futility" by Wilfred Owen
" Attack" by Siegfried Sassoon
" The Veteran" by Margaret Postgate Cole (published in Poetry)
" Repression of War Experience" by Siegfried Sassoon
" Grass" by Carl Sandburg
" Dawn on the Somme" by Robert Nichols
" God! How I hate you, you young cheerful men " by Arthur Graeme West
" Lettres d'un Soldat" by Wallace Stevens (published in Poetry)
" Ypres" by Laurence Binyon
" Spring Offensive " by Wilfred Owen
" Epitaph On My Days in Hospital" by Vera Mary Brittain
" Roundel" by Vera Mary Brittain
" War Mothers" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
" Glory of Women" by Sigfried Sassoon
" Smile, Smile, Smile" by Wilfred Owen
" S. I. W." by Wilfred Owen
" And There Was a Great Calm" by Thomas Hardy

1919 and After
Armies demobilize, return home. Peace Treaty of Versailles ratified by Germany; U.S. Senate votes to reject treaty and refuses to join League of Nations. Proposal and constitution for League of Nations. The Cenotaph unveiled in London. Treaty of Sevres in 1920 ends war on Eastern Front.

" January 1919" by Christopher Middleton (1919)
" Everyone Sang" by Siegfried Sassoon (1919)
" The Cenotaph" by Charlotte Mew (1919)
" First Time In" by Ivor Gurney (1919)
"from Epitaphs of the War, 1914-18 " by Rudyard Kipling (1919)
" Gethsemane" by Rudyard Kipling (1919)
" Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Part I)" by Ezra Pound (1920)
" A.E.F." by Carl Sandburg (1920)
" To E.T." by Robert Frost (1920)
" In Memory of George Calderon" by Laurence Binyon (1920)
" War and Peace" by Edgell Rickword (1921)
" Trench Poets" by Edgell Rickword (1921)
"Soldier-Poet" by Hervey Allen (1921)
" For a War Memorial" by G.K. Chesterton (1921)
" Festubert, 1916" by Edmund Blunden (1921)
" Elegy in a Country Churchyard" by G.K. Chesterton (1922)
" Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries" by A.E. Housman (1922)
" Soldier from the wars returning" by A.E. Housman (1922)
" I Saw England - July Night" by Ivor Gurney (1922)
" Champs d'Honneur" by Ernest Hemingway (1923) (published in Poetry)
" Laventie" by Ivor Gurney (1925)
" A War Bride" by Jessie St. John (1928) (published in Poetry)

Read more poets who served or volunteered in WWI

Browse more War Poems
AUDIO
Poet's Choice: Of Love and War: D.A. Powell reads poems from Rupert Brooke and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Anything But Sweet: Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and modern warfare.
ARTICLES
"100 Years of Poetry: The Magazine and War": A historical look at the role of poetry in wartime.

"How Should We Write About War and Trauma?": Tom Sleigh Looks to David Jones

" Now Online: Siegfried Sassoon's War Diaries "

" Poetry in the First World War" from Poetry magazine (1940)
ONLINE WWI RESOURCES
PBS: The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century
Oxford University: The First World War Poetry Digital Archive U.S. National WWI Museum The Telegraph: Life on the Eve of War

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World War I: Poetry by Year by The Editors | Poetry Foundation

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Roughly 10 million soldiers lost their lives in World War I, along with seven million civilians. The horror of the war and its aftermath altered the world for decades, and poets responded to the brutalities and losses in new ways. Just months before his death in 1918, English poet Wilfred Owen famously wrote: This book is not about heroes.

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Davekochphoto.com. (2018). Fine Art Photography |. [online] Available at: https://davekochphoto.com/portfolio/fine-art-photography/ [Accessed 28 Feb. 2025].

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Photography is the art and technique of capturing images using light, either digitally or on film. It emerged in the early 19th century and has since evolved into a powerful medium for artistic expression, documentation, and communication. Photography serves various purposes, from personal memories and journalism to advertising and fine art. It has played a crucial role in shaping history by documenting significant events, influencing public opinion, and preserving cultural heritage. Today, with advancements in digital technology and social media, photography is more accessible than ever, allowing people worldwide to share their perspectives instantly.

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5 Famous World War 1 Poems | Army Cadets UK

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World War 1 poems changed the way we look at war forever, thanks to the unique insights of WW1 poets into the nightmares of trench combat.

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1960s counterculture, a broad-ranging social movement in the United States, Canada, and western Europe that rejected conventional mores and traditional authorities and whose members variously advocated peace, love, social justice, and revolution. The 1960s counterculture movement, which generally extended into the early 1970s, was an alternative approach to life that manifested itself in a variety of activities, lifestyles, and artistic expressions, including recreational drug use, communal living, political protests, casual sex, and folk and rock music.

The movement was perhaps best encapsulated by the phrase "turn on, tune in, drop out," coined by the American psychologist Timothy Leary, who demonstrated contempt for authority and championed the use of LSD and other psychoactive drugs. U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon famously called Leary "the most dangerous man in America." The counterculture movement featured artists such as Andy Warhol, who was famous for his Pop art works. Adherents advocated freedom of expression and a distrust of those in power.

The movement ranged from nonviolent "peaceniks" to revolutionaries who engaged in armed resistance. Fueled by college students, it included protests of the Vietnam War and racial injustice and struggles for women's rights, gay rights, and sexual freedom. It led to mass demonstrations, such as a 1969 antiwar protest in Washington, D.C., that drew as many as 500,000 people, and a "national teach-in on the environment" in 1970 called Earth Day, which is still commemorated annually.

Hippie lifestyle

One enduring image of the counterculture movement is that of " hippies," who were mostly white, middle-class, young Americans. Many felt alienated from their parents' lifestyles, which they viewed as too focused on material goods and consumerism. That tension drove a "generation gap" that became a hallmark of the 1960s. Hippies often let their hair grow long, and many men had facial hair. The title track of the musical Hair, first performed in 1967, captures this style with the lyrics:

My hair like Jesus wore it
Hallelujah, I adore it
Hallelujah, Mary loved her son,
Why don't my mother love me?

Hippies wore colourful clothes and typically donned sandals. They eschewed regular jobs, many had vegetarian diets, and some engaged in "free love." Hippies often traveled the country, sometimes in Volkswagen Microbuses, dubbed "hippie buses," adorned with peace signs. One of their most famous slogans was "Make love, not war."

The movement's soundtrack

Rock music was an important part of the counterculture movement. Bands like the Grateful Dead-whose fans are known as "Deadheads"-had a strong influence on 1960s counterculture. The Beatles, the most influential band of the era, "helped make rock music a battering ram for the youth culture's assault on the mainstream," according to a New York Times article in 1975. The folk music icon Bob Dylan spoke for many alienated youth when in 1965 he sang, "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more." Other artists and bands associated with the counterculture movement included Joan Baez, Jefferson Airplane, the Velvet Underground and the Rolling Stones. A powerful counterculture song was "Almost Cut My Hair" (1970) by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. A song by the Who, "My Generation" (1965)-with its line "I hope I die before I get old"-practically became an anthem of 1960s youth. The era also produced rock musicals, including (in addition to Hair), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1968), and Jesus Christ Superstar (1971).

Music festivals helped fuel the counterculture movement, most famously Woodstock, a three-day 1969 extravaganza in upstate New York that featured bands and artists such as the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, and Santana. An estimated 400,000 people attended the event. In December 1969, the Altamont festival in Livermore, California, resulted in tragedy. Organizers made the fateful decision to hire the Hells Angels, a motorcycle gang, to provide security, and one of its members fatally stabbed a Black teenager who had drawn a gun as the Rolling Stones were performing. The Associated Press reflected two decades later that this moment "shattered the dream of a utopian counterculture for the '60s generation."

Militant resistance

The 1960s counterculture was also marked by armed protest groups. The Black Panther Party, for example, a group founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in California, sought to protect Black neighbourhoods from police brutality and declared, "The time has come for Black people to arm themselves." That prompted the state to pass legislation dubbed "the Panther Bill," signed into law by Gov. Ronald Reagan, which banned the open carrying of loaded firearms. Another organization, Weatherman, later known as Weather Underground, made up of young white militants, advocated communism and the overthrow of the U.S. government through violent revolution. The group, which grew out of Students for a Democratic Society, used a 1969 position paper called "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows" as its founding statement. The group engaged in bombings into the early 1970s.

Fred Frommer

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1960s counterculture | Definition, Hippies, Music, Protests, & Facts

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1960s counterculture, a broad-ranging social movement in the United States, Canada, and western Europe that rejected conventional mores and traditional authorities and whose members variously advocated peace, love, social justice, and revolution. The 1960s counterculture movement, which generally

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Dada artists felt the war called into question every aspect of a society capable of starting and then prolonging it - including its art. Their aim was to destroy traditional values in art and to create a new art to replace the old. As the artist Hans Arp later wrote:

In addition to being anti-war, dada was also anti-bourgeois and had political affinities with the radical left.

The founder of dada was a writer, Hugo Ball. In 1916 he started a satirical night-club in Zurich, the Cabaret Voltaire, and a magazine which, wrote Ball, 'will bear the name "Dada". Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada.' This was the first of many dada publications. Dada became an international movement and eventually formed the basis of surrealism in Paris after the war.

Leading artists associated with it include Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Kurt Schwitters. Duchamp's questioning of the fundamentals of Western art had a profound subsequent influence.

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Tate glossary definition for dada: Art movement formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war often satirical and nonsensical in nature

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The doctrine was formally proclaimed by Maxim Gorky at the Soviet Writers Congress of 1934, although not precisely defined. In practice, in painting it meant using realist styles to create highly optimistic depictions of Soviet life. Any pessimistic or critical element was banned, and this is the crucial difference from social realism. It was quite simply propaganda art, and has an ironic resemblance to the Fascist realism imposed by Hitler in Germany (see Entartete Kunst - degenerate art).

Outside the Soviet Union, socialist artists produced much freer interpretations of the genre as the paintings on this page illustrate.

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The doctrine was formally proclaimed by Maxim Gorky at the Soviet Writers Congress of 1934, although not precisely defined. In practice, in painting it meant using realist styles to create highly optimistic depictions of Soviet life. Any pessimistic or critical element was banned, and this is the crucial difference from social realism.

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Socialist Realism: Socialist Realism,, officially sanctioned theory and method of literary composition prevalent in the Soviet Union from 1932 to the mid-1980s. For that period of history Socialist Realism was the sole criterion for measuring literary works. Defined and reinterpreted over years of polemics, it

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World War I poetry emerged as a powerful literary response to the horrors of the Great War (1914–1918). It captured the experiences of soldiers, the brutality of trench warfare, and the emotional toll of conflict. Early war poets, like Rupert Brooke, wrote patriotic and idealistic verses, while later poets, such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, exposed the grim realities of war, emphasizing themes of suffering, disillusionment, and loss. Their works, including Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est and Sassoon’s Attack, challenged traditional notions of heroism and highlighted the true cost of war, leaving a lasting impact on literature and historical memory.

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Raoul Hausmann's Mechanical Head (The Spirit of our Time) (1920)

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Raoul Hausmann's Mechanical Head (The Spirit of our Time) (1920)

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1960s: Counterculture and Civil Rights Movement | HISTORY

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The 1960s were a tumultuous decade defined by the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and the emerging “generation gap.”

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What Soviet cartoons teach us about socialism

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What Soviet cartoons teach us about socialism

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a 28 minute long YouTube video explaining what Soviet cartoons teach us about socialism

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What Soviet cartoons teach us about socialism

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Dada was a literary and artistic movement born in Europe at a time when the horror of World War It was being played out in what amounted to citizens' front yards. Due to the war, a number of artists, writers and intellectuals - notably of French and German nationality - found themselves congregating in the refuge that Zurich (in neutral Switzerland) offered. Far from merely feeling relief at their respective escapes, this bunch was pretty ticked off that modern European society would allow the war to have happened. They were so angry, in fact, that they undertook the time-honored artistic tradition of protesting.

Banding together in a loosely-knit group, these writers and artists used any public forum they could find to (metaphorically) spit on nationalism, rationalism, materialism and any other -ism which they felt had contributed to a senseless war.

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History of Russian animation - Wikipedia

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The history of Russian animation is the visual art form produced by Russian animation makers. As most of Russia’s production of animation for cinema and television were created during Soviet times, it may also be referred to some extent as the history of Soviet animation. It remains a nearly unexplored field in film theory and history outside Russia.

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The Counterculture of the 1960s set the stage culturally for the Women's Movement much as the New Left and Civil Rights Movement had done politically. The Counterculture challenged all the conventional social realities: sexual relations, art and media, religion, and the family. In its own alternatives, it espoused female values and a feminine way of being while it oppressed women in practice. The Counterculture broke down the liberal distinction between the public/political and the private/personal. It treated as primary and public those values and characteristics traditionally assigned to women and children in the private sphere. The Counterculture emphasised spontaneity and dependence on others, rather than self-control; intuition and feeling, instead of detached rationality; cooperation and consensus over competition and efficiency; and a preference for face-to-face relationships rather than bureaucratic structure. The Counterculture also devalued those social priorities and motivations which had been traditionally masculine - aggressiveness, toughness, material success - and which had rewarded men more than women.

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The Counterculture of the 1960s set the stage culturally for the Women's Movement much as the New Left and Civil Rights Movement had done politically. The Counterculture challenged all the conventional social realities: sexual relations, art and media,...

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Graf, S. (2023). 8 Famous Dada Artists Who Achieved Greatness. [online] TheCollector. Available at: https://www.thecollector.com/famous-dada-artists/.

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Dadaism was an avant-garde art movement that emerged during World War I (1916) as a reaction to the war, rationalism, and traditional artistic values. It rejected logic, reason, and aesthetic conventions, embracing absurdity, chaos, and anti-art principles. Dada artists used collage, photomontage, performance, and ready-made objects to challenge societal norms and question the meaning of art itself. Key figures included Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Höch, and Tristan Tzara. Though short-lived, Dadaism influenced later movements like Surrealism and Conceptual Art, shaping modern artistic experimentation and rebellion against established norms.

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Left: Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Sheet Music and Glass, 1912, collage and charcoal on board, 18 7/8 x 14 3/4 inches (McNay Museum, San Antonio); right: Hannah Höch, The Beautiful Girl, 1919-20, photomontage and collage, 35 x 29 cm (private collection)

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Midlibrary.io. (2025). Socialist realism Midjourney style | Andrei Kovalev’s Midlibrary. [online] Available at: https://midlibrary.io/styles/socialist-realism [Accessed 28 Feb. 2025].

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Socialist Realism was an official artistic and literary style promoted by the Soviet Union from the 1930s onward. It aimed to glorify communist ideals, depicting workers, farmers, and political leaders in an optimistic and heroic light. Art, literature, music, and film under Socialist Realism were heavily censored and controlled to serve state propaganda, reinforcing themes of industrial progress, patriotism, and class struggle. Notable figures included writers like Maxim Gorky and artists like Isaak Brodsky. Though it suppressed artistic freedom, Socialist Realism shaped Soviet culture for decades and influenced other communist states worldwide.

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The 1960s in America: Crash Course US History #40

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The 1960s in America: Crash Course US History #40

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a 15 minute long YouTube video about the counter-culture in the 1960's

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The 1960s in America: Crash Course US History #40

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Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919-20, photomontage and collage with watercolor, 114 x 90 cm (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie)

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Photography was introduced to the world in 1839. When the new medium arrived in the United States that year, it first established itself in major cities in the East. Photographers based in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston recorded the scenic vistas of tourist destinations such as the White Mountains and Niagara Falls, first photographed by Hugh Lee Pattinson in April 1840. Many early practitioners came to the medium from scientific or mechanical backgrounds, drawn to its seemingly magical ability to reproduce nature. And most - including Pattinson - adopted the daguerreotype, named after its French creator Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. This process fixed an image onto a silver-coated copperplate. Characterized by a mirrorlike surface and precise detail, the daguerreotype dominated photography in the United States for the next decade and a half.

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The Early Decades: Photography in the 1840s and 1850s

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Photography was introduced to the world in 1839. When the new medium arrived in the United States that year, it first established itself in major cities in the East. Photographers based in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston recorded the scenic vistas of tourist destinations such as the White Mountains and Niagara Falls, first photographed by Hugh Lee Pattinson in April 1840.

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Soviet animation, which began in the early 20th century, was heavily influenced by political ideology and artistic experimentation. Studios like Soyuzmultfilm, founded in 1936, produced propaganda films as well as internationally acclaimed works such as Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) and The Snow Queen (1957). These animations often featured stop-motion, hand-drawn styles, and unique storytelling that distinguished them from Western counterparts. Today, Soviet animation continues to inspire modern Russian and international animators, influencing aesthetics in animated films, video games, and digital media. Its legacy also raises discussions on state-controlled art and its impact on creative freedom.

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Counterculture refers to social movements that challenge mainstream norms, often emerging during periods of political or cultural unrest. The 1960s counterculture, driven by opposition to the Vietnam War, civil rights activism, and a rejection of consumerism, saw the rise of hippies, psychedelic music, and experimental art. Similar movements have appeared throughout history, from the Beat Generation in the 1950s to punk in the 1970s and digital activism today. In modern times, countercultural ideas persist in online communities, alternative lifestyles, and resistance to corporate influence, shaping discussions on identity, sustainability, and political activism.

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Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement which took place in Europe between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries. Learn how the Romantics sought to break from the guiding principles of the Enlightenment – which established reason as the foundation of all knowledge – and emphasised the importance of imagination, emotional sensitivity and individual subjectivity.

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Written by

Ben Kehoe Researcher, University of Oxford

Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement which took place in Europe between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries. Learn how the Romantics sought to break from the guiding principles of the Enlightenment - which established reason as the foundation of all knowledge - and emphasised the importance of imagination, emotional sensitivity and individual subjectivity.

Romanticism in literature

Romanticism in English literature started in the late 18th century, with the poets William Blake, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It continued into the 19th century with the second-generation Romantic poets, most notably Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats and Lord Byron.

In contrast to the reasoned detachment of the Enlightenment, the poetic works of Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge were characterised by their emotional sensitivity and reverence for nature.

Second-generation Romantics

Though the second generation of Romantic poets, especially Shelley and Byron, became notorious for their subversive and salacious works, later Romantic poetry also retained many characteristics established by Blake and Wordsworth. Keats' odes, much like the poetry of Wordsworth, took inspiration from nature, and Byron's poetry had a strong introspective character.

Shelley, Byron and Keats also acquired a posthumous reputation as 'Romantic' because many aspects of their lives - including their travels around Europe and the fact they died young - conformed to the emerging 19th-century 'ideal type' of a Romantic hero.

Romanticism in art

Nature was a source of inspiration in the visual arts of the Romantic movement too. This broke with the longer tradition of historical and allegorical paintings, which took scenes from history or the Bible as their principle subject matter.

Romantic artists such as J.M.W. Turner and John Constable - as well as printmakers and engravers such as Samuel Palmer and Thomas Bewick - chose instead to depict the natural world, most notably landscapes and maritime scenes.

Romantic artists depicted nature to be not only beautiful, but powerful, unpredictable and destructive. This was a radical departure from Enlightenment representations of the natural world as orderly and benign.

Romanticism in music

The Romantic movement in music originated with Beethoven, whose later works drew upon and developed the classical styles of Mozart and Haydn. Beethoven's later symphonies and piano sonatas were made distinctive by their expressiveness and strong emotive quality. These characteristics set the tone for successive generations of Romantic composers in Europe, including Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn.

Romantic music was also highly innovative and technically adventurous. Virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt dazzled audiences in the great concert halls of Europe with his masterly performances and never-before-seen techniques. Meanwhile, Polish-born prodigy Frédéric Chopin amazed Parisian salons with his expressive and emotionally complex piano pieces.

The Romantic period was also the 'golden age' of opera in Europe, with composers such as Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner combining music, lyrics and visual imagery to construct dramatic narratives which continue to captivate audiences today.

Romanticism as a mindset

Romanticism may be best understood not as a movement but as a mindset. The artists, poets and musicians of the Romantic period were united by their determination to use their art to convey emotion or provoke an emotional response from audiences.

There was also something pioneering - almost revolutionary - about Romanticism. It involved breaking with the past and consciously moving away from the ideas and traditions of the Enlightenment. In so doing, Romanticism fundamentally changed the prevailing attitudes toward nature, emotion, reason and even the individual.

Wordsworth House and Garden

It was in his parental home in Cockermouth, Cumbria, that William Wordsworth first fell in love with nature and literature. As a young boy he enjoyed going for walks in the Cumbrian countryside and reading from his father's collection of books.

Trusted Source

This is a Trusted Source article, created in partnership with the University of Oxford. This article contains contributions from Ben Kehoe. Ben is a researcher at the University of Oxford. His work focuses on popular politics and popular political participation during the Italian Risorgimento: the period from 1815 to 1870 in which Italy was unified as a single state.

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Discover the objects and works of art we care for on National Trust Collections website.

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Discover how the Romantic movement, led by poets and artists such as Wordsworth, Byron and J.M.W. Turner, celebrated imagination and emotional sensitivity.

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Photographer uses 1800s camera to capture modern urban environments

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What is World War One Poetry? - Answered - Twinkl Teaching Wiki

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Who are the poets of the First World War? Why did they write poems about WW1? Information for teachers and parents.

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The Words of War - Poetry of WW1 - TV Documentary

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The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. 

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The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. 

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Holmes, Richard. 2009. The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. London: HarperPress. ISBN 978-0-00-714952-0. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 978-0-375-42222-5. Paperback reprint, New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-1-4000-3187-0

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A movement in art and literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in revolt against the Neoclassicism of the previous centuries...The German poet Friedrich Schlegel, who is given credit for first using the term romantic to describe literature, defined it as "literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form." This is as accurate a general definition as can be accomplished, although Victor Hugo's phrase "liberalism in literature" is also apt. Imagination, emotion, and freedom are certainly the focal points of romanticism. Any list of particular characteristics of the literature of romanticism includes subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; spontaneity; freedom from rules; solitary life rather than life in society; the beliefs that imagination is superior to reason and devotion to beauty; love of and worship of nature; and fascination with the past, especially the myths and mysticism of the middle ages.

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The following are a few definitions of Romanticism and related terms that I have found to be very helpful. Please keep in mind that the term "Romanticism" has been used in varying contexts and has come to mean different things to different people. The following definitions are pulled from literary contexts and for the purposes of this web site are merely a jumping point for further discussion. The following definitions include the citation to their respective sources.
Romanticism:
A movement in art and literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in revolt against the Neoclassicism of the previous centuries...The German poet Friedrich Schlegel, who is given credit for first using the term romantic to describe literature, defined it as "literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form." This is as accurate a general definition as can be accomplished, although Victor Hugo's phrase "liberalism in literature" is also apt. Imagination, emotion, and freedom are certainly the focal points of romanticism. Any list of particular characteristics of the literature of romanticism includes subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; spontaneity; freedom from rules; solitary life rather than life in society; the beliefs that imagination is superior to reason and devotion to beauty; love of and worship of nature; and fascination with the past, especially the myths and mysticism of the middle ages.

English poets: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats

American poets: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman
Neoclassicism:
The dominant literary movement in England during the late seventeenth century and the eighteenth century, which sought to revive the artistic ideals of classical Greece and Rome. Neoclassicism was characterized by emotional restraint, order, logic, technical precision, balance, elegance of diction, an emphasis of form over content, clarity, dignity, and decorum. Its appeals were to the intellect rather than to the emotions, and it prized wit over imagination. As a result, satire and didactic literature flourished, as did the essay, the parody, and the burlesque. In poetry, the heroic couplet was the most popular verse form. Writers: John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, and Samuel Johnson.

Morner, Kathleen and Ralph Rausch. NTC's Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chicago: NTC Publishing Group, 1997.
Romanticism:
The American Scholar A.O. Lovejoy once observed that the word 'romantic' has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing at all...The variety of its actual and possible meanings and connotations reflect the complexity and multiplicity of European romanticism. In The Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal (1948) F.L. Lucas counted 11,396 definitions of 'romanticism'. In Classic, Romantic and Modern (1961) Barzun cites examples of synonymous usage for romantic which show that it is perhaps the most remarkable example of a term which can mean many things according to personal and individual needs.

The word romantic (ism) has a complex and interesting history. In the Middle Ages 'romance' denoted the new vernacular languages derived from Latin - in contradistinction to Latin itself, which was the language of learning. Enromancier, romancar, romanz meant to compose or translate books in the vernacular. The work produced was then called romanz, roman, romanzo and romance. A roman or romant came to be known as an imaginative work and a 'courtly romance'. The terms also signified a 'popular book'. There are early suggestions that it was something new, different, divergent. By the 17 th c. in Britain and France, 'romance' has acquired the derogatory connotations of fanciful, bizarre, exaggerated, chimerical. In France a distinction was made between romanesque (also derogatory) and romantique (which meant 'tender', 'gentle', 'sentimental' and 'sad'). It was used in the English form in these latter senses in the 18 th c. In Germany the word romantisch was used in the 17 th c. in the French sense of romanesque, and then, increasingly from the middle of the 18 th c., in the English sense of 'gentle', 'melancholy'.

Many hold to the theory that it was in Britain that the romantic movement really started. At any rate, quite early in the 18 th c. one can discern a definite shift in sensibility and feeling, particularly in relation to the natural order and Nature. This, of course, is hindsight. When we read Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth, for instance, we gradually become aware that many of their sentiments and responses are foreshadowed by what has been described as a 'pre-romantic sensibility'.

Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Third Ed. London: Penguin Books, 1991.

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The following are a few definitions of Romanticism and related terms that I have found to be very helpful. Please keep in mind that the term "Romanticism" has been used in varying contexts and has come to mean different things to different people.

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European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents. 

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European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents. 

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Breckman, Warren, European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. Breckman, Warren (2008). European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martin's. ISBN 978-0-312-45023-6.

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McInnerney’s poster for the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream gig, with its ever-expanding list of bands. Photograph: V&A Images

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The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream was a concert held in the Great Hall of the Alexandra Palace, London, on 29 April 1967. The fund-raising concert for the counterculture paper International Times was organised by Barry Miles, John "Hoppy" Hopkins, David Howson, Mike McInnerney and Jack Henry Moore. This poster was designed by Mike McInnerney. (archive.org)

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Uncut print from a carte-de-visite negative by André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, c. 1860; in the George Eastman House Collection, Rochester, New York. (Britannica)

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A new style of portrait utilizing albumen paper, introduced in Paris by André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri in 1854, was universally popular in the 1860s (Britannica, 2025)