Large format camera Front on, realist, sharply defined objective documentary photographs of architectural structures of the urban landscape In series
In reality:
Structures cut from the fabric of existence Isolated by the subjective eye of the photographer and the lens of the camera What to include or exclude
(In the contemporary photographs of the spaces in the posting, the shops are surrounded by trees and vegetation, they have transformed from kiosk to shuttered shop, from boutique to florist: the architecture remains but traces of previous incarnations are visible only in these photographs. Nothing is permanent except change).
In the photographs of kiosks, corner shops and industrial gates, it is the minutiae of existence (not as mere decoration) that gives these supposedly objective photographs their subjective power. For example, “the photo Trinkhalle, Köln-Nippes – with its ice cream and newspaper advertisements and vending machines for chewing gum and cigarettes” is more than amusing and engaging – it depicts vital, archaeological evidence of the transitory nature of human existence in the pyschogeography of the urbanscape.1
In Ronkholz’ photographs of the terrain (from the Latin terra, earth/land) of the city, her exploration of urban environments emphasises interpersonal connections to places – and testify “to social, cultural, and economic change and shows how people shape the world around them.” (Press release)
This is the fluid boundary that these photographs so beautifully and incisively depict: the interface between architecture and human, between order (form/surface) and chaos (placement of insolent signs), between utopian perfection and dystopian unruliness – the one coexistent with the other.
This confluence of pattern and randomness, objective and subjective, is what gives these photographs of the everyday a lasting significance.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Guy Debord (November 1956). “Theory of the Dérive”. Les Lèvres Nues (9). Translated by Ken Knabb.
Many thankx to Huis Marseille, Amsterdam for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Sankt-Franziskus-Straße 104-107 Düsseldorf
Installation views of the exhibition Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February – June, 2026
Installation views of the exhibition Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February – June, 2026
Installation view of the exhibition Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February – June, 2026 showing at left, Tata Ronkholz’s Düsseldorf Harbor (1980)
Tata Ronkholz was one of the first students in Bernd and Hilla Becher’s famous photography class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Her fellow students included Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth, all of whom became artists of world renown. Oddly enough Tata Ronkholz’ work is only now receiving the same international acclaim. The retrospective Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997), on show at Huis Marseille from 14 February until 21 June 2026, is the first large-scale tribute to this many-sided artist.
Objective-documentary photography
Tata Ronkholz was a photographer, product designer, and interior architect. Her photographic series lie within the tradition of objective, documentary photography, a tradition which was decisively shaped by the artist couple Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like theirs, Ronkholz’ work is characterised by clear compositions, a serial approach, and a documentary focus on architectural structures and everyday architectures. Using a large-format camera she produced sharply defined and realistic photographs in which the subject matter, rather than the individual style of the artist, takes centre stage. Her work is predominantly in black and white, although colour images also appear, demonstrating her ambition to engage with the artistic colour photography that emerged in Germany during the 1970s and ’80s, following the example set by the New Color Photography introduced by the American photographers Stephen Shore and William Eggleston.
Kiosks and corner shops
Tata Ronkholz became known for her appealing series of kiosks (Trinkhallen) and small shops that capture typical moments of urban everyday culture. These were photographed between 1977 and 1985, particularly in neighbourhoods of Cologne and Düsseldorf, in the Ruhr area, as well as in Leverkusen and Krefeld. For example, the photo Trinkhalle, Köln-Nippes – with its ice cream and newspaper advertisements and vending machines for chewing gum and cigarettes – is as amusing and engaging as Boutique, Köln-Mülheim in which, according to the store sign, alongside clothing records were also for sale. The photographs illustrate the extent to which product offerings, decoration, and advertising in public spaces has been transformed. Tata Ronkholz’ choice of subject means that her work indirectly testifies to social, cultural, and economic change and shows how people shape the world around them.
Industrial gates
Another significant series is dedicated to industrial gates, photographed between 1977 and 1985. The sober black-and-white images of these gates, with their grids and frameworks, offer glimpses into the interiors of industrial areas. In the photographs the gates function as interfaces between private and public space, between interior and exterior, and between activity and calm. Their aesthetic, reminiscent of abstract artworks, imbues the everyday with a new significance.
Collaboration with Thomas Struth
In 1979 Ronkholz, together with her fellow student Thomas Struth, began work on an impressive documentary series on Düsseldorf’s Rheinhafen. The project originated from the planned redevelopment of this historic harbour area – a site that, in its original form, was considered an industrial area of significant urban historical and architectural importance. Together they set out to document the harbour in its entirety, capturing its historic buildings, technical installations, and operational structures. In carefully composed images they recorded façades, interiors, silos, warehouses, crane structures, and harbour basins, before these elements partially disappeared or were fundamentally altered during the restructuring.
Tata Ronkholz as product designer
Between 1961 and 1965 Ronkholz studied at the Werkkunstschule Krefeld (an academy of applied art) with a focus on furniture design, and subsequently worked as a freelance designer until 1977. The exhibition also explores this aspect of Ronkholz’ oeuvre, including depictions of geometrically shaped furniture and lighting fixtures as well as designs for office and cafeteria furniture. Ronkholz’ designs are characterised by clear forms and functional elegance. Finally, the retrospective also presents early photographs of architectural forms created in 1975/76 in Italy and France, revealing her strong affinity for aspects of the ‘designed world’ across different areas of life.
Ronkholz’ estate, acquired in 2011 by VAN HAM Art Estate in Cologne, forms the basis of the exhibition alongside the holdings of Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf. Significant contributions have also been made from the in-house collections of Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – who also curated the exhibition – and through loans from private collections.
Book
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, Tata Ronkholz: Gestaltete Welt. Eine Retropektive (2025, Schirmer/Mosel Verlag GmbH), with texts in German and English. It is available from the Huis Marseille museum shop (€49.90).
Duane Michals (American, 1932-2026) What is Time? 1994 Gelatin silver print 16 × 19 7/8 inches (40.6 × 50.5cm) Gift of Duane Michals The Morgan Library & Museum
“Time is the duration of everything, and life is an event, a fluttering of wings.”
Duane Michals
There is no time
Vale the transcendent Duane Michals – storyteller.
Magician, poet, philosopher and dreamer.
An artist, like Joseph Cornell, who I have always felt a special affinity / infinity towards.
I wrote in earlier postings on his work:
“As he says, his work goes beyond description, beyond surfaces, to reveal the subject – not as it looks but as it feels. In his sequences he usually achieves this by posing a question that has no answer, a question that is like a Zen koan… what is the sound of one hand clapping? The grandfather ascends smilingly to heaven with little wings on his back as the child waves goodbye (if youth knew, if age could); the man as human condition turns into a galaxy; and the spirit leaves the body as it was left before. …
Michals staged, narrative scenes take us on a journey into his reality, one which “has entered a realm beyond observation.” He poses difficult questions that force us to examine ideas beyond the world of phenomena, beyond the world of surfaces. He challenges our repressed inner lives and our idealised image of ourselves, disturbing the boundaries of personality, ego, and identity.”1
And
“Duane Michals is one of the greatest photographic storytellers of the twentieth century. His parables – seemingly simple stories used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson – resonate, vibrate, with energy, and insight into, the human condition. They are as profound as the air we breathe but cannot see – expressing the invisible, presencing the spiritual. I feel, I know these stories, intimately. Those things-for-which-there-are-no-words. …
There are things here not seen in this photograph. The spirit leaves the body. William Blake and Duane Michals. Enchanted melancholy. The mysterious / music. In swift embrace. In love. In memory. In death. The fluidity of the line of the artist. Things are queer. The world implodes and ravages itself. Paradise is reborn. The letter, and love, from my father that I, also, never did receive. The nature of reality. Truth? … When I was young. What was time?”2
It was Michals great skill as an artist and a human being that enabled us the possibility of accessing some aspect of the mystery of our existence.
Stepping beyond … his spirit has left his body.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Marcus Bunyan. “Exposing your/self,” on the exhibition ‘Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals’ at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, November 2014 – February 2015 on the Art Blart website January 30, 2015 [Online] Cited 11/06/2026
2/ Marcus Bunyan. “The things-for-which-there-are-no-words,” on the exhibition ‘Illusions of the Photographer: Duane Michals at the Morgan’ at The Morgan Library & Museum, October 2019 – February 2020 on the Art Blart website January 24, 2020 [Online] Cited 11/06/2026
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“I write with this photograph not to tell you what you can see, rather to express what is invisible.”
Duane Michals 1966 in Johnson, B. (ed.,) 2004, ‘Photography speaks: 150 photographers on their art’, Aperture, New York p. 150
“The nature of consciousness is always the central question,” he asserted. In The Human Condition, his panel of six photographs from 1969 begins with a man standing on the 14th Street subway platform; the train arrives and he is bathed in a halo of light; the light becomes a swirl and in the last frame he is swept into a white disc the size of a galaxy passing through the night sky. From the immediate to the universal in six frames.
Duane Michals (American, 1932-2026) Things Are Queer 1973 Nine gelatin silver prints Images: 5 × 7 inches (12.7 × 17.8cm) each Gift of Duane Michals The Morgan Library & Museum
Duane Michals (American, b. 1932) The Spirit Leaves the Body 1968 Gift of Richard and Ronay Menschel The Morgan Library & Museum
Curator: Sabine Zorn (Head of Conservation/Restoration of Graphic Art and Photography, Hamburger Kunsthalle); Guest Curator: Dr. Bernd Pappe (Freelance restorer and art historian specialising in portrait miniatures)
I discovered this exhibition while surfing online and I couldn’t miss it before it closes tomorrow. Resistance is futile, especially for an avid collector of object d’arts.
I love miniatures, their sensitivity, their sensuality, their size. The fact they were held in the hand and carried close to the heart. Portraits of the self, relying on mirrors to capture the artist’s own reflection, portraits of loved ones, artists, anonymous men and women.
“Many master miniaturists (like Daguerre himself) used optical tools like the Camera Obscura to map proportions before painting. Using early cameras felt like a natural mechanical extension of this process.” (Wikipedia)
“Portrait miniaturists were already experts at arranging subjects for flattering, highly personalised, and dignified depictions. They brought these same framing, angling, and lighting rules – such as emphasising the face – to the camera.” (Wikipedia)
“As miniature painters attempted to mimic the technical precision of daguerreotypes, they lost the intimate, distinct appeal of their art form. As the former Metropolitan Museum scholar Harry Wehle put it in 1927, “The miniature in the presence of the photograph was like a bird before a snake; it was fascinated – even to the fatal point of imitation – then it was swallowed”.” (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
For me, there is a delicacy and romanticism to the painted miniature which can never be matched by the photographic miniature. Despite both being housed in small, protective leather and wood cases, each are constructed realities of a different aspect – one created through the eye and creativity of the painter, the other created through the eye and creativity of the photographer and the maximal, granular reality of the camera.
Where possible I have added bibliographic and other pertinent information for the artists in the posting.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Hamburger Kunsthalle for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (née Labille; 11 April 1749 – 24 April 1803), also known as Adélaïde Labille-Guiard des Vertus, was a French miniaturist and portrait painter. She was an advocate for women to receive the same opportunities as men to become great painters. Labille-Guiard was one of the first women to become a member of the Royal Academy, and was the first female artist to receive permission to set up a studio for her students at the Louvre.
Adélaïde Labille was born on 11 April 1749 in Paris. Her father, Claude-Edme Labille (1705-1788) was a haberdasher.
Labille-Guiard became a master at miniatures, pastels, and oil paintings. Little is known about her training due to the practices of the 18th century which dictated masters (who were predominately male) should not take on female pupils. During this time, women were perceived as incapable to follow instruction alongside men. During her adolescence, Labille-Guiard studied miniature painting with oil painter François-Élie Vincent and her early work was exhibited at the Académie de Saint-Luc.
Labille-Guillard married Louis-Nicolas Guiard in 1769, but separated from him eight years later, already able to support herself through her artwork. She apprenticed with the pastel master Quentin de la Tour until 1774. From 1776 to 1780, she began to study oil painting with her childhood friend François-André Vincent (the eldest son of François-Élie Vincent), who would later become her husband.
Exhibitions at the Académie de Saint-Luc
Labille-Guiard was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1767 when she was twenty years old. Her admission piece has since disappeared and sadly no records of its existence survive today. The Académie de Saint-Luc provided Labille-Guiard with a space to practice art professionally. In 1774, she exhibited her work at its Salon. This show was so successful that the Royal Academy took offence, and with the backing of the monarchy, issued an edict in March 1776 abolishing “guilds, brotherhoods, and communities of arts and crafts”, forcing the Académie de Saint-Luc to close its doors in 1777. However, this did not stop Labille-Guiard’s ambitions as an artist.
Becoming a member of the Royal Academy
Once the Académie de Saint-Luc closed its doors, Labille-Guiard began to learn oil painting, so she could apply to the Royal Academy which required her to present at least one oil painting for admission. During the late 1770s, she painted several portraits of leading academicians, creating contacts with the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.[6]
Labille-Guiard chose to display some of her work at the Salon de la Correspondance in 1779 and 1783. This included her self-portrait in pastel and oil portraits, which were well received by critics. Labille-Guiard’s talent as an oil painter and pastellist was quickly noticed, and she received national recognition, ultimately leading to her acceptance into the Royal Academy. On 31 May 1783 Labille-Guiard was accepted as a member of the French Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Her rival, Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, was also elected on that day; the two of them were the first women to be inducted. Both Labille-Guiard and Vigée Le Brun were immediately criticised following their admission by those who were furious at women’s entry; Labille-Guiard suffered attacks against both her art and character. One anonymous pamphlet Suite de Malborough au Salon 1783, accused Labille-Guiard of exchanging sexual favours for help with painting. The pamphlet punned on François-André Vincent’s name (though still unmarried, he was her rumoured paramour), saying that Labille Guiard had “vignt cents” (twenty-hundreds, or two thousand) lovers. Still, becoming accepted into the Royal Academy opened doors for Labille-Guiard as she gained patronage from the royal family. …
Style and context
Labille-Guiard often did not fit comfortably within the boundaries of feminine virtue in the 18th century. In order to appeal to a wide variety of viewers including upper-class men and women, she often incorporated recent fashions into her paintings, which allowed her to showcase her artistic ability. She was good at rendering details, such as showing luxurious folds and layers of complex skirts that were in fashion at the time. However, often she painted with a twist such as having women face directly at the viewer or with a low neckline, which was an uncommon practice in the 18th century when portraying women.
Further evidence of Labille-Guiard’s boldness can be seen in her self-portraits, which leave her exposed slightly more than usual, but not enough to evoke allegations of promiscuous behaviour. This is seen in her painting Self-Portrait with Two Pupils. Unlike some other paintings of female artists in the 18th century, Labille-Guiard chose to depict herself actively working rather than passive and at rest. Labille-Guiard also pushed against other restrictions, such as those that limited the number of females that could attend the Royal Academy. By depicting two female students in Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Labille-Guiard suggests more women should be allowed in to the Royal Academy. In this sense, Labille-Guiard was daring, but not too daring as to sabotage her reputation and lose the respect she worked hard to gain within the art world.
At the time, female artists were frequently related to the goddess Minerva. Therefore, Labille-Guiard and her rival Vigée Le Brun were both referred to as “modern Minervas.” Their rivalry was encouraged by both academicians and patrons at court.
Today, Labille-Guiard’s masterpiece, Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, after the Louvre rejected it in a final dismissal of the artist’s talent.
Friedrich Carl Gröger was a north-German portrait painter and lithographer. One of the most respected portraitists of his time in northern Germany, his works are to be found in several museums, including the Hamburger Kunsthalle, as well as in north German, Holstein and Danish private collections.
Johann Dominik Bossi, also known as Domenico Bossi, was a painter. Bossi, a student of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, was born in Trieste and worked primarily as a miniaturist in Germany, Austria, Sweden and Russia before he settled down in Munich, where he lived at Theresien Straße 19 in Munich around 1850.
Carl (Karl) Friedrich Demiani was born in 1768 in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), and died in 1823 in Dresden. He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and specialised in portrait miniatures.
Joseph Nicolaus Peroux was born in 1771, in Ludwigsburg. He was a well-known German miniature painter, etcher and lithographer of the Romantic era. Peroux was a student of the “Peintre du Duc de Wurtemberg” (first painter at the Württemberg court) Nicolas Guibal, who taught at the Académie des Arts and the Hohen Karlsschule in Stuttgart until his death in 1784. Peroux initially worked in Frankfurt am Main (from 1795) and in Hamburg from 1800, where he exhibited a portrait of Emma Hamilton and a self-portrait in 1803. He then opened an art school in Lübeck and became the young Friedrich Overbeck’s first drawing teacher. The turmoil of the French Period brought him back to Frankfurt in 1806. Accordingly, his works can be found primarily in the museums in Frankfurt, the Hamburger Kunsthalle and in the Behnhaus in Lübeck. The artist died in 1849, in Frankfurt am Main.
Text from the Wikipedia website translated from the German
[Stelzner] was the stepson of the portrait and miniature painter Carl Gottlieb Stelzner, who trained him in painting. In 1825 he traveled through Schleswig-Holstein and painted portraits of peasants and citizens. At the end of the 1820s he made study trips to Hamburg, Stockholm , Copenhagen and then to Paris where from 1831 to 1834 he was mentored by prominent miniature painters Jean-Baptiste Isabey and Claude Marie Dubufe. On return to Hamburg in 1837 he opened a studio, painting portrait miniatures.
Hearing of the new technique of photography, Stelzner returned quickly to Paris in 1839 to learn in person from Louis Daguerre how to make daguerreotypes. He then opened a daguerreotype studio in Hamburg with Hermann Blow (1804-1850). The partnership was short-lived and in 1843 he returned to his old studio to become the first daguerreotypist in Schleswig-Holstein and ultimately one of the best in Germany. His output was mainly portraits. His first wife Anna Caroline Stelzner (above), a miniaturist artist who was also his half-sister, coloured many of them and did the rephotography of the plates, since copying was the only way to reproduce the daguerreotype.
Despite the constraints of his medium, Selzner’s portraits rarely appear ‘frozen’. The position of Caroline’s arms and her sideways gaze are reinforced by the position of props such as the book on the table as a counterpoint to the one in her hand which infers movement, and the framing of the foliage of pot plants, repeated in the fabric of her dress and the tablecloth.
You can see Selzner experimenting with his own pose in these two self-portraits [one of which you can see below] on which Caroline no doubt assisted. Though these two images are dated five years apart on the Hamburg Art Museum website, the photographer’s clothing, hair and the background are identical. The only change is in the pose and a lowering of the camera to provide a more regal impression in the second image.
Associate Professor James McArdle. “December 30: Action,” on the On This Date In Photography website 30/12/2016 [Online] Cited 05/06/2026
With FOR YOUR EYES ONLY: Miniatures from the Romantic Era, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting the first major exhibition devoted to the multifaceted art of miniature painting in Hamburg, from its heyday circa 1800 to the 1840s, when it was replaced by early photography. These miniature portraits, usually measuring around 6 to 10 cm and artfully painted in watercolour and gouache on wafer-thin ivory plates, backed in some cases with silver foil, still fascinate us even today. A total of over 250 objects will be on view.
The show is based on portrait miniatures from the Kunsthalle’s own collection that were restored and catalogued in 2023–24. Around 60 of these miniatures will be shown for the first time here, together with some 200 works on loan from European and private collections, some of them also making their public debut.
These small portraits set in frames, brooches or cases were among the most personal and intimate likenesses people had painted of themselves. They were intended only for the eyes of the recipient and could be worn – often directly over the heart – and viewed at will. The portraits were a way to keep memories alive in the event of a long separation or to provide comfort after the loss of a loved one.
Portrait miniatures were widespread in Europe around 1800. Often made for the nobility, they also became popular with the aspiring bourgeoisie – including in Hamburg, which experienced an economic boom in the late eighteenth century that impacted the art world. Private collections were formed, the Kunstverein was founded, and exhibitions, liberal auction laws and new techniques such as the daguerreotype and lithography contributed to Hamburg’s emergence as an important art centre. Internationally renowned miniaturists such as Domenico Bossi and Pierre-Louis Bouvier lived and worked for a time in the Hanseatic city, which itself produced outstanding artists including Heinrich Jacob Aldenrath, Friedrich Carl Gröger, and Ferdinand and Caroline Stelzner.
Hénard was born in Bourg-en-Bresse on 11 February 1756. He was the son of the goldsmith Vincent Hénard and of Elisabeth Cadet. After having studied with Taraval, Hénard worked in both France and England. He exhibited at London’s Royal Academy from 1785 to 1800, and in Paris in 1791 and from 1806 to 1812. He worked in Hamburg from mid-1796 to the spring of 1797. After emigrating to the United States in 1811 on board of the Susquehanna, he lived in Baltimore and showed some of his works in 1812 and 1813 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
With FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. Miniatures from the Romantic Era, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting its first major exhibition devoted to the multifaceted art of miniature painting in Hamburg, from its heyday circa 1800 to the 1840s, when it was replaced by early photography. The show is based on portrait miniatures from the Kunsthalle’s own collection that were restored and catalogued in 2023-2024. Around 60 of these miniatures will be shown for the first time here, together with some 150 works on loan from European and private collections, some of them also making their public debut. Accompanying the miniature portraits are a number of paintings, drawings, prints and photographs, for example a self-portrait by the painter and miniaturist Bernhard Peter von Rausch (1793-1865). This material sheds light on how miniatures were made as well as their special function and the technical modifications they required. In total, over 250 objects are on display in the Harzen Cabinet that tell of an era marked by social transformation, European exchanges and technological innovations.
Even today, people still like to carry a likeness of a loved one on their person. Before the advent of photography, such miniature portraits were precious one-offs that took hours to paint. Their small format – usually around 6 to 10 cm – and skilled execution in watercolour and gouache on wafer-thin ivory plates, sometimes backed with silver foil, hold an enduring fascination. Set in frames, brooches or cases, these miniatures were among the most personal and intimate likenesses people had painted of themselves. The miniaturists held several sittings with their clients, painting “ad vivum” [from life], often on specially developed painting desks. One such desk from the estate of the miniaturist Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin (1759-1832) is exhibited here for the first time, along with painting utensils and measuring instruments such as a pantograph for the true-to-scale reduction of drawings. These aids illustrate the traditional technique used to produce minia-tures on ivory and white-primed paper as well as reproduction methods devel-oped in the late eighteenth century known as Bou-Magie and Physionotrace.
The commission to make a miniature arose from an intimate relationship between two people. The likeness was intended only for the eyes of the recipient, who might wear it as jewellery – often directly over the heart – and could admire it at will. Often, such portraits were designed to keep memories alive in the event of a long separation or to provide comfort after the loss of a loved one. Added locks of hair, artful plaits, inscriptions or symbolic messages hidden in the portrait in the form of flowers, objects or animals underscore the personal nature of these works while offering a glimpse of the emotional climate in the period around 1800.
Portrait miniatures were widespread in Europe during that era. No longer reserved for the nobility, they enjoyed increasing popularity among the aspiring bourgeoisie – including in Hamburg, which experienced an economic upswing in the late eighteenth century. After the setbacks of the Napoleonic era, a prolonged period of prosperity would have a lasting influence on the arts scene in the Hanseatic city. The first private collections were formed, the Kunstverein was founded in 1817, and exhibitions, liberal auction laws and new techniques such as lithography and later daguerreotype contributed to Hamburg’s rapid rise as an important northern art centre.
Internationally renowned miniaturists such as Giovanni Domenico Bossi (1767-1853), Carl Friedrich Demiani (1768-1823), Pierre-Louis Bouvier (1765-1836), Charles Hénard (1756-1813), Jan Gottlieb Jannasch (c. 1755-1804) and Edmé Quenedey (1756-1830) lived and worked in Hamburg for a time. And the Hanseatic city itself produced some outstanding artists during this period, including Leo Lehmann (1782-1859), Ernst August Abel (1720-1790), Karl Friedrich Kroymann (1781-1849) and Christopher Suhr (1771-1842). Friedrich Carl Gröger (1766-1838) and Heinrich Jakob Aldenrath (1775-1844) were particularly influential.
With the invention of photography in 1839, a medium rose to popularity that would take over the function of the portrait miniature and eventually replace it completely. The daguerreotype (also known as helio-graphy) made it possible to produce small-format portraits that were not only more realistic but also sig-nificantly faster to realise. A sitting for a miniature portrait soon took less than a minute. Thanks to the low cost of production, artists could now attract a new clientele. Carl Ferdinand Stelzner (1805-1894) from Hamburg and his wife Caroline (1808-1875) initially painted miniatures before Carl Ferdinand in particular successfully turned his attention to portrait photography in 1842. And yet, the portrait miniature did not go completely out of fashion. The artist Enrichetta Fioroni-Narducci (1806-1892), who worked in Rome, and her sister Teresa Fioroni (1799-1880), for example, augmented their income with miniature versions of famous paintings that were extremely popular with mid-nineteenth-century travellers. The Kunsthalle is home to five of their works, on display in the exhibition.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication (Michael Imhof Verlag, edited by Sabine Zorn and Bernd Pappe, approx. 160 pages), which is available in the museum shop or at http://www.freunde-der-kunsthalle.de for a price of 29 euros, as well as in bookstores.
Among all of the daguerreotypes produced before the advent of the wet-plate swept it aside, it is rare to see pictures of animals. Slezner’s portrait of his dog stands out as a tribute to his attaining an unusual facility in his medium.
No doubt obedient, Ulla the dog has nary a muscle during the long exposure, which, even if by 1860 Slezner was achieving high speeds with his lens and by pimping the daguerreotype process, would have still run into tens of seconds. It is quite a feat; a faint double image of snout and then only the slightest movement around the collar and end of the nose, due to a dog’s rapid breathing, can be discerned.
Associate Professor James McArdle. “December 30: Action,” on the On This Date In Photography website 30/12/2016 [Online] Cited 05/06/2026
Carl Ferdinand Stelzner (German, 1805-1894)
Carl Ferdinand Stelzner was a began his career as a lithographer and engraver, but became interested in photography in the early 1840s. He learnt the daguerreotype process from Louis Daguerre himself and opened his own studio in Berlin in 1845.
Stelzner quickly became known for his high-quality daguerreotypes, which were prized for their clarity and detail. He used a large-format camera that allowed him to capture images with incredible precision, and he experimented with different lighting techniques to create dramatic effects.
As well as his technical skill, Stelzner was also known for his artistic ability. He often posed his subjects in carefully composed scenes and was adept at capturing their personalities and emotions.
Stelzner’s work was exhibited widely throughout Europe and he won numerous awards for his photography. He continued to work as a photographer until his death in 1894 at the age of 88.
Today, Stelzner’s daguerreotypes are highly prized by collectors and museums around the world. They offer a fascinating glimpse into the early days of photography and continue to inspire photographers today.
Text from the Picryl website [Online] Cited 05/06/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Curators: Ron Magliozzi, Curator, with Katie Trainor, Film Collections Manager and Cara Shatzman, Collection Specialist, Department of Film.
Bob Beerman (American) Rock Hudson c. 1953 Sheet: 9 15/16 x 8″ (25.2 x 20.3cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Silhouetting the celebrity
MoMA always puts on interesting photography exhibitions and this one is no exception. Of course, they have a huge collection to draw from, but it still takes intelligence and curatorial inspiration to bring it all together.
It took me a long time to compile the posting. There were not many media images available but with a bit of digging around on the MoMA collection web pages, and searching online, I managed to find enough photographs to illustrate the exhibition / plus the installation photographs / and the addition of movie posters and magazines to illuminate the films the still photographs were taken from (please note: not in the exhibition). While many of the publicity shots were taken by unknown stills photographers, I have also added bibliographic information for the known photographers where possible.
This would be my only criticism of the exhibition: the inability of the viewer to visualise how these “covered with masking tape, marked up with crayon, or reconfigured with ghostly halos of white-out” photographs were actually used (in the press in everyday life) to create the fantasy ideals of Hollywood glamour stars. Perhaps this was a deliberate curatorial strategy, to concentrate on the pre-production rather than the post-production, to concentrate just on the still photos, without the distraction of further stimuli. And I can understand that decision.
In this posting I can show you three examples of how these still photographs were used: the untouched photograph Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in “This Earth is Mine”] by an unknown photographer (1959, below) has then been colourised and used on the front cover of the DVD release of this film; the Limehouse Blues movie poster (1934, below) features a white-out around George Raft’s head, similar to the white-out around Joan Crawford or Rock Hudson (above); and the hair of Elsa Manchester in Elsa Lanchester [in “The Bride of Frankenstein”] by an unknown photographer (1935, below) is graphically stylised and coloured in the The Bride of Frankenstein movie poster (1935, below).
Silhouetting, in-painting, masking, sectioning, and collage were all hands-on practices that readied the photographs for the press whilst in press they promoted the desirous ideal of the glamorous movie starlet, heroic action man, the fantasy ready and available for consumption by the reading public: the beautiful heroine available to the male gaze, aspirational for so many young women.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to MoMA for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Though Iris Barry, who in 1935 became the founding curator of The Museum of Modern Art’s Film Library, aimed to preserve the history of moving images as an art form, she didn’t stop at moving images. “She was trying to save the record of film history,” explains Ron Magliozzi, a curator in what is today known as the Department of Film. “When the department was founded, the silent period had just ended. And its whole history was considered irrelevant and of no interest. That’s why she was so aggressive in collecting it. Films were the most important thing, and images from film history were second.”
Today, the Museum’s Film Stills Collection includes well over a million publicity photos, production stills, and more – and it’s not all pristine, glossy prints. In the current exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, many of the images are covered with masking tape, marked up with crayon, or reconfigured with ghostly halos of white-out. It’s an occasionally startling reminder that the manipulation of photographs – and of celebrity itself – long predates Photoshop and Instagram.”
Jason Persse, Assistant Director, Content Team, MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art announces Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be drawn from the Museum’s film stills archive since 1993. On view in the Titus and Morita Galleries, the exhibition will offer a revisionist look at the Department of Film’s photographic archive, examining the evolution of editorial practice before the digital age, AI technology, and social media reshaped the experience of celebrity.
Face Value will feature over 200 works from 1921 to 1996, including studio photography of Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Katharine Hepburn, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Oprah Winfrey, and many others.
Text from the MoMA website
Installation views of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing in the left hand block of 9 photographs of the bottom image, from left to right top row to bottom row: Ray Jones’ Margaret Sullavan c. 1939 (below); Clarence Sinclair Bull’s Hedy Lamarr c. 1940; Adolph L. “Whitey” Schafer’s Rosalind Russell c. 1940; Ray Jones’ Mischa Auer c. 1940; Unknown photographer Harry Belafonte [in “The Angel Levine”] 1970; Irving Lippman’s George Raft c. 1933; Hal Phyfe’s Miriam Hopkins c. 1930; Unknown photographer Dorothy Gish c. 1929; and Imandt’s Joan Bennett c. 1939 Photos: Jonathan Dorado
Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947) Margaret Sullavan c. 1939 Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 7/8″ (35.2 x 27.6cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Installation view of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing at right in the bottom image at third left in top row, Unknown photographer Jackie Robinson c. 1950 Photos: Jonathan Dorado
Unknown photographer Jackie Robinson c. 1950 Sheet: 10 x 8″ (25.4 x 20.3cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
The Museum of Modern Art announces Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be drawn from the Museum’s film stills archive since 1993. On view in the Titus and Morita Galleries from June 28, 2025, through June 21, 2026, the exhibition will offer a revisionist look at the Department of Film’s photographic archive, examining the evolution of editorial practice before the digital age, AI technology, and social media reshaped the experience of celebrity.
Face Value will feature over 200 works from 1921to 1996, including studio photography of Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Katharine Hepburn, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Oprah Winfrey, and many others.
Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography is organised by Ron Magliozzi, Curator, with Katie Trainor, Film Collections Manager, and Cara Shatzman, Collection Specialist, Department of Film.
“Face Value will encourage viewers to see through the facade of glamour at how celebrity is fabricated and exploited,” says Ron Magliozzi. Showcasing work by over 58 photographers, the exhibition will juxtapose “untouched” images like Otto Dyar’s Carole Lombard (c. 1933) with those altered through traditional press practices such as silhouetting, in-painting, masking, sectioning, and collage, like James Manatt’s Joan Crawford portrait for the film Letty Lynton (1932). Face Value examines how these methods shaped representations of not only film stars but also sports figures, socialites, and politicians, from Jackie Robinson to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Eleanor Roosevelt. Presented in thematic suites, the installation highlights radical editing techniques, stylised visual motifs, and the gendered aesthetics embedded in the system, offering a revealing perspective on the fabrication of glamour and fame.
Since the Museum’s founding, photography has played a vital role in how it has documented the history of motion pictures. Face Value traces the origin of this early initiative to MoMA’s first film curator, Iris Barry, whose archival efforts led to the acquisition of editorial collections from Photoplay (1911-1980) and Dell (1921-1976), two leading publications that helped define Hollywood’s star system. The exhibition includes images of comic stars Buster Keaton, W. C. Fields, Lupe Velez, and Mae West; pioneering actress Hattie McDaniel with Ruby Berkley, the first Black accredited Hollywood correspondent; famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart on a Hollywood film set; and the last photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe.
Featuring promotional portraits crafted to cultivate celebrity personas, such as Ray Jones’s Anna May Wong portrait for the film Limehouse Blues, Soul of a Dragon (1934), the exhibition explores how these images were manipulated for public consumption through hands-on editing techniques long before digital tools became standard.
Press release from MoMA
Installation views of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing in the bottom two photographs, video stills from Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Benedetta Barzini, Ingrid Superstar, Nat Finkelstein: Danny Williams footage of unknown documentary film shoot c. 1965, processed 2024 (below) Photos: Jonathan Dorado
Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Benedetta Barzini, Ingrid Superstar, Nat Finkelstein: Danny Williams footage of unknown documentary film shoot c. 1965, processed 2024 The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Edie Sedgwick dances in Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory during a photoshoot
Installation view of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing at top centre, Jacqueline Kennedy with Caroline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr. 1960s; and a bottom centre, Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher with Michael Wilding Jr. andChristopher Wilding 1960s Photo: Jonathan Dorado
Installation view of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing from top left to right, top to bottom, Unknown photographer Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine 1957 (below); Gene Lester (American, 1910-1994) Dean and Jeannne Martin 1958; Bob Beerman (American) Rock Hudson c. 1953 (top of posting); Unknown photographer Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in “This Earth is Mine”] 1959 (below); Unknown photographer Jean Simmons [in “The Big Country”] 1958; Unknown photographer Elizabeth Threatt and Dewey Martin [in “The Big Sky”] 1952; Unknown photographer Dorothy Malone and Anthony Quinn 1957; Unknown photographer André De Toth and Veronica Lake 1944; Unknown photographer Edmund O’Brien and Tom D’Andrea [in “Fighter Squadron”] 1948; Unknown photographer Ward Bond and Ida Lupino [in “On Dangerous Ground”] 1951; Unknown photographer Aldo Ray and Katharine Hepburn [in “Pat and Mike”] 1952 Photo: Jonathan Dorado
Unknown photographer Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine [in “Island in the Sun”] 1957 Sheet: 6 15/16 × 9 1/16″ (17.6 × 23 cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Unknown photographer Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in “This Earth is Mine”] 1959 Sheet: 8 x 9 15/16″ (20.3 x 25.2cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
This Earth is Mine (1959) DVD cover
Otto Dyar (American, 1892-1988) Carole Lombard c. 1933 Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 1/2″ (35.2 x 26.7cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Hollywood stills photographers like Dyar “were not mirroring life, but illusion; their subjects were not humans but gods – of love, of allure, of luxury, perfection incarnate from the golden age of Hollywood glamor”
John Kobal (ed), Hollywood glamor portraits, Courier Corporation, 1976, p.V on the Wikipedia website
Otto Dyar was a prominent stills photographer who began his career at the Paramount studios in the 1920s. Initially working as an assistant on major film productions such as the 1927 ‘Wings’, Dyar quickly rose through the ranks to become one of Hollywood’s most notable image-makers.
During the 1930s and 40s, Dyar developed his own, highly dramatic style of lighting and photography that deviated from the neoclassical glamor of the 1920s. Edgy and expressionistic, Dyar’s photographs pushed the iconic features of movie stars like Carole Lombard, Cary Grant, Kay Francis and Joan Crawford to a grittier place that was more in accord with the aesthetics of films made in those decades. Of particular note are Dyar’s star portraits taken outside of the studio, an unusual and daring step at the time.
Despite all the high-contrast lighting, skewed angles and often tiny ‘surrealist’ interventions that point to the influence of photographers like Man Ray, Dyar faithfully accomplished the task of elevating the studio stars to the realm of deities. Like his peers George Hurrell, Ted Allen and Clarence Sinclair Bull, Dyar was not concerned with the psychologies of his sitters. What interested him was amplifying and consolidating the image the stars exuded in their roles, which was usually so powerful that it eclipsed the ‘real’ person that was in front of the camera.
Vigen Galstyan. “Dyar, Otto,” on the Lusadaran: Armenian Photography Foundation website 2015 [Online] Cited 02/04/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Otto Dyar (American, 1892-1988) Louise Brooks c. 1927 Sheet: 13 15/16 x 10 15/16″ (35.4 x 27.8cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Otto Dyar (American, 1892-1988) Anna May Wong 1930s Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 7/8″ (35.2 x 27.6cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947) Anna May Wong [in “Limehouse Blues”] 1934 Sheet: 12 7/8 x 10″ (32.7 x 25.4cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Limehouse Blues (1934) movie poster
Unknown photographer Anna May Wong c. 1934 MoMA Film Stills Archive Sheet: 8 x 6″ (20.3 x 15.2cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Unknown photographer Myrna Loy [in “Across the Pacific”] 1926 Sheet: 11 x 14″ (27.9 x 35.6cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Advertisement for the American romantic adventure film Across the Pacific (1926) with Monte Blue and Myrna Loy, on pages 6 and 7 of the October 26, 1926 Film Daily
John Miehle (American, 1902-1952) Dolores del Rio and Edmund Lowe [in “The Bad One”] 1930 Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 15/16″ (35.2 x 27.8cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
John Miehle was born on August 7, 1902 in Los Angeles, California. Being born so close to Hollywood Miehle went to work as an assistant camera man on the 1931 movie “Delicious” starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell.
He then worked exclusively in the Camera and Electrical Department doing uncredited still photography on some of the best known films, such as “What Price Hollywood?,” “Rain,” “Little Women,” “Top Hat,” “Kitty Foyle,” “Rope” and “Portrait of Jennie.”
He photographed many of the greats as well including Constance Bennett, Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne, Ginger Rogers, Ann Harding, William Powell, Joel McCrea, Katherine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Delores Del Rio, Randolph Scott, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Ruth Hussey, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Ethel Barrymoore, Laraine Day, Franchot Tone, Ann Blyth, Farley Granger, and Dana Andrews…
In addition, he did many publicity shots of such stars as Carole Lombard, Marilyn Monroe, and Lucille Ball.
Don’t Forget The Illustrator! “The Classics and “Ginger Rogers” photographer John Miehle,” on the Vintage Movie Star Photos blog Thursday, March 28, 2013 [Online] Cited 12/05/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
The Bad One (1930) movie poster
William Walling Jr (American, 1904-1983) Carole Lombard c. 1933 Sheet: 13 7/8 x 11 15/16″ (35.2 x 30.3cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
William Richard Walling, Jr. (October 6, 1904 – December 11, 1983) was an American actor, inventor, and portrait photographer for film studios.
Robert Coburn (American, 1900-1990) Vera Zorina [in “The Goldywyn Follies”] c. 1937 Sheet: 13 13/16 x 10 15/16″ (35.1 x 27.8cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Robert Coburn was one of the most influential portrait photographers working in the major Hollywood movie studios from the 1930’s to 1960’s. His star subjects included Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford, Kim Novak, Carole Lombard, William Holden, Glenn Ford, and Orson Welles. Coburn’s most infamous portraits immortalised Hollywood’s greatest icons and helped to define this era as the Golden Age of Cinema. In 1940, Robert Coburn began a twenty-year career with Columbia Pictures as the head of the still production department and the studio’s chief portrait photographer for many landmark films including “Picnic”, “Gilda”, and “The Big Heat”.
Text from the Fahey/Klein Gallery website
Goldwyn Follies (1937) movie poster
Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography Introductory text
For MoMA’s founding film curator, Iris Barry, building an archive of images that documented the history of motion pictures was second only to collecting films. Photographs from the study collection that she created were among the first works exhibited in MoMA’s theater gallery. Barry’s initiative eventually led to the acquisition of editorial archives from Photoplay (1911-1980) and Dell (1921-1976), leading fan magazine publishers supporting the Hollywood star system. The portrait photography featured in these publications was produced by film studios to promote the glamorous celebrities under contract to them. Face Value looks at these images and surveys how they were manipulated for public consumption in the decades before digital tools, AI technology, and social media revolutionized the process.
Over sixty photographers are represented in this installation, which intermingles images that survive untouched with those that show evidence of the hands-on practices that readied them for the press. The standard techniques used – silhouetting, in-painting, masking, sectioning, and collage – were applied not only to photographs of entertainers but to sports figures, socialites, and politicians as well. Organised in suites that highlight radical editing practices, stylised visual motifs, and the gender stereotypes inherent in the studio system, the exhibition offers a demystifying perspective on the glamour of celebrity.
Wall text from the exhibition
George P. Hommel (American, 1901-1953) Clara Bow c. 1929 Sheet: 14 x 11″ (35.6 x 27.9 cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Overshadowed by the work of 1920s Paramount colleagues Donald Biddle Keyes and Eugene Robert Richee, stillsman George P. Hommel crafted thoughtful portraits highlighting both the beauty and sorrow of those he photographed. Like Keyes, the peripatetic Hommel always looked for new challenges, new opportunities, keeping him on the move. Unobstrusive and elegant, Hommel’s work reveals hidden depths in those he shot. …
Hommel’s straightforward portraiture captured the vulnerability of his sitters, revealing a wistful and often melancholic look in their expressive eyes. His pensive work focused on serious matters, not straining to create fleeting moods but revealing the heart of those he photographed. Employing simple, dark-textured background, Hommel focused on the eyes and lips, creating a sharp image with an often soft-focus background. His portraits often feature shadows and strong angular lines, creating dramatic composition. Hommel could also capture the sometimes insouciant or even overly exuberant emotions of sitters, often covering their vulnerability and pain, such as in his Pierrot portraits of Clara Bow as clown.
James Manatt (American, 1896-1989) Joan Crawford [in “Letty Lynton”] 1932 Sheet: 13 x 10″ (33 x 25.4cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Letty Lynton (1932) movie posters
Elmer Fryer (American, 1898-1944) Lili Damita [in “The Match King”] c. 1932 Sheet: 14 1/16 x 11″ (35.7 x 27.9cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
The Match King (1932) movie poster
Bert Longworth (American, 1893-1964) Amelia Earhart with Helen Hayes [on set of “A Farewell to Arms”] 1932 Sheet: 13 15/16 x 10 7/8″ (35.4 x 27.6cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
As the studio system came into place with the advent of talkies, studios hired many stillsmen to take scene stills, off-camera images, and candids of both above and below the line talent. Photographers took massive amounts of stills around the lot, at public events, premieres, at homes, in posed shots, to be widely distributed to magazines and newspapers for free publicity promoting upcoming films, new talent, and established stars. The journals, fan magazines, and newspapers splashed these images throughout their pages, building awareness and star popularity.
Bert “Buddy” Longworth was one of the stills photographers taking these images. Longworth began his career shooting scene stills at MGM for Greta Garbo’s first three films, including “Flesh and the Devil,” with Longworth capturing the passion of Garbo and John Gilbert as they fell in love. He was employed for a short time at Paramount, but from 1929 on, he worked at Warner Bros. as an action specialist, working on Busby Berkeley’s spectacular musicals, crime pictures, off-set candids, as well as portraits. Scholar David Shields calls him “Hollywood’s foremost expressionist, often using unusual perspective, occasional use of multiple exposures.”
Unknown photographer Elsa Lanchester [in “The Bride of Frankenstein”] 1935 Sheet: 13 1/2 x 9 3/16″ (34.3 x 23.3cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) movie poster
I want to talk more about the edited photographs. In many of the photos white-out has been used to separate the subject’s head or face – and in one notable case, their bare legs – from the rest of the image. What are some ways in which these disembodied segments were used by the studios and by the magazines?
RM: We know they were from Photoplay magazine, so if we have a still that’s been edited for Photoplay, Cara went and looked for the issue that published the photograph to see how it was used. It might have been a feature on women’s legs, so that’s why they only focused on the legs.
There’s one grouping of photographs, I call it the “eat face grouping,” where the stars are very close up. There’s a photograph of someone eating someone’s chin. Those were all taken for a particular issue of Photoplay – that’s why they’re all edited in the same way.
With research and detective work you can determine how they were actually used in print. The floating heads, they would attach to biographies. They call that silhouetting, with the white-out.
CS: A lot of the uses I found were very gossipy, which was interesting, a lot of rumor columns. And then of course, like Ron said, highlighting certain aspects of celebrities’ bodies or features.
Back in 1980 MoMA’s exhibition Hollywood Portrait Photographers, 1921 to 1941 actually used a couple of the same images that appear in this show. But that nnnexhibition celebrated the artistry and glamor of these images. Why did you choose to focus more on the ways that these images have been manipulated and edited?
RM: The audience for photographs like this has changed. In 1980 there was a whole generation of people who knew who these performers were, who appreciated them as performers and appreciated their celebrity. Nowadays, younger audiences, in many cases, have no idea who these folks are. Even we sometimes have trouble identifying everyone. Displaying them in that way seemed dated. We wanted to mount them in a way that reflected how visitors today would need to look at them.
The photographs in 1980 were all matted in a very formal way that encouraged appreciation for the beauty of the photograph. I wasn’t interested in how beautiful the images were. I wasn’t interested in the celebrities. We’re mostly interested in the photographs. I wanted them to look like working photographs, and that’s reflected in the way they’re displayed. We did ours on plexi traps, which turned out to be very elegant, but the notion was that it would be a less precious way of mounting them so we would look at them in a less precious way.
The other thing we did differently was to have large numbers of photographs grouped in very dense clusters. To me that reflects social media today. The way we encounter images daily is so dense, and we’re forced to sort through a lot of images that come our way in any one moment. So I wanted visitors to have a contemporary view. It was meant to reflect a digital-age perspective, because analog-versus-digital was a subtext of the show in our heads.
There were two shows that were touchstones for this one: the Hollywood Portrait show of 1980, and the Fame After Photography show, a wonderful show in 1999 that MoMA’s Photography department mounted. They borrowed a lot of film stills for that show, which was also investigating celebrity and fame.
Unknown photographer Louis Armstrong [in “Cabin in the Sky”] 1943 Sheet: 8 x 10″ (20.3 x 25.4 cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Cabin in the sky (1943) movie poster
Unknown photographer Hattie McDaniel and Ruby Berkley Goodwin c. 1948 Sheet: 9 1/16 x 7″ (23 x 17.8cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
“[Ruby Berkley Goodwin] was also Hattie McDaniel’s publicist. And she was Ethel Waters’s publicist. She was the first Black American to have a syndicated newspaper column. She wrote this very famous autobiography called It’s Good to Be Black that was very, very popular. She was a poet. She was a fascinating person, and I was not familiar with her. That was a great aspect of learning about all of these people in these photographs.”
Unknown photographer Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis c. 1950 (detail) Sheet: 8 1/16 x 10″ (20.5 x 25.4cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Elvis Presley [Fans’ Star Library magazine, No. 13] 1959 Sheet: 7 x 5 1/8″ (17.8 x 13cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian born Mardin, Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), 1908-2002) Anna Magnani 1959 Sheet: 20 x 15 15/16″ (50.8 x 40.5cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Anna Maria Magnani (Italian, 1908-1973)
Anna Maria Magnani (Italian; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Italian actress. She was the first Italian woman to win an Academy Award.
Born and raised in Rome, Italy or Alexandria, she worked her way through Rome’s Academy of Dramatic Art by singing at night clubs. During her career, her only child was stricken by polio when he was 18 months old and remained disabled. She was referred to as “La Lupa”, the “perennial toast of Rome” and a “living she-wolf symbol” of the cinema. Time described her personality as “fiery”, and drama critic Harold Clurman said her acting was “volcanic”. In the realm of Italian cinema, she was “passionate, fearless, and exciting”, an actress whom film historian Barry Monush calls “the volcanic earth mother of all Italian cinema.” Director Roberto Rossellini called her “the greatest acting genius since Eleonora Duse”. Playwright Tennessee Williams became an admirer of her acting and wrote The Rose Tattoo (1955) specifically for her to star in, a role for which she received an Academy Award for Best Actress.
After meeting director Goffredo Alessandrini, she received her first screen role in The Blind Woman of Sorrento (La cieca di Sorrento, 1934) and later achieved international attention in Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945), which is seen as launching the Italian neorealism movement in cinema. As an actress, she became recognised for her dynamic and forceful portrayals of “earthy lower-class women” in such films as L’Amore (1948), Bellissima (1951), The Rose Tattoo (1955), The Fugitive Kind (1960) and Mamma Roma (1962). As early as 1950, Life had already stated that Magnani was “one of the most impressive actresses since Garbo”.
Curator: Ann Shumard, Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington
Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896) John C. Calhoun 1849 Whole-plate daguerreotype Image/Sight: 20.2 x 15cm (7 15/16 x 5 7/8″) Mat (brass): 24.3 x 19.4cm (9 9/16 x 7 5/8″) Frame: 35 x 30 x 2.5cm (13 3/4 x 11 13/16 x 1″) Case closed: 5.8 x 34.3 x 39.7cm (2 5/16 x 13 1/2 x 15 5/8″) Case open: 5.8 x 72.7 x 39.7cm (2 5/16 x 28 5/8 x 15 5/8″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Gift of Stephan Loewentheil
Mathew Brady’s mastery of the whole plate is on full display in this compelling portrait – the last daguerreotype made of Senator John C. Calhoun before his death in 1850. A contemporary praised the portrait as one of “the best which Mr. Brady has taken himself,” adding, “So perfect was it regarded by the family [of Calhoun], that several copies of it have been made at their request.” Commenting on his subject’s most notable feature, Brady observed, “Calhoun’s eye was startling, and almost hypnotised me.” A painting based on this daguerreotype was commissioned by Brady and now hangs in the U.S. Senate.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
High-class portraits
Eight white men (all whole-plate daguerreotypes) and one black woman (whole-plate tintype) – sounds about right.
“To put the era’s pricing in context, a year’s supply of coal for a working-class family in 1850 cost $15 – the minimum price for a Southworth & Hawes whole-plate daguerreotype. The whole plate was therefore too expensive for most consumers… A whole-plate tintype was likely priced from $.75 to $1 in the 1860s, when the average daily wage of a labourer was only $2.”
Picture and price / detail and scale / delicacy of lights and shadows / beauty of execution – execution being the operative word, considering the upcoming devastation of the American Civil War.
Thus, from unapologetic enslaver (Calhoun) who “staunchly defended chattel slavery and its expansion beyond the American South” and whose painting based on Brady’s daguerreotype hangs in the American senate (really!) – to an unidentified literate Black woman, birthplace unknown, born May 10, 1811 taken by an unknown photographer.
I know which one I would rather honour.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the National Portrait Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Competition prompted photographers such as Mathew Brady and Southworth & Hawes to produce advertisements that provided a wealth of detail about the services offered by their respective establishments … I am inclined to think that word of mouth may well have played a greater role in motivating patronage. In the case of Brady and Southworth & Hawes, the knowledge that these studios counted national celebrities among their clientele could have been a strong inducement for the general public to patronise them as well. …
While the National Portrait Gallery’s collection of early photography is substantial, it’s the rare whole-plate daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes that stand out for their detail and scale. This exhibition allows visitors to consider how new photographic processes impacted the quality and appeal of the medium … As an aside, the impetus for ‘From Shadow to Substance’ was the extraordinary gift to the museum in 2023 of Mathew Brady’s iconic whole-plate daguerreotype of the powerful antebellum senator John C. Calhoun. A subsequent review of other whole-plates in the Portrait Gallery’s collection sparked consideration of the format’s staying power as a top-of-the-line offering through the succession of early photographic processes. This is the story the exhibition seeks to illuminate.”
Ann Shumard, Senior Curator of Photographs quoted in Kate Garibaldi. “How Portrait Photography’s ‘Grand-Scale’ Origins Changed History,” on the Petapixel website Aug 01, 2025 [Online] Cited 26/02/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896) John C. Calhoun 1849 (above)
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing Francis D’Avignon (French, 1813 – c. 1871) Copy after Mathew B. Brady (American, 1823? – 15 Jan 1896) John Caldwell Calhoun, 18 Mar 1782 – 31 Mar 1850 1850
Francis D’Avignon (French, 1813 – c. 1871) Copy after Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896) John Caldwell Calhoun, 18 Mar 1782 – 31 Mar 1850 1850 Lithograph on paper Sheet: 56.7 x 40.6cm (22 5/16 x 16″) Book:The Gallery of Illustrious Americans National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
During the first half of the nineteenth century, John C. Calhoun held sway as one of the nation’s most influential politicians. While serving as a senator from South Carolina (1832-1843; 1845-1850), he was unyielding in his advocacy for Southern interests. Under the banner of states’ rights, he supported the concept of nullification. This doctrine maintained that states had the authority to ignore federal laws by declaring them null and void. An unapologetic enslaver, Calhoun staunchly defended chattel slavery and its expansion beyond the American South. Though he died more than a decade before the Civil War began, his views were widely embraced in the Southern states. They ultimately provided justification for secession from the Union. Mathew Brady’s daguerreotype of Calhoun, on view nearby, is faithfully reproduced in this print. It is one of twelve lithographic portraits in a portfolio published by Brady and titled The Gallery of Illustrious Americans.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation views of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026
Photographers seeking customers during the medium’s early years often urged the public to “Secure the shadow, ere the substance fade.” Hinting at life’s fragility, this tagline underscored photography’s ability to capture a fleeting likeness and preserve it for posterity. Portraits in the impressive whole-plate format – measuring 8.5 x 6.5 inches – were among the premier offerings of the nation’s leading photographic studios.
Drawing on the National Portrait Gallery’s extensive early photography collection, this exhibition traces the evolution of the grand-scale, whole-plate format from the high-end daguerreotype to the mid-range ambrotype to the more affordable tintype. Examples of whole plates in each of these mediums illustrate how the format evolved as new photographic processes were introduced. Featured works include daguerreotypes representing U.S. senators Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun, as well as papal nuncio Gaetano Bedini; an ambrotype portrait of American landscape artist John Frederick Kensett; and a tintype likeness of an unidentified African American woman.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing Southworth & Hawes’ Issac P. Davis 1771-1855 and William Hickling Prescott 1796-1859 c. 1850 (below)
Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862) Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894) Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901) Isaac P. Davis, 7 Oct 1771 – 13 Jan 1855 William Hickling Prescott, 4 May 1796 – 28 Jan 1859 c. 1850 Whole-plate daguerreotype Image/Sight: 20.3 x 15.2cm (8 × 6″) Mat (brass): 23.6 x 18.6cm (9 5/16 x 7 5/16″) Case open: 25.3 x 40.2 x 2.3cm (9 15/16 x 15 13/16 x 7/8″) Case closed: 25.3 x 20.7 x 3.5cm (9 15/16 x 8 1/8 x 1 3/8″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Purchase funded by the photography acquisitions endowment established by the Joseph L. and Emily K. Gidwitz Memorial Foundation
Isaac P. Davis, 7 Oct 1771 – 13 Jan 1855 Born Plymouth, Massachusetts
William Hickling Prescott, 4 May 1796 – 28 Jan 1859 Born Salem, Massachusetts
This portrait depicts two prominent Bostonians who enjoyed considerable success in their respective careers and were also known for their philanthropy. Isaac P. Davis (left) amassed a sizeable fortune in manufacturing and real estate. An original member of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, which Paul Revere helped found, he was also a patron of American artists, including Gilbert Stuart. Historian William H. Prescott (right) first earned international acclaim for his three-volume History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic (1838). Blind in one eye and with low vision in the other, Prescott was a generous supporter of Boston’s Perkins Institute for the Blind.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 Southworth & Hawes’ Lemuel Shaw 1787-1861 c. 1851 (below)
Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862) Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894) Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901) Lemuel Shaw, 9 Jan 1781 – 30 Mar 1861 c. 1851 Whole-plate daguerreotype with silver-plated copper sheet support Plate (sight): 21.5 x 16cm (8 7/16 x 6 5/16″) Case Open: 23.4 x 36.3 x 0.9cm (9 3/16 x 14 5/16 x 3/8″) Case Closed: 23.4 x 18.2 x 1.8cm (9 3/16 x 7 3/16 x 11/16″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Conservation made possible by a grant from the Smithsonian’s Collections Care and Preservation Fund
Lemuel Shaw, 9 Jan 1781 – 30 Mar 1861 Born Barnstable, Massachusetts
The impact of rulings by Lemuel Shaw, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court (1830-1860), extended well beyond the borders of his home state. Particularly in cases affecting business and industry, his decisions influenced commercial law interpretation in courts throughout the nation. He also rendered judgments in key cases concerning the fate of those who had escaped from their enslavers. Though personally opposed to slavery, Shaw believed it was “too deeply interwoven in the texture of society to be wholly or speedily eradicated.” In 1851, he issued the principal opinion supporting the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing showing Southworth & Hawes’ Jonas Chickering 1853 (below)
Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862) Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894) Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901) Jonas Chickering, 5 Apr 1798 – 8 Dec 1853 1853 Whole-plate daguerreotype Image: 20 x 15cm (7 7/8 x 5 7/8″) Frame: 31.1 x 25.7 x 2.5cm (12 1/4 x 10 1/8 x 1″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Jonas Chickering, 5 Apr 1798 – 8 Dec 1853 Born Mason Village, New Hampshire
“The father of American piano making,” Jonas Chickering advanced the development of a one-piece, cast-iron frame that revolutionised piano construction. The result was an instrument that could withstand the tension exerted by its strings and resist extremes in temperature and humidity that impacted its ability to remain in tune. Chickering’s patented innovations also yielded pianos of greater volume and superior resonance. Honoured at the 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition in London, his pianos became the instruments of choice in U.S. and international concert halls.
When he posed for this portrait by Boston’s premier daguerreotypists, Chickering was at the zenith of his career.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing Mathew B. Brady’s John Frederick Kensett 1816-1872 c. 1856 (below)
Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896) John Frederick Kensett, 22 Mar 1816 – 15 Dec 1872 c. 1856 Whole-plate ambrotype Image: 18.4 x 13.2cm (7 1/4 x 5 3/16″) Case Open: 23 x 36.4cm (9 1/16 x 14 5/16″) Case Closed: 23 x 18.4cm (9 1/16 x 7 1/4″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
John Frederick Kensett, 22 Mar 1816 – 15 Dec 1872 Born Cheshire, Connecticut
In a newspaper advertisement that was published on September 29, 1855, photographer Mathew Brady announced he was now offering “AMBROTYPES – a New Style of Picture on Glass, more durable and perfect than any known method of portraiture.”
Brady’s ambrotype represents artist and engraver John Frederick Kensett, one of the most popular members of the Hudson River School’s second generation of American landscape painters. Kensett was admired for his keen observations of nature, refined compositions, and sensitive rendering of light. A member of the prestigious National Academy, he helped found New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
National Portrait Gallery Presents “From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years”
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will present “From Shadow to Substance: Grand Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years” June 20 through June 7, 2026. Drawing from the museum’s extensive early photography collection, this exhibition traces the evolution of the grand scale, whole-plate portrait format from the high-end daguerreotype and mid-range ambrotype to the more affordable tintype. The exhibition is curated by Senior Curator of Photographs Ann Shumard.
Photographers seeking customers during the medium’s early years, from 1840 to 1860, often urged the public to “Secure the shadow ere the substance fade.” Hinting at life’s fragility, this tagline underscored photography’s ability to capture a fleeting likeness and preserve it for posterity. Portraits in the impressive whole-plate format – measuring 8 1/2 by 6 1/2 inches – were among the premier offerings of the nation’s leading photographic studios.
“This exhibition marks the first time these whole-plate daguerreotype, ambrotype and tintype portraits will be shown together at the Portrait Gallery,” Shumard said. Examples of whole plates in each of these mediums illustrate how the format evolved as new photographic processes were introduced. Featured works include daguerreotypes representing U.S. Senators Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun, an ambrotype portrait of American landscape artist John Frederick Kensett and a tintype likeness of an unidentified African American woman. Also included are original advertisements issued by photographers Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes, and Mathew B. Brady to promote their respective businesses. The exhibition will be presented in the Early Photography Alcove on the museum’s first floor.
Press release from the National Portrait Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing at left, Southworth & Hawes’ Daniel Webster 1782-1852 c. 1845; and at right, Unidentified photographer Daniel Webster 1782-1852 c. 1850
Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862) Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894) Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901) Daniel Webster 1782-1852 c. 1845 Whole plate copy daguerreotype National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Conservation made possible by a grant from the Smithsonian’s Collections Care and Preservation Fund
Daniel Webster 1782-1852 Born Salisbury, New Hampshire
Daniel Webster emerged as a major force in national politics at a time when rising sectionalism threatened to split the country apart. During his service in the House (1823-1827) and Senate (1827-1841; 1845-1850), Webster’s brilliant orations in defence of the Union marked him as one of the great public figures of his generation.
Boston-based photographers Southworth & Hawes excelled in creating whole-plate daguerreotypes of unrivalled quality. Consequently, their studio attracted numerous prominent figures, including Webster. Their majestic Webster portrait was so popular that it may have inspired them to produce this daguerreotype, a copy of the original.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Unidentified photographer Daniel Webster 1782-1852 c. 1850 Sixth-plate daguerreotype National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
A sixth-plate daguerreotype such as this portrait of Daniel Webster, would have sold for a fraction of the cost of a whole plate. To put the era’s pricing in context, a year’s supply of coal for a working-class family in 1850 cost $15 – the minimum price for a Southworth & Hawes whole-plate daguerreotype. The whole plate was therefore too expensive for most consumers.
Retailing for about $3, a sixth-plate was a more affordable option. There were tradeoffs, however. While the whole plate allowed for a dramatic, standing view of Webster, the Sith-plate accommodated only a bust-length image.
In a period when American federalism faced increasing challenges from states’-rights supporters, Daniel Webster emerged as one of the Union’s most eloquent defenders. Having gained acclaim as a lawyer who argued some of the young republic’s pivotal Supreme Court cases, Webster became a major force in national politics through his service in the House and in the Senate. There, his brilliant orations on behalf of the indivisibility of the Union marked him as one of the greatest public figures of his generation. Despite his national stature, Webster fell short of mustering the broad support that might have won him the presidency.
This daguerreotype represents Webster around the time of his controversial endorsement of the Compromise of 1850. In supporting the measure, Webster sought to preserve the Union through concession and compromise but succeeded principally in incurring the wrath of his northern constituents, who abhorred the legislation’s Fugitive Slave Act. Although attacks from his critics left Webster shaken and burdened by “the crushing weight of anxiety and responsibility,” he soldiered on until a liver ailment claimed his life in October 1852. The evergreen sprig preserved with this daguerreotype serves as a reminder of Webster’s endurance as a symbol and an icon in American history.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing a wood engraving by an unidentified artist of Southworth & Hawes’ Daguerreotype Rooms c. 1849 (below)
Unidentified Artist Southworth & Hawes’ Daguerreotype Rooms c. 1849 Wood engraving 20 x 12.7cm (7 7/8 x 5″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Gift of an anonymous donor in honour of Carlos G. Vertanssian
In 1843, photographer Albert Sands Southworth (1811-1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808-1901) formed a creative partnership that yielded daguerreotypes unrivalled for their artistry and technical achievement. Committed to the highest standards, the duo excelled in producing beautiful composed, evocative portraits, particularly in the large (8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.) and technically demanding whole-plate format.
In this advertisement for their Boston studio, Southworth & Hawes offered potential customers the assurance: ‘In style of execution and picturesque effect – in boldness of character and beauty of expression – in variety of size and delicacy of lights and shadows, we shall aim at the highest perfection’.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862) Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894) Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901) Gaetano Bedini, 1806-1864 1853 Whole-plate daguerreotype Image: 20 x 15cm (7 7/8 x 5 7/8″) Case Open: 25.4 x 40.8 x 1cm (10 x 16 1/16 x 3/8″) Case Closed: 23.1 x 18.1 x 1.7cm (9 1/8 x 7 1/8 x 11/16″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Conservation made possible by a grant from the Smithsonian’s Collections Care and Preservation Fund
Gaetano Bedini, 1806-1864 Born Sinigaglia, Italy
In 1853, Italian archbishop Gaetano Bedini travelled to the United States at the request of Pope Pius IX to assess the condition of the Catholic Church in North America and to study the possibility of establishing a papal mission in Washington, D.C. Bedini’s multi-month, fact-finding tour coincided with an intense wave of anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant feeling fanned by the newly ascendant American (or Know-Nothing) Party. In several cities, his presence sparked hostile demonstrations. Upon returning to the Vatican, Bedini advocated successfully for the creation of a North American College in Rome to prepare Roman Catholic clergy for service in the United States.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing a wood engraving by an unidentified artist of Brady’s Daguerreotypes 1854 (below)
Unidentified Artist Brady’s Daguerreotypes 1854 Wood engraving on paper Image: 21.8 x 14.8cm (8 9/16 x 5 13/16″) Sheet: 24 x 18.6cm (9 7/16 x 7 5/16″) Mat: 45.8 x 35.6cm (18 1/16 x 14″) Published in the Illustrated American Biography, 1854 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Gift of George S. Whiteley IV
Mathew Brady placed this full-page advertisement in the Illustrated American Biography, a publication that marketed itself as a biographical volume but was actually a glorified business directory. With its cutaway image of a camera, Brady’s ad presents a fanciful view of the process by which sunlight passes through the camera’s lens to produce an image.
In 1851, Mathew Brady submitted forty-eight daguerreotypes to the “Great Exhibition,” the vast international fair organised by Britain’s Prince Albert at the Crystal Palace in London. A critic for the London Illustrated News noted, “The likenesses of various distinguished Americans by Mr. Brady are notable examples of this style of art.” It is reasonable to assume that whole-plate portraits were among the works Brady exhibited. When jurors pronounced his daguerreotypes “excellent for beauty of execution,” he proudly claimed one of the fair’s highly coveted medals.
Well aware of the marketing value of his prize, Brady touted it in full-page advertisements, such as this example. Presenting a cutaway image of a camera’s interior, the ad offers a fanciful view of the way in which sunlight, represented by an allegorical figure, passes through the lens to produce an image.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing a whole-plate tintype by an unidentified photographer of an Unidentified Woman c. 1865 (below)
Unidentified photographer Unidentified Woman c. 1865 Whole-plate tintype Image/Sheet: 21.6 x 15.2 cm (8 1/2 x 6″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Unidentified Woman Birthplace unknown
A penciled note attached to the back of this tintype reads simply, “Born May 10 1811.” Regrettably, the woman pictured is not otherwise identified. However, her handsome dress, her gold-accented jewelry, the book on the table beside her, and the slim volume in her hands suggest she was a literate woman who could afford a top-of-the-line tintype.
This portrait’s large scale and studio setting distinguish it from the small, inexpensive tintypes commonly produced by itinerant photographers. A whole-plate tintype such as this was likely priced from $.75 to $1 in the 1860s, when the average daily wage of a labourer was only $2.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
National Portrait Gallery 8th and F Sts NW Washington, DC 20001
“Through his surreal, dream sequences captured in pop colour, punctum laden reality, Parr observed the absurdities of life on this planet…” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Exhibition dates: 30th January – 24th May, 2026
Curators: Quentin Bajac, in collaboration with Martin Parr and Clémentine de la Féronnière
“We are living in a time when, to borrow a phrase and book title of Sigmund Freud’s, civilization and its discontents are becoming painfully evident to us all. Our machine age technology with its private greed, ecologically disastrous policies, crass materialism, human alienation, incessant strife and conflict, and the portent of man’s destroying himself by his own recklessness, is taking its toll in terms of our confidence and optimism about life. …
John Anson Warner. “Introduction” to The Life & Art of the North American Indian. London: Hamlyn, 1975, p. 6.
A bewitching eye / the unfolding moment
A bewitching eye refers to eyes that are so powerfully, seductively attractive or charming that they appear to cast a spell, mesmerising or enchanting an onlooker. They possess an irresistible, magnetic allure that captivates the viewer, having an almost magical ability to draw someone in. This description could metaphorically be applied to the photographs of the legendary (and I don’t use that word lightly) contemporary British photographer Martin Parr (1952-2025).
Parr was an observer of life with a socially critical eye. Through his surreal, dream sequences captured in pop colour, punctum laden reality, Parr observed the absurdities of life on this planet – human, animal, inanimate – with curiosity and a sense of wonder even while questioning our path to destruction. While this exhibition is split into various sections – Leisure & waste lands; Last Chance To Buy; Small World; The Animal Kingdom; and Technological Addictions – in reality most of his images from each of the sections could fit into any other, for the whole world is interconnected in the excesses and grotesqueness of modern life, of civilization and its discontents.
Parr’s exploration of the pyschogeography of the urbanscape, the exploration of urban environments that emphasises interpersonal connections to places, is damming in its technicolor coat of glory. Mass tourism takes us to leisure spaces like the beach where technology is used to take selfies and mountains of waste pile up near the water’s edge. Mass human, mass cultivation (of palm oil or eucalyptus trees for example) is causing mass extinction of species across the planet. Mass consumption means that we are using the Earth’s resources indiscriminately to fuel (ha!) our desire for the latest, larger four-wheel drive we can get our hands on, the latest fashions that end up in landfill every 6 month cycle when they are not bought, or the brightest, pinkest, must luscious cup cakes you have ever seen in your life.
Parr’s colour saturated photos draw us into this consumptive world where the body is racked by disease, where the patient will soon be on life support. Through his mesmerising, enchanting, multilicious photographs he pokes a great big subversive stick at our follies, excesses, self-destructive desires. Unfortunately, while Parr’s photos seep into our subconscious, most images have little power to change public and personal opinion – all they can do is proffer alternate visions and interpretations of the world and hope that some glimmer of recognition of the environmental damage we are doing will permeate the mind of the viewer.
Of course, Parr’s famous photographs did not appear out of thin air. He was a dedicated photographer whose art practice required years of hard work, talent and skill to obtain his images. He emphasises that, “you have to look at the history of photography and learn what they have done and achieved and apply that, think about it and have it in the back of your head and then you can apply that to your own work.” By doing that, “you may have the rare opportunity actually to develop your own voice, and you can become a photographer with a particular voice.”
“What you are going to do, of course, is to find a good connection to the world out there. It is the quality of that connection that is really important. So, you find a subject you feel strongly about. Then work out how to articulate that and that hopefully will give you momentum for you to get good work.”
Nothing comes without hard work and perseverance.
In the video below where he is giving advice to young photographers he states that he might get only ten great photographs a year, sometimes only one, but he shoots heap of photographs and then discards the dross. What he also says that is really important is that he is attentive to the unfolding moment, he is aware and ready for what the energy of the world puts in front of his eye and his camera. If only the human race was so aware.
Parr was a human being that I would have really liked to have met. To have a conversation about the energy of the world, the passion and commitment of human beings to do good things, to see things differently, to make a difference.
We have his images for as long as the human race exists. But I miss him already.
Many thankx to Jeu de Paume for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“l’m creating entertainment, which has a serious message if you want to read into it, but I’m not trying to convince anyone – l’m just showing them what they think they may know already.”
Martin Parr, 2021
“We are heading towards catastrophe but we are all going there together. Who would dare ban cars or air travel?”
“When I take a photograph, I try to say something. Beyond the garish colours, there is a political message…”
Martin Parr
I now realise that almost all the images I have taken and produced are indirectly linked to climate change.”
Martin Parr 2009
“Global Warning gives us Parr in all his gluttonous, giddy glory, an attentive, unabashed and unpretentious observer of everyday absurdities. But through clever curatorial nudges, this show also gives us other unexpected sides to Parr, a creeping sense of a doom we are hurtling towards at breakneck speed.”
Martin Parr’s Advice to Young Photographers | Louisiana Channel
“You are probably going to fail, so unless you are obsessed, almost like a disease, you are not going to make it.” Legendary Martin Parr, regarded as the most crucial figure in contemporary British photography, offers advice to young photographers.
“What you are going to do, of course, is to find a good connection to the world out there. It is the quality of that connection that is really important. So, you find a subject you feel strongly about. Then work out how to articulate that and that hopefully will give you momentum for you to get good work.”
Another thing which is very important for Martin Parr to emphasise is that “you have to look at the history of photography and learn what they have done and achieved and apply that, think about it and have it in the back of your head and then you can apply that to your own work.” By doing that, “you may have the rare opportunity actually to develop your own voice, and you can become a photographer with a particular voice.”
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2022
This exhibition revisits the work of the late British photographer Martin Parr, bringing together a selection of series produced since the 1970s that find new resonance in light of the growing disarray of the contemporary world. For over fifty years, Parr travelled the globe not as an activist but as a relentless and amused observer, offering a lucid and unsparing portrait of global imbalances and the excesses of contemporary life: the grotesque face and damaging effects of mass tourism, the rise of car culture, our dependence on technology, unbridled consumerism, and our ambivalent relationship with other living beings.
Through his characteristically offbeat vision, Parr also indirectly engaged with the human behaviours driving contemporary climate change: the unrestrained use of transport, reliance on fossil fuels, global overconsumption, and environ mental degradation. Over time, and as social attitudes have shifted, what once appeared merely entertaining has revealed itself to be increasingly serious. ln retrospect, Parr’s corrosive irony places him within a long tradition of British satire: his sharp wit and deadpan humour deliver a critical, and at times merciless, view of the world we inhabit.
Text from the Jeu de Paume website
The Martin Parr: Global Warning exhibition at the Jeu de Paume (on display through May 2026) is organised into five thematic sections. These sections explore the excesses of modern life through about 180 photographs.
Leisure & waste lands: Focuses on recreational spaces like crowded beaches where pleasure often leads to environmental degradation.
Last Chance To Buy: Examines unbridled consumerism in supermarkets, malls, and luxury shops using Parr’s signature saturated colours.
Small World: Documents the rituals and “ravages” of mass tourism across five continents.
The Animal Kingdom: Explores our ambivalent relationship with animals – as pets, entertainment, or consumer products.
Technological Addictions: Highlights our growing dependence on machines, from slot machines to compulsive selfie-taking
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing Martin Parr’s black and white photographs of Ireland 1980-83 Photos: Salim Santa Lucia
Ireland 1980-1983
While living in Ireland, Martin Parr became interested in the abandoned morris Minors – the emblematic car of the post-war British middle classes – found throughout the Irish countryside. Through his lens, the vehicles become a new motif of contemporary ruin: modern vanities symbolising the inevitable decline of progress, a subtle criticism of pollution linked to the automotive industry, an homage to the beauty of Irish landscapes, an almost optimistic meditation on the resilience of nature, and a celebration of human ingenuity. In this sense, the series offers an implicit history of both pollution and adaptation.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left the wall text “Leisure & Waste Lands” and at centre, Martin Parr’s Mar del Plata, Argentina (2014, below)
Leisure & Waste Lands
Beginning in the 1980s, Martin Parr relentlessly documented how contemporary landscapes are periodically or permanently reshaped by the expansion of mass leisure. Many of these works capture the coexistence and constant intermingling of natural and man-made elements.
Parr’s photography explores the interests of ordinary people, with whom he identified. Although he never learned to swim – unlike his wife Susie, who is an excellent swimmer – he spent a great deal of time on beaches, which feature prominently in his work. His first major colour series, ‘The Last Resort’, focuses on the popular seaside resort, New Brighton, near Liverpool. Parr would go on to pursue this theme across all five continents, producing some of his most incisive social critiques, from ‘Benidorm’ – capturing life at a sprawling resort on Spain’s Costa Blanca – to ‘Playas’ – a survey of Latin America’s most frequented beaches.
‘You can read a lot about a country by looking at its beaches: across cultures, the beach is that rare public space in which all absurdities and quirky national behaviour can be found,’ he wrote in 2013. For Parr, the beach setting became a field of experimentation, rarely appearing in his work as exotic or pristine, but instead as spaces rife with the contradictions of the leisure industry. At once convivial and chaotic, beaches are places of relaxation, paradoxically crowded with bodies, colours and – on might even say – noise. They are sites where we reproduce our ordinary urban habits, and where consumerism is inextricably bound up with trash and waste in every imaginable form: a highly photogenic subject that Parr faithfully captured from the very beginning of his career.
‘I first came to Mar del Plata, the largest Argentine seaside resort, way back in 2007 when I was shooting images for my ‘Playas’ project, a survey of Latin American beaches. I was amazed then at the scale of the resort. It has two thousand hotels, sixteen kilometres of beaches, and welcomes over seven million visitors a year. In terms of scale, Mar del Plata dwarfs other well-known resorts across the globe, including Copacabana, Blackpool and benidorm, yet it is virtually unknown beyond Argentina.’
From Martin parr’s blog, Mar del Pata, 2004 Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s New Brighton, United Kingdom (1983-85, below); and at second left, Benidorm, Spain (1997)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Tokyo, Japan (2000, below); at second left, Melbourne, Australia (2008); and at right, New Brighton, United Kingdom (1983-85, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s photograph New Brighton, United Kingdom (1983-85, below); at at right, Mar del Plata, Argentina (2014)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at right, Martin Parr’s photograph Untitled (Hot Dog Stand), United Kingdom (1983-85, below) from Last Resort
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing from left to right, Benidorm, Spain (1997); Magaluf, Majorca, Spain (2003); Benidorm, Spain (1997); and at right, Tenby, United Kingdom (2018)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Benidorm, Spain (1997, below) and at right, Tenby, United Kingdom (2018)
This exhibition invites the public to revisit the work of Martin Parr. Through different bodies of work created from the late 1970s to the present day, Parr’s photographs capture the absurdities and malfunctions of our contemporary world. Over 50 years, in locations all round the globe, the photographer has built up a corpus of work that portrays the inequalities and excesses of our modern lifestyle. A number of themes recur throughout. These include: the ravages of tourism, the prevalence of car culture, our dependence on technology, consumer excess, and even our ambivalent relationship with the living world. Martin Parr brings his unique, off-beat perspective to several major causes of climate change and environmental damage: unchecked global travel, reliance on fossil fuels, and world-wide overconsumption. Seemingly light-hearted and humorous, Parr’s work is in fact deeply serious. The ironical nature of his work places Parr firmly within the traditions of British satire and offers an indirect yet profound critique of contemporary life.
Through some 180 images spanning fifty years of work – from his early black and white images to more recent output – this exhibition addresses the chaos of modern society. Five main sections, organised according to recurring themes, motifs and obsessions, convey the range and depth of Parr’s work. These sections explore the way in which our leisure pursuits impact the environment. Despite being a non-swimmer, Parr is repeatedly drawn to the beach as a site where the natural and artificial worlds coexist and pleasure leads to waste. In the section ‘Everything Must Go!’ our obsessive consumerism is explored. Parr draws up a crude inventory of sought-after objects and modes of consumption. Supermarkets, shopping malls, fairs and exhibitions provide the setting for a frantic materialistic race that is common to all classes of society. Sometimes even human beings become a form of merchandise.
In the ‘Small World’ section, named after one of his most celebrated series, Parr explores the joys, contradictions and dead ends of the tourism industry. In some of the world’s most iconic destinations, he focuses on the habits, behaviours, expectations and disappointments of the global tourist, against the backdrop of North/South, West/East imbalances. In ‘The Animal Kingdom’ he looks at the ambiguous relationship between humans and animals, from fascination and indulgence to neglect and exploitation. The final section – ‘Technological Addictions’ addresses our relationship with machines of all kinds: phones, cars, planes and computers as through them we navigate space, time and reality on a daily basis.
I create entertainment that contains a serious message if you are willing to look for it, but I’m not trying to convince anyone, I’m simply showing people what they think they know’ declared Martin Parr in 2021. Tireless photographer, frequent flyer, beach-lover, Martin Parr never tries to be a moral authority. He has often acknowledged that he himself is fully part of the world he documents and is clear-sighted about the environmental impact of his own lifestyle, particularly his significant carbon footprint: ‘We are heading towards catastrophe but we are all going there together. Who would dare ban cars or air travel?’
Aware that images alone are not enough to change the world, he advocates a form of discreet activism, a subtle visual guerilla warfare. If Parr uses humour it is always in the service of a commentary, often critical and satirical, that seeks to de-stabilise the idealised visions conveyed in the media by the cultural and tourism industries. Many of his images play with cliches, highlighting their inherent absurdity in order to subvert and deconstruct them. Tourist postcards, wildlife photography, foodie habits, selfies, all these and more provide the material that enables him to question, critique and occasionally mock the lifestyles and imagination of large sections of the world population. This exhibition is indeed a global warning.
Press release from Jeu de Paume
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Moscow (1992) ; and at right, the wall text to “Last chance to buy”
Last chance to buy
Beginning in the 1980s, Martin Parr began documenting a subject that relatively few photographers were exploring at the time: the myriad dimensions of consumer culture in Britain under Margaret Thatcher, and in particular the tastes, aspirations and attitudes of the middle class. Parr would sustain this interest throughout his career, later extending his investigation across Europe and the United Sates as well as to countries in Asia and the Middle East shaped by Westernised or Americanised lifestyles.
Today, Parr’s work offers a blunt and often humorous inventory of our consumer goods and ways of life – from food and art to luxury items and useless trinkets – framing consumption as a kind of new religion. In several series, parr deliberately subverted the visual vocabulary of advertising photography. In ‘Common Sense’, one of his most incisive critiques of consumer culture, close-ups and saturated colours produce a grotesque caricature of a world dominated by kitsch. Through his lens, supermarkets, hypermarkets, shopping malls, fairs, and trade shows become stages on which all social classes take part in a frenzied and absurd rush to accumulate goods of every kind. In this world, which seems ultimately to offer little pleasure, human beings themselves are at times turned into commodities.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at centre, photographs from Martin Parr’s series Common Sense (1999)
Installation views of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing photographs from Martin Parr’s series Common Sense (1999, below)
In his playfully titled Common sense series, British photographer Martin Parr confronts and amuses us in a similar way. Each image in the series is an isolated detail revealing one ghastly aspect of excessive consumerism and consumption after another. The images jostle for our attention like billboards on the side of a freeway, employing many of the tactics of advertising, using large-scale, saturated colour and shock value to attract our gaze.
In his photographs of food, Martin Parr pointedly examines the gross indulgence that is encouraged by manufacturers and their advertisers. Shown here as just another commodity, generic and mass-produced food becomes obscene in its abundance…. When seen in such lurid detail, the overblown details on the person’s hands, such as the ring with blue stone, a Band-Aid, and the imperfect application of the gaudy nail polish, become repulsive images of the ordinary. …
The Common sense series is a major body of work within Parr’s ongoing exploration of globalisation, mass tourism, class culture and consumerism. In common with much of his work, this series presents images critical of the contemporary culture with a distinctive sense of irony and British humour. There is something uncomfortable in all these photographs. We laugh at them while being slightly embarrassed by their familiarity and are acutely aware of the gulf between a dream of glamour and the sad synthetic reality.
Susan van Wyk, Curator, Photography, National Gallery of Victoria
Susan van Wyk. “Martin Parr’s Common Sense,” in Art Journal 46, 29 Jan 14 on the National Gallery of Victoria website [Online] Cited 16/04/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Cozumel, Mexico (2002, below); and at right, the wall text for “Small World”
Small World
Martin Parr maintained that he belonged fully to the world he documented and critiqued. He readily acknowledged the environmental impact of his own lifestyle – not least his substantial carbon footprint – and near positioned himself above his subjects. Although fully aware that images alone could never change the world, he nevertheless engaged in a form of subtle, visual guerrilla warfare that questioned dominant representations, particularly those promoted by the tourism industry.
Beginning in the 1990s, tourism emerged as one of his favourite subjects. He would explore it the world over, in all its pleasures, contradictions, and even dead ends, documenting the rituals and behaviours of the global tourist in the world’s most visited destinations. The sameness of gestures, attitudes and clothing encountered in every corner of the planet provides a humorous, slightly wistful counterpoint to the diversity of the sites and monuments photographed. Parr takes particular pleasure in overturning the codes of postcard perfect aesthetics, especially in his images of iconic landmarks, which he presents in degraded forms caught between over crowding, scenes of anxiety, and crude replicas. Through his lens, the quest for authenticity is a thing of the past.
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing Parr’s photograph Cannes, France (2018, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s photograph Sorrento, Italy (2014, below); and at right, The Matterhorn, Alps, Switzerland (1990)
‘Between the hours of 10am and 2pm the site is at its busiest with up to 4,000 visitors arriving each day. Knowing how inaccessible the place is, it is staggering where and how they emerge. It is also not a cheap visit as each foreign tourist has to pay 122 soies (roughly $40) to enter the site. I am convinced that this entrance payment, together with the cost of the journey and the trekking are probably keeping the Peruvian economy afloat, as 70% of all visitors are foreigners.’
From Martin Parr’s blog, Machu Picchu, 2008 Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at bottom left, Martin Parr’s photograph Notre Dame, Paris, France (2012, below); and at right, Kleine Scheidegg, Switzerland (1994, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s West Midlands Safari Park, United Kingdom (1990); and at right, Longleat Safari Park, United Kingdom (1994)
Unlike zoos, safari parks are designed to let animals roam freely, almost as if they were “in the wild”, while human visitors are meant to experience a sense of closeness to the animals natural state. In his images of safari parks, Martin Parr mocks this idea by deliberately including exactly what such photographs usually try to exclude: cars. The resulting images resemble absurd collages of two disjointed realities, in which – in typical Par-like fashion – he plays with the incongruous encounter between the natural world and a human-made, artificial dimension
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at second left, Martin Parr’s photograph Snow Polo World Cup, St Moritz, Switzerland (2011, below) from the series Luxury; and at second right, Venice Beach, California, USA (1998, below)
“I am not saying that tourism is bad – far from it as it brings a livelihood for many people. Organisations like Tourism Concern in the UK make a very important contribution to a better understanding of the yin and yang of tourism. This charity highlights the problems caused by tourism – from water shortages in newly developed sites to the pure rape of our ever decreasing natural habitats – and tries to ensure that local people benefit from the fruits of tourism. We need to adopt a better understanding of the issues surrounding this huge business. These photographs, I hope, will offer a good starting point. For remember we, in the wealthy West, are the ones that seek out the pleasures of tourism, so we’re all in this together.”
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing the wall text “Technological Addictions” with at bottom left, Martin Parr’s Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai, India (2018, below); at second right, Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England (2022, below) and at right, New York, USA (1999, below)
Technological Addictions
Even in his exploration of technology, Parr remains a humanist in both his practice and overarching project: what interests him is our relationship to the technology rather than the object or machine itself. As a keen observer of behaviour and constantly on the lookout for unexplored for unexplored topics, Parr examined how the human body interacts differently with each new technological object. He also probes technology’s growing role in daily lives and imagination, and the dependency it engenders. At the same time, he implicitly explores the way technology profoundly alters our perception of reality and our relationship to space and time.
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England (2022, below); and at top right, England, United Kingdom (1994) and at bottom right, England, United Kingdom (1994)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing Martin Parr’s Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England (2022, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s New York, USA (1999, below); and at right top, Salford, United Kingdom (1986) and right bottom, Dublin, Ireland (1986)
‘I was hanging around a petrol station like a pervert. Photographers at the time would have said that this was the craziest place to take a picture. Because it’s a very unglamorous subject matter. Boring. There’s no drama here. But there’s something really interesting about boring. Something that seems very ordinary at the time becomes interesting when you look back at it later, almost 40 years later: the pump has changed, the clothes have changed, the car has changed. It tells us something about consumerism, and how we depend on fuel, oil and petrol.
From Martin Parr’s interview, ‘”There’s something very interesting about boring” Martin Parr on his life in pictures.’ The Guardian, 24 August 2025 Wall text from the exhibition
‘Although many museums have now banned the selfie stick, outside in the street, especially in front of that iconic monument or landmark the stick comes into its own. Getting the photo of you and your loved one(s) with the landmark in the background is de rigueur. The tourism industry, which is the biggest in the world, now dictates that the first requirement of any trip is to prove you were there with the necessary photo. It connects you to the world that we know and understand, and it is a vital part of any successful holiday experience. We used to have to ask a passing tourist to take the photo, but thanks to the selfie stick those days are over and we are now self sufficient.’
From Martin Parr’s blog, The Selfie Stick, 2015 Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s photographs Advertisement for Sony PlayStation, England, United Kingdom (2003); and at right, Ooty, India (2018, above)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at right, Martin Parr’s photograph from The Republican National Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, USA (2016, below)
Curators: Julien Faure-Conorton, head of research and scientific promotion of the collections, Albert-Kahn Museum and David-Sean Thomas, exhibition manager, Albert-Kahn Museum
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) L’église au soleil couchant, Ouidah, Dahomey (Bénin), 2 mai 1930 (The church at sunset, Ouidah, Dahomey (Benin), May 2, 1930) 1930 Autochrome 9 x 12cm Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
Honneur et patrie (Honour and fatherland)
Another exhibition on an obscure topic that Art Blart likes to promote…
Of all things, I was watching an episode of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan on streaming the other day and one of the Russian characters turns around and says, “Once a colony, always a colony.” As Dr Ama Biney cogently observes, “the past is not dead … it lives on in the present.” This is how she perceives the impact of history.1
The past leading the present.
Reading the history of Dahomey (now Benin) it’s the usual story of many European countries slicing and dicing the people, treasures and resources of a foreign kingdom.
“… the 1897 invasion of Benin contributed to the greater African holocaust enshrined in our experience of enslavement, colonialism and neo-colonialism. The brutal desecration of Benin lives and culture through the theft of over 4,000 of its artefacts by Western Europeans seems to be a known but yet untold story. It led to the demise of the Great Benin Kingdom, marking a most significant period in the continuing scramble for African resources. During the invasion the Oba (King) was deposed and deported to Calabar [Nigeria] on 13 September 1897 where he died 16 years later.”1
The photographs in this posting were taken in 1930 only 17 years after the exiled Oba died. The wounds would have been raw and open, probably still are.
While the first two photographs below are NOT in the exhibition, they are most pertinent for they inform all that follows, no matter what the Albert Kahn Museum – which promotes the work of Albert Kahn (1860-1940), a French banker and philanthropist who devoted his fortune to promoting knowledge and understanding between peoples – likes to think.
“Proud and resigned, the ministers of Behanzin pose on the deck of the Mésange. As a reminder of the victory, the motto ‘Honneur et patrie’ (the motto of the French army) is displayed above their heads.”
Many thankx to the Musée départemental Albert-Kahn for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“The term ‘post-colonial’ is used generally to describe all cultures affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonisation to the present day. It is also considered as the most appropriate term for the new cross-cultural criticism which has emerged in recent years and for the discourse through which it is constituted.”
W.D Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989. p.2.
“I do not think people are used to seeing cultures that were labelled primitive as contemporary culture. This is primitivism in continued operation, in the inability to recognise these as photographs of people that are connected to contemporary culture. The blind spot is so large; it is devastating and it continues to affect First Nations peoples. The sensitivities and limitations around displaying the photographic evidence of the people who perished is tied up in this primitivist ideology.”
Brook Andrew speaking in interview in Brook Andrew and Jessica Neath. “Encounters with Legacy Images: Decolonising and Re-imagining Photographic Evidence from the Colonial Archive,” in History of Photography, 42:3, 2018, pp. 217-238.
The exile of King Behanzin in photographs
King Behanzin finally surrendered in January 1894 and was deported to Martinique with his family. This exile was immortalised by a few black and white photographs taken by a sailor on the schooner “La Mésange”.
Unknown photographer Behanzin and his family January 1894 SHD Vincennes
THIS PHOTOGRAPH IS NOT IN THE EXHIBITION
Behanzin and his family
The exiled king remains dignified; he is surrounded by his relatives – women and a child. One of the women holds an umbrella to protect his head and another seems to be bringing him a drink. The looks are serious, but not overpowering. In the background are French soldiers wearing colonial helmets; on the left, ropes remind us that we are on a ship.
Unknown photographer Behanzin’s ministers January 1894 SHD Vincennes
THIS PHOTOGRAPH IS NOT IN THE EXHIBITION
Behanzin’s ministers
Proud and resigned, the ministers of Behanzin pose on the deck of the Mésange. As a reminder of the victory, the motto ‘Honneur et patrie’ (the motto of the French army) is displayed above their heads. One of their jailers, a sailor armed with a rifle, poses with them, but curiously blurred by the light, he seems to fade away in front of the dignity of this government in exile.
This conquest was organised in three stages, punctuated by three military-scientific expeditions. The first expedition, which aimed essentially to defend the French trading posts on the coast, was entrusted to Commander Terrillon of the Troupes de Marine and took place from March to April 1890. It ended with the battle of Atchoupa, on 20 April 1890, and a French victory. A first peace treaty was signed on 3 October 1890, but it was not ratified by the Chamber of Deputies. The situation between the kingdom of Dahomey and France remained tense, with King Behanzin, hostile to French interference, opting for a policy of force and confrontation. A second expedition was organised from July to December 1892, preceded by a maritime blockade of the coast. This time it was no longer a question of defending the French establishments with a rapidly built-up force, but of leading an expedition into the heart of the kingdom of Dahomey, with the eventual establishment of a protectorate. The expedition was entrusted to Colonel Dodds. Starting from Cotonou and Porto Novo, the French column went up to Abomey, the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey, occupied on 17 November 1892. It was there that the now General Dodds had the royal objects seized and sent to France. He also proclaimed the deposition of King Behanzin, but did not manage to take him prisoner. This was the aim of the third expedition, from October 1894 to January 1895. It ended on 15 January with the proclamation of a new king of Dahomey, allied with France, then with the surrender of Behanzin, and finally with the proclamation of the French protectorate over Dahomey on 29 January 1895.
With Behanzin defeated, Upper Dahomey opened up to French penetration, with the Niger in its sights. According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Delcassé, the aim was to keep the road to the Sudan and Niger open by establishing a French sphere of influence in Upper Dahomey. From 1894 to 1898, a series of missions made it possible to establish this French trusteeship, recognised by a series of conventions with Germany and the United Kingdom between 1897 and 1898.
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Joueurs de tambours royaux, Sakété, Dahomey (Bénin), 14 janvier 1930 (Royal drummers, Sakété, Dahomey (Benin), January 14, 1930) 1930 Autochrome 9 x 12cm Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Autel du vodún Djéholou, Adjarra, Dahomey (Bénin), 19 janvier 1930 (Vodun altar of Djéholou, Adjarra, Dahomey (Benin), January 19, 1930) 1930 Autochrome 9 x 12cm Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Village dans les collines, Dahomey (Bénin), 26 avril 1930 (Village in the Hills, Dahomey (Benin), April 26, 1930) 1930 Autochrome Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Soeurs et épouses du chef Justin Aho, Abomey, Dahomey (Bénin), 8 mars 1930 (Sisters and wives of Chief Justin Aho, Abomey, Dahomey (Benin), March 8, 1930) 1930 Autochrome 12 x 9 cm Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
The Albert-Kahn Museum’s current exhibition, A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 (Bénin aller-retour. Regards sur le Dahomey de 1930), offers a reinterpretation of the films and photographs produced during a mission to Dahomey (now Benin) led from January to May 1930 by Catholic missionary Francis Aupiais and camera operator Frédéric Gadmer for Albert Kahn’s Archives of the Planet. This immersion, meant as a Franco-Beninese dialogue, questions the views on non-European cultures in a context of colonial rule and the birth of ethnography.
Following on from a series of inaugural exhibitions dedicated to travel and gardens, the Albert-Kahn Museum continues to explore the fundamental themes of its collections, this time focusing on perspectives on non-European cultures and the ethnographic dimension of the Archives of the Planet, recently added to the UNESCO ‘Memory of the World’ Register.
The 1930 mission to Dahomey was unique in several ways: it was the only foray by the Archives of the Planet into sub-Saharan Africa, the last major expedition before the project was halted due to Albert Kahn’s bankruptcy, and the result of an initiative by an atypical clergyman, Father Francis Aupiais (1877-1945). This missionary priest, committed to a long-term endeavour to improve knowledge of African cultures, contacted Albert Kahn in 1927 and convinced him to finance his project to document Dahomey’s cultural and religious practices, in line with the philanthropist’s humanist views.
One of the first film collections of French ethnography
Father Aupiais’s goal was to promote an ‘African recognitio’ by documenting the traditional culture of Dahomey, particularly royal ceremonies and vodun rituals, which he held in high esteem. The mission lasted four and a half months, during which Frédéric Gadmer produced 1,102 autochromes (colour photographs) and shot 140 film reels under Aupiais’s direction. These films, the first of this scale to be shot in Dahomey, constitute the largest collection of films in the Archives of the Planet and one of the first film collections of French ethnography, five years after the founding of the Paris Institute of Ethnology and one year before the Dakar-Djibouti mission.
Recently digitised in high definition (4K), these films constitute the narrative arc of the exhibition, which aims to present the outline, challenges, and legacy of this unusual mission, a century later. Projected in large format throughout an immersive journey, they offer unprecedented image quality and immerse visitors in the intimacy of Dahomey’s ceremonies and cults, forging links between yesterday’s protagonists and today’s visitors, between France and Benin.
Numerous objects, in a large part loaned by the musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, echo the still and moving images: emblems of power, vodun artifacts, and tools dedicated to divination are striking in their sophistication, matching the uses for which they were intended, documented in the films. These rare pieces also feature items exhibited in France by Father Aupiais himself.
Views from contemporary African artists
A Return Trip to Benin also questions the contemporary reception of images from 1930 through the eyes of artists from the African continent. Serving as a perspective and critical counterpoint, artworks by Ishola Akpo, Thulani Chauke, Sènami Donoumassou, Bronwyn Lace, Roméo Mivekannin, Angelo Moustapha, and Marcus Neustetter, several of which were created specifically for the exhibition, combine painting, photography, installation, and performance, reappropriating and reactivating the photographs and films.
The Albert-Kahn Museum
Located in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, the Albert-Kahn Museum preserves and promotes the work of Albert Kahn (1860-1940), a French banker and philanthropist who devoted his fortune to promoting knowledge and understanding between peoples. In addition to the collection of photographs and films in the Archives of the Planet, it features a four-hectare landscaped garden, the vegetal embodiment of its patron’s universalist dream.
An ambitious renovation completed in 2022 significantly increased the space dedicated to exhibitions, notably thanks to a new 2,300-square-meter building designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, creating a dialogue between the image collections and the garden. The museum has welcomed more than 600,000 visitors since its reopening.
Press release from Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Paris
Installation view of the exhibition A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 at Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Paris, October 2025 – June 2026
Installation view of the exhibition A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 at Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Paris, October 2025 – June 2026 showing a selection of black and white photographs by Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) (see below)
Installation view of the exhibition A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 at Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Paris, October 2025 – June 2026 showing a selection of Automchromes by Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954)
Installation views of the exhibition A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 at Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Paris, October 2025 – June 2026 showing at left, Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Soeurs et épouses du chef Justin Aho, Abomey, Dahomey (Bénin), 8 mars 1930 (Sisters and wives of Chief Justin Aho, Abomey, Dahomey (Benin), March 8, 1930) 1930
Bénin aller-retour. Regards sur le Dahomey de 1930 offers a new interpretation of films and photographs produced during a Mission des Archives de la Planète, carried out by Catholic missionary Francis Aupiais and cameraman Frédéric Gadmer in Dahomey (present-day Benin) from January to May 1930. This immersive exhibition, shaped as a Franco-Beninese dialogue, questions how extra-European cultures were viewed in a context of colonial domination and the emergence of ethnography.
The 1930 mission to Dahomey was unique in several aspects: it was the only foray by the Archives de la Planète into sub-Saharan Africa, the last major expedition before the project was halted due to the bankruptcy of Kahn bank, it was the initiative of an atypical man of the church, Father Francis Aupiais (1877-1945), and lasted four and a half months, during which Frédéric Gadmer produced 1,102 autochromes (colour photographs) and shot 140 reels of film under Aupiais’s direction.
These films, the first of this scale to be shot in Dahomey, constitute the most extensive collection of films in the Archives de la Planète and one of the earliest film collections of French ethnography, five years following the establishment of the Institut d’ethnologie de Paris and one year prior to the Dakar-Djibouti mission.
Bénin aller-retour also interrogates the contemporary reception of the 1930 images through the perspective of artists from the African continent. The works of Ishola Akpo, Thulani Chauke, Sènami Donoumassou, Bronwyn Lace, Roméo Mivekannin, Angelo Moustapha, and Marcus Neustetter, several of which were created especially for the exhibition, combine painting, photography, installation, and performance, as reappropriations – and reactivations – of the photographs and films.
The Exhibition
A major exhibition for the 2025-2026 season at the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum, A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 offers a reinterpretation of films and photographs produced during an Archives of the Planet mission led by Catholic missionary Francis Aupiais and cameraman Frédéric Gadmer in Dahomey (present-day Benin) from January to May 1930. This immersive experience, in the form of a Franco-Beninese dialogue, questions the way non-European cultures were perceived within the context of colonial rule and the birth of ethnography. Prior to the exhibition, fieldwork documentation missions were carried out in 2023-2024 by the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum in partnership with Beninese heritage experts, as part of a cooperation program between the Hauts-de-Seine Department and the Zou Community of Municipalities in Benin.
A Unique Mission of the Archives of the Planet
Following a reopening cycle dedicated to travel, and then an exhibition showcasing images of gardens, the Albert-Kahn departmental museum continues its exploration of the fundamental themes of its collections, this time focusing on the perspective of the other and the ethnographic dimension of the Archives of the Planet, recently inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
The 1930 mission to Dahomey is unique in several respects: the only incursion of the Archives of the Planet into sub-Saharan Africa, the last large-scale expedition before the project was halted due to the bankruptcy of the Kahn bank, it resulted from the initiative of an atypical clergyman, Father Francis Aupiais (1877-1945). This missionary priest, committed to a long-term project for a better understanding of African cultures, contacted Albert Kahn in 1927 and convinced him to finance his work documenting Dahomean cultural and religious practices, which naturally aligned with the philanthropist’s humanist project.
One of the first film collections of French ethnography
Father Aupiais’s aim was to contribute to an “African recognition” by documenting the evangelisation but especially the traditional culture of Dahomey, in particular the royal ceremonies and Vodun rites, which he held in high esteem. The mission lasted four and a half months, during which Frédéric Gadmer produced 1,102 autochromes (colour photographs) and shot 140 reels of film, under Aupiais’s direction. These films, the first of this scale shot in Dahomey, constitute the largest collection of films in the Archives of the Planet and one of the first film collections of French ethnography, five years after the founding of the Paris Institute of Ethnology and one year before the Dakar-Djibouti mission.
Recently digitised in high definition (4K), these films form the central thread of the exhibition, which aims to present the unfolding, the stakes, and the legacy, a century later, of this unique mission. Projected in large format throughout an immersive experience, they offer unprecedented image quality and plunge visitors into the heart of Dahomean ceremonies and rituals, forging connections between the protagonists of the past and the public of today, between France and Benin.
Numerous objects, loaned notably by the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, resonate with the still and moving images: emblems of power, Vodun attributes, and divination tools are striking in their sophistication, reflecting the uses for which they were intended and which the films document. Among these rare pieces are some objects exhibited in France by Father Aupiais himself.
Artists’ Perspectives from the African Continent
A Benin Round Trip also explores the contemporary reception of images from 1930 through the perspectives of artists from the African continent. Serving as contextualisation and critical counterpoints, the works of Ishola Akpo, Thulani Chauke, Sènami Donoumassou, Bronwyn Lace, Roméo Mivekannin, Angelo Moustapha, and Marcus Neustetter, several of which were created specifically for the exhibition, blend painting, photography, installation, and performance, representing a reappropriation – and reactivation – of the photographs and films.
Throughout the exhibition, a genuine exchange of perspectives is fostered to construct new narratives that respect Beninese sensibilities and knowledge. This approach was made possible thanks to the numerous collaborations established with heritage experts in Benin, both within the framework of the project’s scientific committee and in that of two documentation missions carried out on site by the Albert-Kahn departmental museum in 2023-2024, thus continuing Albert Kahn’s program: “training to see, training to know.”
Exhibition design and layout
The exhibition offers an immersion in the images of 1930 through a modern and minimalist scenography, the juxtaposition of photographs and films with numerous objects and the spectacular presentation of the films in the form of large format projections.
Father Aupiais’s Dahomey
This introductory section presents the historical context as well as the figure of Francis Aupiais, the initiator of this Archives of the Planet mission, whose figure remains well known in Benin.
The Kingdom of Dahomey was founded in the 17th century by the Fon people, under the cultural influence of neighboring peoples and pre-existing city-states. Links were quickly forged with Europe, and the region saw the arrival of travellers, traders, and missionaries. The slave trade, established by Europeans to meet the demand of the Americas and the West Indies, exacerbated conflicts between kingdoms. The travel accounts published by Westerners at the time, riddled with inaccuracies and prejudices, revelled in describing the warlike and ferocious nature of the rulers of Dahomey. They also demonstrate a fascination with Vodun, a religion and animistic system of thought that they denigrate as “fetishism.”
In 1894, following a war against the King of Dahomey, Béhanzin, the country became a French colony: Dahomey. This conquest, which received considerable media attention in France, was still fresh in everyone’s minds when Francis Aupiais arrived there for the Society of African Missions.
Auguste Léon (French, 1857-1942) Portrait du révérend père Aupiais, Boulogne-sur-Seine, 9 août 1927 (Portrait of Reverend Father Aupiais, Boulogne-sur-Seine, August 9, 1927) 1927 Autochrome Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
~ Francis Aupiais (1877-1945)
Ordained a priest of the Society of African Missions of Lyon in 1902, Francis Aupiais was sent to Dahomey the following year. There, he served as director of schools and later as superior of the mission in the capital, Porto-Novo. Like the Bishop of Dahomey, François Steinmetz (1868-1952), he sought to understand and promote Dahomean culture. To this end, he learned the language and researched its history, art, and customs from local authorities, particularly Vodun religious leaders.
This fraternal dialogue materialised within the journal La Reconnaissance africaine (1925-1927), to which the future writer Paul Hazoumé (1890-1980) contributed, as well as Thomas Mouléro (1888-1975) and Gabriel Kiti (1900-1948), the first two Dahomeans ordained priests.
Returning to France at the end of 1926, Father Aupiais undertook an intense propaganda campaign aimed at “rehabilitating Black people in the eyes of Europeans” and attended the Paris Institute of Ethnology in preparation for his most ambitious undertaking: a film mission to Dahomey.
The Aupiais-Gadmer Mission
This space presents the second protagonist of the adventure, Frédéric Gadmer, and provides visitors with insights into the 1930 mission (duration, route, topics covered, dual film corpus, etc.).
On January 1, 1930, Father Aupiais arrived in Cotonou accompanied by Frédéric Gadmer, an operator for the Archives of the Planet. For four and a half months, the two men traveled nearly 1,600 kilometers by train and car. Their itinerary focused on southern Dahomey: the Porto-Novo region, where Aupiais had lived for nearly twenty-five years, and the Abomey region, capital of the former kingdom of Dahomey. The pair also made a short stay in the north, in Natitingou, whose culture the missionary wished to document from a comparative perspective. Gadmer carried three devices with him: a camera for creating autochromes (colour slides) and two cameras with complementary capabilities, an ICA and a Debrie. In total, Gadmer produced 1,102 autochromes representing 312 different subjects and shot 140 reels of film, representing a little over 10 kilometres of film, equivalent to 8 hours and 30 minutes of footage.
This constitutes the largest film corpus in the Archives of the Planet and one of the most ambitious ethnographic undertakings of the first half of the 20th century.
Aris Lachalarde (French, 1881-1964) Portrait de Frédéric Gadmer, Boulogne-sur-Seine (Portrait of Frédéric Gadmer, Boulogne-sur-Seine) Nd Autochrome Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
~ Frédéric Gadmer (1878-1954)
A professional photographer, Frédéric Gadmer was employed by the army during the First World War and undertook a long mission in Cameroon (1916-1918). In 1919, Albert Kahn (1860-1940) recruited this seasoned photographer for the Archives of the Planet. Gadmer became one of the most prolific photographers for the banker’s philanthropic project, distinguishing himself by his taste for distant horizons, from Syria to Canada, by way of Persia and Afghanistan.
He trained in filmmaking in 1924, thus acquiring a valuable dual skill set which contributed to his being chosen to accompany Father Aupiais to Dahomey in 1930. A reserved and rigorous man, Gadmer combined the humanist ambitions of the missionary with the documentary rigour of Jean Brunhes (1869-1930), scientific director of the Archives of the Planet, while also overcoming the technical difficulties of the field (high temperature, high humidity, etc.).
A Portrait of Dahomey
This third section, the largest in the exhibition, explores the three main themes addressed by the photographs and films of the mission.
~ Colonisation and Evangelisation
Given the circumstances, colonial influence and missionary activities are, of course, central to the corpus. This section notably presents Christian Dahomey, a missionary propaganda film conceived by Aupiais alongside his documentation of traditional Dahomean culture.
During their mission, Aupiais and Gadmer primarily documented three interconnected themes that sketch a rich and nuanced portrait of Dahomey at that time: colonisation and evangelisation, power and royalty, and finally, Vodun.
In 1930, the French presence was palpable everywhere, from newly constructed avenues to the lucrative palm oil trade. The role played by French Catholic missionaries is also described by Aupiais in Le Dahomey chrétien, a propaganda film extolling the benefits of evangelisation through education, healthcare, and agricultural production. This idealised vision however, it obscures a harsher reality: that of a population under colonial rule, often coerced by force. But the voices denouncing this situation and demanding a form of independence – which would be proclaimed in 1960 – remained a minority. An agent of colonisation, Aupiais was also a defender of the Dahomeans and their rights, notably speaking out against forced labour.
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Portrait du chef de canton Justin Aho, Dahomey (Bénin), 8 mars 1930 (Portrait of Chief Justin Aho, Dahomey (Benin), March 8, 1930) 1930 Autochrome Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
~ Power and Royalty
One of Aupiais’s main areas of study concerns the ceremonial surrounding the manifestations of power and royal ceremonies, particularly funeral rites, in Dahomean culture.
Aupiais’s interest in what he calls “ceremonialism” leads him to document everything related to Dahomean traditions and customs in order to reveal their beauty and sophistication. This is how Gadmer filmed numerous royal ceremonies, especially funeral rites.
Beyond protocol, the seats of power are also depicted, from the Honmè Palace in Porto-Novo to the famous royal palaces of Abomey. The prestige objects – royal staffs, parasols, palanquins – attest to a splendour that is also a tool for legitimising power, particularly for the canton chiefs, who owe their position to the colonial authorities.
The portraits painted by Gadmer are a perfect testimony to this. The claim to a historical heritage is further expressed through panegyrics that celebrate the genealogy and exploits of the ancient kings whose power is linked to the divine. Royalty, colonisation, and Vodun are thus intimately linked.
~ Vodun
This section explores how Aupiais documented Vodun ceremonies, not to denigrate them, but rather to demonstrate the respectability of this religion, which is, more broadly, a way of thinking.
A system of thought and an animistic religion, Vodun embodies a worldview in which the elements of nature (earth, thunder, water, etc.) serve as intermediaries between humans and a higher spiritual entity. Initiates, both men and women, are responsible for their worship: these are the vodunsi, the “wives of Vodun.”
Through its complexity and richness, and the refinement of its ceremonies and associated dances, Vodun perfectly aligns with Aupiais’s interest in “ceremonialism.” The missionary saw this as proof of the high spiritual value of the Dahomeans, which, according to him, predisposed them to convert to Catholicism. His privileged relationships with religious leaders gave him access to rare ceremonies, never before filmed.
These scenes offer a unique glimpse into the vitality of Vodun in 1930, a vitality that continues to this day. Among the subjects filmed, prayers to ancestors and the divinatory art of Fa received particular attention.
The Making of Films
This fourth section offers a different perspective, examining the behind-the-scenes aspects of the mission and what it entailed to make a film in 1930 for the Archives of the Planet. The question of staging is also addressed and explained, as well as the context of the birth of ethnographic cinema.
The Dahomey mission is by far the best documented in the Archives of the Planet thanks to the shooting diary kept by Gadmer. This exceptional document not only provides us with very precise information about the content of the 140 reels shot by the cameraman using his two cameras, but it also offers valuable insights into his filming methods, the conditions on location, and the technical difficulties encountered.
The recent digitisation of the original reels in high definition has been a true revelation: it has allowed for a reassessment of the scope and ethnographic value of these films and a rediscovery of the formal beauty of the shots filmed by Gadmer. Previously unseen images have also emerged, in particular shot marks, “ghost” portraits of rare power, which bear witness to both an era in the history of cinema and the dignity of a population under colonial rule.
Comparison with other contemporary ethnographic works – particularly the films of the American anthropologists Melville and Frances Herskovits – while underlining the unique character of the images produced by Aupiais and Gadmer, also reveals some of their limitations.
Finally, the exhibition concludes with a look at the dissemination of these images upon the mission’s return and their legacy to the present day. Topics covered include the 1931 Vincennes Colonial Exhibition, Father Aupiais’ lectures, as well as the work carried out on this collection since 1945 and the contemporary reinterpretations proposed by artists from the Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg.
Upon returning from the mission, Aupiais disseminated its findings. On October 24, 1930, an exhibition of Dahomean art was inaugurated by the Minister of Colonies at the headquarters of the Kahn Foundations’ general secretariat (a few meters from the current museum). Aupiais presented pieces from the collection he had assembled to reveal the cultural richness of Dahomey to the French. At the same time, he provided commentary on the films shot by Gadmer under his direction.
In 1931, the Vincennes Colonial Exhibition provided an opportunity to showcase the images brought back from the mission, but also, for Albert Kahn, to host the members of the Dahomey delegation at his estate. Soon ordered by his superiors to cease his “melanophile propaganda,” Aupiais would not return to these films until years later, dedicating lectures to them until his death in 1945. Since then, this collection has been a constant subject of study.
Today, it is at the heart of a dual collaborative approach: documentary, with two field missions to meet with Beninese experts, and artistic, by inviting prominent figures from the African continent to reclaim and reactivate this shared century-old heritage.
Text from the Musée départemental Albert-Kahn website
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Vodúnon exécutant la danse de Hèviosso, Oumbégamé (près d’Abomey), Dahomey (Bénin), 17 février 1930 (Vodun performing the dance of Heviosso, Oumbégamé (near Abomey), Dahomey (Benin), February 17, 1930) 1930 Frame taken from the reel “Fetishism 1” 35mm nitrate film (negative)
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Vodúnon exécutant la danse de Hèviosso, Oumbégamé (près d’Abomey), Dahomey (Bénin), 17 février 1930 (Vodun performing the dance of Heviosso, Oumbégamé (near Abomey), Dahomey (Benin), February 17, 1930) 1930 Frame taken from the reel “Fetishism 1” 35mm nitrate film (negative)
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Marque du plan No. 380, Djimé (environs d’Abomey), Dahomey (Bénin), 26 mars 1930 (Mark of plan No. 380, Djimé (near Abomey), Dahomey (Benin), March 26, 1930) 1930 Still image from the reel “Various Scenes” 35mm nitrate film
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Cérémonie de purifi cation de deux vodúnsi, Agbankamé (près d’Abomey), Dahomey (Bénin), 18 février 1930 (Purification ceremony of two vodunsi, Agbankamé (near Abomey), Dahomey (Benin), February 18, 1930) 1930 Frame taken from the reel “Fetishism 3” 35mm nitrate film (negative)
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Consécration de quatre vodúnsi dans un couvent, Covè, Dahomey (Bénin), 11 mars 1930 (Consecration of four vodunsi in a convent, Covè, Dahomey (Benin), March 11, 1930) 1930 Frame taken from the reel “Fetishism 1” 35mm nitrate film (negative)
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Consultation du Fa par le bokonon, Banhito (près de Porto-Novo), Dahomey (Bénin), 12 avril 1930 (Consultation of the Fa oracle by the bokonon, Banhito (near Porto-Novo), Dahomey (Benin), April 12, 1930) 1930 Frame extracted from the reel “Dances, Funeral of a King” 35mm nitrate film (negative)
The contemporary journey
The curators chose to give prominence to contemporary art by inviting several African artists, particularly from Benin, to enrich the perspective on this shared heritage that is the Archives of the Planet.
This dialogue between past and present is materialised through paintings, photographs, performances, sound creations, and installations, through which the artists appropriate the exhibition’s theme by offering a counterpoint to the historical narrative.
Among the works on display, five were directly inspired by the autochromes and films of the 1930 mission, three of which were commissioned specifically for the exhibition.
Roméo Mivekannin (Ivory Coast, b. 1986) La Mère Mélanie et deux épouses de Glélé, palais royaux d’Abomey (Mother Melanie and two wives of Glélé, royal palaces of Abomey) 2021 Painting, elixir bath, pigments and binders on canvas 255 x 264cm Courtesy Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Paris
Roméo Mivekannin
The work of Roméo Mivekannin (born in 1986) revisits Western representations of Black bodies. In his paintings and sculptures, the artist appropriates testimonies from the colonial past (paintings, photographs) to subvert their meaning, for example, by inserting his self-portrait into Frédéric Gadmer’s autochromes, which depict the figures involved in the evangelisation of Dahomey.
Commissioned for the exhibition thanks to the support of the Friends of the Albert-Kahn Museum, his work, entitled Adangba, takes the form of an imposing parasol decorated with royal motifs, inspired by the autochromes and films of the 1930 mission. It overlooks the central section of the exhibition dedicated to Beninese cultural heritage.
Angelo Moustapha
Voted best percussionist in Africa in 2017, Angelo Moustapha (born in 1993) weaves together the traditional sounds of his native Benin with innovative artistic currents, such as modern jazz. Ibilè, which means “origin” or “identity” in Yoruba, is a musical creation conceived specifically for the exhibition. Angelo Moustapha composed it, drawing inspiration from the rhythms visible in scenes filmed in 1930. It is not an attempt to recreate the original sound of these silent films, but rather an invitation to take a fresh look at these archival images.
Bronwyn Lace (b. 1980) Bronwyn Lace dans le Pepper’s Ghost, SO Academy, Johannesburg, 12 mai 2023 (Bronwyn Lace at Pepper’s Ghost, SO Academy, Johannesburg, May 12, 2023) 2023 Digital photograph by Zivanai Matangi The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg
Bronwyn Lace
Co-founder with William Kentridge of the Centre for the Less Good Idea, an unconventional artistic creation space based in Johannesburg, Bronwyn Lace (born in 1980) has collaborated with the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum since 2022. Her performance, Amazing Grapes, is inspired by the films of Father Aupiais and Frédéric Gadmer, which she overlays with her own childhood memories in South Africa. It has been specially adapted for the exhibition to be presented in a miniature “Pepper’s Ghost” (a theatrical optical illusion device).
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Portait du chef de canton Zodéougan, Zado, Dahomey (Bénin), 28 février 1930 (Portrait of Chief Zodéougan, Zado, Dahomey (Benin), February 28, 1930) 1930 Autochrome Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
Thulani Chauke
South African dancer, choreographer, and performer, Thulani Chauke regularly collaborates with William Kentridge and the Centre for the Less Good Idea. Fascinated by one of the autochromes from the 1930 mission – the portrait of canton chief Zodéougan – he has created a work that highlights the performative dimension of colonial archives and raises questions about how we see ourselves and others: Finding the Dahomean Prince (2025).
Installation view of the exhibition A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 at Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Paris, October 2025 – June 2026 showing the work of Ishola Akpo with at left, Trace d’une reine I (2020, below); and at right, Iyami (2021, below)
Ishola Akpo
Ishola Akpo (born in 1983) brings forgotten African narratives to light by creating composite works that engage in a dialogue between personal and collective memory. In the series Traces of a Queen from his AGBARA Women project, the Beninese artist combines contemporary photography, historical iconography, and embroidery to bring back from oblivion major female figures in African history, such as Queen Tassi Hangbé, long erased from the royal genealogies of Dahomey.
Ishola Akpo (Benin, b. 1983) Trace d’une reine I 2020 Traces of a Queen series, AGBARA Women project Collage and sewing on paper, cotton thread, 44 x 37.5cm Zinsou Collection, Ouidah
Ishola Akpo (Benin, b. 1983) Iyami 2021
Noticing the lack of archives on the queens of various African kingdoms, artist Ishola Akpo created several series of works that retrace their history, using different mediums as a metaphor for the complex stories of the figures and their true political weight. Among them, the Agbara Women photographic series creates fictional portraits that shed light on the queens’ histories. Each portrait’s elements trace Akpo’s Yoruba/Nago culture and its traditions, the photos and illustrations of the Zinsou Foundation Archives on Dahomey, and the artist’s travels and books. For example, Iyami is a portrait of a regal-looking older woman, seated and swathed in crisp white cloth, adorned with a red beaded crown and various pieces of gold and silver jewellery. The woman clasps a wooden staff; the solemn authority of this gesture is underscored by her stoic expression. The title of the work means mother in the West African language Yoruba, and the portrait sitter is the artist’s actual mother. Through this fictionalised photograph, Akpo creates a space for a relationship between the “little stories” of contemporary women embodying “great women”. More than just an ode to the power of women, the series questions the amnesic and patriarchal dimensions of African history, embodied by portraits of known and forgotten queens.
Text from the KADIST website Nd [Online] Cited 13/05/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Sènami Donoumassou (Benin, b. 1991) Ahantun dagbanu (series Akɔ mla mla) 2022 Silver gelatin print on baryta paper, accompanied by sound recordings 61 x 50.8 cm Artist’s personal collection
Sènami Donoumassou
A Beninese visual artist, Sènami Donoumassou (born in 1991) uses various modes of expression to explore the notions of identity, heritage, and history: videos, installations, photograms, and drawings. The works in her series Akɔ mla mla (“Panegyrics”), as well as her installation Ðɛgbè (“Prayer”), which examines the notion of religious syncretism, perfectly echo the images collected by Father Aupiais and Frédéric Gadmer in 1930, bearing witness to the richness and perpetuation of traditional culture in Benin.
Georges Chevalier (French, 1882-1967) Art dahoméen: masque Gèlèdè aux serpents géminés, Orléans, 14 décembre 1927 (Dahomean art: Gelede mask with twin serpents, Orléans, December 14, 1927) 1927 Autochrome 12 x 9cm Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
A heritage in images and objects
The autochromes and films made in Dahomey by Frédéric Gadmer under the direction of Father Aupiais document many aspects of the country’s cultural heritage, particularly royal, religious, and funerary ceremonies. These images constitute a precious testimony of what Aupiais called “ceremonialism.”
In the exhibition, the various concepts involved are explained through educational texts intended for both adults and young audiences (for whom a family tour is dedicated). The curators have also selected emblematic heritage objects, similar to those seen in the films and photographs, in order to allow visitors to better understand their materiality, function, and use.
In total, nearly thirty objects (tapestries, seats, statuettes, royal staffs, gourds, etc.) are on display thanks to the support of the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, as well as the collaboration of the Carrefour des cultures africaines in Lyon, the Muséum de Toulouse, and private collections. Among this collection of objects are pieces gathered by Father Aupiais himself and exhibited in France as early as 1927 to demonstrate to Europeans the richness of Dahomean culture.
Melville (1895-1963) and Frances (Shapiro) Herskovits (1897-1972) were pioneering American anthropologists who revolutionised African and African Diaspora studies. Working as a team from the late 1920s through the 1940s, they conducted field research in West Africa, South America, and the Caribbean, focusing on cultural continuities from Africa in Black communities.
An ethnographic mission?
The exhibition also situates this mission of the Archives of the Planet within the context of the emergence of ethnography as a discipline in France. Upon his return to France at the end of 1926, Father Aupiais attended lectures by Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) and associated with Paul Rivet (1876-1956) and Maurice Lévy-Bruhl, who, along with Mauss, founded the Institute of Ethnology in Paris in 1925.
This new scientific discipline significantly influenced the organization of the mission funded by Albert Kahn and can thus be compared to other similar undertakings carried out in the following years, such as the Dakar-Djibouti mission (1931-1933). A striking parallel also exists abroad with the work of the American anthropologists Melville and Frances Herskovits, who traveled extensively through Dahomey less than a year after Father Aupiais and Frédéric Gadmer. For the first time in France, the exhibition presents their filmed and audio recordings, which allow for a better understanding of the images collected by Aupiais and Gadmer.
Shared perspectives and international cooperation
The preparation of the exhibition involved numerous collaborations with heritage experts in Benin, both within the scientific committee and the project team, as well as during the two fact-finding missions conducted on-site by the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum in 2023 and 2024. These field missions were carried out with the support of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs as part of the cooperation program between the Hauts-de-Seine Department and the Zou Community of Municipalities in Benin.
The Department launched its international cooperation program with Benin in 2017 as part of its international solidarity policy, with the main objectives being the fight against food insecurity among vulnerable populations, securing the incomes of small-scale producers, developing market-connected agricultural entrepreneurship, and promoting sustainable development and positive action through agroecology. This initiative notably led to the deployment of an agricultural development program in the Zou region. To continue the work begun, the program was renewed in 2022 for a period of four years. Its objective: to strengthen family farming and support households and social entrepreneurs in rural and peri-urban areas.
This cooperation also includes a cultural component, integrated into the agreement in 2022, which has grown in scope over recent years, thanks to the involvement of the Zou inter-municipal council in hosting documentary missions in preparation for the exhibition. This cultural component enabled the organization, in November-December 2023 in Abomey, of an exhibition entitled “The Zou, from Yesterday to Today: Intersecting Perspectives,” combining images from 1930 and the present day. Public conferences and screenings were also held, notably in Covè in 2024 where the films of Frédéric Gadmer and Francis Aupiais were screened on the very sites where they had been filmed.
Finally, the “Dahomey” collection from the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum was presented in 2023 at the School of African Heritage (Porto-Novo) and in 2024 at the Zinsou Foundation (Cotonou), anticipating a desired tour of the exhibition in Benin – currently under study – as well as possible partnerships with future Beninese museums, in particular the International Vodun Museum in Porto-Novo and the Museum of the Kings and Amazons of Dahomey in Abomey.
Text from the Musée départemental Albert-Kahn website
A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 exhibition poster
Musée départemental Albert-Kahn Albert-Kahn Museum 2 rue du Port, 92100 Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday (closed Mondays) 11am – 6pm
Curator: Hans Rooseboom, Curator of Photography at the Rijksmuseum
W.H. Martin (American, 1865-1940)(photographer) The North American Post Card Co. (publisher) The largest ear of corn grown 1908 Postcard Rijksmuseum Purchase 2018
William H. “Dad” Martin of Ottawa, Kan., is considered to be the father of the exaggerated postcard. Some of his better work featured huge ears of corn, giant apples and peaches, stalks of wheat taller than any man and massive pumpkins uprooting a farmstead. Such cards were hugely successful throughout the Great Plains states where agriculture was the life’s blood of rural America.
W.H. Martin moved to Ottawa in 1899 to serve as an apprentice under photographer E.H. Corwin. Eight years later, Martin purchased Corwin’s studio and began crafting the tall tale postcards that would eventually make him a millionaire.
To fake or not to fake, that is the question…
Since the very inception of photography people have been making “fake” photographs. Indeed, one of the very first self-portraits ever taken, Hippolyte Bayard’s Le Noyé [The Drowned Man], made on October 18, 1840, is of the artist experimenting, using himself as a subject, posing himself in a fake suicide, expressing frustration “about his position in the photography world and about how little respect he felt he had been given in comparison to fellow photographer Louis Daguerre.”
There are many photographs pre digital manipulation that can be seen as “fake”1 but to me this is a disingenuous word, a sensationalist word, to describe photographs that basically undermine the photograph and its link to truth, the link of the photograph to the indexicality of its referent. But what is “truth” in a photograph?
Photographs have always deceived,2 depending on where you place the camera, which point of view you decide to capture and which to exclude, and when you decide to press the shutter … or what collage of photographs you put together and in what order. Thus, from one point of view, there is no such thing as a fake photograph, just different versions of (de)constructed realities.
Conversely you could argue that ALL photographs are “fake” as the photograph is only, can only ever be, a symbolic representation of a reality that never existed in the first place (“Ceci n’est pas une pipe”).
Photographs are tricky little things.
In the case of this exhibition, early photo collages and photomontages are seen as “fake” only in terms of their relation to a certain version of a photographic reality. They are not fake in terms of the reality of their construction, produced in the IMAGINATION of the artist, expressed in the final image. In those terms they are as real as the surrealist interpretation of dreams, or cubist dissection of the image plane. And we don’t call those photographs or paintings “fake”.
Today, photography is delimited in terms of what a photograph can be. And it has been so since the very beginning of the medium if only we look hard enough. Dreams or nightmares, impossible, absurd or humorous scenes, believable and unbelievable: there is no such thing as genuine or fake – only the space between – expressed in pictorial compositions governed by the creativity and breadth of your imagination.
2/ “Fake” describes something not genuine, real, or authentic, intended to look like something else to deceive, cheat, or pretend.
. Many thankx to the Rijksmuseum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“… photomontage is the fabrication of a composite but single image made up of a number of distinct photographic parts. It “results from the association of photographic elements, which have diverse origins, natures and proportions, combined in such a way as to express with force a particular idea.””
José Pierre, “Hannah Höch et le photomontage des Dadaists berhnois,” in Techniques Graphiques, no. 66 (November – December 1966), p. 352 quoted in Robert A. Sobieszek. “Composite Imagery and the Origins of Photomontage, Part 1: The Naturalistic Strain,” in Artforum, Vol. 17, No. 1, September 1978 on the Artforum website [Online] Cited 18/02/2026
Installation views of the exhibition FAKE! At the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, February – May, 2026 Photos: Albertine Dijkema/Rijksmuseum
Leonard de Koningh (Dutch, 1810-1887) Man startled by his own reflection c. 1870-1880 Cartes de visite
In this comical memento mori, where a man comes face to face with his ghost, the painter and photographer Leonard de Koningh exposed just half of the photographic plate, then had the subject adopt a different pose before exposing the other half. Photography might have been a relatively new art, but the transition between the two images is imperceptible. “It’s like a magician,” marvels Rooseboom. “You know you are being tricked, but you don’t know how the photographer does it.” Quoting Oscar Gustave Rejlander, a trailblazer for this type of composite printing, the photographer Robert Sobieszek (1943-2005) stated: “This manner of working led not to falsehood but to truth. An image made by a single negative [claimed Rejlander] ‘is not true, nor will it ever be so – the focus cannot be everywhere’.”
Anonymous photographer Daydream c. 1870-1890 Cartes de visite
In this one we see the present: a woman and her partner both with the tools of their trades; and an imagined future: her daydream of becoming a mother. The image, explains Rooseboom, was “a darkroom trick”, achieved by shielding part of the photographic paper from the light and then adding a second negative to it later. Such images took photography into a new dimension, suggesting the innermost thoughts of their subjects, and paving the way for the comic strips of the future with their speech bubbles and thought clouds.
“We still expect photography to bring the truth, but this idea only really emerged from the illustrated magazines of the 1930s in order to inform readers how things worked elsewhere in the world,” says Rooseboom. Until then, the creative freedom to alter the image was unchallenged. “Anything possible would be tried out and produced,” he says. “There was no ethical restraint on producing non-realistic images. No-one would forbid you from doing this.” Removing and moving someone’s head, for example, presented the photographer with a pleasing puzzle. In the case of this cabinet card – a style of print mounted on card had taken over from the smaller carte de visite by the 1880s – with its black humour, the creative mission was highly successful. Only the positioning of the curtain, that would have concealed the original head, and some light retouching visible under a microscope, offer clues to how the photographer created the deception.
Anonymous photographer Photomontage of a man pushing a wheelbarrow containing a head c. 1900 – c. 1910 Gelatin silver print
This photomontage, created from two negatives, was found in a French photo album, and featured in the science magazine La Nature. Here, the displaced head illusion goes a step further as the photographer plays with scale, prefiguring the Surrealist movement which gathered pace as the century unrolled, disrupting conventional shapes and sizes to create confusing, dreamlike scenes. The open doorway provides a conveniently plain, dark background in which to smuggle in the cut-and-pasted portion before re-photographing the image as a whole. Some of these images were most likely purchased as portraits to show others, to see their look of surprise. “It’s hard to see where the trick starts and ends,” says Rooseboom. “This is showing off. Something is unbelievable, impossible, it’s improbable, but still it’s there in a photographic image which suggests we see a real scene that really unfolded in front of the camera.”
Almost immediately after the invention of the medium people began manipulating photographs – some with scissors and glue, others through ingenious photographic techniques. Drawing on more than 50 historical images from the museum’s own collection, the exhibition FAKE! Early Photo Collages and Photomontages, shows how image manipulation developed – from the birth of photography to the Second World War – and explores the motives behind it. The exhibition runs from 6 February to 25 May 2026 in the Photo Gallery of the Rijksmuseum.
“Many photo collages and composites depict impossible, absurd or humorous scenes that no one would have mistaken for reality. Yet even then, the boundary between genuine and fake, believable and unbelievable, was often hard to see.” ~ Hans Rooseboom, Curator of Photography
Cut and paste
The exhibition covers 1860-1940, a period when the possibilities of cutting and pasting photographs were widely explored. People also started experimenting with other methods of image manipulation. One trick that became popular shortly after the invention of photography was to show the same person twice in a single image: first, one half of the plate was exposed; then the subject would move, strike a different pose, and the other half of the plate was exposed. This technique was mostly used for harmless visual jokes, purely for entertainment, but the exhibition also shows how it was sometimes employed with very serious intent.
Political protest
Exaggeration, humour and incongruous visual combinations also played a major role in political protest. The best-known creator of political photo composites is John Heartfield (pseudonym of Helmut Herzfeld, 1891-1968), who opposed Hitler’s Nazi movement. Several examples of his work appear in the exhibition.
Press release from the Rijksmuseum
P. Michaelis (Berlin, publisher) Man and woman with briefcase and three babies above Hamburg c. 1900-1910 Postcard
Martin Post Card Company (American) Taking our Geese to market 1908 Postcard Rijksmuseum Purchase 2019
The trend for playing with images of impossible proportions spawned a genre known as “Exaggerations” or “Tall Tales”. This US photograph was printed during the “Golden Age” of picture postcards, shortly after the US decreed that messages could be written on the address side of the card. We see again the pioneering role photo manipulation plays in artistic developments such as Surrealism, but the use of scale here is also a marketing ploy to create myths about the agricultural superiority of a region. In this case, it’s the celebrated stuffed geese of Watertown, Wisconsin. Elsewhere in the show, Nebraska boasts about its bountiful produce with an ear of corn the length of a horse-drawn carriage. As US author and folklorist Roger Welsch noted in Tall Tale Postcards (1976): “Photography brought into being visual effects that tall-tale tellers through the centuries had seen only in their fertile imaginations.”
William H. Martin, (1865 – c. 1940) also known by the nickname “Dad“, was an American photographer and postcard designer known for using photomontage to depict exaggerated scenes with out-of-scale plants and animals. His works featured fanciful depictions of the American frontier inspired by tall tales. His depictions of abundant crops and large livestock served to humorously parody the struggles of farmers in the Midwestern United States who faced drought. They also mocked the exaggerated promises of fertile land and abundant livestock that companies used to lure settlers to the West. Martin was a pioneer of the art form of collage in the United States, and is considered to be the “father” of the exaggeration postcard genre.
Martin was originally from Maple City, Kansas. and was born in 1865. When he was 21 years old, he moved to Ottawa, Kansas to study under the photographer E.H. Corwin. He had no prior experience in photography. He proved successful, and bought Corwin’s photography studio in 1894.
He used photomontage and trick photography and, in 1908, began producing wildly exaggerated postcards for commercial sale. His cards typically featured out-of-scale scenes with people alongside giant plants and animals, created by cutting and pasting together different photographs. His postcards were popular with Western settlers, who sent them back to their families in the Eastern United States. His business was successful, and by 1909 he had built a two-story business building behind his home and employed around 20 people, who produced around 10,000 postcards every day. His photographs proved so popular that they were often plagiarised by other postcard companies and sold under different names.
Theodor Eismann (publisher) (Leipzig, Germany) Car flying over Mulberry Bend Park, New York before 1908 Postcard Rijksmuseum Purchase 2025
Eismann established the company in Leipzig around 1884 and was instrumental in the pre-World War I postcard boom in Germany for the U.S. market. Theochrom was name given to the printing process used.
Fake photographs activated the imagination, presenting imagined possibilities yet to come. This example of a toekomstbeeld (vision of the future) envisages a world where cars could fly. Elsewhere in the exhibition we see futuristic cityscapes: town centres transformed by sky rails and zeppelins thanks to some deft copy and pasting, and skyborne visitors floating over Boston, Hamburg and The Hague in scenes reminiscent of Mary Poppins. Eismann’s New York photomontage [above] now features colour but is no more truthful, its limited range of inks added during the printing process at the whim of the designer.
Alfred Stanley Johnson Jr. (American, 1863-1932) Collision between a car and a steamroller 1915 Tall-tales postcard (exaggerated postcard) Waupun catalog no. P126
We’ve come to think of photo trickery as something sinister, but in his research on its use in early photography, Rooseboom says he was surprised to find that “three-quarters of all the images were made for fun”. In this photomontage by Alfred Stanley Johnson Jr, the clever placement of a series of individual − sometimes overlapping − images provides a humorous snapshot in time. The unusually dynamic, action-filled scene features flying coattails and frilly bloomers as the passengers of a car are catapulted through the air, inviting a before-and-after narrative in the mind of the viewer. “Many photomontages obviously depict impossible situations,” states a text at the exhibition. “The intention was not to mislead, but rather to entertain the viewer.”
Alfred and Elizabeth were living at 315 South Madison Street (in Dodge County) and their son Stanley – who was now going by his middle name – and wife Myrtie were living at 315 North Madison Street (in Fond du Lac County), with their son Alfred S. (the III), who was less than a year old. The Johnson photo studio/gallery was then located at 11-17 North Madison, just off Main Street. This was only a few years after Stanley began producing his tall-tale postcards, probably assisted by his wife, Myrtie, who was listed in the 1905 State Census as being a “photographer” and the 1910 Census as a “photo retoucher.” Although he apparently was known locally by the name of Stanley, he used the name “Alfred Stanley Johnson, Jr.” on most of his postcards.
Stanley Johnson, Sr. died December 3, 1914, and his wife Elizabeth died December 9, 1919; both are buried in the family plot in Forest Mound Cemetery in Waupun. Stanley continued in the photo business at 11 North Madison Street – while living at 17 N. Madison – until a few years before his death on March 1, 1932. His obituary in the Waupun Leader News stated that he had “been in poor health for about 30 years,” which would have been since about the time he started creating his exaggerated postcards. Perhaps the cards provided the extra income needed to pay ongoing medical bills.
Anonymous. “Johnson, Alfred Stanley,” on the Wisconsin Historical Society website Nd [Online] 18/02/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Elsie Wright (British, 1901-1988) and Frances Griffiths (British, 1907-1986) Fairy Offering Flowers to Iris 1920 From the Cottingley Fairies series Gelatin silver print
The Cottingley Fairies are the subject of a hoax which purports to provide evidence of the existence of fairies. They appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 9. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of The Strand Magazine. Doyle was enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of supernatural phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the images as genuine, others believed that they had been faked.
Interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both girls married and lived abroad for a time after they grew up, and yet the photographs continued to hold the public imagination. In 1966 a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper traced Elsie, who had by then returned to the United Kingdom. Elsie left open the possibility that she believed she had photographed her thoughts, and the media once again became interested in the story.
Albert Huyot (French, 1872-1968) Photo collage 1929
The cutting up of images and rearranging them on paper with glue was once a popular pastime. People made celebrity photo quizzes, sometimes featuring just a nose or a pair of eyes; and the photographed faces of friends and family were superimposed onto drawings for comic effect. Photo collages were also undertaken by established artists. In this piece, which is influenced by Dadaism and Cubism, French artist Albert Huyot manipulates fragments of photographic images into surprising new artistic forms. More intricate photographic artworks can be seen in the show on the pages of the Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy’s seminal book Painting, Photography, Film (1925). In it he argues that photography is not just about recording reality. Instead, it should explore the visual language unique to its medium.
The son and grandson of artists, Albert Huyot was a pupil of Diogène Maillart and Gustave Moreau. His first paintings were done in a generic Post-Impressionist manner indebted to the example of the Nabis, but he soon became influenced by Cubism. He exhibited regularly at the Salon des Indépendants, the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Tuileries, and also participated in the Grande Exposition in Brussels in 1910; in the same year he also spent some time in Russia. Huyot was a friend of Henri Matisse, and around 1912 his work reveals the influence of Fauvism; André Derain was another particular influence. After 1920, however, Huyot seems to have abandoned the rigour of his earlier work in favour of landscape painting. An exhibition of his work was held at the Galerie Berthe Weill in Paris in 1926.
Text from the Stephen Ongpin Fine Art website
John Heartfield, pseudonym of Helmut Herzfeld (German, 1891-1968) Mimikry, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (A-I-Z), 19 April 1934 1934
Sometimes, in a surprising twist, photographic trickery was a tool for conveying a perceived truth. Anti-Nazi campaigner Helmut Herzfeld, who changed his name to the anglicised John Heartfield in protest against Hitler’s regime, created over 200 handcrafted political photomontages for the leftist AIZ publication, many seeking to expose the hidden dangers of the Nazi dictatorship and the lies it disseminated. Mimicry depicts Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, disguising Hitler as the 19th-Century revolutionary communist Karl Marx. The artist is warning the working classes not to be fooled by Hitler’s promises that he genuinely supports workers’ rights. Such work is comparable with political memes today that aim to speak truth to power. Image manipulation can both mislead us and help us find our way.
Curator: Dr. Carrie Cushman, Director of the Bates College Museum of Art and former Linda Wyatt Gruber ’66 Curatorial Fellow in Photography at the Davis Museum
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Music Stands 1933 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 7 in. x 11 15/16 in. (17.8 cm x 30.3cm) Mount: 11 in. x 14 in. (27.9 cm x 35.6cm) Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)
A bonus mid-week posting on this compact exhibition on the work of German photographer Isle Bing (1899-1998)
It’s wonderful to see the expressive musicality and movement in Bing’s black and white photographs, most of the images new to me. I would have loved to have seen more photographs from this “New Woman” but this is all I have from the exhibition. The museum is very lucky to have had a recent gift of vintage photographs donated by Bing’s mentee and friend Suzanne Ciani (class of ’68).
But if you want to be taken seriously as a collecting institute please make sure that you title the artist and subject correctly on your collections website pages. It’s not The Honorable Daisy Fellowers it is The Honorable Daisy Fellowes (corrected below) and it’s not Florence Henry it is Florence Henri!
Little things make all the difference.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Davis Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Acrobat with Black Ball 1936 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 8 3/4 in. x 11 1/8 in. (22.2cm x 28.3cm) Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Circus Horse in NYC 1936 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 13 1/2 in. x 19 3/8 in. (34.3 cm x 49.2cm) Mount: 19 5/8 in. x 25 1/2 in. (49.8 cm x 64.8cm) Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)
Featuring a recent gift of vintage photographs by the groundbreaking photographer Ilse Bing (1899-1998), this exhibition explores the development of the photographic medium in the mid-twentieth century. The era in which Bing came to prominence saw the birth of the journalistic photo-essay, the launch of the 35-mm Leica camera, and experiments with abstract photograms and solarization. Artists led critical debates over how photography should remain true to itself as a medium of and for the modern world. From Frankfurt to Paris to New York City, Bing was at the centre of it all, carving out a place for herself as “Queen of the Leica” in a male-dominated world of image making. The Worlds of Ilse Bing is organised geographically according to the three cities where Bing lived, placing her work in conversation with the artists who made up her creative worlds and providing insight into her influences, process, and undeniable impact on others as they pushed the boundaries of modern art.
Text from the Wellesley College website
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Jane Neidensaul, Hands on Harp 1943 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 10 1/4 in. x 13 7/8 in. (26 cm x 35.2cm) Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)
Jane B. Weidensaul (1935-2003) was a prominent American harpist, educator, musicologist, and editor known for her contributions to harp literature and pedagogy. A Juilliard graduate and assistant to Marcel Grandjany, she taught at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music, served as editor of the American Harp Journal (1978-1996), and authored numerous scholarly works.
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) La Main de Szymon Goldberg 1949 Gelatin silver print Image: 13 1/4 in. x 9 1/2 in. (33.7 cm x 24.1cm) Mount: 21 3/16 in. x 17 5/16 in. (53.8 cm x 44cm) Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)
Szymon Goldberg (American born Poland, 1909-1993)
Szymon Goldberg (1 June 1909 – 19 July 1993) was a Polish-born Jewish classical violinist and conductor, latterly an American.
Born in Włocławek, Congress Poland, Goldberg played the violin as a child growing up in Warsaw. His first teacher was Henryk Czaplinski, a student of the great Czech violinist Otakar Ševčík; his second was Mieczysław Michałowicz, a student of Leopold Auer. In 1917, at age eight, Goldberg moved to Berlin to study the violin with the legendary pedagogue Carl Flesch. He was also a student of Josef Wolfsthal.
After a recital in Warsaw in 1921, and a debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1924 in which he played three concertos, he was engaged as concert-master of the Dresden Philharmonic from 1925 to 1929. In 1929 he was offered the position of concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic by its principal conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler. He accepted the position, serving from 1930 to 1934. During these years, he also performed in a string trio with Paul Hindemith on viola and Emanuel Feuermann on cello, and also led a string quartet of Berlin Philharmonic members.
The rise of the Third Reich forced Goldberg to leave the orchestra in 1934, despite Furtwängler’s attempts to safeguard the Jewish members of the orchestra. Thereafter, he toured Europe with the pianist Lili Kraus. He made his American debut in New York in 1938 at Carnegie Hall. While in the former Netherlands East Indies he formed the Goldberg Quartet, together with Robert Pikler on viola, Louis Mojzer on cello and Eugenie Emerson, piano. Pikler and Mojzer were Hungarians and Emerson was American. This Piano Quartet toured the major cities in Java, before the Japanese invasion and occupation. Goldberg’s first wife was a skilled artist and sculptor. She was interned by the Japanese in the Tjihapit Women’s Camp in Bandung, together with Mojzer’s family, while Goldberg and Kraus were on a tour of Asia.
He toured Australia for three months in 1946. Eventually he went to the United States and became a naturalised American citizen in 1953. From 1951 to 1965 he taught at the Aspen Music School. Concurrently he was active as a conductor. In 1955 he founded the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra in Amsterdam, which he led until 1979. He also took the ensemble on many tours. From the years 1977 to 1979 he was the conductor of the Manchester Camerata.
He taught at Yale University from 1978 to 1982, the Juilliard School in New York City from 1978 to 1989, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 1980 to 1981, and the Manhattan School of Music in New York starting in 1981. From 1990 until his death, he conducted the New Japan Philharmonic in Tokyo. …
He made a number of recordings, most notably a celebrated series of Mozart and Beethoven sonatas with Lili Kraus before World War II, the three Brahms Sonatas with Artur Balsam (Brunswick AXTL 1082), and Mozart and Schubert pieces with Radu Lupu (with whom he performed as a duo in concert) in the 1970s. The Berlin Philharmonic, in a 2014 tribute to their former concertmaster, wrote that in the music of Bach and Mozart, Goldberg “brought a poise and a beauty of tone that seemed like perfection. Indeed he was the finest Mozart violinist of his time, with the feline grace essential for the violin sonatas, the concertos and the Sinfonia concertante.”
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Konrad Wolff, Hands 1949 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 13 3/8 in. x 10 1/2 in. (34 cm x 26.7cm) Mount: 14 in. x 11 in. (35.6 cm x 27.9cm) Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)
Her photograph Konrad Wolff, Hands illustrates her formalist technique, as the camera closes in on two hands playing a piano – the black and white of the piano keys contrast with the grey tones of the hands to create a dynamic composition of linear, oblique shapes. She often manipulated her prints, flipping them upside-down or turning them sideways to view their compositional narratives in new ways.
Text from the Davis Museum website
Konrad Wolff (March 11, 1907 – October 23, 1989) was a German-born American pianist, composer, musicologist, and educator renowned for his interpretive performances of classical piano repertoire, his scholarly writings on musical pedagogy, and his role in preserving the legacy of his teacher Artur Schnabel.
Installation view of the exhibition The Worlds of Ilse Bing at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley MA, February – May, 2026 (wall text below)
Reflecting on her early career in the 1920s and 1930s, the groundbreaking photographer Ilse Bing (1899-1998) once proclaimed, “It was a fascinating time, because everything was new. We had nothing to hold onto.” The era in which Bing came to prominence saw the birth of the journalistic photo-essay, the launch of the 35mm Leica camera, and experiments in the darkroom. Through these developments, artists led critical debates over how photography could remain true to itself as a medium of and for the modern world. From Frankfurt to Paris to New York City, Bing was at the centre of it all, carving out a place for herself as “Queen of the Leica” in a male-dominated world of image making.
The Worlds of Ilse Bing places Bing’s work in conversation with the artists who made up her creative worlds, as tougher they forged a new visual language that married the experiences of urban life and advances in industrial production with the spirit of the avant-garde. The exhibition is organised geographically according to the three cities where Bing lived, providing insight into her influences, process, and impact. Featuring a recent gift of vintage photographs donated by Bing’s mentee and friend Suzanne Ciani ’68, the exhibition highlights Bing’s enormous breadth of work, from documentary to portraiture to fashion photography, just as it traces her answers to the question of what photography could be in the twentieth century.
Wall text from the exhibition
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Sun in Clouds Over Swiss Mountains 1929/1984 Sheet: 6 1/4 in. x 9 1/2 in. (15.9 cm x 24.1cm) Mount: 11 in. x 14 in. (27.9 cm x 35.6cm) Gelatin silver print Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Merry Go Round, Paris 1932 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 in. x 8 3/4 in. (27.9 cm x 22.2cm) Mount: 16 1/2 in. x 13 3/4 in. (41.9 cm x 34.9cm) Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Dancers Balanchine Tchelitchew 1933 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 3/16 in. x 8 1/2 in. (28.4 cm x 21.6cm) Mount: 14 in. x 11 in. (35.6 cm x 27.9cm) Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)
George Balanchine (Georgian-American, 1904-1983) and Pavel Tchelitchew (Russian, 1898-1957) were both artists who collaborated significantly in the realm of ballet during the 1930s and 1940s. Tchelitchew, a surrealist painter and designer, created innovative, often translucent sets and costumes for several of Balanchine’s ballets, helping to define the visual aesthetic of that period.
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) The Honorable Daisy Fellowes 1933 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 8 13/16 in. x 11 1/8 in. (22.4 cm x 28.3cm) Mount: 13 3/16 in. x 16 7/16 in. (33.5 cm x 41.8cm) Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)
The Hon. Daisy Fellowes (née Marguerite Séverine Philippine Decazes de Glücksberg) (29 April 1890 in Paris – 13 December 1962 in Paris) was a celebrated 20th-century society figure, acclaimed beauty, minor novelist and poet, Paris Editor of American Harper’s Bazaar, fashion icon, and an heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune.
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Spider Web in Stables 1951 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 13 9/16 in. x 10 1/2 in. (34.4 cm x 26.7cm) Mount: 14 in. x 10 3/4 in. (35.6 cm x 27.3cm) Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College 106 Central Street Wellesley, MA 02481 781-283-1000
“Evans took photographs worth taking – unadorned, clearly seen, focused, descriptive photographs (of ordinary things) of the utmost beauty and honesty.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
In the medium of photography the work of the American photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975) is rightly exalted, subject to the highest praise. “His work directly inspired photographers like Robert Frank, Helen Levitt, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Bernd and Hilla Becher.” Some of the most important photographers of the 20th century.
In the near 18 year history of Art Blart his importance can be gauged by the number of exhibition postings he has accumulated over the journey, this being the 8th posting on the artist, joining a select few at the top of the tree: Julia Margaret Cameron, August Sander, Robert Frank, William Eggleston, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol.
I have written extensively on Evans’s work in previous postings links to which can be found below. Suffice to say that, through awareness, his personal journey of conscious choice and deliberate self-creation has led to his photographs entering the American vernacular – through a direct pointing to a photographic reality that reflects the time in which they were taken. Which transcend the time in which they were taken.
Evans took photographs worth taking – unadorned, clearly seen, focused, descriptive photographs (of ordinary things) of the utmost beauty and honesty. He was a passionate photographer. You can feel that passion in his images. Today with a world full of AI images, fragmentation, and conceptual hoo-hah, it might do us all well to ponder the stare of this great artist so that we, in our own way, can die knowing something.
To transform your own destiny into awareness!
“When I first looked at Walker Evans’ photographs, I thought of something Malraux wrote: ‘To transform destiny into awareness.’ One is embarrassed to want so much for oneself. But, how else are you going to justify your failure and your effort?” ~ Robert Frank
Many thankx to Fundación Mapfre for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“I was a passionate photographer and, for a time, I carried a certain feeling of guilt. I thought photography was replacing something else: writing. I wanted to write. But I felt deeply committed to everything that could come out of a camera, and I became a compulsive photographer. I was responding to a genuine impulse.”
“Stare. It is the way to educate the eye, and something more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”
Walker Evans
“Walker Evans is serious and smart and purposeful. He is trying to show you very clearly what he is seeing. It is very unadorned, as if nobody had taken the photograph. He conveys what is in front of him as clearly as possible.”
Interview with Chris Killip about his exhibition Work at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Renia Sofia, October 2013 [Online] Cited 11/02/2021
”Good clothes and good conversation, wit and erudition, originality and inventiveness, the charms of smart and pretty women – Walker took pleasure in being alive… He photographed objects as if they were people and people as if they were souls. All the while, he never forgot Blind Joe Death. The annihilations of the First War, the extinctions of the epidemic that followed it, the pyres and the pits – these he never forgot. The still silence of his images was, to the very last, transcendental, and always he remembered the skull beneath the skin.”
Michael Levy. Walker Evans: Last Photographs & Life Stories. New York: Blast Books, 2022
Walker Evans. Now and Then offers a renewed look at the career of one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. In a broad anthology bringing together images made over more than fifty years, the exhibition invites viewers to rediscover the direct, restrained, and analytical gaze with which Evans documented everyday life in the United States. Far from the theatrical, the artist championed precise and honest photography, always attentive to the cultural and social context.
The exhibition is structured around several essential threads of his work: his interest in the signs of the city (shop signs, storefronts, billboards, etc.), through which Evans captured a compelling reflection of the collective identity of his era; anonymous individuals (pedestrians, subway riders, workers), whom he portrayed with a spontaneity that blends formal precision and deep respect for his subjects; and his fascination with modest environments and small towns, where he found an authenticity that large cities tended to obscure. Alongside these major axes of his oeuvre, the exhibition also presents his late experiments with the Polaroid camera, which reveal a more intimate shift without losing the clarity of his vision.
The photographer Walker Evans (St. Louis, Missouri, 1903 – New Haven, Connecticut, 1975) is an essential figure of modern photography and one of the great visual chroniclers of the United States during the twentieth‑century. His images, seemingly simple yet profoundly complex, lucidly portray everyday life, urban landscapes, and the anonymous faces of a country in transformation. Rooted in the documentary style, Evans combined a direct, austere gaze with an inexhaustible curiosity for the signs of popular culture, which led him to define an era even as he questioned it.
Walker Evans began his work in photography in the 1920s, after a stay in Paris; and over the course of his extensive career, which spanned more than fifty years, he produced some of the most recognized photographs in the medium. He explored a wide range of subjects, from street snapshots taken surreptitiously to meticulous and precise architectural studies, although his best‑known photographs remain those he made in the American South beginning in the 1930s. Evans also embraced new artistic and technical developments, and toward the end of his life he explored the possibilities offered by the Polaroid camera. What unified his entire body of work was a deep interest in and affection for the appearance and essence of everyday life in a society increasingly obsessed with the new and the immediate.
Evans remains, even today, one of the most important and influential photographers of the twentieth century. With a style that is both simple and analytical, his deeply careful way of photographing, resulting in elegant compositions that are free of rigidity, has attracted countless followers. In addition to being an extraordinary photographer, Evans was also an editor, writer, and designer, and he took great care in how his work reached the public through magazines, books, and exhibitions, personally involving himself in the process.
In 2009 Fundación Mapfre launched its photography program with a retrospective dedicated to Walker Evans. Seventeen years later, the institution is pleased to present a new exhibition curated by David Campany, creative director of the International Center of Photography in New York. The show offers an extensive review of his work and of his lasting influence on generations of artists. It brings together key photographs and projects spanning his entire career – from his self‑portraits of the 1920s to his Polaroid experiments in the 1970s – alongside books and publications that reflect his inexhaustible capacity for observation. Through these works, the exhibition reveals a creator who not only documented the world around him, but also invited viewers to question the role of photography.
Key Themes
Signs of the city
Walker Evans stood out for deliberately and systematically incorporating all kinds of urban signage into his photographs – from sophisticated commercial signs to handmade notices, billboards, and shop windows – unlike other photographers of his generation, who often excluded them in pursuit of a supposed aesthetic purity. Evans believed these signs were reflections of society and its values; in this sense, his work resonates with artistic movements such as Pop Art and Postmodernism. His images of signs not only explore the relationship between word and image, but also question the role of photography as art, document, and commercial tool, underscoring the need for dialogue between photography and popular culture.
Anonymous people, anonymous places
Walker Evans showed no interest in portraying celebrities; on the contrary, he was always drawn to the anonymous individuals he encountered on the street or in the subway. He created portraits with a lightweight camera, privileging the spontaneity of isolated figures, crowds, beach scenes, or laborers at work. In this way, the simplicity of what he believed photography should be was reflected in the subjects he chose: a detached, direct, and unadorned kind of photography with carefully composed images that were nonetheless profoundly lyrical.
Tradition and the urban
One of Walker Evans’s core convictions was that the true character of any society was revealed more clearly in small towns than in large cities, which tended to blur individual particularities and traits. This emphasis on the popular and the vernacular set against the standardisation produced by major industries in big cities and metropolitan centers lies at the heart of American culture. Some of Evans’s finest and most celebrated photographs emerged from this belief, resulting in images of small‑town train stations and railcars, wooden buildings, traditional grocery stores and gas stations, as well as quintessential objects such as old pliers, rocking chairs, and fire hydrants.
Walker Evans information and keys from Fundación Mapfre
Sometimes a great photograph is a gift of time and space. Main Street, Saratoga Springs, New York, was taken from the United States Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1931. Had Evans asked for a room with a picture perfect view? Or did the view only look perfect in Evans’s picture taken on that day, at the moment? The scene has something of the proportioned urban vistas he would have seen on his European trip in 1926. There is something Parisian here.
Recent rain has presented a dreamy shimmer. The light is coming from the clearing weather in the distance. The slick road looks almost like a canal and blends into the sky. In neat rows the shiny automobiles are all black. The filigree of tree branches doodles across the frame.
Although this is one of Evans’s best known and cherished images, the vision of pictorial and social harmony is unusual. No screeching billboards or shop signs. No tension on the street. Sometimes the modern world does offer a rare moment of equanimity.
The town of Ossining, where Walker Evans lived for a short time, lies up the Hudson River from Manhattan. He made many photographs there. His views of its hillside communities and single building were shot with a large format camera, but he also made a number of snapshots on the street with a 35 mm Leica. He was experimenting, figuring out what could be done with such lightweight and versatile equipment. It was around this time that Henri Cartier-Bresson began to work with a Leica in Europe. Evans took two photographs of this couple in their parked car. In the other exposure the woman is smelling, but Evans preferred the more wary expression he caught here (the stern gaze of women recurs in his work). This photograph was included in his book American Photographs and because a source of inspiration for younger photographers such as Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand.
Of all the celebrated photographers of the last century, the one who remains the most relevant today, and the one with the widest influence, is Walker Evans (St. Louis, Missouri 1903 – New Haven, Connecticut, 1975). His images, made in what he called the “documentary style”, are among the best known in the history of the medium. Direct and generous, analytical yet lyrical, carefully composed but unforced, his ways of photographing left the door open for countless others.
For a while, Evans’ reputation rested on the photographs he had made in the southern parts of the USA in the 1930s, but his achievement was wider than that. He worked with every camera format and photographed many subjects in different ways, from surreptitious street shots, to meticulous and exacting studies of architecture. He embraced new artistic and technical developments, and at the end of his life he explored what could be done with a Polaroid camera. What united it all was a deep interest in, and affection for, the look and feel of everyday life. In a culture increasingly obsessed with the new, Evans cherished things that were standing the test of time, be it a face or the facade of a warehouse.
Evans was also concerned with the ways photographic meaning is related to context, text, and relations between images, whether on the gallery wall, or on the pages of books and magazines. To be in control of one’s photographs means being in control how they are presented and circulated in the world. So, as well as being a remarkable image-maker, Evans was also an editor, writer and designer, shaping the way his work met its public. In this exhibition we see the range of Evans’ themes and approaches, and his understated resistance to the excesses and shallowness of so much American culture becomes clear.
A Young Modernist
Walker Evans spent most of 1926 in Paris, studying at the Sorbonne but struggling to become a writer. Charles Baudelaire and Gustave Flaubert were his models, while he paid attention to contemporaries such as James Joyce and Blaise Cendrars. He made a handful photographs with a pocket camera, notably a series of self-portraits.
Returning to New York, Evans began to take photography seriously. He knew the city photographs of Ralph Steiner, Charles Sheeler, and especially Paul Strand. Their bold compositions presented Manhattan as a quintessentially modern metropolis. Evans was also aware of the ‘New Vision’ in European photography, with its enthusiastic embrace of modernist form, especially in architecture. He published a portfolio in the journal Architectural Record, and supplied three photographs from around the Brooklyn Bridge for a deluxe publication of Hart Crane’s epic poem The Bridge (1930).
The economic crash of October 1929 and the ensuing cultural turmoil sharpened the creative and political minds of all the ambitious artists of Evans’ generation. He soon stepped back from the celebration of the city to look hard at the lives of those who inhabited it.
A Past Without Nostalgia: Nineteenth Century Architecture
In 1931 Evans was commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein, a wealthy friend and supporter of the arts, to photograph Victorian houses in and around Boston. Two years later, the pictures were presented in the architecture room of the recently established Museum of Modern Art, New York. While Evans was credited, the context and display clearly put the emphasis on the architecture rather than Evans’ authorship. Nevertheless, in the press release for the exhibition, Kirstein noted:
Walker Evans’ photographs are perfect. They have been taken during the last four years and form the beginning of a photographic history of American domestic building during its most fantastic, imaginative, and impermanent period. Many of the houses, neglected and despised, have disappeared in the short period since these photographs were made. Evans worked in bright sunlight, forcing the details into utmost clarity. The focus was so sharpened that some of the houses seem to exist in an airless atmosphere such as Edward Hopper suggests in his painting of similar subjects. These houses were photographed in New England and New York.
Cultural artefacts endangered by contemporary tastes were already a key subject matter for Evans, one he would return to at various points.
Signs of Images, Images of Signs
Slick commercial signs, hand-made vernacular signs, street wayfinding signs, billboards, posters and shop fronts: if anything defines the time and place of an urban situation it is signage. While most photographers of Evans’ generation avoided or limited its presence in their images (searching for some kind of ‘purity’), he embraced it whole-heartedly. His fascination with signage, and his conviction that it has much to say about a society and its values, chimed with everything from the Pop Art that emerged at the end of the 1950s to the postmodern arts of quotation and appropriation that were emerging just as Evans was reaching the end of his life in 1975.
Evans’ photographs of signs seem highly reflexive, bringing photography itself into question as a medium of representation, while blurring the distinction between word and image. Photography may be a fine art, but it is also a means to make functional documents, and a vital tool of commerce. Whatever its aesthetic ambitions, Evans understood that serious photography would have to contend with its place in common culture.
Cuba
In 1933 Evans was on commission to photograph Havana and its environs for Carleton Beals’ book The Crime of Cuba. Beals was a journalist committed to exposing the corruption of Gerardo Machado’s brutal rule and America’s complicity with it. Cuba had gained independence back in 1902 but America reserved the right to interfere in its affairs, overseeing its finances and foreign relations.
Evans was not politically naïve. His street shots are a counterpoint to Beals’ high rhetoric of abstract political force and faceless conspiracy. And yet, his wary self-consciousness makes his pictures of people difficult to assess. His Cuba work continues to challenge critics and historians. Should we read it as the snaps of a curious tourist with a great eye for composition and social detail? Or might they register the slight tremors, the “mood on the street” of a tense society watching its back? Evans rarely presented his Cuban pictures after their moment had passed.
Anonymous & Incognito
Evans came into photography just as anonymity was becoming a touchstone of the modern era. Laborers on production lines. Isolated figures in the street. The crowd through which a wanderer might move unnoticed, or subject to the suspicious gaze of others. His early street portraits had much in common with those made by Eugène Atget in France and August Sander in Germany in the 1920s. Lightweight cameras soon made more candid portraits possible and Evans began to experiment, making serial photographs of New York subway passengers, and people on streets in various cities.
Evans worked through a period marked by increasing surveillance, and increasing presence of photography and photographers in daily life. It made him wary of the idea that people could be judged quickly by their appearance. His texts for ‘Labor Anonymous’ (Fortune, October 1946), and ‘The Unposed Portrait’ (Harper’s Bazaar, March 1962) push the reader to think again about the limits of photography.
Car Culture
In 1903 (the year Walker Evans was born) there were 4,000 cars in America. By 1930 there were 26.7 million: one for every 4.5 people. The transformation was breathless. Roadsides were redefined by billboards, gas stations, and motels. Towns and cities were designed or adapted for car use.
Evans enjoyed driving, and much of his photography beyond New York required a car. However, the rapid changes that cars were bringing to the appearance and the functioning of society left him feeling ambivalent. In the mass media at least, cars were the embodiment of optimism and mobility. Waste and despoilment were kept out of site, on the stage wings of progress. Evans’ view of rusting cars in a field (Joe’s Auto Graveyard, 1936) is a glimpse behind the scenes. This theme stayed with him for life. In 1962 he published a photo-essay in Fortune titled ‘The Auto Junkyard’, and in the 1970s, he also made many Polaroid photographs of cars and trucks rusting in fields.
Three Tenant Farmer Families
In the summer of 1936, the writer James Agee was commissioned to make a report on cotton farm tenancy in the American south. He chose Evans as his photographer. They committed to the project with great energy but while at work they barely overlapped. Evans recalled: “We lived with [the three families] for three weeks, as I remember it. We told them exactly what we were doing, and we worked intensely and separately. I didn’t see Agee. He was working all day interviewing and taking notes, and I was photographing.”
When Agee’s text was ten times longer than planned, Fortune dropped the project leaving him and Evans to pursue it as a book. Evans assembled a discrete sequence of thirty-one photos that would be set apart from the text, with no captions. Such radical separation of word and image stood against the tide of more conventional documentary practices. The resulting book, Let us now Praise Famous Men, finally appeared in 1941. Evans’ sequence shows him perfecting a way of seeing that was stoic and inscrutable, associative yet anti narrative, with images that eventually became some of the most famous of the era, and of his career.
Chicago
In late 1946, Evans opened a major solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. In February 1947, Fortune published his ambitious photo-essay ‘Chicago: a camera exploration’. Across ten pages he avoided the city’s “prized and remarkable postcard colossi” to show “sights that meet a leisured and untethered eye,” as he put it in his text for the piece. The layout looked celebratory but its tone was not: “Chicago decays as it does everything else – spectacularly and speedily.” The fourth spread is the most remarkable, showing citizens at the corner of State and Randolph Streets. These are post-war consumers, Caucasian, Asian and African-American. Evans places himself directly in their path. Trapped anxiously in bright sunlight the faces hint at the unrest beneath middle-class decorum.
Beyond street portraits, Evans made a comprehensive study of Chicago’s remarkably mixed architecture, allowing him to resume his ongoing interest in buildings as a kind of indirect portrait of a society. The Chicago photo-essay for Fortune was by far his most significant magazine work to date, giving him the confidence to develop and refine what he wanted to do with the printed page in the coming years.
Small Towns & Neighbourhoods
Although Evans’ photography began in New York and he made a substantial photographic portrait of Chicago, he remained convinced that it was the smaller towns that offered a more accurate sense of the nation. The major cities of the USA are always exceptional, and tend to think of themselves as such. Evans concerned himself with the typical, and with the pragmatic ways small towns work and grow. Away from intense modern progress, artefacts of the past persist until they no longer function, rather than being replaced for the sake of it. Some of Evans’ most loved and complex photographs came out of this commitment to typical places.
Message from the Interior
Evans’ deep interest in rooms was long-lasting, and it suited his slow and careful pace of observation. With no people present, an interior scene can become a portrait of an individual, a family, or a community. Moreover, the way a camera records will allow everything that is present to become significant, as in a still life composition. Details of décor. Treasured objects. Casual objects. Furniture. Fabrics. Even the atmosphere of a room can be communicated.
African Sculpture: an Art of Documentation
In 1935 the Museum of Modern Art, New York, commissioned Evans to document nearly five hundred sculptures gathered for an exhibition of African art. In the museum itself each object was shot separately (with a few objects documented in pairs) in long exposure, during which lights were sometimes moved around to produce an all-over, hyper-factual clarity. Prints were made for extensive teaching folios, and a travelling exhibition. The catalogue for MoMA’s exhibition African Negro Art (in which Evans is not credited) was a serious attempt to look at the origin and complexity of these objects beyond the crude reductions and exoticism of the attitudes of European surrealists and modernist artists of the time. Although it was a free-standing commission, we can view this work in the context of Evans’ earlier commission from the Museum of Modern Art to photograph Victorian architecture, as well commissions to document folk art at New York’s Downtown Gallery, and Diego Rivera’s political murals for the Workers’ School of New York.
Vernacular Designs, Common Objects
Evans took the forces of modernity and modernisation – economic, political, social, aesthetic – as a subject matter to be considered carefully. These forces could be sensed most acutely through objects that had somehow survived the onslaught of modernisation or were about to succumb to it. Even the titles of Evans’ Fortune magazine photo-essays signalled his suspicion of the new: ‘The Wreckers’, ‘These Dark Satanic Mills’, ‘Downtown: A Last Look Backward’, ‘Before they Disappear’, ‘The Last of Railroad Steam’, ‘The Auto-Junkyard’.
Nevertheless, it would be hasty to dismiss this as nostalgia, or a sentimental looking back in the knowledge that the juggernaut of progress could not be stopped. In 1956 Evans observed: “[N]ostalgia has become debased to mean a kind of syrup savoured by self-pitying people conjuring better days, funny hats and an innocence nobody ever had.” In a caption for a series of photographs of antique store window displays he declared: “Nostalgia I disdain: pray keep me forever separated from an atmosphere of moist elderly eyes just about to spill over at the sight of grandmother’s tea set. Design just a little dated will interest any artist. Design current is always terrible. Anyone who has tried to find a good contemporary lamp or clock will know what I mean.”
Walker Evans, ‘Before They Disappear’, Fortune, March 1957
The familiar insignia of the freight cars are like old ditties beating in the back of our heads. Once we knew them all by heart, they were with us like the weather, like the backs of books we collected, and like the streets we walked in.
Brought into focus by selection, you almost expect these brave and naïve emblems to emit the very sound of railroading – the iron whines, the Steely screechers, and the attenuated nocturnal moans of steam transportation.
They don’t quite do that. But they are worth examining, not only for the commemorative thoughts they carry, but because they are going to disappear from the US landscape one day you have only to notice the new, exceedingly distinguished lettering of the New Haven’s car sides, or the redesigned Boston & Maine signature, to see that the fell hand of the contemporary commercial designer is lurking near, T-square poised.
When we can no longer catch sight of the great Chinese red and black double tadpole of the Northern Pacific, or the simple old cross of the Santa Fe, then will a whole world of cherished association have been destroyed. Impiety could go no further.
Walker Evans, ‘The Auto Junkyard’, Fortune, April 1962
The nadir of landscape scenery is the great American auto-junk scrap pile. With the effect of some evil prank, these obscene perversities leer out of the countryside almost anywhere, often in the middle of idyllic rural spots … Pictorially speaking, the result is chaos abstracted, and this has considerable curious interest in itself. There is a secret imp in almost every civilized man that bids him delight in the surprises and in the mockery in the forms of destruction. At times, nothing could be gayer than the complete collapse of our fanciest contrivances. Scenes like these are rich in tragicomic suggestions of the fall of man from his high ride.
Walker Evans, ‘The U.S. Depot’‚ Fortune, February 1953
He who travels by rail over the lesser lines of the USA clangs and shunts straight into his own childhood. Most of the smalltown railroad stations up and down the country are now about fifty years old. Looked at collectively they seem more and more toylike – as model railroad toys grow more and more like the real thing. With only a slight effort of the imagination, these encrusted little buildings turn into miniature stage sets, and the people in them correctly costumed dolls. You feel an old affection for the way a station agent throws the block-signal lever there in his coal-heated office. And what in that green-paper note handed up on its looped stick to the engineer as the 3:52 breaks to a stop? Does it say “Train five Engine eight four nine six delayed at Millerton hot journal box,” or does it say “Tell Jeanie I’ll get pork chops?”
Walker Evans, ‘Beauties of the Common Tool’, Fortune, July 1955
Among the low-priced, factory-produced goods, none is so appealing to the senses as the ordinary hand tool. Hence, a hardware store is a kind of offbeat museum show for the man who responds to good, clear “undesigned” forms. The Swedish steel pliers pictured above, with their somehow swanlike flow, and the objects on the following pages, in all their tough simplicity, illustrate this. Aside from their functions – though they are exclusively wedded to function – each of these tools lures the eye to follow its curves and angles, and invites the hand to test its balance.
Who would sully the lines of the tin-cutting shears on page 105 with a single added bend or whorl? Or clothe in any way the fine naked impression of heft and bite in the crescent wrench on page 107? To be sure, some design-happy manufacturers have tampered with certain tool classics; the beautiful plumb bob, which used to come naively and solemnly shaped like a child’s top, now looks suspiciously like a toy space ship, and is no longer brassy. But not much can be done to spoil a crate opener, that nobly ferocious statement in black steel as may be seen on page 104. In fact, almost all the basic small tools stand, aesthetically speaking, for elegance, candour and purity.
Labor Anonymous is a 1946 photo series by Walker Evans, commissioned by Fortune magazine, documenting 50+ candid, close-up street portraits of Detroit workers. Capturing diverse, unposed facial expressions and postures, the project created a “physiognomy of a nation,” exploring modern anonymity and the dignity of laborers.
Shot on assignment for Fortune magazine in 1946, this Walker Evans photograph of an unknown Detroit office worker is reproduced from Labor Anonymous, just out from D.A.P. Publishing and Walther König. “When I knew him, Evans was beset by troubles of all kinds,” Jerry L Thompson writes, “money troubles, tax troubles, marriage troubles (he divorced a second time in 1972), health troubles, advancing age, declining strength: the full catastrophe that flesh is heir to. As he approached 70, most onlookers would have taken him (even by the standards of that time) to be at least a decade older. Yet every time he walked out to start his day he was ready to be an artist. Every day had some work in it – for Evans, work meant being an artist – and the work got done even if every practical concern – what ordinary people call work – fell by the wayside.”
Evans was in poor health when he began to work with the Polaroid SX-70 in 1973; he was attracted to the camera’s small, elegant design and the instant color prints it generated that required no tedious lab or darkroom work. Like the developing Polaroid print itself, with its miraculous and immediate image, Evans came to life and worked feverishly with the new camera. At the age of seventy, he returned to many of his lifelong themes, including vernacular architecture, domestic interiors, portraiture, and roadside signage.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
KBr Fundación MAPFRE Av. del Litoral, 30 08005 Barcelona Phone: +34 932 723 180
![Installation view of the exhibition 'Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography' at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 - June 2026 showing from top left to right, top to bottom, Unknown photographer Harry 'Belafonte and Joan Fontaine' 1957; Gene Lester (American, 1910-1994) 'Dean and Jeannne Martin' 1958; Bob Beerman (American) 'Rock Hudson' c. 1953; Unknown photographer 'Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in "This Earth is Mine"]' 1959; Unknown photographer 'Jean Simmons [in "The Big Country"]' 1958; Unknown photographer 'Elizabeth Threatt and Dewey Martin [in "The Big Sky"]' 1952; Unknown photographer 'Dorothy Malone and Anthony Quinn' 1957; Unknown photographer 'André De Toth and Veronica Lake' 1944; Unknown photographer 'Edmund O'Brien and Tom D'Andrea [in "Fighter Squadron"]' 1948; Unknown photographer 'Ward Bond and Ida Lupino [in "On Dangerous Ground"]' 1951; Unknown photographer 'Aldo Ray and Katharine Hepburn [in "Pat and Mike"]' 1952](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/face-value-installation-q.jpg "Installation view of the exhibition 'Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography' at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 - June 2026 showing from top left to right, top to bottom, Unknown photographer Harry 'Belafonte and Joan Fontaine' 1957; Gene Lester (American, 1910-1994) 'Dean and Jeannne Martin' 1958; Bob Beerman (American) 'Rock Hudson' c. 1953; Unknown photographer 'Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in \"This Earth is Mine\"]' 1959; Unknown photographer 'Jean Simmons [in \"The Big Country\"]' 1958; Unknown photographer 'Elizabeth Threatt and Dewey Martin [in \"The Big Sky\"]' 1952; Unknown photographer 'Dorothy Malone and Anthony Quinn' 1957; Unknown photographer 'André De Toth and Veronica Lake' 1944; Unknown photographer 'Edmund O'Brien and Tom D'Andrea [in \"Fighter Squadron\"]' 1948; Unknown photographer 'Ward Bond and Ida Lupino [in \"On Dangerous Ground\"]' 1951; Unknown photographer 'Aldo Ray and Katharine Hepburn [in \"Pat and Mike\"]' 1952")
![Unknown photographer. 'Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine [in "Island in the Sun"]' 1957](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/unknown-photographer-harry-belafonte-and-joan-fontaine.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine [in \"Island in the Sun\"]' 1957")
![Unknown photographer. 'Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in "This Earth is Mine"]' 1959](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/jean-simmons-and-rock-hudson.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in \"This Earth is Mine\"]' 1959")
![Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947) 'Anna May Wong [in "Limehouse Blues"]' 1934](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ray-jones-anna-may-wong.jpg "Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947) 'Anna May Wong [in \"Limehouse Blues\"]' 1934")
![Unknown photographer. 'Myrna Loy [in "Across the Pacific"]' 1926](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/unknown-photographer-myrna-loy.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Myrna Loy [in \"Across the Pacific\"]' 1926")
![John Miehle (American, 1902-1952) 'Dolores del Rio and Edmund Lowe [in "The Bad One"]' 1930](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/john-miehle-dolores-del-rio-and-edmund-lowe-1.jpg "John Miehle (American, 1902-1952) 'Dolores del Rio and Edmund Lowe [in \"The Bad One\"]' 1930")
![Robert Coburn (American, 1900-1990) 'Vera Zorina [in "The Goldywyn Follies"]' c. 1937](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/robert-coburn-vera-zorina.jpg "Robert Coburn (American, 1900-1990) 'Vera Zorina [in \"The Goldywyn Follies\"]' c. 1937")
![James Manatt (American, 1896-1989) 'Joan Crawford [in "Letty Lynton"]' 1932](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/james-manatt-joan-crawford.jpg "James Manatt (American, 1896-1989) 'Joan Crawford [in \"Letty Lynton\"]' 1932")
![Elmer Fryer (American, 1898-1944) 'Lili Damita [in "The Match King"]' c. 1932](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/elmer-fryer-lili-damita.jpg "Elmer Fryer (American, 1898-1944) 'Lili Damita [in \"The Match King\"]' c. 1932")
![Bert Longworth (American, 1893-1964) 'Amelia Earhart with Helen Hayes [on set of "A Farewell to Arms"]' 1932](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/bert-longworth-amelia-earhart-and-helen-hayes.jpg "Bert Longworth (American, 1893-1964) 'Amelia Earhart with Helen Hayes [on set of \"A Farewell to Arms\"]' 1932")
![Unknown photographer. 'Elsa Lanchester [in "The Bride of Frankenstein"]' 1935](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/elsa-lanchester.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Elsa Lanchester [in \"The Bride of Frankenstein\"]' 1935")
![Unknown photographer. 'Louis Armstrong [in "Cabin in the Sky"]' 1943](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/louis-armstrong.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Louis Armstrong [in \"Cabin in the Sky\"]' 1943")
!['Elvis Presley [Fans' Star Library magazine, No. 13]' 1959](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/elvis-presley.jpg "'Elvis Presley [Fans' Star Library magazine, No. 13]' 1959")
![Ray Wilson. 'Mia Farrow [in "Rosemary's Baby"]' c. 1967](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ray-wilson-mia-farrow.jpg "Ray Wilson. 'Mia Farrow [in \"Rosemary's Baby\"]' c. 1967")
![Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Shadow Self-portrait, Juan-les-Pins, France]' 1927 from the exhibition 'Walker Evans. Now and Then' at Fundación Mapfre, Barcelona, February - May, 2026](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/walker-evans-shadow-self-portrait-juan-les-pins-france.jpg "Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Shadow Self-portrait, Juan-les-Pins, France]' 1927 from the exhibition 'Walker Evans. Now and Then' at Fundación Mapfre, Barcelona, February - May, 2026")
![Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
'[Subway Passengers, New York]' 1938](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/3428-018-web.jpg "Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Subway Passengers, New York]' 1938")
![Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Boarded-up House, Stonington, Connecticut]' 1974](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/walker-evans-boarded-up-house-stonington-connecticut.jpg "Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Boarded-up House, Stonington, Connecticut]' 1974")
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