Daguerreotype Portraiture

Abstract

Facing the Light is a major national exhibition of 110 daguerreotype portraits gathered from 35 sources. In his introduction to this catalogue for the exhibition, Pfister outlines his criteria for selection in the National Portrait Gallery's show. For consideration, the works had to be ‘unmistakably identified portraits of nationally prominent individuals … [whose] inclusion was first determined by the existence of a striking example of the daguerrean [sic] art’. This respect for the medium, as well as for the likenesses represented, makes the book a happy blend that should appeal to a broad audience. It is fitting that a national exhibition sponsored in part by the government and in part by the public-minded Polaroid Corporation should have set itself this task.     

Eduard Steichen and Maurice Maeterlinck

Abstract

Eduard Steichen (1879-1973) met the Belgian Symbolist writer Maurice Maeterlinck in 1901, when Steichen was in Europe. Steichen's goal there was to photograph painters and writers whom he personally admired,¹ including Maeterlinck whom Steichen photographed in 1901. Maeterlinck attended Steichen's first one-man exhibition at Maison des Artistes in 1902 and looked favourably on the young artist's work. Maeterlinck and Steichen discussed photography at the time. Steichen thought that Maeterlinck's comments were ‘more considered than any [he] had heard before’ and ‘wondered whether he would put down some of his thoughts’² to be included with reproductions of Steichen's photographs in Camera Work. Steichen felt emphatically that his best photographs should be reproduced with Maeterlinck's statement, and he told Alfred Stieglitz as much.³ The connection between Maeterlinck and Steichen has not gone unnoticed     

Books Received and Noted

Abstract

In August 1920 Lu Marten published a two-part essay entided ‘History, satire, Dada and more’ in Die Rote Fahne, the newspaper of the German Communist Party (KPD).¹ Written as a response to Gertrud Alexander's review of the First International Dada Trade Fair, which had appeared the previous month and characterized the exhibition as a manifestation of ‘bourgeois decadence’,² Märten's essay articulated a more complex understanding of Dada's significance by locating it within satire's historical development. Märten described how the bourgeoisie's replacement of the epic and fable with new literary genres had stripped satire of its popular character. Confined to the treatment of narrow, individual issues in the bourgeois humour magazine, satire had degenerated into a telling of jokes; and any illusions that humour magazines such as Simplicissimus provided social criticism had been dispelled by their performance during the recent war and revolution which had revealed their true class interest. The proletariat was increasingly in the grip of the bourgeois press, because capitalism's control of the publishing industry deprived the proletariat of the technological means necessary for modem satire. This circumstance, Marten argued, was the field in which Dada operated as the negative side of proletarian satire. Its important discovery was that art was no longer necessary for satire since capitalism's material body was satire itself Materials published by the bourgeois press could be arranged for satirical effect and ‘the simple reproduction, the photograph also replaces art here’.³ This destructive impulse was one side of a dialectic that Marten viewed as offering hope for proletarian satire's new beginning.     

Strand's world

Abstract

Paul Strand's photographs are always a pleasure to look at, just as Calvin Tompkins' writing is always a pleasure to read. Aperture, the sine qua non of American photographic book publishing, has recently brought out yet another volume of Strand's photographs, this time pairing them with a critical essay by Calvin Tompkins and adding what is perhaps the most interesting element of all, a section entitled, ‘excerpts from correspondence, interviews and other documents’. The book is a stunning contribution to photographic literature. The pictures themselves are beautifully and faithfully reproduced. Tompkins' interpretive historical essay, altered very little from its first appearance in The New Yorker (16th September 1974), is graceful and informative. The book is executed with the high degree of taste associated with Aperture, thoroughly befitting the intelligence of Strand's photographs. By publishing more pages on Strand than on any other photographer, Aperture had made its own contribution to the Strand legend. This includes the recent, charming article by Catherine Duncan (‘The Garden: Vines and Leaves’, in Aperture, No. 78) and, of course, the monumental two-volume catalogue (also issued in a single volume version) which served as an accompaniment to the Strand retrospective exhibition organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1971.     

Reflections on a theme

Abstract

This book can and perhaps should be seen as a kind of portable exhibition with a wall label by Hilton Kramer. As an exhibition it should be reviewed in a fashion somewhat different from a book, with a much greater proportion of text. For many years Kertész's ‘distortions’ have been considered among the most successful surreal photographs ever made. Few people were aware that this series was as extensive as it turned out to be because many of the images had not been published or exhibited. Now that everything Kertész has done is being given the ‘master’ treatment, we are permitted to see what the photographer in earlier times would perhaps have left unseen.     

The success of Samuel Bourne in India

Abstract

In their 1955 edition of The History of Photography Helmut and Alison Gernsheim noted that the work of Samuel Bourne has ‘undeservedly fallen into oblivion’. They recognized the outstanding quality of the photographs produced on Bourne's excursions in India during the 1860s, including three arduous treks into the western Himalayas. By drawing on the young Englishman's own engaging accounts of his exploits in the mountains — a series of articles published in The British Journal of Photography — the Gernsheims were able to provide ‘an impression of a truly unique achievement’.¹ This initial effort to rescue Bourne from the limbo of forgotten landscapists was continued some twenty years later when his expeditionary work was featured in Ann Turner's BBC television series, ‘Pioneers of Photography’, which was brought out in book form by Aaron Scharf in 1976.² Other serious examinations of Bourne's photographs soon followed, the most significant of these being Arthur Ollman's brief but excellent monograph published in conjunction with an exhibition sponsored by the Friends of Photography in California.³ While the collective writings on Bourne thus ensured his entry into the mainstream of photo-history and provided the groundwork for future studies, numerous questions still remained unanswered regarding Bourne's entry into the photographic trade in India, his professional success, and the impact of his work on his contemporaries. Moreover, previous discussions of the artist's pictorial accomplishments have been limited to selected works with little or no investigation of the possible meanings attached to variations of formats and subtly interrelated series of images, including their cultural and social significance.⁴     

Sidney Carter and Alfred Stieglitz: The Canadian Pictorialist Exhibition (1907)

Abstract

On a late autumn afternoon in 1907, to the sweet strains of orchestral music, 500 of Montreal's cultural elite turned out for the opening of Canada's first international exhibition of pictorial photographs, in the galleries of the Art Association of Montreal, the oldest and most prestigious art museum in the dominion.¹ Sidney Carter (figure 1), a young Photo-Secessionist zealously determined to advance ‘the cause’, had single-handedly solicited the support of the Art Association, gathered the prints, written the catalogue and hung the show.     

The Family of Man as American foreign policy

Situated within an engaging personal account of a career in photojournalism, Morris contributes a thoughtful analysis of The Family of Man, its origins, message and impact. Born in 1916, John G. Morris was an eye-witness to key political events informing the philosophy behind the exhibition. As Picture Editor for the London Bureau of LIFE magazine during World War II, and later, as executive editor of Magnum Photos, he worked closely with the premiere photojournalists of the period, many of whom contributed work to the exhibition. ‘People Are People the World Over’, Morris's innovative series of photo essays for Ladies' Home Journal, influenced Edward Steichen and, ultimately, the shape of The Family of Man. Morris provides a unique perspective on the historical and political context of the exhibition.     

John Bishop Hall

Abstract

Excitement, elation, and scepticism travelled throughout the photographic industry when first reports of a new colour and stereoscopic relief process were published on 1 August 1856.¹ The process was patented by John Bishop Hall in New York, on 27 May 1856 and 20 January 1857. Hall's location at 585 Broadway, New York City was known as the ‘Temple of Art’, occupied by the well known photographer Charles Deforest Fredricks. The photographic journals conceived the name hallotype, a derivative of the ambrotype process on glass. The ambrotype was patented July 1854 by James Ambrose Cutting. Legal action relating to Cutting's several patents on the ambrotype began in the early 1860s. In 1868, Cutting's ambrotype patent extension was denied by the patent office. Jerimiah Gurney, a leading photographer at 349 Broadway, New York City, co-signed Hall's patent. On 13 November 1853 Gurney was awarded first prize in a photographic contest sponsored by Edward Anthony. He was awarded a silver pitcher for his tinted whole plate daguerreotype of a mother and her child. Several medals were awarded to Gurney in 1857, at the annual exhibition of the American Institute.² Gurney objected to the ambrotype process, claiming that it was not permanent. He preferred the hallotype claiming that it could be ‘colored by transparent painting put on from behind; — and the ambrotype is taken on one piece of glass and covered by another, the atmosphere being excluded by a balsamic cement, which secure the faces to each other’.³ A business venture employing the name Hall & Gurney was established at 349 Broadway, known as the ‘Palace of Art’, to exploit the hallotype process.⁴     

Obituary

Abstract

This handsome book is a superb introduction to the history of photography in Japan as well as a catalogue of The History of Japanese Photography exhibition held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Cleveland Museum of Art (2003). The over-sized (12 x 10 inches) volume contains 207 beautifully reproduced photographic plates, seven chapters discussing the history of photography in Japan from 1848 until 2000, and a helpful series of appendices. The latter includes the ‘Exhibition Checklist’, a ‘Chronology’, ‘Artist Profiles’, listings of ‘Major Photography Clubs and Associations’ and ‘Major Photography Magazines’, a ‘Selected Bibliography’ and an ‘Index’. For those interested in a well written, informative and visually stimulating introduction to the subject, this is the book to consult.     

Lewis Hine

Abstract

‘I'm afraid, Mr Hine, that you haven't the broad sociological background required,’ said a distinguished adviser when Lewis W. Hine announced his decision to give up teaching at the Ethical Culture School and set up as a ‘social’ photographer. ‘Nonsense,’ retorted Arthur Kellogg, ‘it's wonderful to find a photographer who has any sociological background’.     

The Reception of Albert Renger-Patzsch's Die Welt ist schön

Abstract

No history of photography or publication on the photography of the 1920s fails to mention the photo-book Die Welt ist schön. Regarded as a ‘manifesto of the revival of Realism,’¹ and hailed as the ‘bible’ of Neue Sachlichkeit photography,² ‘hardly any other book has influenced a generation of photographers to the same great extent and with such long-lasting effects as this volume‘.³ It was the book's tide in particular that was received like a catchword and influenced the reception of this photographic volume: ‘The tide became symbolic for an attitude of Neue Sachlichkeit to the world and the book was acknowledged as the ideal volume of Neue Sachlichkeit photography’.⁴ Hitherto in the history of the book's reception, this opinion has been restricted primarily to the reference to Walter Benjamin's well-known negative critique of 1931.⁵ Amongst the multitude of reviews of Die Welt ist schon, it is Benjamin's assessment which is most frequendy cited in the literature. That Benjamin was able to neglect explicidy mentioning Renger-Patzsch's name and to refer merely to the tide of the book can be interpreted as proof of the great fame of this photographic author. In fact, Die Welt ist schön had by this time been reviewed in nearly all leading cultural magazines and daily newspapers and evaluated as an exemplary volume of a modem, neusachliche photography. For critics such as Benjamin, however, the tide was synonymous with a new, sterile ‘l’art pour l'art' photography which manipulated reality and denied social contexts. But to confine negative criticism of Die Welt ist schön to the political left and its praise to a more conservative attitude is too simple a model as becomes apparent when all of the reviews are taken into consideration. Karl With's attempt to summarize the contradictions of this picture book may be cited here: ‘Ein seltsames Buch!} (A strange book!). Exciting in its busding abundance, as well as in its silence’.⁶     

Erotic Photography

Abstract

In his exhibition catalogue The Body Exposed: 150 Years of the Nude in Photography (Zurich 1995), Michael Kohler expresses the hope that ‘nobody will shy away from taking a closer look at nude photography, its aesthetics, its history and its ideology under the illusion that there is nothing left to discover; for it's exactly the opposite’. In fact, true academic attention toward the nude photograph has been surprisingly limited, the genre leaving behind instead a trail of pseudo-academic coffee-table books and prodigious, but unanalysed, collections. This is perhaps the reason that Michelle Olley's book is at once so heartening and so disappointing. Venus presents an anthology of erotic, and predominantly nude, photography of women spanning approximately the last 40 years. Unfortunately, where such a collection could be a prime opportunity to finally provide a cogent and analytical narrative of the genre's recent history, Olley instead offers a sparse text that uses the photographs merely as evidence of the modern world's sexual liberation. She asserts that ‘Our attitudes toward sex and sexuality, women and the depiction of erotic subjects has shifted, so that society no longer hides the nude away from us as something forbidden and too shocking even for adults’. Her argument is supported by a cursory history of the female nude in painting and photography and by references to ‘restrictive’ Victorian morality. This single-mindedness glosses over the diversity of issues posed by the photographs in the collection — issues such as identity, isolation and interaction, confinement and freedom, universality and incident.     

The painterí lens

Abstract

The importance of the artist Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze) as a forerunner of international tachism painting of ‘Art informal’ has long been recognized. It is surprising, therefore, that Laszlo Glozer's new study, Wols Photograph, is the first monograph devoted to the artist. Even more surprising, perhaps, is the author's concentration on Wols' activity as a a role usually not identified with his high art-historical position. Actually, Glozer is at pains to characterize the artist as a tragic, creative unity; we realize as we read the admirable text that the author might have taken any aspect of Wols' production as his point of departure and ended essentially with the same picture of the artist. ‘Wols’ art is autobiographical', Glozer writes. ‘Behind the transformations of the expressive forms, it remains self-expression to the end. This unconditional situation is constant.’ Wois himself is responsible for the remark, ‘il faut savoir que tout rime’, and Glozer discovers the truth of the dictum, not only for the totality of Wols' art but for his life as well.     

‘Princess’ Alice

Abstract

Burr Mcintosh had an enviable job as a photographer; at the turn of the century, he was called the ‘special photographer … to [a popular] Theodore Roosevelt’¹. With such credentials, Mcintosh accompanied William Howard Taft's Republican peace entourage to the Philippines and to China in 1905, bathing in the knowledge that his calling and appointment were secure. He was obviously smitten by ‘the Princess’, Alice Roosevelt, Teddy's headstrong daughter, and took every opportunity to photograph her with the other politicos on the junket. Alice mentions these events m her autobiography, Crowded Hours     

Alfred Stieglitz and New Yark Dada

Abstract

In February of 1921 the photographer and entrepreneur Alfred Stieglitz mounted the fIrst public exhibition of his work since the closing of his pioneering art gallery, ‘291’, nearly four years earlier.1 An exhibition of 146 of Stieglitz's photographs was held at the Anderson Galleries in New York during February of 1921. This show was instrumental in helping Stieglitz ultimately to reassert his prominence in the New York art world and re-establish his status as an important American artist. Curiously, however, the manner in which Stieglitz and his associates chose to promote the photographer was somewhat unusual. They repeatedly described the camera as an extension of Stieglitz's own body, and his photographs as an extension of his spirit. As a result, they claimed that Stieglitz had achieved a profound physical and spiritual union both with his machinery and with the subjects he photographed.     

Two Stieglitz Autochromes: Katherina and Käti Raab

Abstract

In the course of preparatory research for the exhibition ‘Frank Eugene — The Dream of Beauty’, several boxes of autochromes privately owned by a Munich industrialist came to light. These autochromes were taken by the American art photographers Frank Eugene and Alfred Stieglitz, probably between 1907 and 1909 in Tutzing. In the meantime, the colour photographs taken by Eugene have been reproduced in the catalogue of the above-mentioned exhibition (Ulrich Pohlmann, ed., Frank Eugene — The Dream of Beauty, Munich: Nazraeli 1995, 176-79).     

Book reviews

Abstract

A joint exhibition of Ansel Adams's Museum Set portfolio of seventy-five images plus one hundred photographs selected from his centennial project for the University of California, Fiat Lux, was due to open at the University of California, Irvine, on 8 January 1991. The installation of The Museum Set photographs was near completion when museum scientist and installation designer, Phyllis Lutjeans, noticed that Sequoia Gigantea Roots, Yosemite National Park, California, c.1950 (figures 1 and 2), plate number 55 in the exhibition catalogue,¹ was reversed, from the image hanging on the wall before her. Ms Lutjeans had been using the catalogue as a guide to affix labels for the exhibition.