Andreas Feininger

1. Andreas Feininger The Mountains of the Mind VS. Heaven and Earth Bronya Flynn

2. Andreas Feininger was born 1906, in Paris to an American family. He grew up and was educated as an architect in Germany, but he became a famous photographer. Science and nature became a very frequent subject for his photography. He took photographs of objects like shells, bones, plants and minerals. I am going to compare photographs by Andreas Feininger from his book, “The Mountains of the Mind”, with photographs from another book, “Heaven and Earth”. The book “Heaven and Earth” contains photographs of things that cannot be seen by the naked eye. “Nature - the world, the universe – is a magic garden where everything is beautiful and nothing is what it seems to be.” – Andreas Feininger

3. Both of these photographs are of the Earth. The interesting thing about them both though, is that one is taken from quite close-up, whereas the other is taken from a bird’s eye view, looking directly down onto the ground. At a first glance, you may think they have both been taken from similar positions, and the reason for this is because the images are flat. There are no other objects to give any scale to the photographs. Objects would give clues as to either how close-up, or far away, a photograph has been taken. The top picture is of a desert floor that has been taken up close. The bottom picture is of an area of Mexico, high up in the sky. Andreas Feininger Heaven & Earth

4. The images in the book, “The Mountains of the Mind”, are all very organic. The objects photographed are all naturally formed making these interesting shapes. Andreas Feininger believes that maybe it is these natural formations that inspired man to express himself in the form of sculptural art. This photograph shows a natural formation of several components forming together to create this weird looking rock. The way that Feininger has used black and white for this photograph helps to reveal the unusual textures in this rock, and enhances the shadows between the creases.

5. Landscape – different scales By taking his photograph from low down, Andreas Feininger has managed to make this piece of driftwood appear a lot bigger than it really is. This piece of driftwood is actually only 10 inches high. Ray Manley took this photograph of a sand stone arch. The rocks seem to be about the same size and shape as the driftwood. It’s amazing how a small amount of cropping can completely change the spectrum of a photograph… Andreas Feininger Ray Manley

6. Just by seeing a small group of men with a herd of sheep, stood under the sand stone arch, allows us to appreciate the enormous difference in size. This shows us just how important it can be to get something in a photograph that gives it scale that will immediately make you think “wow”. Without the three men in this photograph, it would just be seen as a respectable photograph. It’s the men and sheep, the size of ants, in front of the arch that gives this photograph the ‘wow factor’.

7. Here we have a track that runs through a sandy desert. So what made the track? Some sort of vehicle? No, think smaller. A mammal, a reptile? Smaller again. This is in fact the track of a single ant that has scurried it’s way across the desert ground. I think that the reason that this photograph works so well is not only because you can see nothing in the photo but sand, but each grain of sand is so tiny that it would look very similar if the photo taken from far away. The sand gives us hardly any indication of what position the photograph is taken from, close up or from far away.

8. The top photograph here, to the left is an aerial shot taken looking down on The Huang Ho (Yellow River) that travels through China. Next to this photograph the bottom picture could also be seen as a long river, but is in fact a photograph showing the joins between two plates of a human skull. I think that Andreas Feininger is very clever with his use of black and white for his photographs. The black and white removes minor details that may give big clues away about the images. Using black and white make the photographs a little more mysterious, allowing us to question the picture and use our imagination. Heaven & Earth Andreas Feininger

9. This photo has been captured in a very clever way. The photograph is obviously of a shell, but it has again been taken by Andreas Feininger to have a bigger scale than it really does. Looking closely to the bottom right of the shell there is a small twig-like object standing vertically. This tiny detail creates the same affect as the men stood under the sandstone arch. In this case the tiny “twig” (bottom right) creates a false perception to the photograph on our behalf, making us believe the shell is in fact a lot bigger than it really is. The reason that this works so well is because we, as the viewer, have nothing else to compare the size of the shell to. We depend on the twig to much, and then this is how we perceive the shell to be so much bigger.

10. When I first saw this picture, the first thing I naturally thought of was a forest fire. The black streams running through the orange land reminded me of a tree, and the orange and yellow colours have connotations of fire. This photograph is an extremely powerful and awesome photograph. It’s got a slightly more abstract style to it, compared to all of the previous photographs, as different people who look at the photograph could see it in a different way. I perceive the image as representing a forest fire. Someone who is not so open minded, might just see the photo as what it is though, just a large web of rivers, running on separate journeys cutting through the land.

11. Conclusion I think that there are some truly fantastic photographs that I have discussed here. I’m always interested to see photographs like these, photographs that present to us things that you would not see with the naked eye. The images here also show us how much of a difference just one single object in a photograph can make. They also show us how an image can be easily distorted to make us see a scale that is false. The photographs basically work like illusions, tricking our minds into seeing photographs, not incorrectly, but differently.