De Lancey W. Gill: Photographer for the Bureau of American Ethnology

Abstract

Between the 1850s and 1930s, Washington, D.C., was a centre for the photography of the American Indian. As many tribal leaders came to the capital to treat with government officials concerning their people's affairs, they sat for some of the city's leading photographers. Those who frequently worked behind the camera included Julian Vannerson, Alexander Gardner, A. Zeno Shindler, Charles M. Bell, andjohn K. Hillers¹. Although the work was first undertaken by a private photographer, it came to involve many individuals and government agencies and, in time, developed into a systematic effort to photograph as many of the Indian visitors as possible. The last of the photographers to work with the Indians in this way was De Lancey W. Gill. He made more portraits than all his predecessors combined, although he did not begin as a photographer until he was nearly 40 and well established in a government career.     

Camouflage and the Half-Hidden History of Max Dupain in War

Max Dupain is Australia's best-known modernist photographer. The least-known period of his working life is the Second World War, when he joined many other Australian artists and served as a camouflage officer for the Department of Home Security, attached to the Royal Australian Airforce. Dupain was trained in aerial photography. He camouflaged airbases in New South Wales and photographed camouflage experiments from the air. When the war moved into the SW Pacific region, Dupain was sent to Goodenough Island in Papua to work alongside Americans. This article addresses the emotional impact of the war on Dupain and contrasts the depersonalised, abstracted aesthetics of functional aerial camouflage photography with The New Guinea Series, a portfolio of documentary photographs of people and landscapes on the islands of New Guinea and Papua. Dupain's war service left him troubled and searching for greater truth through photography. I argue that The New Guinea Series, which was completed independently of Dupain's official employment as a camoufleur, communicates his sharpened awareness of the importance of embodiment as a moral approach to the world. I propose that the New Guinea Series acted as a humanist antidote to the dehumanisation that Dupain experienced through the abstractions of aerial photography.     

Edward Steichen

Abstract

‘The camera’, Steichen wrote in 1947, ‘serves as an instrument for waging war and as an historian in recording the war’.¹ He spoke from experience. By this time, as a veteran of both world wars, he was reflecting upon a long life devoted to photography as art, as an advertising medium, as social commentary, and as war documentation. Although Steichen often used his camera as a very effective propaganda device in wartime, his hatred of war motivated him to use the same instrument to persuade people that war would never provide a lasting solution to human problems.²     

The Photography of Roman Freulich from Poland to Hollywood

Professional contributions and technical innovations of photographer Roman Freulich to the Hollywood film industry are contextualised regarding the heritage of his life experiences in Czenstochowa, Poland, New York and Los Angeles. The remarkable output of Freulich's independent work, consisting of film projects that ventured far beyond the relative professional shelter provided by his popular glamour shots, emerges in the present study. Freulich sought to give voice to the voiceless as evidenced in his self-produced film Broken Earth (1936) – the first film to feature a black actor in a starring role – as well as his collaborations with the actor Paul Robeson. Freulich's immigration to America and the loss of his family members who remained in Poland are two legacies that distinguished Freulich from his fellow cameramen. Freulich both achieved a fruitful Hollywood career as a photographer of contract players – aided by his early use of the 35 mm camera – and authored a narrative of Joseph Trumpeldor, founder of the Jewish Legion. A survivor of the Holocaust, Freulich did more than preserve these dual identities; his lasting achievement lies in the incorporation of a veteran's sensitivity toward war in cinematic works that expanded early principles of still and moving image photography. Perspective by Freulich's family members is presented in original form, illuminating chronological events in the life of a pioneering photographer, writer and soldier.     

Ann Cooke

Abstract

The visual-verbal world of discursive topography will see few readings as valuable as that of the photographer Brassal developing his image of the past century's foremost autobiographer. That Proust and photography are inextricably bound rings tme to any careful reader of In Search if Lost Time. Brassal has placed a quote in the opening epigraph that captures, in a few words, the essential relationship between writing, reading, seeing, and personal interaction. Proust and photography together show how other people and their images, developed in the mind's eye, contribute autobiographically to a more extensive and composite notion of the subject as it seeks to re-create itself through barriers of time and space. As the author/ photographer of The Secret Paris if the 1930s (Gallimard 1976), Brassaï is well acquainted with the ins and outs of society, its margins and centre, the necessity and means of penetrating into personal portraits and sacred spaces where what is seen is rarely told. His vision of Proust as read in this book is replete with insight, both technical and psychological, as the photographer guides the reader through the universe of the ocular writer, opening doors, windows, and fields of vision that permit recorded views and stolen glimpses.     

Diane Arbus,Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton

Abstract

It is impossible to consider the body of work Diane Arbus produced during her short career as a photographer without remembering that she took her own life in 1971. In the same way, it is impossible to read Sylvia Plath's or Anne Sexton's poetry without thinking about the fact that they, too, died by their own hands.⁴ Privacy is the very last thing Arbus's suicide earned for her. With the passage of time, the Arbus legend — like those spun around the lives of Plath and Sexton — grows rather than diminishes. Most recently, a performance, a play and a short story have appeared, adding to the Arbus myth and reviving questions about her life, her death and the meaning of her work. Despite the vigorous efforts of survivors and literary executors to control perceptions of these artists' personal histories, the details of their lives, real and imagined, have captured readers' imaginations and have entered the public domain. The Arbus legend, perhaps now more than ever, has become the point of origin for a cult following, which continues to gather momentum well beyond photographic circles.     

Paul S. Taylor and the origins of documentary photography in California, 1927–1934

Abstract

Contrary to most of what has been written on the subject, the documentary tradition in California photography did not spring entirely from the economic and psychological blight of the Great Depression. There were experimenters and pioneers who, on their own initiative, without government or institutional backing, in response to specific personal and professional commitments, during the years between 1900 and 1930, compiled photographic records with a social purpose; facts which not only showed how things were but, inevitably, how things should be. Among the first to sense this persuasive power was Paul S. Taylor, a young economist at the University of California. His pictures unravelled a chapter in American immigration history that had long been swamped by clichés and ethnocentric distortions. They also demonstrated a radically broadened view of scholarly research. Unfortunately, these images have remained largely unpublished. As a result, Taylor has been pigeonholed as a man of words and statistics, and as “husband of Dorothea Lange”, the noted Farm Security Administration photographer. Not until a half-century after he first took a camera into the field did the full nature and significance of Paul Taylor's work finally come into focus¹.     

Aaron Siskind

Abstract

Scholars have acknowledged the scotsman, hugh Mackay (c. 1824–1857), as the earliest photographer in Hongkong. A resident of the British colony during the late 1840s, he was beleived to have operated a daguerreotype studio in that growing port town. ¹ A recent study of newspapers published in Hongkong between 1845 and 1849, revelas that Mackay's involvement with photography has been overstated and he may never, in fact, have taken a photograph. A review of Mackay's career, as documented in these publications, illustrates how the thoughtful use of primary source material, such as advertisements, can assist the historian of photography and, as demontrated in this case, challenge generally accepted notions.     

Aadu Treufeldt (1874˜1956)

Abstract

The period 1900-30 is of great interest in the history of Estonian photography, because it was only then that the camera became a familiar implement, the photographer an honoured person in our society and the photograph itself an everyday thing. One could order ‘picture boxes’ from abroad or buy them at local shops and, as a result of the universal enthusiasm, a great many shopkeepers, teachers and office workers became amateurs, in the towns as well as in the country. They were self-taught from books, or else had attended lessons given by someone who was. In the country, they often played the role of pioneers, because photographers were still rare at the time, and previous visits were not always remembered by the locals. In due course, some of these ‘pioneers’ became professionals.     

Henry van der Weyde (1839–1924)

Abstract

My great-great-grandfather Henry van der Weyde (figure 1) was a fascinating individual with a variety of talents. He was an artist, society photographer and inventor. He can be regarded as one of the fathers of electric-light photography because, in 1877, he was the first person to use a dynamo to produce electric-arc light to illuminate his studio. This was a revolution in the evolution of photography. He also invented and developed photographic techniques in lenses, lighting, printing and vignetting. He filed 81 patent applications, which were not all in the field of photography.     

New York and Photography

Abstract

This exhibition catalogue about the New York School of photography, begun long before 11 September 2001, fortuitously lifts up the city as both image and source of visual ideas. Comforting in this accidental homage, the book also offers significant essays that explore the reasons for the flourishing of photography in twentiethcentury New York. New York: Capital of Photography offers some especially thought provoking explanations. Max Kozloff, art historian, critic and photographer, traces the development of a particular way of seeing that evolved from the early years of the century in the Reform Movement through the ‘made-to-order Surrealism’ of New York in the 1960s and 1970s. Five of his six essays approach a textbook treatment of this art form in this period and place. The sixth, ‘Jewish Sensibility and the Photography of New York’, poses the intriguing thesis that the aesthetic of New York photography as a whole is a Jewish one. This idea may not be accepted as fact in actual photography history texts until another hundred years have passed, but is worthy and fascinating, in Kozloffs telling, of consideration.     

Burton Brothers of New Zealand

Abstract

The New Zealand firm of Burton Brothers was engaged in a wide spectrum of enterprise, icluding portrait, topographic and commercial photography. It came into being withing 20 years of the founding of the Otago Settlement. The firm soon became widely known for its ethnoghraphic photographs of the South Pacific, and later for its output of photographic postcards under the name of Muir & Moodie. Thomas M. B. Muir, who joined the firm early on, was related both to James Weaver Allen, a noteworthy pioneer photographer in the colony, and to Fred Muir who carried his camera to the unexplored interior of the South Island of New Zealand and brougllt back views of the hitherto unknown lakes, waterfalls and natural wonders to fascinated townspeople. Not surprisuingly, therefore, Burton Brothers and Muir & Moodie are household names in New Zealand, and are also well known to librarians and ethnographers throughout the world.     

Seeing Photographically: Reading Rejlander’s “Apology”

The subject of this essay is a little known text by the photographer Oscar G. Rejlander (1813–1875) titled “An Apology for Art-Photography” published in 1863. The article argues that the “Apology” renders visible a mode of seeing that Celia Lury terms “seeing photographically.” “Seeing photographically” is the means or medium through which Rejlander came to see and fashion his self as a photographer. A reading of Freud’s “R is my Uncle” dream from The Interpretation of Dreams provides an analogical and analytical lever with which to open and expand Lury’s insight into the optics of seeing photographically. The article concludes with a reading of Rejlander’s Two Ways of Life of 1856. It argues that this photograph can be read as what I call, following W.J.T. Mitchell, a metaphotograph of the nineteenth-century photographer imaged as a divided figure emerging against the culturally contested backdrop of early photography.     

The Decisive Network: Producing Henri Cartier-Bresson at Mid-Century

Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photobook The Decisive Moment (1952) popularised the notion that the best photographs are made by the patient and gifted photographer who captures a fleeting moment with just one click of the shutter, creating an image with internal geometry and balance. The book solidified Cartier-Bresson’s reputation as an artist working with a camera and it encouraged scholars, curators, and hobbyists to understand photography as the product of trained individual vision and talent. Yet the book’s emphasis on personal vision also deflected attention away from the collective efforts and infrastructure necessary to promote Cartier-Bresson’s practice as art. By shifting our attention to the decisive network of magazine editors, book publishers, printers, and curators who helped Cartier-Bresson onto a highly orchestrated road to fame at mid-century, this article considers the ways in which collective work is central to the material and social history of photography, and how these realities challenge the decisive moment’s paradigm of individual and inspired creation.     

The Canadian photographic periodical press

Abstract

From the very beginning, Canadian photography periodicals have had to cope with not only the small and uncertain home market, but also with the ready availability of similar imported publications, some of which included Canadian photographic news from time to time. As a result, the earliest native journals to appear were subsidized by photographic dealers, and were designed to appeal to both a professional and amateur readership. Around the tum of the century, with the rise in the numbers of amateur photographers, a few photojoumals directed specifically at them briefly prospered before succumbing to economic crisis and war. After the peace, it was the camera clubs, with their enlarged or new newsletters, that soldiered on during the Depression. Then another war intervened, during which time photographic activity halted once again. It was only in the 1950s that photomagazines began to appear (and disappear) with increasing frequency, until the efflorescence of the 1970s when the popular periodicals aimed at the amateur were joined by the non-profit ones devoted to photography as a visual art. This period of extraordinary photographic activity lasted about a decade, leaving behind a few popular publications issued by commercial concerns in French and English Canada, as well as one devoted to the history of the medium.     

Edward Linley Sambourne (1844–1910)

Abstract

Edward Linley Sam bourne worked as a Punch cartoonist from 1867 until his death in 1910.¹ Beginning his 43-year association with the magazine as a freelance contributor he then joined the permanent staff in 1871 as Cartoon Junior (to Tenniel who was Cartoonist-in-Chief). His rise through the Punch ranks meant a commensurate increase in his workload and, because of this, he took up photography in the early 1880s to assist his productivity and to satisfy his demand for accuracy. Sometimes Sam bourne copied the entire photograph, occasionally he even traced it; or else he used elements of a photograph or several photographs to construct the picture for the final drawing. Gradually, Sam bourne the Cartoonist became Sambourne the Photographer as his interest in drawing was supplanted by a fascination with photography; he developed an enthusiasm for the medium in an amateur way, joining the Camera Club in April 1893 and slowly amassing an enormous archive comprising some 30,000 images. To follow Sambourne's development as a photographer involves looking at how and why he used photography, and what his private as well as his public attitude was towards the medium.     

Karl Struss

Abstract

As a leading cameraman in Hollywood for five decades, Karl Struss received the first Academy Award for cinematography in 1929 and was an active figure in West-Coast pictorial photography during the years following World War I. As a still photographer, however, his most significant work dates from the years between 1909 and 1915.¹     

Photography at the Institute of Design

Abstract

In 1937, László Moholy-Nagy planted the Bauhaus seed, a hybrid of art and mass production, in the soil of the American Midwest. The New Bauhaus in Chicago only survived a year, but its successor, first called the School of Design and then the Institute of Design (ID), would be an influential centre of photographic experimentation for the next thirty-five years. Taken by Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937–1971 traces the tumultuous history of the school's small but seminal photography programme, the work of its major instructors, and their combined influence on photography in the USA. The essays in this handsome catalogue tell the story of how the ID approach evolved, from Moholy's formalist view of photography as one of the design arts, into the arrival of the medium as an art form in its own right under Hany Callahan, Aaron Siskind and Arthur Siege!. Published to accompany David Travis and Elizabeth Siegel's exhibition of the same title for the Art Institute of Chicago, the book is the first comprehensive documentation of the vital contribution of the Institute of Design to the history of photography.     

Alvin Langdon Coburn

Abstract

One of the most intriguing aspects of Alvin Langdon Coburn's life began when he stopped making photographs. At thirty-six years of age, Coburn had a well established photographic career. He had photographed some of the most important people of his day and was admired and befriended by many of them. A member of the Photo-Secession and the Linked Ring, Coburn was involved in the promotion of photography as an art form. He made Vortographs in 1917 and therefore he is also credited by many as the first purely abstract photographer. Yet, in 1918, Coburn stopped photographing professionally. In his autobiography he said:     

Leah King-Smith and the Nineteenth-century Archive

Abstract

In postmodern criticism the camera has often been seen as an apparatus of control, one of the surveillance mechanisms of the state, in the service of its institutions and immersed in its technologies of power. The metaphor of the camera as a weapon, as analysed by Susan Sontag in the early 1970s, describes an unbalanced and non-reciprocal relationship between photographer and subject.¹ One is the hunter, the other the prey; one is the agent, the other the victim. This theoretical paradigm was consolidated in the 1980s when structuralist critics started to analyse nineteenth-century photographic archives held in libraries, institutions and museums.² Much of this criticism followed the work of Michel Foucault who used Jeremy Bentham's model of the Panopticon to analyse the controlling mechanism of the gaze in modern institutions.³ I am aware that aligning Foucault with structuralism will appear problematic to some; however, the way in which some of his work has been adapted by postmodern critics of photography does underline the determinism of his theory. For a lucid analysis, see Joan Copjec, Read my Desire: Lacan against the Historicists, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1994, 1–10. For a different perspective, sympathetic to Foucault, see Geoffrey Batchen, Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1997. Although Foucault's concept of power is productive and he admits to sites of resistance, he is pessimistic about the possibilities of such resistance.⁴ Discipline and Punish, upon which many theories of photographic surveillance are predicated, constructs disciplinary power as ‘the nonreversible subordination of one group of people by another’.⁵