Eudora Welty,photographer

Abstract

That Eudora Welty¹ in addition to her great gifts as a short-story writer should also have been a gifted photographer may come as something of a surprise. One thinks immediately of Wright Morris², another original writer and photographer, whose interest in the art has continued to this day, whereas photographic activity was only a passing phase for Welty. For a time Eudora Welty thought of becoming a professional photographer, but her early portfolios did not sell, while her short stories did. In 1944 Vogue magazine published three of her pictures with an accompanying text, entitled ‘Literature and the lens’, the first of three statements that she has made on the nature of the photograph and of the moment it preserves³. Her photographs are indeed of One Time, One Place, Mississippi in the Depression; A Snapshot Album to quote the title of a collection of her photographs published with a preface in 1971⁴. A new and sumptuous portfolio of 20 well-printed photographs has since appeared⁵.     

The Ties that Bind Hans Bellmer's Tenir au Frais to Heinrich Von Kleist

This article examines Hans Bellmer's photographic collage of 1958 Tenir au frais (Keep Cool), a work produced as part of his exploration of the theme of the female body bound with string. The paper argues that an interpretation of this image in the context of French Surrealism must take into account the fact that it appeared on the cover of le surréalisme, même, a journal that was filled with praise for the German Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist. Tenir au frais has been interpreted variously, but little attention has been paid to its material context as the cover of the Surrealist journal. The Surrealists were political and cultural radicals, and their aim was a profound transformation of the world, a world that had generated atrocities beyond imagination in two World Wars. Shock was an important element in the work of the Surrealists, who often used images of sexual violence to challenge the status quo. The roots of this preoccupation lay in the writings of the literary heroes of the movement. This article argues that material context is crucial when considering possible meanings and that the image is tied to the Surrealist preoccupation with the German Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist. Kleist's Penthesilea was particularly cherished by the group. They were interested in his portrayal of sexual frenzy, in how love and violence are fused in the play and in the psychological realism and tension in this ecstatic work. Bellmer's photographic collage provides an allusive illustration to the text on Kleist and connects with his drama on a number of levels, for it conveys extraordinary emotional distress but also the physical turmoil of the play in which the theme of binding is evident throughout.     

Editorial

Abstract

In the history of photography the earliest years are represented by a comparatively small number of people, remembered not only for their excellence, but often because their work features with some regularity in international salerooms. It is therefore gratifying to be able to introduce a new name onto the scene who was highly regarded by his contemporaries, and was at the same time related, by marriage, to William Henry Fox Talbot, the centenary of whose death we are remembering this year. That John Dillwyn Llewelyn should not be widely known today, is perhaps not surprising. Apart from a few photographs that were included in such publications as The Sunbeam, the majority of his existing images have remained in the family.That John Dillwyn Llewelyn should not be widely known today, is perhaps not surprising. Apart from a few photographs that were included in such publications as The Sunbeam, the majority of his existing images have remained in the family.     

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.     

Albert Renger—Patzsch's early work: Object and abstraction

Abstract

In photography, one should surely proceed from the essence of the object and attempt to represent it through purely photographic means, regardless of whether it is a human being, a landscape, architecture or something else; whereas today a rape of the object for the sake of formal play is more often the norm. Because the German word Sachlichkeit has taken on practically the opposite meaning today, I have to use a foreign word to properly characterize the position of servitude I maintain before the motif: ‘objectivity’.¹     

Die Kunst in der photographie,the German camera work part 1: The publication and its images

Abstract

For some twenty years the author's library has contained six handsome folio volumes, bound in green linen and dark brown half-leather. On the front cover of each there is a stylized rising sun and the title Die Kunst in der Photographie (Art in Photography), both imprinted in gold (Figure 1 ). The large-format photogravures bound into each volume, to accompany some text, have been a source of delight, but facts about this publication have been hard to find. As far as is known, this item has not featured in any photographic auction, and only once has a single volume been offered (for a breath-taking price) in an antiquarian's catalogue. The matter warranted some research.     

19th century indian photographers in India

Abstract

It may never be possible to discover who was the first person to use a camera in India. Dr A. Toussaint considers it likely that the Frenchman, Jules Léger, may have taken photographs during his visit to India before establishing a photographic studio in Mauritius in February 1845¹. Josiah Rowe, a Calcutta surveyor, was hailed as ‘the father of photography in India’ by Dr F. J. Mouat, the first president of the Bengal Photographic Society, but as yet no photographs have been found that can be attributed to him. The earliest known photographs were taken by John McCosh, a surgeon in the Bengal establishment of the East India Company's army, during the second Sikh War in 1848-49. He had no doubts about the pleasures of photography:

I would strongly recommend every assistant-surgeon to make himself master of photography in all its branches, on paper, on plate glass, and on metallic plate. I have practised it for many years, and know of no extra-professional pursuit that will repay him for all the expense and trouble (and both are very considerable) than this fascinating study².     

Landscape photography

Abstract

My first exposure to Eliot Porter was when as a young college student I discovered Eliot Porter's photographic portrait of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in E.P. Dutton's Appalachian Wilderness: The Great Smoky Mountains (1970). I felt I'd found someone else who could see the landscape through the same childlike sense of wonder I'd felt growing up in East Tennessee. The pictures were not of the grandest views or best-known waterfalls in the park; instead, Eliot's photographs recorded the rather common features and patterns that give the Appalachians their peculiar identity and rich character. Here were deep patterns of green in a mountain pool, a tapestry of yellow and orange on an autumn hillside, the rich variety of greens as spring marches up a mountainside.     

Kunst and conscience

Abstract

This book owes its existence largely to the ‘discovery’ of a new cache of Zille photographs, now in the possession of one of the artist's descendants. Altogether, there are 418 negatives on glass, some glass positives, some contact prints, and about a hundred photographs of which negatives have not been traced. None of this material, had been treated with any particular care; its value had remained unrecognized, in harmony with Zille's own view of his photographic activities, as a means to a very practical end. Famous as a painter and cartoonist of the Berlin scene, he did not himself consider his photographs as Hochkunst, but there is no doubt whatever that modern sensibilities and judgements place them into that category. It is true enough that the present selection of 200 items, beautifully printed and presented one to a page, includes some trivial material, but an astonishing number of images invite comparison with the work of the more famous turn-of-the-century masters, and yield nothing at all to their superior reputations. Zille, who began photographing in 1890, might conceivably have know of Nègre, but there is no evidence that he had ever seen work by Atget, Coburn, Riis or Hine. Indeed, many of Zille's most important photographs predate some of their American parallels, and yet his images reflect the intrinsic qualities of all these artists, while at the same time exhibiting a freshness of approach which is peculiarly his own. This does not come through as a minor descant on a familiar theme; on the contrary, it is the dominant impression, important enough to secure Zille's place in any photographic Hall of Fame. The two examples available as illustrations for this review, though entirely competent, cannot by themselves confirm the impression of the originality and richness that are in store for the reader.     

F. Holland day

Abstract

Research Into F. Holland Day's æuvre has begun to provide a framework for interpreting the content found in his photographs, and the host of literary, artistic, and spiritual sources that often seem to have informed has aesthetic decision making. For while Day's work is here considered in the context of photographic history, he is no less part of the intricate network of writers, poets, artists, and socialites whose often controversial expression comprise the fin de siècle that ruptured Brahmin society in Boston. Incited by Estelle Jussim's resistance to discussing either homosexuahty or the homoerotic content manifest in Day's Images of the male nude (figure 1; see also figure 14, Curtis, ‘F. Holland Day: The Poetry of Photography’, in this issue.), scholars have been vigorously asserting the centrality of these issues as a means for understanding Day's life and career.¹ While it is evident that many of his photographs of the male nude possess a casual relationship to the profusion of gay male erotica circulating in both England and the United States, the issues that may explicate the sexual ambiguities of male-male relationships during this period are far more complex than what has emerged 10 the literature on Day.² It can be said, moreover, that the male nude photographs by Day have received disporportionate attention from scholars, and thus have suppressed discussions about the diversity of his repertoire, and the important role that other images play in the photographer's æuvre.     

Side by Side: The Halftone’s Visual Culture of Pragmatism

Charles S. Peirce’s late-nineteenth-century semiotic theory has long been considered one of the key frameworks for analysing the photograph as a visual sign. This article, however, proposes a closer look at Peirce’s contemporaneous philosophy of pragmatism as a fundamental component of the visual, cultural, and intellectual context within which the photographic halftone first emerged. When, exactly, did it begin to matter if a photographic image made up of a certain arrangement of graphic marks was read differently from a photographic image made up of a different arrangement of graphic marks? Such pragmatist questions were crucial to the early reception of halftone reproductions, which were often integrated into illustrated magazines as simply one element within an already diverse array of graphic codes. Turning to Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives (1890) as a case study, this article argues that reading the halftone as a chiefly photographic sign was not in fact an inevitable outcome of its introduction into the illustrated press in the 1880s and 1890s, but required instead a constant negotiation of both visual and conceptual imprecision – an imprecision eventually smoothed over in favour of an association of halftone technology with photographic ontology by the early twentieth century.     

Books received and noted

Abstract

This study of the use of photographs during the Paris Commune, and continuing through the periods of Bonapartism, Boulangism, Royalism, and the Dreyfus Affair, is excellent in every way but two, and neither shortcoming is the fault of the author. First, the price is unaccountably high considering that, secondly, the reproduction quality is so poor. Nevertheless, in this scholarly and lively text, students of photo history will find a thorough, well-documented, and very thoughtful examination of the use of photographs, and especially captioned photos, primarily by the various opponents to the Third Republic. This is not so much a discussion of important French photographers as an attempt to identify and interpret those often anonymous images that enjoyed national circulation from 1871–1914, and to analyse their use as propaganda. To do this, the author carefully traces their political and sociological context, examines prevailing notions about the nature of photographs, and comments about the effectiveness of various photographic propaganda campaigns (although he concedes that it is difficult to determine their absolute effect on 19th-century viewers).     

Electroless deposition catalysed by gold in the photographic gelatin layer studied with positron annihilation

Abstract

The effects of free volume holes in the photographic gelatin in the electroless deposition process was studied by positron annihilation technology in this paper. The results show that, after complete activation, the average volume of the free volume holes in photographic gelatin decreased by about 0.011 nm³ which is equivalent to the volume of a gold atom. On an average basis, every free volume hole was filled by a gold atom which catalysed the electroless copper deposition. The copper grain formed in the electroless copper deposition was not filamentary in shape but a spherical stack. After electroless copper deposition was completed, the average volume of the free volume holes in the photographic gelatin decreased by about 0.020 nm³ which is equivalent to the volume of three copper atoms. Therefore, the deposition of copper in isotropic and spherical form was not hindered by free volume holes in photographic gelatin.     

Publications Received

At the turn of the twentieth century, landscape photography began to emerge as a new way to represent nature in Korea. Landscape photographs of the Korean peninsula were printed in modern media, such as the daily newspaper Maeilsinbo, the public cultural magazine Cheongchun, and picture postcards. This article explores the photographic representation of nature in Korea in the 1910s. Landscape images of the period were rooted in the visual regime of the camera obscura, and they often borrowed techniques and themes from Korean traditional landscape painting, or sansuhwa. The photographic medium was important in shaping new perceptions, aesthetic experiences, and discourses on nature. This article examines several categories of landscape photography, including images of scenic and historical places, idyllic and bucolic scenes, and urban parks. These categories were common in Korean western-style landscape painting and art photography of the 1920s, and continue to be seen to this day in Korean visual culture.     

The darkroom abolish

Abstract

‘You press tlie button and we do the rest' had been Kodak's proud slogan slnce 1888, but as the success of popular pliotography grew, the wisdom of allowing hundreds of thousands of amateurs to do ‘the rest’ themselves became very clear. By 1902, the annuals sales of photographic paper alone had reached three million dollars¹, and Kodak's famous propaganda slogan was tacltly disowned with the publication of The Darkroom Abolished. In eloquent terms, and supported by the highest photographic authorities in the land, the notion came to be propagated that ‘You’ should not only press the button, but also ‘do tlie rest’ yourself. If ‘The Kodak Girl’ could do it, fragile and delicate woman that she was, anyone could. No mention here of the fact that at least 18 women were formal members of the Photo-secession in that year, or that two had been among the founders. The early years of this century were not, of course, attuned to these sensibilities; indeed, plctures of pretty girls selling enticing products like potassium ferrous oxalate to an eager publoc will be with us for a while yet. In the testimonials for the new products, Eickemeyer ranks discreetly above (or at any rate ‘before’) Stieglitz, and through the four quotations are almost on a par, one may guess that the layout of the brochure was more popular in some quarters than in others. And Edward W. Newcoinb, while equally positive, was evidently confused about the limits of human skill. Frederick Remington's endorsement must have been valued more for the sake of the artist's name than for its own persuasive qualities. His cautious tone notwithstanding, it is known that his own practice as an illustrator was shaped, at least in part, by the public's insistence on the kind of pictorial authenticity that only a pliotograph could sulpply².     

John Szarkowski

Abstract

Photography was practised in India soon after its discovery in 1839 (witness the work of John McCosh about 1843–44), but not until the mid-1850s did the East India Company start to appropriate the medium for its own use.     

On the Method of Determination of the Noise Levels of Black-and-White Photographic Materials

According to the recent studies on the noise characteristics of photographic materials, two kinds of noise can be defined: the macronoise, trD (mac), and the micronoise, aD (mic). The macronoise is the equivalent of the RMS-granularity of the photographic material, and is believed to include the contribution of the macroscopic non-uniformity of the emulsion layer. On the other hand, the micronoise is thought to be determined by the ultimate limits of the statistical fluctuation in the process of photon recoding on the emulsion layer. In this work, the above mentioned hypothesis was verified experimentally and also by computer simulation. The results showed that σ_D (mac) is generally greater than σ_D (mic), and the standard correlation coefficient, r, is greater than zero. This is obviously not due to the overlapping of the successive sampling spots. When the sampling rate was reduced from 50 s^-l to 11 s^-1 which is equivalent to increase the distance between the successive sampling spots from 52.4 microns to 238 microns, the macronoise remained unchanged, whereas the micronoise became close or equal to the macronoise. The computer simulation showed that the micronoise approaches the macronoise as the distance between the successive sampling spots increases. The authors suggested that the macronoise, i.e. the RMS-granularity, can be used as a figure of merit in the evaluation of photographic materials, whereas the micronoise may be more meaningful when one’s interest is on the influence of AgX emulsion on the image quality. The r-value may serve as a measure of the large-scale non-uniformity of a photographic layer.     

Advertising photographica

Abstract

A collection of German advertisements relating to cameras and accessories; not in chronological order, but a Nachschlagebuch all the same by virtue of its useful index. Charming period pieces, marking the entrance of the amateur on the photographic scene; of substantial interest to camera collectors and social historians. The Anschutz Moment-Apparat may have been a burden to owners who lovingly carried it in 1893; not so the 1937 Robot, advertised as ‘pfeilgeschwind wie der Mowenflug’. The graphic designs reflect the tastes and preoccupations of their era, and have acquired an endearing quality through the healing passage of time. Styles vary from bicycle-acrobatic, via pixie-voyeurish to classical camp. No text.     

How to Orient Collagen and Gelatin

Abstract

The arrangement of triple helical domains of gelatin molecules may have important physical consequences in photographic gelatins. We review work which indicates that lyotropic liquid crystallization is important in defining molecular orientation and packing in collagens and suggest that it would be worth looking for similar effects in gelatins under certain conditions. We present a preliminary observation which suggests that gelatin can actually behave as a liquid crystal. The possible role of lyotropic liquid crystallization in photographic manufacturing and the interaction of gelatin with other photographic components, such as silver halide, needs further investigation.     

William Lake Price and James Mudd

Abstract

Photography, of course, appears everywhere but for all its successes it has been remarkably unable to shake the complacency of the disciplines; it has its uses and its places, but these seem just too setded and too well known. The photographer remains a junior partner in the practices of a society, high or low, cultural or otherwise. But if we travel back through time we will encounter a point when photography seemed anything but limited. If any spatial figure typifies English photographic debate in the 1860s it would be ‘boundless’. In the language of English photographic culture the idea that the potentials of the new medium were unlimited stretched from Lady Easdake to the juror's reports on the International Exhibitions. Out of this mass of commentary I intend to extract only two fairly ordinary pieces of writing: William Lake Price's A Manual of Photographic Manipulation published in 1868¹ and James Mudd's ‘A photographer's dream’, originally read at the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, and published in The Photographic News for May 1865.²