Photography Research Paper essay
In different periods there were different tasks put in front of art, but when there is only art for art, there is much less to discover than in case when an artwork carries some specific social and cultural functions. As photography is not only a piece of art, but also a reflection of reality, it becomes the source of cognition, the source of knowledge about the time and place it was taken in. In other words, any professional photo retracts a piece of temporal and spatial coordinates and is taken in some historical context we can later learn through it.
Andre Kertesz (1894 – 1985) is recognized as an American photographer, but it is hard to disagree that his work was essentially influenced by his Hungarian origin. Though he was self-taught (an autodidact), he really revealed a talent in his works and is now globally known as the first photojournalist.[1] First of all, he became known for his simplistic style. He used his photo camera to fix the ordinary, routine day-to-day events through their timeless and essential qualities.[2] In fact, there are four general periods marked out in the Kertesz’s work: the Hungarian period, the French period, the American period and the International period.[3] The first works of Kertesz were essentially influenced by Lajos Tihanyj and Gyula Zilzer and were focused on the landscapes of the puszta, the surroundings of Hungarian Plains as well as local peasants and gypsies. It is underlined that distinctive and mature style of the photographer was already evident here.[4] One of the attractive works of the first period is The Violinist’s Tune taken in 1921 in Abony, Hungary. In this photo we see a boy leading an old blind gypsy musician playing the violin. There is also a child at the background, who makes the entire photo more vivid and reflective. Writing about this work, Roland Barthes describes how he recognizes with his whole body the straggling villages he passed through on his long-ago travels in Hungary and Rumania.[5] For him this is the sole proof of the local art. Barthes sees the referent, not a reflection. The referent means the thing that a word or phrase denotes or stands for. In this case this is a fragment of Hungarian reality with its blind cast away musician on a dirty road. “The photograph transcends itself by annihilating,” the researcher notices.[6]
Speaking about photographic realism, it is significant to approach the photograph as a “reflective medium.” A photograph becomes the interpretation of all thing real, a medial
representation of the real; in photograph, the world is visualized and reflected in images. It can also be stated that a photograph is “the performative of the real, the medial translation of the real.”[7] Thus, when it goes about photographic realism the art becomes scrutinized at a social and political level. But in the case with The Violinist’s Tune the photograph becomes something more than just a reflection, more than a medium, but the thing itself. From a cultural historicist perspective, this photograph presents a cultural signifier.[8]
On the one hand, we explore the view of a typical town in the Middle Europe, with its small one-storey white houses, old drawn windows, fence and, again, dirty road. A piece of life has been grasped by the photographer, and the image is full of dynamics: the violinist and the boy supporting him are walking somewhere on purpose; simultaneously, the musician is not simply bearing his instrument, but he is playing it at the moment; the fact that he is blind is not hidden from the eyes of an attentive observer, and at the same time it makes the scene more dramatic and controversial.[9] Considering discursive and institutional place chosen by the photographer, we see how the photograph acquires some documentary status and puts its genre out of the art.
On the other hand, the theme itself is connected with the art itself. It can be said that the violinist is a votary of muses. That is not academician music, but still he produces something beautiful for other people and earns for living by playing the violin in spite of his serious invalidity. There is no pathos in this act, but the photo acquires a kind of pathos through the interaction of context and details: “the type, “blind gypsy violinist,” reiterates connotations readily available to a few others: Indigence, Diaspora, i.e. this stateless Other in the Same of Europe, object of both fascination and derision.”[10] In this way, we can conclude what was the subject of interest for the father of photojournalism Andre Kertesz.
