Please click on the photography for a larger version of the image.
Marcus
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) (Thomas Eakins and John Laurie Wallace on a Beach) c. 1883 Public domain
The great American painter and photographer Thomas Eakins was devoted to the scientific study of the human form and committed to its truthful representation. While he and his students at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts were surrounded by casts of classical sculpture, Eakins declared that he did not like “a long study of casts. … At best they are only imitations, and an imitation of imitations cannot have so much life as an imitation of life itself.” Photography provided an obvious solution.
This photograph, in which Eakins and a student affected the elegant contrapposto stances of classical sculpture, was probably taken during an excursion with students to Manasquan Inlet at Point Pleasant, New Jersey, during the summer of 1883. Valuing his photographs not only as studies for paintings but also for their own sake, Eakins carefully printed the best images on platinum paper. In this case, he went to the additional trouble of enlarging the original, horizontally formatted image and cropping it vertically to better contain the perfectly balanced figures.
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Nude, Playing Pipes c. 1883 Platinum print 22.7 x 16.6cm (8 15/16 x 6 9/16 in.) irregular Metropolitan Museum of Art David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1943 Public domain
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Standing Male Nude with Pipes 1880s Platinum print 22.9 x 17.3cm (9 x 6 13/16 in.) Metropolitan Museum of Art David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1943 Public domain
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Bill Duckett nude, reclining on side, hand on knee c. 1889 Platinum print 2 15/16 x 4 5/16 in. (7.46252 x 10.95502cm) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Charles Bregler’s Thomas Eakins Collection, purchased with the partial support of the Pew Memorial Trust Public domain
In January 1886, Thomas Eakins removed the loincloth from a male model while lecturing about the pelvis to an anatomy class that included female students at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Angry protests by parents and students soon forced him to resign from the Academy at the request of the board. Following Eakins’ departure, however, thirty-eight of his male students resigned from the Academy and formed the Art Students’ League of Philadelphia, providing him with a new forum for his life classes and for the creation of many of the paintings and photographs of the 1880s, including this nude study of Bill Duckett, an amateur athlete. The relaxed atmosphere of the Art Students’ League, where Eakins and his students governed themselves, permitted greater freedom in the photography of models than had prevailed at the Pennsylvania Academy. This photograph is an excellent example of Eakins’ unabashed exploration of frontal male nudity.
For Eakins, the camera was a teaching device comparable to anatomical drawing, a tool the modern artist should use to train the eye to see what was truly before it.
In the 1880s, through a series of technical advances that greatly simplified its practice, photography had expanded from being the province solely of the specialist into an activity accessible to the millions. To define photography as a discipline distinct from its casual, commercial, and scientific applications became the overriding goal of many American artists in the last two decades of the century, who claimed for it a place commensurate with those artistic endeavours that celebrated the complex, irreducible subjectivity of their makers. The photographs of Thomas Eakins are a perfect example of this development.
In addition to being an accomplished painter, watercolorist, and teacher, Thomas Eakins was a dedicated and talented photographer. Working with a wooden view camera, glass plate negatives, and the platinum print process, he distinguished himself from most other painters of his generation by mastering the technical aspects of the new medium and requiring his students to do the same. For Eakins, the camera was a teaching device comparable to anatomical drawing (43.87.23; 43.87.19), a tool the modern artist should use to train the eye to see what was truly before it.
Although it is not known from whom or when Eakins learned photography, it is clear that by 1880 he had already incorporated the camera into his professional and personal life. The vast majority of photographs attributed to Eakins are figure studies (nude and clothed) and portraits of his pupils (43.87.17), extended family (including himself) (43.87.23), and immediate friends (41.142.2). More than 225 negatives survive in the Bregler collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and approximately 800 images are currently attributed to Eakins and his circle – ample proof of the intensity with which Eakins worked with the camera.
Eakins did not generally use photographs as a preparatory aid to painting, although there are a small number of oils which have direct counterparts in existing photographs: the Amon Carter Museum’s The Swimming Hole [below] and the Metropolitan’s Arcadia [below] being the foremost examples. To the contrary, Eakins saw a different role for photography – one related to his extraordinary interest in knowing the figure and improving his sensitivity to complex figure-ground relationships. Committed to teaching close observation through the practice of dissection and preparatory wax and plaster sculpture, Eakins introduced the camera to the American art studio. At first his photographs were likely quick studies of pose and gesture; later, perhaps during the process of editing and cropping the negatives, and then making enlarged platinum prints, he saw the photographs as discrete works of art on paper, at their best on equal status with his watercolours.
The artistic freedom of the classical world that Eakins strove to bring to life in his academic programs at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (and in his Arcadian paintings) also appears as an important element in many of his nude studies (43.87.19) with the camera. These photographs, far more than the paintings, celebrate the male physique; even today, more than a century after their creation, their unabashed frontal nudity still has the power to shock contemporary eyes.
Citation: Department of Photographs. “Thomas Eakins (1844-1916): Photography, 1880s-90s,” in Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Thomas Eakins and J. Laurie Wallace at the Shore 1883 Public domain
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Thomas Eakins and J. Laurie Wallace at the Shore 1883 Public domain
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Thomas Eakins and J. Laurie Wallace at the Shore 1883 Public domain
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Unidentified model, Thomas Anschutz and J. Laurie Wallace 1883 Public domain
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Unidentified model, Thomas Anschutz and J. Laurie Wallace 1883 Public domain
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) (Three Boys Wading in a Creek)
In 1882, Thomas Eakins was promoted to the post of director of schools at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he became known as a charismatic and innovative teacher who advocated intensive study of the nude figure. Committed to teaching close observation through every means possible, Eakins turned his school into a laboratory of photographic experimentation. He and his students (male and female) made negatives of each other – in lithe repose or in action, nude or in costume. At times, Eakins must have realised that he was pushing the limits of Philadelphia decorum. This small 4 x 5 albumen silver print shows several of Eakins’ nephews playing in a creek on the property of the artist’s sister Frances and her husband, William J. Crowell. In the 1880s, Eakins spent much of his free time at the Crowell family home in Avondale, Pennsylvania, thirty miles southwest of Philadelphia. Distant from urban distractions, the idyllic farm soon became a refuge for him. The Crowell children delighted Eakins and he made many photographs of their spirited games.
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Arcadia c. 1883 Oil on canvas 98.1 × 114.3cm (38.6 × 45 in) Metropolitan Museum of Art
Circle of Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Thomas Eakins and students, swimming nude c. 1883 Public domain
The Swimming Hole (1884-1885) features Eakins’ finest studies of the nude, in his most successfully constructed outdoor picture. The figures are those of his friends and students, and include a self-portrait. Although there are photographs by Eakins which relate to the painting, the picture’s powerful pyramidal composition and sculptural conception of the individual bodies are completely distinctive pictorial resolutions. The work was painted on commission, but was refused.
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Swimming / The swimming hole 1885 Oil on canvas 27.625 × 36.625 in (70.2 × 93cm) Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Wrestlers in Eakins’s studio 1899 Platinum print on paper 3 5/8 x 6 in. (9.0 x 15.2cm) Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966 Public domain
On May 22, 1899, Eakins had two wrestlers pose in his 4th-floor studio at 1729 Mount Vernon Street, Philadelphia. Three days earlier, he had written to his friend, sportswriter Clarence Cranmer: “I am going to start the wrestling picture on Monday at half past two. I wish you could find it convenient to be at the studio and help us with advice as to positions and so forth.” The artist’s protégé Samuel Murray may have been present; he modelled a small sculpture of the wrestlers that is also dated 1899. Eakins painted the works from the live models and from a nearly identical photograph, that may have been taken that day. The photograph shows the wrestler on top holding the other in a half nelson and crotch hold.
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Wrestlers 1899 Oil on canvas 48 3/8 x 60 in. (122.87 x 152.4cm) Image: Museum Associates/LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Image Library
Circle of Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Reclining Male Nude from The Grafly Album 1886 Albumen print Mounting Sheet: 6 7/8 x 10 in. (17.5 x 25.4cm) Photo: 4 1/2 x 7 in. (11.5 x 17.8cm) Acquired by the Clark, 2001 The Clark Art Institute Public domain
Circle of Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Three Male Nude Models Supporting a Reclining Fourth Model, from The Grafly Album 1886 Albumen print Mounting Sheet: 6 7/8 x 10 in. (17.5 x 25.4cm) Photo: 4 1/2 x 7 in. (11.5 x 17.8cm) Acquired by the Clark, 2001 The Clark Art Institute Public domain
Circle of Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Four Standing Male Nudes, Frontal View, from The Grafly Album 1886 Albumen print Mounting Sheet: 6 7/8 x 10 in. (17.5 x 25.4cm) Photo: 4 1/2 x 7 in. (11.5 x 17.8cm) Acquired by the Clark, 2001 The Clark Art Institute Public domain
Circle of Thomas Eakins (American, 1844-1916) Two Male Nude Models Posing as Boxers, from The Grafly Album 1886 Albumen print Mounting Sheet: 6 7/8 x 10 in. (17.5 x 25.4cm) Photo: 4 1/2 x 7 in. (11.5 x 17.8cm) Acquired by the Clark, 2001 The Clark Art Institute Public domain
It takes some time to form an opinion as to the merit of Lee Miller’s work, given the amount of photographs available online, including the ones available on the Lee Miller Archives website. It is also difficult to separate the muse / socialite from the artist, the icon from the person.
Certainly there are unforgettable photographs, such as the haunting SS Guard in Canal, Dachau, Germany (1945, below). Once seen, never forgotten. But then there are the usual fashion photographs for Vogue that are no different from anyone else, a lot of pretty average social documentary photographs, some excellent and not so excellent portraits of friends and artists, and some surreal offerings that sometimes hit the mark.
Only occasionally do her photographs raise themselves above the mundane. This is not the fault of Lee Miller, but the fault of people claiming that someone is more than they are. The fault of people in control of her image. And that all comes down to money and power.
Instead of limiting access to her photographs, if her work was just left to breathe – just letting Lee Miller be nothing, in a Zenian sense – just let the work be what it is … then she and the work might attain more credibility than it has at the moment.
If Lee Miller was not set up as this icon, if she just is, then the work would be all the better for it. Icon and artist need to be separated. Let’s see more of the work freely available, for only then can we truly understand, believe.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Albertina for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Lee Miller (1907-1977) is considered one of the most fascinating artists of the 20th century. In only 16 years, she produced a body of photographic work of a range that remains unparalleled, and that unites the most divergent genres. Miller’s oeuvre extends from surrealistic images to photography in the fields of fashion, travelling, portraiture and even war correspondence; the Albertina presents a survey of the work in its breadth and depth, with the aid of 100 selected pieces.
Lee Miller began her artistic career as a surrealist photographer in the Paris of 1929. She alienated motifs by using narrow image frames and applying experimental techniques like solarisation, so that it would be possible to see paradox reality. Travel photography, in which she translated the landscape into modernistic and ambiguous shapes, originated in Egypt in 1934.
As one of just a handful of female photojournalists, she began to photograph the disastrous consequences of the Second World War back in 1940. Lee Miller photographed the attack on London by the German Luftwaffe (“the Blitz”), as well as the eventual liberation of Paris. Her reporting led her to Vienna via Salzburg in 1945 where she photographed a cityscape destroyed by war, as well as the hardships in the children’s hospitals. In this exhibit, the focus is specifically placed on the vast bulk of this unpublished group of works.
Irmgard Seefried (9 October 1919 – 24 November 1988) was a distinguished German soprano who sang opera, sacred music, and lieder.
One of the outstanding singers to emerge immediately after the Second World War, she was noted for her Mozart and Richard Strauss roles. But she also sang in other composers’ operas; the title role in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Marie in Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, Eva in Meistersinger, Blanche in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, and the title role in Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová. She was also a noted lieder singer, and a number of her Salzburg Festival recitals were recorded. She left many recordings of oratorio and sacred music by Bach, Mozart, Haydn (including at least four different renditions of the Archangel Gabriel in Die Schöpfung), Brahms, Fauré, Beethoven, Dvořák, Verdi and Stravinsky.
Although she was a high soprano, she performed, and recorded, both the trouser roles of the Composer and Octavian in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Der Rosenkavalier, respectively. These roles are usually associated with weightier voices, and today are usually sung by mezzo-sopranos.
She often sang with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, who said in interview that Seefried was naturally able to achieve results effortlessly which other singers, including Schwarzkopf herself, had to work hard to produce.
Curators: Sarah Greenough, Senior Curator and Head of the Department of Photographs, and Diane Waggoner, Associate Curator, Department of Photographs, National Gallery of Art
Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880) Market Scene at the Port of the Hotel de Ville, Paris before February 1852 Salted paper print 14.7 x 19.9cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 2003
What a great title for an exhibition. Photography always evidences light of the past, we live in light of the past (the light of the Sun takes just over 8 minutes to reach Earth) and, for whatever reason, human beings never seem to learn from mistakes, in light of the past history of the human race.
My favourites in this postings are the 19th century photographs, to which I am becoming further attuned the more I look at them. There is almost a point when you become psychologically enmeshed with their light, with the serenity of the images, a quality that most contemporary photographs seem to have lost. There is a quietness to their presence, a contemplation on the nature of the world through the pencil of nature that is captivating. You only have to look at Gustave Le Gray’s The Pont du Carrousel, Paris: View to the West from the Pont des Arts (1856-1858, below) to understand the everlasting, transcendent charisma of these images. Light, space, time, eternity.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the National Gallery of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877) A Scene in York: York Minster from Lop Lane 1845 Salted paper print 16.2 x 20.4cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Edward J. Lenkin Fund, Melvin and Thelma Lenkin Fund and Stephen G. Stein Fund, 2011
A British polymath equally adept in astronomy, chemistry, Egyptology, physics, and philosophy, Talbot spent years inventing a photographic process that created paper negatives, which were then used to make positive prints – the conceptual basis of nearly all photography until the digital age. Calotypes, as he came to call them, are softer in effect than daguerreotypes, the other process announced in 1839. Though steeped in the sciences, Talbot understood the ability of his invention to make striking works of art. Here the partially obstructed view of the cathedral rising from the confines of the city gives a sense of discovery, of having just turned the corner and encountered this scene.
Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829-1916) Piwac, Vernal Falls, 300 feet, Yosemite 1861 Albumen print 39.9 x 52.3cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mary and David Robinson, 1995
The westward expansion of America opened up new opportunities for photographers such as Watkins and William Bell. Joining government survey expeditions, hired by railroad companies, or catering to tourists and the growing demand for grand views of nature, they created photographic landscapes that reached a broad audience of scientists, businessmen, and engineers, as well as curious members of the middle class. Watkins’s photographs of the sublime Yosemite Valley, which often recall landscape paintings of similar majestic subjects, helped convince Congress to pass a bill in 1864 protecting the area from development and commercial exploitation.
Eugène Cuvelier (French, 1837-1900) Belle-Croix 1860s Albumen print 25.4 x 34.3cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gail and Benjamin Jacobs for the Millennium Fund, 2007
In the second half of the nineteenth century, some photographers in France, hired by governmental agencies to make photographic inventories or simply catering to the growing demand for pictures of Paris, drew on the medium’s documentary abilities to record the nation’s architectural patrimony and the modernisation of Paris. Others explored the camera’s artistic potential by capturing the ephemeral moods of nature in the French countryside. Though photographers faced difficulties in carting around heavy equipment and operating in the field, they learned how to master the elements that directly affected their pictures, from securing the right vantage point to dealing with movement, light, and changing atmospheric conditions during long exposure times.
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Pont du Carrousel, Paris: View to the West from the Pont des Arts 1856-1858 Albumen print 37.8 x 48.8cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 1995
Édouard-Denis Baldus (French, 1813-1889) Toulon, Train Station c. 1861 Albumen print 27.4 x 43.1cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 1995
In Light of the Past: Celebrating 25 Years of Photography at the National Gallery of Art, on view in the West Building from May 3 through July 26, 2015, will commemorate more than two decades of the Gallery’s robust photography program. Some 175 of the collection’s most exemplary holdings will reveal the evolution of the art of photography, from its birth in 1839 to the late 1970s. In Light of the Past is one of three stellar exhibitions that will commemorate the 25th anniversary of the National Gallery of Art’s commitment to photography acquisitions, exhibitions, scholarly catalogues, and programs.
“In Light of the Past includes some of the rarest and most compelling photographs ever created,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art, Washington. “It also honours the generous support of our donors who have enabled us to achieve this new place of prominence for photography at the Gallery.
About the exhibition
In Light of the Past begins with exceptional 19th-century salted paper prints, daguerreotypes, and albumen prints by acclaimed early practitioners such as William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884), Roger Fenton (1819-1869), Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), Albert Sands Southworth (1811-1894), and Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808-1901). It also displays works by American expeditionary photographers, including William Bell (1830-1910) and Carleton E. Watkins (1829-1916).
The exhibition continues with late 19th- and early 20th-century American Pictorialist photographs by Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), Clarence H. White (1871-1925), Gertrude Käsebier (1852-1934), and Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966), among others, as well as European masters such as Eugène Atget (1857-1927). The exhibition also examines the international photographic modernism of artists such as Paul Strand (1890-1976), André Kertész (1894-1985), Marianne Brandt (1893-1983), László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), and Ilse Bing (1899-1998) before turning to the mid-20th century, where exceptional work by Walker Evans (1903-1975), Robert Frank (b. 1924), Harry Callahan (1912-1999), Irving Penn (1917-2009), Lee Friedlander (b. 1934), and Diane Arbus (1923-1971) will be on view.
The exhibition concludes with pictures from the 1960s and 1970s, showcasing works by photographers such as Robert Adams (b. 1937), Lewis Baltz (1945-2014), and William Eggleston (b. 1939), as well as Mel Bochner (b. 1940) and Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), which demonstrate the diverse practices that invigorated photography during these decades.
Press release from the National Gallery of Art
Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901) The Letter c. 1850 Daguerreotype Plate: 20.3 x 15.2cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 1999
Working together in Boston, the portrait photographers Southworth and Hawes aimed to capture the character of their subjects using the daguerreotype process. Invented in France and one of the two photographic processes introduced to the public in early 1839, the daguerreotype is made by exposing a silver-coated copper plate to light and then treating it with chemicals to bring out the image. The heyday of the technique was the 1840s and 1850s, when it was used primarily for making portraits. The daguerreotype’s long exposure time usually resulted in frontal, frozen postures and stern facial expressions; this picture’s pyramidal composition and strong sentiments of friendship and companionship are characteristic of Southworth and Hawes’s innovative approach.
Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925) The Hillside c. 1898 Gum dichromate print 20.8 x 15.88cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 2008
The Photo-Secession
At the turn of the century in America, Alfred Stieglitz and his colleague Edward Steichen led the movement to establish photography’s status as a fine art. In 1902 Stieglitz founded an organisation called the Photo-Secession, consisting of young artists who shared his belief in the creative potential of the medium. Many of the photographers featured here were members of the group, including Gertrude Käsebier, Clarence White, and Alvin Langdon Coburn. Through the exhibitions Stieglitz organised in his New York gallery, called 291, and the essays he published in his influential quarterly, Camera Work, he and the Photo-Secession promoted the Pictorialist aesthetic of softly textured, painterly pictures that elicit emotion and appeal to the imagination. Occasionally the photographers’ compositions refer to other works of art, such as Steichen’s portrait of his friend Auguste Rodin, whose pose recalls one of the sculptor’s most famous works, The Thinker. Influenced by the modern European and American painting, sculpture, and drawing he exhibited at 291, Stieglitz lost interest in the Photo-Secession in the early 1910s and began to explore a more straightforward expression.
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Saint-Cloud 1926 Albumen print 22.2 x 18.1cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon and Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 2006
Using a cumbersome camera mounted on a tripod, Atget recorded the myriad facets of Paris and its environs at the turn of the century. Transforming ordinary scenes into poetic evocations, he created a visual compendium of the objects, architecture, and landscapes that were expressive of French culture and its history. He sold his photographs to artists, architects, and craftsmen, as well as to libraries and museums interested in the vanishing old city. Throughout his career he returned repeatedly to certain subjects and discovered that the variations caused by changing light, atmosphere, and season provided inexhaustible subjects for the perceptive photographer.
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) The Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty June 1866 Albumen print 36.1 x 26.7cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, New Century Fund, 1997
Ensconced in the intellectual and artistic circles of midcentury England, Cameron manipulated focus and light to create poetic pictures rich in references to literature, mythology, and history. Her monumental views of life-sized heads were unprecedented, and with them she hoped to define a new mode of photography that would rival the expressive power of painting and sculpture. The title of this work alludes to John Milton’s mid-seventeenth-century poem L’Allegro. Describing the happy life of one who finds pleasure and beauty in the countryside, the poem includes the lines:
Come, and trip it as ye go On the light fantastic toe; And in thy right hand lead with thee, The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty.
Dr Guillaume-Benjamin-Amant Duchenne (de Boulogne) (French, 1806-1875) Figure 63, “Fright” from “Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine (Mechanism of human physiognomy)” (1862) 1854-1855 Albumen print 21.5 × 16cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 2015
A neurologist, physiologist, and photographer, Duchenne de Boulogne conducted a series of experiments in the mid-1850s in which he applied electrical currents to various facial muscles to study how they produce expressions of emotion. Convinced that these electrically-induced expressions accurately rendered internal feelings, he then photographed his subjects to establish a precise visual lexicon of human emotions, such as pain, surprise, fear, and sadness. In 1862 he included this photograph representing fright in a treatise on physiognomy (a pseudoscience that assumes a relationship between external appearance and internal character), which enjoyed broad popularity among artists and scientists.
Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940) An Anaemic Little Spinner in a New England Cotton Mill (North Pownal, Vermont) 1910 Gelatin silver print 24.1 × 19.2cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 2015
Trained as a sociologist and initially employed as a teacher, Hine used the camera both as a research tool and an instrument of social reform. One of the earliest and most influential social documentary photographers of his time, he made many pictures under the auspices of the National Child Labor Committee, an organisation formed in 1904 to promote better working conditions for children. Hine’s focus on the thin, frail body of this barefoot twelve-year-old spinner, who stands before rows of bobbins in the mill where she worked, was meant to illustrate the unhealthy effects of her employment. Photographs like this one were crucial to the campaign to change American child labor laws in the early twentieth century.
In Light of the Past: Twenty-Five Years of Photography at the National Gallery of Art
Georgia O’Keeffe and the Alfred Stieglitz Estate laid the foundation of the photography collection of the National Gallery of Art in 1949 with their donation of 1,650 Stieglitz photographs, an unparalleled group known as the Key Set. Yet the Gallery did not start actively acquiring photographs until 1990, when it launched an initiative to build a collection of works by European and American photographers from throughout the history of the medium and mount major exhibitions with scholarly publications. Now including nearly fifteen thousand prints, the collection encompasses the rich diversity of photographic practice from fine art to scientific and amateur photography, as well as photojournalism. It is distinguished by its large holdings of works by many of the medium’s most acclaimed masters, such as Paul Strand, Walker Evans, André Kertész, Ilse Bing, Robert Frank, Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, Gordon Parks, Irving Penn, and Robert Adams, among others.
In Light of the Past celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1990 initiative by presenting some of the Gallery’s finest photographs made from the early 1840s to the late 1970s. It is divided into four sections arranged chronologically. The first traces the evolution of the art of photography during its first decades in the work of early British, French, and American practitioners. The second looks at the contributions of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century photographers, from Stieglitz and the American Pictorialists to European masters such as Eugène Atget. The third section examines the international photographic modernism of the 1920s and 1930s, and the fourth features seminal mid-twentieth-century photographers. The exhibition concludes with pictures representing the varied practices of those working in the late 1960s and 1970s.
The Nineteenth Century: The Invention of Photography
In 1839 a new means of visual representation was announced to a startled world: photography. Although the medium was immediately and enthusiastically embraced by the public at large, photographers themselves spent the ensuing decades experimenting with techniques and debating the nature of this new invention. The works in this section suggest the range of questions addressed by these earliest practitioners. Was photography best understood as an art or a science? What subjects should photographs depict, what purpose should they serve, and what should they look like? Should photographers work within the aesthetics established in other arts, such as painting, or explore characteristics that seemed unique to the medium? This first generation of photographers became part scientists as they mastered a baffling array of new processes and learned how to handle their equipment and material. Yet they also grappled with aesthetic issues, such as how to convey the tone, texture, and detail of multicoloured reality in a monochrome medium. They often explored the same subjects that had fascinated artists for centuries – portraits, landscapes, genre scenes, and still lifes – but they also discovered and exploited the distinctive ways in which the camera frames and presents the world.
Photography at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
In the late nineteenth century, improvements in technology and processing, along with the invention of small handheld cameras such as the Kodak, suddenly made it possible for anyone of middle-class means to take photographs. Many amateurs took up the camera to commemorate family, friends, and special events. Others, such as the sociologist Lewis Hine, used it as a tool for social and political change. Partially in response to the new ease of photography, more serious practitioners in America and Europe banded together to assert the artistic merit of the medium. Called Pictorialists, they sought to prove that photography was just as capable of poetic, subjective expression as painting. They freely manipulated their prints to reveal their authorial control, often resulting in painterly effects, and consciously separated themselves from amateur photographers and mechanised processes.
Photography Between the Wars
In the aftermath of World War I – the first modern, mechanised conflict – sweeping changes transformed photography. Avant-garde painters, graphic designers, and journalists turned to the medium, seeing it as the most effective tool to express the fractured, fast-paced nature of modernity and the new technological culture of the twentieth century. A wide variety of new approaches and techniques flourished during these years, especially in Europe. Photographers adopted radical cropping, unusual angles, disorienting vantage points, abstraction, collage, and darkroom alchemy to achieve what the influential Hungarian teacher László Moholy-Nagy celebrated as the “new vision.” Other photographers, such as the German August Sander or the Americans Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Walker Evans, sought a more rigorous objectivity grounded in a precise examination of the world.
Postwar Photography
Photography thrived in the decades after World War II, invigorated by new ideas, practices, and expanding venues for circulating and displaying pictures. Immediately after the war, many photographers sought to publish their pictures in illustrated magazines, which prospered during these years. Some, such as Gordon Parks, made photographs highlighting racial, economic, and social disparities. Others, such as Louis Faurer, Sid Grossman, and Robert Frank, turned to the street to address the conditions of modern life in pictures that expose both its beauty and brutality. Using handheld cameras and available light, they focused on the random choreography of sidewalks, making pictures that are often blurred, out of focus, or off-kilter.
In the later 1950s and 1960s a number of photographers pushed these ideas further, mining the intricate social interactions of urban environments. Unlike photographers from the 1930s, these practitioners, such as Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, and Diane Arbus, sought not to reform American society but to record it in all its complexity, absurdity, and chaos. By the late 1960s and 1970s, other photographers, such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz, looked beyond conventional notions of natural beauty to explore the despoliation of the urban and suburban landscape. Their pictures of tract houses, highways, and motels are stripped of any artistic frills, yet they are exquisitely rendered and replete with telling details. Also starting in the 1960s, many conceptual or performance artists working in a variety of media embraced what they perceived to be photography’s neutrality and turned to it as an essential part of their experiments to expand traditional notions of art. In the late 1960s, improvements in colour printing techniques led others, such as William Eggleston, to explore the artistic potential of colour photography.
Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) An Apple, A Boulder, A Mountain 1921 Platinum print National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 2014
After World War I, Steichen became disillusioned with the painterly aesthetic of his earlier work and embarked on a series of experiments to study light, form, and texture. Inverting an apple, he demonstrated how a small object, when seen in a new way, can assume the monumentality and significance of a much larger one. His close-up scrutiny of a natural form closely links this photograph with works by other American modernists of the 1920s, such as Edward Weston, Paul Strand, and Georgia O’Keeffe.
Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976) People, Streets of New York, 83rd and West End Avenue 1916 Platinum print 24.2 x 33cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 1990
Strand was introduced to photography in high school by his teacher Lewis Hine, who instilled in him a strong interest in social issues. In 1907, Hine took his pupil to Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 gallery in New York, which launched Strand’s desire to become a fine art photographer. By the early 1910s, influenced by Stieglitz, he began to make clearly delineated portraits, pictures of New York, and nearly abstract still lifes. Strand came to believe that photography was a gift of science to the arts, that it was an art of selection, not translation, and that objectivity was its very essence.
American 20th Century Untitled c. 1930 Gelatin silver print 5.7 x 10cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Robert E. Jackson, 2007
Snapshots
After World War I, a parade of technological improvements transformed the practice of photography. With smaller cameras, faster shutter speeds, and more sensitive film emulsions, both amateurs and more serious practitioners could now easily record motion, investigate unexpected angles and points of view, and work in dim light and inclement weather. The amateur’s less staid, more casual approach began to play an important role in the work of modernist photographers as they explored spontaneity and instantaneity, seeking to capture the cacophony and energy of modern life. Blurriness, distorted perspectives, and seemingly haphazard cropping-once considered typical amateur mistakes-were increasingly embraced as part of the modern, vibrant way of picturing the world.
Robert Frank (Swiss, 1924-2019) City of London 1951 Gelatin silver print 23 x 33.6cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Robert Frank Collection, Purchased as a Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1991
Robert Frank (Swiss, 1924-2019) Woman/Paris 1952 Gelatin silver print in bound volume Image: 35.1 x 25.4cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Robert Frank Collection, Gift (Partial and Promised) of Robert Frank, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1990
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Frank made several handbound volumes of photographs, exploring different ways to link his pictures through non-narrative sequences. While in Zurich in October 1952, he assembled pictures taken in Europe, South America, and the United States in a book called Black White and Things. With a brief introductory quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye” – the photographs are arranged in a sophisticated sequence that uses formal repetition, conceptual contrasts, and, as here, witty juxtapositions to evoke a range of ideas …
While in Zurich in October of 1952, Frank assembled photographs taken in Europe, South America, and the United States in the preceding years into a bound book called Black White and Things. Designed by Frank’s friend Werner Zryd, and with only a brief introductory statement describing the three sections, the photographs appear in a sophisticated sequence that relies on subtle, witty juxtapositions and powerful visual formal arrangements to evoke a wide range of emotions.
Frank made three copies of this book, all identical in size, construction, and sequence. He gave one copy to his father, gave one to Edward Steichen, and kept one. The book that belonged to his father is now in a private collection; Steichen’s copy resides at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and in 1990 Frank gave his copy to the Robert Frank Collection at the National Gallery of Art.
Robert Frank (Swiss, 1924-2019) Trolley – New Orleans 1955 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 21 x 31.6cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Maria and Lee Friedlander, 2001
Roy DeCarava (American, 1919-2009) Mississippi Freedom Marcher, Washington, D.C. 1963 Gelatin silver print 25.5 x 33cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation through Robert and Joyce Menschel, 1999
Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934) New York City 1966 Gelatin silver print Image: 13.3 x 20.6 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Trellis Fund, 2001
Heir to the tradition of documentary photography established by Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, and Robert Frank, Friedlander focuses on the American social landscape in photographs that can seem absurd, comical, and even bleak. In dense, complex compositions, he frequently depicts surprising juxtapositions that make the viewer look twice. He has made numerous self-portraits, yet he appears in these pictures in oblique and unexpected ways, for example reflected in a mirror or window. The startling intrusion of Friedlander’s shadow onto the back of a pedestrian’s coat, at once threatening and humorous, slyly exposes the predatory nature of street photography.
Giovanni Anselmo (Italian, 1934-2023) Entering the Work 1971 Photographic emulsion on canvas 49 x 63.5cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Glenstone in honor of Eileen and Michael Cohen, 2008
Conceptual Photography
In the 1960s, many painters and sculptors questioned the traditional emphasis on aesthetics and turned to creating art driven by ideas. Photography’s association with mechanical reproduction appealed to them as they sought to downplay the hand of the artist while promoting his or her role as idea maker. Some conceptual artists, such as Sol Lewitt and Mel Bochner, used photographs to explore an interest in perspective, scale, and mathematics. Others turned to photography as a tool to record performances and artistic undertakings, the resulting pictures acting as an integral part of those projects.
Anselmo was a member of the Italian Arte Povera group, which sought to break down the separation of art and life through experimental performances and the use of natural materials such as trees and leaves. To make this work, Anselmo set his camera up with a timed shutter release, and raced into view so that his running figure creates a modest yet heroic impression on the landscape.
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Colorado Springs, Colorado 1974 Gelatin silver print, printed 1983 15.2 x 15.2cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon and Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 2006
For more than forty years, Adams has recorded the changing American landscape, especially the ongoing settlement of the West. Although he has photographed roads, tract houses, and strip malls that have utterly transformed the landscape, he has also captured the beauty that remains and indeed, that refuses to die, as in his poetic picture of morning fog over California hills. He is convinced, as he wrote in 1974, that “all land, no matter what has happened to it, has over it a grace, an absolutely persistent beauty.”
Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) Fort Peck Dam, Montana 1936 Gelatin silver print 33.02 × 27.31cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 2014
One of the most iconic photographs by the pioneering photojournalist Bourke-White, Fort Peck Dam, Montana was published on the cover of the inaugural issue of Life magazine on November 23, 1936. A striking representation of the machine age, the photograph depicts the stark, massive piers for an elevated highway over the spillway near the dam. The two men at the bottom of the print indicate the piers’ massive scale while revealing the vulnerable position of the worker in the modern industrial landscape.
György Kepes (American born Hungary, 1906-2001) Juliet with Peacock Feather and Red Leaf 1937-1938 Gelatin silver print with gouache 15.7 × 11.6cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 2014
Trained as a painter at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, Kepes was an influential designer, educator, aesthetic theorist, and photographer. In 1930 he moved to Berlin, where he worked with László Moholy-Nagy, but eventually settled in Chicago and later Cambridge, Massachusetts. Created soon after his arrival in America, this startling photograph is both an intimate depiction of Kepes’s wife and a study of visual perception. Like the red leaf that seems to float above the image, the peacock feather – its eye carefully lined up with Juliet’s – obscures not only her vision but also the viewer’s ability to see her clearly.
Irving Penn (American, 1917-2009) Woman with Roses (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in Lafaurie Dress), Paris 1950 Platinum/palladium print, 1977 55.1 x 37cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Irving Penn, 2002
One of the most influential fashion and portrait photographers of his time, Penn made pictures marked by refinement, elegance, and clarity. Trained as a painter and designer, he began to photograph in the early 1940s while working at Vogue; more than 150 of his photographs appeared on the cover of the magazine during his long career. A perfectionist, Penn explored earlier printing techniques, such as a late nineteenth-century process that used paper coated with solutions of platinum or palladium rather than silver, to achieve the subtle tonal range he desired.
National Gallery of Art National Mall between 3rd and 7th Streets Constitution Avenue NW, Washington
Curators: Brett Abbott, Keough Family Curator of Photography and Head of Collections at the High Museum of Art, in collaboration with Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Executive Director from the Gordon Parks Foundation
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Airline Terminal, Atlanta, Georgia 1956 Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
The more I see of this man’s work, the more I admire it.
A sense of history, truth and injustice; a sense of beauty, colour and disenfranchisement; above all, a sense of composition and knowing the right time to take a photograph to tell the story. It’s all there, right in front of us, in almost every photograph. Photographs of institutionalised racism and the American apartheid, “the state of being apart”, laid bare for all to see.
From the languid curl and mass of the red sofa on which Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton, Mobile, Alabama (1956) sit, which makes them seem very small and which forms the horizontal plane, intersected by the three generations of family photos from top to bottom – youth, age, family … to the blank stare of the nanny holding the white child while the mother looks on in Airline Terminal, Atlanta, Georgia (1956). I love the amorphous mass of black at the right hand side of the this image. From the neon delightful, downward pointing arrow of ‘Colored Entrance’ in Department Store, Mobile, Alabama (1956) to the ‘WHITE ONLY’ obelisk in At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama (1956). And so the story flows on like some great river, unstoppable, unquenchable…
But then we have two of the most intimate moments of beauty that brings me to tears as I write this, the two photographs at the bottom of the posting Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama (1956). Just look at the light that Parks uses, this drawing with light. And then the use of depth of field, colour, composition (horizontal, vertical and diagonal elements) that leads the eye into these images and the utter, what can you say, engagement – no – quiescent knowingness on the children’s faces (like an old soul in a young body). This is a wondrous thing.
Notice how the photographer has pre-exposed the sheet of film so that the highlights in both images do not blow out. Pre-exposing the film lessens the contrast range allowing shadow detail and highlight areas to be held in balance. Also notice how in both images the photographer lets the eye settle in the centre of the image – in the photograph of the boy, the out of focus stairs in the distance; in the photograph of the three girls, the bonnet of the red car – before he then pulls our gaze back and to the right of the image to let the viewer focus on the faces of his subjects. In both photographs we have vertical elements (a door jam and a telegraph post) coming out of the red colours in the images and this vertically is reinforced in the image of the three girls by the rising ladder of the back of the chair. Masterful image making, this push and pull, this bravura art of creation.
Surely, Gordon Parks ranks up there with the greatest photographers of the 20th century.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the High Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Many thanx also to Carlos Eguiguren for sending me his portrait of Gordon Parks taken in New York in 1985, which reveals a wonderful vulnerability within the artist.
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton, Mobile, Alabama 1956 Promised gift of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
This portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton Sr., aged 82 and 70, served as the opening image of Parks’s photo essay. The well-dressed couple stares directly into the camera, asserting their status as patriarch and matriarch of their extensive Southern family. Photography is featured prominently within the image: a framed portrait, made shortly after the couple was married in 1906, hangs on the wall behind them, while family snapshots, including some of the Thorntons’ nine children and nineteen grandchildren, are proudly displayed on the coffee table in the foreground.
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Department Store, Mobile, Alabama 1956 Promised gift of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
Joanne Wilson, one of the Thorntons’ daughters, is shown standing with her niece in front of a department store in downtown Mobile. The pair is impeccably dressed in light, summery frocks. The jarring neon of the “Colored Entrance” sign looming above them clashes with the two young women’s elegant appearance, transforming a casual afternoon outing into an example of overt discrimination. Notice the fallen strap of Wilson’s slip. Though this detail might appear discordant with the rest of the picture, its inclusion may have been strategic: it allowed Parks to emphasise the humanity of his subjects.
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama 1956 Promised gift of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
A group of children peers across a chain-link fence into a whites-only playground with a Ferris wheel. Although they had access to a “separate but equal” recreational area in their own neighbourhood, this photograph captures the allure of this other, inaccessible space. The children, likely innocent to the cruel implications of their exclusion, longingly reach their hands out to the mysterious and forbidden arena beyond. The pristinely manicured lawn on the other side of the fence contrasts with the overgrowth of weeds in the foreground, suggesting the persistent reality of racial inequality.
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama 1956 Promised gift of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
The Jim Crow laws established in the South ensured that public amenities remained racially segregated. These laws applied to schools, public transportation, restaurants, recreational facilities, and even drinking fountains, as shown here. The photograph documents the prevalence of such prejudice, while at the same time capturing a scene of compassion. Here, a gentleman helps one of the young girls reach the fountain to have a refreshing drink of water.
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Ondria Tanner and Her Grandmother Window-Shopping, Mobile, Alabama 1956 Promised gift of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
RARE PHOTOS BY GORDON PARKS PREMIERE AT HIGH MUSEUM OF ART
Featuring works created for Parks’ powerful 1956 Life magazine photo essay that have never been publicly exhibited.
The High Museum of Art presents rarely seen photographs by trailblazing African American artist and filmmaker Gordon Parks in Gordon Parks: Segregation Story on view November 15, 2014 through June 21, 2015.
The exhibition, presented in collaboration with The Gordon Parks Foundation, features more than 40 of Parks’ colour prints – most on view for the first time – created for a powerful and influential 1950s Life magazine article documenting the lives of an extended African-American family in segregated Alabama. The series represents one of Parks’ earliest social documentary studies on colour film. The High will acquire 12 of the colour prints featured in the exhibition, supplementing the two Parks works – both gelatin silver prints – already owned by the High. These works augment the Museum’s extensive collection of Civil Rights era photography, one of the most significant in the nation.
Following the publication of the Life article, many of the photos Parks shot for the essay were stored away and presumed lost for more than 50 years until they were rediscovered in 2012 (six years after Parks’ death). Though a small selection of these images has been previously exhibited, the High’s presentation brings to light a significant number that have never before been displayed publicly. As the first African-American photographer for Life magazine, Parks published some of the 20th century’s most iconic social justice-themed photo essays and became widely celebrated for his black-and-white photography, the dominant medium of his era. The photographs that Parks created for Life’s 1956 photo essay The Restraints: Open and Hidden are remarkable for their vibrant colour and their intimate exploration of shared human experience.
The images provide a unique perspective on one of America’s most controversial periods. Rather than capturing momentous scenes of the struggle for civil rights, Parks portrayed a family going about daily life in unjust circumstances. Parks believed empathy to be vital to the undoing of racial prejudice. His corresponding approach to the Life project eschewed the journalistic norms of the day and represented an important chapter in Parks’ career-long endeavour to use the camera as his “weapon of choice” for social change. The Restraints: Open and Hidden gave Parks his first national platform to challenge segregation. The images he created offered a deeper look at life in the Jim Crow South, transcending stereotypes to reveal a common humanity.
“Parks’ images brought the segregated South to the public consciousness in a very poignant way – not only in colour, but also through the eyes of one of the century’s most influential documentarians,” said Brett Abbott, exhibition curator and Keough Family curator of photography and head of collections at the High. “To present these works in Atlanta, one of the centres of the Civil Rights Movement, is a rare and exciting opportunity for the High. It is also a privilege to add Parks’ images to our collection, which will allow the High to share his unique perspective with generations of visitors to come.
A Day in the Life
For The Restraints: Open and Hidden, Parks focused on the everyday activities of the related Thornton, Causey and Tanner families in and near Mobile, Ala. The images present scenes of Sunday church services, family gatherings, farm work, domestic duties, child’s play, window shopping and at-home haircuts – all in the context of the restraints of the Jim Crow South.
Key images in the exhibition include:
~ Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton, Mobile Alabama (1956) ~ Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama (1956) ~ Department Store, Mobile Alabama (1956) ~ Airline Terminal, Atlanta, Georgia (1956) ~ Willie Causey, Jr., with Gun During Violence in Alabama, Shady Grove, Alabama (1956)
About Gordon Parks
Gordon Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas. He grew up poor and faced racial discrimination. Parks was initially drawn to photography as a young man after seeing images of migrant workers published in a magazine, which made him realise photography’s potential to alter perspective. Parks became a self-taught photographer after purchasing his first camera at a pawnshop, and he honed his skills during a stint as a society and fashion photographer in Chicago. After earning a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship for his gritty photographs of that city’s South Side, the Farm Security Administration hired Parks in the early 1940s to document the current social conditions of the nation.
By 1944, Parks was the only black photographer working for Vogue, and he joined Life magazine in 1948 as the first African-American staff photographer. In 1970, Parks co-founded Essence magazine and served as the editorial director for the first three years of its publication. Parks later became Hollywood’s first major black director when he released the film adaptation of his autobiographical novel The Learning Tree, for which he also composed the musical score, however he is best known as the director of the 1971 hit movie Shaft. Parks received the National Medal of Arts in 1988 and received more than 50 honorary doctorates over the course of his career. He died in 2006
About The Gordon Parks Foundation
The Gordon Parks Foundation permanently preserves the work of Gordon Parks, makes it available to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media and supports artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon described as “the common search for a better life and a better world.” The Foundation is a division of The Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation.
Press release from the High Museum of Art
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Untitled, Alabama 1956 Collection of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama 1956 Collection of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Store Front, Mobile Alabama 1956 Collection of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama 1956 Collection of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Willie Causey, Jr., with Gun During Violence in Alabama, Shady Grove, Alabama 1956 Collection of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama 1956 Collection of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama 1956 Collection of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Black Classroom, Shady Grove, Alabama 1956 Promised gift of The Gordon Parks Foundation Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
Although this photograph was taken in the 1950s, the wood-panelled interior, with a wood-burning stove at its centre, is reminiscent of an earlier time. Parks’s photograph of the segregated schoolhouse, here emptied of its students, evokes both the poetic and prosaic: springtime sunlight streams through the missing slats on the doors, while scraps of paper, rope, and other detritus litter the uneven floorboards. One of the Thorntons’ daughters, Allie Lee Causey, taught elementary-grade students in this dilapidated, four-room structure. After Parks’s article was published in Life, Mrs. Causey, who was quoted speaking out against segregation, was suspended from her job. She never held a teaching position again.
High Museum of Art 1280 Peachtree Street, N.E. Atlanta, GA 30309
Original curator of the touring exhibition: Linda Benedict-Jones, Curator of Photography at the Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA)
Duane Michals (American, b. 1932) From the series I Remember Pittsburgh 1982 Nine gelatin silver prints Greenwald Photograph Fund and Fine Arts Discretionary Fund Courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
I couldn’t resist. Another posting on the work of this extraordinary artist. I particularly like The Bewitched Bee (1986) and Who is Sidney Sherman?, replete with blond wig and fag hanging out of the mouth accompanied by very funny and perceptive text.
There is also a very interesting piece of writing on life and photography included in the posting, Real Dreams, from 1976.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“I’m not interested in what something looks like, I want to know what it feels like.”
Duane Michals
Duane Michals (American, b. 1932) The Bewitched Bee 1986 Thirteen gelatin silver prints with hand-applied text 5 x 7 in. (12.7 x 17.8 cm)
Michals uses photography to spin what amount to Ovidian legends, as in The Bewitched Bee, a sequence of thirteen images in which a young man stung by a bee grows antlers, wanders through the woods, and finally drowns in a sea of leaves.
The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) presents Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals, the first major U.S. retrospective of the artist’s work in 20 years. Through image sequences, multiple exposures and the overlay of handwritten messages and pigment, Duane Michals (b. 1932) pioneered distinctly new ways of creating and considering photographs. The last half-century of this artist’s prolific, trailblazing career is explored in a carefully selected presentation of more than 65 works. Organised by the Carnegie Museum of Art, Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals is on view at PEM from March 7 through June 21, 2015.
Michals’ career has been fuelled by his enduring curiosity about the human experience and has been defined by its continual creative exploration and reinvention. A self-taught practitioner, he emerged on the photographic scene in the 1960s, at a time when Ansel Adams’ austere mountain ranges and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s iconic street scenes ruled the day. Rather than journey outward to depict nature or patiently wait to capture a decisive moment, Michals sought a new method of expression for his psychological and imaginative vision. He worked with friends and acquaintances to stage sequences of photographs that sought to express things that cannot be seen directly, such as metaphysical reflections on the passage from life to death. Later, he added handwritten text to the images’ margins, further challenging the prevailing sanctity of the single pure photograph.
“For Michals, the need to authentically express himself trumped any interest in being accepted into the mainstream art world. His work charts fresh territory, creatively mixing philosophical rigour, surreal witticism and childlike playfulness with an unabashed sentimentality and nostalgic longing,” says Trevor Smith, PEM’s Curator of the Present Tense. “In Michals’ photographs we encounter an uncommon vulnerability as well as a resolute search for meaning and human connection.”
Raised in a steelworking family outside of Pittsburgh, Michals has explored familial and personal identity as a recurring theme. In a rarely exhibited 30-photograph sequence titled The House I Once Called Home (2003), the artist explores the abandoned three-story brick house where he spent his childhood. Each image is paired with poetic verse of remembrance and reflection to create an intimate photographic memoir and metaphysical scrapbook. Recent photographs are superimposed on historic images as the series toggles through time, space and memory. The home’s current dilapidated state contrasts with reveries of a formerly bustling family home and a rumination on the passage of time and the inevitable succession of generations.
Michals’ lifelong adventure with photography began on a trip to Russia in 1958. Borrowing a camera from a friend, he discovered a way to interact with people and tell stories. Shortly thereafter, Michals moved to New York City where he supported himself through work as a commercial photographer for Vogue, Esquire and Life magazines and took portraits of notable artists including Meryl Streep, Sting and Willem de Kooning. In the 1960s, Michals began his earliest experimental narrative sequences that were exhibited in 1970 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The curator of the show, William Burback, noted that “the mysterious situations Michals invents are posed and theatrical. Yet, they are so common to the urban condition that we have the illusion of remembering scenes and events experienced for the first time.” Later he began adding text to his photographs such as This Photograph Is My Proof (from 1974), which allowed him to tell stories and address feelings that could not be fully explored by photography alone.
Rather than take cues from his photographic contemporaries, Michals considers surrealist painters such as René Magritte, Balthus and Giorgio de Chirico to be his artistic heroes. Scratching out universal truths from the mystery of human experience, Michals has explained that his works are, “about questions, they are not about answers.” Over the decades, he has been at the forefront of exploring sexual identity and the struggles for gay rights. In his 1976 work, The Unfortunate Man, a model arches his back in anguish while the accompanying text reads: The unfortunate man could not touch the one he loved. It was declared illegal by the law. Slowly his fingers became his toes and his hands gradually became feet. He wore shoes on his hands to disguise his pain. It never occurs to him to break the law.
One of the constants of Michals’ career – from his classic narrative sequences to his more recent series of hand-painted tintypes – has been his preference for intimately scaled images with tactile surface treatments. These works, with their universal themes of memory, dreams, desire and mortality, draw the viewer closer and insist on their full engagement at an emotional level. Commenting on why Michals includes handwritten text on his images, he has said: “I love the intimacy of the hand. It’s like listening to someone speaking.”
Duane Michals (American, b. 1932) Sting 1982 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery and the artist
Duane Michals (American, b. 1932) The Great Photographers of My Time #2 1991 Gelatin silver print The Henry L. Hillman Fund Courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Duane Michals (American, b. 1932) The Unfortunate Man 1976 Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text The Henry L. Hillman Fund Courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Duane Michals (American, b. 1932) Magritte at His Easel 1965 Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text
Duane Michals (American, b. 1932) Georgette and Rene Magritte 1965 Gelatin silver print with hand-applied text
Duane Michals (American, b. 1932) From the series The House I Once Called Home 2002 Thirty gelatin silver prints with hand-applied text The Henry L. Hillman Fund Courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Randy Duchaine Duane Michals, portrait with red nose 2015 Photo courtesy of Randy Duchaine
Real Dreams
by Duane Michals
Nothing is what I once thought it was. You are not what you think you are. You are nothing you can imagine. I am a short story writer. Most often photographers are reporters. I am an orange. They are apples. One of the biggest cliches in photography is to say that he is a personal photographer. We must touch each other to stay human. Touch is the only thing that can save us. I use photography to help me explain my experiences to myself. Some photographers literally shoot everything that moves, hoping somehow, in all that confusion to discover a photograph. The difference between the artist and the amateur is a sense of control. There is a great power in knowing exactly what you are doing, even when you don’t know. We are all stars. We just don’t know it. I practice being Duane Michals everyday – that’s all I know. Most portraits are lies. People are rarely what they appear to be, especially in front of a camera. You might know me your entire lifetime and never reveal yourself to me. To interpret wrinkles as character is insult not insight. Was there ever a 1956? What did I do in June 1971? What happened in 1956? I think that there was 1932. The history of photography has not been written. You will write it. No one has photographed a nude until you have. No one has photographed a sequence or green pepper till you have. Nothing has been done until you do it. There are no answers anymore. Get (Edward) Weston off your back, forget (Diane) Arbus, (Robert) Frank, (Ansel) Adams, (Clarence) White, don’t look at photographs. Kill the Buddha. I am my own hero. Photography books have titles like “The Photographer’s Eye” or “The Vision of So and So” or “Seeing Photographers” – as if photographers didn’t have minds, only eyes. Everything is going; yes, even you must go. Right now you are going. Right now! I find myself talking to photographs. I see a photograph of a women and I ask, “Is that all you’re going to tell me?” I can see the long hair and costume. Is she a witch, a mother, kind, consuming? Does she believe anything? I want more. As I write this, at this moment, thousands of people are dying, thousands are being born, the earth is totally alive with Spring lust, stars are exploding – my God! It is the great unknowing that we all live in, that we call life, that I find overwhelming. And I think that I will never know, never. I am the limits of my work. You are the limits of yours. This is a journey. We do not live here. When I say “I,” I mean We. As soon as I say “now,” it becomes “then.” It is very easy for photographers to fake. Just go out and photograph twenty Pizza Huts. That’s all there is, change. Some influences open doors and liberate, other influences close doors and suffocate. Photography, particularly, is suffocating. I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.
Photographers tell me what I already know. The recognition of the beautiful, bizarre, or boring (the three photographic B’s) is not the problem. You would have to be a refrigerator not to be moved by the beauty of Yosemite. The problem is to deal with one’s total experience, emotionally as well as visually. Photographers should tell me what I don’t know. I find the limitations of still photography enormous. One must redefine photography, as it is necessary to redefine one’s life in terms of one’s own needs. Each generation should redefine the language and all its experiences in terms of itself. The key word is expression – not photography, not painting, not writing. You are the event, not your parents, friends, gurus. Only you can teach yourself. Everything we experience is in our mind. It is all mind. What you are reading now, hearing now, feeling now… We’re all afraid of dying. We’ve already died. Look at your high school graduation picture, she’s dead! Just now, you died. It is essential for me to be silly. If one is serious, one must also be foolish, to survive. Trying to communicate one true feeling on my own terms is a constant problem. I am compulsive in my preoccupation with death. In some way I am preparing myself for my own death. Yet if someone would put a gun to my stomach, I would pee my pants. All my metaphysical speculations would get wet. When you look at my photographs, you are looking at my thoughts. I am very attracted to the person of Stefan Mihal. He is the man I never became. We are complete opposites, although we were born at the same moment. If we should meet, we would explode. We are like matter and anti-matter. He is my shadow. I saved myself from him. I only photograph what I know about, my life, I do not presume to know who blacks are or what they feel or bored suburban families or transvestites. And I never believe photographs of them staring into a camera. I take nothing for granted. I can count on nothing. I am not sure where I once was certain. I don’t know what will be left by the time I’m fifty. That’s ok. The sight of these words on a page pleases me. It’s like some sort of trail I’ve left behind, clues, strange marks made, that prove I was once here. When I was about 9 ( the year my brother Tim was born), I would sit on the edge of my bed and be very still, long after the family had gone to sleep. I would try to find the “I” of “me.” I thought that if I would be very quiet, I might find that place inside that was “I.” I am still looking. We are all a mental construction. Change our chemistry, our point of reference and reality changes. I am a professional photographer and a spiritual dilettante: I would prefer to be a professional mystic and a dilettante photographer. I remember the first time I sensed being lonely. I was about five at the time, living with my grandmother, and my best friend Art went away with his family. The afternoon loomed long and empty. I missed someone, I was empty. There was a lacking. Only I am my enemy. My fear can stop me. Never try to be an artist. Just do your work and if the work is true, it will become art. “We must pay attention so as not to be deceived by the familiar.” Things are what we will them to become. It is important to stay vulnerable. To permit pain, to make mistakes, not to be intimidated by touching. Mistakes are very important, if we’re alert. None of my photographs would have existed without my inventing them. These are not accidental encounters, witnessed on the street. I am responsible whether (Henri Cartier-) Bresson was there or not, those people would have had their picnic along the Seine. They were historical events.
There is not one photography. There is no photography. The only value judgment is the work itself. Does it move, touch, fill me? Any one who defines photography frightens me. They are photo-fascists, the limiters. They know! We must struggle to free ourselves constantly, not only from ourselves but especially from those who know. It seems I am waiting for something to happen: and when it does, it will be difficult for me to imagine that I had ever been the person who is writing this. I will be someone else. I am not interested in the perfect print. I am interested in a perfect idea. Perfect ideas survive bad prints and cheap reproductions. They can change our lives. (If Duane wants to take pictures, he should do a study of laborers and farm workers and unwed mothers and make some social changes. Do something else – something noble. That’s what I’d do. – Stefan Mihal) We have a way of making the most extraordinary experiences ordinary. We actually work at destroying miracles. The best artists give themselves in their work. (Rene) Magritte was a gift, (Eugene) Atget, (Thomas) Eakins, (Odilon) Redon, (Bill) Brandt, (August) Sander(s), Balthus, (Giorgio) De Chirico, (Walt) Whitman, Cavafy. That’s all that there is to give. I am my gift to you, and you are your gift to me. Most photographers photograph other people’s lives, seldom their own. We must free ourselves to become what we are. Photography describes to well. Our parents protect us from death. But when they die, there is no one to stand between us and death. I once thought that time was horizontal, and if I looked straight ahead, I could see next Thursday. Now I think it is vertical and diagonal and perpendicular. It’s all very confusing. People believe in the reality of photographs, but not in the reality of paintings. That gives photographers an enormous advantage. Unfortunately, photographers also believe in the reality of photographs. The most important sentences usually contain two words: I want, I love, I’m sorry, please forgive, please touch, I need, I care, thank you. Everything is subject for photography, especially the difficult things of our lives: anxiety, childhood hurts, lust, nightmares. The things that cannot be seen are the most significant. They cannot be photographed, only suggested. I would like to talk to William Blake and Thomas Eakins.
Duane Michals (American, b. 1932) Paradise Regained 1968 Courtesy of the artis The Henry L. Hillman Fund Carnegie Museum of Art
“Everything I did grew out of my frustration with the medium, the silence of the still picture,” he says, so he found the “wiggle room.” With sequences, he could add drama before and after the decisive moment. Having his subjects move created ethereal images and an awareness of time’s passage. Layering negatives challenged preconceptions.
Language, Michals says, has always been associated with photographs. A newspaper caption might tell you that 20 inches of snow fell on Boston or Vladimir Putin arrived by plane at the Olympics. “I write about what cannot be seen,” he says. “My text picks up where the photograph fails. This Photograph is my Proof, a “nice picture” of his cousin and new bride at Michals’ grandmother’s house, is metaphorically “out of focus” until Michals adds the text.
Michals uses a pen nib and ink to enhance his visual stories, writing in cursive or all capitals depending on his mood. “I like the handwriting, the texture.” He also collects original manuscripts. He describes himself as an intimist, a lover of diaries, books (he has three libraries at home in New York City), small pictures and intimacy. “My photographs whisper into the viewers’ eyes rather than shout. They say, ‘Come closer. I’ll tell you a secret.'”
Michals says he’s taken many professional risks, especially when presenting issues born of the gay community like isolation and illegal behaviour. “Remember, 20 or 30 years ago, marriage wasn’t even on the table,” he says. (Michals and Fred Gorrée, his partner of nearly 56 years, married in 2011, just days after same-sex marriage was legalised in New York.)
Unlike Robert Mapplethorpe, whom he says is more hardcore, Michals tends toward sentimentality and the legitimacy of the love between people of the same gender. “I’m not a typical gay person any more than I’m a typical person or photographer.”
That disdain for following established paths might explain why Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson are not among his heroes. “My sources for inspiration were anybody who contradicted my mind and opened my imagination,” Michals says, like Lewis Carroll, Magritte, Joseph Cornell and surrealists in general. “Ansel Adams did not open my imagination. He dealt with Yosemite and sunsets. I was interested in metaphysical ideas, what happens when you die.”
Extract from Lisa Kosan. “Meet Duane Michals,”on the PEM website 2nd March 2015 [Online] Cited 08/06/2015. No longer available online.
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Blue Handkerchief, Red Handkerchief 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
I remember coming out in 1975, six years after Stonewall, that seismic event that was the out and proud culmination of the resistance to oppression that had been building since the Second World War. Pre-disco, pre-Heaven night club (opened in December 1979) young gay men like me went to pubs in the Soho and Earl’s Court district of London and to places like Bang! nightclub on Tottenham Court Road (opened 1976). I used to wear an earring in my left ear, keys on the left, handkerchiefs to all the fetish nights at Heaven, and speak a queer language that secretive gay men had to speak in straight places… Polari (or alternatively Parlare, Parlary, Palare, Palarie, Palari; from Italian parlare, “to talk”).
“Polari is a form of cant slang used in Britain by actors, circus and fairground showmen, merchant navy sailors, criminals, prostitutes, and the gay subculture. There is some debate about its origins, but it can be traced back to at least the nineteenth century and possibly the sixteenth century… Polari is a mixture of Romance (Italian or Mediterranean Lingua Franca), London slang, backslang, rhyming slang, sailor slang, and thieves’ cant… It was a constantly developing form of language, with a small core lexicon of about 20 words (including bona, ajax, eek, cod, naff, lattie, nanti, omi, palone, riah, zhoosh (tjuz), TBH, trade, vada), and over 500 other lesser-known words.
Polari was used in London fishmarkets, the theatre, fairgrounds and circuses, hence the many borrowings from Romany. As many homosexual men worked in theatrical entertainment it was also used among the gay subculture, at a time when homosexual activity was illegal, to disguise homosexuals from hostile outsiders and undercover policemen. It was also used extensively in the British Merchant Navy, where many gay men joined ocean liners and cruise ships as waiters, stewards and entertainers. On one hand, it would be used as a means of cover to allow gay subjects to be discussed aloud without being understood; on the other hand, it was also used by some, particularly the most visibly camp and effeminate, as a further way of asserting their identity.” (Text from Wikipedia)
For example “vada the bona omi” was a “look at the good man”, “spark out on his palliass” was “flat out on his back”, and “he had huge lallies” which was “he had huge legs” (more terms can be found on the Polari – British gay slang web page). Another favourite was “trolling the Dilly” which means “to cruise or walk about Pica/dilly” where the rent boys (known as Dilly boys) used to line up against the railings looking for customers or “trade”. In this context “trolling” could be seen as a form of gay flâneur. Wikipedia states that Polari had begun to fall into disuse amongst the gay subculture by the late 1960s, but in my experience this is not true. Within my circle of friends it was still in constant use into the early 1980s. The language was very useful in pubs in London where sailors, ruff trade, and the theatre crowd mixed in Soho, were you could comment to a gay friend on a man that you thought attractive and anyone overhearing your conversation would not know what you were talking about.
All this must seem rather quaint now, but the archetypal images of gay men have not changed much over the intervening years. There is still the natural young gay man, the bear, the leatherman (or those that just wear leather for dance parties, just for show and not for attitude), the S/M scene, still the handkerchief code (still seen though rarely these days), the armband on the left or right for active or passive, still the gay jocks but now much more the gym preened bunnies. Everything old is new again… it’s just less heterogeneous.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Fotomuseum Winterthur for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
In 1977, Hal Fischer produced his photo-text project Gay Semiotics, first as a series of silver gelatin prints and then as a book published by NFS Press. The project explored the growing visibility of the male gay community in the Castro district of San Francisco, particularly its street style and so-called ‘hanky codes’ indicating different sexual preferences. Fisher’s series was one of the earliest attempts to explore a queer semiotics, offering a playful engagement with male self-fashioning and archetypes. Gay Semiotics is both a marker of the self-confidence and creativity of the San Francisco gay community before the emergence of HIV/AIDS and an important contribution to West Coast conceptual photography.
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Keys 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Leather Apparel 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Gag Mask 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Amyl Nitrite 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Earring 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
JBW:Gay Semiotics is an attempt to map some of the discourse of structuralism onto the visual codes of male queer life in the Castro. How did you come to structuralism?
HF: Thanks to Lew Thomas, in graduate school I began reading things like Jack Burnham’s The Structure of Art and Ursula Meyer’s Conceptual Art. Those were two key texts. Of course, structuralism came late to photography, when you consider that Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation came out in 1966. Reading Burnham, going on to read Claude Lévi-Strauss, all that was crucial. I learned about signifiers, and thought, this is going on all around me.
JBW: You’re doing several things in Gay Semiotics. On the one hand, you’re parsing a signification system that arose out of a nonverbal, erotic exchange, and you’re also deconstructing gay male self-fashioning and photographing “archetypes.” It is thus a photo-project about the history of photography and its long legacy of ethnographic typing.
HF: I can’t say I was conscious of it at the time, but one of the first photographers who influenced me was August Sander. I mean, I LOVED Sander. I still do. I probably was a fascist in an earlier life, because I’m definitely into types, and I’m definitely into archetyping. I don’t really think it’s that awful a thing to do; it can be very informative. I was also interested in the Bechers and the notion of repetition.
JBW: So the work is also about genre.
HF: Yes. It’s also about personal desire; it’s a lexicon of attraction.”
Extract from Julia Bryan-Wilson speaking with Hal Fischer. Aperture magazine #218, Spring 2015
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Signifiers for a Male Response 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Street Fashion Basic Gay 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Street Fashion Jock 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Street Fashion Forties Trash 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Street Fashion Hippie 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Street Fashion Uniform 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Street Fashion Leather 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Archetypal Media Image Leather 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Archetypal Media Image Urbane 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Archetypal Media Image Western 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Archetypal Media Image Classical 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Archetypal Media Image Natural 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Dominance 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Sadism & Masochism 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Submission 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Bondage Device Cross 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Bondage Device Open End Table Rack 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Bondage Device Meat Hoist 1977/2014 From Gay Semiotics 1977 Inkjet print
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Air France Jun 21 1982 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol being, well … Andy Warhol.
Artist, tourist, celebrity, poofter, man about town and spontaneous, thoughtful snapper. The photograph of the Prado at night is superb as are the multiple, stitched together photographs. Warhol certainly loved his high key, 35mm images.
Marcus
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Cessna Plane c. 1977 Four stitched gelatin silver prints Each: 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6cm) Overall: 2 1 1/4 x 27 3/8 in. (54 x 69.5cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) City View May 07 1984 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Houston Skyline c. 1979 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) German Trolley Jun 23 1980 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Limousine Interior c. 1980 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Luxor Temple c. 1977 Two unique gelatin silver prints Each: 8 x 5 in. (20.3 x 12.7cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Luxor Temple (detail) c. 1977 Two unique gelatin silver prints Each: 8 x 5 in. (20.3 x 12.7cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Ocean Landscape 1986 Four stitched gelatin silver prints Each: 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6cm) Overall: 2 1/4 x 27 1/2 in. (54 x 69.9cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Statues Outside Musée D’Orsay c. 1980 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Monastery of Saint John of the Kings, Toledo Jan 24 1983 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4 cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Museo del Prado Exterior, Madrid, Spain Jan 24 1983 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Spanish Portico Jan 24 1983 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Richard Coeur de Lion at Westminster c. 1980 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Pyramid c. 1977 Unique gelatin silver print 5 x 8 in. (12.7 x 20.3cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Street Scene c. 1982 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Riders from the Car c. 1979 Two unique polaroid prints mounted on board Each: 4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in. (10.8 x 8.6cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Unidentified Men c. 1980 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Venetian Canal 1977 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Table Setting c. 1980 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Beach Scene c. 1975 Unique polaroid print 4¼ x 3½ in. (10.8 x 8.8cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Place de la Concorde c. 1980 Unique gelatin silver print 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Rockefeller Center c. 1984 Unique gelatin silver print 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Sears Tower c. 1980 Unique gelatin silver print 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Max Delys at the Saloon c. 1980 Unique polaroid print mounted on board 4 1/4 x 3/ 3/8 in. (10.8 x 8.5cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Union Square c. 1975 Unique polaroid print 4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in. (10.8 x 8.5cm)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Tunnel c. 1980 Unique gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
Exhibition dates: 23rd January – 4th September, 2015
*PLEASE NOTE THIS POSTING CONTAINS ART PHOTOGRAPHS OF HUMAN EROTIC ACTIVITY AND NUDITY – IF YOU DO NOT LIKE PLEASE DO NOT LOOK, FAIR WARNING HAS BEEN GIVEN*
Unknown photographer Female nude 1850s Daguerreotype in case
Part 2 of this special posting of photographs from the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.
I especially like the allusion to Romanticism and class in Bijoux 118 (catalog card) (below) through the picture on the wall behind the copulating couple; and the allusion to the landscape and the sublime in Man performing analinctus on another man (1885-1900, below) through the painted studio backdrop. The sheer pleasure on the faces of some of the people in these photographs, such as in Clothed man kneeling behind a nude woman (1884-1886, below) is a joy to behold.
Many thankx for the Kinsey Institute for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
The Kinsey Institute research collection contains thousands of examples of erotic imagery produced over centuries by artists around the world. When the new technology of photography was announced in France in 1839, it was not long before it became the most popular medium for depictions of the nude figure, as well as erotic imagery. The first photographic process to be widely used was the daguerreotype, which produced a unique image. With the invention of other processes that used negatives to make multiple prints, the mass production of erotic photographs became possible. Hold That Pose features daguerreotypes, tintypes, albumen and gelatin silver prints, stereocards, and other examples of photographic processes that were used by professional photographers in the 19th century to produce and distribute erotic material.
W.H. Gilbert Tate (London, England) Portrait of an actress c. 1870 Albumen print (carte de visite)
Cartes de visite and cabinet cards
Mass produced on cheap paper or cardstock, actress cards served as cartes de visite – photographic cards left as messages – and as collectible portraits of popular stars of the theatre in London and Paris. One could purchase larger photographs, known as cabinet cards, from the photography studio or the pocket-sized cartes de visite. In an era when women were expected to stay at home, living quiet lives as wives and mothers, actresses were seen as having turned their backs on their ‘God given duty’ to be devoted homemakers. Though looked down upon socially, some actresses achieved fame and notoriety, through their work on stage as well as their lives outside the theatre.
Wendt Studio (New Jersey, United States) Helen Mathews, Length of hair 6 feet 4 inches 19th century Albumen print mounted on cabinet card
Guglielmo Plüschow (Wilhelm von Plüschow, Germany 1852-1930) Female nude Italy, c. 1890 Albumen print
Exhibition dates: 23rd January – 4th September, 2015
*PLEASE NOTE THIS POSTING CONTAINS ART PHOTOGRAPHS OF HUMAN EROTIC ACTIVITY AND NUDITY – IF YOU DO NOT LIKE PLEASE DO NOT LOOK, FAIR WARNING HAS BEEN GIVEN*
Gallery wall of the exhibition Hold That Pose at the Kinsey Institute
A first for Art Blart – photographs from the world famous Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction!
After visiting the Kinsey Institute as part of my PhD in 2001 I was not allowed to publish any photographs from the collection for my research, which was a pity. Things have changed over the last decade and a half I am happy to say. As I observed in an email to Catherine Johnson-Roehr, Curator of Art, Artifacts, and Photographs recently, I understood that they had to be more sensitive than most institutions, especially with some of the material they hold in their collection. In reply, Catherine noted that while the Kinsey still had to be careful with the use of their materials especially when they are made public online, things had improved in the last 15 years. “Although we have collected artworks since the 1940s, we did not exhibit any of the materials until the 1990s and then on a very limited basis until 2002. When I arrived here in 2000, we had only a few tame images on our website, but now we have online galleries for some of our exhibitions (including all the juried art shows).”
Therefore, after some negotiation for online release, it is with great pleasure that I can feature 40 images in this two-part posting. Nobody should be offended by these glorious, historic photographs of the human body and a human action that everyone does, and it is fantastic to see the Kinsey opening up their collection to the world. We must oppose bigoted views such as that of Nazi Germany where they destroyed the library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexology) headed by Magnus Hirschfeld, in 1933… by making these images visible in the world, not hiding them away behind closed doors. These are joyous photographs of the male and female body, a body in which every one of us lives, desires, and enjoys pleasure.
Many thankx for the Kinsey Institute for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
The Kinsey Institute research collection contains thousands of examples of erotic imagery produced over centuries by artists around the world. When the new technology of photography was announced in France in 1839, it was not long before it became the most popular medium for depictions of the nude figure, as well as erotic imagery. The first photographic process to be widely used was the daguerreotype, which produced a unique image. With the invention of other processes that used negatives to make multiple prints, the mass production of erotic photographs became possible. Hold That Pose features daguerreotypes, tintypes, albumen and gelatin silver prints, stereocards, and other examples of photographic processes that were used by professional photographers in the 19th century to produce and distribute erotic material.
Photo process display case from the exhibition Hold That Pose at the Kinsey Institute
Stanhopes on display from the exhibition Hold That Pose at the Kinsey Institute
Unknown photographers Stanhope lenses and holders 19th or early 20th century
Unknown photographer Stanhope lens and holder (detail) 19th or early 20th century
Stanhope lenses and holders 19th or early 20th century
Stanhopes derive their name from Lord Stanhope, who created the tiny rod-shaped lens before the invention of photography. In 1859, an entrepreneurial French inventor named René Prudent Patrice Dagron patented a process for making “cylindres photomicroscopiques”, and then created a successful business selling them as inexpensive novelty items. A photograph smaller than the head of a pin was mounted on a Stanhope lens, and then both were placed in a holder such as a pen knife, ring, or other small object. Stanhopes were popular souvenir items – many featured photographs of places or famous monuments such as the Eiffel Tower, but images of nude women or explicit sexual activity were also produced.
Gallery wall from the exhibition Hold That Pose at the Kinsey Institute showing at second left, Bathing in a Baetingplace (Japan, 1880-1890, below) by an unknown photographer; and at second right bottom, Nude woman reclining on a fallen tree (c. 1880, below) by an unknown photographer
Stereoscope display case from the exhibition Hold That Pose at the Kinsey Institute
Stereoscope on display in the exhibition Hold That Pose at the Kinsey Institute
Stereo photography
The stereoscope, a device for viewing images in three dimensions, was invented in England in1838, just as the first photographic processes were being developed in France. The first stereo photographs were created using the daguerreotype process, which preserved an image on a highly polished silver plate. Initially a single camera was used to produce two nearly identical images that when viewed through a stereo device gave the illusion of seeing in 3-D, but soon a camera equipped with two lenses came into use for the production of stereo images. Stereoscopes became as popular as televisions are today, as a form of affordable home entertainment that could be enjoyed by children and adults.
Webster & Albee (Publishers, United States) Woman standing on the back of a kneeling man Late 19th century Hand-colored stereocard
See the installation photograph above and the card in the Stereoscope
Unknown photographer (France) Two nude women in a room with a mirror c. 1850-1855 Stereo daguerreotype under glass
Underwood & Underwood (United States) Oh ! you naughty man 1900 Stereocard
Unknown photographer The Entanglement Mid 19th century Hand-coloured stereocard
Unknown photographer (France) Nude woman in a room with a mirror c. 1850-1855 Copy photograph of stereo daguerreotype
Unknown photographer Photomontage of men and women engaged in sexual activity 1895-1900 Gelatin silver print
Unknown photographer Photomontage of men and women engaged in sexual activity (detail) 1895-1900 Gelatin silver print
Unknown photographer Woman penetrating a woman with a dildo 1880-1885 Gelatin silver copy print
Unknown photographer Bathing in a Baetingplace Japan, 1880-1890 Hand-coloured albumen print
___ and ___ – bathing, attended by their ____ (maid) who is putting charcoal into the fire under the tub
Unknown photographer (United States) Nude woman reclining on a fallen tree c. 1880 Modern platinum print from glass plate negative (printed in 2012 by Herbert Ascherman, Jr.)
Unknown photographer (Indiana, United States) Erect penis 19th century Modern gelatin silver print from glass plate negative
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (German, 1856-1931) Man seated beside a tree Taormina, Sicily, 1899 Albumen print
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (German, 1856-1931) Two nude men standing in a forest Taormina, Sicily, 1899 Albumen print
The Kinsey Institute Morrison Hall 313, Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana, USA
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Peter Beard’s, East Hampton, from the portfolio 82 Photographs 1974 to 1982 1982; printed 1983 Silver gelatin print
Hands / Class – Tree, Surface, Root
These are magnificent photographs. Fink’s mastery of the picture plane, ensemble, mise-en-scène, chiaroscuro is outstanding. But for me it is the attitude of the hands that make these photographs. Reaching, holding (usually the bodies of women), clasping, upturned, crotch grabbing, oversized, limp, clenched and gesticulating – in more of less every photograph it is the positioning of the hands that are the focus of my attention, and their relation to the social class of the proponent. The hedonism of Studio 54, the snobbishness of the benefits at MoMA and Corcoran Museum, and the Russian and Hungarian balls with their icy coolness and sidelong glances, all played off against the working class birthday parties of Pat Sabatine.
I spoke to my friend and mentor Ian Lobb about these photographs and we had a lively discussion:
MB: What do you think of the work of Larry Fink?
IL: The image of the child holding up his hand was on the cover of the second (?) Larry fink monograph. They are OK, but not great.
I have a rule: “The closer we get to the origin the more options we have.” But Larry is building on heaps of people – Winogrand, Mark Cohen etc, and earlier. And when that happens it really needs to be BUILT to be a success for the viewer. But he is just adding a bit. Its good, OK work. It’s mainly referencing stuff though. I can’t see anyone building on what he has done, a worker would have to go down the tree to a point before him to progress again.
Photography is pretty much fantastic before the fact, so things can look pretty good if it just happens. The process is so different from the reproduction of music that keeps trying to return to an original – photography has done that, but then runs tangential ideas where there can be flash and frozen time and no colour etc…
MB: I can understand what you are saying Ian … even though I don’t necessarily agree!
There is an essay I have just read as part of a Joan Fontcuberta book (“The Right Distance,” in Joan Fontcuberta. Pandora’s Camera: Photogr@phy after Photography. Mack, 2014, pp. 143-150). It’s interesting what he has to say about the “distance” of the photographer from the object… long distance landscape (in Victorian times… Muybridge, Carelton Watkins), long distance city (Marville) – the infinite sublime I call it – coming closer with Atget (parts of doors, stairs, closer engagement) and Blossfeldt – and then the avant-garde in the 1920s with the dissolution of far near into near far… followed by New Topographics and the griding of space, the regimentation and delineation of an even narrower point of view, both aesthetically and objectively.
I am paraphrasing but that is what he says anyway. It makes sense in one way. But in another we do not have to be either / or – near / far. Nor do we have to be “new” every time we take a photograph.
What I am arguing is that you do not always have to reinvent the wheel, in answer to your observation that you have to go back down the tree. Nothing is ever new and sometimes, as with the photography of Fink, it is the gesture that is enough for me – that human gesture that will never happen again exactly in that form. I am still in wonder of that moment, of the child’s raised hand (Pat Sabatine’s 8th Birthday Party). I don’t really care that people have done it before, they have never captured that moment, that precise gesture before… and it is still beautiful to me. The apple never falls far from the tree.
IL: A good term Marcus: the infinite sublime.
Fontcuberta understands it very well – mainly because it could be applied to the best of his pictures in terms of the continual involvement that some of them generate. As I said, the Larry Finks are OK. Have you seen the YouTube about Joel Sternfeld photographing in NY? He is literally right in peoples faces, and yet they don’t even seem to notice him. I’d like to see one of Larry Fink with his flash in these small rooms and intimate spaces.
What I can say is that some smart person will invent the term that distinguishes between the surface aesthetic of the digital and analogue print. There is such “value” in the display here [of Fink’s work], that would not mean the same in a digital print. Why? The analogue look could even be faked to fool everyone I suppose. Even with these, the surface would fall apart @ about 19″ sq and it would all be lost.
MB: It is the surface aesthetic Ian, but it goes deeper than that. I saw the Richard Avedon exhibition up at The Ian Potter Museum of Art were his negatives were blown up to enormous size and digitally printed… and they just didn’t work. There is a containment of energy within a classical analogue black and white photograph that the surface of a digital print cannot capture, yes, but in a good analogue photograph there is also an emotional depth that seems to transcend surface…. and as yet, digital photographs rarely approach this state of being. What would be a word that evinces surface and psychological depth at one and the same time?
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Larry Fink is a prominent American photographer who is best known for capturing images of high-profile social events. Fink’s images from the 1970s and 1980s capture individual vignettes within social gatherings, and nod to the development of documentary photography within the image-driven culture of the second half of the twentieth century. Some of the photographs below are from Fink’s series 82 Photographs 1974 to 1982 and Making Out 1957 – 1980 and depict scenes from clubs and parties in and around New York City. Fink’s subjects are caught off-guard by his camera, and their expressions provide windows into their weariness or giddy party euphoria. Capturing groups and individuals at surprisingly intimate and vulnerable moments, his photographs subtly reveal the disconnect often found between a subject’s public image and his or her inner self. For example, in Peter Beard’s, East Hampton, Fink captures a dynamic group of people in various levels of engagement with one another. While some are intertwined, others glance outward to the party beyond, having seemingly lost interest in the gathering at hand.
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) John Sabatine and Molly 1980 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Jean Sabatine and Molly 1983 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) N.Y.C. Club Cornich, from the portfolio 82 Photographs 1974 to 1982 1977; printed 1983 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) N.Y.C. Club Cornich, from the portfolio 82 Photographs 1974 to 1982 1977; printed 1983 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Benefit, Corcoran Museum, Washington DC 1975 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Benefit, Corcoran Museum, Washington DC 1975 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Benefit, MoMA, New York 1977 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) ICP Peter Beard Opening 1977 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Oslin’s Graduation Party 1977 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Oslin’s Graduation Party June 1977 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Studio 54 1977 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Studio 54, New York City May 1977 Silver gelatin print
Shore writes that the four ways, “in which the world in front of the camera is transformed into the photograph” are flatness, frame, time, and focus. Fink was aware of these attributes of photography and used them to define the picture’s content and structure. (The depictive level)
Shore, Stephen. The Nature of Photographs. John Hopkins University Press, 1998 quoted by Tyler Brennan Reiss, October 16, 2013.
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Studio 54, New York City May 1977 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Studio 54, New York City May 1977 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Washington DC 1975 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Russian Ball, New York 1976 Silver gelatin print
“Sometimes you’re invited to a big ball and for months you think about how glamorous and exciting it’s going to be. Then you fly to Europe and you go to the ball and when you think back on it a couple of months later what you remember is maybe the car ride to the ball, you can’t remember the ball at all. Sometimes the little times you don’t think are anything while they’re happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life. I should have been dreaming for months about the car ride to the ball and getting dressed for the car ride, and buying my ticket to Europe so I could take the car ride. Then, who knows, maybe I could have remembered the ball.”
~ Andy Warhol
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Russian Ball, New York City 1976 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Pat Sabatine’s 8th Birthday Party 1977 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Pat Sabatine’s 11th Birthday Party 1980 Silver gelatin print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Skating Rink 1980 Silver gelatin print
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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