Landscape and Photography

Landscapes

When it comes to painting and art the landscape genre is one of the most, if not the most popular genres of art, it is a genre which can contain and make almost anything its main focus, for example the landscapes main focus can be rolling green hills, a dry desert, a magnificent mountain range or a city full of buildings, this is one of the main reasons it’s so popular because it appeals to a very large audience and a variety of audiences. 

(1) (2)

The genre originally started in the seventeenth centre and carried on growing in popularity, some of the most famous artist to produces these landscape paintings were people like Aelbert Cuyp, Claude Monet, John Constable and JMW Turner. when the genre first started out the piece of art that were produced were usually painted with oil and was done on a canvas and unlike we see now where the main focus can be anything, back then the usual thing you saw were landscapes of magnificent places such as Rome, Greece and Milan, but shortly after this was helped change by an artist called Jacob van Ruysdael who started painting and showing people regular landscapes, the sort of areas that were around him at places he was familiar with. it stayed like this throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centre but once we reached the nineteenth centre the genre grew and gained massive popularity and started to change, whereas before the main focus was nature and a lot of natural things painters started creating landscapes with the main focus being rural and urban areas, this is because at this time there was a lot of urbanisation and industrialisation. before and during the nineteenth centre the genre started to be used in art movements such as impressionism, expressionism and even surrealism, because of this landscapes didn’t just stick the traditional images they started becoming more, they started being pieces of art with certain messages behind them coming from the artist, a good example of this is a piece of work by Hubert Roestenburg called Autumn near London and one of the most famous examples of this is the piece of work by Vincent van Gogh called starry Night.

(3)(4)

Photography and landscapes

As the genre of landscape art started changing, process, types and ways to produce art also had meaning pieces of art in the landscape genre would change from oil and canvas pieces of art like when the genre started to more modern ways such as photography. Because all the rules of landscape photography stayed the say for example the main focuses could involve almost anything the audiences have still stayed the same, they are still very wide and reach a lot of people. Because they ways to produce landscape images has evolved and became more modern they have also expanded and reached new audiences, for example with photography a landscape piece can also be used as a document and as commercial use such as in a newspaper or on the news or in magazines and articles, not just certain news stories and articles either it can be used for many different things such as nature, sports and urban environments. Because of new technology as well there are different and improved ways of capturing landscapes and producing this genre of art, for example the panoramic feature which most modern cameras are able to do, this gives the viewer a lot more to look at and makes them feel like they are one with the place and know the place more rather than just a straight on view a single particular thing, people are now able to manipulate images as well which can be used to improve landscapes, if you wanted a more surreal effect but a lot of details and information you can go onto a program such as Photoshop and manipulate the image to get it how you want it or how it should look with the decided genre or path the photograph is going to go down, pPhotoshop has also made it possible to change things simply as well for example you could capture an image of a some rolling British hills in the middle of the and the photography might want to see what the image would look like as an image that has been taken nearer the time of sundown, without Photoshop and other pieces of software this would have been much harder to do, the photographer or painter would have had to do to the specific place at a certain time to be able to capture the actual mood the right colours to use. Another feature which has been made available by photography is that fact you can use different lens for example lenses of very high quality and lenses that are able to zoom in significantly, because of this it makes it possible to capture very intricate things and things that might not be able to be seen without the technology. In landscape photography there were many famous artists/photographers that helped evolve the genre of landscape artwork and the profession of photography, for example a photography who has done this is Ansel Adams who is very famous for his black and white landscape photographs of America, which contained a lot of contrast, details and emotion, some people found these photographs to be so inspirational they have gone back to the same locations and took the images with new developed technology. Another photographer who is well known for their landscape work is Andreas Gursky who is very famous for his use of colour, textures, lines and shapes, he every had one of his images sold for 4.3 million dollars in 2011 and which was a world record at the time.

(5)(6)

In conclusion I think because technology has improved and developed it has helped improve all art forms and genres, it has helped widen and attract more audiences, added new features and ways to capture and produce a piece of art. even though there are a lot of positives I also think that because some of the pieces of art have been produced with a camera it has created a lot of conflict and has been questioned by a lot of people whether or not it’s actually a piece of art and not just a document, I feel like even though a photograph hasn’t been created but the photographer/artist straight out of their imagination I still feel like it’s a piece of art, involving the artists emotion, feelings and aesthetics which appeal to audiences.

bibliography

(1)http://historylink101.com/art/FamousLandscapePaintings/images/502013.jpg

(2)http://images.all-free-download.com/images/graphicthumb/william_haseltine_landscape_art_216740.jpg

(3)http://hubertroestenburg.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Hubert-Roestenburg-Autumn-near-London-German-Expressionism-L.jpg
(4)http://www.moma.org/wp/moma_learning/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Van-Gogh.-Starry-Night-469x376.jpg
(5)http://anseladams.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/1901006-2-412x300.jpg
(6)https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/gursky-rhine.jpg