Art History and the View Camera

After researching the various artists that used the view camera ilearned some very ineresting facts and coincidences that coincide with my particular interests in the view camera as a means to better capture the landscape. As we know, Ansel Adams was among the first photographers to use the view camera to capture landscapes of nature as his art. He used this camera because as we have already learned the view camera is ideal for the greatest amount of detail and depth of field- obviously this is key when capturing a large landscape. Here is an example of His work:

Many Artists continued this legacy of traveling through more rural areas and photographing life and leaving out details such as industry, work, technology, etc. A more recent artist of that like is Claire Richardson. Her work is very intimate and beautiful. Often in book form, each searies tends to have the same color scheme, so that it feels like the photos were taken all in 5 minutes. She documents people as well as places and seems to get to know her subjects well.

Here are some examples of her work:

Looking later down the line through the history of photography it was the artists like Ansel Adams, who paid great attention to detail, particularly from a large-scale perspective were the ones often using a view camera. Another interesting example, is one of my person favorite photographers, Andreas Gursky. Gursky's photographs are both systematic and chaotic in the sence that they are a bit overwhelming because so much seemed to be going on at once yet there is a very clear order to the madness of his images. When his work is compared to the work of Jackson Pollock's, who is similiar in that same way, it becomes astonishingly clear; check it out

The Jackson Pollock Reference is perhaps a bit unrelated to the view camera but this has got to be one of the most peculiar discoveries i have stumbled upon in the history of art, its remarkable how alike the work is!

Lastly I would like to talk about Thomas Ruff, another phototgrapher who used a view camera to often execute his ideas. Alhtough he is most famous for his portraits which are obviously a great with the view camera , again because of the detail, he has some night-time photography which i find not only very interesting but also ties into my personal interests as an artist because the photos seem to share something with the night-time photos i have been taikng around the city, take a look: