Jeremiah Gurney (American) at 349 Broadway, New York Untitled (Cross-eyed man in three-quarter profile) Nd Half-plate daguerreotype
All of these photographs came from the Internet, most from an auction site selling them at prices way beyond what I could afford.
As you can see, I have given most of them a digital clean. Even though this might seem too clinical, unethical? or just wrong – you can now see the photographs as they were originally intended, without the grunge and gunk of years of dust and degradation over the top of them.
Just look at the photograph above, and you can immediately get an idea of the unique spatiality of the image, from front to back. A really low depth of field that is focused diagonally across the front of the body and jacket, making the hands, the table and the back of the head out of focus. Because it is occluded with all the scratches and dust on the original, you have little idea of the complexity of the visualisation of this portrait until you observe the image in its pristine state, as it was meant to be seen just after it was taken.
I just love these early portraits and photographic processes for the presence they bring to their subjects. For example the hair, the gaze and the attitude of the right hand in Handsome man with fifth finger ring is just magnificent. I could go on cleaning them for a very long time, and never get bored.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (Group of three men) c. 1850 Sixth-plate daguerreotype Unusual period frame of cast thermoplastic
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (Man on crutches) c. 1850-1860s Sixth-plate ambrotype Housed in a moulded leather case
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (Man with pistols) c. 1850-1860s Sixth-plate daguerreotype, delicately tinted Housed in a moulded leather case
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (Man, possibly a sailor, wearing hoop earrings) Nd Sixth-plate daguerreotype Housed in a moulded leather case
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (African American) c. 1850s Sixth-plate daguerreotype
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (African American) c. 1850s Sixth-plate daguerreotype
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (Two men in caps, elegantly dressed) c. 1850s Sixth-plate daguerreotype Housed in a moulded leather case
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (Handsome man with fifth finger ring) c. 1850s Sixth-plate daguerreotype
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (Portrait of violinist holding instrument) c. 1855 Sixth-plate daguerreotype Union case
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (Two men, one with trug of tools) c. 1850-1860s Sixth-plate ambrotype Housed in a moulded leather case
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (Two firemen) c. 1850-1860s Quarter-plate tinted tintype Leather case
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (Man in button braces) c. 1850 Ninth-plate daguerreotype
William J. Shew (American, 1820-1903) Charles Calistus Burleigh (1810-1878) c. 1845-1850 Quarter-plate daguerreotype 11.5 x 9.5cm (cased) Boston Public Library, Print Department
Charles Calistus Burleigh (American, 1810-1878)
An ardent abolitionist and journalist, Burleigh was vocal against Connecticut’s “Black Law” and became editor of the Unionist, originally published in defence of Prudence Crandall’s school.
Eccentric in dress and with a flowing beard he vowed not to remove until the end of slavery, Burleigh turned his back on a professional career to become agent and lecturer for the Middlesex Anti-Slavery. He was a regular contributor to the Liberator and one of the editors of the Pennsylvania Freeman.
He was a supportive friend of Abby Kelley. Active in a number of reform movements, Burleigh plunged into the Anti-Sabbatarian campaign after he was arrested in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1847 for selling antislavery literature on Sunday. Abby and Stephen Foster had been arrested in Ohio for the same offence in July 1846.
In 1845 he published a pamphlet, Thoughts on the Death Penalty, condemning capital punishment.
Karen Board Moran. “Charles Calistus Burleigh (1810-1878),” on the Worcester Women’s History Project website 26/3/2005 [Online] Cited 10/02/2022. No longer available online
William J. Shew (American, 1820-1903)
William Shew (1820-1903) made a name for himself as a Daguerrotype portrait artist in the United States. He maintained a mobile studio in a wagon that he called his “Daguerrotype Saloon.”
William Shew was born on a farm in Waterton, New York on March 1820. At the age of 20 he read an article by the inventor Samuel F.B. Morse about the daguerreotype process and, along with his three brothers, moved to New York City to study with Morse. His brothers Jacob, Myron and Trueman were also photographers, but not attained the stature of William Shew. Morse would become more famous as the inventor of the telegraph.
After completing his studies, Shew worked briefly in upstate New York before becoming the supervisor at John Plumbe’s gallery in Boston. Three years later he opened John Shew and Company in Boston, where he manufactured his own dyes and created daguerrotypes with wooden frames, thin veneer backings and embossed paper coverings. In 1846, Shew married Elizabeth Marie Studley and had a daughter they named Theodora Alice, born in Feb. 1848. He also became and active member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.
In 1851, he sold his business and sailed on the steamer Tennessee to San Francisco, where he joined his brother Jacob who arrived in 1849. It is believed that Shew set up a gallery shortly after arriving in San Francisco, which may have been destroyed by the 1851 fire that swept the city. After the fire he set up “Shew’s Daguerreian Saloon.”
Unknown photographer (American) Untitled (Two young men with straw hats, seated beside each other) Nd Sixth-plate painted tintype Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
I have posted on this exhibition before, when it was at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, but this iteration at SFMOMA is the exclusive United States venue for the Walker Evans retrospective exhibition – and the new posting contains fresh media images not available previously.
I can never get enough of Walker Evans. This perspicacious artist had a ready understanding of the contexts and conditions of the subject matter he was photographing. His photographs seem easy, unpretentious, and allow his sometimes “generally unaware” subjects (subway riders, labor workers) to speak for themselves. Does it matter that he was an outsider, rearranging furniture in workers homes while they were out in the fields: not at all. Photography has always falsified truth since the beginning of the medium and, in any case, there is never a singular truth but many truths told from many perspectives, many different points of view. For example, who is to say that the story of America proposed by Robert Frank in The Americans, from the point of view of an outsider, is any less valuable than that of Helen Levitt’s view of the streets of New York? For different reasons, both are as valuable as each other.
Evans’ photographs for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression on American life are iconic because they are cracking good photographs, not because he was an insider or outsider. He was paid to document, to enquire, and that is what he did, by getting the best shot he could. It is fascinating to compare Floyd and Lucille Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama (1936, below) with Alabama Tenant Farmer Floyd Bourroughs (1936, below). In the first photograph the strong diagonal element of the composition is reinforced by the parallel placement of the three feet, the ‘Z’ shape of Lucille Burroughs leg then leading into her upright body, which is complemented by the two vertical door jams, Floyd’s head silhouetted by the darkness beyond. There is something pensive about the clasping of his hands, and something wistful and sad, an energy emanating from the eyes. If you look at the close up of his face, you can see that it is “soft” and out of focus, either because he moved and/or the low depth of field. Notice that the left door jam is also out of focus, that it is just the hands of both Floyd and Lucille and her face that are in focus. Does this low depth of field and lack of focus bother Evans? Not one bit, for he knows when he has captured something magical.
A few second later, he moves closer to Floyd Burroughs. You can almost hear him saying to Floyd, “Stop, don’t move a thing, I’m just going to move the camera closer.” And in the second photograph you notice the same wood grain to the right of Floyd as in the first photograph, but this time the head is tilted slightly more, the pensive look replaced by a steely gaze directed straight into the camera, the reflection of the photographer and the world beyond captured on the surface of the eye. Walker Evans is the master of recognising the extra/ordinary. “The street was an inexhaustible source of poetic finds,” describes Chéroux. In his creation of visual portfolios of everyday life, his “notions of realism, of the spectator’s role, and of the poetic resonance of ordinary subjects,” help Evans created a mythology of American life: a clear vision of the present as the past, walking into the future.
With the contemporary decline of small towns and blue collar communities across the globe Evans’ concerns, for the place of ordinary people and objects in the world, are all the more relevant today. As the text from the Metropolitan Museum observes, it is the individuals and social institutions that are the sites and relics that constitute the tangible expressions of American desires, despairs, and traditions. And not just of American people, of all people… for it is community that binds us together.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Walker Evans is one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. His elegant, crystal-clear photographs and articulate publications have inspired several generations of artists, from Helen Levitt and Robert Frank to Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. The progenitor of the documentary tradition in American photography, Evans had the extraordinary ability to see the present as if it were already the past, and to translate that knowledge and historically inflected vision into an enduring art. His principal subject was the vernacular – the indigenous expressions of a people found in roadside stands, cheap cafés, advertisements, simple bedrooms, and small-town main streets. For fifty years, from the late 1920s to the early 1970s, Evans recorded the American scene with the nuance of a poet and the precision of a surgeon, creating an encyclopaedic visual catalogue of modern America in the making. …
Most of Evans’ early photographs reveal the influence of European modernism, specifically its formalism and emphasis on dynamic graphic structures. But he gradually moved away from this highly aestheticised style to develop his own evocative but more reticent notions of realism, of the spectator’s role, and of the poetic resonance of ordinary subjects. …
In September 1938, the Museum of Modern Art opened American Photographs, a retrospective of Evans’ first decade of photography. The museum simultaneously published American Photographs – still for many artists the benchmark against which all photographic monographs are judged. The book begins with a portrait of American society through its individuals – cotton farmers, Appalachian miners, war veterans – and social institutions – fast food, barber shops, car culture. It closes with a survey of factory towns, hand-painted signs, country churches, and simple houses – the sites and relics that constitute the tangible expressions of American desires, despairs, and traditions.
Between 1938 and 1941, Evans produced a remarkable series of portraits in the New York City subway. They remained unpublished for twenty-five years, until 1966, when Houghton Mifflin released Many Are Called, a book of eighty-nine photographs, with an introduction by James Agee written in 1940. With a 35mm Contax camera strapped to his chest, its lens peeking out between two buttons of his winter coat, Evans was able to photograph his fellow passengers surreptitiously, and at close range. Although the setting was public, he found that his subjects, unposed and lost in their own thoughts, displayed a constantly shifting medley of moods and expressions – by turns curious, bored, amused, despondent, dreamy, and dyspeptic. “The guard is down and the mask is off,” he remarked. “Even more than in lone bedrooms (where there are mirrors), people’s faces are in naked repose down in the subway.”
Extract from Department of Photographs. “Walker Evans (1903-1975),” in Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000 on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website October 2004 [Online] Cited 08/02/2022
“These are not photographs like those of Walker Evans who in James Agee’s account in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men tookhis pictures of the bare floors and iron bedsteads of the American mid-western sharecroppers while they were out tending their failing crops, and who even, as the evidence of his negatives proves, rearranged the furniture for a ‘better shot’. The best shot that Heilig could take was one that showed things as they were and as they should not be. …
To call these ‘socially-conscious documentary’ photographs is to acknowledge the class from which the photographer [Heilig] comes, not to see them as the result of a benign visit by a more privileged individual [Evans], however well-intentioned.”
Extract from James McCardle. “Weapon,” on the On This Day In Photography website [Online] Cited 29/01/2018
Exhibition Displays Over 400 Photographs, Paintings, Graphic Ephemera and Objects from the Artist’s Personal Collection
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will be the exclusive United States venue for the retrospective exhibition Walker Evans, on view September 30, 2017, through February 4, 2018. As one of the preeminent photographers of the 20th century, Walker Evans’ 50-year body of work documents and distills the essence of life in America, leaving a legacy that continues to influence generations of contemporary photographers and artists. The exhibition will encompass all galleries in the museum’s Pritzker Center for Photography, the largest space dedicated to the exhibition, study and interpretation of photography at any art museum in the United States.
“Conceived as a complete retrospective of Evans’ work, this exhibition highlights the photographer’s fascination with American popular culture, or vernacular,” explains Clément Chéroux, senior curator of photography at SFMOMA. “Evans was intrigued by the vernacular as both a subject and a method. By elevating it to the rank of art, he created a unique body of work celebrating the beauty of everyday life.”
Using examples from Evans’ most notable photographs – including iconic images from his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression on American life; early visits to Cuba; street photography and portraits made on the New York City subway; layouts and portfolios from his more than 20-year collaboration with Fortune magazine and 1970s Polaroids – Walker Evans explores Evans’ passionate search for the fundamental characteristics of American vernacular culture: the familiar, quotidian street language and symbols through which a society tells its own story. Decidedly popular and more linked to the masses than the cultural elite, vernacular culture is perceived as the antithesis of fine art.
While many previous exhibitions of Evans’ work have drawn from single collections, Walker Evans will feature over 300 vintage prints from the 1920s to the 1970s on loan from the important collections at major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée du Quai Branly and SFMOMA’s own collection, as well as prints from private collections from around the world. More than 100 additional objects and documents, including examples of the artist’s paintings; items providing visual inspiration sourced from Evans’ personal collections of postcards, graphic arts, enamelled plates, cut images and signage; as well as his personal scrapbooks and ephemera will be on display. The exhibition is curated by the museum’s new senior curator of photography, Clément Chéroux, who joined SFMOMA in 2017 from the Musée National d’Art Moderne of the Centre Pompidou, Paris, organiser of the exhibition.
While most exhibitions devoted to Walker Evans are presented chronologically, Walker Evans‘ presentation is thematic. The show begins with an introductory gallery displaying Evans’ early modernist work whose style he quickly rejected in favour of focusing on the visual portfolio of everyday life. The exhibition then examines Evans’ captivation with the vernacular in two thematic contexts. The first half of the exhibition will focus on many of the subjects that preoccupied Evans throughout his career, including text-based images such as signage, shop windows, roadside stands, billboards and other examples of typography. Iconic images of the Great Depression, workers and stevedores, street photography made surreptitiously on New York City’s subways and avenues and classic documentary images of life in America complete this section. By presenting this work thematically, the exhibition links work separated by time and place and highlights Evans’ preoccupation with certain subjects and recurrent themes. The objects that moved him were ordinary, mass-produced and intended for everyday use. The same applied to the people he photographed – the ordinary human faces of office workers, labourers and people on the street.
“The street was an inexhaustible source of poetic finds,” describes Chéroux.
The second half of the exhibition explores Evans’ fascination with the methodology of vernacular photography, or styles of applied photography that are considered useful, domestic and popular. Examples include architecture, catalog and postcard photography as well as studio portraiture, and the exhibition juxtaposes this work with key source materials from the artist’s personal collections of 10,000 postcards, hand-painted signage and graphic ephemera (tickets, flyers, logos and brochures). Here Evans elevates vernacular photography to art, despite his disinclination to create fine art photographs. Rounding out this section are three of Evans’ paintings using vernacular architecture as inspiration. The exhibition concludes with Evans’ look at photography itself, with a gallery of photographs that unite Evans’ use of the vernacular as both a subject and a method.
About Walker Evans
Born in St. Louis, Walker Evans (1903-1975) was educated at East Coast boarding schools, Williams College, the Sorbonne and College de France before landing in New York in the late 1920s. Surrounded by an influential circle of artists, poets and writers, it was there that he gradually redirected his passion for writing into a career as a photographer, publishing his first photograph in the short-lived avant-garde magazine Alhambra. The first significant exhibition of his work was in 1938, when the Museum of Modern Art, New York presented Walker Evans: American Photographs, the first major solo exhibition at the museum devoted to a photographer.
In the 50 years that followed, Evans produced some of the most iconic images of his time, contributing immensely to the visibility of American culture in the 20th century and the documentary tradition in American photography. Evans’ best known photographs arose from his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), in which he documented the hardships and poverty of Depression-era America using a large-format, 8 x 10-inch camera. These photographs, along with his photojournalism projects from the 1940s and 1950s, his iconic visual cataloguing of the common American and his definition of the “documentary style,” have served as a monumental influence to generations of photographers and artists.
Charles DeForest Fredricks (American, 1823-1894) Inmigrantes alemanes en Buenos Aires jugando cartas / German Immigrants in Buenos Aires Playing Cards c. 1852 Daguerreotype Courtesy of Carlos G. Vertanessian
Charles DeForest Fredricks (American, 1823-1894)
Charles DeForest Fredricks (December 11, 1823 – May 25, 1894) was an American photographer.
Charles D. Fredricks was born in New York City on December 11, 1823. He learned the art of the daguerreotype from Jeremiah Gurney in New York, while he worked as a casemaker for Edward Anthony. In 1843, at the suggestion of his brother, Fredricks sailed for Angostura, today Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela. His business took him to Pará, Rio Grande do Sul, Montevideo, Buenos Aires. He enjoyed great success in South America, remaining there until some time in the early 1850s.
Following a brief period in Charleston, South Carolina, Fredricks moved to Paris in 1853. Here he became the first photographer to create life-sized portraits, which artists (like Jules-Émile Saintin) were hired to colour using pastel.
On his return to New York City, he rejoined Jeremiah Gurney, though it is not clear whether he was initially a partner or an employee. By 1854, he had developed an early process for enlarging photographs. His partnership with Gurney ended in 1855.
During the latter half of the decade he operated a studio in Havana. Here he received awards for his photographic oil colours and watercolours. During the 1860s he operated a studio on Broadway that was noted for its cartes de visites. In the early 1860s, Charles Fredricks personally photographed John Wilkes Booth (the assassin of President Lincoln) on several occasions at his studio.
He retired from photography in 1889 and died in Newark, New Jersey, five years later, on May 25, 1894.
Charles DeForest Fredricks (American, 1823-1894) Inmigrantes alemanes en Buenos Aires jugando cartas / German Immigrants in Buenos Aires Playing Cards (detail) c. 1852 Daguerreotype Courtesy of Carlos G. Vertanessian
I knew very little about Argentinian photography before researching for this posting.
Such a rich historical photographic archive – Indigenous, political, activist, performative – engaged in the dissection of national identity construction. Lots of German émigrés, lots of strong women photographers e.g. Grete Stern, Annemarie Heinrich, Julio Pantoja and Graciela Sacco.
There is a deep probing in Argentinian photography. There is the irony of the not quite right and an investigation of the dark side, of danger, fear and violence, of loss, grief, rage and resignation. As one of the sections of the exhibition is titled, of Civilisation and Barbarism. A quotation in the posting observes, “One of the most effective means to exercise control of populations in contemporary capitalism is the production of fear.” Drop dead fear.
The bloodlines of the collective consciousness of the Argentinian people run very deep. The dead ones are still there…
Apologies for the lack of photographs in The Aesthetic Gesture section, there were just no good images available.
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.
From its independence in 1810 until the economic crisis of 2001, Argentina was perceived as a modern country with a powerful economic system, a strong middle class, a large European-immigrant population, and an almost nonexistent indigenous culture. This perception differs greatly from the way that other Latin American countries have been viewed, and underlines the difference between Argentina’s colonial and postcolonial process and those of its neighbours. Comprising three hundred works by sixty artists, this exhibition examines crucial periods and aesthetic movements in which photography had a critical role, producing – and, at times, dismantling – national constructions, utopian visions, and avant-garde artistic trends.
This exhibition is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.
Contradiction and Continuity examines the complexities of Argentina’s history over 160 years, stressing the creation of contradictory narratives and the role of photography in constructing them. The exhibition concentrates on photographs that are fabricated rather than found, such as narrative tableaux and performances staged for the camera. However, it also includes examples of what has been considered documentary photography but can be interpreted as imagery intended as political propaganda or expressions of personal ideology.
The exhibition comprises seven sections: Civilization and Barbarism; National Myths: The Indigenous People; National Myths: The Gaucho; National Myths: Evita and the Modern City; The Aesthetic Gesture; The Political Gesture; and Fissures. These themes were chosen to emphasise crucial historical moments and aesthetic movements in Argentina in which photography played a critical role.
Civilisation and Barbarism
In 1845 Domingo Sarmiento (1811-1888), a prominent Argentine intellectual, published the novel Facundo, subtitled Civilization and Barbarism. Sarmiento, who would later be elected president, presented his political ideas in terms of an opposition between civilisation, represented by the capital city of Buenos Aires and European culture, and barbarism, represented by colonial customs, the gauchos, and the indigenous peoples. This section of the exhibition employs these antagonistic themes to introduce some of the complexities of Argentina’s history and culture. Nineteenth-century albums show the growth and advancement of the country through views of Buenos Aires and images that refer to progressive strategies initiated during this period, including railroad construction and the development of the educational system. In contrast, the work of several contemporary artists embodies the lifestyle and popular culture of the vast interior provinces of Argentina.
Like Sarmiento, Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810-1884), another influential intellectual, viewed immigration as a definitive measure for modernising the country. In Bases, published in 1853, he addressed the necessity of implementing policies to encourage immigration. The studio photographs in this section depict the growing presence of immigrant communities. Immigration is a key component to understanding Argentine society that continues to inspire contemporary artists.
Esteban Gonnet (French, 1830-1868) Recuerdos de Beunos Ayres / Memories of Beunos Aires 1864 Page opening: La pirámide / The Pyramid Albumen print
Benito Panunzi (Italian, 1835-1896) Monument to General San Martín c. 1860-1869 Albumen print
National Myths: The Gaucho
The National Myths section of the exhibition focuses on the construction of specific state symbols, including indigenous people, the gaucho, First Lady Eva Perón, and the city of Buenos Aires. Around 1880, coinciding with increasing waves of immigration and efforts at modernisation, an avid debate on national identity arose among Argentine intellectuals and politicians.
By 1910, when the Centennial of Independence was celebrated, the gaucho emerged as an emblematic figure in the national iconography. The gaucho was already a common theme in Costumbrista (customs and character types) paintings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Criollismo (native culture), a movement of the late nineteenth century, stimulated a wider interest in gaucho-themed art, fiction, theatre, and photographs.
José Hernández’s epic narrative poem Martín Fierro (1872) and Eduardo Gutiérrez’s novel Juan Moreira (1879) were major influences. About 1890, amateur photographer Francisco Ayerza staged a series of romanticised photographs meant to illustrate a later edition of Fierro. Commercial studios accommodated women and children who wanted to be pictured as gauchos. More than a national symbol, the gaucho embodied the idealised masculinity of the virile Argentine man; the contemporary fashion photographs of Gustavo Di Mario present a queer interpretation of the gauchesque.
Francisco Ayerza (Argentinian, 1860-1901) Estudio para la edición de “Martín Fierro,” gaucho con caballo / Study for an edition of Martín Fierro, Gaucho with Horse c. 1890, print about 1900-1905 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of a private collection
Francisco Ayerza (1860 – Buenos Aires, Argentina – 1901), was a photographic artist founding member of the Argentine Photographic Society. He formed an artistic movement in Latin America .
At the end of the 19th century, Doctor Francisco Ayerza cultivated the still new photographic art as an amateur. He was one of the organizers of the Argentine Amateur Photographic Society, the first entity of the genre created in that country.
It was at Francisco Ayerza’s house (1266 Piedad Street) where a group of gentlemen met “with the aim of forming a society of photography amateurs”, which ultimately constituted the Argentine Amateur Photographic Society (1889). The following participated in the first session: Leonardo Pereyra, who was elected president; Germán Kühr, Francisco Ayerza (secretary), José María Gutiérrez, Roberto Wernicke, Ricardo N. Murray, Fritz Büsch, Juan Quevedo, Isidro Calderón de la Barca Piñeyro, Daniel MacKinglay, Leonardo Pereyra Iraola, Fernando Steinius and Fernando Denis. …
An aspect of the immediate reality that seduced Francisco Ayerza and his friends for its picturesque appearance was the Pampa, whose geography began to be altered by machinism and immigration, as documented by some prints. From this interest in the Argentine countryside and its customs was born the idea of photographically illustrating the Martín Fierro and, although they made many shots, it could not be finished, despite the efforts made by the authors in such an exhausting task, and although the selected field to photograph was the Estancia San Juan de Pereyra, very close to Buenos Aires.
Malambo was born in the Pampas around the 1600. Malambo is a peculiar native dance that is executed by men only. Its music has no lyrics and it is based entirely on rhythm. The malambo dancer is a master of tap dancing wearing gaucho’s boots. Among the most important malambo moves are: “la cepillada” (the foot sole brushes the ground), “el repique” (a strike to the floor using the back part of the boot) and the “floreos”. Malambo dancers’ feet barely touch the ground but all moves are energetic and complex. Together with tap dancing, malambo dancers use “boleadoras” and other aids such as “lazos”. Like “Payadas” for gauchos (improve singing), malambo was *the* competition among gaucho dancers.
While the gaucho became a national myth, “official” images rarely addressed the existence of indigenous peoples. The practice of recording their presence in photography, however, was well established by the late nineteenth century. It began in the portrait studios of Buenos Aires when native caciques (chiefs) visited the capital for peaceful negotiations, or when they were brought in as prisoners and made to pose in traditional garb. Later, photographers would travel by train or wagon to Native American settlements or plantations where indigenous people worked.
These staged compositions, as in the rest of Latin America, portrayed indigenous people as exotic and passive, objectifying them and emphasising their “otherness.” Sitters were always isolated from signs of the “civilised” or “Christian” world. The iconography found in these nineteenth- and early twentieth century photographs corresponds to a nostalgic image of a backward and subjugated group ignored by progress. Modernist and contemporary artists, such as Grete Stern and Guadalupe Miles, presented a different and more accurate view of these people. Both Stern and Miles immersed themselves in indigenous communities, portraying their subjects as individuals rather than stereotypes.
Esteban Gonnet (French, 1830-1868) Cacique Tehuelche Casimiro Biguá / Tehuelche Chief, Casimiro Biguá 1864 Albumen print 14.1 x 9.7cm Courtesy of the Daniel Sale Collection Photo: Javier Augustín Rojas
Born in Grenoble, France, Esteban Gonnet moved to Argentina from Newcastle, England, in 1857. Gonnet became a photographer after arriving in Buenos Aires in 1857. He was a surveyor, working with his cousin Hippolyte Gaillard, also a surveyor.
Gonnet’s work reflected the rural lifetime and customs, showing the life and customs of Aboriginal people and paisanos of that era, although Gonnet also took photographies in urban places. In most of his photography he tried to show the typical image of the creole, stereotyping Argentine customs, and using objects as symbols that would create iconic images of the era. His photos were then sold abroad (mostly in Europe), when photography of travels or distant places where gaining in popularity. Gonnet’s innovative style of work consisted of the use of negative system rather than daguerreotype (that was the most common technique by then). Furthermore, Gonnet usually chose to take pictures outdoors instead of working at a studio, which was also his hallmark.
Antonio Pozzo (Argentinian born Italy, 1829-1910) Cacique Pincén (Chief Pincén) 1878 Printed by Samuel Rimathé, Swiss, born Italy, 1863-unknown Albumen print 20.2 x 14cm (7 15/16 x 5 1/2 in.) Collection of Diran Sirinian
Antonio Pozzo (Argentinian born Italy, 1829-1910) Cacique Pincén (Chief Pincén) Negative 1878; print c. 1900 Unknown printer, active Argentina, c. 1900 Hand-coloured halftone postcard 13.7 x 8.7cm Courtesy of the Daniel Sale Collection Photo: Javier Augustín Rojas
Sociedad Fotográfica Argentina de Aficionados (Argentine, active 1889-1926) India yagán u ona tejiendo una canasta / Yagán or Ona Woman Weaving a Basket c. 1890s Printing-out paper 21 x 17cm Courtesy of the Daniel Sale Collection Photo: Javier Augustín Rojas
Attributed to Carlos R. Gallardo (Argentinian, 1855-1938) Esperando el ataque / Waiting for the Attack 1902 Gelatin silver print 15.5 x 22cm Courtesy of the Diran Sirinian Photo: Javier Augustín Rojas
Grete Stern (9 May 1904 – 24 December 1999) was a German-Argentinian photographer. Like her husband Horacio Coppola, she helped modernise the visual arts in Argentina, and in fact presented the first exhibition of modern photographic art in Buenos Aires, in 1935. (Wikipedia)
In Berlin in 1927, Stern began taking private classes with Walter Peterhans, who was soon to become head of photography at the Bauhaus. A year later, in Peterhans’s studio, she met Ellen (Rosenberg) Auerbach, with whom she opened a pioneering studio specialising in portraiture and advertising. Named after their childhood nicknames, the studio ringl + pit embraced both commercial and avant-garde loyalties, creating proto-feminist works. In Buenos Aires during the same period, Coppola initiated his photographic experimentations, exploring his surroundings and contributing to the discourse on modernist practices across media in local cultural magazines. In 1929 he founded the Buenos Aires Film Club to introduce the most innovative foreign films to Argentine audiences. His early works show the burgeoning interest in new modes of photographic expression that led him to the Bauhaus in 1932, where he met Stern and they began their joint history.
Following the close of the Bauhaus and amid the rising threat of the Nazi powers in 1933, Stern and Coppola fled Germany. Stern arrived first in London, where her friends included activists affiliated with leftist circles and where she made her now iconic portraits of German exiles, including those of Bertolt Brecht and Karl Korsch. After traveling through Europe, camera in hand, Coppola joined Stern in London, where he pursued a modernist idiom in his photographs of the fabric of the city, tinged alternately with social concern and surrealist strangeness.
In the summer of 1935, Stern and Coppola embarked for Buenos Aires [the had married in the same year, divorcing in 1943], where they mounted an exhibition in the offices of the avant-garde magazine Sur, announcing the arrival of modern photography in Argentina. The unique character of Buenos Aires was captured in Coppola’s photographic encounters from the city’s centre to its outskirts, and in Stern’s numerous portraits of the city’s intelligentsia, from feminist playwright Amparo Alvajar to essayist Jorge Luis Borges to poet-politician Pablo Neruda.
Photography contributed substantially to the construction of the myths of Buenos Aires as the “Modern City” and Evita as the symbol of Peronism. From the 1930s into the 1950s, the capital, like other advanced cosmopolitan metropolises, continued to expand. Some of the emblematic streets and monuments of the city, such as the Obelisk (1936), Avenida 9 de Julio (begun 1935), and Avenida Corrientes (1936), were built or renovated during this period. Buenos Aires became a model of progress for photographers like Horacio Coppola and Sameer Makarius, who produced series reinforcing this view.
Photography was among the propagandistic strategies deployed by the populist Perón administration (1946-1955). Eva Duarte de Perón (1919-1952), known as Evita, had an important role during the first presidency of her husband, Juan Perón (1895-1974), and became the most enduring image of Peronist ideology. Numerous photographers contributed to building an image of Evita as both an elegant celebrity and a compassionate politician. While Juan Di Sandro, considered the father of photojournalism in Argentina, made her political life accessible through views of official events, Annemarie Heinrich helped create her “new” femininity in glamorous studio portraits. Jaime Davidovich’s installation Evita, Then and Now: A Video Scrapbook (1984) and Santiago Porter’s Evita (2008) offer contrasting – critical as well as multidimensional – views of this complex figure.
Annemarie Heinrich (9 January 1912 – 22 September 2005) was a German-born naturalised Argentine photographer, who specialised in portraits and nudity. She is known for having photographed various celebrities of Argentine cinema, such as Tita Merello, Carmen Miranda, Zully Moreno and Mirtha Legrand; as well as other cultural personalities like Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and Eva Perón.
Heinrich was born in Darmstadt and moved to Larroque, Entre Ríos Province, with her family in 1926, her father having been injured during the First World War. In 1930 she opened her first studio in Buenos Aires. Two years later she moved to a larger studio, and began photographing actors from the Teatro Colón. Her photos were also the cover of magazines such as El Hogar, Sintonía, Alta Sociedad, Radiolandia and Antena for forty years.
Heinrich’s work was shown in New York for the first time in 2016 at Nailya Alexander Gallery in the show “Annemarie Heinrich: Glamour and Modernity in Buenos Aires.” Heinrich is considered one of Argentina’s most important photographers.
Sameer Makarius was without doubt one of the most prolific photographers in Buenos Aires during the 1950s and 60s. Almost every weekend, he ventured out taking along with him his two cameras, a Leica and an Olympus, to record his new home town. Makarius arrived in Buenos Aires in 1953 and the city must have made a real impact on him. Europe was scarred and slowly recuperating, but things were completely different here. A bustling, modern, elegant plus very confident capital was waiting to be explored. Taking photographs probably helped him to find his bearings and get to know the customs of the city’s inhabitants really well. But then, everybody’s past often determines both their present and their future. Makarius had studied art in Hungary and – being an artist – was inclined to a visual approach. He started out as a painter and abstraction, in all its various ramifications, was one of the main tendencies at the time, with Makarius following suit. Still, when he came to Argentina he was already principally interested in photography. At some stage, probably between the mid and late nineteen forties, a major shift had thus taken place and it is interesting to speculate why. Maybe, Makarius switched to photography because of practical reasons. Cameras were not only widely available at the time, but also coincided perfectly with his wandering life after the end of the war. Before moving to Argentina, he visited and lived in many countries, for example France and Switzerland. And, last but not least, because of his artistic background, he already knew how to deal with composition, light and shadow.
Marjan Groothuis. “Sameer Makarius,” on the Arte Aldia website Nd [Online] Cited 03/02/2022
The gesture of “pointing out” had its origin in conceptual Argentine photography of the 1960s and 1970s. The artistic act evolved into radical actions as the sociopolitical situation in Argentina deteriorated. This section of the exhibition investigates photographs of political gestures provoked by the last dictatorship of 1976-83, in relation to the earlier conceptual practice presented in the adjacent gallery, “The Aesthetic Gesture.”
The action of showing a photograph of a person who was kidnapped or “disappeared” during the dictatorship was employed by the activist group Madres de Plaza de Mayo. In their weekly marches, the Mothers always wore white head scarves and carried photographs of their children on homemade signs demanding they “Return Alive.” With the arrival of democracy and Nunca Más (Never Again), the official 1984 report of crimes against humanity, trials of the military leaders began. However, over the next fifteen years, many of those who were culpable operated with impunity due to such regulations as the Full Stop Law (1986), the Law of Due Obedience (1987), and the Pardons Act (1990). During this time, activist artist groups, such as Grupo Etcétera… and Escombros, emerged to remind the public of crimes and atrocities, pointing out those assassins who had hoped to remain anonymous.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1937, García Uriburu began painting at an early age and, in 1954, secured his first exhibition at the local Müller Gallery. He enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires, where he received a degree in architecture, and relocated to Paris with his wife, Blanca Isabel Álvarez de Toledo, in 1965. He would later father a child named “Azul” with Blanca. His Three Graces, a sculpture in the pop art style, earned him a Grand Prize at the National Sculpture Salon in 1968. Venturing into conceptual art, he mounted an acrylic display at the Iris Clert Gallery, creating an artificial garden that set a new direction for García Uriburu’s work towards environmental activism.
He was invited to the prestigious Venice Biennale in June 1968, where García Uriburu dyed Venice’s Grand Canal using fluorescein, a pigment which turns a bright green when synthesised by microorganisms in the water. Between 1968 and 1970, he repeated the feat in New York’s East River, the Seine, in Paris, and at the mouth of Buenos Aires’ polluted southside Riachuelo.
A pioneer in what became known as land art, he created a montage in pastel colours over photographs of the scenes in 1970, allowing the unlimited photographic reproduction of the work for the sake of raising awareness of worsening water pollution, worldwide. In addition to environmental conservation he also produced works of art that showcased humanistic naturalism and an antagonism between society and nature, such as: Unión de Latinoamérica por los ríos (Latin America Union for Rivers), and No a las fronteras políticas (No to Political Borders).
Grupo Escombros was born in 1988, in full hyperinflation, as a group of street art or public art as it is usually defined. In that Argentina where the economic value of things changed hour by hour, everything seemed to collapse, including democracy reconquered at the cost of 30,000 missing and collective wounds that may never close.
When analysing this social, political and economic situation, the founding artists of the group asked themselves what would be left of the country. The answer was: “the rubble.” That day the group acquired its name. A name that today is more current than ever, because Argentina continues to collapse, relentlessly. Next to the name, and beyond the inevitable changes, there are characteristics that remained intact:
Most of the works were made outdoors, one street, a square, a cellar, an urban stream
They always express the sociopolitical reality that the country lives at that moment
It is expressed through all possible forms of communication: installations, manifestos, murals, objects, posters, poems, prints, talks, visual poems, graffiti, postcards, net art
Its members come from various disciplines: plastic, journalism, design, architecture. Their works are always collective, annulling the individualities that compose it. They do not belong to any political party or religious creed in particular. Despite constantly denouncing the conditions of absolute injustice in which the men, women and children of Argentina and Latin America live, it is a mistaken simplification to say that it is only a protest group.
Anonymous text from the Grupo Escombros website Nd [Online] 24/01/2018. No longer available online
Etcétera is a multi-disciplinary collective created in Buenos Aires in 1997. It is made up of artists with a background in poetry, theater, visual arts and music. Its original purpose was to bring artistic expression closer to places of social conflict and shift these problems to cultural production spaces. These experiences take place at contemporary art venues such as museums, galleries and cultural centres, but also in the streets, at festivals, during protests and demonstrations, using different strategies including contextual and ephemeral public interventions. They consider themselves part of the “committed art” movement. In 2005, they created the Fundación del Movimiento Internacional Errorista (International Errorist Movement Foundation) with other artists and activists. This international organisation seeks to consolidate error as a life philosophy. The co-founders of the collective, Loreto Garín Guzmán y Federico Zukerfeld, are responsible for coordinating all activities, archives and other initiatives since 2007.
Escrache: Intimidatory action by citizens against persons in the political, administrative or military sphere, which consists in disseminating information about the abuses committed during their administration to their private homes or to any public place where they are identified.
Graciela Sacco (Argentina, Rosario, 1956 – November 5, 2017) was a visual artist and teacher from Argentina. She worked mainly with photography, video and installation.She received great recognition for the wide participation of his work in individual and collective exhibitions in his country, fairs and international biennials as those in Mexico, Venice and Shanghai , the most important worldwide… She was an artist committed to the problems of her country. …
Through light, shadows, space, time and movement, she captures the themes he addresses, builds, dialogues and discusses in his works; her first technical interest was photography as a visual language to portray time in a certain space, a certain context lived in a fixed image, navigating analogue and digital media, working with techniques such as Heliography , through which she transfers images to the surface of objects chosen for their compositions, which have been previously emulsified with photosensitive substances which allows their printing and thus provide wooden blocks, acrylic sheets, PVC, paintings, windows, suitcases, dishes, spoons, knives of new meanings and meanings that speak beyond their own meaning; how to use an empty spoon with the “reflection” of the mouth that will eat from it to talk about a society that goes hungry and needs, because as she herself has said: “we are individuals different from each other in their personal growth, but with shared or unresolved needs that unite us and relate”. For this reason Bocanada (1993-2014) and “Body to Body” (1996-2014) become an active work as long as the situation is repeated or is not solved (societies with hunger and ignored basic needs), will remain valid, in force and it can be traced and displayed as many times as necessary.
The first was a set of images reproduced and multiplied, a technique that took from the media and its means to advertise and promote ideas, events, news and products, but through art, taking advantage of the reproducibility of the same product, worth the redundancy, of modernity in the technification and technological evolution of the visual arts. It was born from the urban interventions that Sacco practiced in schools and public squares in Argentina, Brazil and European cities, in which she painted the streets with the image repeated hundreds of times of open mouths, which portray the hunger of the world, the poverty, the need, humility, problems that affect much of the world and that are of human and universal interest, anyone can understand or arouse.
Hence, the work can be reinterpreted anywhere in the world, alluding to the context in which it is presented. As in the second work mentioned in which is not hunger but protests and public demonstrations to claim rights and welfare of student and civil communities, then take advantage of public space as the space of free thought where they can be transformed, evidence and manifest the plurality of ideas and get the support or rejection of their listeners.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the art scene in Argentina fostered a radical break with traditional forms of art. The opening of new spaces dedicated to experimental art, most notably the Instituto Torcuato di Tella and CAyC (Centro de Arte y Comunicación), gave rise to conceptual art and the engagement of intellectual artists, who began to generate works in unconventional forms, including performances, actions, and installations.
Among these innovations was the “aesthetic gesture,” in which artists used actions and performances to “point out” or signal everyday life events, objects, and people, thus transforming them into works of art. Documented primarily with photographs, these pieces sought to invoke viewers as active participants in artistic actions, erasing the divisions between art and life. In his 1962 Vivo-Dito manifesto, for example, Alberto Greco advocated for “a living art”; and in his Signaling series of 1968, Edgardo Antonio Vigo “pointed out” common objects and events with the intention of producing aesthetic experiences. The difficult political climate of repression in the early 1970s, which culminated in the dictatorship period, provoked artists to undertake increasingly political productions.
The democracy restored to Argentina in 1983 followed a neoliberal model, one that favoured free-market capitalism. The implementation of neoliberalism, during the presidency of Carlos Menem (1989-99), together with the catastrophic economic collapse of 2001, provoked the questioning of long-held national ideals. The works in this section utilise architecture to highlight aspects of national history in relation to current sociopolitical issues. Santiago Porter’s photographs reflect the prosperity of the past in contrast to the present fiscal situation. Similarly, Nuna Mangiante’s graphite-altered pictures revolve around the 2001 crisis and, specifically, the corralito (when citizens were not allowed to withdraw their money from banks).
The works in this section stress inequality and its consequences in contemporary Argentina. SUB, Photographic Cooperative’s series A puertas cerradas (Behind Closed Gates) documents the comfortable life of a wealthy family in a gated neighbourhood outside Buenos Aires, while Gian Paolo Minelli’s photographs focus on people living in Barrio Piedrabuena, an impoverished neighbourhood in the capital city. Ananké Asseff’s portraits of middle-class citizens with their guns attest to rising fear and paranoia in contemporary Argentine society.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Argentina opened up to several waves of immigration, mostly European, which arrived through the port of Buenos Aires. The country also experienced strong waves of emigration: the first was in the 40s and was followed by two of a more political nature. One during the political persecution at universities under the dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía and the second following the coup in 1976. None however compared with the emigration that took place as from December 2001, when unemployment reached 22%.
Black-and-white TV began to be broadcast during Peron’s regime. The inaugural transmission showed Evita’s speaking from Plaza de Mayo. Color TV arrived under the military dictatorship of 1978, in time to broadcast soccer’s World Cup.
Alessandra Sanguinetti (1968, New York, New York) is an American photographer. Born in New York, Sanguinetti moved to Argentina at the age of two and lived there until 2003. Sanguinetti has stated that she began taking photographs to create a sense of permanence in her life after realising that “everything is transitory.” Currently, she lives in San Francisco, California.
Her most involved project is a documentary photography project about two cousins – Guillermina and Belinda – as they grow up outside of Buenos Aires. The project began in 1999 when Sanguinetti visited her grandmother, Juana, in Argentina. She intended to take pictures of the animals which occupied her grandmother’s rural farm. However, she saw potential in her cousins, whom she had previously disregarded. Sanguinetti recounts this, “I was shooting them without even thinking it was work. My first idea was to just do a single story trying to figure out what they imagined life to be, just so I could get into their world.” Titled The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams, the project follows them as they fantasise about becoming adults, early motherhood, and becoming young women while their relationship changes. In this particular collection of photographs, Alessandra makes commentaries about feminine conventions of beauty and behaviour, as well as gender roles and gender identity. She occasionally ridicules social expectations through her images, which are often satirical in nature. These commentaries are best typified in Petals (2000) and The Couple (1999). Her images focus on the lives of young women and children. Sanguinetti told Vice reporter, Bruno Bayley, “Children are fascinating… As a society, we project so much of our hopes, frustrations, denials, and aspirations on children, and they are so transparent in how they reflect everything that is thrust upon them. How could I not photograph them?”
One of the most effective means to exercise control of populations in contemporary capitalism is the production of fear.
To talk about one of my projects, in “Potential” I worked on the reaction of contemporary society when facing fear, and I got involved with Argentinian society more directly when I photographed the middle and upper classes with weapons in their houses. In this country, this is not something socially accepted, on the contrary. The embedded image of people carrying weapons is something associated with low-income earners and criminals. I put into question the prototype of the “suspect” that is generated by each society, but this issue, like all the other aspects that make up this project, goes beyond Argentinian society. It is something that involves us on a global level. At the time I made this work, people talked exhaustively about the lack of safety in Argentina and terrorism around the world. At the time I lived in Germany for a while (I got a scholarship from KHM) and the sense of insecurity was evident there as well, the weariness before someone unknown approaching or the presence of a stranger (a feeling that was much stronger if the other person looked like they were from the Middle East). Everything was exacerbated and worsened by the obsession of the mass media which propagated fear and terror in society. How awake we had to be (and still have to be) to avoid succumbing to these manipulations!
As Leonor Arfuch says, “certain registers of contemporary communication, certain topics and media obsessions allow the defining, and building, of tendentious trends and consensus, shared beliefs and feelings that invade our intimate and family structures, thus spreading easily into our personal history.”
Fear is a feeling that’s experienced individually but built within a society.
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) The Bubble 1898, printed 1905 Platinum print 24.2 x 19.3cm (9 1/2 x 7 5/8 in.) Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
A sense of the beyond
I have waited over nine years to be able to do a posting on this artist. This is the first retrospective of Clarence H. White’s photographs in a generation… and my first posting for 2018. What a beauty the posting is, and what beauty is contained within, his photographs.
White was born in Newark, Ohio (see map below) in 1871. Just to put that into perspective, of the big three Alfred Stieglitz was born in 1871, Edward Steichen in 1879 and Paul Strand in 1890. Soon after marrying his wife in 1893 White took up photography, applying some of his artistic vision, developed earlier through filling sketchbooks with pencil sketches, pen-and-ink drawings and watercolours, to the craft of photography. “He learned how to use light, or the lack of it, to draw attention to his subject. He also learned how to visualise his subjects in his mind.” He was completely self-taught, “in part because he had no money to pay for training or courses at the time when he was developing his own vision in the medium. Many of his friends, students and biographers believe his lack of any formal training was one of his greatest strengths… It is important to note that at that time there were no formal schools of photography in the U.S. or even acknowledged leaders with whom White might have studied.”1
In 1895, he exhibited his first photos in public, at the Camera Club of Fostoria, Ohio, and by 1898 he had met Fred Holland Day and Alfred Stieglitz. His star continued to rise, White having solo exhibitions in 1899 at the Camera Club of New York and at the Boston Camera Club, and he also exhibited in the London Photographic Salon organised by The Linked Ring. In 1900 White was elected to membership in The Linked Ring and in 1901 White and 10 others to become “charter members” of the Photo-Secession, a group founded by Alfred Stieglitz to promote Pictorialism and fine art photography. Due to financial constraints during this time, White was only able to create about 8 photographs each month, and he had to photograph either very early in the morning, after he finished work as a bookkeeper, or at the weekend. Some of his most memorable images were created at this time, before his move to New York in 1906. As Cathleen A. Branciaroli and William Inness Homer observe in “The Artistry of Clarence H. White”, “White is most significant in the history of photography because, in his early years, he redefined the nature of picture-making, creating a distinctly modern idiom for his own time…. He reduced his compositions to very simple elements of form, and by experimenting with principles of design derived largely from Whistler and Japanese prints, he created a personal style that was unique for photography.”2
If the photograph consumes light, then Clarence H. White was consumed by photography. Informed by the widespread Japonisme of the period, especially ukiyo-e prints (the term ukiyo-e translates as “picture[s] of the floating world”) with their flat perspective, unmodulated colours and outlined forms – his photographs “sought to capture either the geometry of perceived pattern or the gorgeous effect of shimmering light… qualities of image that the camera, conjoining realism and poetic perception, could render with compelling effect.”3 We now group these kind of photographs under the label “pictorialism,” soft-focus photographs that were more than purely representational, that project “an emotional intent into the viewer’s realm of imagination.”4 Here, an “atmosphere” (formulated, created, conceptualised, captured) is the key to conveying an expressive mood and an emotional response to the viewer “through an emphasis on the atmospheric elements in the picture and by the use of “vague shapes and subdued tonalities … [to convey] a sense of elegiac melancholy.””5
After his move to New York in 1906, White and Stieglitz “jointly created a series of photographs of two models, Mabel Cramer and another known only as Miss Thompson,” in 1907. This was the only time that Stieglitz ever worked with another photographer. “In 1908 Stieglitz continued to show his admiration for White by devoting an entire issue of Camera Work to him and 16 of his photographs. It was only the third time Stieglitz had singled out an individual photographer for this honor (the others were Steichen and Coburn).”6 In 1910, White set up the Seguinland School of Photography, the first independent school of photography in America, while in 1912 he had a terminal falling out with the excessive ego of Stieglitz. “First Käsebier, then White and finally Steichen broke off their relationship with Stieglitz, each citing Stieglitz’s overbearing ego, his refusal to consider other’s viewpoints and his repeated actions on behalf of the Photo-Secession without consulting any of the so-called “members” of the group.”7
Encouraged by his newfound freedom to act outside of the shadow of Stieglitz, White founded the Clarence H. White School of Photography in 1914… an influential school which, over the next decade, “attracted many students who went on to become notable photographers, including Margaret Bourke-White, Anton Bruehl, Dorothea Lange, Paul Outerbridge, Laura Gilpin, Ralph Steiner, Karl Struss, Margaret Watkins and Doris Ulmann.”8 In his class “The Art of Photography” White stressed that the primary thing his students had to learn was “the capacity to see.” White became one of the most important teachers of photography of the age. White died suddenly of a heart attack while on a trip to Mexico with students to take his first photographs in years. He was 54 years old.
After Alfred Stieglitz died in 1946 numerous photographs by White were found in his personal collection. Despite their differences, it is obvious that Stieglitz held White in very high regard, “one of the very few who understand what the Photo-Session means & is.”9 “Although White and Stieglitz had tried to reconcile their differences before White died, Stieglitz never forgave White for breaking from him in 1912. Upon hearing about White’s untimely death, Stieglitz wrote to Kuehn, “Poor White. Cares and vexation. When I last saw him he told me he was not able to cope with [life as well as he was] twenty years ago. I reminded him that I warned him to stay in business in Ohio – New York would be too much for him. But the Photo-Session beckoned. Vanity and ambitions. His photography went to the devil.” In spite of these words, Stieglitz had 49 of White’s photographs, including 18 created jointly with Stieglitz, in his personal collection when he died.”10
There is something undeniable in what Stieglitz says. White’s greatest photographs emerge from the Stygian dusk, a dash of melancholy, a lot of beauty, mostly before he moved to New York. It says a lot that Stieglitz still thought that much of him as an artist, a man, and as an emasculated friend, that he kept nearly 50 of his photographs in his personal collection until he died. Stieglitz knew the nature of (his) genius.
The value of self-expression and direct engagement with experience
Clarence H. White’s artistic achievements may have been overshadowed by the likes of Stieglitz, Steichen and Strand’s later modernist photographs, but there is no doubt in my mind that he is a colossus, a monster in the history of art photography. Simply put, there is no one else like him in the history of photography, for you can always recognise the “signature” of a White photograph.
Peter Bunnell notes, “[White] celebrated elemental things, the time spent playing in the fields or woods, the simple pleasure of unhurried living, the playing of games in interior spaces…. White, growing up within an extended family, knowing nothing else, had no real sense of other societies and his pictures thus had a kind of fortification against the outside. They were his private epic.”12 His private epic was a personal mythology which expressed his personality and distinctive sentiments through his photographs of imagined worlds. This is the critical thing that makes him so different from other photographers of the period: he was beholden to no movement, no school, teacher or narrative – but only to himself. In his best photographs it was this private world writ large in light that made him famous.
His “masterful reinterpretation of the possibilities of light and the photographic medium done with artistic intent”11 allowed him to develop this personal mythology. White learned how to visualise his subjects in his imagination, before rendering them by drawing in light. His unique prints, made in a variety of processes (platinum, gum-platinum, palladium, gum-palladium, gum, glycerin developed platinum, cyanotype and hand-coated platinum) with the same image sometimes printed using different processes,13 celebrate “pure photography”, a cerebral, ethereal emanation of pure light and form. They seem not of this earth. Indeed, I would argue that White steps outside strict Pictorialism into this “other”, private realm.
There may be, as Peter Bunnell suggests, a luminosity of tone in his prints rarely achieved in the history of photography, but there was also a luminosity in his thinking, in the way he approaches the medium itself. I look at the photograph The Deluge (c. 1902-1903, below) and I think of William Blake. I look at the three versions of the photograph Spring – A Triptych [Letitia Felix] (1898, below) and observe how each iteration is different (in colour, tone and inflection), but how they are just as valid as each other. There are personal, domestic quotidian scenes (Blindmans’ Bluff, 1898 or Mother was living in the old home alone, 1902); mythic scenes, such as the glorious photograph The Bubble (1898, above) where the figure seems to hover above the ground (“pictures of the floating world”); and early Modernist inclinations such as Drops of Rain (1903, below) and Newport the Maligned (1907, below). But above all, there is the light which shines from within.
Further, his was a whole art aligned perhaps subconsciously, perhaps not, to that German Art Nouveau movement named after the Munich periodical Die Jugend (‘Youth’) – Jugendstijl. “A decorative art with the mid-century idea of the gesamtkunstwerk; the ‘total work of art’ applied in Wagner’s opera and in Dülfer’s architecture, Jugendstil before 1900 favoured floral motifs and ukiyo-e prints of Japanese art.” Evidence of this ‘total work of art’ (an expression of folk legend as universal humanist fable), can be seen in the few Pictorialist works from the late 1890s that survive in their original exhibition frames (see below). The plain dark wood frames with their curved tops serve to further isolate and flatten the pictorial space of the photograph; the dark colour of the wood pushing against the luminosity, line, form and reddish brown colour of the prints. The last version of Spring – A Triptych (Letitia Felix) (1898, below) is particularly illuminating in this respect, the dark wood framing the individual panels fragmenting the field upon which the young woman stands, so that we are no longer in a fairytale landscape (as in the first iteration) but surrounded by writhing tree trunks of sombre hue with a ghost-like presence walking amongst them. And then we see how these photographs were originally exhibited!
In Display of Clarence H. White photographs in Newark Camera Club exhibition, Young Men’s Christian Association building, Newark, Ohio, 1899 (below) we observe, we are witness to, a flow of energy from one side of the wall to the other – none of this staid singular hanging “on the line” – but a dynamic narrative that moves the viewer both physically and mentally. How wondrous is this display! An then in William Herman Rau’s photograph Untitled [Clarence H. White works in Second Philadelphia Photographic Salon installation (1899, below) we see a networked display, almost a cross-like shape, with portraits surrounding what looks like a central landscape image (although it is difficult to make out exactly what the image is). This is an almost contemporary sequencing of photographic work, still used by the likes of Annette Messager today… a perfect example of gesamtkunstwerk, where White has fully understood concept, narrative, form, function, the physicality of the photograph, it’s frame, and the context and environment of the image display.
To me, the early prints of Clarence H. White give the sense that he has found a metaphor, but he is not sure what that metaphor relates to: a cosmology? / man creating something of wonder (when viewed with imagination)?
He is still working it out… and then he goes to New York. Does it matter that he didn’t find the answer? A thing that is done as a reaction to a situation. Not at all. It’s the journey that matters.
The sense of ethereal beauty and the beyond that he captured on his glass plates are enough to make him a genius in my eyes. “Images arising from dreams are the well spring of all our efforts to give enduring form and meaning to the urgencies within,” states Douglas Fowler.14 White’s oneiric photographs, and our prior experiences with dreaming and imagination, help to create a sense of oneness with his photographs. Ultimately, his private epic, his personal mythology brought these aspects of art into photography.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Princeton University Art Museum for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the art work for a larger version of the image.
2/ Cathleen A. Branciaroli and William Inness Homer. “The Artistry of Clarence H. White,” in Homer, William Innes (ed.). Symbolism of Light: The Photographs of Clarence H. White. Wilmington, DE: Delaware Art Museum, 1977, p. 34
4/ “Pictorialism is the name given to an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer has somehow manipulated what would otherwise be a straightforward photograph as a means of “creating” an image rather than simply recording it. Typically, a pictorial photograph appears to lack a sharp focus (some more so than others), is printed in one or more colours other than black-and-white (ranging from warm brown to deep blue) and may have visible brush strokes or other manipulation of the surface. For the pictorialist, a photograph, like a painting, drawing or engraving, was a way of projecting an emotional intent into the viewer’s realm of imagination.”
Anonymous. “Pictorialism,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 02/01/2018
5/ Naomi Rosenblum. A World History of Photography. New York: Abbeville Press, 1989, p. 297 quoted in Anonymous. “Pictorialism,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 02/01/2018
7/ Maynard Pressley White Jr. Clarence H. White: A Personal Portrait. Wilmington, Delaware: University of Delaware, PhD dissertation, 1975 quoted in Anonymous. “Clarence Hudson White,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 02/01/2018
8/ Lucinda Barnes (ed.) with Constance W. Glenn and Jane L. Bledsoe. A Collective Vision: Clarence H. White and His Students. Long Beach, CA: University Art Museum, 1985 in Anonymous. “Clarence Hudson White,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 02/01/2018
9/ Maynard Pressley White Jr. Clarence H. White: A Personal Portrait. Wilmington, Delaware: University of Delaware, PhD dissertation, 1975, p. 175 quoted in Anonymous. “Clarence Hudson White,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 02/01/2018
10/ Weston J. Naef. The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz, Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography. NY: Viking Press, 1978, pp. 482-493 quoted in Anonymous. “Clarence Hudson White,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 02/01/2018
11/ Peter Bunnell. Clarence H. White: The Reverence for Beauty. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Gallery of Fine Arts, 1986, p. 17 quoted in Anonymous. “Clarence Hudson White,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 02/01/2018
13/ “White sometimes printed the same image using different processes, and as a result there are significant variations in how some of his prints appear. His platinum prints have a deep magenta-brown tone, for example, whereas his gum prints have a distinct reddish hue. Photogravures of his images in Camera Work, which he considered to be true prints, were more neutral, tending toward warm black-and-white tones.”
Maynard Pressley White Jr. Clarence H. White: A Personal Portrait. Wilmington, Delaware: University of Delaware, PhD dissertation, 1975, p. 68 quoted in Anonymous. “Clarence Hudson White,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 02/01/2018
14/ Douglas Fowler. The Kingdom of Dreams in Literature and Film: Selected Papers from the Tenth Annual Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film. Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida, 1986, p. 10 quoted in Anonymous. “Oneiric (film theory),” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 03/01/2018
Newark, Ohio – where Clarence H. White was born and taught himself photography
Lecture Clarence H White and His World
Anne McCauley, curator of the exhibition and David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art, explores the legacy of one of the early twentieth century’s most gifted photographers and influential teachers. Program took place on Saturday, October 14, 2017.
Clarence H. White Analysis and Collaborative Discovery
Collaboration with Yale Reveals Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Photographic Processes
Preparations for the first retrospective exhibition in a generation of pioneer photographer Clarence Hudson White (1871-1925) have inspired an unexpected collaboration between the Princeton University Art Museum and the Yale Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. Immersed in the real-life setting of the Princeton University Art Museum, the project drew students, researchers, and curators from across two universities and from numerous disciplines to analyse the experimental techniques that took place during the “Pictorialism” period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Unknown photographer Display of Clarence H. White photographs in Newark Camera Club exhibition, Young Men’s Christian Association building, Newark, Ohio, 1899 1899
Unknown photographer Jury of the Second Philadelphia Photographic Salon 1899
Photograph shows, from left: Frances Benjamin Johnston, Clarence H. White, F. Holland Day, Gertrude Käsebier, and Henry Troth
William Herman Rau (1855-1920) Untitled [Clarence H. White works in Second Philadelphia Photographic Salon installation] 1899
Photograph shows a wall installation of photographs by Clarence H. White at the second exhibition of the Philadelphia Photographic Salon; according to the catalog for the exhibition, the works shown are “Fear”, “Morning”, “A Puritan”, “The Bubble”, “Lady in Black”, “Evening : An Interior”, “On the Old Stair”, “At the Old Canal Lock”, and “Lady with the Venus.” Also includes a portrait, presumably of White, half-length, facing right.
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) A Rift in the Clouds 1896 Platinum print Image (window): 10.3 x 13.9cm (4 1/16 x 5 1/2 in.) Frame: 28.6 × 36.2cm (11 1/4 × 14 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) A Rift in the Clouds 1896 Platinum print Image (window): 10.3 x 13.9cm (4 1/16 x 5 1/2 in.) Frame: 28.6 × 36.2cm (11 1/4 × 14 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
White was completely self-taught throughout his career, in part because he had no money to pay for training or courses at the time when he was developing his own vision in the medium. Many of his friends, students and biographers believe his lack of any formal training was one of his greatest strengths. When a one-man exhibition of his work was held in Newark in 1899, fellow Newark photographer Ema Spencer wrote, “He has been remote from artistic influences and is absolutely untrained in the art of the schools. In consequence, traditional lines have unconsciously been ignored and he has followed his own personal bent because he has been impelled by that elusive and inscrutable force commonly known as genius.” It is also important to note that at that time there were no formal schools of photography in the U.S. or even acknowledged leaders with whom White might have studied. The most common way a new photographer learned the trade was by working with an experienced photographer, and, other than a few portraitists, there was no one to learn from in Newark.
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) The Girl with the Violin 1897 Platinum print with gouache in original frame Image: 14.7 x 14cm (5 13/16 x 5 1/2 in.) Frame: 22.9 x 22.4cm (9 x 8 13/16 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) The Deluge c. 1902-1903 Gum bichromate print Image (arched top): 20.2 x 16.2cm (7 15/16 x 6 3/8 in.) Frame: 43.8 × 36.2 × 3.2cm (17 1/4 × 14 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Just a Line 1897 Platinum print in original frame Image: 19.2 x 13.3cm (7 9/16 x 5 1/4 in.) Frame: 28.8 x 22.9cm (11 5/16 x 9 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Climbing the Hill 1897 Platinum print with gouache in original frame Image: 20 x 16cm (7 7/8 x 6 5/16 in.) Frame: 34.5 x 30.5cm (13 9/16 x 12 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) At the Window 1896, printed 1897 Platinum print in original frame Image: 20.4 x 14.2cm (8 1/16 x 5 9/16 in.) Frame: 29.8 x 22.9cm (11 3/4 x 9 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
“These photographs [above] are among the few Pictorialist works from the late 1890s that survive in their original exhibition frames.”
Wall text from the exhibition
Gertrude L. Brown (approximately 1870-1934) Clarence H. White (seated center), Gertrude Käsebier (seated right), and students, Summer School of Photography, Five Islands, Maine c. 1913 Clarence H. White School of Photography
“My photographs were less sharp than others and I do not think it was because of the lens so much as the conditions under which the photographs were made – never in the studio, always in the home or in the open, and when out of doors at a time of day very rarely selected for photography.”
Clarence H. White
“I think that if I were asked to name the most subtle and refined master photography has produced, that I would name him… To be a true artist in photography one must also be an artist in life, and Clarence H. White was such an artist.”
Alvin Langdon Coburn
“What he brought to photography was an extraordinary sense of light. ‘The Orchard’ is bathed in light. ‘The Edge of the Woods’ is a tour de force of the absence of light.”
Beaumont Newhall
“Clarence White’s poetic vision and sensitive intuition produced images that insinuate themselves deeply into one’s consciousness.”
Edward Steichen
“[White] celebrated elemental things, the time spent playing in the fields or woods, the simple pleasure of unhurried living, the playing of games in interior spaces… White, growing up within an extended family, knowing nothing else, had no real sense of other societies and his pictures thus had a kind of fortification against the outside. They were his private epic.”
“The qualities that make White’s photographs memorable have to do with both form and content. In his finest pictures the disposition of every element, of each line and shape, is elevated to an expressive intensity few photographers managed to attain. … White was able to transform the sensory perception of light into an exposition of the most fundamental aspect of photography – the literal materialisation of form through light itself. His prints, mostly in the platinum medium, display a richness, a subtlety, and a luminosity of tone rarely achieved in the history of photography.”
Peter Bunnell
Innovative American Photographer Clarence H. White Receives First Retrospective in a Generation
The vision and legacy of photographer Clarence H. White (1871-1925), a leader in the early twentieth-century effort to position photography as an art, will be the focus of a major traveling exhibition organised by the Princeton University Art Museum. The first retrospective devoted to the photographer in over a generation, Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895-1925 will survey White’s career from his beginnings in 1895 in Ohio to his death in Mexico in 1925.
On view at the Princeton University Art Museum from October 7, 2017, through January 7, 2018, the exhibition will draw on the Clarence H. White Collection at the Museum and the deep holdings at the Library of Congress as well as loans from other public and private collections. Clarence H. White and His World reasserts White’s place in the American canon and, in the process, reshapes and expands our understanding of early twentieth-century American photography.
White’s career spans the radical shifts in photographic styles and status from the Kodak era of the 1890s; the corresponding fight for art photography primarily associated with his friend and fellow photographer Alfred Stieglitz; and the postwar rise of advertising and fashion photography. While living in a small town in Ohio, White received international recognition for his beautiful scenes of quiet domesticity and his sensitivity to harmonious, two-dimensional composition. With his move to New York in 1906, he became renowned as a teacher, first at Teachers College with Arthur Wesley Dow, then in the summer school he established in Maine, and finally with the Clarence H. White School of Photography, founded in 1914. Among his students were some of the most influential artistic and commercial photographers of the early twentieth century: Laura Gilpin, Doris Ulmann, Paul Outerbridge, Ralph Steiner, Margaret Watkins, Dorothea Lange, Karl Struss, Anton Bruehl and hundreds more who did not become professional photographers but were shaped by White’s belief that art could enrich the lives of everyday Americans.
“The goal of the exhibition is to locate White’s own diverse and rich body of work within a period of great social and aesthetic change, from the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties,” said Anne McCauley, exhibition curator and David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art at Princeton. “Far from staying stuck in the nineteenth century, White embraced new media like cinema and new commercial uses for photography, including fashion and advertising.”
The exhibition will feature photographs by White’s fellow Photo-Secessionists and his students as well as a selection of paintings and prints by other artists whom he knew and admired, and was influenced by or whose work he shaped, including William Merritt Chase, Thomas Dewing, Max Weber, Edmund Tarbell and John Alexander.
Also explored within the exhibition are White’s links to the American Arts and Crafts movement, his embrace of socialism, his radically modern representations of childhood, and his complicated printing and framing processes. Of particular note is his lifelong investment in photographing the nude model, culminating in series that he made with Alfred Stieglitz in 1907 and with Paul Haviland in 1909, brought together here for the first time.
“As an artist and a teacher, White emerges as one of the essential American innovators of the early twentieth century, dedicated to the creation of beauty,” notes James Steward, Nancy A. Nasher – David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director. “Through significant new archival research and bringing together works not seen in one setting since the artist’s lifetime, this exhibition and publication aim to reaffirm White’s astonishing accomplishments.”
After premiering at the Princeton University Art Museum, the exhibition travels to the Davis Museum, Wellesley College (February 7-June 3, 2018), the Portland Museum of Art, Maine (June 30-September 16, 2018) and the Cleveland Museum of Art (October 21, 2018-January 21, 2019). The exhibition is accompanied by a sumptuous 400-page catalogue by Anne McCauley, published by the Princeton University Art Museum and distributed by Yale University Press, with contributions by Peter C. Bunnell, Verna Posever Curtis, Perrin Lathrop, Adrienne Lundgren, Barbara L. Michaels, Ying Sze Pek and Caitlin Ryan.
Press release from the Princeton University Art Museum
The Clarence H. White School of Photography
In 1910, to augment his courses in New York City and bring in extra income, White opened a summer school for photography. Named the Seguinland School of Photography, it was housed in a hotel, which was to be part of the new “Seguinland” resort on the mid-coast of Maine near Georgetown and Seguin Island. Pictorialist photographer F. Holland Day, who summered nearby, had earlier invited White and his family to the area for a respite from the city and the opportunity to explore creative photography outdoors. The fellowship between the two photographers and their families was an important factor in White’s decision to start the summer school. Students wore sailor suits, a practice begun by Day and his summer guests, and boarded at the Seguinland Hotel. Day regularly conducted critiques for White’s students, as on occasion did New York photographer Gertrude Käsebier. After 1912, the Pilot House adjacent to the hotel served as the school’s studio and darkroom. Among the students attracted to the idyllic coastal setting was the Pictorialist Anne W. Brigman from Northern California, who made the pilgrimage to Maine during an eight-month visit to the East Coast. White’s summer school in Maine lasted until 1915, when White relocated to northwestern Connecticut’s Berkshire Hills for summers. He reintroduced a summer school there, first in East Canaan, and then in Canaan that lasted until his death.
In the fall of 1914, the Clarence H. White School of Photography opened its doors at 230 E. 11th St. in New York City. This was the first of four locations for the school in the burgeoning art and publishing capital. White’s first instructor for art appreciation and design between 1914 and 1918 was avant-garde painter Max Weber, who often posed for the students. When Weber left, White hired one of his Columbia students, Charles J. Martin.
In 1917 the school occupied the “Washington Irving House” at 122 E. 17th St. at the corner of Irving Place near Union Square and Gramercy Park. Three years later, when that location was no longer available, the Clarence H. White Realty Corp. was formed in order to purchase a building for the school, and the White School resettled again, at 460 W. 144th St., where it remained until 1940. The uptown location provided a meeting place for White’s Columbia classes. From the 1920s on, photographer Edward Steichen was among those who served regularly as guest lecturers. White students paid $150 per semester, a fee that held constant until the school’s closing.
After Clarence White’s unexpected death in 1925, friends urged his widow to carry on despite the fact that his personality had been crucial to the advancement of the school. Though Jane Felix White was not a photographer herself, she took on the challenge and remained the school’s director until her retirement in 1940, when her youngest son, Clarence H. White Jr., took over. Jane and Clarence Jr. recruited more students, raising the enrolment to 106 by 1939. With greater numbers came significant changes: twice as many men as women (a reversal of the previous 2-to-1 ratio of women to men) and new classes. Art integrated with technique – the school’s previous hallmark – was no longer central to the curriculum. Nonetheless, the school continued to prosper, and its reputation surpassed other competitors, such as the New York Institute of Photography, a commercial school established in 1910, and the Studio School of Art Photography, which began in 1920 and continued a strict orientation toward the soft-focus, Pictorialist style. A poorly timed and costly move to larger, more centrally located quarters at 32 West 74th Street in 1940, however, soon helped bring about its closure. The mobilisation for World War II dealt the White School its final blow. After surviving for three decades, it closed its doors in 1942.
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Spring – A Triptych (Letitia Felix) 1898 Gum bichromate prints with graphite Image (1): 16.8 x 2.7cm (6 5/8 x 1 1/16 in.) Image (2): 20.7 x 9.8cm (8 1/8 x 3 7/8 in.) Image (3): 16.8 x 2.7cm (6 5/8 x 1 1/16 in.) Frame: 34 x 28.5 x .5cm (13 3/8 x 11 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Arthur Wesley Dow (American, 1857-1922) Spring Landscape 1892 Oil on canvas University of Michigan Museum of Art
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) The Orchard 1902 Palladium print 24.3 x 19.1cm (9 9/16 x 7 1/2 in.)
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) What shall I say? 1896, printed after 1917 Palladium print Image: 14.8 × 17.3cm (5 13/16 × 6 13/16 in.) Frame: 43.8 × 36.2 × 3.2cm (17 1/4 × 14 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Girl with Mirror 1898 Varnished palladium print George Eastman Museum, purchase
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Evening Interior c. 1899 Platinum print
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Untitled [Male academic nude] c. 1900 Waxed platinum print Image: 22.7 x 14.7cm (8 15/16 x 5 13/16 in.) Frame: 51.4 × 41.3 × 3.2cm (20 1/4 × 16 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) The Ring Toss 1899 Palladium print
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Untitled [Portrait of F. Holland Day with Male Nude] 1902 Platinum print 24.2 x 18.8cm (9 1/2 x 7 3/8 in.) Gilman Collection, Purchase, Harriette and Noel Levine Gift, 2005 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Untitled [F. Holland Day lighting a cigarette] 1902 Cyanotype Image: 24.2 x 19.2cm (9 1/2 x 7 9/16 in.) Frame: 43.8 × 36.2 × 3.2cm (17 1/4 × 14 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) The Boy with His Wagon [1/3] 1898 Platinum print Sheet: 17.7 x 15.5cm (6 15/16 x 6 1/8 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) “Blindman’s Bluff” 1898 Platinum print Library of Congress
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Drops of Rain 1903 Platinum print Image: 21.1 × 16.2cm (8 5/16 × 6 3/8 in.) Frame: 51.4 × 41.3 × 3.2cm (20 1/4 × 16 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Winter Landscape 1903 Photogravure
Leon Dabo (July 9, 1864 – November 7, 1960) was an American tonalist landscape artist best known for his paintings of New York, particularly the Hudson Valley. His paintings were known for their feeling of spaciousness, with large areas of the canvas that had little but land, sea, or clouds. During his peak, he was considered a master of his art, earning praise from such luminaries as John Spargo, Bliss Carman, Benjamin De Casseres, Edwin Markham, and Anatole Le Braz. His brother, Scott Dabo, was also a noted painter.
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Unpublished illustration [Beacon Rock with home of E. D. Morgan III] for Gouverneur Morris, “Newport the Maligned” 1907 Platinum print Image: 23.9 x 19.2cm (9 7/16 x 7 9/16 in.) Frame: 51.4 × 41.3 × 3.2cm (20 1/4 × 16 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) The Sea (Rose Pastor Stokes, Caritas Island, Connecticut) 1909 Platinum print The Clarence H. White Collection, Princeton University Art Museum
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) “At the Edge of the Woods – Evening” [Letitia Felix] 1901 Chine-collé photogravure 14.4 x 10.1cm 28.6 x 19.6cm uncut Camera Notes, Vol. IV, April 1901
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Untitled [Jean Reynolds in Newark, Ohio] c. 1905 Gum bichromate print Image: 24.1 x 19cm (9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in.) Frame: 43.8 × 36.2cm (17 1/4 × 14 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Mother was living in the old home alone 1902 Photogravure From the book Eben Holden, John Andrew & Son (Boston) 1903
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Untitled [Interior of Weiant house, Newark, Ohio] 1904 Platinum print Image: 15.6 x 19.6cm (6 1/8 x 7 11/16 in.) Frame: 36.2 × 43.8 × 3.2cm (14 1/4 × 17 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) Gift of Edmund T. Weiant
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) and Paul Burty Haviland (French, 1880-1950) Untitled [Florence Peterson] 1909, printed after 1917 Palladium print Image: 25.6 x 19.6cm (10 1/16 x 7 11/16 in.) Frame: 51.4 × 41.3 × 3.2cm (20 1/4 × 16 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Morning – The Bathroom 1906 Platinum print 22.3 x 18.0cm (8 3/4 x 7 1/16 in.) Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) and Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) “Experiment 28” 1907 Vintage japanese tissue photogravure 20.6 x 15.9cm 30.2 x 21.1cm uncut Published in Camera Work XXVII, 1909
In 1907, the year after Clarence White arrived in New York City, he collaborated with Photo-Secession founder Alfred Stieglitz on a series of portraits featuring two models. Shown here holding a glass globe, California model Mabel Cramer poses in a portrait later reproduced as a plate in Camera Work. Said to be a friend of the German American photographer Arnold Genthe and possessing a face worthy of Cleopatra, Cramer and a woman known only as a Miss Thompson, posed for a series of photographs intended to promote photography as an equivalent medium to painting. It was the only time Stieglitz would ever work in tandem with another photographer and shows the extent to which the photographers were allied aesthetically and technically.
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) and Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Untitled [Miss Thompson] 1907 Platinum print Image: 23.7 x 18.4cm (9 5/16 x 7 1/4 in.) Frame: 43.8 × 36.2 × 3.2cm (17 1/4 × 14 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Also in 1910, Stieglitz led an effort to create a major exhibition of the Photo-Secession artists at what was then called the Albright Gallery in Buffalo, New York (now known as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery). While this effort was announced as a group activity of the Photo-Secession, Stieglitz refused to allow any others to have input or make decision about who would be included in the exhibition and how it would be displayed. Stieglitz, who was already known for his domineering ways and dogmatic approach to photography, took his self-assigned, unilateral authority even beyond his past actions; in this case he proved to have gone too far for several people who had been closely aligned with him. First Käsebier, then White and finally Steichen broke off their relationship with Stieglitz, each citing Stieglitz’s overbearing ego, his refusal to consider other’s viewpoints and his repeated actions on behalf of the Photo-Secession without consulting any of the so-called “members” of the group.
Stieglitz reacted to these claims and White’s departure in particular with his usual antagonistic manner. Within a short while, he delivered to White most of the negatives and prints he had jointly produced with White in 1907. The split between the two was so deep that Stieglitz wrote to White “One thing I do demand… is that my name not be mentioned by you in connection with either the prints or the negatives… Unfortunately I cannot wipe out the past…” …
Although White and Stieglitz had tried to reconcile their differences before White died, Stieglitz never forgave White for breaking from him in 1912. Upon hearing about White’s untimely death, Stieglitz wrote to Kuehn, “Poor White. Cares and vexation. When I last saw him he told me he was not able to cope with [life as well as he was] twenty years ago. I reminded him that I warned him to stay in business in Ohio – New York would be too much for him. But the Photo-Session beckoned. Vanity and ambitions. His photography went to the devil.” In spite of these words, Stieglitz had 49 of White’s photographs, including 18 created jointly with Stieglitz, in his personal collection when he died.
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) and Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Torso 1907 Platinum print 22.1 x 18.7cm (8 11/16 x 7 3/8 in.) Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In 1907 White and Stieglitz collaborated on a series of nude studies in which they planned to experiment with various lenses and papers. Stieglitz placed the camera and choreographed the poses, much as he would later do in his extensive portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe, while White focused the camera and developed the negatives. These three photographs illustrate the range of the imagery and its progression from the most formal and demure image in which the draped Miss Thompson assumes a cool classical pose to the second image which is surprisingly intimate and unaffected. Combining the compositional strength and naturalism of the first two photographs, but exchanging props and interior surroundings for tight framing and expressive chiaroscuro, the third and most accomplished photograph is both modern and sensual.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Untitled [Florence Peterson] c. 1909 Platinum print Image (arched top): 22.5 x 16.5cm (8 7/8 x 6 1/2 in.) Frame: 51.4 × 41.3 × 3.2cm (20 1/4 × 16 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Morning 1905 Platinum print From Camera Work (No. 23, July 1908)
Morning perfectly embodies the tenets of Pictorialism: expressive, rather than narrative or documentary, content; craftsmanship in the execution of the print; and a carefully constructed composition allied to Impressionist and American Tonalist painting and to popular Japanese prints. His photographs from the period before he moved to New York in 1906 signalled a remove from the modern urban world. Neither genre scene nor narrative tableau, this photograph is a retreat into domesticised nature.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Eugene Debs c. 1906-1908 Platinum print Image: 22.2 x 17.8cm (8 3/4 x 7 in.) Frame: 51.4 × 41.3 × 3.2cm (20 1/4 × 16 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Eugene Debs (American, 1855-1926)
Eugene Victor Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies), and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. Through his presidential candidacies, as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States. …
Debs ran as a Socialist candidate for President of the United States five times, including 1900 (earning 0.63% of the popular vote), 1904 (2.98%), 1908 (2.83%), 1912 (5.99%), and 1920 (3.41%), the last time from a prison cell. He was also a candidate for United States Congress from his native state Indiana in 1916.
Debs was noted for his oratory, and his speech denouncing American participation in World War I led to his second arrest in 1918. He was convicted under the Sedition Act of 1918 and sentenced to a term of 10 years. President Warren G. Harding commuted his sentence in December 1921. Debs died in 1926, not long after being admitted to a sanatorium due to cardiovascular problems that developed during his time in prison. He has since been cited as the inspiration for numerous politicians.
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Alfred Stieglitz 1907 Cyanotype Image: 24.2 x 19.2cm (9 1/2 x 7 9/16 in.) Frame: 43.8 × 36.2 × 3.2cm (17 1/4 × 14 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Portrait of Arthur Wesley Dow 1908 Vintage waxed platinum print 22.1 x 16.6cm
“White was hired by Arthur Wesley Dow at Teachers College in 1907 and shared Dow’s philosophy that students of the fine and the applied arts should have the same fundamental training based on design principles (anticipating the approach of the Bauhaus in the 1920s).”
Arthur Wesley Dow (American, 1857-1922)
Arthur Wesley Dow (April 6, 1857 – December 13, 1922) was an American painter, printmaker, photographer and influential arts educator.
Dow taught at three major American arts training institutions over the course of his career beginning with the Pratt Institute from 1896-1903 and the New York Art Students League from 1898-1903; then, in 1900, he founded and served as the director of the Ipswich Summer School of Art in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and from 1904 to 1922, he was a professor of fine arts at Columbia University Teachers College.
His ideas were quite revolutionary for the period; he taught that rather than copying nature, art should be created by elements of the composition, like line, mass and colour. He wanted leaders of the public to see art is a living force in everyday life for all, not a sort of traditional ornament for the few. Dow suggested this lack of interest would improve if the way art was presented would permit self-expression and include personal experience in creating art.
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Clarence H. White c. 1908-1910 Autochrome 17.5 x 12.5cm The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
In the decade after the invention of the Kodak point-and-shoot camera in 1888, thousands of men and women began taking their own amateur photographs. Some of them, generally from educated backgrounds and interested in the fine arts, aspired to make aesthetically pleasing images that rivalled paintings and prints in their compositions and tonal effects. These serious photographers, favouring large-format view cameras on tripods, called themselves pictorialists, which merely meant that they were concerned with making artistic “picture” rather than documents.
One of the most successful and influential of these self-taught amateurs was Clarence H. White (1871-1925), who rose from modest origins in Newark, Ohio, to become an internationally known art photographer and teacher. Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895-1925 celebrates the short-lived career of this dedicated visionary, which spans the turbulent era from the Gilded Age through the 1913 Armory Show to the Roaring Twenties.
Drawing primarily on the vast collection of prints and archival material acquired by former curator Peter C. Bunnell for the Princeton University Art Museum and from the Library of Congress’s White Family Collection, the exhibition also includes photographs by White’s friends – such as Alvin Langdon Coburn, F. Holland Day, and Gertrude Käsebier – and works by a sampling of the hundreds of students who White trained at Columbia Teachers College, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and the schools he founded in New York, Maine, and Connecticut. Complementing more than 140 rare photographic prints, illustrated books, and albums are paintings and drawings by John White Alexander, Léon Dabo, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Arthur Wesley Dow, Alice Barber Stephens, Edmund Charles Tarbell, Max Weber, and Marius de Zayas that illuminate the artistic milieu in which White’s style evolved.
White’s early career centers on his Midwestern hometown, where he took up the camera in 1894. Squeezing photographic sittings into the spare time he had from his job as a bookkeeper for a wholesale grocer, he dressed his wife, her sisters, and his friends in costumes evocative of the colonial or antebellum era and posed them in penumbral interiors or the twilit hills outside Newark. White’s knack for setting up tableaux that were at once naturalistic and yet formally striking won him prizes in regional exhibitions, followed by his acceptance in 1898 in the exclusive group show of art photographs held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His meeting there with Alfred Stieglitz, F. Holland Day, Gertrude Käsebier, and others led to his participation in international exhibitions and his eventual inclusion as a founding member of the group that Stieglitz in 1902 dubbed the “Photo-Secession.” White stood out from his contemporaries for his assimilation of the radical cropping and flattened planes of Japanese prints, his melancholy, introspective women, and his frank, unromanticised portrayals of children.
White’s decision in 1904 to become a full-time photographer and his move in 1906 to New York transformed his life and his subjects. While in Newark, he had already earned extra income from commercial jobs illustrating fiction, primarily stories set in frontier America, such as the bestselling novel by Irving Bacheller, Eben Holden: A Tale of the North Country. A section of the exhibition reveals the extent to which White, like many Photo-Secessionists, sold portraits, landscapes, and narrative illustrations to magazines – a practice that has received little attention as a result of Alfred Stieglitz’s renowned dismissal of commercial photography.
Another discovery explored in the exhibition is the importance of socialism for White’s aesthetic vision. White’s selection of handmade printing techniques – such as gum prints in which a pigmented gum emulsion is hand applied to drawing paper – and his transformation of each platinum print (made in contact with a negative) into a unique object are indebted to the ideals of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, which valued hand labor over standardised machine production. White’s deep friendship with the family of Stephen M. Reynolds, Eugene Debs’s campaign manager and a leading Indiana socialist, resulted in idealised portraits of a family that embraced the simple life, racial and social equality, and the philosophy that every object in the home should be harmonious. White also went on to celebrate Rose Pastor Stokes and her husband, Graham Stokes, a socialist power couple in the years prior to the American entry into World War I.
Consistent with many socialists’ embrace of Morris and Walt Whitman, White also accepted the undressed human form as natural and free of sin. Throughout his career he made photographs of nude figures, primarily his sons outdoors and young women posed in the studio or in secluded glens. Drawing upon his greater experience with indoor lighting, White joined with Stieglitz in 1907 for a series of soft-focus studies of female models. A sampling of these prints is reunited here for the first time since 1912, when Stieglitz split with White and disavowed this collaborative venture.
The latter part of the exhibition is devoted to White’s innovations as a teacher, which form a major part of his legacy. White was hired by Arthur Wesley Dow at Teachers College in 1907 and shared Dow’s philosophy that students of the fine and the applied arts should have the same fundamental training based on design principles (anticipating the approach of the Bauhaus in the 1920s). At a time when the few American schools that existed to teach photography focused solely on processes and technique, White assigned more open-ended compositional and exposure problems followed by group critiques. Later, at the Clarence H. White School that he founded in New York in 1914, he hired a series of artists (starting with Max Weber) to teach art history and composition. White’s students – represented here by Anton Bruehl, Laura Gilpin, Paul Burty Haviland, Paul Outerbridge, Karl Struss, Doris Ulmann, and Margaret Watkins, among others – mastered abstract principles of framing, cropping, and lighting that prepared them for a wide array of professional careers, including the growing arenas of advertising and fashion photography.
White’s late works include portraits of famous, but now forgotten, actresses and silent film stars, such as Alla Nazimova and Mae Murray, as well as the painter Abbott Thayer and the art director for Condé Nast, Heyworth Campbell. White also tried his hand at fashion photography and welcomed filmmaking into the White School in the months before he led a summer class to Mexico City, where he tragically succumbed to a heart attack at the age of fifty-four.
Far from rejecting modern styles, White accommodated them in his school, although he maintained his preference for matte printing papers and a degree of soft focus for his personal salon prints. What unites his career, and allows his work to speak to us today, is his belief in the transformative power of art and the potential of every individual to craft objects of lasting beauty.
Anne McCauley David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art
Margaret Watkins (1884-1969) was a Canadian photographer who is remembered for her innovative contributions to advertising photography. She lived a life of rebellion, rejection of tradition, and individual heroism; she never married, she was a successful career woman in a time when women stayed at home, and she exhibited eroticism and feminism in her art and writing. …
Watkins opened a studio in Greenwich Village, New York City, and in 1920 became editor of the annual publication Pictorial Photography in America. She worked successfully as an advertising photographer for Macy’s and the J. Walter Thompson Company and Fairfax, becoming one of the first women photographers to contribute to advertising agencies. She also produced landscapes, portraits, nudes and still lifes. While teaching at the Clarence White school from 1916 to 1928, her students included Margaret Bourke-White, Laura Gilpin, Paul Outerbridge, Ralph Steiner and Doris Ulmann.
One of the earliest art photographers in advertising, her images of everyday objects set new standards of acceptability. From 1928, when she was based in Glasgow, she embarked on street photography in Russia, Germany and France, specialising in store fronts and displays. Watkins died in Glasgow, Scotland in 1969, largely forgotten as a photographer.
Watkins legacy exists in her exemplary work left behind, but also her example as a single, successful woman. According to Queen’s Quarterly, her life is an inspiration for single women, who are fulfilled by their careers, rather than the traditional gender roles women face of fulfilment through marrying and having children.
Before she died, Watkins handed over a sealed box of all her work to her neighbour and executor of her will, Joseph Mulholland. She gave him strict instructions to not open it until after she died. As a result, several solo exhibitions were subsequently held in Britain and North America. When she died in November 1969, she left most of her estate to music charities.
In October 2012, a retrospective exhibition of Margaret Watkins’ work titled “Domestic Symphonies” opened at the National Gallery of Canada. This exhibition showcased 95 of her photographs dating from 1914-1939. Of these photos were portraits and landscapes, modern still life, street scenes, advertising work, and commercial designs. Music was a vital inspiration for Watkins, and that can be seen just from the title of this exhibition.
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Shipbuilding, Bath, Maine 1917 Hand-applied platinum print Image: 12.1 x 9.8cm (4 3/4 x 3 7/8 in.) Frame: 43.8 × 36.2 × 3.2cm (17 1/4 × 14 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Printed by Clarence H. White Jr., American, 1907-1978 Untitled [Dome of the Church of Our Lady of Carmen, San Ángel, Mexico] 1925 Palladium print by Clarence H. White Jr. Image: 21.9 x 17.1cm (8 5/8 x 6 3/4 in.) Frame: 43.8 × 36.2 × 3.2cm (17 1/4 × 14 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Mae Murray c. 1919-20 Platinum print with graphite Image: 24.3 x 14.8cm (9 9/16 x 5 13/16 in.) Frame: 43.8 × 36.2 × 3.2cm (17 1/4 × 14 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Mae Murray (May 10, 1885 – March 23, 1965) was an American actress, dancer, film producer, and screenwriter. Murray rose to fame during the silent film era and was known as “The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips” and “The Gardenia of the Screen”.
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Alla Nazimova 1919 Photogravure Library of Congress
All Nazimova (Russian, 1879-1945)
Alla Nazimova (Russian: Алла Назимова; born Marem-Ides Leventon; June 3 [O.S. May 22], 1879 – July 13, 1945) was a Russian actress who immigrated to the United States in 1905. On Broadway, she was noted for her work in the classic plays of Ibsen, Chekhov and Turgenev. Her efforts at silent film production were less successful, but a few sound-film performances survive as a record of her art. Nazimova openly conducted relationships with women, and her mansion on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard was believed to be the scene of outlandish parties. She is credited with having originated the phrase “sewing circle” as a discreet code for lesbian or bisexual actresses.
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) The Dancers – Barnard Greek Games 1922 Palladium print Image: 24.5 x 19.6cm (9 5/8 x 7 11/16 in.) Frame: 43.8 × 36.2 × 3.2cm (17 1/4 × 14 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
The Barnard Greek Games were a tradition at Barnard College pitting the freshman and sophomore classes against one another in a series of competitions. They began in 1903 when the Class of 1905 challenged the Class of 1906 to an informal athletic contest. In later years upperclass students would cheer on their juniors, “odds” cheering for “odds” and “evens” for “evens.” Signature events included a chariot race, with chariots pulled by teams of 4 students, and a torch race. The torch race is captured in the “Spirit of the Greek Games” statue outside Barnard Hall that was given by the Class of 1905 as a gift on the 25th anniversary of the games in 1928. The games, a central part of Barnard campus life, were held annually until 1968, when upheaval on campus caused their cancellation, snuffing out this tradition along with such longstanding features of campus life as the Varsity Show.
After a 22 year absence, the Games were revived in 1989 as part of Barnard’s Centennial celebrations. The games were revived again in 2000, and have been held sporadically since.
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) Heyworth Campbell c. 1921 Hand-applied platinum print Image: 24 x 18.9cm (9 7/16 x 7 7/16 in.) Frame: 51.4 × 41.3 × 3.2cm (20 1/4 × 16 1/4 × 1 1/4 in.) The Clarence H. White Collection, assembled and organised by Professor Clarence H. White Jr., and given in memory of Lewis F. White, Dr. Maynard P. White Sr., and Clarence H. White Jr., the sons of Clarence H. White Sr. and Jane Felix White
Gertrude Käsebier (1852 – 1934) Portrait of Clarence H. White c. 1910 Silver gelatin print Library of Congress
Note: Digital clean and print balance by Dr Marcus Bunyan
Princeton University Art Museum McCormick Hall, Princeton, NJ Phone: (609) 258-3788
The main Museum building is closed for construction of our new Museum, designed by architect Sir David Adjaye and anticipated to open in late 2024.
Exhibition dates: 14th October – 3rd December, 2017
Curator: Richard Perram OAM
Warning: this posting contains male nudity. If you don’t want to see please do not look.
Todd Fuller (Australian, b. 1988) and Amy Hill (Australian, b. 1988) They’re Only Words (video still) 2009 Film, sound duration: 2:42 mins Courtesy the artists and May Space, Sydney
I must congratulate curator and gallery Director, Richard Perram OAM and the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery for putting on such a fine exhibition, worthy of many a large gallery in a capital city. An incredible achievement, coming at the same time as Latrobe Regional Art Gallery put on the recent René Magritte exhibition. All power to these regional galleries. Now on with the show…
Show and tell
The male body. The female body. The trans body. The gay body. Etc. etc. etc. … The male gaze. The female gaze. The trans gaze. The gay gaze. Etc. etc. etc. …
I did my Doctor of Philosophy, all four and a half years of it, on the history of photography and its depiction of the male body so I know this subject intimately. It is such a complicated subject that after all of time, nothing is ever certain, everything is changeable and fluid.
To start, the definition of masculinity that I used as a determination for the term in my PhD is included as the first quotation below. The quotation is followed by others – on the optic experience and the creation of body image; on body image and our relation to other people; on the anxiety caused by the crisis of looking as it intersects with the crisis of the body; and how we can overcome the passivity of objective truth (accepting dominant images in this case, as they are presented to us) through an active struggle for subjective truth, or an acceptance of difference. A further, longer quote in the posting by Chris Schilling examines Ernst Goffman’s theories of body, image and society in which Goffman states that the body is characterised by three main features: firstly, that the body as material property of individuals; secondly, that meanings attributed to the body are determined by ‘shared vocabularies of body idiom’ such as dress, bearing, movements and position, sound level, physical gestures such as waving and saluting, facial decorations, and broad emotional expressions; and thirdly; that the body plays an important role in mediating the relationship between people’s self-identity and their social identity. These quotations just start to scratch the surface of this very complicated, negotiated social area.
What we can say is this: that masculinity is always and forever a construct; that male body image is always and forever a further construct built on the first construct; and that photo media images of the male body are a construct, in fact a double or triple construct as they seek to capture the surface representation of the previous two conditions.
What strikes me with most of the photographs in this posting is that they are about a constructed “performance” of masculinity, performances that challenge cultural signifiers of mainstream and marginalised aspects of Western patriarchal culture. In most the masculine subject position is challenged through complex projections of masculinity, doubled through the construction of images. In fact, spectatorship is no longer male and controlling but polymorphous and not organised along normative gender lines.
Thus, these artists respond to four defined action problems in terms of representation of body usage: “… control (involving the predicability of performance); desire (whether the body is lacking or producing desire); the body’s relation to others (whether the body is monadic and closed in on itself or dyadic and constituted through either communicative or dominating relations with others); and the self-relatedness of the body (whether the body associates and ‘feels at home’ in itself, or dissociates itself from its corporeality).”1 Further, four ideal types of body usage can be defined in terms of these action problems: the disciplined body where the medium is regimentation, the model of which is the rationalisation of the monastic order; the mirroring body where the medium is consumption, the model of which is the department store; the dominating body where the medium is force, the model of which is war; and the communicative body where the medium is recognition, the model of which could be shared narratives, communal rituals (such as sex) and caring relationships.2
As Chris Schilling observes, “The boundaries of the body have shifted away from the natural and on to the social, and the body now has ‘a thoroughly permeable “outer layer” through which the reflexive project of the self and externally formed abstract systems enter.” In other words, masculinity and male figure can be anything to any body and any time in any context. The male body can be prefigured by social conditions. But the paradox is, the more we know masculinity and the male body, the more knowledge we have, the more we can alter and shape these terms, the less certain we are as to what masculinity and the male body is, and how or if it should be controlled. Taking this a step further, Schilling notes that the photographic image of the body itself has become an abstract system/symbolic token which is traded without question, much as money is, without the author or participants being present.3 You only have to look into some of the gay chats rooms to know this to be true!
The most difficult question I had to ask myself in relation to this exhibition was, what is it to be male? Such a question is almost impossible to answer…
Is being male about sex, a penis, homosociality, homosexuality, heterosexuality, friendship, braveness, dominance, perversity, fantasy, love, attraction, desire, pleasure, Ockerism, respect, loyality, spirituality, joy, happiness etc. etc. It is all of these and more besides. And this is where I find some most of these images to be just surface representations of deeper feelings: I just like dressing in drag; I like pulling a gun on someone; I like holding a knife next to my penis to make my phallus and my armoured body look “butch”. It’s as though the “other”, our difference from ourselves (and others), has been normalised and found wanting. I want to strip them away from this performative, normalising aspect. Most of these photographs are male figures dressed up to the nines, projecting an image, a surface, to the outside world (even though the performative tells us a great deal about the peculiarities of the human imagination). I want them to be more essential, not just a large penis dressed up for show. Only in the image Untitled (Auschwitz victim) (Nd, below), where the performance for the camera and the clothing the man is wearing is controlled by others – does some sense of an inner strength of a male come through. In times of unknown horror and dire circumstances, this man stares you straight in the eye with a calm presence and inner composure.
For me personally, being male is about a spiritual connection – to myself, to the earth and to the cosmos. I hope it is about respect for myself and others. Of course I use the systems above as a projection of myself into the world, as to who I am and who I want people to see through my image. But there is so much more to being male than these defined, representational personas. This is not some appeal to, as David Smail puts it, “a simple relativity of ‘truths'” (anything to anybody at anytime in any context), nor a essentialist reductionism to a “single truth” about our sense of being, but an appeal for a ‘non-finality’ of truth, neither fixed nor certain, that changes according to our values and what we understand of ourselves, what it is to be male. This understanding requires intense, ongoing inner work, something many males have no desire to undertake…
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Word count: 1,230
Footnotes
1/ Chris Schilling, The Body and Social Theory, Sage Publications, London, 1993, p.95.
2/ Ibid., p. 95.
3/ Ibid., p. 183.
Many thankx to Director Richard Perram, Assistant Curator Julian Woods and the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“The category of “masculinity” should be seen as always ambivalent, always complicated, always dependent on the exigencies (necessary conditions and requirements) of personal and institutional power … [masculinity is] an interplay of emotional and intellectual factors – an interplay that directly implicates women as well as men, and is mediated by other social factors, including race, sexuality, nationality, and class … Far from being just about men, the idea of masculinity engages, inflects, and shapes everyone.”
Berger, Maurice; Wallis, Brian and Watson, Simon. Constructing Masculinity. Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1995, pp. 3-7.
“We choose and reject by action … Nietzsche calls the body ‘Herrschaftsgebilde’ (creation of the dominating will). We may say the same about body-image. Since optic experience plays such an enormous part in our relation to the world, it will also play a dominating role in the creation of the body-image. But optic experience is also experience by action. By actions and determinations we give the final shape to our bodily self. It is a process of continual active development.” (My underline)
Schilder, Paul. The Image and Appearance of The Human Body. New York: International Universities Press, 1950, pp. 104-105.
“Body images should not exist in isolation. We desire the relation of our body-images to the body-images of all other persons, and we want it especially concerning all sexual activities and their expression in the body-image. Masturbation is specifically social. It is an act by which we attempt to draw the body-images of others, especially in their genital region, nearer to us.”
Schilder, Paul. The Image and Appearance of The Human Body. New York: International Universities Press, 1950, p. 237.
“As the French critic Maurice Blanchot wrote, “The image has nothing to do with signification, meaning, as implied by the existence of the world, the effort of truth, the law and the brightness of the day. Not only is the image of an object not the meaning of that object and of no help in comprehending it, but it tends to withdraw it from its meaning by maintaining it in the immobility of a resemblance that it has nothing to resemble” … It is this severance of meaning and its object, this resemblance of nothing, that the crisis of looking intersects with the crisis of the body. In contemporary culture we promote the body as infinitely extendable and manageable. Indeed, we mediate this concept through the permeation of the photographic image in popular culture – through advertising and dominant discourse that place the young, beautiful, erotic body as the desirable object of social attention. This is a body apparently conditioned by personal control (moral concern). But the splitting apart of image and meaning pointed to by Blanchot suggests that such control is illusory. There is no single truth; there are only competing narratives and interpretations of a world that cannot be wholly, accurately described.” (My underline)
Blanchot, Maurice. The Gaze of Orpheus. New York: Barrytown, 1981, p. 85, quoted in Townsend, Chris. Vile Bodies: Photography and the Crisis of Looking. Munich: Prestel, 1998, p. 10.
“Where objective knowing is passive, subjective knowing is active – rather than giving allegiance to a set of methodological rules which are designed to deliver up truth through some kind of automatic process [in this case the construction of the male figure through the image], the subjective knower takes a personal risk in entering into the meaning of the phenomena to be known … Those who have some time for the validity of subjective experience but intellectual qualms about any kind of ‘truth’ which is not ‘objective’, are apt to solve their problem by appealing to some kind of relativity. For example, it might be felt that we all have our own versions of the truth about which we must tolerantly agree to differ. While in some ways this kind of approach represents an advance on the brute domination of ‘objective truth’, it in fact undercuts and betrays the reality of the world given to our subjectivity. Subjective truth has to be actively struggled for: we need the courage to differ until we can agree. Though the truth is not just a matter of personal perspective, neither is it fixed and certain, objectively ‘out there’ and independent of human knowing. ‘The truth’ changes according to, among other things, developments and alterations in our values and understandings … the ‘non-finality’ of truth is not to be confused with a simple relativity of ‘truths’.” (My underline).
Smail, David. Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1984, pp. 152-153.
The Unflinching Gaze: photo media & the male figure
The Unflinching Gaze: photo media & the male figure surveys how the male figure has been depicted by Australian and international artists in photo media over the last 140 years. It includes historic and contemporary fine art photography and film, fashion photography, pop videos and homoerotic art. Images range from the beautiful to the banal to the confounding.
The Unflinching Gaze: photo media & the male figure is a Bathurst Regional Art Gallery exhibition in partnership with Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York. Curated by Richard Perram OAM. This exhibition is supported by the Dobell Exhibition Grant, funded by the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation and managed by Museums & Galleries of NSW.
Installation views of the exhibition The Unflinching Gaze: photo media and the male figure at the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales Photos: Sharon Hickey Photography
In line with current thinking the exhibition posits masculinity, and gender itself, as a kind of performance – a social construct that is acquired rather than biologically determined.
This idea has its limits, with most people happy to accept anatomy as destiny. Nevertheless, there is much we view as ‘natural’ that might be more accurately described as ‘cultural’. In an exceptional catalogue essay, Peter McNeil refers to Jonathan Ned Katz’s book, The Invention of Heterosexuality, which notes that the term “heterosexual” was first published in the United States in 1892. This is a remarkably late entry for a concept often viewed as a cornerstone of social orthodoxy.
A condition doesn’t require a word to make it a reality but it sure helps. Wittgenstein’s famous dictum: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world,” reminds us of the power of naming and categorisation.
To establish anything as an unquestionable norm is to stigmatise other views as abnormal. From the perception of abnormality comes the fear and hatred that surfaced during a same-sex marriage postal survey that revealed more about political cowardice than it did about Australian social attitudes. Although Perram has no qualms about celebrating gay sexuality his chief concern is to encourage a broader, more inclusive understanding of masculinity. …
One of the most striking moments in Perram’s show is a juxtaposition of Mapplethorpe’s 1983 portrait of gay porn star, Roger Koch, aka Frank Vickers, wearing a wig, bra and fishnets, his hands clasped demurely over his groin. The feminine coyness is at odds with Vickers’s musclebound torso and biceps which are fully on display in his self-portrait of the same year, along with his semi-erect penis.
The photos may be two versions of camp but the comparison shows how an individual’s sexual identity can be reconfigured with the appropriate props and body language. In the case of performance artist, Leigh Bowery, captured in a series of photos by Fergus Greer, the play of fantasy transcended the simple binary opposition of male and female, to create monstrous hybrids that question the limits of what it is to be human.”
Tony Albert (Australian, b. 1981) Brother (Our Past) 2013 Brother (Our Present) 2013 Brother (Our Future) 2013 Pigment on paper, edition of 3 150 x 100cm each Courtesy UTS Art, Corrigan Collection
Blow Job is a silent film directed by Andy Warhol. It depicts the face of an uncredited DeVeren Bookwalter as he apparently receives fellatio from an unseen partner. While shot at 24 frames per second, Warhol specified that it should be projected at 16 frames per second, slowing it down by a third.
Whether it is a male or a female performing the act is not stated, and the viewer must assume that fellatio is occurring. The salaciousness has also been speculated to be entirely in the title with no fellatio actually being performed. The identity of the person performing the act is disputed. Warhol states in his book Popism: The Warhol Sixties (1980) that five different boys performed the fellatio. In this book, Warhol writes that he originally asked Charles Rydell, the boyfriend of filmmaker Jerome Hill, to star in the film, promising that there would be “five beautiful boys” to perform the act.
However, when Warhol set up the film shoot at The Factory on a Sunday, Rydell failed to show up. Warhol phoned Rydell at Hill’s suite at the Algonquin Hotel and asked where Rydell was. Rydell replied that he thought Warhol was kidding and had no intention of appearing in such a film. When he declined Andy used “a good-looking kid that happened to be hanging around the Factory that day”, who was later identified as Bookwalter. According to Peter Gidal, the film distances the viewer from the experience it purportedly depicts, “Sometimes the young actor looks bored, sometimes as if he is thinking, sometimes as if he is aware of the camera, sometimes as if he is not.” Douglas Crimp states that after a few minutes, “it becomes clear that we will see nothing more than the repetition, with slight variations, of what we’ve already seen”. This frees the mind to look in a different way. Likewise, the sexual act has the effect of distracting the actor from the presence of the camera, creating a unique kind of unselfconsciousness.
Critic Roy Grundmann argues that “Blow Job‘s self-reflexive devices create a new kind of spectatorial address that dislodges audiences from their contemplative positions in a number of ways. Blow Job‘s reflexivity makes spectators intensely aware that seeing a film makes projecting onto and investing into an image a part of oneself which is also a socialized acculturated act”. Grundmann further claims that “viewers oscillate between an awareness of their contingency on the larger scheme and the promise of ocular centric mastery of the image”.
Text from the YouTube website
Robert Wilson (American, b. 1941) Brad Pitt 2004 Video portrait, looped Dimensions variable Courtesy the artist and the Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation, New York
Robert Wilson (American, b. 1941) Brad Pitt video portrait 2004
Nikki Johnson (American, b. 1972) David Amputation Fetishist 2007 Digital print (from a set of images) Courtesy the artist
Luke Parker (Australian, b. 1975) Double hanging 2005 Photograph, cotton thread, pins 15 x 40cm Courtesy the artist and 55 Sydenham Rd
Gregory Collection Mr Cullen & Mr Gornall Date unknown Digital copy from scanned negative Courtesy the Bathurst Historical Society
Two hundred photos and videos by sixty two leading artists (twenty four Australian and thirty eight international) will be exhibited at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) from Saturday 14 October until Sunday 3 December 2017.
Curated by BRAG Director Richard Perram OAM, an openly gay man, The Unflinching Gaze: photo media and the male figure surveys how the male figure has been depicted by Australian and international artists in photo media over the last 140 years. It includes historic and contemporary fine art photography and film, fashion photography, pop videos and homoerotic art. Images range from the beautiful to the banal to the confounding.
Key artists in the exhibition include iconic American artists Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, and avant-garde theatre director Robert Wilson with a video portrait of Brad Pitt; European artists such as Eadweard Muybridge, and Baron Wilhelm Von Gloeden; and historic and contemporary Australian artists including Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss, Max Dupain, Deborah Kelly, William Yang, Gary Carsley, Owen Leong and Liam Benson. Works have been sourced from Australian and international collections, including a major loan of 60 works from the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York.
The exhibition brings an unflinching gaze to how concepts of humanity and the male figure are intertwined and challenged. Themes include the Pink Triangle, which deals with the persecution, torture and genocide of homosexuals in concentration camps during World War II to those in Chechyna today; and the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
The Unflinching Gaze exhibition is a unique opportunity for audiences in the Bathurst Region to access a world class photo-media exhibition, says Richard Perram OAM. The Unflinching Gaze not only deals with aesthetic concerns but also engages the community in a discussion around social issues. BRAG is working with local Bathurst LGBTI community groups to ensure that one of the most important outcomes of the exhibition will be to inform and educate the general Bathurst community and support and affirm the Bathurst LGBTI community.
The Unflinching Gaze: photo media and the male figure is a Bathurst Regional Art Gallery exhibition in partnership with Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York. Curated by Richard Perram OAM. This exhibition is supported by the Dobell Exhibition Grant, funded by the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation and managed by Museums & Galleries of NSW.
Press release from the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG)
American & Australian Photographic Company (Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss) Mssrs. Bushley & Young Nd Digital reproductions from glass photo negatives, quarter plate From the Collections of the State Library of NSW
Horst P. Horst (Germany; United States, 1906-1996) Male Nude I NY 1952 Silver gelatin print 25.4 x 20.3cm Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art, gift of Ricky Horst
Liam Benson (Australian, b. 1980) The Crusader 2015 The Executioner 2015 The Terrorist 2015 Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, edition of 5 90 x 134cm Photograph by Alex Wisser Courtesy of the artist and Artereal Gallery
George Platt Lynes (American, 1907-1955) Blanchard Kennedy 1936 Gelatin silver photograph 23 x 18.2cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1981
Christopher Makos (American, b. 1948) Altered Image: One Photograph of Andy Warhol 1982 Gelatin silver photograph 50.6 x 40.8cm each National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1982
Goffman’s approach to the body is characterised by three main features. First, there is a view of the body as material property of individuals. In contrast to naturalistic views … Goffman argues that individuals usually have the ability to control and monitor their bodily performances in order to facilitate social interaction. Here, the body is associated with the exercise of human agency, and it appears in Goffman’s work as a resource which both requires and enables people to manage their movements and appearances.
Second, while the body is not actually produced by social forces, as in Foucault’s work, the meanings attributed to it are determined by ‘shared vocabularies of body idiom’ which are not under the immediate control of individuals (E. Goffman, Behaviour In Public Places: Notes on the Social Organisation of Gatherings, The Free Press, New York, 1963, p.35). Body idiom is a conventionalized form of non-verbal communication which is by far the most important component of behaviour in public. It is used by Goffman in a general sense to refer to ‘dress, bearing, movements and position, sound level, physical gestures such as waving and saluting, facial decorations, and broad emotional expressions’ (Goffman, 1963:33). As well as allowing us to classify information given off by bodies, shared vocabularies of body idiom provide categories which label and grade hierarchically people according to this information. Consequently, these classifications exert a profound influence over ways in which individuals seek to manage and present their bodies.
The first two features of Goffman’s approach suggest that human bodies have a dual location. Bodies are the property of individuals, yet are defined as significant and meaningful by society. This formulation lies at the core of the third main feature of Goffman’s approach to the body. In Goffman’s work, the body plays an important role in mediating the relationship between people’s self-identity and their social identity. The social meanings which are attached to particular bodily forms and performances tend to become internalized and exert a powerful influence on an individuals sense of self and feelings of inner worth.
Goffman’s general approach to the body is revealed through his more specific analyses of the procedures involved in what he terms the ‘interaction order’. Goffman conceptualises the interaction order as somehow autonomous sphere of social life (others include the economic sphere) which should not be seen as ‘somehow prior, fundamental, or constitutive of the shape of macroscopic phenomena’ (Goffman, 1983:4). His analysis of this sphere of life demonstrates that intervening successfully in daily life, and maintaining a single definition in the face of possible disruptions, requires a high degree of competence in controlling the expressions, movements and communications of the body.” (Goffman, 1969).
Schilling, Chris. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage Publications, 1993, pp. 82-83.
Owen Leong (Australian, b. 1979) Resistance Training 2017 Archival pigment print on cotton paper, edition of 5 + 2 AP 120 x 120cm Courtesy the artist and Artereal Gallery, Sydney Commissioned by BRAG for The Unflinching Gaze: photo media & the male figure with funds from BRAGS Inc. (Bathurst Regional Art Gallery Society Inc.)
Owen Leong (Australian, b. 1979) Milk Teeth 2014 Archival pigment print on cotton paper, edition of 5 + 2Ap 120 x 120cm Courtesy of the artists and Artereal Gallery Sydney
Samuel J Hood (Australian, 1872-1953) The 9th Field Brigade (four images) 24/2/1938 (Liverpool, NSW) Photo negative (copied from original nitrate photograph) 35mm From the Collections of the State Library of NSW
Anthony Sansone (Italy; United States, 1905-1987) Untitled 1935 Bromide print 24.1 x 18.9cm Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art, gift of David Aden Gallery
Fergus Greer (United Kingdom, 1961-1994) Leigh Bowery, Session V Look 27 February 1992 Digital reproduction Courtesy Fergus Greer
Fergus Greer (United Kingdom, 1961-1994) Leigh Bowery, Session VII Look 34, June 1994 Digital reproduction Courtesy Fergus Greer
Unknown American photographer Vintage photograph from the Closeted History/Wunderkamera Nd Tintypes, paper photographs Collection of Luke Roberts
Frank Vickers (American, 1948-1991) Untitled (self-portrait) 1983 Silver gelatin print 17.8 x 12.4cm Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art, Founders’ gift
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (Germany; Italy, 1856-1931) Untitled c. 1910 Albumen silver print 20.3 x 15.2cm Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Founders’ gift
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Untitled (Victor Hugo’s Penis) Date unknown Polaroid 8.5 x 10.5cm Collection of Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation
Gary Carsley (Australian, b. 1957) YOWL [still] 2017 Single Channel HD Video on Layered A3 Photocopy substrate 360 x 247cm Duration 4.32 min Videography Ysia Song, Soundscape Tarun Suresh, Art Direction Shahmen Suku
Royale Hussar (Basil Clavering and John Parkhurst) Queens Guard 3 1959-1960 Digital print from original negative
William Yang (Australian-Chinese, b. 1943) ‘Allan’ from the monologue ‘Sadness’ 1992 19 gelatin silver photographs in the monologue 51.0 x 41.0cm each sheet Photograph: William Yang/Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
A photograph from the Sadness series, which depicts the slow death of his sometime lover, Allan Booth, from AIDS.
This prisoner was sent to Auschwitz under Section 175 of the German Criminal Code, which criminalised homosexuality.
The picture may have been taken by Wilhelm Brasse who was born on this date, 3 December in 1917, who became known as the “photographer of Auschwitz concentration camp”, though he was one of several, including Alfred Woycicki , Tadeusz Myszkowski, Józef Pysz, Józef Światłoch, Eugeniusz Dembek, Bronisław Jureczek, Tadeusz Krzysica, Stanisław Trałka, and Zdzisław Pazio whom the Camp Gestapo kept alive for the job of recording thousands of photographs of their fellow prisoners, supervised by Bernhard Walter, the head of Erkenundienst.
The photographs themselves present a transgression of the subject’s own self-image. The carte-de-visite format forces a confrontation of the victim (which in this situation, they are) with themselves in a visual interrogation, by placing a profile and a three-quarter view either side of a frontal mug shot. The final image seems to depict the subject beholden to a higher authority.
Brasse had been arrested in 1940, at age 23, for trying to leave German-occupied Poland and sent to KL Auschwitz-Birkenau where because he had been a Polish professional photographer in his aunt’s studio his skills were useful. Brasse has estimated that he took 40,000 to 50,000 “identity pictures” from 1940 until 1945.
Brasse and another prisoner Bronisław Jureczek preserved the photographs when in January 1945, during the evacuation of the camp, they were ordered to burn all of the photographs. They put wet photo paper in the furnace first and followed by such a great number of photos and negatives that the fire was suffocated. When the SS-Hauptscharfürer Walter left the laboratory, Brasse and Jureczek swept undestroyed photographs from the furnace, scattering them in the rooms of the laboratory and boarding up the door to the laboratory. 38,916 photographs were saved.
James McCardle. “Ghosts,” on the On This Day in Photography website 03/12/2017
M. P. Rice (American) American poet Walt Whitman and his ‘rebel soldier friend’, Pete Doyle Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle, Washington DC. c. 1865 Charles E. Feinberg Collection, Library of Congress Photograph: Library of Congress/Library of Congress/Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
The first extant photo of Whitman with anyone else, here Peter Doyle, Whitman’s close friend and companion in Washington. Doyle was a horsecar driver and met Whitman one stormy night in 1865 when Whitman, looking (as Doyle said) “like an old sea-captain,” remained the only passenger on Doyle’s car. They were inseparable for the next eight years.
Christopher Makos (American, b. 1982) Altered Image: Five Photographs of Andy Warhol 1982 Portfolio of five gelatin silver prints Each sheet: 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6cm) Each image: 18 x 12 3/4 in. (45.7 x 32.3cm)
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) 70 -78 Keppel St Bathurst NSW 2795
Opening hours: Tues to Sat 10am – 5pm Sundays 11am – 2pm
Exhibition dates: 21st October – 30th November, 2017
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Vinegar Hill, New York 1985 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
These remind me very strongly of the 1970s urban Americana colour work of Stephen Shore. Most of them are successful, well seen, well photographed colour images that evince a certain period in the American cultural landscape.
When they work – as in the formal Vinegar Hill, New York (1985, above) or the more abstract Vinegar Hill, New York (1985, below); the colourful, planar Varick Street, New York (1984); the duo-chromatic L.B. Oil, New York (1984); the magnificently shadowed, geometric Halsted Street, Chicago (1978); and my particular favourite (because of the light), Under the EL, Chicago (1978) – they work superbly. When they don’t work – as in Blankets, New York (1986) or Barbers, New York (1985) – they feel a bit flat.
It’s so hard to put a body of photographs together where each image is as strong (but not necessarily the same) as the next and they form a holistic group. Most photographers can put together four images well enough, but the skill is to be able to narrativise a larger body of work, and then do that over a longer period of time.
I believe that over the lifetime of a photographic artist, you can count on the fingers of two hands the truly memorable images they will make, if they are lucky. Other images are valuable in their own right… while others should be quietly singed.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Mike and Joseph Bellows Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Vinegar Hill, New York 1985 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Varick Street, New York 1984 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Halsted Street, Chicago 1978 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) L.B. Oil, New York 1984 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Spiral Fire Escape, Chicago 1975 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) No Left, Vinegar Hill 1988 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Dave’s Restaurant, New York 1984 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) EL Platform, Chicago 1978 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Bee Gee’s, New York 1984 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Fort Dearborn Coffee, Chicago 1977 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) East Chicago 1977 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Chock Full of Nuts, New York 1984 Digital chromogenic print 20 x 24 inches
Joseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming solo exhibition,Wayne Sorce: Urban Color. The exhibition will open on October 21st and continue through November 30th, 2017. In conjunction with Sorce’s exhibition will be a group show relating to the city as subject.
Urban Color will present a remarkable selection Sorce’s large-scale colour photographs of urban environments taken in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s in both Chicago and New York City. His urban landscapes describe with a formal exactitude, the light, structures, and palette of these cities within a certain era. For Sorce, the urban landscape is both still and transitory; people appear in the photographs as both inhabitants of the city, as well as sculptural forms relating to a larger composed scene.
Sorce’s photographs are held within the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the George Eastman Museum, the Armand Hammer Museum of Art, National Museum of American Art, at the Smithsonian Institution, and the Museum of Modern Art. Complementing Sorce’s exhibition will be a collection of photographs by his contemporaries that describe the city as subject. Work by Bob Thall, George Tice, Bevan Davies, Grant Mudford, and others will be included.
Press release from the Joseph Bellows Gallery
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Under the EL, Chicago 1978 Digital chromogenic print 24 x 20 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Blankets, New York 1986 Digital chromogenic print 24 x 20 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Barbers, New York 1985 Digital chromogenic print 24 x 20 inches
Wayne Sorce (American, b. 1946) Greyhound Station c. 1970’s Digital chromogenic print 24 x 20 inches
Joseph Bellows Gallery 7661 Girrard Avenue La Jolla, California Phone: 858 456 5620
Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm and by appointment
Exhibition dates: 30th September – 12th November, 2017
Curators: Naomi Cass and Pippa Milne
Living artists include: Laurence Aberhart, Brook Andrew, Rushdi Anwar, Warwick Baker, Paul Batt, Robert Billington, Christian Boltanski, Pat Brassington, Jane Brown, Daniel Bushaway, Sophie Calle, Murray Cammick, Christian Capurro, Steve Carr, Mohini Chandra, Miriam Charlie, Maree Clarke, Michael Cook, Bill Culbert, Christopher Day, Luc Delahaye, Ian Dodd, William Eggleston, Cherine Fahd, Fiona Foley, Juno Gemes, Simryn Gill, John Gollings, Helen Grace, Janina Green, Andy Guérif, Siri Hayes, Andrew Hazewinkel, Lisa Hilli, Eliza Hutchison, Therese Keogh, Leah King-Smith, Katrin Koenning, O Philip Korczynski, Mac Lawrence, Kirsten Lyttle, Jack Mannix, Jesse Marlow, Georgie Mattingley, Tracey Moffatt, Daido Moriyama, Harry Nankin, Jan Nelson, Phuong Ngo.
Historic photographers: Hippolyte Bayard (French, 1801-1887), Charles Bayliss (Australian born England, 1850-1897), Bernd and Hilla Becher (German; Bernd Becher 1931-2007, Hilla Becher 1934-2015), Lisa Bellear (Australian / Goernpil, 1962-2006), James E. Bray (Australian, 1832-1891), Jeff Carter (Australian, 1928-2010), Harold Cazneaux (Australian, 1878-1953), Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003), Peter Dombrovskis (Australian, 1995-1996), Max Dupain (Australian, 1911-1992), Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019), Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975), Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009), Marti Friedlander (New Zealand born Britain, 1928-2016), Kate Gollings (Australian, 1943-2017), André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985), J. W. Lindt (Australian born Germany, 1845-1926), W. H. Moffitt (Australian, 1888-1948), David Moore (Australian, 1927-2003), Michael Riley (Australian / Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi, 1960-2004), Robert Rooney (Australian, 1937-2017), Joe Rosenthal (American, 1911-2006), Mark Strizic (Australian, 1928 -2012), Ingeborg Tyssen (Australian, 1945-2002), Aby Warburg (German, 1866-1929), Charles Woolley (Australian, 1834-1922).
Installation photographs of the exhibition
The installation photographs (some of the 148 images in the exhibition) proceed in spatial order, in the flow that they appear in the gallery spaces. The numbers in brackets refer to the number of the image in the field guide. The text is taken from the field guide to the exhibition (Online cited 01/11/2017. No longer available online).
An unorthodox flow of images commences with what is known as the first press photograph in Australia and unfurls through historic, press, portraiture, popular and art photography, some in their intended material form and others as reproductions. An unbroken thread connects this line of still and moving images, each tied to those on either side through visual, conceptual, temporal, material or circumstantial links.
This is a proposition about photography now. Relationships between images are sometimes real, and sometimes promiscuous. Unorthodox brings new contexts to existing artworks whilst celebrating the materiality of real photographs, in real time and critically, honouring the shared democratic experience of the public gallery space.
Text from the CCP website
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne with at right, wallpaper of J. W. Lindt’s Body of Joe Byrne, member of the Kelly Gang, hung up for photography, Benalla 1880, to open the exhibition Photo: Marcus Bunyan
(1) J W Lindt (Australian, 1845-1926) Body of Joe Byrne, member of the Kelly Gang, hung up for photography, Benalla 1880 Courtesy State Library Victoria, Pictures Collection
J W Lindt: Thought to be the first press photograph in Australia, this shows Joe Byrne, a member of the Kelly Gang, strung up for documentation days after his death, which followed the siege at Glenrowan. Byrne is displayed for an unknown photographer and the painter Julian Ashton who is standing to the left with possibly a sketchbook under his arm. Lindt’s photograph captures not only the spectacle of Byrne’s body but the contingent of documentarians who arrived from Melbourne to record and widely disseminate the event for public edification.
J. E. Bray: “As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible.”
~ Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (7) J. E. Bray’s Untitled [“McDonnell’s Tavern opposite Railway Station, remains of Dan Kelly and Hart in coffins”] 1880 cabinet card (right) and (8) a photograph by an unknown photographer Hunters of Ned Kelly 1880 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (13) Tracey Moffatt’s I Made a Camera 2003 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Moffatt: Returning to J.W. Lindt’s photograph – in particular the hooded central figure photographing Joe Byrne – Tracey Moffatt’s picturing of children role-playing calls to mind the colonial photographer’s anthropological gesture.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (14) Siri Hayes’ In the far reaches of the familiar 2011 (right) and (15) Janina Green’s Self Portrait 1996 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (15) Janina Green’s Self Portrait 1996 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Green: Although celebrated for her hand coloured prints, this is in fact made with the second version of Photoshop.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (16) Georgie Mattingley’s Portrait IV (After Arthroplasty) 2016 (right) and (17) Lisa Hilli’s In a Bind 2015 (middle) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Mattingley: The photographer’s hood has become a meat-worker’s protective gear, tenderly hand-coloured.
Hilli: ‘The woven material that hoods the artist’s identity is a reference to collected Pacific artefacts, which are usually of a practical nature. Magimagi is a plaited coconut fibre used for reinforcing architectural structures and body adornment within the Pacific. Here it emphasises the artist’s feeling of being bound by derogatory Western and anthropological labels used by museums and the erasure of Pacific bodies and narratives within public displays of Pacific materiality.’ ~ Lisa Hilli 2017, in an email to the curator
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (18) Fiona Pardington’s Saul 1986 (right), (19) Fiona MacDonald’s 12 Artists 1987 (postcard, middle), and (20) Jack Mannix’s Still Life, Footscray 2013 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Pardington: A portrait of Joe Makea in his beekeeper’s helmet.
MacDonald: A vintage Victorian Centre for Photography (VCP) postcard, prior to its change of name to CCP.
Mannix: A vanitas is a still life artwork which includes various symbolic objects designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the worthlessness of worldly goods and pleasures.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (27) Wolfgang Sievers’ The writer Jean Campbell, in her flat in East Melbourne 1950 (right); (26) André Kertész’s Chez Mondrian, Paris 1926 (middle top); (28) Gisèle Freund’s Vita Sackville-West 1938 (middle bottom); and (29) Anne Zahalka’s Home #3 (mirror) 1998 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Sievers: Wolfgang’s inscription on the back of this particular print reads: The writer Jean Campbell in her near-eastern flat with her portrait by Lina Bryans.
Kertész: A studio is site for the artist’s gathering of images.
Freund: Vita Sackville-West’s writing studio was in an Elizabethan tower at Sissinghurst in Kent, overlooking her famous white garden. It remains, exactly as she left it.
Zahalka: The boundary between home and studio is often blurred when an artist has a small child.
Installation views of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing in the bottom image (30) Siri Hayes’ Plein air explorers 2008 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Hayes: An artist’s studio in the landscape.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (31) Robyn Stacey’s Wendy and Brett Whiteley’s Library from the series Dark Wonder 2016 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Stacey: The landscape brought into the studio by a camera obscura. Robyn Stacey captures the perfect moment of light and clarity, in this instance, also turning the egg-object into an orb of light.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (33) NASA Images’ A lunar disc as seen from the Apollo 15 spacecraft 1971 (top); (34) Steve Carr’s Smoke Bubble No. 30 2010 (right); and (35) National Geographic Vol. 174, No. 6, December 1988 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Carr: Smoke filled soap orb, reminiscent of a planet.
National Geographic: The subtitle to this special 1988 issue of National Geographic, which has a holographic front and back cover is: “As We Begin Our Second Century, the Geographic Asks: Can Man Save this Fragile Earth?”
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (39) Jesse Marlow’s Santa 2002 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (44) Susan Fereday’s Köln 2016 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (49) W. H. Moffitt’s Beach Scene, Collard #3 c. 1944 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
W. H. Moffitt: The bromoil process was invented in 1907 by Englishman C. Wellbourne Piper. A bromoil print is simply a black and white photograph printed on a suitable photographic paper from which the silver image is removed and lithography inks applied.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (51) Sarah Brown’s Quietly 2017 (right); (52) Robert Billington’s Narrabeen Baths 1994 (middle bottom); and (53) Trent Parke’s Untitled #92 1999-2000 (middle top) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brown: The salted paper technique was created in the mid-1830s by Henry Fox Talbot. He made what he called “sensitive paper for “photogenic drawing” by wetting a sheet of writing paper with a weak solution of ordinary table salt, blotting and drying it, then brushing one side with a strong solution of silver nitrate.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (55) Charles Bayliss’ Ngarrindjeri people, Chowilla Station, Lower Murray River, South Australia 1886 (right) and (56) Anne Noble’s Antarctic diorama, Polaria Centre, Tromso, Norway 2005 (left) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Bayliss: Water looks like glass in this colonial photograph where the subjects perform for Bayliss. “Bayliss here re-creates a ‘native fishing scene’ tableau, reminiscent of a museum diorama.”
Noble: Water is glass in this diorama; photographed as if it were from nature.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (55) Charles Bayliss’ Ngarrindjeri people, Chowilla Station, Lower Murray River, South Australia 1886 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (58) Andrew Hazewinkel’s Staring together at the stars, #1 2013 (right); (59) Ian Dodd’s Wet Hair 1974 (second right); (60) Juno Gemes’ One with the Land 1978 (middle); (61) David Rosetzky’s Milo 2017 (upper left); and (62) Brook Andrew’s I Split Your Gaze 1997 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gemes: The subtitle to this photograph in some collections reads: ‘waiting for the sacred fish the Dunya and Wanra to come in, Mornington Island, Queensland’.
Installation views of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing at centre right in the bottom image (64) William Yang’s Alter Ego 2000 and at right, Brook Andrew’s I Split Your Gaze 1997 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970) I Split Your Gaze 1997 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (65) Sue Ford’s Lyn and Carol 1961 (right) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) Lyn and Carol 1961 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (67) a stereoscope by an unknown photographer titled Affection c. 1882 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kilburn Brothers, Littleton, N. H. (publisher): In the stereoscope, the double image combines to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. Compelled to make meaning from disrupted information, the brain merges two slightly different images into a seemingly single three-dimensional image.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (68) a photograph by an unknown photographer (Courret Hermanos Fotografía – Eugenio Courret 1841 – c. 1900) titled Lima Tapadas c. 1887 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (76) Harold Cazneaux’s Spirit of Endurance 1937 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Cazneaux: In the following two works, a critical change of title by the artist reveals what, alone, the eye cannot see. This photograph had already achieved iconic status as a symbol of the noble Australian landscape when, following the loss of his son who died aged 21 at Tobruk in 1941, Cazneaux flipped the negative and presented the image under the new title Spirit of Endurance. The tree is now classified on the National Trust of South Australia’s Register of Significant Trees.
Harold Cazneaux (Australian born New Zealand, 1878-1953) Spirit of endurance 1937 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (77) Jeff Carter’s The Eunuch, Marree, South Australia 1964 (NB. note reflections in the image from the gallery) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Carter: Changing a title can dramatically alter the meaning of an image. This work has had several titles:
Morning Break 1964; Dreaming in the sun at Marree, outside the towns single store 1966; At times there is not too much to do except just sit in the sun… 1968; ‘Pompey’ a well known resident of Marree; and finally The Eunuch, Marree, South Australia 2000
Under early titles, the photograph appeared to be a simple portrait of “Pompey”, a local Aboriginal man in Marree who worked at the town’s bakery. The final title draws viewers’ attention away from what might have seemed to be the man’s relaxed approach to life, and towards the violence enacted on Aboriginal communities in castrating young boys.
Jeff Carter (Australian 1928-2010) Morning Break, Marnee SA 1964 Silver gelatin print
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (78) Lisa Bellear’s The Black GST Protest at Camp Sovereignty 2006 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Bellear (Minjungbul/Goernpil/Noonuccal/Kanak): Is the demonstrator leading the policeman? Is the policeman arresting this demonstrator? Or is this tenderness between two men? This is a photograph of a photograph. As was her practice, Lisa Bellear always gave the original to her subject.
Installation views of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (82) photographer undisclosed ASIO surveillance images 1949-1980 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
ASIO: The Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) employed photographers to spy on Australian citizens. The photographs which were annotated to indicate persons of interest, were retained by ASIO along with other forms of material gathered through espionage.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (83) O. Philip Korczynski’s Unwanted Witness and Run 1980s Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (85) pages from Luc Delahaye’s book L’Autre 1999 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Delahaye: In the footsteps of Walker Evans’ classic candid series, Rapid Transit 1956.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (88) Tracey Lamb’s Surveillance Image #3 2015 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (89) Walker Evans’ Family Snapshots on Farmhouse Wall 1936 (right) with (91) Photographer unknown Lee family portrait before the funeral c. 1920 (top left); and (92) Photographer unknown Lee family portrait with portrait of dead father added c. 1920 (bottom left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Evans: During his celebrated work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression, Walker Evans secretly removed these photographs from the home of his subject, and seemingly hurriedly pinned them to the exterior wall of the house, and photographed them without permission.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (90) photographer unknown In memoriam album 1991 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Memoriam: Double exposure enables the impossible in this personal memorial album.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (91) Photographer unknown Lee family portrait before the funeral c. 1920 (top) and (92) photographer unknown Lee family portrait with portrait of dead father added c. 1920 (bottom) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Funeral: When the family photographer arrived at the Lee home – the day of grandfather’s funeral – he asked them to pose with smiles so that, in the absence of a family portrait, he could create a composite portrait, which was given to the family some days later.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (93) Kate Gollings’ Lee family portrait 1986 (right) and (94) David Moore’s Migrants arriving in Sydney 1966 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gollings: A studio portrait of the Lee family, some 60 years following the previous two photographs. The young man is now grandfather. Still the photographer continues to craft the family, in this case through positioning the subjects, in ways which may or may not reflect actual family relationships.
Moore: In 2015, Judy Annear said of this famous photograph: “It’s great to consider that it’s not actually what it seems.” Years after the photo was published, it emerged that four of the passengers in it were not migrants but Sydneysiders returning home from holiday.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (98) Hippolyte Bayard’s Self-portrait as a Drowned Man 1840 (right); (99) J. W. Lindt’s Untitled (Seated Aboriginal man holding Boomerangs) c. 1874 (top middle); (100) J. W. Lindt’s Untitled (Aboriginal man with Snake) c. 1875 (bottom middle); and (101) Charles Woolley’s Truccanini, last female Aborigine of Tasmania with shell necklace 1886 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Bayard: With its telling title, this staged image is the first instance of intentional photographic fakery, made in protest by Bayard because he felt aggrieved that his role in the invention of photography was unrecognised.
Lindt: For white colonialists, photography became “a vehicle for recording new and exotic lands and informing the ‘unexotic’ Europe of the strange landscape, flora, fauna, and people. In the case of the postcard print fashion from around 1900; to entice tourists to cruise to [exotic] places … Ultimately and blatantly however, photography became another tool of colonialism, to label, control, dehumanise and disempower their subjects who could only reply in defiant gaze at the lens controlled by someone else.” ~ Djon Mundine from Fiona Foley: River of Corn, exh. cat. University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, USA, 2001
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (101) Charles Woolley’s Truccanini, last female Aborigine of Tasmania with shell necklace 1886 (right); (102) Christian Thompson’s (Bidjara) Untitled (self portrait) Image No 1 from Emotional Striptease 2003 (middle); (103) Charles Kerry’s Aboriginal Chief c. 1901-1907 (top left); and (104) Brook Andrew’s Sexy and Dangerous 1996 (bottom left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Thompson: Contemporary Indigenous artists return the colonial photographer’s gaze. “For Indigenous people the camera’s central role has been in transforming but really stereotyping our cultures.” In more recent times, “Indigenous people have moved behind the camera, firstly replacing the documenter, then creatively reinterpreting their photographic history.” ~ Djon Mundine from Fiona Foley: River of Corn, exh. cat. University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, USA, 2001
Kerry: No name or details are recorded of this sitter from Barron River, QLD. He was a member of the touring Wild West Aboriginal troupe, which staged corroborees, weapon skills and tableaux of notorious encounters between armed Native Police and unarmed local communities.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (105) Fiona Foley’s (Badtjala) Wild Times Call 2 2001 (right); (106) Murray Cammick’s Bob Marley p owhiri, White Heron Hotel, April 1979 1979 (second right); and (107) Kirsten Lyttle’s (Waikato, Tainui A Whiro, Ngāti Tahinga) Twilled Work 2013 (middle left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Foley: Referencing Hollywood’s representation of the Wild West, Fiona Foley stands with Seminole Indians.
Lyttle: This is woven using the Maori raranga (plaiting) technique for making kete whakario (decorated baskets). According to Mick Pendergrast, the pattern is not named, but attributed to Te Hikapuhi, (Ngati Pikiao), late 19th Century. ~ Pendergrast, M (1984), Raranga Whakairo, Coromandel Press, NZ, pattern 19.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (107) Kirsten Lyttle’s (Waikato, Tainui A Whiro, Ngāti Tahinga) Twilled Work 2013 (right) and (108) Michael Riley’s (Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi) Maria 1985 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (109) Maree Clarke’s (Mutti Mutti, Yorta Yorta, BoonWurrung) Nan’s House (detail of installation) 2017 (right); (110) photographer unknown Writer, Andre Malraux poses in his house of the Boulogne near Paris working at his book Le Musee Imaginaire or Imaginary Museum 2nd volume 1953 (middle top); and (111) Clare Rae’s Law Library 2016 (bottom left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Clarke: This work is currently on display at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, as a hologram of the artist’s grandmother’s house, as remembered by the artist.
Unknown: ‘The imaginary museum’ or ‘the museum without walls’ (as it is often translated) is a collection reflecting Andre Malraux’s eurocentric conception of art history.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (117) Bill Culbert’s Small glass pouring Light, France 1997 (right) and (119) David Moore’s Sisters of Charity 1956 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
David Moore (Australian, 1927-2003) Sisters of Charity 1956 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (119) David Moore’s Sisters of Charity 1956 (bottom right); (118) Olive Cotton’s Teacup Ballet c. 1935 (top right); and (120) Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Kies-und Schotterwerke (Gravel Plants) 2006 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (120) Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Kies-und Schotterwerke (Gravel Plants) 2006 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (120) Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Kies-und Schotterwerke (Gravel Plants) 2006 (right) and (121) Robert Rooney’s Garments: 3 December – 19 March 1973 1973 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (122) Helen Grace’s Time and motion study #1 ‘Women seem to adapt to repetitive-type tasks…’ 1980, printed 2011 (detail) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (122) Helen Grace’s Time and motion study #1 ‘Women seem to adapt to repetitive-type tasks…’ 1980, printed 2011 (detail, right) and (123) Max Dupain’s Backyard, Forster 1940 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Max Dupain (Australian, 1911-1992) Backyard, Forster, New South Wales 1940 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (123) Max Dupain’s Backyard Forster 1940 (right) and (124) Marie Shannon’s Pussy 2016 (left) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Shannon: Also a trace of the cat.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (127) Mac Lawrence’s Five raised fingers 2016 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Lawrence: Watery trace.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (136) Simon Terrill’s Arsenal vs Fenerbahce 2009
Terrill: The long exposure leaves only a trace of the football crowd, that has disappeared for the day.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (137) Christian Boltanski’s L’ecole de la Große Hamburger Straße, Berlin 1938 1993 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Boltanski: Photography records the passing or death of a particular moment. This is a photograph of a Jewish School in Berlin in 1938.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (138) Joyce Evans’ Budapest Festival 1949 (top) and (139) photographer unknown Nina Dumbadze, Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR, world champion in discus throwing from the series Women of the Soviet Georgia c. 1953 (bottom) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (139) photographer unknown Nina Dumbadze, Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR, world champion in discus throwing from the series Women of the Soviet Georgia c. 1953 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (141) Harry Burrell’s Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger, cover image for The Australian Magazine 1958, September, Vol 12, No 11 1958 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Burrell: Published in this museum journal, there is now some contention as to whether Burrell’s series of photographs of the extinct thylacine were made from life, or staged using a taxidermied animal.
Installation view of the exhibition An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the CCP, Melbourne showing (148) Francis Alÿs’ Fitzroy Square 2004 (video stills) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
(148) Francis Alÿs Railings (Fitzroy square) London, 2004 4.03 min. Francis Alÿs website
We posit Fitzroy Square at this point; in honour of your journey through this unorthodox flow of images.
Look at the tonality and sensuality in Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait (8) (1919, below) and Dancing Trees (1922, below). No one would ever think of printing a photograph like that today!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
This exhibition presents a selection of the MFA’s exceptional holdings of works by Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), the great American impresario of photography at the turn of the 20th century. Featuring 36 photographs, the exhibition showcases fine examples of his New York views, portraits and photographs that Stieglitz took at his family’s country home at Lake George. The New York views reveal the artist’s lifelong interest in the city, from his early explorations of the picturesque effects of rain, snow and nightfall to later ones that focus on the inherent geometry of modernity’s rising architectural structures. The portraits include 10 images from Stieglitz’s magnificent extended series of images of his wife, the celebrated painter Georgia O’Keeffe – a “portrait in time” that reflects his ideals of modern womanhood and is evocative of their close relationship. These portraits are accompanied by additional images of members of his family and friends.
The Lake George photographs include, in addition to views of the family property, a sequence of the mystical cloud studies that Stieglitz called “equivalents,” which explore the interpretation of inner states of being. Many of the photographs on view were donated by Stieglitz to the MFA in 1924 – making it one of the first museums in the US to collect photography as fine art. Enhanced by an additional gift from O’Keeffe in 1950, the MFA’s Stieglitz holdings form an outstanding survey of the photographer’s career, as well as the cornerstone of the Museum’s photography collection.
291 is the commonly known name for an internationally famous art gallery that was located in Midtown Manhattan at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City from 1905 to 1917. Originally known as the “Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession“, the gallery was created and managed by photographer Alfred Stieglitz.
The gallery is famous for two reasons. First, the exhibitions there helped bring art photography to the same stature in America as painting and sculpture. Pioneering artistic photographers such as Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Käsebier and Clarence H. White all gained critical recognition through exhibitions at 291. Equally important, Stieglitz used this space to introduce to the United States some of the most avant-garde European artists of the time, including Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin, Henri Rousseau, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brâncuși, and the Dadaists Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp.
First published in 1921 with the caption “Watch your step!” in the single issue of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray’s magazine New York Dada, Stieglitz’s surreal portrait was a happy accident. Attempting to capture the modern character of Dorothy True, a friend of Georgia O’Keeffe, Stieglitz made two exposures: a conventional, full-face portrait and a view of one artfully posed leg. Stieglitz was thrilled with the fortuitous superimposition of the images, believing that together they captured the spirit of the postwar American female. While the equation of short hair and skirts with women’s liberation might seem trite today, Stieglitz made the portrait in 1919, the year that Congress extended suffrage to women. In 1926, he exhibited it with the title American Girl.
This double exposure of the face and leg of Dorothy True constitutes an unusual portrait. Her somewhat somber face, very faint, is not immediately apparent, but slowly a mouth, nose, and eye begin to reveal themselves in the black-stockinged ankle and calf. Alone, the image of the leg is an interesting one; her foot appears veritably stuffed into her stylish, patent leather pump. Her instep bulges out of the top of the shoe, and the leather ripples from the pressure at the toe, making the foot an almost sculptural form.
True appears to step down upon overturned prints or mats. A chair casts a graphic shadow across the floor, and a vertical paper backdrop echoes the black shadow at the upper left, uncovered by the sagging paper. The neat triangle of True’s skirt lends additional geometric balance.
Georgia Engelhard was the first child of George Engelhard and Agnes Stieglitz. It is as the niece of Alfred Stieglitz, modernism’s most successful early booster in the United States, that Engelhard’s artistic career was encouraged. From the age of 12 to 22 she corresponded regularly with Stieglitz who serve as a confidant to the young woman. Engelhard occasionally posed for Stieglitz and the uncle honoured her with an exhibition at his famous gallery, 291, when she was only ten years old. (Stieglitz’s motivation to show his niece’s work was more than likely a response to Wassily Kandinsky’s proposition that there was a fundamental spirituality to be found in true art and that children’s art had the ability to convey this “inner truth.”)
It is under the tutelage of Stieglitz’s wife, Georgia O’Keeffe, that Engelhard matured as a painter. In biographies Engelhard is repeatedly mentioned as O’Keeffe’s friend and companion. Georgia minor, as Engelhard was called, served as comic release for the older artist who often found Stieglitz and his family oppressive. The two artists frequently painted together at Stiegltiz’s summer house on Lake George and occasionally took excursions together. Engelhard’s paintings reflect O’Keeffe’s influence – flat areas of pure colour and sensuous curves are used to define the landscape. …
Despite a paralysing fear of heights, Engelhard became a premier mountain climber at the age of 20 and was the first female climber to ascend many of the peaks in the Canadian Rockies. Engelhard’s determination to overcome this specific fear evolved into a passion for the mountains that lasted throughout her lifetime…
Engelhard was also a writer and an accomplished photographer. In 1938 when she began living with Eaton Cromwell she stopped painting and together the couple pursued photography. While living in Switzerland they sold a number of their pictures to postcard companies. Few of Georgia Engelhard’s paintings are in existence today and when one does appear there is often a dispute about whether the canvas comes from O’Keefe’s hands or Engelhard’s.
Anonymous text. “Georgia Engelhard,” on the JWL Collection website [Online] Cited 05/01/2022. No longer available online
Charles Sheeler is a cracking good photographer who’s work has not got the recognition that it deserves – in comparison to, say, Stieglitz, Strand, Steichen or Weston. When you think of those top echelon artists from the early twentieth century, his name is never mentioned. And it should be.
Sheeler’s Side of White Barn, Bucks County, Pennsylvania (1915, above) predates one of the most famous early modernist photographs, Strand’s White Fence, Port Kent, New York (1916, above) by a year, yet is hardly known. While Strand’s image possesses low depth of field, strong lighting and a focus on the fence as physical, geometric, sculptural object within the picture frame, Sheeler’s photograph is much more subtle but no less effective in its modernist vocation. The pictorial space is flattened into geometric shapes, the bottom of the photograph grounded by a cracked wall, hay, chickens and a fence, the top of the image foreclosed by the tiled roof of the barn and its attendant shadow (showing that the sun was high in the sky when this image was taken). Within the boundaries of the rectangle are subtle graduations of tone, colour and form, almost like an modernist etching with light, so beautifully does the artist both understand what he is seeing and how to render it through the physicality of the print. Unlike Strand’s “knock you over the head with the white picket fence”, Sheeler’s subtle paean to the modern world requires contemplation on the nature of light, photography and the fine art print. This is a masterpiece in the history of photographic art.
I am similarly convinced by Sheeler’s Ford Plant – Criss–Crossed Conveyors (1927, below), in my opinion one of the top ten photographs of all time.
I cannot fault this image. The light falling on the subject is incredible (notice the shadow from the beam mid-upper left, telling us the time of day the photograph was taken), the tonality superb, the framing of the subject admirable – all elements tensioned perfectly within the pictorial plane. The bottom of the photograph is grounded by stacked tyres and the structure ascends to the heavens from there… not just in one element, but in five! The main criss-cross of the conveyors is placed off centre supported by an iron tower, which allows the eye to roam freely across the image. The placement also allows for another elevator to ascend behind the main two, while a set of steps climbs higher and higher eventually exiting the picture stage left. Behind the criss-crossed conveyors the depth of space that must exist in reality is proposed by two tanks, further reinforced by 8 chimney stacks, and yet this photograph evidences no such depth of field. While everything is reduced to flattened shapes in this machine age, modernist, objectified world – and while no human being is presented for scale – the human hand is all over this image: in the construction of such technology, in the presence of the human scale stairs, in the ascension to the sky of the organ pipes of the industrial cathedral, in the comprehending eye of the photographer, and in the presence, the aura, of this magnificent print. While this image may seem the antithesis of humanist photography in one sense, conversely it reaffirms the very act of humanity in another. Or perhaps I’m just an old romantic.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
This exhibition celebrates the MFA’s unparalleled holdings of works by Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), presenting 40 photographs from three significant series created during the heyday of his career as a founder of American modernism.
After enjoying success as a painter, Sheeler initially took up photography as a way to make a living. His experiments with the medium included the 1916-1917 series of photographs capturing various elements of an 18th-century house he rented in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The sequence of stark, geometric compositions was among the most abstract and avant-garde work being made in the US at the time – created in response to the Cubist art of Picasso and Braque that Sheeler had previously encountered in Europe.
In 1920, Sheeler collaborated with fellow photographer Paul Strand on the short film Manhatta, presenting dramatic views of lower Manhattan. Abstract stills from the 35mm film, which was shot from steep angles, are presented alongside larger prints of Sheeler’s cinematic images of New York City, produced shortly after Manhatta – which he used as source material for his paintings. The film Manhatta is on view in the gallery.
Charles Sheeler from Doylestown to Detroit culminates with the 1927 photographs of the Ford Motor Company plant in River Rouge, Michigan, commissioned to celebrate the introduction of Ford’s Model A. The cathedral-like scenes convey an optimism for American industry, and are now considered icons of Machine Age photography. All of the photographs in the exhibition are drawn from the Museum’s Lane Collection – one of the finest private holdings of 20th-century American art in the world, including Sheeler’s entire photographic estate – given to the MFA in 2012.
In 1920 Paul Strand and artist Charles Sheeler collaborated on Manhatta, a short silent film that presents a day in the life of lower Manhattan. Inspired by Walt Whitman’s book “Leaves of Grass,” the film includes multiple segments that express the character of New York. The sequences display a similar approach to the still photography of both artists. Attracted by the cityscape and its visual design, Strand and Sheeler favoured extreme camera angles to capture New York’s dynamic qualities. Although influenced by Romanticism in its view of the urban environment, Manhatta is considered the first American avant-garde film.
Aubrey Beardsley and “The Yellow Book,” Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession, Josef Albers, Dada, Surrealism, William Blake (a favourite of mine), photography, typography and graphic design. You couldn’t ask for more… except for those psychedelic colours!
As a friend of mine observed of the Grateful Dead, Oxford Circle (1966) poster – look where the tickets were sold: psychedelic shops, book stores, record shops and coffee houses. He actually saw the Grateful Dead play live while he was in America, and he said it was quite a trip. As Mark Feeney keenly observes, this art was “liberation in two dimensions.”
He is correct, for these posters and record covers reflect the cultural era from which they emerge – the official beginnings of Gay Liberation, Feminism, student revolt, protests against war and racism, civil rights, drugs, free love and peace. They are powerful and eloquent works of art that summon the noisy spirit of the age, a riotous poltergeist hell bent on change.
And all these years later, they still look as fresh and as relevant (perhaps even more so in this conservative world), as they day they were created. Just fab!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
PS. It always amazes me the cultural contexts in which photography can be put to use.
Many thankx to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“What’s fascinating is how the graphic designs manage to have a kind of coherence despite being such a jumble. Certain principles recur: curves, yes, angles, no; a pugilistic employment of colour (psychedelia really did look … psychedelic); legibility as afterthought. So do certain influences: Aubrey Beardsley and “The Yellow Book,” Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession, Dada, Surrealism (among the album covers on display is, yes, the Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow”). The presiding spirit is William Blake: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” The last thing the Haight cared about was history, but history’s hand lay all over it.
The look of these designs is assaultive, overly busy, restrained only by the confines of poster size or album cover. That look still feels exhilarating: liberation in two dimensions. It must have felt close to Martian back then. NASA wanted to put a man on the moon. Why stop there? Gravity was just another law to flout. One of the 32 Herb Greene photographs in “The Summer of Love” shows Airplane lead singer Grace Slick looking at the camera and flipping the bird. Maybe that image, even more than Blakean excess, is the presiding spirit.”
Mark Feeney. “The MFA celebrates San Francisco’s Summer of Love,” on the Boston Globe website July 6th 2017 [Online] Cited 02/01/2022. No longer available online
Victor Moscoso (born Galicia in 1936) is a Spanish-American artist best known for producing psychedelic rock posters, advertisements, and underground comix in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s.
Moscoso was the first of the rock poster artists of the 1960s era with formal academic training and experience. After studying art at Cooper Union in New York City and at Yale University, he moved to San Francisco in 1959. There, he attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he eventually became an instructor. Moscoso’s use of vibrating colours was influenced by painter Josef Albers, one of his teachers at Yale. He was the first of the rock poster artists to use photographic collage in many of his posters.
Professional success came in the form of the psychedelic rock and roll poster art created for San Francisco’s dance halls and clubs. Moscoso’s posters for the Family Dog dance-concerts at the Avalon Ballroom and his Neon Rose posters for the Matrix resulted in international attention during the 1967 Summer of Love.
Stanley Miller (Mouse) (American, b. 1940) and Alton Kelley (American, 1940-2008) Moby Grape, Sparrow, The Charlatans (Avalon Ballroom, 13-14 January 1967) 1967 Poster, offset lithograph Collection of Patrick Murphy Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Bonnie MacLean, also known as Bonnie MacLean Grahamis an American artist known for her classic rock posters. In the 1960s and 1970s she created posters and other art for the promotion of rock and roll concerts managed by Bill Graham, using the iconic psychedelic art style of the day. MacLean went on to continue her art as a painter focusing mostly of nudes, still lifes and landscapes.
Fillmore posters
Artist Wes Wilson was the main poster artist for the Fillmore Auditorium when he and Bill Graham had a “falling out” and Wilson quit. MacLean had been painting noticeboards at the auditorium in the psychedelic style, and took up the creation of the posters after Wilson left, creating about thirty posters, most in 1967. MacLean’s posters are included in many museum collections including at the Brooklyn Museum, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco collection and at the DeYoung museum. A few examples of her posters are in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art collection.
Stanley George Miller (born October 10, 1940), better known as Mouse and Stanley Mouse, is an American artist, notable for his 1960s psychedelic rock concert poster designs for the Grateful Dead and Journey albums cover art as well as many others.
Psychedelic posters
In 1965, Mouse travelled to San Francisco, California with a group of art school friends. Settling initially in Oakland, Mouse met Alton Kelley. Kelley, a self-taught artist, had recently arrived from Virginia City, Nevada, where he had joined a group of hippies who called themselves the Red Dog Saloon gang. Upon arrival in San Francisco Kelley and other veterans of the gang renamed themselves The Family Dog, and began producing rock music dances. In 1966, when Chet Helms assumed leadership of the group and began promoting the dances at the Avalon Ballroom, Mouse and Kelley began working together to produce posters for the events. Later the pair also produced posters for promoter Bill Graham and for other events in the psychedelic community.
In 1967, Mouse collaborated with artists Kelley, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso and Wes Wilson to create the Berkeley Bonaparte Distribution Agency. Mouse and Kelley also worked together as lead artists at Mouse Studios and The Monster Company – producing album cover art for the bands Journey and Grateful Dead. The Monster Company also developed a profitable line of T-shirts, utilising the four colour process for silk screening.
The psychedelic posters Mouse and Kelley produced were heavily influenced by Art Nouveau graphics, particularly the works of Alphonse Mucha and Edmund Joseph Sullivan. Material associated with psychedelics, such as Zig-Zag rolling papers, were also referenced. Producing posters advertising for such musical groups as Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Grateful Dead led to meeting the musicians and making contacts that were later to prove fruitful.
Alton Kelley (June 17, 1940 in Houlton, Maine – June 1, 2008 in Petaluma, California) was an American artist best known for his psychedelic art, in particular his designs for 1960s rock concerts and albums. Along with artists Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso and Wes Wilson, Kelley founded the Berkeley Bonaparte distribution agency in order to produce and sell psychedelic poster art.
Along with fellow artist Stanley Mouse, Kelley is credited with creating the wings and beetles on all Journey album covers as well as the skull and roses image for the Grateful Dead. Kelley’s artwork on the 1971 self-titled live album, Grateful Dead, incorporated a black and white illustration of a skeleton by Edmund Sullivan, which originally appeared in a 19th-century edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
In celebration of the Summer of Love’s 50th anniversary, this exhibition explodes with a profusion of more than 120 posters, album covers and photographs from the transformative years around 1967. That summer, fuelled by sensational stories in the national media, San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood became a mecca for thousands seeking an alternative to the constrictions of postwar American society. A new graphic vocabulary emerged in posters commissioned to advertise weekly rock concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom, with bands such as Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and the Janis Joplin-led Big Brother & The Holding Company.
A group of more than 50 concert posters highlights experiments with psychedelic graphic design and meandering typography – often verging on the illegible. These include works by Wes Wilson, who took inspiration from earlier art movements such as the Vienna Secession, and Victor Moscoso, whose studies of colour theory with Josef Albers at Yale University translated into striking use of bright, saturated colours in his own designs. A grid of 25 album covers traces the influence of the famously amorphous lettering in the Beatles’ 1965 album Rubber Soul on countless covers and posters from later in the decade.
At the heart of the exhibition is a group of 32 photographs by Herb Greene, a pioneering member of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture and now a resident of Massachusetts. Many of his iconic images document the city’s burgeoning music scene, while a selection from a newly published portfolio offers a glimpse at everyday life in the Haight during the fabled summer of 1967.
Text from the Museum of Fine Arts website
Herb Greene (American, 1942-2025) Ohio to San Fransico: Haight Street 1967 (Plate 17) 1967, printed 2013 Photograph, gelatin silver print Private collection Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Herb Greene (American, 1942-2025) Ohio to San Fransico: Haight Street 1967 (Plate 20) 1967, printed 2013 Photograph, gelatin silver print Private collection Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Herb Greene (American, 1942-2025) Ohio to San Fransico: Haight Street 1967 (Plate 30) 1967, printed 2013 Photograph, gelatin silver print Private collection Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Herb “Herbie” Greene (born April 3, 1942 – March 3, 2025) was an American photographer best known for his portraits of The Grateful Dead, the iconic psychedelic rock band led by Jerry Garcia. Over 50 years, Greene’s photographs traced the band’s evolution from its roots in San Francisco’s psychedelic underground to global stardom.
His portraits of other rock and roll luminaries – including Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck, The Pointer Sisters, Carlos Santana, Sly Stone, and more – have been regularly featured in Rolling Stone magazine and several books documenting the music of the 1960s counterculture.
Known as “Herbie” by his friends, Greene won high praise for his ability to capture intimate portraits of the most revered figures in rock. That access was largely due to his relationships with the bands he photographed. Although he refers to himself as “just the guy with the long hair and the camera,” Greene lived in San Francisco during the 1960s rock revolution and was friends with renowned musicians, promoters, and artists.
1960s San Francisco
In 1961, Greene took photography classes at City College of San Francisco and later enrolled at San Francisco State University, where he majored in anthropology and communications. After moving into an apartment near the famed Haight-Ashbury district, he met Jerry Garcia at a bluegrass café called the Fox and Hound. The two became friends and Greene booked his first gig, a portrait session with Garcia’s band, The Warlocks. (The band would eventually change its name to The Grateful Dead).
As Greene’s reputation grew, some of the decade’s most iconic performers came to him for portraits and album covers. He photographed Big Brother and the Holding Company and its lead singer, Janis Joplin. He shot the cover for the Jefferson Airplane’s second album, Surrealistic Pillow, and captured rare portrait sessions with Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Procol Harem and others. His portfolio landed him a job as a fashion photographer with Joseph Magnin and Co, a prominent San Francisco department store. Greene began to split his time between San Francisco and a new studio in Los Angeles. As the 1960s came to a close, his work with The Grateful Dead and other iconic rockers continued.
Greene and The Grateful Dead
Greene first met Jerry Garcia in 1963 at The Fox and Hound, a bluegrass café on North Beach in San Francisco. Both were just 21 years old, and Garcia had not yet formed The Warlocks, the band that would eventually become The Grateful Dead. He was playing as part of the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers, a folk trio. After one of the Garcia’s sets, Greene introduced himself. It was the start of a lifelong friendship. The pair remained friends until Garcia’s death in August 1995.
While many photographers have captured The Grateful Dead on film, Greene is widely regarded as the group’s unofficial photographer. Over 50 years, he shot just 10 sit-down sessions with the band, but his images’ intimacy offer a rare glimpse into the band’s evolution from a fledgling group to international stars.
Photography style and equipment
Despite ample opportunities, Greene did not photograph musicians on stage. Instead, he shot portraits of his subjects in his studios, backstage, and in his home. His pieces include both one-on-one and group shots, and he is renowned for his ability to capture intimate expressions from revered musical figures.
Green’s portraits were shot in both colour and black-and-white, and the bulk of his work was captured on Kodak Tri-X 120-roll film, using D76 developer. His go-to cameras were a Hasselblad and Mamiya RB67.
Alfred Roller (2 October 1864 – 21 June 1935) was an Austrian painter, graphic designer, and set designer.
Roller was born in Brünn (Brno), Moravia. He at first studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Christian Griepenkerl and Eduard Peithner von Lichtenfels, but eventually became disenchanted with the Academy’s traditionalism. In 1897 he co-founded the Viennese Secession with Koloman Moser, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Josef Hoffmann, Gustav Klimt, and other artists who rejected the prevalent academic style of art. He became a professor of drawing at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Kunstgewerbeschule) in 1899, and president of the Secession in 1902.
In his early career Roller was very active as a graphic designer and draughtsman. He designed numerous covers and vignettes for the pages the Secessionist periodical Ver Sacrum, as well as the posters for the fourth, fourteenth, and sixteenth Secession exhibitions. He also designed the layout of the exhibitions themselves.
In 1902 Roller was introduced to the composer Gustav Mahler by Carl Moll. Roller expressed an interest in stage design and showed Mahler several sketches he had made for Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Mahler was impressed and decided to employ Roller to design the sets for a new production of the piece. The production, which premiered in February 1903, was a great critical success. Roller continued to design sets for Mahler’s productions. Eventually Roller left the Secession and his teaching post at the Kunstgewerbeschule to be appointed chief stage designer to the Vienna State Opera, a position he held until 1909. He died in Vienna in 1935.
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![J[eremiah] Gurney (American) 'Untitled [Cross-eyed man in three-quarter profile]' Nd](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/dag-half-plate-jeremiah-gurney-at-349-broadway-new-york-web.jpg "J[eremiah] Gurney (American) 'Untitled [Cross-eyed man in three-quarter profile]' Nd")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Group of three men]' c. 1850](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/dag-unsigned-unusual-period-frame-of-cast-thermoplastic-circa-1850-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Group of three men]' c. 1850")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Man on crutches]' c. 1850-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/man-on-crutches-sixth-plate-ambrotype-1850-60s-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Man on crutches]' c. 1850-1860s")
![Unknown photographer (American) Untitled [Man with pistols] c. 1850-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/man-with-pistols-sixth-plate-daguerreotype-1850-60s-orig.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) Untitled [Man with pistols] c. 1850-1860s")
![Unknown photographer (American) Untitled [Man with pistols] c. 1850-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/man-with-pistols-sixth-plate-daguerreotype-1850-60s-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) Untitled [Man with pistols] c. 1850-1860s")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Man, possibly a sailor, wearing hoop earrings]' Nd](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/man-possibly-a-sailor-wearing-hoop-earrings-orig.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Man, possibly a sailor, wearing hoop earrings]' Nd")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Man, possibly a sailor, wearing hoop earrings]' Nd](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/man-possibly-a-sailor-wearing-hoop-earrings-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Man, possibly a sailor, wearing hoop earrings]' Nd")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [African American]' c. 1850s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/dag-unsigned-sixth-plate-american-circa-1850s-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [African American]' c. 1850s")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [African American]' c. 1850s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/dag-unsigned-sixth-plate-american-circa-1850s-b-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [African American]' c. 1850s")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Two men in caps, elegantly dressed]' c. 1850s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/unsigned-dag-two-men-in-caps-elegantly-dressed-american-circa-1850s-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Two men in caps, elegantly dressed]' c. 1850s")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Handsome man with fifth finger ring]' c. 1850s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/dag-unsigned-1850s-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Handsome man with fifth finger ring]' c. 1850s")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Portrait of violinist holding instrument]' c. 1855](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/dag-sixth-plate-portrait-of-violinist-holding-instrument-circa-1855-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Portrait of violinist holding instrument]' c. 1855")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Two men, one with trug of tools]' c. 1850-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/two-men-one-with-trug-of-tools-sixth-plate-ambrotype-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Two men, one with trug of tools]' c. 1850-1860s")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Two firemen]' c. 1850-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/two-firemen-quarter-plate-tinted-tintype-1850-60s-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Two firemen]' c. 1850-1860s")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Man in button braces]' c. 1850](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/dag-unsigned-ninth-plate-american-circa-1850-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Man in button braces]' c. 1850")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Man in button braces]' c. 1850](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/dag-unsigned-ninth-plate-american-circa-1850-web1.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Man in button braces]' c. 1850")
![Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Two young men with straw hats, seated beside each other]' Nd](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/two-young-men-with-straw-hats-web.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) 'Untitled [Two young men with straw hats, seated beside each other]' Nd")
![Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Subway Passengers, New York City]' 1938](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/walker-evans-subway-passengers-new-york-city-web.jpg "Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Subway Passengers, New York City]' 1938")
![Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Untitled [Street scene]' 1950s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/walker-evans-untitled-web.jpg "Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Untitled [Street scene]' 1950s")
![William Herman Rau (1855-1920) 'Untitled [Clarence H. White works in Second Philadelphia Photographic Salon installation]' 1899](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clarence-h-white-works-in-second-philadelphia-photographic-salon-installation-1899-web.jpg "William Herman Rau (1855-1920) 'Untitled [Clarence H. White works in Second Philadelphia Photographic Salon installation]' 1899")
![Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Spring - A Triptych [Letitia Felix]' 1898](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clarence-h-white-spring-web.jpg "Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Spring - A Triptych [Letitia Felix]' 1898")
![Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Spring - A Triptych [Letitia Felix]' 1898](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clarence-h-white-spring-a-triptych-1898-web.jpg "Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Spring - A Triptych [Letitia Felix]' 1898")
![Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Spring - A Triptych [Letitia Felix]' 1898](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clarence-h-white-spring-a-triptych-1898-b-web.jpg "Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Spring - A Triptych [Letitia Felix]' 1898")
![Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [Male academic nude]' c. 1900](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clarence-h-white-untitled-male-academic-nude-c-1900-web.jpg "Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [Male academic nude]' c. 1900")
![Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [Portrait of F. Holland Day with Male Nude]' 1902](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clarence-h-white-portrait-of-f-holland-day-with-male-nude-1902-platinum-print-web.jpg "Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [Portrait of F. Holland Day with Male Nude]' 1902")
![Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [F. Holland Day lighting a cigarette]' 1902](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clarence-h-white-untitled-f-holland-day-lighting-a-cigarette-1902-web.jpg "Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [F. Holland Day lighting a cigarette]' 1902")
![Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'The Boy with His Wagon [1/3]' 1898](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clarence-h-white-boy-web.jpg "Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'The Boy with His Wagon [1/3]' 1898")
![Clarence H. White (1871-1925) 'Untitled [Jean Reynolds in Newark, Ohio]' c. 1905](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clarence-h-white-untitled-jean-reynolds-in-newark-ohio-c-1905-web.jpg "Clarence H. White (1871-1925) 'Untitled [Jean Reynolds in Newark, Ohio]' c. 1905")
![Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [Interior of Weiant house, Newark, Ohio]' 1904](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clarence-h-white-untitled-interior-of-weiant-house-newark-ohio-1904-web.jpg "Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [Interior of Weiant house, Newark, Ohio]' 1904")
![Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) and Paul Burty Haviland (French, 1880-1950) 'Untitled [Florence Peterson]' 1909, printed after 1917](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/white-haviland-untitled-florence-peterson-1909-printed-after-1917-web.jpg "Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) and Paul Burty Haviland (French, 1880-1950) 'Untitled [Florence Peterson]' 1909, printed after 1917")
![Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) and Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [Miss Thompson]' 1907](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/stieglitz-and-white-untitled-miss-thompson-1907-web.jpg "Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) and Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [Miss Thompson]' 1907")
![Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [Florence Peterson]' c. 1909](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clarence-h-white-untitled-florence-peterson-c-1909-web.jpg "Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [Florence Peterson]' c. 1909")
![Margaret Watkins (Canadian, 1884-1969) 'Untitled [Kitchen still life]' c. 1919-1920](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/margaret-watkins-untitled-kitchen-still-life-c-1919-20-web.jpg "Margaret Watkins (Canadian, 1884-1969) 'Untitled [Kitchen still life]' c. 1919-1920")
![Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [Dome of the Church of Our Lady of Carmen, San Ángel, Mexico]' 1925](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clarence-h-white-dome-of-the-church-of-our-lady-of-carmen-1925-web.jpg "Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) 'Untitled [Dome of the Church of Our Lady of Carmen, San Ángel, Mexico]' 1925")
![Peter Elfes (Australia, b. 1961) 'Brenton [Heath-Kerr] as Tom of Finland' 1992](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/elfes-brenton-heath-kerr-web.jpg "Peter Elfes (Australia, b. 1961) 'Brenton [Heath-Kerr] as Tom of Finland' 1992")
![Unknown photographer. 'Untitled [Auschwitz victim]' Nd](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/unknown-photographer-untitled-auschwitz-victim-nd-web.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Untitled [Auschwitz victim]' N")
![Installation view of the exhibition 'An Unorthodox Flow of Images' at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Melbourne, September - November 2017 showing (7) J. E. Bray's 'Untitled ["McDonnell's Tavern opposite Railway Station, remains of Dan Kelly and Hart in coffins"]' 1880 cabinet card (right) and (8) a photograph by an unknown photographer Hunters of Ned Kelly 1880 (left)](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/installation-d-web.jpg "Installation view of the exhibition 'An Unorthodox Flow of Images' at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Melbourne, September - November 2017 showing (7) J. E. Bray's 'Untitled [\"McDonnell's Tavern opposite Railway Station, remains of Dan Kelly and Hart in coffins\"]' 1880 cabinet card (right) and (8) a photograph by an unknown photographer Hunters of Ned Kelly 1880 (left)")
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