June 2014Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘Garry Winogrand’ at the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Exhibition dates: 2nd March – 8th June 2014

More photographs by Gary Winogrand.

Many thankx to the National Gallery of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
New York
1950
Gelatin silver print
Framed: 40.64 x 50.8cm (16 x 20 in.)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Fractional and promised gift of Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Coney Island, New York
c. 1952
Gelatin silver print
Framed: 40.64 x 50.8cm (16 x 20 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase and gift of Barbara Schwartz in memory of Eugene M. Schwartz
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Richard Nixon Campaign Rally, New York
1960
Gelatin silver print
Framed: 45.72 x 55.88cm (18 x 22 in.)
Posthumous print made from original negative on the occasion of the Garry Winogrand exhibition organised by the National Gallery of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, courtesy Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
John F. Kennedy, Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles
1960
Gelatin silver print
Framed: 45.72 x 55.88cm (18 x 22 in.)
Posthumous print made from original negative on the occasion of the Garry Winogrand exhibition organised by the National Gallery of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, courtesy Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Metropolitan Opera, New York City
c. 1951
Gelatin silver print
Framed: 45.72 x 55.88cm (18 x 22 in.)
Posthumous print made from original negative on the occasion of the Garry Winogrand exhibition organised by the National Gallery of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, courtesy Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

The first retrospective in 25 years of work by artist Garry Winogrand – renowned photographer of New York City and postwar American life – will be on view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, March 2 through June 8, 2014. Revealing the full breadth of his art for the first time, Garry Winogrand brings together some 190 of the artist’s most iconic images – many never before exhibited or reproduced.

“Winogrand is widely recognised as one of the preeminent photographers of postwar America, though his work remains largely unexplored and incompletely published,” said Earl A. Powell III. “Building on several recent exhibitions of 20th-century American photographers, such as Robert Frank and Harry Callahan, the Gallery is proud to present another major American photographer to our visitors.”

The exhibition was on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from March 9 through June 2, 2013. After Washington, the exhibition will travel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (June 27 through September 21, 2014); the Jeu de Paume, Paris (October 14, 2014, through January 25, 2015); and the Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid (March 3 through May 10, 2015).

Exhibition highlights

Garry Winogrand (1928-1984), a New Yorker who roamed the United States during the postwar decades, left behind a sweeping portrait of American life. His photographs powerfully combine the hope and exhilaration as well as the anxiety and turbulence that characterised America during these vital years, revealing a country that glitters with possibility but threatens to spin out of control. From Fifth Avenue to Sunset Boulevard, from Cape Kennedy to the Texas State Fair, he made the American middle class the primary subject of his pictures. Endlessly curious, Winogrand scrutinised both cities and suburbs, always on the lookout for those instants when happenstance and optics might join to make a good picture that exposes some deep current in American culture.

Working in the tumultuous postwar decades, Winogrand captured moments of everyday American life, producing an expansive picture of a nation rich with possibility yet threatening to spin out of control. He did much of his best-known work in New York City in the 1960s, but he also traveled widely around the United States, from California and Texas to Miami and Chicago. Combining hope and buoyancy with anxiety and instability, his photographs trace the mood of the country itself, from the ebullience of the postwar optimism to the chaos of the 1960s and the gloom and depression of the post-Vietnam era.

When he died suddenly at age 56, Winogrand left behind thousands of rolls of exposed but undeveloped film and unedited contact sheets – some 250,000 frames in total. Many of these pictures have been printed for the first time for this long-awaited retrospective of his work. By presenting such archival discoveries alongside celebrated pictures, Garry Winogrand reframes a career that was, like the artist’s America, both epic and unresolved.

The exhibition is divided into three sections over seven galleries, each presenting a broad variety of subjects found in Winogrand’s art. “Down from the Bronx” presents photographs taken in New York City from his start in 1950 to 1971; “A Student of America” looks at work made in the same period during journeys outside New York; and “Boom and Bust” addresses Winogrand’s late period – from 1971, when he moved away from New York, to his death in 1984 – including photographs from Texas and Southern California, as well as Chicago, Washington, and Miami. The third section also presents a small number of Manhattan photographs made during Winogrand’s return visits; like much of his later work, they express a sense of desolation unprecedented in his earlier photographs.

Plunging headlong into his work, Winogrand preferred shooting film to editing his pictures or producing books and exhibitions. As a result, many of his strongest early photographs fell into obscurity as he matured, while numerous later ones remained unprocessed at his death. Winogrand never published or exhibited approximately one-third of the photographs presented here, and more than sixty have been printed for this exhibition and are being shown in public for the first time. By presenting such discoveries alongside his celebrated pictures, Garry Winogrand reinterprets a career that was, like the artist’s America, both epic and unresolved. A video of Winogrand at Rice University in the 1970s, edited for the exhibition, allows visitors to experience rare footage of the artist talking to students in a casual, extemporaneous manner.

Garry Winogrand (1928-1984)

Born in the Bronx, Winogrand is known primarily as a New York City street photographer, often associated with famed contemporaries Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander. Exposing some 20,000 rolls of film in his short lifetime, Winogrand photographed business moguls, everyday women on the street, famous actors and athletes, hippies, politicians, antiwar demonstrators, soldiers, animals in zoos, rodeos, car culture, and airports. He was also an avid traveler who roamed around the United States to locations that included Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Ohio, Colorado, and the open country of the Southwest.

After serving in the military as a weather forecaster, Winogrand began working as a photographer while studying painting on the G.I. Bill at Columbia University (1948-1951). He supplied commercial photographs to such general-interest magazines as Life, Look, Sports Illustrated, Collier’s, and Pageant. His career was further shaped by the decline of these popular magazines and the rise of a new culture of photography centred in the art world.

Although Winogrand was a prolific photographer throughout his career, he largely postponed printing and editing his work, especially at the end of his life. He published five books, but they contain only a fraction of his oeuvre. In his later years he spoke of reviewing and reediting all of his photographs, but he died abruptly, leaving behind more than 6,500 rolls of film (almost 250,000 images) that he had never seen, as well as proof sheets from his earlier years that he had marked but never printed. Winogrand’s archive, including his film and proof sheets, is now housed at the Center for Creative Photography of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Press release from the National Gallery of Art website

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
New York
c. 1960
Gelatin silver print
Framed: 40.64 x 50.8cm (16 x 20 in.)
The Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Los Angeles
1980-1983
Gelatin silver print
Framed: 40.64 x 50.8cm (16 x 20 in.)
The Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Los Angeles
1980-1983
Gelatin silver print
Framed: 45.72 x 55.88cm (18 x 22 in.)
Posthumous print made from original negative on the occasion of the Garry Winogrand exhibition organised by the National Gallery of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, courtesy Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Los Angeles
1983
Gelatin silver print
Framed: 45.72 x 55.88cm (18 x 22 in.)
Posthumous print made from original negative on the occasion of the Garry Winogrand exhibition organised by the National Gallery of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, courtesy Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
New York
1961
Gelatin silver print
Framed: 50.8 x 40.64cm (20 x 16 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase and gift of Barbara Schwartz in memory of Eugene M. Schwartz
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Park Avenue, New York
1959
Gelatin silver print
Framed: 40.64x 50.8cm (16 x 20 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Patrons’ Permanent Fund
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

National Gallery of Art
National Mall between 3rd and 7th Streets
Constitution Avenue NW, Washington

Opening hours:
Daily 10.00am – 5.00pm

National Gallery of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Past Tense’ at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 4th February – 8th June 2014

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Sam Eric, Pennsylvania
1978
Gelatin silver print
42.5 x 54.5cm
Private collection, Frankfurt
© Hiroshi Sugimoto / Courtesy The Pace Gallery

I loved Sugimoto’s time lapse movie screens, where the exact length of a movie was captured by the open lens of the camera, the substance of time and space evidenced by a seemingly empty screen. There was something wonderfully poetic and transformational about that gesture, about the notion of compressing the narrative, reality and action of a movie into a single frame of light: “the ‘annihilation of time and space’ as a particular moment in a dynamic cycle of rupture and recuperation enables a deliberate focus on the process of transition.”1 The process of transition in the flow of space and time.

Sugimoto’s art since that ground breaking body of work has been a bit of a let down. Where the movie theatres photographs were transubstantiationalist, the three series presented here – Dioramas (1975-1994), Portraits (1999) and his newest series, Photogenic Drawings (2008-present) play, if that is the right word, with the re/animation of death. The stuffed animals, the wax figures, the redrawing of William Henry Fox Talbot photogenic drawings, the redrawing of a light already been, just seem DEAD to me – a kind of double death or even triple death – the death of the animal / the death of the photograph, the unreality (the undead) of the wax figures and their death in the photograph, the death of the plant, their capture not once but twice by the death of the photograph. We know exactly what Sugimoto is doing, but the images are stilted and lifeless and I am not convinced by them.

The diorama images are just OK – almost good undergraduate work but nothing more. My problem with the waxworks images and the pencil of nature is “other images”. We all know Cindy Sherman and her images of historical figures, and we know the work of William Henry Fox Talbot. Somehow these earlier images crowd Sugimoto’s work in a way that doesn’t often happen. Winogrand never crowded Friedlander or vice versa – and you can think of many other examples where comparing is actually beneficial… but not here.

I’m not saying Sugimoto is derivative but because of these other works, they don’t have much room to move. Indeed, they hardly move at all. They are so frozen in attitude that all the daring transcendence of light, the light! of space time travel, the transition from one state to another, has been lost. The Flame of Recognition (Edward Weston) – has gone.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ McQuire, Scott. The Media City. London: Sage Publications, 2008, p. 14.

Many thankx to the J. Paul Getty Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Polar Bear
1976
Gelatin silver print
42.1 x 54.6cm (16 9/16 x 21 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Wapiti
1980
Gelatin silver print
34.9 x 58.7cm (13 3/4 x 23 1/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Sable Antelope
1994
Gelatin silver print
42.4 x 54.1cm (16 11/16 x 21 5/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Manatee
1994
Gelatin silver print
42.2 x 54.1cm (16 5/8 x 21 5/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Birds of Japan
1994
Gelatin silver print
38.7 x 58.4cm (15 1/4 x 23 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Cheetah
1980
Gelatin silver print
36.5 x 58.7cm (14 3/8 x 23 1/8 in.)
Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
White Rhinoceros
1980
Gelatin Silver Print
34.1 x 58.6cm (13 7/16 x 23 1/16 in.)
Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Since the mid-1970s, Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948) has used photography to investigate how history pervades the present. Featuring photographs of habitat dioramas, wax portraits, and early photographic negatives, Hiroshi Sugimoto: Past Tense, on view February 4 – June 8, 2014 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, brings together three separate bodies of work that present objects of historical and cultural significance in the collections of various museums. By photographing subjects that reimagine or replicate moments from the distant past and diverse geographical locations, Sugimoto critiques the medium’s presumed capacity to portray history with accuracy.

“This exhibition presents work that inventively reframes objects from the collections of a variety of museums, including from our extensive holdings of prints from the early days of photography,” explains Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “Mr. Sugimoto has generously donated eighteen prints from his recent Photogenic Drawings series, which reprise a selection of important experiments by William Henry Fox Talbot that are in the Getty Museum’s collection.”

Sugimoto’s meticulously crafted prints are the result of a rigorous working method that includes extensive preparatory research, the use of a large-format view camera, and long exposures. Each of his projects is rooted in a sustained exploration of a singular motif and often carried out over many years. The exhibition will present a selection of prints from three bodies of work, Dioramas (1975-1994), Portraits (1999) and, his newest series, Photogenic Drawings (2008-present).

Dioramas

The diorama was first introduced in Paris in 1822 by the stage designer Jacques Louis Mandé Daguerre (French, 1787-1851), who later developed the daguerreotype photographic process. Situated in a darkened room, the first diorama consisted of a large painted scene on a semi-transparent curtain that was illuminated by the opening and closing of skylights and the constant shifting or dimming of lamps to create the impression of movement. In the early 20th century, habitat dioramas in natural history museums became popular, staging creatures in their faithfully replicated “natural” environments.

Sugimoto first encountered elaborate animal dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History after moving to New York in 1974, and began to focus his camera on individual scenes shortly thereafter. Omitting the educational text surrounding each display, the works heighten the illusion that animals such as manatees, wapiti, and sea lions were photographed in their natural habitats. While each photograph appears to be a candid moment captured by an experienced nature photographer, the subjects are – in actuality – depicted in poses they hold indefinitely.

Wax Portraits

While waxworks have a long history, contemporary wax museums can be traced to the French sculptor Marie Grosholz (French, 1761-1850), who achieved success in the Parisian entertainment market by creating waxworks of popular politicians and cultural figures. After moving to London in 1802, she established a commercial enterprise under the name Madame Tussaud, specialising in the production and display of full-length wax figures modelled after commissioned portraits.

Posed against pitch-black backdrops and framed by the camera in a manner suggesting old master portrait-painting traditions, each of Sugimoto’s subjects was captured with a nine-minute exposure that illuminates the finely modelled expressions and the sumptuous costumes. These life-size photographs record likenesses that have been distilled through multiple reproductions of the original sitter. The source material for the wax figures of Henry VIII and his wives is based on 16th-century panel paintings, while the portrait of Queen Victoria’s likeness is taken from a photograph of her from the 1890s, around the time of her Diamond Jubilee celebration.

“Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographic practice is deeply rooted in a tradition of image making that was developed and perfected during the 19th century,” explains Arpad Kovacs, assistant curator in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and curator of the exhibition. “By employing century-old techniques and turning his lens to subjects and compositions that recreate or simulate moments from the past, Sugimoto intimately connects himself to the historical moments depicted.”

Photogenic Drawings

In the early 1830s, William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877) began trying to create pictures without the aid of a pencil. After coating small pieces of writing paper with a salt solution and silver nitrate, he successfully captured the outlines of leaves and lace placed on the paper and exposed to sunlight. He continued his experiments with a camera obscura, placing a sheet of paper in this precursor to the camera to produce the first negatives, with highlights and shadows reversed. Talbot called the results of these experiments photogenic drawings.

In 2007, Hiroshi Sugimoto visited the J. Paul Getty Museum to study the earliest photographs in the collection. After photographing some of Talbot’s photogenic drawing negatives, he produced large-scale prints and coloured them with toning agents during the processing to replicate the often-bright hues of the original sheets. The scale of the enlarged prints reveals the fibres of the original writing paper, which create subtle and delicate patterns embedded in the images.

The artist’s gift of eighteen gelatin silver prints from his Photogenic Drawings series significantly enhances the Museum’s holdings of work by Sugimoto. His photographic practice, rooted in a serial approach and primarily concerned with the medium’s relationship to the passage of time, has long been an important source of influence for a younger generation of artists. The prints greatly enhance the Getty Museum’s growing collection of contemporary photographs.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Past Tense is on view February 4 – June 8, 2014 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center. The exhibition will run concurrently in the Center for Photographs with A Royal Passion: Queen Victoria and Photography, an exhibition featuring rare private and public photographs from the Victoria era.

Press release from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Henry VIII
1999
Gelatin silver print
148.9 x 119.1cm (58 5/8 x 46 7/8 in.)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG in consultation with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Queen Victoria
1999
Gelatin silver print
148.9 x 119.1cm (58 5/8 x 46 7/8 in.)
Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Anne Boleyn
1999
Gelatin silver print
148.9 x 119.1cm (58 5/8 x 46 7/8 in.)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG in consultation with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Asplenium Halleri, Grande Chartreuse 1821 – Cardamine Pratensis, April 1839
2008
Toned gelatin silver print
93.7 x 74.9cm (36 7/8 x 29 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles,
Gift of the Artist
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Roofline of Lacock Abbey, circa 1835-1839
2008
Gelatin silver print
93.7 x 74.9cm (36 7/8 x 29 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of the Artist
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Bust of Venus, November 26, 1840
2009
Gelatin silver print
93.7 x 74.9cm (36 7/8 x 29 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of the Artist
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
A Stem of Delicate Leaves of an Umbrellifer, circa 1843-1846
2009
Gelatin silver print
93.7 x 74.9cm (36 7/8 x 29 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of the Artist
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Arrangement of Botanical Specimens, 1839
2008
Toned gelatin silver print
93.7 x 74.9cm (36 7/8 x 29 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of the Artist
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Nicolaas Henneman, circa 1841
2008
Toned gelatin silver print
93.7 x 74.9cm (36 7/8 x 29 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of the Artist
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Bust of Patroclus, September 8, 1841
2009
Toned gelatin silver print
93.7 x 74.9cm (36 7/8 x 29 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of the Artist
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

The J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday, Sunday 10am – 5.30pm
Saturday 10am – 8pm
Monday Closed

The J. Paul Getty Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘A Royal Passion: Queen Victoria and Photography’ at The J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 4th February – 8th June 2014

Exhibition includes major loans from Royal Collection Trust

Roger Fenton (English, 1819-1869)
Buckingham Palace
about 1858
Albumen silver print
32.2 x 43.3cm (12 11/16 x 17 1/16 in.)
Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013

There are some glorious photographs in this posting. The serene Buckingham Palace with open gates; Crystal Palace with enclosed tree and ghostly figures; Nelson’s Column with wooden scaffolding and posters (nothing changes – a shop is knocked down in Chapel Street and within half a day the hoarding is covered in posters); atmospheric tugboat by Gustave Le Gray; the very famous, staged, Valley of the Shadow of Death by Roger Fenton; the “attitude” of the melange of men (if you like) in their stovepipe hats in I.K. Brunel and Others Observing by Robert Howlett, with everyone looking in different directions; and the serenity, beauty, grandeur and suppressed sense of power in Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee Portrait by W. & D. Downey. To name but a few.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the J. Paul Getty Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877)
Nelson’s Column under Construction in Trafalgar Square, London
April 1844
Salted paper print from a paper negative
17.1 x 21.1cm (6 3/4 x 8 5/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Roger Fenton (English, 1819-1869)
Manchester Art Treasures
1857
Albumen silver print
18.6 x 24.4cm (7 5/16 x 9 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

John Jabez Edwin Mayall (British, 1810-1901)
The Crystal Palace at Hyde Park, London
1851
Daguerreotype
Image: 30.5 x 24.6cm (12 x 9 11/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

William Edward Kilburn (English, 1818-1891)
Portrait of Lt. Robert Horsely Cockerell
1852-1855
Daguerreotype, hand-coloured
8.9 x 6.5cm (3 1/2 x 2 9/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
The Tugboat
1857
Albumen silver print
Image: 30 x 41.3cm (11 13/16 x 16 1/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Roger Fenton (English, 1819-1869)
Valley of the Shadow of Death
April 23, 1855
Salted paper print
27.6 x 34.9cm (10 7/8 x 13 3/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Leonida Caldesi (Italian, 1823-1891)
Royal Family
May 27, 1857
Albumen silver print
Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013

William Edward Kilburn (English, 1818-1891)
Queen Victoria, the Princess Royal, the Prince of Wales, Princess Alice, Princess Helena, Prince Alfred
January 17, 1852
Daguerreotype
9.1 x 11.5cm (3 9/16 x 4 1/2 in.)
Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013

Queen Victoria’s devotion to photography will be on display in A Royal Passion: Queen Victoria and Photography, February 4 – June 8, 2014 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center. With important loans held in the Royal Collection, generously lent by Her Majesty The Queen, shown alongside masterpieces from the Getty Museum, the exhibition displays rare daguerreotypes, private portraits of the royal family, and a selection of prints by early masters such as William Henry Fox Talbot, Roger Fenton, and Julia Margaret Cameron.

At the age of 18, Queen Victoria (1819-1901) ascended the throne of Great Britain and Ireland and was about to turn 20 when the invention of photography was announced – first in Paris, then in London – at the beginning of 1839. The queen and her husband Prince Albert fully embraced the new medium early on, and by 1842 the royal family was collecting photographs. Through their patronage and support, they contributed to the dialogue on photography and were integral to its rise in popularity.

“As the first British monarch to have her life fully recorded by the camera, Victoria’s image became synonymous with an entire age,” explains Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “Now, 175 years later, we take this opportunity to celebrate both the anniversary of photography and the queen’s relationship with it, through a rich collection of images that portray both the evolution of the medium and the monarchy.”

Birth of Photography and Royal Patronage

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert took an interest in photography in the 1840s, which is remarkable given its limited application and dissemination at the time. The first royal photographic portrait – of Albert – was made by William Constable in 1842. While Victoria enjoyed seeing Albert photographed, she was initially apprehensive about being photographed herself. A pair of key images in the exhibition feature Victoria with her children in 1852, sitting for photographer William Edward Kilburn. In the first portrait, the long exposure time created an image in which Victoria’s eyes were closed. Writing in her diary entry for that day, she described her image as “horrid.” She disliked the portrait so much that she scratched the daguerreotype to remove her face. However two days later the queen repeated the exercise and sat before Kilburn’s camera again, only this time she chose to sit in profile wearing a large brimmed bonnet to hide her face.

For many people, the first opportunity of viewing an actual photograph took place in 1851 at the Great Exhibition of the Industry of Works of All Nations, which opened in London at an event presided over by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Among its 13,000 exhibits were 700 photographs housed in a massive iron and glass structure in Hyde Park. The Crystal Palace, as it was known, was documented in a series of daguerreotypes by John Jabez Edwin Mayall. The royal family would continue to support similar displays of photography that took place during the 1850s; in addition, they became patrons of the Photographic Society of London. Queen Victoria’s interest in the medium was effectively a royal seal of approval and her interest facilitated its growing popularity.

During her reign, a number of conflicts were also captured on camera, including the Crimean War and Sepoy Rebellion. The camera, although unable to record live battle, was able to record the before and after effects of conflict, and its images revealed both the tedium and horrors of war in these far off lands. Roger Fenton’s Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855) shows a stretch of land that was frequently attacked by the Russian Army, strewn with cannonballs. Formal military portraits, such as William Edward Kilburn’s Portrait of Lt. Robert Horsely Cockerell (1854) took on a memorial quality for families who lost loved ones.

As the application of photography developed through the course of the 19th century, so too did the medium itself. Many photographic innovations and experimentations occurred, particularly in the first thirty years. From early daguerreotypes and paper negatives, to the popular carte de visite and stereoscopic photography, the latter a technique that gave photographs the illusion of depth through binocular vision, the exhibition surveys these many innovations and accomplishments. Visitors will be able to look through reproductions of stereoscopic devices in the exhibition.

Private Photographs of the Royal Family

Victoria and Albert shared their passion for photography, not only in exchanging gifts at birthdays and Christmas, but in collecting, organising, and mounting the family portraits in albums, and would frequently spend evenings working together on assembling these volumes. Victoria would often bring albums and small framed portraits of her family along on her travels. The Getty will display a custom-made bracelet she wore that features photographs of her grandchildren.

“As the medium of photography evolved over the years, so did Victoria’s photographic image: she was the camera-shy young mother before she became an internationally recognisable sovereign,” explains Anne Lyden, curator of the exhibition.

In a rare glimpse of these private photographs, the exhibition includes scenes of young royals at play and images in which the royal family appears informal and almost middle-class in their appearance. In an 1854 portrait by Roger Fenton, the casual attire of the queen is disarming. She is wrapped in a tartan shawl and surrounded by four of her children (she would bear nine children in the span of seventeen years). This is not the image of a bejewelled monarch reigning over her empire, but an intimate view of family life. A pair of scissors and a key visible on the chain on her chatelaine suggests practicality and hints at routine household rituals.

Public Photographs, Public Mourning, and State Portraits

Public photographs of the royal family were incredibly popular – the majority of the population would never see a royal in person, and photographs offered a connection to nobility. However, it was not until 1860 that such photographs were available to the public, when John Jabez Edwin Mayall made the first photograph of the queen available for purchase. The event coincided with the rise in popularity of cartes de visite, thin paper photographs mounted on a thick paper card, which, given their small size, were popular for trading and were easily transported. Within days of Mayall’s portrait being issued, over 60,000 orders had been placed, as people were eager to have a glimpse into the private life of the sovereign. Interest in the royal family extended to views of their various royal residences, such as Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Balmoral Castle, and Osborne House, which will also be included in the exhibition.

When Albert died suddenly on December 14, 1861, Victoria became a widow at the age of 42 and was in deep mourning for the rest of her life. While she retreated from public life, photographs of her as the bereaved wife were widely available, becoming in effect the queen’s public presence. While the tableau of a grieving widow remained prevalent for the remainder of Victoria’s reign, in the 1870s and 1880s she sat for a number of extremely popular state portraits that preserved her powerful position as monarch. The exhibition includes portraits taken by W. & D. Downey and Gunn & Stewart on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, as well as other portraits in which she is seen in full regal attire, complete with royal jewels and crown.

A Royal Passion: Queen Victoria and Photography, is on view February 4 – June 8, 2014 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center. The exhibition was curated by Anne Lyden, international photography curator at the National Galleries of Scotland and former associate curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Getty Publications will issue the accompanying book A Royal Passion: Queen Victoria and Photography by Anne Lyden. Concurrently on view in the Center for Photographs is Hiroshi Sugimoto: Past Tense, which includes Sugimoto’s wax figure portrait of Queen Victoria.”

Press release from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Robert Howlett (British, 1831-1858)
I.K. Brunel and Others Observing the “Great Eastern” Launch Attempt
November 1857
Albumen silver print
Image (arched top): 24.8 x 21.4cm (9 3/4 x 8 7/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Bryan Edward Duppa (English, 1804-1866)
Gustav William Henry Mullins (English, 1854-1921)
Portrait of Queen Victoria Holding Portrait of Prince Albert
Negative, July 1854; print, 1889
Carbon print
21.8 x 16.6cm (8 9/16 x 6 9/16 in.)
Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013

Roger Fenton (English, 1819-1869)
The Prince of Wales, the Princess Royal, Princess Alice, the Queen, Prince Alfred
Negative February 8, 1854; print later
Carbon print
22 x 19.7cm (8 11/16 x 7 3/4 in.)
Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013

Roger Fenton (English, 1819-1869)
Princesses Helena and Louise
1856
Salted paper print
33 x 29.2cm (13 x 11 1/2 in.)
Repro Credit: © Royal Photographic Society/NMEM / SSPL

William Edward Kilburn (English, 1818-1891)
Prince Albert
1848
Daguerreotype, hand-coloured
8.6 x 6.3cm (3 3/8 x 2 1/2 in.)
Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013

Roger Fenton (English, 1819-1869)
Queen Victoria
June 30, 1854
Salted paper print, hand-coloured
19.1 x 15.6cm (7 1/2 x 6 1/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Roger Fenton (English, 1819-1869)
The Queen and Prince Albert
May 11, 1854
Albumen silver print
20.4 x 16.2cm (8 1/16 x 6 3/8 in.)
Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013

W. & D. Downey (British, active 1860-1920s)
Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee Portrait
July 1893
Carbon print
Image: 37.7 x 25.4cm (14 13/16 x 10 in.)
Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013

Ghémar Frères
Portrait of Queen Victoria Seated, Gazing at a Photograph of Prince Albert
About 1862
Albumen silver print
8.4 x 5.4cm (3 5/16 x 2 1/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Alexander Bassano (British born Italy, 1829-1913)
Queen Victoria
April 1882
Carbon print
30.9 x 19.1cm (12 3/16 x 7 1/2 in.)
Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013

The J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday, Sunday 10am – 5.30pm
Saturday 10am – 8pm
Monday Closed

The J. Paul Getty Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Apartheid and After’ at Huis Marseille – Museum for Photography, Amsterdam

Exhibition dates: 15th March – 8th June 2014

Curators: Els Barents, David Goldblatt

Artists: David Goldblatt met Paul Alberts, Pieter Hugo, Santu Mofokeng, Sabelo Mlangeni, Zanele Muholi, Jo Ractliffe, Michael Subotzky, Guy Tillim, Graeme Williams and others, and the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg

Santu Mofokeng (South African, 1956-2020)
Sunflowers harvest, Vaalrand farm, Bloemhof
1988
From the Bloemhof Series, 1988-1989, 1994

A raft of exhibitions finishing on the 8th June 2014 means a lot of postings over the next few days. This posting continues my fascination with African photography. The two excellent photographs by David Goldblatt are the stand out here, along with the portrait by Mikhael Subotzky.

Marcus

Many thankx to Huis Marseille for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Santu Mofokeng (South African, 1956-2020)
Windmill, Vaalrand
1988
From the Bloemhof Series, 1988-1989, 1994

Jo Ractliffe (South African, b. 1961)
Military watchtower in a domestic garden, Riemvasmaak
2013
From The Borderlands (2011-2013)

Jo Ractliffe (South African, b. 1961)
Playing soccer with marbles, Platfontein
2012
From The Borderlands (2011-2013)

Graeme Williams (South African, b. 1958)
Kempton Park
Nd
From Previously Important Places series 1990s -2013

The Emperors Palace Casino and Chariots Entertainment World was build on the site [ in… add please date and place… ]? were the negotiations leading up to the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) took place. Now, at the very same place a statue of the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus greets visitors at the entrance of the afore mentioned entertainment centre.

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
In Sipho Ntsibande’s Home, Soweto
2013
from the series Kin, 2013

Guy Tillim (South African, b. 1962)
Neri James, Petros Village, Malawi
2006
from the series Petros Village, 2006

“The scars left in South Africa’s collective memory by its apartheid regime were also inscribed visually on its collective retina. There is less consensus, however, on the period of ‘truth and reconciliation’ after political apartheid came to an end in South Africa in 1990. The exhibition Apartheid and After addresses the question: where did photographers whose earlier work had opposed the apartheid regime point their cameras after 1980?

They include David Goldblatt, for instance, now an éminence grise of South African photography whose exhibition Cross Sections hung in Huis Marseille and others. Has South African democracy been given a face? Where is the real development happening? And where are the scars? Has South African national identity got stuck on a runaway merry-go-round, as the South African visual artist William Kentridge has suggested? One thing is clear: after apartheid, most South African photographers continued to make their own country their work domain, and in doing so they have gained a considerable international reputation.”

“It is astonishing to think that until the beginning of the 1990s, merely two decades ago, modern and contemporary African photography was largely in the shadows.”

Okwui Enwezor in Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity: Contemporary African Photography from the Walther Collection, Steidl, 2013, p. 23.

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
Child minder, Joubert Park, Johannesburg, 1975 (no.11)
1975
From the series Particulars, 2003 (publishing date)

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
Man on a beach, Joubert Park, Johannesburg, 1975 (no. 2)
1975
From the series Particulars, 2003 (publishing date)

Sabelo Mlangeni (South African, b. 1980)
Coming to Johannesburg I, January, 2011
2011

Daniel Naudé (South African, b. 1984)
Africanis 23. Richmond, Northern Cape, 298 January 2009
2009

Mikhael Subotzky (South African, b. 1981)
Joseph Dlamini (Eye test), Matsho Tsmombeni squatter camp
2012
From the series Retinal Shift

Graeme Williams (South African, b. 1958)
Nelson Mandela speaks at CODESA, 199..?
Nd
From Previously Important Places series 1990s-2013

Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972)
Being (T)here (Amsterdam)
2009

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Paul Alberts (South African, 1946-2010)
The portraits of the applicants
1994

As the 1994 election approached in South-Africa many blacks living in small towns and rural areas had never been officially identified. In order to speed up these otherwise slow procedures, Charmaine and Paul Alberts set up an official, but temporary office and studio to process applications. The portraits of the applicants were taken before a paper back drop in the community hall of Majwemasweu. Each person held a slate with a number that corresponded to the number of the film and exposure, plus their name and place where they lived.

Huis Marseille – Museum for Photography
Keizersgracht 401
1016 EK Amsterdam

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 6pm
Thursday 10am – 9pm

Huis Marseille – Museum for Photography website

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