Podcast Entry

The Camera in The Cathedral: Camera Position goes Historical

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The Camera in The Cathedral: A Brief History of Photography of the Natural World

In a bit of “podcast cross-pollination,” I’m presenting an episode of my history of photography podcast here on Camera Position. If you’ve heard the Photo History podcast of this same topic, you’ve heard this podcast, but for those Camera Position listeners who don’t listen to the Photo History podcast, I thought this topic might prove useful to you.

Camera Position Goes Historical!

From the very beginning of the medium, photographers have wanted to portray their sense of wonder and awe in the face of the natural world through the camera’s lens, often offering up nature as the Great American Cathedral. This romantic tradition continues, but the mid-20th century saw a change in the way photographers looked at the world around them; a change that altered the face of photography

By looking at photographs from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, we’ll explore the ways photographers have recorded and interpreted nature with the camera.

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2 thoughts on “The Camera in The Cathedral: Camera Position goes Historical”

  1. Hi Jeff, just wanted to say that this was an excellent presentation. Thanks for sharing. Would be nice to revisit the New Topographers again in more depth in a future episode. Surely the view they take is worth talking about in terms of camera position… many thanks.

  2. Thanks, Dirk… it’s actually sort of tough to talk about contemporary photography and *not* talk about the New Topographics group…

    I just returned from a few days in San Francisco and saw several wonderful shows at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. One was a staggeringly beautiful (and enormous) Lee Friedlander show:
    http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/exhib_detail.asp?id=304
    Which proved once again to me what a master this guy is.

    Another was a show called Picturing Modernity: The Photography Collection and it dealt with a lot of the same landscape issues that I discussed in this podcast.
    http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/exhib_detail.asp?id=12

    -Jeff

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