Tag Archives: U3A Cambridge

U3AC Photo Forum 2023-24 – Week 2 Personal Choices

For this week Tim asked us to present and talk about: a photograph by someone else we would be proud to have taken; and a picture of our own that we are pleased with. I chose Robert Frank’s Bar Gallop … Continue reading

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U3AC Photography – Reading Photographs

The five-week course I ran in February/March seems to have been well received.  Of the 64% of attendees who gave formal feedback 74% thought it was excellent and 26% good against a range of criteria, giving an overall approval rating … Continue reading

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Photography and Painting

In my recent U3A Cambridge courses on photography I’ve shown how photography and painting depict similar relationships in work created centuries apart.  Examples are: Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936 and Raphael, Madonna of the Pinks, 1507; and W Eugene Smith, … Continue reading

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U3A Cambridge 2022-23: Reading Photographs 5 – Open Discussion

Yesterday saw the fifth and final session in my five week course on Reading Photographs. It was devoted to an open discussion of 13 photographs chosen by class members from a selection of thirty-one suggested by me.  The material fell … Continue reading

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U3A Cambridge 2022-23: Reading Photographs 3 – Formal Qualities of Photographs

I presented the third session in my five week course on Reading Photographs today. We considered how the formal qualities of photographs and how they are made affect our reactions and reading.  The aim was to draw out the ways … Continue reading

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U3A Cambridge 2022-23: Reading Photographs 2 – Shaping our Reading

I presented the second session in my five week course on Reading Photographs today.  This week we looked at what shapes our reading of photographs.  I suggested it depends on ourselves, the subject and the context; and our response may … Continue reading

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U3A Cambridge 2022-23: Reading Photographs 1

I presented the first session in my five week course on Reading Photographs on Monday.  The aim of the course is to improve the critical appreciation and understanding of the photographs around us in exhibitions, books, magazines, newspapers and online … Continue reading

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All Voyeurs Now?

I’ve posted below the text of a short presentation that I gave to the U3AC Arts Forum yesterday to stimulate discussion around the subject of voyeurism. I took a photograph of a couple cuddling in the seclusion of the Temple … Continue reading

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U3AC Photography – Five Facets of Photography

The five-week course I ran in March/April seems to have been well received.  Of the 62% of attendees who gave formal feedback 92% thought it was excellent and 8% good against a range of criteria, giving an overall approval rating … Continue reading

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Five Facets of Photography – Photographs that Changed the World: Rontgen’s X-Ray

A medical X-ray photograph of Anna Bertha Röntgen hand made by her husband Wilhelm in 1895. The discovery of x-rays won Wilhelm the first Nobel Prize ever granted for physics in 1901. His breakthrough quickly went into use around the world, … Continue reading

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Five Facets of Photography – Ideas that Changed Photography: Conceptual photography

Conceptual Photography is often considered to derive from Conceptual Art of the late 1960s, but it has been around longer than that.  It is photography that is staged or created to represent an idea; it is not primarily intended to depict and … Continue reading

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Five Facets of Photography – Ideas that Changed Photography: Photojournalism

Photojournalism is journalism that integrates images and text to tell a news story.  It is distinguished from other close branches of photography by having a rigid ethical framework which demands an honest but impartial approach that tells a story in strictly journalistic terms. In the … Continue reading

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Five Facets of Photography – Ideas that Changed Photography: Straight Photography

In the early years of the 20th Century it was increasingly realised that photography would not be taken seriously if it simply aped painting.  Ironically, Alfred Stieglitz, a supporter of the pictorialist Photo Secession in the US, was midwife to … Continue reading

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Five Facets of Photography – Ideas that Changed Photography: Marketing/Advertising

Advertising in the 19th century relied mainly on the power of the description of the product’s excellence and occasional unconvincing illustrations.  Recognition of the value of pictures, the improved technology of reproduction and the growth in newspapers and magazines provided … Continue reading

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Five Facets of Photography – Ideas that Changed Photography: Tabloids

In 1903 Alfred Harmsworth started the first modern tabloid newspaper, The Daily Mirror, in London. Appealing to the mass market, it presented the now familiar mix of crime stories, human tragedies, celebrity gossip, sports, comics, and puzzles.  Photographs were an essential … Continue reading

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