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Solar Effect in the Clouds--Ocean (Effet de soleil dans les nuages--ocean)
Gustave Le Gray1850/1890
University of Michigan Museum of Art
Ann Arbor, United States
Details
- Title: Solar Effect in the Clouds--Ocean (Effet de soleil dans les nuages--ocean)
- Creator: Gustave Le Gray
- Creator Lifespan: 1820/1882
- Creator Nationality: French
- Creator Gender: Male
- Creator Death Place: Cairo, Egypt
- Creator Birth Place: Villiers-le-Bel, France
- Date Created: 1850/1890
- Physical Dimensions: w40.3 x h31.2 (image)
- Label Copy: Gustave Le Gray understood that in the early stages of its development, photography was regarded more as an industrial process than as an artistic one. The painter-turned-photographer sought to change that perception, and he self-consciously positioned himself as an artist. He wrote in 1852,“For me, instead of falling into the domain of industry or commerce, I wish for photography to enter into the domain of art; it is in this direction that I will always seek to advance it”. Le Gray’s use of a “solar effect” can be understood as the photographer’s attempt to position photography as a medium capable of reproducing picturesque beauty in a manner similar to painting but with a set of formal characteristics all its own. Here, Le Gray demonstrates his mastery of the medium with a tour de force combination of clouds, ocean and sun. Le Gray has frozen these mobile forces of nature on the glass plate and in so doing, staked a claim for photography as a medium capable of producing atmospheric effects similar to those achieved in landscape painting.
- Type: Photograph
- External Link: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/musart/x-2008-sl-2.1/2008_2_1.JPG?lasttype=boolean;lastview=thumbnail;resnum=1;sel9=ic_exact;size=20;sort=relevance;start=1;subview=detail;view=entry;rgn1=musart_an;select1=starts;q1=2008%2F2.1
- Medium: albumen print
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