United Kingdom
Matthew Greenburgh is a fine art photographer based in East Suffolk and North London.
Matthew's work, which centres on contemporary still lives in a large format, has been exhibited in galleries and has been sold on to private collectors.
Water is almost as ubiquitous in art as in life - dramatic seascapes, romantic lakes, powerful rivers, charming streams. These are common images for many reasons: they have strong natural appeal for the viewer and artist, they can demonstrate the technical superiority of the artist and have almost endless symbolic...
In an earlier post I discussed the series of 19th century stop motion photographs, which had scientific intentions whilst creating images which came to be treated as art. The Muybridge series brings out the tension between motion/time and the photograph as well as between intention and interpretation which are key...
Oliviero Toscani was the photographer involved in the creation of the United Colours of Benetton ads in the 1990s, which used controversial themes and juxtapositions to great effect from a marketing point of view. The ads included images of AIDS victims, death row prisoners, body parts, famine sufferers etc.
In a previous week, I addressed the work of Ed Ruscha who took a series of photographs of deliberately no aesthetic value. Just prior to this work, Andy Warhol had held his first solo exhibition, which majored on his silkscreens of "ready-made" objects (Campbells soup cans etc).
Ed Ruscha's photoseries Twenty-six Gas Stations (1963) was an important early example of photography's contribution to conceptual art and post-modernism. While probably not a direct pastiche of the Bechers work, which was coming to prominence at the same time, the deliberate lack of aesthetic value was certainly an attempt at undermining modernism's claim to be both objective/deadpan and aesthetic.
Typology in photography gained widespread recognition in the art world with the industrial photographs of Hilla and Bernd Becher (commencing in the late 1960s). The objective or deadpan style of photographing series of similar ageing industrial buildings raised questions not only about the ostensible subject of the disappearance of a certain type of architectural landscape but also the nature of man-made beauty and photography's role in art.
Plant still lifes were also perhaps the first works of pure photo-typology in Karl Blossfeldt's "Urformen der Kunst" (English ed: "Art Forms in Nature", 1929). Blossfeldt attempted a scientific analysis of aesthetic form and created an iconic work of modernism.
In the early 1870s, Edward Muybridge began working on a series of photographs demonstrating the details of a horse in motion - until then the shape of a galloping horses legs or the points at which contact was made with the ground were not known.
Photography by its nature lends itself to the serial examination of a subject. The comparative ease of creating the image and the ostensible accuracy of that image facilitates the use of multiple images to explore the differences and commonalities between subjects. The accurate comparison of subjects through a photographic series has some features of a scientific endeavour.
Ed Ruscha's photoseries Twenty-six Gas Stations (1963) was an important early example of photography's contribution to conceptual art and post-modernism. While probably not a direct pastiche of the Bechers work, which was coming to prominence at the same time, the deliberate lack of aesthetic value was certainly an attempt at undermining modernism's claim to be...
Typology in photography gained widespread recognition in the art world with the industrial photographs of Hilla and Bernd Becher (commencing in the late 1960s). The objective or deadpan style of photographing series of similar aging industrial buildings raised questions not only about the ostensible subject of the disappearance of a certain type of architectural landscape...
Plant still lifes were also perhaps the first works of pure photo-typology in Karl Blossfeldt's "Urformen der Kunst" (English ed: "Art Forms in Nature", 1929). Blossfeldt attempted a scientific analysis of aesthetic form and created an iconic work of modernism. Blossfeldt studied parts of a range of plants in black and white to try to...
Matthew Greenburgh discusses Muybridge's work with horses. In the early 1870s, Edward Muybridge began working on a series of photographs demonstrating the details of a horse in motion - until then the shape of a galloping horses legs or the points at which contact was made with the ground were not known.
Matthew Greenburgh introduces his series. Photography by its nature lends itself to the serial examination of a subject. The comparative ease of creating the image and the ostensible accuracy of that image facilitates the use of multiple images to explore the differences and commonalities between subjects.
The Best Doctor Cut leaf staghorn sumach - Rhus Typhina 'Laciniata'124x82cm - edition of 4 plus artist's proof62x41cm - edition of 5The image of a doctor upright over a dying...
Palliative Care Japanese maple - Acer palmatum 130x147m - edition of 4 plus artist's proof 65x74m - edition of 5 Most people giving palliative care are, of course, high...