Group f/64

Imogen Cunningham

Ansel Adams


The F64 Group consisted of seven San Francisco photographers: Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, John Paul Edwards, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, Willard Van Dyke, and Edward Weston. They all had the same photographic style, their images were all sharply focused and precisely framed. They formed this group to for two reasons. Number one: they wanted to go up against the more popular Pictorialism style which had dominated much of the early 1900, and number two: they wanted to introduce a new Modernist aesthetic of properly exposed images of the natural form and found objects. . The two photographers who put this group together were Ansel Adams and Willard Van Dyke.


The late 1920s and early 1930s were time of substantial social and economic unrest in the United States, they were going through the Great Depression. The people searched for relief from their everyday hardships. For different reasons the West was seen as the future for economic recovery and people sought out news and images because it was "a land of hope" and gave them something to look forward to. They were increasingly attracted to images of photographers like Ansel Adams, whose strikingly detailed photographs of the American West were seen as "pictorial testimony…of inspiration and redemptive power.

Pinhole

The Old Barn by Scott Speck

"The Old Barn" by Scott Speck is a black and white image of the outside of an old, run down barn and the debris surrounding it. The debris leads the eye deeper into the photograph. Alot of the image is blurred which gives it a nice sense of movement.
I feel like Speck's intention was to show how even the most run down and forgotten places can be beautiful and mesmerizing. Speck also wanted to demonstrate how even beautiful things can be haunting and dangerous.
My initial reaction to the photo is mixed. It is scary and ominous but at the same time the boards that litter the lawn makes me want to go further in.
Overall the photo is amazing. It does what every great photo should: it makes you want to enter inside and discover a whole new world. There is definitely a story behind the photo and it makes you think. This photo is actually something I would consider hanging on my wall.

9/10!

-Katherine Dydyk

This cyanotype image is composed of a few stars, some safety pins, a necklace and a long piece of string. The edges aren't entirely filled with the cyanotype chemicals which makes the image more creative and interesting.In my opinion, Katherine's intention for this beautiful composition was to express the way she sees the world. She's also letting her personality shine in through her image. This photograph is very creatively composed and holds nicely shaped objects. She might have created a bigger effect by bringing the objects closer together, but as is, Katherine's image is very interesting and I give it a score of 8/10

Celia Lavinskas

Anna Atkins

"Dictyota Dichotoma" is an image of algae done by Anna Atkins. She did this by using a printing process called cyanotype which gives the image a bluish hue. It is merely a silhouette.
I'm sure there were many reasons why Anna decided to make this photograph. The main one was to document the world around her and the other reason to show how even the simplest of things, like algae, can be beautiful.
When I look at the image it makes me smile. To see how far we've come is very interesting. The image itself is very wonderful. The blue is a great colour and I love how the algae itself goes from very stark white to a transparent blue. The algae almost looks like snowflakes.
I think the photo is very well done, it is crisp and, although just a silhouette, seems detailed because we get all these different layers of the algae's leaves. I would give this photo an 8/10!