Category: documentary photography

Exhibition: ‘Helen Levitt’ at Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona

Exhibition dates: 24th September, 2025 – 1st February, 2026

Curator: Joshua Chuang

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1940 from the exhibition 'Helen Levitt' at Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona, Sept 2025 - Feb 2026

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne 

 

 

Helen Levitt’s photographs from 1938-1940 are some of the earliest of her artistic career. “Her interest in photography blossomed when, aged 18, and having dropped out of high school, she began working in the darkroom of a commercial portrait photographer.”1

At the age of 23 she bought a secondhand Leica camera and walked the streets of New York – mainly Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the Bronx and Spanish Harlem – observing the social interactions of children and adults in this teeming metropolis. But she was not a flâneuse,2 strolling around the city observing but not interacting with her surroundings … she was fully engaged in the activity of the city.

What amazes me is that her vision as an artist was so well (in)formed at such a young age. And that the concerns and investigations into the nature of play, love and life in New York as a young, strong, independent “New Woman” remained constant throughout her life and decades long photographic career.

In her photographs there is an (in)direct engagement with the people that surrounded her (in her early works “she often hid her camera under her coat to capture candid, unnoticed moments on the streets”), an exchange of energy from the photographer to the subject and back through the camera onto the film… evidencing a generosity of spirit on the part of the artist towards her subjects. Here there is no pressing the camera into the face of the victim a la Garry Winogrand to evince a reaction, but a genuine sense of compassion and empathy towards the people who live in the great city of New York.

Influenced by social realism and the idea the photography could be an agent for change, avant-garde European film, surrealism and contemporaneous dance and theatre Levitt, “decided I should take pictures of working-class people and contribute to the movements,” Levitt later said of that time. “And then I saw pictures of [Henri] Cartier-Bresson and realised that photography could be an art – and that made me ambitious.”1

Levitt’s photographs are performative and theatrical, an engagement between artist, subject and viewer in the cause of art. “In her photographs, she presents the street as an almost theatrical landscape where the smallest interactions and gestures are incredibly resonant.”1

Levitt was not interested in concept nor didactic narrative. She was interested in the presence of the image before you … in just what you see.

As with any great art, the artist (even as she is ambitious) seems to be without ego. She lets the picture and the emotions tell the story without the shadow of the artist getting in the way (unlike much contemporary art and photography). For the work of art to have value in itself.

Thus, her photographs speak to us directly, or not at all.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Sean O’Hagan. “Helen Levitt: the most celebrated, least known photographer of her time,” on The Guardian website Sun 3 Oct 2021 [Online] Cited 28/11/2025

2/ “The flâneuse is not a female flâneur, but she is a version of the flâneur. She does not experience the city in the same way as he does. It is hard to define the archetype of the flâneuse, because the flâneur himself consists of paradoxes and many subcategories. Key concepts for flâneur and flâneuse are the amount of spare time, the aesthetic detachment towards objects, crowd and sceneries they see and their ambiguity about it.”

Akkelies van Nes and Tra My Nguyen. “Gender Differences in the Urban Environment: The flâneur and flâneuse of the 21st Century,” in Daniel Koch, Lars Marcus and Jesper Steen (eds.,). Proceedings of the 7th International Space Syntax Symposium. Stockholm: KTH, 2009


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

 

 

“Levitt was part of a highly intellectual cultural and political milieu in New York in the 1930s and her photography reflected her deep interest in surrealism, cinema, leftwing politics and the new ideas that were then emerging about the role of the body in art.”


Walter Moser, curator

 

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1938 from the exhibition 'Helen Levitt' at Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona, Sept 2025 - Feb 2026

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1938
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne 

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' [113th Street] c. 1938

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1938
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne 

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1939

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne 

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1939

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne 

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1939

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1939

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1939

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1939

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1939

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

 

Helen Levitt (1913-2009) began photographing the streets of New York, her hometown, in the late 1930s, focusing mainly on poor neighbourhoods such as Hispanic Harlem and the Lower East Side, where the street clearly takes center stage as the setting for everyday life. Her camera was directed mainly at children and their games in the streets. These scenes of children occupy a central place in a body of work that, as a whole, captivates us with its ability to transform everyday scenes into images that convey all the emotion, mystery, and humour that life can contain, and with which the viewer establishes an immediate connection even though they lack an explicit narrative. Her work soon gained the recognition it deserved, and in 1943 the MoMA in New York organised her first solo exhibition (Photographs of Children).

Later in her career, she also became closely interested in film and colour photography. In 1948, she collaborated on the documentary The Quiet One and co-directed In the Street, another documentary about the streets of Hispanic Harlem. Both titles were highly influential in the subsequent evolution of documentary filmmaking by artists such as Jonas Mekas and Andy Warhol.

After receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959 to explore chromatic techniques, she began experimenting with colour photography, a medium in which she would also develop pioneering work.

A socially committed artist, Levitt was one of the first women to forge a professional career in photography. This exhibition is the first to be based on her entire body of work and archives, which have only recently been made available to the public.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE website

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1940

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1940

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1940

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

 

Dedicated full-time to her artistic activities, the photographer Helen Levitt (New York, 1913-2009) did not begin to gain public recognition until relatively late in life. Although her name has always been associated with “street photography,” as it was precisely the streets of her native city that provided the context for the production of her images, throughout her career Levitt made forays into film, visited other countries such as Mexico, and also focused on colour photography. Her images, almost invariably ambiguous and mysterious although not necessarily at first glance, are also characterised by their spontaneity, warmth and sensitivity. The movements and gestures of the figures captured by her lens and the communication between them transcend that inclination to “photograph children” which many critics pointed out after her first exhibition at the MoMA in 1943, entitled Helen Levitt: Photographs of Children.

Levitt’s work as a whole goes far beyond the latter aspect, revealing her acceptance of the pleasures, terrors and complexity of existence at all ages, traits often overlooked by the viewer when immersed in the harsh reality of the urban landscape. The exhibition, the first to be devoted to the artist on the basis of the entirety of her work and archives, which have only recently become available for study, offers a broad overview of Levitt’s career through nine sections and around 220 photographs. It includes previously unexhibited images, as well as work produced in Mexico in 1941 and a large proportion of the artist’s work in colour, which she explored from the 1950s onward. It also features her film In the Street, directed by Levitt in collaboration with Janice Loeb and James Agee, and a projection of her colour slides.

Born in Brooklyn to a Russian-Jewish family, Helen Levitt dropped out of high school early and began her photography training in a Bronx studio. Influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson, she pursued independent photography, capturing everyday life in New York neighbourhoods between 1938 and 1942. Her first solo exhibition was at the MoMA in 1943. She also experimented with film, making In the Street, and with colour photography, which gained her a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959. Levitt continued to work intermittently,
exploring new settings such as the subway and rural areas. Her creative output is recognised for its ability to capture moments of human connection in complex urban environments.

Key themes

Enigmatic photographs

Helen Levitt’s images possess a mysterious quality that transforms them into true visual enigmas. Her unique and highly perceptive gaze turns everyday scenes into compositions that are hard to define, creating an immediate connection with the viewer even when there is no clear narrative to explain them.

A pioneer with her own voice

Helen Levitt was one of the first women to make her way in the world of photography, especially in the field of street photography. She always avoided constructing an explicit narrative in her images and preferred not to talk about them. Far from diminishing its value, that decision is one of the key traits that make her work so interesting. Despite this characteristic of reserve, Levitt’s photographs connect with the viewer through the universal emotions they convey.

Text from Fundación MAPFRE

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'Mexico City' 1941

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Mexico City
c. 1941
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1942

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1942
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1945

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

 

Helen Levitt

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Helen Levitt (1913-2009) became a photographer in the mid-1930s after meeting Henri Cartier-Bresson and seeing his radical new pictures made with a discreet, handheld camera. By the end of the decade, she had developed a unique sensibility, one informed by Surrealism and a love of avant-garde cinema but focused on the interactions of ordinary people in the streets, sidewalks, stoops, and vacant lots of her native city.

Grounded in gritty realism but brimming with subversive humor, mischief, and pathos, Levitt’s pictures are openended and enigmatic, concealing as much as they reveal. Her uncanny photographs of urban children and their games brought Levitt early renown even as she remained attentive to the quiet gestures and movements of a broader swath of humanity observed with her 35mm Leica, especially in Spanish Harlem, where the activity of everyday life often spilled out of doors.

Following a months long foray in Mexico City, Levitt began to work in filmmaking, leading to a long hiatus in her photographic activity. In 1959, advances in the sensitivity colour film spurred her to take to the streets again with her Leica. She continued to photograph in color throughout the 1970s, reverting to black-and-white film for a series of pictures taken in the New York City subway. Levitt continued to photograph intermittently until the early 1990s, when she became known as the “unofficial poet laureate” of New York and her oeuvre universally acknowledged as one of the most timeless and affecting in the history of the medium.

Early Work / Graffiti / Gypsies

Only a few examples survive from Levitt’s first year using a Leica camera. Amid the backdrop of the Great Depression, her pictures of lone figures hunched over or lying on the ground appear documentary in their impulse, while other depictions of people in urban surroundings are notably more ambivalent in their view.

In 1937, while employed by the Federal Art Project to teach at a public school in East (Spanish) Harlem, Levitt noticed the many chalk drawings and messages illicitly scrawled by children on streets and buildings on her way to work, and began to document them in all their variety, innocence, and vulgarity. She sometimes also portrayed the artists themselves posing next to their ephemeral interventions.

Around 1938, on the advice of Walker Evans, Levitt began to use a right-angle viewfinder, a device that allowed her to face one direction while pointing her camera in another. This was particularly effective in recording the uninhibited interactions of the “gypsy” families prevalent in Spanish Harlem and Yorkville. Drawn to their way of life, she also borrowed Evans’s 4 x 5-inch view camera and tripod to make portraits of “gypsy” children in their homes.

1938-1940 / Mexico City / A Way of Seeing

By 1940 Levitt had established her terrain, subject, and approach. In a rare statement, she later described her intent “to seize upon and record those apparently accidental disarrangements that nevertheless and in seeming contradiction provide a more intense apperception of reality.” Uninterested in portraying New York City as a bustling metropolis, Levitt instead saw it as
an environment whose “size and varied character constantly forces into the open material for my camera.” The working class, immigrant neighbourhoods she frequented – where adults chatted on stoops, mothers and children leaned out of windows, and children were left to their own devices – proved to be an especially fertile ground for her work.

In 1941, again inspired by Cartier-Bresson’s example, Levitt, a reluctant traveler, went to Mexico City with a friend to photograph there. Initially struggling with the challenge of working in new environment, she was eventually able to find her artistic footing, producing a body of work that at once acknowledged rawer social realities while locating a subtle lyricism unique to the city and its people. It would be her only trip abroad.

Upon her return to New York City, Levitt picked up where she left off, picking up on more sober themes of melancholy, alienation, and what she referred to as “the deep repressions of the unyoung.” After having photographed for a decade, Levitt collaborated with her friend, the writer and critic James Agee, to edit and sequence a book of her New York photographs. Envisioning the project as an urban counterpart to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, his 1941 collaboration with Walker Evans, Agee wrote an extensive essay to accompany Levitt’s pictures that heralded their lyric qualities, the sum of which presented “unified view of the world, an uninsistent but irrefutable manifesto.” After a series of setbacks, the book, eventually given the title A Way of Seeing, was not published until nearly two decades later in 1965.

In the Street

In the mid-1940s, along with her friend and patron, Janice Loeb, Levitt began to shoot footage around New York City with a home movie camera. They were joined by James Agee, who encouraged them to conceive of an experimental project that would serve as a cinematic extension of Levitt’s still photographs. This led the three of them to collaborate on the pioneering short film that was first screened in 1949 and then released in 1952 under the title In the Street, a forerunner of the cinéma verité style. By the end of the 1940s and for the next two decades, filmmaking became Levitt’s primary occupation.

Color / Subway / 1980s

In 1959, Levitt was granted a Guggenheim fellowship to experiment with “the latest techniques in colour photography.” Her Leica loaded with colour slide film, she walked some of the same streets she had frequented in the 30s and 40s, newly attentive to the chromatic character of her compositions. After the bulk of her slides were stolen by a burglar in 1970, Levitt redoubled her efforts, photographing throughout the decade with renewed zeal, developing an intuitive system of colour that was at once transporting and transparent. In 1974, a continuous projection of forty of Levitt’s slides were featured at MoMA in New York, after which she began to realise select images as dye transfer prints.

Around the same time, Levitt also decided to revisit the subterranean theatre of New York City subway as a site to make pictures, having served as a decoy for Walker Evans’s subway project work more than three decades earlier. With her subjects largely stationary in train cars and platforms, Levitt attended to the nuances of expression and gesture, recording quiet dramas amid unflattering light and cramped quarters.

From the 1980s onwards, Levitt continued to photograph, but only intermittently, working mainly in black and white, both in the city and outside it.

Text from Fundación MAPFRE

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' 1975

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1975
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'Brooklyn, New York' 1982

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
c. 1982
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' Nd

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
Nd
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' 1971

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
1971
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' 1976

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
1976
Gelatin silver print
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne

 

 

Fundación MAPFRE
KBr Photography Center
Avenida Litoral, 30 – 08005 Barcelona
Phone: +34 93 272 31 80 (Attention only during the opening hours of the exhibition hall)

Opening hours:
Mondays (except holidays): Closed
Tuesday to Sundays (and holidays): 11am – 7pm

Fundación MAPFRE website

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Exhibition: ‘Berlin Courtyards: Between Everyday Life, Work, and Encounters’ at the Museum Ephraim-Palais, Berlin

Exhibition dates: 18th July, 2025 – 18th January, 2026

 

 

André Kirchner (German, b. 1958) 'Stralauer Straße, Ecke Waisenstraße' from the series 'Nachtrag Berlin' 1990-1992 ('Stralauer Straße, corner of Waisenstraße' from the series 'Addendum Berlin') from the exhbition 'Berlin Courtyards: Between Everyday Life, Work, and Encounters' at the Museum Ephraim-Palais, Berlin, July 2025 - January 2026

 

André Kirchner (German, b. 1958)
Stralauer Straße, Ecke Waisenstraße
From the series Nachtrag Berlin 1990-1992
Silver bromide baryta paper
34cm x 46cm
Collection of the Berlin City Museum Foundation
© André Kirchner
Reproduction: Dorin Alexandru Ionita, Berlin

 

 

This is one of those wonderful, idiosyncratic exhibitions that Art Blart has always liked to promote: small, occluded histories that have great importance to local people; spaces and histories that deserve to be acknowledged in a wider sphere; microcosms of everyday life, work and encounters expanded into the macrocosm of the universe, making us aware of the importance of the seemingly in/consequential in this dance of death we call life.

“This exhibition delves into how these spaces have fostered social and cultural exchange since the 19th century, becoming living capsules of history and community. They reflect the complexities of urban life, showcasing how people shape their surroundings and creating a unique atmosphere that has long inspired artists.” (Press release)

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the Museum Ephraim-Palais for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Hans Baluschek (German, 1870-1935) 'Fleisch am Knochen' (Meat on the Bone) 1924 from the exhbition 'Berlin Courtyards: Between Everyday Life, Work, and Encounters' at the Museum Ephraim-Palais, Berlin, July 2025 - January 2026

 

Hans Baluschek (German, 1870-1935)
Fleisch am Knochen (Meat on the Bone)
Berlin, 1924
Pen and black ink on paper
27.7cm x 35.2cm
Collection of the Berlin City Museum Foundation
Reproduction: Michael Setzpfandt, Berlin

 

Heinrich Zille (German, 1858-1929) "Eine kleine Freundin hat doch jedermann, eine kleine Freundin braucht man dann und wann…" ("Everyone has a little friend, and one needs a little friend now and then...") 1924

 

Heinrich Zille (German, 1858-1929)
“Eine kleine Freundin hat doch jedermann, eine kleine Freundin braucht man dann und wann…” (“Everyone has a little friend, and one needs a little friend now and then…”)
Berlin, 1924
Lithograph on laid paper
45.5cm x 36.8cm
Collection of the Berlin City Museum Foundation

 

Mathèos Florakis (Greek, b. 1935) 'Naunynstraße, Hinterhof' 1979

 

Mathèos Florakis (Greek, b. 1935)
Naunynstraße, Hinterhof
1979
Coloured lithograph on paper
59cm x 42cm
© MathËos Florakis – Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin
Reproduction: Michael Setzpfandt Berlin

 

Manfred Butzmann (German, b. 1942) 'Giebelwand (Chausseestraße 16)' (Gable wall (Chausseestraße 16)) 1988

 

Manfred Butzmann (German, b. 1942)
Giebelwand (Chausseestraße 16) (Gable wall (Chausseestraße 16))
1988
Watercolour on laid paper
49.8cm x 34cm
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Reproduction: Michael Setzpfandt, Berlin

 

Doris Leue (German, b. 1954) 'Hirschhof' 1999

  

Doris Leue (German, b. 1954)
Hirschhof
Berlin, 1999
Pen and ink on paper
29.5cm x 42cm
Purchased with funds from the German Class Lottery Berlin by the Cultural Administration of the Berlin Senate, 2024
© Doris Leue
Reproduction: Michael Setzpfandt, Berlin

  

 

Ever wondered about the secret lives tucked away behind Berlin’s bustling streets?

The Museum Ephraim-Palais is inviting you on a captivating journey with its new exhibition, “Berlin Courtyards: Between Everyday Life, Work, and Encounters,” running from July 18, 2025, to January 18, 2026.

From cozy residential nooks to bustling commercial hubs and serene artist retreats, Berlin’s courtyards tell the vibrant story of a city constantly evolving. This exhibition delves into how these spaces have fostered social and cultural exchange since the 19th century, becoming living capsules of history and community. They reflect the complexities of urban life, showcasing how people shape their surroundings and creating a unique atmosphere that has long inspired artists.

“Berlin Courtyards” brings together nearly 100 striking photographs and graphics from the vast collection of the Stadtmuseum Berlin. Visitors will discover gems from legendary artists like Heinrich Zille, Hans Baluschek, and Manfred Hamm, alongside contemporary perspectives from photographers like André Kirchner and Günther Steffen.

Adding a fresh layer to the historical narrative are new artistic works by urban researchers Duygu Örs and Sinthujan Varatharajah, specially commissioned for the show. Their multi-sensory exploration of Wedding’s backyards, using texts, photos, videos, and sound, offers an intimate look at these overlooked spaces.

What’s more, the exhibition features a dynamic display of modern-day Berlin courtyards, crowdsourced through the Stadtmuseum Berlin’s “Berlin now!” photo campaign. You’ll see 40 framed photos on the walls, plus 50 smaller photo cards that visitors can rearrange, literally co-creating the exhibition experience. Due to overwhelming interest, the “Berlin now!” photo call has been extended until September 18, giving photography enthusiasts more time to submit their own unique views of Berlin’s courtyards. Selected photos will even be rotated into the framed display in October!

Adding another exciting dimension, junior curators from the Refik-Veseli School in Kreuzberg, mentored by Yella Hoepfner, will share their own “courtyard stories” across five dedicated areas within the Museum Ephraim-Palais, including spaces within the “BerlinZEIT” permanent exhibition. Their personal narratives will engage in a dialogue with objects from the Stadtmuseum Berlin’s collection, offering fresh, youthful insights.

Don’t miss this chance to experience Berlin from a new perspective, delving into the hidden heart of its neighborhoods through the eyes of both historical and contemporary artists.

Press release from Museum Ephraim-Palais

  

Rudolf Dührkoop (German, 1848-1918) From the portfolio 'Das malerische Berlin, Band 1' (Picturesque Berlin, Volume 1) 1911

  

Rudolf Dührkoop (German, 1848-1918)
From the portfolio Das malerische Berlin, Band 1 (Picturesque Berlin, Volume 1)
1911

 

Ludwig Binder (German born Serbia, 1928-1980) 'Hofeinfahrt Kottbusser Straße 6' (Courtyard entrance at Kottbusser Straße 6) c. 1976

 

Ludwig Binder (German born Serbia, 1928-1980)
Hofeinfahrt Kottbusser Straße 6 (Courtyard entrance at Kottbusser Straße 6)
c. 1976
Ludwig Binder’s Photographic Estate – Positives – 43 images titled Ausländer-Läden-Kino
Photograph
24cm x 18.2cm
© Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, Ludwig Binder

 

Manfred Hamm (German, b. 1944) 'Goerz'sche Höfe, Rheinstraße' 1978

 

Manfred Hamm (German, b. 1944)
Goerz’sche Höfe, Rheinstraße
Berlin, 1978
Photograph, baryta paper
22cm x 28.1cm
© Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin

 

Reinhard Münch (German, b. 1951) From the series 'Das Haus Dunckerstr. 16 in Berlin 1058' (The House at Dunckerstrasse 16 in Berlin, 1058) 1985

 

Reinhard Münch (German, b. 1951)
From the series Das Haus Dunckerstr. 16 in Berlin 1058 (The House at Dunckerstrasse 16 in Berlin, 1058)
1985
Baryta paper, silver gelatin
24.9cm x 24.9cm
© Reinhard Münch

 

Ergun Çağatay (Turkish, 1937-2018) From the report: "Türken in Deutschland. Die zweite Generation" ("Turks in Germany. The Second Generation") 1989/90

 

Ergun Çağatay (Turkish, 1937-2018)
From the report: “Türken in Deutschland. Die zweite Generation” (“Turks in Germany. The Second Generation”)
1989/90

 

Werner Brunner (German, b. 1941) From the series 'Berliner Wandbilder' (Berlin Murals) 1974-1990 (Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, Esmarchstraße 26, I. Hinterhof)

 

Werner Brunner (German, b. 1941)
Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, Esmarchstraße 26, I. Hinterhof
From the series Berliner Wandbilder (Berlin Murals) 1974-1990
Hahnemühle Digital Fine Art, inkjet printing
30cm x 20cm
© Werner Brunner
Reproduction: Dorin Alexandru Ionita, Berlin

 

Dr. Barbara Hansen. '"Motive aus dem Osten Berlins 1993-1998. Höfe", Hof in Ostberlin' um 1995 ('"Motives from East Berlin 1993-1998. Courtyards" Courtyard in East Berlin' around 1995)

 

Dr. Barbara Hansen
“Motive aus dem Osten Berlins 1993-1998. Höfe”, Hof in Ostberlin
(“Motives from East Berlin 1993-1998. Courtyards” Courtyard in East Berlin)
Berlin, around 1995
Colour photograph on PE paper
Approx. 10 x 15cm (HF and QF)
© Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin

 

Unknown photographer. 'Hoffest in der Falckensteinstraße 27' (Garden festival at Falckensteinstraße 27) 1920

 

Unknown photographer
Hoffest in der Falckensteinstraße 27 (Garden festival at Falckensteinstraße 27)
1920
Postcard
From the collection of Eberhard Müller

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Berlin Courtyards: Between Everyday Life, Work, and Encounters' at the Museum Ephraim-Palais, Berlin, July 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Berlin Courtyards: Between Everyday Life, Work, and Encounters' at the Museum Ephraim-Palais, Berlin, July 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Berlin Courtyards: Between Everyday Life, Work, and Encounters' at the Museum Ephraim-Palais, Berlin, July 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Berlin Courtyards: Between Everyday Life, Work, and Encounters' at the Museum Ephraim-Palais, Berlin, July 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Berlin Courtyards: Between Everyday Life, Work, and Encounters' at the Museum Ephraim-Palais, Berlin, July 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Berlin Courtyards: Between Everyday Life, Work, and Encounters' at the Museum Ephraim-Palais, Berlin, July 2025 - January 2026

 

Installation views of the exhibition Berlin Courtyards: Between Everyday Life, Work, and Encounters at the Museum Ephraim-Palais, Berlin, July 2025 – January 2026
Photos: Alexander Rentsch

 

Yella Hoepfner. 'Junior Curator at Refik-Veseli-Schule' 2025

 

Yella Hoepfner
Junior Curator of the Refik Veseli School
2025
© Yella Hoepfner

 

 

Berlin backyards have a lot to tell. Since the industrial revolution in the 19th century at the latest, Berlin has been a center of attraction for people from other regions of Germany and from other countries. The history of the city has therefore always been a history of migration.

Due to enormous population growth, spatial expansion and structural densification, Berlin is characterised by backyards like no other city. They are used for residential, educational, commercial, artistic, culinaric and many other purposes. Their history is diverse, just like the people who live there. With the special exhibition “Berliner Höfe” (Berlin Backyards) on the 3rd floor of the Museum Ephraim-Palais, the Stadtmuseum Berlin invites you to explore these urban spaces between past and present.

The backyards are exemplary of urban coexistence with all its contradictions. They show how people shape space. And they encourage us to take a closer look: What can backyards tell us about Berlin? What about ourselves? In short: What is going on there?

Graphics, photography and history

The special atmosphere of the Berlin backyards has repeatedly inspired graphic artists, draughtsmen and photographers to create images. In the exhibition, highlights from the museum collection meet the artistic works of urban researchers Duygu Örs and Sinthujan Varatharajah, which were created especially for “Berliner Höfe”. Using sounds and light, they deal with different sensory impressions from backyards that Örs and Varatharajah encountered in Wedding.

In addition, the junior curators from the Refik Veseli School in Kreuzberg and their mentor Yella Hoepfner present their own spaces in the permanent exhibition “BerlinZEIT” on the first and second floors of the museum. Their individual stories interact with objects from the collection.

Biographical data

Duygu Örs is a researcher, art educator and curator specialising in cultural and urban research. Since 2019 she has headed the education and mediation work of the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, since 2025 with Jas Wenzel. At the Institute for Sociology and Cultural Organisation (ISKO) at Leuphana University Lüneburg, she is working on the role of the museum in the ‘Right to the City’ movement.‍ She is also a co-founder of the curatorial research collective Curating through Conflict with Care (CCC). Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Sinthujan Varatarajah (சிந்துஜன் வரதராஜா) writes and researches in Berlin. As a political geographer, Varatarajah focuses on issues of statelessness, im-/mobility and displacement from the perspective of infrastructure, logistics and building culture. Varatarajah has published several books since 2022. Varatarajah’s next book, ‘Where Time Stands Still’, will be published by Carl Hanser Verlag in spring 2026.

Text from the Museum Ephraim-Palais website

 

Lotti Nass (German, b. 1950) 'Hof mit Baum' (Courtyard with Tree) 2010

 

Lotti Nass (German, b. 1950)
Hof mit Baum (Courtyard with Tree)
2010
© Lotti Nass

 

Andreas Metz. 'In der Sandkiste' (In the Sandbox) 2020

 

Andreas Metz
In der Sandkiste (In the Sandbox)
2020

 

Birgit Hantke. 'Waldstraße, Moabit' 2021

 

Birgit Hantke (German)
Waldstraße, Moabit
2021
© Birgit Hantke

 

Andrea Steiner. 'Doch die Toscana?' (But Tuscany?) 2025

 

Andrea Steiner
Doch die Toscana? (But Tuscany?)
2025
© Andrea Steiner

 

Duygu Örs and Sinthujan Varatharajah. 'Untitled' 2025

 

Duygu Örs and Sinthujan Varatharajah
Untitled
2025

 

 

Museum Ephraim-Palais
Poststraße 16
10178 Berlin

Opening hours:
Tue – Sun 10am – 6pm (also on public holidays)
Mon closed

Museum Ephraim-Palais website

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Exhibition: ‘A World Apart: Photographing Change in London’s East End 1970-76’ at Four Corners, London

Exhibition dates: 24th October – 6th December, 2025

 

 

Val Perrin (English) 'Brick Lane market' 1970 or 1972 from the exhibition 'A World Apart: Photographing change in London's East End 1970-76' at Four Corners, Oct - Dec, 2025

 

Val Perrin (English)
Brick Lane market
1970 or 1972
Gelatin silver print
© Val Perrin

 

 

The heroes of this posting (I don’t know about the exhibition for I haven’t seen it!) are the photographs of Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) which are deeply rooted in the traditions of photography and the community from which they emanate.

They picture an era of change in the East End of London in the 1970s with all the working class grittiness that area was renowned for. I remember going to Brick Lane market in the mid-1970s and it was a rough area. At that time, the East Enders seemed to be a throw back to a vanishing race born out of the Second World War: flat hats, heavy overcoats and a toughness to just carry on regardless. But things were changing.

“As the docks closed, and wholesale slum clearance replaced old neighbourhoods, many communities were being transformed beyond recognition… Yet a different East End was also coming into being, as new migrant communities created a space for themselves,” one that has become equally as British as previous white iterations. The narrow definition of an “East Ender” was gradually replaced with something more multicultural.

McCormick’s photographs picture such a transformation: Jewish, White, Muslim, Indian, Black, etc., all mixing together in a potpourri of ethnicities, “a vibrant cultural landscape with a variety of traditions, languages, and backgrounds existing together,” while his photographs are rooted in strong social documentary traditions.

In his work I can feel (the critical observation) the influence of Lewis Hine and Walker Evans, more recently that of Lisette Model and the interior photographs of Diane Arbus, Roman Vishniac’s photographs of Jewish life in Eastern Europe between the two World Wars, possibly even the contemporaneous portraits by Milton Rogovin.

Undoubtedly this blending of influences in his photographs ultimately reveals McCormick’s insightful eye and generous spirit: his love for the people he is photographing and his embeddedness in local social networks, deeply influenced by the social and cultural environment from which they emerge – a community in a time of rapid transition and social change.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

Paul Trevor (English, b. 1947) 'Wapping family at window' 1973 from the exhibition 'A World Apart: Photographing change in London's East End 1970-76' at Four Corners, Oct - Dec, 2025

 

Paul Trevor (English, b. 1947)
Wapping family at window
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Trevor

 

Paul Trevor (English, b. 1947) 'Mr and Mrs Kelleher in members pub' 1973

 

Paul Trevor (English, b. 1947)
Mr and Mrs Kelleher in members pub
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Trevor

 

Nicholas Battye (British, 1950-2004) / Exit Photography. 'Floyd Wilson' 1973

 

Nicholas Battye (British, 1950-2004) / Exit Photography
Floyd Wilson
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Nicholas Battye/Exit Photography

 

Exit Photography. 'Wapping pier' 1973

 

Exit Photography
Wapping pier
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Exit Photography

 

Exit Photography. 'Demolition at Colonial Wharf' 1973

 

Exit Photography
Demolition at Colonial Wharf
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Exit Photography

 

 

Four Corners’ autumn exhibition captures a unique moment of change in London’s East End.

As the docks closed, and wholesale slum clearance replaced old neighbourhoods, many communities were being transformed beyond recognition. Yet a different East End was also coming into being, as new migrant communities created a space for themselves.

­­A new generation of photographers were drawn to document ordinary people’s lives and give visibility to working-class experiences. They showed their photographs in everyday spaces where local people could view images of themselves and their own communities.

The exhibition features remarkable photographs by Ron McCormick and the Exit Photography collective of Nicholas Battye, Diane Bush, Alex Slotzkin, and Paul Trevor, alongside work by Ian Berry, John Donat, David Hoffman, Jessie Ann Matthews, Dennis Morris, Val Perrin, and Ray Rising.

With many thanks to Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Hackney Museum, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and Spectrum Photographic.

Text from the Four Corners website

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Watch repairer, Black Lion Yard, Whitechapel' 1973 from the exhibition 'A World Apart: Photographing change in London's East End 1970-76' at Four Corners, Oct - Dec, 2025

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Watch repairer, Black Lion Yard, Whitechapel
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Tea break, P & L Engineering, Heneage Street, East London' 1973

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Tea break, P & L Engineering, Heneage Street, East London
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Street scene Spitalfields' 1971

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Street scene Spitalfields
1971
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Schmaltz herring shop, 35 Old Montague Street' 1971

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Schmaltz herring shop, 35 Old Montague Street
1971
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Mr and Mrs Ali, Brick Lane' 1973

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Mr and Mrs Ali, Brick Lane
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Clothing sweatshop in Whitechapel' 1973

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Clothing sweatshop in Whitechapel
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Brick Lane Sunday market' 1971

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Brick Lane Sunday market
1971
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Abdul Latif, Halal butcher, 44 Brick Lane' 1973

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Abdul Latif, Halal butcher, 44 Brick Lane
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Mother and daughter, Fieldgate Street, Whitechapel' 1971

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Mother and daughter, Fieldgate Street, Whitechapel
1971
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Lady in Sunday best Brick Lane market' 1970

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Lady in Sunday best Brick Lane market
1970
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

Lisette Model (American, born Austria 1901-1983) 'Lower East Side' c. 1942

 

Lisette Model (American, born Austria 1901-1983)
Lower East Side
c. 1942
Gelatin silver print

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Mohamhed Truffant in his bedsit, Hanbury Street, Spitalfields' 1973

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Mohamhed Truffant in his bedsit, Hanbury Street, Spitalfields
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Family group, Settle Street, Whitechapel' 1971

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Family group, Settle Street, Whitechapel
1971
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947) 'Zysman's delicatessan and pickle shop, 49 Hessel Street' 1973

 

Ron McCormick (English, b. 1947)
Zysman’s delicatessan and pickle shop, 49 Hessel Street
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Ron McCormick

 

 

Brought together for the first time, these rarely seen photographs document a now-disappeared world. Bengali migrants live side-by-side with elderly Jewish shopkeepers and artisans, dockers socialise in Wapping’s clubs and pubs, neighbours and children celebrate at a raucous, multicultural Stepney festival. 

But the images reveal streetscapes and communities in upheaval. Desolation hangs over the soon-to-be demolished streets, dock cranes stand lifeless over empty quays awaiting speculative redevelopment. Amid this apparent wasteland a different East End was coming into being. New migrant communities were creating a space for themselves as economic decline displaced earlier neighbourhoods. 

A young generation of photographers were drawn to record ordinary people’s lives at this moment of rapid transition and to advocate for social change. Their exhibitions at the Half Moon Gallery attracted people to view images of themselves and their neighbours. At a time when photography was largely unrecognised by the art world, these photographers mounted ‘guerrilla’ exhibitions in launderettes, on estate walls, and even on portable sandwich boards. They were part of a flourishing community arts scene that gave a voice to local people, including at pioneering shows at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. 

A World Apart features photographs by Ron McCormick and Exit Photograph – Nicholas Battye, Diane Bush, Alex Slotzkin, and Paul Trevor – alongside work by Ian Berry, John Donat, David Hoffman, Jessie Ann Matthews, Dennis Morris, Val Perrin, and Ray Rising. 

These remarkable photographs celebrate the people of the East End, an area whose identity has been defined by centuries of migration. In an age of increasing social division and intolerance, its strong community history is ever more important today. 

A World Apart is made possible through a National Lottery Heritage Fund project, which is helping build Four Corners’ archive collection and opening up its history to new audiences. The exhibition celebrates the early history of the Half Moon Gallery, Britain’s second independent photography gallery, as part of Four Corners 50th anniversary programme in 2025. 

Photographers 

Ron McCormick is a self-taught photographer who has exhibited and published for fifty years. His early photographs of Whitechapel were first shown alongside the poetry of east London schoolchildren in the controversial book Stepney Words produced by school teacher Chris Searle. He taught at the renowned School of Documentary Photography in Newport, where he ran the NEWPORT SURVEY, an annual record of the community life. A dynamic contributor to the revitalisation of British photography of the 1970s and 1980s, he was the second director the Half Moon Gallery, and the founding director of Side Gallery, Newcastle on Tyne. He runs Communimedia, a community design and production enterprise in South Wales. He has exhibited widely at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Photographers Gallery, Barbican, MIT Cambridge USA; La Photo Galeria, Madrid, among others. 

Exit was a collective of four photographers, Nicholas Battye, Diane Bush, Alex Slotzkin, and Paul Trevor. Their first project, Down Wapping, focused on Wapping’s working class community that was threatened by the closure of the docks and imminent redevelopment. It was shown at the E1 Festival in Stepney in 1973, and at the Photographers Gallery later that year. A booklet of the photographs was designed by Exit and published by the East End Docklands Action Group in 1974. After some changes, Paul Trevor, Nicholas Battye and Chris Steele-Perkins went on to create Survival Programmes from 1974-79, a significant study of social and economic poverty in Britain’s inner-cities. A with. Side Gallery in Newcastle toured the exhibition around the country, and a book of the work was published by Open University Press in 1982. Find out more 

Ian Berry is a Magnum photojournalist who worked for Drum magazine in South Africa, where he was the only photographer to document the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. In 1972 he was commissioned by the Whitechapel Art Gallery to photograph the changing local community, creating work which contributed to his book The English (1978). He has worked internationally, covering the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Irish Troubles, famine in Ethiopia, and conflicts in Israel, Vietnam, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. His work is represented in Black and Whites: L’Afrique du Sud (1988) and Living Apart (1996). His project Water focused on the disaster of climate change, and was published by GOST in 2023. 

John Donat (1933-2004) was one of Britain’s foremost architectural photographers of his generation. After studying architecture, he took up photography full-time. His early images can be seen in Crete 1960 (Crete University Press, 1999). Donat captured the built environment with a social documentary, almost photojournalistic approach. He was commissioned by the Whitechapel Art Gallery to capture change taking place in the area for the exhibition This is Whitechapel in 1972, although the focus of the show became the work of another important photographer, Ian Berry. 

David Hoffman is a documentary photographer of protest and social issues. Living in a squat in Fieldgate Mansions, east London in the 1970s, he recorded homelessness, anti-racism and protest. In particular, he documented homeless people at St Botolph’s refuge in Aldgate. He has covered many of the key moments in contemporary British protest – from Brixton in 1981 and Broadwater Farm in 1985, to the poll tax riots and the Occupy movement. Recent books are A Place to Live, Endurance and Joy in Whitechapel, published by Spitalfields Life Books and accompanied by a exhibition at The Museum of the Home in 2024; and Protest!, published by Image and Reality, 2025.

Jessie Ann Matthew was born in 1952 and educated at the Central School of Art and Design, London. She worked as a portrait photographer for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, including The Seven Poets (1981) with paintings by Alexander Moffat. She participated in Men Photographed by Women at Half Moon Gallery in 1975, and Gaining Momentum: 8 women photograph women, a Half Moon touring show in 1981. More recently, Matthew has been making with texiles, in particular wall-hangings and paintings. 

British-Jamaican photographer Dennis Morris is world-renowned for his images of music icons such as Bob Marley and Marianne Faithfull. Growing up in Dalston, east London, he started his career aged just eleven. His early documentary photographs include powerful work such as Growing Up Black, Southall and This Happy Breed, images that show everyday life and Black British culture which capturing the pride and resilience of London’s communities. While still a teenager, he showed his early work, Dalston Photographs at the Half Moon Gallery in 1973.

Ray Rising is an ex-docker and self-taught photographer, whose exhibition Redundant River was shown at the Half Moon Gallery in 1973. He went on to be a reportage photographer for Report Digital, covering issues such as the 1984 miners’ strike, the death of Colin Roach in police custody in 1983, anti-racist protests, CND campaigns, among others. 

Press release from Four Corners

 

Diane Bush (British born America, b. 1947) 'E1 Festival steel band performers' Early 1970s

 

Diane Bush (British born America, b. 1947)
E1 Festival steel band performers
Early 1970s
Gelatin silver print
© Diane Bush

 

David Hoffman (British, b. 1946) 'Dancing at E1 Festival' 1975

 

David Hoffman (British, b. 1946)
Dancing at E1 Festival
1975
Gelatin silver print
© David Hoffman

 

David Hoffman (British, b. 1946) 'One of the last remaining shops in Hessel Street, Whitechapel' c. 1972

 

David Hoffman (British, b. 1946)
One of the last remaining shops in Hessel Street, Whitechapel
c. 1972
Gelatin silver print
© David Hoffman

 

David Hoffman (British, b. 1946) 'Child playing in tenement block, Whitechapel or Wapping' 1972

 

David Hoffman (British, b. 1946)
Child playing in tenement block, Whitechapel or Wapping
1972
Gelatin silver print
© David Hoffman

 

 

Four Corners
121 Roman Road, Bethnal Green
London E2 0QN
Phone: 020 8981 6111

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Saturday 11am – 6pm

Four Corners website

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Exhibition: ‘Hidden Connections’ at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland

Exhibition dates: 27th April, 2025 – 1st June, 2026

Curators: Reggie Baay and Bibi de Vrie

 

Unknown photographer. 'Women sort tobacco leaves by length in a shed at the Tegalsirondo (also Tegalgondo) enterprise near Oengaran south of Semarang' c. 1910 from the exhibition 'Hidden Connections' at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland, April 2024 - June 2026

 

Unknown photographer
Women sort tobacco leaves by length in a shed at the Tegalsirondo (also Tegalgondo) enterprise near Oengaran south of Semarang
c. 1910
University Libraries Le

 

 

Hidden histories

Exposed (in photographs, in texts)

The effects of colonialism are immediate (slavery, subjugation, exploitation, prison, murder) and pernicious, ongoing in so many obvious, subtle and insidious ways.

“… we must be ever vigilant in understanding the networks of power, dispossession and enslavement that patriarchal societies use to marginalise the poor, the weak, the different for their gain.”1

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. I so dislike Piet van der Hem’s painting of Henri Van Abbe – the self importance of the man, dressed to the nine, staring out at the viewer in all his entitlement, hands clasped over his masculine power even as it radiates through every pore of the painting – the epitome of white hegemonic power. And the museum is named after him …


Sejarah Tersembunyi

Terungkap (dalam foto, dalam teks)

Dampak kolonialisme bersifat langsung (perbudakan, penaklukan, eksploitasi, penjara, pembunuhan) dan merusak, berkelanjutan dalam begitu banyak cara yang nyata, halus, dan licik.

“… kita harus selalu waspada dalam memahami jaringan kekuasaan, perampasan, dan perbudakan yang digunakan masyarakat patriarki untuk meminggirkan kaum miskin, yang lemah, yang berbeda demi keuntungan mereka.”1

Dr. Marcus Bunyan

PS. Saya sangat tidak menyukai lukisan Henri Van Abbe karya Piet van der Hem – sosok pria yang sangat penting, berpakaian rapi, menatap penonton dengan segala keistimewaannya, tangan tergenggam di atas kekuatan maskulinnya, bahkan saat kekuatan itu terpancar melalui setiap pori lukisan – lambang kekuatan hegemoni kulit putih. Dan museum ini dinamai menurut namanya …

 

1/ Marcus Bunyan. “Hermann Kummler (1863-1949) (compiler) ‘Ethnographic portraits of Indigenous women of Pernambuco and Bahia’ 1861-1862,” on Art Blart, 1st August, 2018


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

 

 

“The horrific history of contract labour in Deli in Sumatra, which forced people to work for western entrepreneurs, seems to have been covered up. Stories of resistance were often not written down but passed on orally instead. This deliberate oppression and denial of the plantation workers and their experiences is still palpable to this very day.”

“Sejarah mengerikan buruh kontrak di Deli, Sumatra, yang memaksa orang bekerja untuk pengusaha Barat, tampaknya telah ditutup-tutupi. Kisah-kisah perlawanan seringkali tidak tertulis, melainkan diwariskan secara lisan. Penindasan dan penyangkalan yang disengaja terhadap para pekerja perkebunan dan pengalaman mereka masih terasa hingga saat ini.”


Press release from the Van Abbemuseum

 

 

Unknown photographer. 'Workers on a plantation in Deli (now Medan)' c. 1900 from the exhibition 'Hidden Connections' at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland, April 2024 - June 2026

 

Unknown photographer
Workers on a plantation in Deli (now Medan)
c. 1900
Photo: Stafhell-Kleingrothe

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Hidden Connections' at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland
Installation view of the exhibition 'Hidden Connections' at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland
Installation view of the exhibition 'Hidden Connections' at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland

 

Installation views of the exhibition Hidden Connections at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland

 

Piet van der Hem (Dutch, 1885-1961) 'Henri Van Abbe' 1929

 

Piet van der Hem (Dutch, 1885-1961)
Henri Van Abbe
1929
Oil on canvas

 

 

Why do we know so little about what happened on the plantations in the former Dutch East Indies? The horrific history of contract labour in Deli in Sumatra, which forced people to work for western entrepreneurs, seems to have been covered up. Stories of resistance were often not written down but passed on orally instead. This deliberate oppression and denial of the plantation workers and their experiences is still palpable to this very day. In its multi­-year Hidden Connections research project, the Van Abbemuseum discovers the role it played in the Netherlands’ colonial past. The museum is presenting its research results in an exhibition and podcast and on a heritage platform.

Founder Henri van Abbe

The Van Abbemuseum was named after Henri van Abbe (1880­-1940), the founder of the Karel 1 ­cigar factories, once the second biggest employer in Eindhoven and the surrounding area. The tobacco for Karel 1 cigars was sourced largely from plantations in the Dutch East Indies. Even though Van Abbe was not based in the Dutch East Indies, the tobacco he bought from Deli, on the island of Sumatra, had a big impact on the region and its inhabitants. In 1933, Van Abbe founded a museum for contemporary art, funded partly with money he had made from tobacco. Besides a building, Van Abbe donated 26 paintings from his personal collection, including works by Isaac Israëls, Carel Willink and Jan Sluijters.

Ongoing research

Over the last 10 years, the Van Abbemuseum has become increasingly aware of its roots in the tobacco industry. The donation of the Van Abbe family archive to the museum in 2018 was the starting point for ongoing research into its past. The initial results have been presented in the museum since autumn 2021. This presentation has been expanded to include new work inspired by this research. Why have events on the plantations in Sumatra been kept hidden? And why don’t we know anything about the different forms of resistance to it? Author and historian Reggie Baay has searched Dutch archives for forgotten stories about this period. At the same time, artists and researchers Ferial Affif and Dwihandono Ahmad spoke to descendants of contract workers on the plantations in Deli. Isabelle Britto also did research to find out how much Henri van Abbe could have known about the conditions there.

Hidden stories of resistance

Curators Reggie Baay and Bibi de Vries present the results of the research above in the exhibition Hidden Connections. Archive material, audio and video interviews and illustrations in the exhibition all focus on the perspective of the plantation workers in Deli and their working and living conditions. Graphic designer Gayle Tjong­ Kim­Sang took inspiration for her huge wall drawings from the inventive ways contract workers chose to express their anger, sadness and warnings. Plantation owners were not always aware of resistance, but if contract workers were caught, they were thrown into prison, abused or even murdered. One form of resistance was the story ‘De Slang van Sumatra’ (which translates as ‘the snake of Sumatra’). This parable warned workers about a man­eating snake on the neighbouring island. After eating its prey, it excreted gold for the Dutch. Another example of resistance was improvisation during theatre and wayang performances. Workers used this opportunity to criticise the western enterprises and sometimes tell (satirical) stories about the plantation owners.

Addition to the Delinking and Relinking collection presentation

The exhibition Hidden Connections is located in the basement of the collection building at the Van Abbemuseum. The long­term Delinking and Relinking collection presentation (2021­-2026) can currently be seen on the three floors above; it allows visitors to experience art by smelling, hearing, feeling and seeing it. Hidden Connections, as the literal and figurative foundation for the multi­-sensory Delinking and Relinking collection presentation, enlighten visitors on the origins of this long­standing display and offer a new perspective on the circumstances in which it was created. This new chapter provides a more complete historiography that includes the contemporary significance of the museum’s colonial past.

Collective memory

The Van Abbemuseum places great importance on the permanent preservation and communication of the stories from its Hidden Connections research. They are part of our cultural heritage and must be findable by and accessible to everyone. With this in mind, the museum is working with Erfgoed Brabant, the province’s knowledge and expertise centre, and is integrating its ongoing research into the platform Koloniale Historie Brabant (a platform on Brabant’s colonial history). The museum also launched a podcast with Reggie Baay and Aldus’ producties. In it, Baay explores why it is we know so little about this colonial past via a search in which he attempts to uncover his own Indonesian family history.

Press release from the Van Abbemuseum

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Hidden Connections' at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland
Installation view of the exhibition 'Hidden Connections' at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland

 

Installation views of the exhibition Hidden Connections at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland

 

Unknown photographer. 'Coolies on a tobacco plantation of the Deli Maatschappij in Deli Shelfmark KITLV Deli Serdang' 1920-1922 from the exhibition 'Hidden Connections' at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland, April 2024 - June 2026

 

Unknown photographer
Coolies on a tobacco plantation of the Deli Maatschappij in Deli Shelfmark KITLV Deli Serdang
1920-1922

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Hidden Connections' at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland. Photo: Almicheal Fraay
Installation view of the exhibition 'Hidden Connections' at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland
Installation view of the exhibition 'Hidden Connections' at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland

 

Installation views of the exhibition Hidden Connections at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland

 

'Identification card Soemo' 1907

 

Identification card Soemo
1907
Loan from the National Archives of Suriname

 

 

Identification card Soemo
1908
Loan from the National Archives of Suriname

 

Johan Braakensiek (Dutch, 1848-1940) "The coolie ordinances" in 'De [Groene] Amsterdammer', Date 23 November 1902

 

Johan Braakensiek (Dutch, 1848-1940)
“The coolie ordinances”
De [Groene] Amsterdammer, Date 23 November 1902

 

The Coolie Ordinances

From Koi. (To former Minister Cramer): What do you think about that?
Cremer: Yes, we Deli Men [Deli on the island of Sumatra] … prefer to keep quiet about that.

Advertisement from Deli-Courant and the Sumatrapost:

“Emigration, sales and commission office. Telegram address: Esas, Surabaya. Supply: Strong, young, and healthy workers, including Madurese, Javanese, and Sudanese, as well as Chinese, for agricultural and mining companies. Risk of desertion on board at our expense. – We have had the most success with our coolie projects and are willing to send copies of satisfaction reports for review. Also supply: Chinese and Javanese artisans. We undertake to fulfil all possible orders, including for beautiful Madura and Balinese slaughter and draught cattle, at competitive prices.”


Dari Koi. (Kepada mantan Menteri Cramer): Apa pendapat Anda tentang itu?
Cremer: Ya, kami, Deli Men [Deli di Pulau Sumatra] … lebih suka diam tentang itu.

Iklan dari Deli-Courant dan Sumatrapost:

“Kantor emigrasi, penjualan, dan komisi. Alamat Telegram: Esas, Surabaya. Pasokan: Pekerja yang kuat, muda, dan sehat, termasuk orang Madura, Jawa, dan Sudan, serta Tionghoa, untuk perusahaan pertanian dan pertambangan. Risiko desersi di kapal ditanggung oleh kami. – Kami telah meraih kesuksesan terbesar dengan proyek kuli kami dan bersedia mengirimkan salinan laporan kepuasan untuk ditinjau. Juga pasokan: pengrajin Tionghoa dan Jawa. Kami berkomitmen untuk memenuhi semua pesanan yang memungkinkan, termasuk sapi potong dan sapi penarik Madura dan Bali yang indah, dengan harga yang kompetitif.”

 

Unknown maker. 'Advertisement from the Deli Courant of March 1, 1899'

 

Unknown maker
Advertisement from the Deli Courant of March 1, 1899
from De Millionenen uit Deli (Private collection), 1902

 

“Runaway
A Javanese, named Kasan
with
1 wife and 2 small children
Age 35 years, height 161 cm
Signs: left eye blind
Request information
A. Siemssen & Co.,
Post: Tebing Tinggi-Deli”

“Pelarian
Seorang Jawa, bernama Kasan
dengan
1 istri dan 2 anak kecil
Usia 35 tahun, tinggi badan 161 cm
Tanda-tanda: buta mata kiri
Minta informasi
A. Siemssen & Co.,
Pos: Tebing Tinggi-Deli”

 

Unknown maker. 'Advertisement from the Sumatra-Post of May 7, 1902'

 

Unknown maker
Advertisement from the Sumatra-Post of May 7, 1902
from De Millionenen uit Deli(Private collection), 1902

 

“H.H. Chief-Administrators and Administrators, also Butchers and Mining Entrepreneurs!
Delivery at the lowest prices:
Castrated, solid Madurese or East Java draught cattle
From 300-375 kg, with veterinary certificate
Beautiful Madurese slaughter bulls
Strong, young, and healthy East Java work force,
Men or women for agriculture and mining, for
60 guilders per adult, free of charge Belawan.
In charge of purchasing and selling:
Savonian and Rottinean riding and carriage horses,
Excellently suited for mountain terrain.
Highly recommended,
H. Leeksma Kzn., Surabaya.”

“Yang Mulia Kepala Administrator dan Administrator, juga Tukang Jagal dan Pengusaha Pertambangan!
Pengiriman dengan harga terendah:
Sapi penarik Madura atau Jawa Timur yang dikebiri dan sehat
Berat 300-375 kg, dengan sertifikat dokter hewan
Sapi potong Madura yang cantik
Tenaga kerja Jawa Timur yang kuat, muda, dan sehat,
Pria atau wanita untuk pertanian dan pertambangan, dengan harga
60 gulden per orang dewasa, gratis untuk Belawan.
Bertanggung jawab atas pembelian dan penjualan:
Kuda tunggang dan kereta Savonian dan Rottinean,
Sangat cocok untuk medan pegunungan.
Sangat direkomendasikan,
H. Leeksma Kzn., Surabaya.”

 

 

Van Abbemuseum
Stratumsedijk 2 Eindhoven
+31 40 238 10 00

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday from 11am – 5pm

Van Abbemuseum website

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Exhibition: ‘Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing’ at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Exhibition dates: 13th June, 2025 – 4th January, 2026

Curator: Maria L. Kelly, High Museum of Art assistant curator of photography

 

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991) 'Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #37' 1953

 

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991)
Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #37
1953
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Adair and Joe B. Massey in honour of Gus Kayafas

 

Aaron Siskind was recognised for the ways he rendered his surroundings into often stark shapes and forms, which reflected his fascination with contemporary trends in abstract art. He was an influential teacher at Chicago’s Institute of Design, which was founded by László Moholy-Nagy as the New Bauhaus. This image of a person flying or falling comes from a series Siskind made of the contorted bodies of divers plunging into Lake Michigan. He masterfully created its disorienting effect through tight focus on the floating figure without contextual elements.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

 

 

While contemporarily AI-powered technologies are revolutionising the way we interact with and consume media, enabling us to “to process and analyse vast amounts of data quickly, making it easier to find and access the information we need” in the 1920s and 1930s there was also a revolution in the way artists (and their use of the camera) viewed and felt the world – one not based on information, image quality or duplicity in the veracity of the image but one based on the word, perspective – be that point of view, context, close ups, surreality, fragmentation, scale, concept, construction, colour, aesthetics, identity, gender, or radical experimentation.

In this departure from traditional photographic methods, “New Vision photographers foregrounded experimental techniques, including photograms, photomontages and compositions that favoured extreme angles and unusual viewpoints, and these extended to movements such as surrealism and constructivism.” (Press release)

To me, this New Vision is about experiencing different perspectives – experiencing, sensing, feeling and seeing the world in a new light. After the disasters and machine-ations, the destruction of a conservative way of life before the First World War, here was a way to grasp hold of (and picture) the speed of a new world order, the dreams of physiological analysis, the diversity of new identities, and the fluidity of rapidly evolving technological and social cultures.

While today this (r)evolution continues at an ever expanding pace with the consumption of huge amounts of information and images, I believe it may be advantageous to rest for a while on certain experiences and images … so that we let the daggers drop from our eyes, to ‘not make images’ in our minds eye but just to be present in the viewing of a photograph, so that we appreciate and understand every aspect of the great life spirit of this wondrous earth.

Then and now, new vision.

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.

 

 

The New Vision movement of the 1920s and 1930s offered a revolutionary approach to seeing the world. It represented a rebellion against traditional photographic methods and an embrace of avant-garde experimentation and innovative techniques. László Moholy-Nagy, an artist and influential teacher at the Bauhaus in Germany, named this period of expansion the “New Vision.” Today, the term encompasses photographic developments that took place between the two World Wars in Europe, America, and beyond. New Vision photographers foregrounded inventive techniques, including photograms, photomontages, and light studies, and made photographs that favoured extreme angles and unusual viewpoints. These approaches – which also extended to more defined movements like Surrealism – spoke to a desire to find and see different perspectives in the wake of World War I.

Uniting more than one hundred works from the High’s photography collection, the exhibition traces the movement’s impact, from its origins in the 1920s to today, and demonstrates its long-standing effect on subsequent generations.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing

Named by the influential German artist and teacher László Moholy-Nagy, the “New Vision” comprised an expansive variety of photographic exploration that took place in Europe, America, and beyond in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement was characterised by its departure from traditional photographic methods. New Vision photographers foregrounded experimental techniques, including photograms, photomontages, and light studies, and made photographs that favoured extreme angles and unusual viewpoints.

This exhibition, uniting more than one hundred works from the High’s robust photography collection, will trace the impact of the New Vision movement from its origins in the 1920s to today. Photographs from that era by Ilse Bing, Alexander Rodchenko, Imogen Cunningham, and Moholy-Nagy will be complemented by a multitude of works by modern and contemporary artists such as Barbara Kasten, Jerry Uelsmann, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Abelardo Morell to demonstrate the long-standing impact of the movement on subsequent generations.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026
Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026

 

Installation views of the exhibition Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 – January 2026
Photos: Mike Jensen

 

 

The High Museum of Art presents “Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing” (June 13, 2025 – Jan. 4, 2026), an exhibition uniting more than 100 works from the High’s robust photography collection to trace the impact of the New Vision movement from its origins in the 1920s to today. Works include century-old photographs exemplifying themes from the movement and modern and contemporary images that emphasise the relevance of current artistic and social practices as a response to the technological and cultural changes that occurred in the early 20th century.

“This exhibition provides an opportunity to illuminate photographers’ creativity and innovative practices, all inspired by the progression of the medium in the 1920s and 30s,” said High Museum of Art Director Rand Suffolk. “Many of the works are rarely on view, so it will be an exciting experience for visitors to see them and learn about photographers’ abilities as they reflect reality while experimenting with technique and perspective.” Named by the influential German artist and teacher László Moholy-Nagy, the “New Vision” comprised an expansive variety of photographic exploration that took place in Europe, America and beyond in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement was characterised by its departure from traditional photographic methods. New Vision photographers foregrounded experimental techniques, including photograms, photomontages and compositions that favoured extreme angles and unusual viewpoints, and these extended to movements such as surrealism and constructivism.

“Experiments in Seeing” features nearly 100 photographers. It also demonstrates how the New Vision movement revolutionised the medium of photography in the early 20th century in response to the great societal, economic and technological shifts spurred by the upheaval of the two World Wars. Photographs from that era by Ilse Bing, Alexander Rodchenko, Imogen Cunningham and Moholy-Nagy have been complemented by a multitude of photographs by modern and contemporary artists such as Barbara Kasten, Jerry Uelsmann, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Abelardo Morell to demonstrate the long-standing impact of the movement on subsequent generations.

The first section of the exhibition delves into experimental techniques that foreground the light-sensitive aspects of photography, followed by works created through in-camera manipulations or additions to the surfaces of the prints. Subsequent sections explore inventive methods of capturing unexpected views of the world articulated with radical angles or detailed close-ups. Other works showcase surreal approaches to subjects such as humanlike forms and bodies, the use of mirrors and doubling, and everyday scenes heightened by uncanny moments or distorted through the interplay of light, shadow and water.

“Not only does the early 20th century and its art movements continue to be influential, but that time also echoes our current moment – one that feels similarly consequential and innovative with the development of new emerging technologies and methods of communicating,” said Maria L. Kelly, the High’s assistant curator of photography. “The movements and happenings of a century ago are akin to those of today and those shown in the exhibition. There remains a desire for alternative ways to see and approach the world through art, and particularly through photography.”

“Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing” is on view in the Lucinda W. Bunnen Galleries for Photography located on the Lower Level of the High’s Wieland Pavilion.

Press release from the High Museum of Art

 

 

“Light was considered the medium that permits photography. But for me it became the main subject: the protagonist of my photography.”


Ilse Bing, c. 1920s

 

 

Light Experimentation

After the trauma of World War I, many artists felt compelled to reconsider conventional art making methods to better reflect and engage with the world. Some photographers turned their attention to the essential element of photography: light. Through innovative visual investigations, cameraless photographs were produced, viewes of the world altered, and scientific discoveries made.

Experimentations with illumination and light-sensitive paper in the darkroom gave rise to photograms, enabling artists to pursue abstraction and to wield light as a sculptural element. The process of solarisation – reversing tones in a print using a flash of light during developing – provided an unconventional view of a subject. Early attempts to capture traces of light on film led to scientific innovations such as using strove lights to freeze movement, depicting magnetic fields, and tracing electrical currents on light sensitive paper.

These processes aim to reveal the invisible, with the elements of change as a constant companion. While artists can insert some control over the elements, the process ultimately shapes the final image. Many artworks in this section exist as unique prints, challenging the assumption of the reproducibility of photography, and emphasising the singularity of the creative moment.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Francis Bruguière (American, 1879-1945) 'The Light That Never Was on Land or Sea' c. 1925

 

Francis Bruguière (American, 1879-1945)
The Light That Never Was on Land or Sea
c. 1925
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Georgia-Pacific Corporation

 

Nathan Lerner (American, 1913-1977) 'Light Drawing #8 (Smoke)' 1938-1939

 

Nathan Lerner (American, 1913-1977)
Light Drawing #8 (Smoke)
1938-1939
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Hilary Leff and Elliot Groffman

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Untitled [Seated Woman with Necklace, Solarized]' 1943

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Untitled [Seated Woman with Necklace, Solarized]
1943
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of the Estate of Ilse Bing Wolff

 

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) 'Camera Movement on Flashlight, Chicago' c. 1949

 

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Camera Movement on Flashlight, Chicago
c. 1949
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, Dr. Robert L. and Lucinda W. Bunnen, Collections Council Acquisition Fund, Jackson Fine Art, Powell, Goldstein, Frazer and Murphy, Jane and Clay Jackson, Beverly and John Baker, Roni and Sid Funk, Gloria and Paul Sternberg, and Jeffery L. Wigbels
© 2018 The Estate of Harry Callahan

 

Abelardo Morell (American born Cuba, b. 1948) 'Still Life with Wine Glass: Photogram on 20" x 24" Film' 2006

 

Abelardo Morell (American born Cuba, b. 1948)
Still Life with Wine Glass: Photogram on 20″ x 24″ Film
2006
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the Friends of Photography
© Abelardo Morell

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948) 'Lightning Fields 182' 2009

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Lightning Fields 182
2009
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase through funds provided by patrons of Collectors Evening 2012
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

 

Inspired by William Henry Fox Talbot, an inventor of photography who was fascinated with electromagnetic conduction, Hiroshi Sugimoto began applying charges of electricity directly to unexposed photographic film. After months of honing his technique in the darkroom, he managed to achieve remarkable results with a handheld wand charged by a generator. His Lightning Fields photographs are made without a camera or lens. Here, the abstract visual trace of an electric charge measuring over 400,000 volts sweeps across the composition, reading like the textures of a human hand, the upward tentacles of a fern, or the stark branches of a tree.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

 

Hans-Christian Schink (German, b. 1961) '2/26/2010, 7:54 am – 8:54 am, S36° 49.622' E 175° 47.340'' 2010

 

Hans-Christian Schink (German, b. 1961)
2/26/2010, 7:54 am – 8:54 am, S36° 49.622′ E 175° 47.340′
2010
From the series 1h
© Hans-Christian Schink

 

Abelardo Morell (American born Cuba, b. 1948) 'Camera Obscura: View of Philadelphia from Loews Hotel Room #3013 with Upside Down Bed, April 14th, 2014' 2014

 

Abelardo Morell (American born Cuba, b. 1948)
Camera Obscura: View of Philadelphia from Loews Hotel Room #3013 with Upside Down Bed, April 14th, 2014
2014
Pigmented inkjet print
High Museum of Art Atlanta, gift of Dr. Roger Hartl
© Abelardo Morell

 

V. Elizabeth Turk (American, b. 1945) 'Calaeno' 2018

 

V. Elizabeth Turk (American, b. 1945)
Calaeno
2018
Van Dyke print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection
© Elizabeth Turk

 

V. Elizabeth Turk is an Atlanta-based photographer whose work explores the connections between the human body and the natural world. To make this print, Turk used an analog process from the 1800s that involves coating a large sheet of paper with light-sensitive chemicals. She then arranged her model on top of the sheet and exposed it to light, creating a ghostly silhouette, before repeating the exposure with plants. The resulting photogram is a unique image in which botanical forms intersect with the body, alluding to bones, veins, and skin and suggesting a visceral bond between humans and the environment. 

Text from the High Museum of Art website

 

 

“The limits of photography are incalculable; everything is so recent that even the mere act of searching may lead to creative results. […] The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as of the pen.”


László Moholy-Nagy 1928

 

 

Radical Viewpoints

From photography’s inception in 1839, camera technology involved cumbersome equipment and time-consuming development processes until the advent of lightweight cameras in the 1920s. Photographers were then able to work more nimbly, transforming photography into a medium capable of capturing fleeting moments, unusual viewpoints, and multiple perspectives. The exploration of unexpected angles became a hallmark of New Vision photography. Sharp diagonals, extreme vantage points, and shortened perspectives opened novel pathways of perceiving otherwise commonplace environments.

Alexander Rodchenko, a pioneer in this method, championed the camera’s ability to reveal, stating, “in order to teach man to see from all viewpoints, it is necessary to photograph […] from completely unexpected viewpoints and in unexpected positions […] We don’t see what we are looking at. We don’t see marvellous perspectives.” This approach aimed to provide a fuller impression of subjects, prompting viewers to seek and appreciate what might otherwise be overlooked.

Though these early photographs may not appear groundbreaking today, their makers’ carefully considered methods transferred how photography is used. This is evident in photographers’ creative interpretations of their surroundings over the past century.

Wall text from the exhibition

  

Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956) 'Sbor na demonstratsia' (Gathering for a Demonstration) 1928

  

Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Sbor na demonstratsia (Gathering for a Demonstration)
1928
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Joseph and Yolandra Alexander, Moscow/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
© Estate of Alexander Rodchenko/RAO, Moscow/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

 

Alexander Rodchenko was a key figure in the movements of New Vision and Constructivism – abstract and functional art that reflected an industrial society. Advocating “to achieve a revolution in our visual thought,” he explored various methods, such as photographing from unexpected angles, to capture dynamic views and expose new realities. With a new, lightweight 35 mm camera, he often photographed from his apartment balcony to create dramatic scenes of the street below. The perspective in this photograph flattens the building’s stories into one visual field, giving the image a theatrical quality as an onlooker peers over the railing.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

  

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'The Bridge' 1929

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
The Bridge
1929
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Arnold H. Crane
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

A central figure among twentieth-century American photographers, Walker Evans created works in his early career that sample from the New Vision aesthetic, which he may have encountered while abroad in Paris in 1926. His photographs of New York City, made after he returned to the United States, feature dramatically angled or cropped scenes of architecture and city life. Evans made numerous photographic studies of the Brooklyn Bridge from both below and on the bridge, portraying it less as a recognisable landmark and more as a hulking expanse whose form fills each tight frame.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

 

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian 1895-1946) 'Stage Set for Madame Butterfly' 1931

 

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian 1895-1946)
Stage Set for Madame Butterfly
1931
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Georgia-Pacific Corporation

 

Moholy-Nagy, a leader of the New Vision, had an expansive artistic practice that included painting, photography, sculpture, film, and more. As a teacher at the Bauhaus, which connected art and industry, he believed in technology’s potential to advance art and society. In 1929, he became set designer at the Kroll Opera House and created avant-garde sets with translucent and perforated materials, often making light itself a sculptural element. Lucia Moholy, a photographer, writer, teacher, and Moholy-Nagy’s first wife, was commissioned as Kroll’s stage photographer. In this image, which either artist may have made, the sharp angle shot from above complicates the set of Madame Butterfly, emphasising intersecting, moving elements and heightening areas of light and shadow.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

 

Lucas Foglia (American, b. 1983) 'Esme Swimming, Parkroyal on Pickering, Singapore' 2014

 

Lucas Foglia (American, b. 1983)
Esme Swimming, Parkroyal on Pickering, Singapore
2014
Pigmented inkjet print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Irene Zhou
© Lucas Foglia

 

Close Ups

Similar to the practice of using unusual angles to offer unexpected perspectives, some photographers began capturing highly detailed, close-up views of objects. This approach affords a study of texture, pattern, and structure that may otherwise go unnoticed by the human eye. By eliminating surroundings that could offer a narrative, the physicality of the object becomes the primary focus, allowing it to transcend beyond its everyday existence.

Practitioners of straight photography in the United States and the concurrent New Objectivity movement in Germany shared a core desire to unearth a balance of the familiar and the foreign within intricate images of forms. While Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston perfected carefully composed studies of plants and other natural matter, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Alexander Rodchenko, and Ralph Steiner explored scientific and industrial objects. Such images celebrated the technological advancements of the time and revealed how mechanical structures often mimic those found in nature, suggesting a shared framework, and a shared beauty, between humanmade and natural. The emphasis on detail and abstraction invites viewers to reconsider their perceptions of both the ordinary and the extraordinary in the world around them.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976) 'Agave Americanus' 1929

 

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Agave Americanus
1929
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust

 

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976) 'Agave Design I' c. 1920

 

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Agave Design I
c. 1920
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Georgia-Pacific Corporation
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust

 

Edward Weston (American 1886-1958) 'Palma Cuernavaca II' 1925

 

Edward Weston (American 1886-1958)
Palma Cuernavaca II
1925
Palladium print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection to mark the retirement of Gudmund Vigtel
© Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents

 

Ralph Steiner (American, 1899-1986) 'Electrical Switches' 1929

 

Ralph Steiner (American, 1899-1986)
Electrical Switches
1929
Gelatin silver print
8 x 10 5/16 inches
Purchase with funds from Georgia-Pacific Corporation

 

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) 'Weed Against Sky, Detroit' 1948

 

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Weed Against Sky, Detroit
1948
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of the Callahan and Hollinger Families
© 2018 The Estate of Harry Callahan

 

Eugenia de Olazabal (Mexican, b. 1936) 'Espinas' c. 1985

 

Eugenia de Olazabal (Mexican, b. 1936)
Espinas
c. 1985
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of the artist

 

 

“Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic enterprise: in the very creation of a duplicate world, of a reality in the second degree, narrower but more dramatic than the one perceived by natural vision.”


Susan Sontag, 1973

 

 

Surreality

Surrealism emerged as an artistic movement in reaction to the horrors of World War I. The often disconcerting imagery and literature of the movement reflected a world that felt disorienting and chaotic and captured how the very foundations of reason and humanity were tested and questioned through the realities of war. In his Surrealist Manifesto (1924), French writer Andre Breton advocates for a rejection of rational ways of approaching the world in four of dreams and imagination as pathways to new creative expressions.

Photography played an important role in the Surrealist movement. Artists valued how the medium could capture spontaneous moments that reveal the unexpected, be manipulated to stage scenes, or be altered with darkroom processes. They harness photography in a multitude of ways to create dreamlike and unconscious associations with reality. In these galleries, artists explore uncanny moments and create links to the human psyche by focusing on humanlike forms and fragmented body parts, mirrored and doubled views, and the impact of light and shadows in space.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) 'Men's Fashions (Avenue des Gobelins)' 1925, printed 1956

 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Men’s Fashions (Avenue des Gobelins)
1925, printed 1956
Gelatin silver print
Purchase

 

Eugène Atget was the great chronicler of Paris at the turn of the century. His vast photographic archive captures a city on the precipice of modernisation. Though his photographs of empty city streets were documentary in nature, the Surrealists admired their dreamlike quality and claimed Atget as one of their own despite his protestations. They believed any photograph could shed its original context and intent when viewed with a surrealist sensibility. Atget’s photograph of mannequins peering out of a shop window appealed to the movement by embodying the uncanny valley, where the human likeness of a nonhuman entity evokes both affinity and discomfort in viewers.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

 

Florence Henri (Swiss born United States, 1893-1982) 'Composition' 1932, printed 1972

 

Florence Henri (Swiss born United States, 1893-1982)
Composition
1932, printed 1972
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Dr. Joe B. Massey in honor of Maria L. Kelly

 

Florence Henri is well known for her manipulations of light and form that create complex, surrealist scenes. She used angled mirrors to frame, obscure, and replicate portions of scenes to dissolve a sense of perspective and space, as seen in this still life comprising mirrors, pears, and an image of the sea. After only one semester studying under László Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus in 1927, Henri shifted her focus from painting to photography and began using various experimental techniques such as photomontage, multiple exposures, photograms, and negative printing.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

 

Barbara Kasten (American, b. 1936) 'Construct NYC' 1984

 

Barbara Kasten (American, b. 1936)
Construct NYC
1984
Dye destruction print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection
© Barbara Kasten

 

Barbara Kasten’s art is as much about the process of setting up innovative still life scenes as it is about the photographs she makes of them. Her Constructs series focuses on large-scale complex assemblages that she builds in her studio using a wide variety of materials, including painted wood, plaster, mirrors, screens, and fibers. Her work is not digitally altered; instead, she complicates the scene using mirrors and light, much in the tradition of Florence Henri, whose photograph is also on view in the exhibition.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

 

Manipulations

This final section features photographers from the New Vision period to the present day who experiment with physically manipulating photographs. Through approaches such as double exposure, photomontage, surface alteration, and multilayering, they challenge and expand our perceptions of reality. The artworks in this section prioritise the creative process through labour, intention, intervention, and theatricality.

Double exposures is the process of photographing multiple images with the same negative within the camera, resulting in layered images that often provide a frenetic, multifaceted view of a scene. In contrast to the in-camera process of double exposure, photomontage combines separate images in the darkroom to produce a final photograph that emphasises the image’s artifice and absurdity. Physically disrupting the surface of photographs with alterations such as adding unnatural colour, drawing connections, stitching into prints, or inscribing texts augments the visual experience and offers emotional and narrative depth. Finally, whether through ancient visual techniques like the camera obscure or new technologies like digital screens, these artists create enigmatic scenes by layering and physically transforming subject, composition, and image.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992) 'Protest' 1940

 

Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992)
Protest
1940
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase

 

Charles Swedlund (American, b. 1935) '31 St. Beach' c. 1955

 

Charles Swedlund (American, b. 1935)
31 St. Beach
c. 1955
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Steven Nordman
© Charles Swedlund

 

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022) 'Untitled' 1964

 

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled
1964
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from a friend of the Museum

 

Lucinda Bunnen (American, 1930-2022) 'Untitled' 1974

 

Lucinda Bunnen (American, 1930-2022)
Untitled
1974
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the Lawrence and Alfred Fox Foundation for the Ralph K. Uhry Collection
© Lucinda Bunnen

 

Duane Michals (American, b. 1932) 'Untitled' 1989 From the 'Indomitable Spirit Portfolio'

 

Duane Michals (American, b. 1932)
Untitled
1989
From the Indomitable Spirit Portfolio
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

 

Paul Mpagi Sepuya (American, b. 1982) 'Studio (0X5A8180)' 2021

 

Paul Mpagi Sepuya (American, b. 1982)
Studio (0X5A8180)
2021
Archival pigment print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the Donald and Marilyn Keough Family Foundation
© Paul Mpagi Sepuya

 

Noémie Goudal (French, b. 1984) 'Phoenix V' 2021

 

Noémie Goudal (French, b. 1984)
Phoenix V
2021
Dye coupler print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase through funds provided by patrons of Collectors Evening 2023

 

Noémie Goudal visualises “deep time” (geological history of the planet) and paleoclimatology (study of past climates) to challenge our perception of the world. Referring to the ancient continental split two billion years ago that formed South America and Africa, this image features the Phoenix atlantica, a palm tree that grows on both sides of the Atlantic. Goudal arranged strips of photographic prints of the palms made on one continent in front of the physical palms on the other and rephotographed the scene. The resulting image interweaves the two continents, creating a glitchy, kaleidoscopic view meant to unsettle our sense of stability and the constancy of the planet.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

 

Naima Green (American, b. 1992) 'It Lingers Sweetly' 2022

 

Naima Green (American, b. 1992)
It Lingers Sweetly
2022
Pigmented inkjet print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the LGBTQIA+ Photography Centennial Initiative

 

Naima Green’s practice centres connection and collaboration to cast a tender lens on her own queer community of colour. Her lyrical portraits take shape in intimate domestic spaces and airy outdoor environments that embody havens for the people in those spaces. Through double exposure and serial photographs, she provides what she calls “multiple entry points” into a moment in time, translating movements and emotions into a single image. She explains her interest in double exposure “as a means of capturing things that can’t be held in just one way … ,” allowing her to “play with loosening the narrative and letting go of some control.”

Text from the High Museum of Art website

 

 

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Sunday 12 – 5pm
Monday closed

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Exhibition: ‘Elliott Erwitt. Icons’ at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy

Exhibition dates: 28th June – 21st September, 2025

Curator: Biba Giacchetti

 

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'England, Birmingham, 1991' 1991

 

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
England, Birmingham, 1991
1991
40 x 50cm
© Elliott Erwitt
Private Collection

 

 

Small intimacies

My apologies that I haven’t been writing that much in recent postings, but I am still recovering from my hip replacement operation and the pain is still ongoing over 6 weeks after the operation. I’m a little exhausted to put it mildly…

With this sumptuous exhibition of photographs by Elliott Erwitt – in a beautiful palazzo with painted ceilings and classical sculptures with the walls painted a glorious colour of green – you get what is says on the tin: Erwitt’s iconic and humanist photographs of dogs, children and celebrities, “visual double-takes and finely tuned one-liners.”

That is all the media images consisted of, his famous photographs.

I know that the exhibition, and the artist’s reputation, rests on his “icons” but I just wish we could see past these to his other photographs, photographs of everyday people, captured in the midst of their ordinary lives; photographs that contain a little more gravitas, a little more depth of poignancy / spirit / energy, revealing small intimacies not readily seen and acknowledged.

That Erwitt is capable of such images can be see in photographs such as Italy, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, 1965 (below), USA, New York City, 1969 (below) and that most gut wrenching, heart breaking of images, USA, Arlington, Virginia, Jacqueline Kennedy at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, November 25, 1963 (below) – where Erwitt reveals the grief of loss and finally touches the marrow of what it is to be human.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx of the Palazzo Bonaparte for allowing me to publish the photographs and video in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

 

Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy

Installation walk through of the exhibition “Elliott Erwitt. Icons,” dedicated to the late master of visual irony and empathy, Elliott Erwitt. This major show offers an intimate look into the universe of one of contemporary photography’s most significant figures, whose work transformed everyday life into profound visual poetry.

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy
Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy
Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy
Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy
Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt's photograph 'France, Paris, 1989'

 

Installation views of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing in the bottom image, the Erwitt’s photograph France, Paris, 1989

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at right Erwitt's photograph 'USA, New York City, 1953'

 

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at right Erwitt’s photograph USA, New York City, 1953

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy

 

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, USA, Santa Monica, California, 1956 (below); at second left, USA, New York City, 1955 (below); at third left, USA, Louisiana, Shreveport, 1962; and at right, USSR, Bratsk, Siberia, 1967 (below)

 

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'USA, Santa Monica, California, 1956' 1956

 

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, Santa Monica, California, 1956
1956
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

 

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'USA, New York City, 1955' 1955

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, New York City, 1955
1955
Gelatin silver print
50 x 60cm
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'USSR, Bratsk, Siberia, 1967' 1967

 

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USSR, Bratsk, Siberia, 1967
1967
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

  

  

Starting June 28th, 2025, Palazzo Bonaparte will open its doors to an extraordinary exhibition, “Elliott Erwitt. Icons,” dedicated to the late master of visual irony and empathy, Elliott Erwitt. This major show offers an intimate look into the universe of one of contemporary photography’s most significant figures, whose work transformed everyday life into profound visual poetry.

With over 80 celebrated photographs, “Elliott Erwitt. Icons” invites visitors to experience Erwitt’s distinctive style – irreverent, poetic, and deeply human. He possessed a remarkable ability to capture the lightness of the joy of living, becoming the most insightful and moving chronicler of the human comedy. His lens made us smile, reflect, and feel, turning fleeting moments into unforgettable images.

A Glimpse into Erwitt’s Vision

Erwitt, who passed away in November 2023 at the age of 95, was a master at transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. His “Icons” are not just photographs; they are symbols of his unique perspective and our shared collective memory. As he once put it, “In the saddest and most wintry moments of life… suddenly the sight of something wonderful can change the aspect of things, your state of mind. The type of photography I like, the one where the instant is caught, is very similar to this break in the clouds. In a flash, a wonderful photo seems to come out of nowhere.”

This exhibition, curated by Biba Giacchetti, a leading international Erwitt expert, along with technical assistance from Gabriele Accornero, offers a comprehensive yet concise overview of his genius. From his anthropomorphic dogs to powerful world leaders, from iconic movie stars like Marilyn Monroe to intimate family moments, Erwitt’s gaze was both incisive and empathetic. He captured not only the irony of daily life but also its underlying complexity.

Beyond the Famous Faces

While the exhibition features renowned portraits of figures such as Che Guevara, Jack Kerouac, Marlene Dietrich, Fidel Castro, and Sophia Loren, it also highlights historical moments like the Nixon-Khrushchev dispute, Kennedy’s funeral, and the Frazier-Ali fight. Yet, Erwitt’s democratic approach to his medium shines through in his focus on everyday people, captured in the midst of their ordinary lives.

A significant portion of Erwitt’s work showcased his love for dogs, whose free-spirited nature he admired. Many photographs are taken from a dog’s-eye view, often revealing only the feet or legs of their owners. Erwitt ingeniously employed playful tactics, like sounding a horn or mimicking a bark, to elicit natural reactions from the animals, resulting in humorous and endearing compositions.

An Unmissable Summer Event

The “Elliott Erwitt. Icons” exhibition, running until September 21st, 2025, marks the opening of Palazzo Bonaparte’s summer exhibition season. Following the success of the recent Edvard Munch retrospective, this show pays homage to a globally beloved master of photography. Visitors will have the unique opportunity to journey through Erwitt’s surreal, romantic, and playful vision of the world, always capable of grasping the essence of things.

Press release from Palazzo Bonaparte

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy
Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy
Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy
Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing from left to right, 'taly, Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia, 1965'; 'France, Versailles, 1975'; and 'Spain, Madrid, 1995'

  

Installation views of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing in the bottom image from left to right, Italy, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, 1965; France, Versailles, 1975; and Spain, Madrid, 1995 (below)

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'Italy, Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia, 1965' 1965

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
Italy, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, 1965
1965
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'Spain, Madrid, 1995' 1995

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
Spain, Madrid, 1995
1995
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, Erwitt’s photograph USA, New York City, 1969 (below)

  

“A 1969 scene in Amagansett, New York – a sober, soot-stained Victorian office block with a single storefront whose sign (“Tony’s of Worth Street”) is written in cheerful white paint – somehow combines the austerity of Atget with the irreverent glee of Weegee.”

Andrew Dickson. “Elliott Erwitt’s Visual One-liners,” on The New Yorker website October 14, 2016 [Online] Cited 02/09/2025

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'USA, New York City, 1969' 1969

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, New York City, 1969
1969
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

  

  

From June 28 to September 21, 2025, Palazzo Bonaparte welcomes the most ironic and disarming gaze in twentieth-century photography: Elliott Erwitt. An exhibition that is much more than an exhibition: it is an invitation to observe the world with lightness, empathy, and wonder.

An unmissable event, which recounts – through over 80 iconic shots – the long and brilliant career of an artist capable of capturing the soul of the twentieth century and transforming ordinary moments into unforgettable images, with a profoundly human yet always surprising gaze.

On display in Rome are icons of an era, of a way of looking at the world with lightness and intelligence. “Icons” because each of Erwitt’s shots has become a symbol of his poetics and of our collective memory.

Erwitt is more than just a photographer: he is the poet of human comedy, the unerring witness to life’s small and large absurdities, which he recounts with disarming irony, subtle poetry, and timeless grace. His images – famous, unforgettable, often dazzling – manage to be simultaneously light and profound, intimate and universal. They are shots that make you smile, reflect, and move you.

Elliott Erwitt was – and is – a key figure in the visual culture of our time. His images, books, reportages, illustrations, and advertising campaigns have spanned the decades, appearing in international publications and influencing generations of photographers and artists. This exhibition is a journey through his work and an invitation to look at the world with new eyes: with lightness, empathy, and wonder.

A member since 1953 of the historic Magnum agency – founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, among others – Erwitt has chronicled the last sixty years of history and contemporary civilisation with journalistic flair, capturing the most dramatic yet humorous aspects of the life that has passed before his lens.

“In life’s saddest, wintry moments, when a cloud has enveloped you for weeks, suddenly the sight of something wonderful can change the face of things, your state of mind. The kind of photography I like, the one that captures the moment, is very similar to this break in the clouds. In a flash, a wonderful photo seems to come out of nowhere.”

With these words, Erwitt sums up the spirit and poetics with which he filters reality, representing it with his mastery, capturing its sometimes playful, sometimes irreverent, or almost surreal aspects, which make him an undisputed master of the human comedy.

Curated by Biba Giacchetti, one of Erwitt’s leading international experts, with technical assistance from Gabriele Accornero, Elliott Erwitt. Icons is a snapshot of history and customs, a concise and comprehensive journey through his genius and his perspective on the world, from his anthropomorphic dogs to the world’s powerful figures, from the great movie stars – Marilyn Monroe above all – to his children. But it is also a tribute to the man who, with a gentle and disenchanted gaze, was able to portray the world for what it is: tragicomic, tender, absurd, unique.

The exhibition features famous portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Che Guevara, Kerouac, Marlene Dietrich, Fidel Castro, Sophia Loren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and photographs that have made history, such as the Nixon-Khrushchev quarrel, Kennedy’s funeral, and the great fight between Frazier and Ali. Other iconic photographs, beloved by the public for their romantic power, such as the California Kiss, include more intimate and private ones, such as the snapshot of his newborn firstborn, observed by her mother on the bed.

Above all, Erwitt casts an incisive yet empathetic gaze, revealing not only the irony of everyday life, but also its complexity.

With the same attitude, Erwitt reserves his attention for any other subject, pushing the democratic quality that is typical of his medium to the extreme. His imagery is populated predominantly by ordinary people, men and women, captured in the midst of the normality of their lives.

From portraits of famous people to more ironic and sometimes irreverent images, we move on to some self-portraits where Erwitt no longer leaves anything to chance or intuition, but constructs a self-other, where eccentricity for its own sake is metaphor and pure surreal fun.

Special attention is paid to dogs, whose irreverent, free-spirited attitude Erwitt appreciated, unfettered by the common rules that condition humans, is what Erwitt appreciated.

Many of his shots are “from the dog’s point of view,” allowing only the shoes or parts of their owners’ legs to appear in his compositions. Erwitt wanted these photographs to be comical, and for this reason he employed ingenious strategies, such as blowing a trumpet or emitting a kind of bark, to elicit the most natural reaction from the animals.

The exhibition – on view until September 21st – marks the opening of Palazzo Bonaparte’s summer exhibition season, following the recent resounding success of the Edvard Munch retrospective and paying tribute to one of the world’s most beloved masters of photography. Visitors will have the opportunity to retrace his vision of the world: surreal, romantic, playful, always capable of capturing the essence of things.

The exhibition, “Elliott Erwitt. Icons,” is produced and organised by Arthemisia, in collaboration with Orion57 and Bridgeconsultingpro. The exhibition’s main partner is the Fondazione Terzo Pilastro – Internazionale with Fondazione Cultura e Arte and Poema.

The exhibition’s special partner is Ricola, mobility partner Frecciarossa Treno Ufficiale, and technical sponsor Ferrari Trento.

Text translated from the Italian by Google Translate from the Palazzo Bonaparte website

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at right, Erwitt’s photograph USA, Pittsburgh, 1950 (below)

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'Pittsburgh, USA' 1950

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, Pittsburgh, 1950
1950
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at right, Erwitt's photograph 'France, Honfleur, 1968'

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at right, Erwitt’s photograph France, Honfleur, 1968

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing from left to right, 'France, Honfleur, 1968'; 'USA, New York City, 1977'; and 'USA, New York City, 1955'

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing from left to right, France, Honfleur, 1968; USA, New York City, 1977; and USA, New York City, 1955

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph Ireland, Ballycotton, 1991

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt's photograph 'USA, New York City, Marilyn Monroe (with hand), 1956'

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph USA, New York City, Marilyn Monroe (with hand), 1956

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, 'USA, New York City, 1953'; and at right, 'USA, NewYork, 1956'

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, USA, New York City, 1953; and at right, USA, NewYork, 1956 (below)

    

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'USA, NewYork, 1956' 1956

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, NewYork, 1956
1956
Gelatin silver print
40 x 50cm
© Elliott Erwitt
Private Collection

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, USA, Los Angeles, 1960; and at right, USA, Arlington, Virginia, Jacqueline Kennedy at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, November 25, 1963 (below)

Note: wrong title and date underneath the photograph on the right-hand side

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'USA, Arlington, Virginia, Jacqueline Kennedy at John F. Kennedy's funeral, November 25, 1963' 1963

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, Arlington, Virginia, Jacqueline Kennedy at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, November 25, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print
© Elliott Erwitt
Private Collection

  

  

Elliott Erwitt was not just a photographer, but an unparalleled visual storyteller, capable of transforming the moment into history, the everyday into art, irony into poetry. His images evoke in the viewer emotions that move on different registers, from emotion to laughter, to the most spontaneous amusing. Having passed away in November 2023 at the age of 95, he left us an immense legacy: an archive of photographs that span eras, cultures, and feelings with a universal language, inviting us to look at the world with greater indulgence and wonder, always standing by our side in that profound lightness that he himself defined as “The Art of Observation.”

His lens captured iconic moments in history: the tense confrontation between Nixon and Khrushchev, Kennedy’s funeral, the legendary fight between Frazier and Ali. He portrayed legends of our imagination – Marilyn Monroe, Che Guevara, Marlene Dietrich – but he also captured moments of extraordinary intimacy and summarised universal feelings in a single shot: a stolen kiss in the rearview mirror, the gaze of a mother on her newborn baby, a dog lost in thought. Images that transcend time to become iconic.

What makes Erwitt unique is his ability to intertwine emotion and intelligence, making us laugh and moved, surprising us with his irony and his ability to grasp the profound meaning of existence. He has captured the absurd and the surreal with a sharp and light-hearted gaze, always finding in every scene a spark capable of making it memorable.

His anthropomorphic dogs, the protagonists of entire photographic series, are not just amusing images: they are mirrors of the human condition, ironic and melancholic at the same time, sometimes proud and surprising. His children, portrayed with the most authentic spontaneity, convey the wonder of discovery and freedom, still intact, expressing already defined personalities, still unconstrained. His self-portraits, where he pokes fun at himself, remind us that art – like life – should never take itself too seriously.

Elliott Erwitt was all of this: a master of photography, an interpreter of the human comedy, an artist who left an indelible mark on the history of the image. This exhibition is our homage to his vision of the world: a journey through irony, tenderness, depth, and lightness, just as his art has always been able to convey.

Welcome to the world of this great artist. My master.

Biba Giacchetti
Exhibition curator

Text translated from the Italian by Google Translate

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt's photograph 'USA, New York City, 1971' (Muhammad Ali vs Joe Frazier)

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph USA, New York City, 1971 (Muhammad Ali vs Joe Frazier)

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, 'USA, Los Angeles, 1960'; and at second left, 'USA, Arlington, Virginia, Jacqueline Kennedy at John F. Kennedy's funeral, November 25, 1963'; at third right, 'USSR, Moscow, 1959'; and at second right, 'Cuba, Havana, 1964'

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, USA, Los Angeles, 1960; and at second left, USA, Arlington, Virginia, Jacqueline Kennedy at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, November 25, 1963; at third right, USSR, Moscow, 1959 (below); and at second right, Cuba, Havana, 1964 (below)

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt's photograph 'USSR, Moscow, 1959'

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph USSR, Moscow, 1959 (below)

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'USSR, Moscow, 1959' (Nikita Khruschchev and Richard Nixon) 1959

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USSR, Moscow, 1959 (Nikita Khruschchev and Richard Nixon)
1959
Gelatin silver print
40 x 50cm
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt's photograph 'Cuba, Havana, 1964

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph Cuba, Havana, 1964 (Che Guevara)

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, 'England, Birmingham, 1991' (top); at third right, 'USA, New York City, 1946'; at second right, 'France, Paris, 1989'; and at right, 'USA, New York City, 2000'

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing at left, England, Birmingham, 1991 (top); at third right, USA, New York City, 1946 (below); at second right, France, Paris, 1989 (below); and at right, USA, New York City, 2000 (below)

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'USA, New York City, 1946' 1946

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, New York City, 1946
1946
Gelatin silver print
40 x 50cm
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'France, Paris, 1989' 1989

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
France, Paris, 1989
1989
Gelatin silver print
50 x 60cm
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'USA, New York City, 2000' 2000

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, New York City, 2000
2000
Gelatin silver print
50 x 60cm
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt's photograph 'USA, New York City, 1974'

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph USA, New York City, 1974 (below)

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'USA, New York City, 1974' 1974

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, New York City, 1974
1974
Gelatin silver print
50 x 60cm
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

  

Installation view of the exhibition 'Elliott Erwitt. Icons' at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy

  

Installation view of the exhibition Elliott Erwitt. Icons at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, Italy showing Erwitt’s photograph USA, New York City, 1955 (below)

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) 'USA, New York City, 1955' 1955

  

Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023)
USA, New York City, 1955
1955
Gelatin silver print
Private Collection
© Elliott Erwitt

  

  

Palazzo Bonaparte
Piazza Venezia 5, Roma

Palazzo Bonaparte website

Palazzo Bonaparte exhibitions website

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Exhibition: ‘The Underground Camera’ at Foam, Amsterdam

Exhibition dates: 2nd May – 1st September, 2025

Co-curators: Hripsimé Visser, former curator at Stedelijk Museum, Foam curator Claartje van Dijk, and exhibition designer Jeroen de Vries, in collaboration with NIOD Institute

  

Marius Meijboom (Dutch, 1911-1998) 'Hunger Winter' February 1945

  

Marius Meijboom (Dutch, 1911-1998)
Hunger Winter
February 1945
Marius Meijboom / Niod

  

Iconic photo of Henkie Holvast from the Jordaan, 9 years old

  

 

Resist!

The photograph of Henkie Holvast (February 1945, above) is an example of the famine the Nazis inflicted on the general population of the Netherlands during the last year of the Second World War.

I’ll leave you to make the correlation between these historical events and what is happening in Gaza today … and to understand the hypocrisy and evil of contemporary acts.

Like the photojournalists that are being targeted and killed for reporting the truth of the situation in Gaza, so these photographers would have been killed by the Nazis for photographing the occupation of the Netherlands if they had been caught.

“Verzet! Verzet!” (Resist! Resist!)

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

  

  

“The exhibition The Underground Camera captures the hunger and hardship in Amsterdam during the final year of World War II, but also sheds light on the untold stories behind the images, offering fresh perspectives.”


De Volkskrant

  

  

Cas Oorthuys (Dutch, 1908-1975) 'Resistance slogans on a bomb shelter at Kwakersplein, Amsterdam' 1944-1945 from the exhibition 'The Underground Camera' at Foam, Amsterdam, May - Sept, 2025

  

Cas Oorthuys (Dutch, 1908-1975)
Resistance slogans on a bomb shelter at Kwakersplein, Amsterdam
1944-1945
© Cas Oorthuys / Netherlands Photo Museum

  

  

“Verzet! Verzet!” (Resist! Resist!) is spray painted boldly on a public wall, confronting the public in Cas Oorthuys’s Verzetsleuzen op een schuilbunker Kwakersplein (Resistance slogans on a bunker at Kwakersplein), taken in Amsterdam between 1944-1945. In many ways this image serves as a visual manifesto for The Underground Camera, the new exhibition at Foam Amsterdam, articulating the collective’s commitment to resistance, subversion, and the political potential of the photographic image.

The Underground Camera, a group of Amsterdam based photographers, made the life-threatening and courageous decision to photograph the Nazi occupation of Holland, specifically the famine of 1944-45 in Amsterdam as a result of the Nazis blocking food transport. The photographers, recruited by members of the Dutch resistance, were tasked with making the unseen visible. The intention was to inform the Dutch government working in exile in London to advocate for food drops on their behalf while also documenting the conditions of the occupation, creating evidence in the event the Nazis would be held accountable. A general ban on photography was implemented in 1944 by the occupation, so The Underground Camera followed through with illegal acts carried out discreetly, often hiding the cameras under their garments.

Not only was participating in illegal acts under the Nazi occupation dangerous, but being associated with the resistance otten carried dire consequences. By highlighting the potential fatality of the mission, its dangerous conditions, and the equipment that was difficult to obtain at the time and often poor quality, Foam’s exhibit allows the audience to witness a quiet rebellion. A rebellion that is often overlooked not only in the history of photography, but in history as a whole.

With this exhibit, the courageous and inspiring group finally gets their time of recognition.

The Underground Camera, initially known as the more unassuming ‘Nederland Archief’ (Netherlands Archive), significantly contributed to the retelling of history regarding Germany’s occupation during the war, viewing the camera as both a witness and a weapon. The idea of the camera as a weapon is underscored by many academic discourses surrounding documentary war photography. A camera has the potential to become a tool of war whose target is completely dependent on the intention of the one shooting, but in this case of the camera has actively deconstructed propaganda while also holding the occupiers accountable.

There are many unknowns when it comes to this group. Who were the participating photographers, were any were caught, how were they organised, how did they operate, etc. This exhibition is giving them deserved institutional and academic recognition and advocates for their story to be told. The Underground Camera is an incredible show not only because it offers rare glimpses into the realities of war, but because the photographs are a product of courageous resilience.

Georgina Laube. “Apr 24: The Underground Camera | Foam,” on the Musee magazine website, April 2th, 2025 [Online] Cited 09/05/2025

  

Cas Oorthuys (Dutch, 1908-1975) 'A man collects materials from a demolished building, Zwanenburgstraat' 1944 from the exhibition 'The Underground Camera' at Foam, Amsterdam, May - Sept, 2025

  

Cas Oorthuys (Dutch, 1908-1975)
A man collects materials from a demolished building, Zwanenburgstraat
1944
© Cas Oorthuys/Nederlands Fotomuseum

  

Cas Oorthuys (Dutch, 1908-1975) 'Two women returning from a hunger march' Early 1945

  

Cas Oorthuys (Dutch, 1908-1975)
Two women returning from a hunger march
Early 1945
Courtesy of Foam
© Cas Oorthuys / Nederlands Fotomuseum

  

  

Foam presents The Underground Camera, an exhibition that features work from Dutch photographers who captured the consequences of the German occupation during the 1944-45 ‘famine winter’ in Amsterdam.

The exhibition The Underground Camera is inspired by the celebrations of Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary and 80 years of liberation.

With their photographs, The Underground Camera group made a significant contribution to the image of the Second World War. The photographers were recruited by members of the resistance, with the aim of informing the Dutch government in London. They worked independently and under the dangerous conditions of an occupied city, with hard-to-obtain, often poor-quality equipment. The exhibition provides an impressive picture of the consequences of hunger and cold in the dismantled Amsterdam at the end of the war.

The group of photographers included Cas Oorthuys, Emmy Andriesse, Charles Breijer, Kryn Taconis, and Ad Windig, among others.

Text from the Foam website

  

Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011) 'Closure of the Jewish Quarter near the Waag, Nieuwmarkt, Amsterdam' 1941

  

Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011)
Closure of the Jewish Quarter near the Waag, Nieuwmarkt, Amsterdam
1941
© Charles Breijer / Netherlands Photo Museum

  

Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011) 'Charles Breijer photographs a German-requisitioned building near Vondelpark from his bicycle bag. He inadvertently captures his own shadow' Spring 1945

  

Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011)
Charles Breijer photographs a German-requisitioned building near Vondelpark from his bicycle bag. He inadvertently captures his own shadow
Spring 1945
Charles Breijer / Netherlands Photo Museum (NFM)

  

German guard post in front of the Kriegsmarine building at Emmaplein in Amsterdam. Visible in the foreground is the shadow of photographer Charles Breijer, operating his Rolleiflex camera from his pannier.

  

Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011) 'Andrea Domburg distracts bystanders while Margreet Meijboom-Van Konijnenburg takes the photo from her bag' Nd

  

Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011)
Andrea Domburg distracts bystanders while Margreet Meijboom-Van Konijnenburg takes the photo from her bag
Nd
Charles Breijer / Netherlands Photo Museum

  

Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011) 'Margreet Meijboom-van Konijnenbrug (right) demonstrates photographing from a shopping bag. Andrea Domburg, in a nurse's uniform, accompanies her to keep an eye on the surroundings' Nd

  

Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011)
Margreet Meijboom-van Konijnenbrug (right) demonstrates photographing from a shopping bag. Andrea Domburg, in a nurse’s uniform, accompanies her to keep an eye on the surroundings
Nd
Charles Breijer / Netherlands Photo Museum

  

Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011) 'Joop Kuijt, a refugee, crawls into a hiding place at Oranje Nassaulaan 15, Amsterdam' 1945

  

Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011)
Joop Kuijt, a refugee, crawls into a hiding place at Oranje Nassaulaan 15, Amsterdam
1945
© Charles Breijer/Netherlands Photo Museum

  

Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011) 'Shortly after the liberation, Cas Oorthuys demonstrates how he took illegal photographs during the occupation' 1945

  

Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011)
Shortly after the liberation, Cas Oorthuys demonstrates how he took illegal photographs during the occupation
1945
© Charles Breijer / Nederlands Fotomuseum

  

  

In honour of Amsterdam’s 750th jubilee and the 80th remembrance of the Netherlands’ liberation, Foam presents The Underground Camera (De Ondergedoken Camera). The exhibition showcases images captured by the group of photographers who came to be known by the same name. They photographed the harsh realities of Amsterdam during the ‘Hunger Winter’ of 1944-1945, offering a rare glimpse into the courageous missions of the resistance group and their role in documenting the Nazi occupation. The exhibition features work by renowned Dutch photographers such as Cas Oorthuys, Charles Breijer and Emmy Andriesse.

The resistance group was led by Fritz Kahlenberg and Tonny van Renterghem. In November 1944, when the German administration banned public photography, they – alongside a network of fourteen photographers – worked in secrecy to document the occupation and the resistance. Their efforts, carried out at great personal risk, preserved a crucial visual record of this era. Kahlenberg, a German Jewish filmmaker who had migrated to Amsterdam in 1933, was involved in the forgery of identity cards for the resistance. Van Renterghem had a military background and was also actively involved in resistance work. Although he was not a photographer himself, he played a crucial role in the coordination between The Underground Camera and other resistance groups. The images taken by the photographers of The Underground Camera were intended to be smuggled to London to convince the Dutch government in exile of the need for Allied food droppings in the Netherlands. Today, the photos provide a realistic perspective of daily life in Amsterdam during the last months of the German occupation.

The historical material of the group was stored in various Dutch collections in the form of negatives, original photo prints, albums and picture books. The exhibition sheds light on topics such as the Hunger Winter, the resistance, the illegal press, instances of sabotage, the transport of weapons and the liberation by the Allied Forces.

The Underground Camera is the result of a close collaboration with the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. A publication by the same name, written by NIOD-researchers René Kok and Erik Somers, will be released in March 2025. The exhibition has been co-curated by Hripsimé Visser, former curator of photography at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, in collaboration with exhibition designer Jeroen de Vries.

The Mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, will open the exhibition at Foam.

The exhibition The Underground Camera is part of a research trajectory within Foam’s artistic programme, launched in early 2024 under the title The Camera as a Weapon, which included a pop-up exhibition of the same name and a symposium. In a time marked by conflict, Foam poses the question: what can photography do? Through this research line – which also includes the exhibition Sakir Khader – Yawm al-Firak – the museum responds to current events by presenting artistic practices in which the camera is used as a weapon.
In light of the national observance of Remembrance Day on 4 May and the national celebration of Liberation Day on 5 May, het Amsterdams 4 en 5 mei comité, in collaboration with Foam en NIOD, will also present an exhibition. This public exhibition will be shown from 29th of April until the 6th of May on the Museumplein.

About The Underground Camera

Kahlenberg and Van Renterghem, the driving forces behind the operation, instructed a group of photographers from their main location at the Michelangelostraat 36 in Amsterdam South from where they oversaw their resistance activities. Many of the The Underground Camera photographers would later become internationally renowned. They concealed their cameras in handbags and jackets in order for them to take the pictures unnoticed. Many used Rolleiflex cameras which had a viewfinder on top, making it easier to take pictures from hip height. Given the danger of being involved in organised resistance, the photographers did not know who else was part of the collective and worked under neutral names such as ‘Netherlands Archive’ (‘Nederlands Archief’) and ‘Central Imagery Archive’ (‘Centraal Beeldarchief’). Just a few weeks after the liberation, in early June 1945, a selection of work was showcased in the exhibition The Underground Camera located in the studio of the photographer Marius Meijboom at the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. The exhibition brought national recognition for The Underground Camera’s work, leading the group to officially adopt this name. Now, 80 years later, their legacy returns in a new exhibition along the same canal.

UNESCO included The Underground Camera in its Dutch Memory of the World Register, making it the first photographic legacy ever to receive this prestigious distinction.

The Underground Camera consisted of Tonny van Renterghem (1919-2009), Fritz Kahlenberg (1916-1996), Emmy Andriesse (1914-1953), Carel Blazer (1911-1980), Charles Breijer (1914-2011), Cornelis Holtzapffel (1916-1984), Ingeborg Kahlenberg-Wallheimer (1920-1996), Boris Kowadlo (1912-1959), Frits Lemaire (1921-2005), Marius Meijboom (1911-1998), Margreet Meijboom-van Konijnenburg (1910-onbekend), Cas Oorthuys (1908-1975), Hans Sibbelee (1915-2003), Ben Steenkamp (1917-1967), Ad Windig (1912-1996) and Krijn Taconis (1918-1979). Taconis was the first Dutch person to become a member of renowned international photography collective Magnum.

Press release from Foam

  

Margaretha van Konijnenburg (1910 - d.) 'Bicycle raid on the Weteringplantsoen in Amsterdam' Autumn 1944

  

Margaretha van Konijnenburg (1910 – d.)
Bicycle raid on the Weteringplantsoen in Amsterdam
Autumn 1944

  

Photographed from a shopping bag

  

Marius Meijboom (Dutch, 1911-1998) 'Hungry' Nd

  

Marius Meijboom (Dutch, 1911-1998)
Hungry
Nd
© Marius Meijboom, NIOD

  

Hans Sibbelee (Dutch, 1915-2003) 'Children on Sarphatistraat remove the impregnated wooden blocks from between the tram rails, for the stove' March 1945

  

Hans Sibbelee (Dutch, 1915-2003)
Children on Sarphatistraat remove the impregnated wooden blocks from between the tram rails, for the stove
March 1945

  

The photographer took the photo from under his jacket

  

Krijn Taconis (Dutch, 1918-1979) 'Police officers guarding food supplies in the Amsterdam harbour to prevent looting will receive an extra meal' Nd

  

Krijn Taconis (Dutch, 1918-1979)
Police officers guarding food supplies in the Amsterdam harbour to prevent looting will receive an extra meal
Nd
Krijn Taconis / Niod

  

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) 'On the way to the soup kitchen' Nd

  

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953)
On the way to the soup kitchen
Nd
BBWO2 / Leiden University Library

  

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) 'A man and a woman find some coal remains at the Weesperpoort station in Amsterdam' Spring 1945

  

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953)
A man and a woman find some coal remains at the Weesperpoort station in Amsterdam
Spring 1945

  

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) 'A boy eats a meal from a soup kitchen' Nd

  

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953)
A boy eats a meal from a soup kitchen
Nd

  

H.R. Kettner (Dutch, 1916 - d.) 'The distribution of groceries became increasingly difficult, resulting in long lines in front of, among other places, the Wijnbergh & Co. store on Middenweg' Nd

  

H.R. Kettner (Dutch, 1916 – d.)
The distribution of groceries became increasingly difficult, resulting in long lines in front of, among other places, the Wijnbergh & Co. store on Middenweg
Nd

  

Other photographs by The Underground Camera photographers

  

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) 'Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter' (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) [1944-1945] book published 1947

 

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953)
Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) [1944-1945]
Published 1947
Bound volume
Closed: 29.21 x 22.86cm (11 1/2 x 9 in.)
Open: 29.21 x 44.45cm (11 1/2 x 17 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art Library, David K.E. Bruce Fund

 

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953)

Emmy Eugenie Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) was a Dutch photographer best known for her work with the Underground Camera group (De Ondergedoken Camera [nl]) during World War II. …

War years and the ‘Underground Camera’

In June 1941 Andriesse married graphic designer and visual artist Dick Elffers (a gentile with whom she had two sons, one who died young), but as a Jew during the Nazi occupation Andriesse was no longer able to publish and she was forced into hiding. At the end of 1944, with the assistance of the anthropologist Arie de Froe [nl] she forged an identity card and re-engaged in everyday life, joining a group of photographers, including Cas Oorthuys and Charles Breijer, working clandestinely as De Ondergedoken Camera. The photos that Andriesse made under very difficult conditions of famine in Amsterdam, include Boy with pan, The Gravedigger and Kattenburg Children are documents of hunger, poverty and misery during the occupation in the “winter of hunger” of 1944-1945.

Post-war

After the war, she became a fashion photographer and was an associate and mentor of Ed van der Elsken. She participated in the group show Photo ’48 and in 1952, together with Carel Blazer [nl], Eva Besnyö and Cas Oorthuys, the exhibition Photographie, both in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. Edward Steichen chose her 1947 portrait of a staid and elderly Dutch couple for the section ‘we two form a multitude’ in the Museum of Modern Art world-touring The Family of Man that was seen by an audience of 9 million. More recently (October 2006 – January 2007) she was included in a display of Twentieth Century European photography at the Barbican Art Gallery, London.

Andriesse’s last commission, the book The World of Van Gogh – published posthumously in 1953 – was not yet complete when she became ill and after a long battle with cancer, died at the age of 39.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) 'Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter' (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) [1944-1945] book published 1947 (detail)

 

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953)
Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) (detail)
1947
Bound volume
Closed: 29.21 x 22.86cm (11 1/2 x 9 in.)
Open: 29.21 x 44.45cm (11 1/2 x 17 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art Library, David K.E. Bruce Fund

 

Steeds grauwer werd het beeld de steden. Schoeisel en kleding raakten totaal versleten.

The image of the cities became increasingly grey. Footwear and clothing became totally worn out.

 

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) 'Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter' (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) [1944-1945] book published 1947 (detail)

 

Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953)
Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) (detail)
1947
Bound volume
Closed: 29.21 x 22.86cm (11 1/2 x 9 in.)
Open: 29.21 x 44.45cm (11 1/2 x 17 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art Library, David K.E. Bruce Fund

 

De etalages waren leeg of toonden alleen vervangingsmiddelen.

The shop windows were empty or only showed substitutes.

  

  

Foam
Keizersgracht 609
1017 DS Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Phone: 31 (0)20 5516500

Opening hours:
Monday – Wednesday 10am – 6pm
Thursday – Friday 10am – 9pm
Sat – Sun 10am – 6pm

Foam website

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Exhibition: ‘Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits’ at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 5th June – 16th August, 2025

Curated by Catlin Langford with Christopher Sutherland and Jessie Norman (Metro Auto Photo)

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025

 

Installation view of the exhibition Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June – August, 2025
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Dream Maker

This is one of the most joyous photography exhibitions that I have seen in a very long time.

The exhibition “introduces us to Alan Adler (2932-2024), who while little known, was the oldest and longest serving photobooth technician in the world… For over 50 years, Adler maintained a fleet of photobooths across Melbourne / Narrm, most notably the site at Flinders Street Station.”

Through the strip self-portraits Adler took while servicing and then testing the photobooths that he operated in Melbourne, Australia we become immersed in an archive of his world, the exhibition becoming a joyous ode to a man who devoted his life to photography (not in the traditional sense): in turns humorous and historical, a travelogue, his travelogue, through time and space.

We see Adler growing older and ageing; we see historic events such as the COVID pandemic with him wearing a mask; we see him travelling the world to picture other photobooths in situ; we see him goofing and performing for the camera; and we see the people he met along the way. I particularly like the photograph of Adler having his photo taken on the “Photo Ride: Take “5” with Chuckie” where he imitates the smile of his fellow traveller (see below)

The exhibition is also historical – there is a short section on the history of the photobooth – contemporary – there are contemporary works by Australian artists who use the photobooth as the basis for their art – and lost and found – where “lost” photobooth strips that Adler diligently collected in the hope of one day reuniting them with their owner are displayed.

There is an absolutely wonderful video by Christopher Sutherland titled Alan (extract below) which gives you good insight into the man. He seems part magician, keeping those old photobooths going, and part artist – Adler’s workshop reminding me so much of the basement of the American artist Joseph Cornell (1903-1972, see photo below) where he used to keep all the treasures he scavenged from around New York that he used to make his magical boxes. Adler’s photobooths were his magical boxes kept going by his bits and pieces, booths of happiness and memories, tales of a life in portraits.

In this exhibition the spirit of this man shines through in gloriously irreverent black and white and colour self-portraits, and fun, adventurous photographs from overseas. One of the best pure photography exhibitions I have seen this year.

What a life, well honoured.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All installation photographs © Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Entrance

Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Wall text from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025

 

Installation view of the exhibition Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June – August, 2025
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gallery 1

 

 

Christopher Sutherland (Australian)
Alan (extract)
2025-ongoing
Digital film

 

This is part of an ongoing film project by Christopher Sutherland on Alan Adler, which began in 2018 when they first met.

 

Cornell's basement studio, 3708 Utopia Parkway, Flushing, New York, 1964

 

Cornell’s basement studio, 3708 Utopia Parkway, Flushing, New York, 1964
Collection Duff Murphy and Janice Miyahira
© Terry Schutté

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Wall text from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025

 

Installation views of the exhibition Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June – August, 2025
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gallery 2

Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Wall text from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Wall text from of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025

 

Installation views of the exhibition Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June – August, 2025
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits introduces us to Alan Adler (1932-2024), who while little known, was the oldest and longest serving photobooth technician in the world.

For over 50 years, Adler maintained a fleet of photobooths across Melbourne / Narrm, most notably the site at Flinders Street Station. As part of his weekly service, he would take a strip of test shots, now forming an extraordinary visual archive of over a thousand self-portraits.

Adler’s story shows a fascinating dedication to repetitious image making and is supported by the artworks of Melbourne creatives who have passionately used his photobooths.

Marking 100 years of the photobooth, Auto-Photo is one of many worldwide events that celebrate the centenary and reflect on the significance of this analogue machine.

Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits features Adler’s extensive archive, alongside additional exhibits and works of art from the collections of Katherine Griffiths, Mark Holsworth, Kyle Archie Knight, Ruth O’Leary, Nicky Makin, Jesse Marlow, Brian Meacham, Metro Auto Photo, Patrick Pound and Joshua Smith.

Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits is a Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP) exhibition, presented in partnership with RMIT Culture.

Text from the RMIT Gallery website

 

Gallery 3

Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Wall text from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025

A Selected Visual History (in vitrine)

Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Wall text from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025

Photobooth portraits with the same background (c. 1930-1950) (in vitrine)

Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025

Julie Mac Photobooth Portraits 1970s (in vitrine)

Vitrine text from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of Julie Mac's 'Photobooth Portraits' 1970s from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of Julie Mac's 'Photobooth Portraits' 1970s from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of Julie Mac's 'Photobooth Portraits' 1970s from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025

Mark S. Holsworthy Photo Booth – readymade in 3 minutes 1984-continuing (in vitrine)

Vitrine text from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of Mark S. Holsworth's 'Photo Booth - readymade in 3 minutes' (1984 - continuing) from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of Mark S. Holsworth's 'Photo Booth - readymade in 3 minutes' (1984 - continuing) from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of Mark S. Holsworth's 'Photo Booth - readymade in 3 minutes' (1984 - continuing) from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025

 

Installation views of the exhibition Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June – August, 2025
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gallery 4

Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Wall text from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025

Joshua Smith Flinders Street Photobooth 2019

Wall text from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of Joshua Smith's 'Flinder Street Photobooth' (2019) from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025
Installation view of Joshua Smith's 'Flinder Street Photobooth' (2019) from the exhibition 'Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits' at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June - August, 2025

 

Installation views of the exhibition Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June – August, 2025
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

RMIT Gallery
344 Swanston St,
Melbourne VIC 3000

Opening hours:
11am – 5pm Tuesday to Friday
12pm – 4pm Saturday
Closed on public and University holidays

RMIT Gallery website

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Photographs: Anonymous 1960s medium format Kodak Ektachrome slides of Australia

July 2025

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'The Nobbies, Phillip Island, Victoria, Australia' 1960s

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
The Nobbies, Phillip Island, Victoria, Australia
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

 

Further Australian photographs from scans of 73 medium format Kodak Ektakchrome slides found in a country town in Victoria, Australia taken in Australia, Mexico, United States of America and Canada in the mid-1960s. I believe that the photographer was an Australian who was on holiday in Mexico, United States of America and Canada.

In nearly 40 years of being a photographer I have never seen colour medium format slides from the 1960s. There was no colour fading to the slides. The person who took the photographs was shooting medium format colour in the 1960s so they would have been a photographic aficionado. Just by holding the slides up to the light I could see the photographs were compositionally very interesting. Whoever the photographer was they had a great eye!

There are some beautiful photographs of the Australian landscape here. And the Australian “light” and colour are so different from the rest of the photographs (see part 1 of the posting).

I have also included an example of how incredibly dirty these slides were, see Untitled (Australian landscape) (detail uncleaned and cleaned) 1960s (below), and note how much work and many hours were required to bring these images back into a state of grace … and preservation.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


All photographs © Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. See Part 1 of the posting.

 

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960s

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

The fault at left appears in several other slides in these Ektachromes and must have been in the camera as it’s not in the slide itself…

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

There is a Mini panel van on the causeway!

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960s

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

The same landscape as the two photographs below

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960s

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960s (detail uncleaned and cleaned)
Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960s (detail uncleaned and cleaned)

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape) (detail uncleaned and cleaned)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Man holding his movie camera, Australia)' 1960s

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Man holding his movie camera, Australia)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

Australian built Ford XR Falcon station wagon

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Unknown woman' 1960s

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Unknown woman
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

I don’t know where this is but it feels Australian to me, especially the fashion…

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape, possibly South Point, Wilson's Prom, Victoria)' 1960s

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape, possibly South Point, Wilson’s Prom, Victoria)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

Australian coastal she oak and tea tree.

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960s

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

Wonderful photograph of the Australian landscape…

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

Max Dupain (Australian, 1911-1992) 'Silos through windscreen' 1935

 

Max Dupain (Australian, 1911-1992)
Silos through windscreen
1935
Gelatin silver print

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

The second photograph taken through the windscreen of a car

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Australian landscape)' 1960

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Australian landscape)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled' 1960s

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

I’m not sure what they are doing or where this is (possibly Australia) but I like the photo!

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled' 1960s

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

A geologist hammer in his hand?

 

Unknown photographer (Australian) 'Untitled (Visitors must not leave pathway)' 1960s

 

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Visitors must not leave pathway)
1960s
Ektachrome medium format transparency scanned

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Exhibition dates: 11th April – 20th July, 2025

Curators: Jeff L. Rosenheim, Joyce Frank Menschel Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs. Virginia McBride, Research Associate in the Department of Photographs, provided assistance.

 

Unknown Maker. 'Woman Wearing a Tignon' c. 1850

 

Unknown Maker
Woman Wearing a Tignon
c. 1850
Daguerreotype with applied colour
Case (open): 3 1/8 × 7 1/4 in. (8 × 18.4cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

 

It’s just nice to be able to post on this eclectic exhibition – to see the installation photographs with vitrines full of the wonders of the age, outdoors, indoors, objects, people, landscapes, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, salted paper prints, albumen silver prints, cyanotypes, platinum prints, and gelatin silver prints, cartes de visite, stereographs, and cabinet cards.

Can you imagine having your photograph taken for the first time?

Entering the photographers studio, com(posing) yourself in front of the camera and the process and performance of doing that, even as the photographer composed you on the glass plate in the camera. A double composition, the constituent parts making the whole, a dance between the sitter, the camera and the photographer.

And there you are, exposed in camera, the latent image revealed by vapour, a talismanic object radiating your spirit.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to The Metropolitan 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.

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April - July, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April - July, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April - July, 2025

 

Installation views of the exhibition The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April – July, 2025

 

 

This exhibition presents a bold new history of American photography from the medium’s birth in 1839 to the first decade of the 20th century. Drawn from The Met’s William L. Schaeffer Collection, major works by lauded artists such as Josiah Johnson Hawes, John Moran, Carleton Watkins, and Alice Austen are shown in dialogue with extraordinary photographs by obscure or unknown practitioners made in small towns and cities from coast to coast. Featuring a range of formats, from daguerreotypes and cartes de visite to stereographs and cyanotypes, the show explores the dramatic change in the nation’s sense of itself that was driven by the immediate success of photography as a cultural, commercial, artistic, and psychological preoccupation. In 1835, even before the nearly simultaneous announcement of the invention of the new art in Paris and London, the American philosopher essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson noted with remarkable vision: “Our Age is Ocular.”

Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April - July, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April - July, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April - July, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April - July, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April - July, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April - July, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April - July, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition 'The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April - July, 2025

 

Installation views of the exhibition The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April – July, 2025

 

 

 The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910 will feature more than 250 photographs drawn from the Museum’s William L. Schaeffer Collection 

This spring, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present an adventurous new history of American photography from the medium’s birth in 1839 to the first decade of the 20th century. Drawn from the Museum’s William L. Schaeffer Collection – a magnificent recent promised gift to The Met by trustee Philip Maritz and his wife Jennifer – major works by lauded artists such as Josiah Johnson Hawes, John Moran, Carleton E. Watkins, and Alice Austen, will be presented in dialogue with extraordinary photographs by obscure or unknown practitioners made in small towns and cities from coast to coast. The exhibition’s many photographs by little-studied makers, early practitioners, and intrepid amateurs have been selected to reveal the artists’ ingenuity, aesthetic ambition, and lasting achievement. In some 275 photographs – most never before seen – The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910 explores the nation’s shifting sense of self, driven by the immediate success of photography as a cultural, commercial, artistic, and psychological preoccupation. The presentation will be on view from April 11 through July 20, 2025. 

“Through an impressive array of 19th- and early 20th-century images that capture the complexities of a nation in the midst of profound transformation, this exhibition offers something new even for those well-versed in the history of photography,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “Thanks to the generosity of Jenny and Flip Maritz, we can study and celebrate these formerly hidden treasures by hundreds of both known and unknown makers finally ready for their close-ups. Our hope is to give these works their rightful place in the ever-expanding history of the medium.”

Jeff L. Rosenheim, Joyce Frank Menschel Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs, added, “The camera and its myriad democratic products – rivals to the greatest literature of the era – are clearly the origin of modern communication and global image-sharing today. If we want to forge a deeper appreciation of contemporary art and the role of the camera in the lives of today’s picture makers, we must recognise and respect the stunning visual power and authenticity of early American photography.” 

Carefully assembled over the last 50 years by the Connecticut collector and private dealer William L. Schaeffer, the collection includes splendid photographs in superb condition from every stage of the medium’s early technical development: daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, salted paper prints, albumen silver prints, cyanotypes, platinum prints, and gelatin silver prints. The exhibition also features an extensive display of three types of card-mounted photographs – cartes de visite, stereographs, and cabinet cards – each wildly popular in the mid- to late 19th century. When seen through binocular viewers, all the stereographs in the show will be visible in three dimensions. 

This is not the first exhibition at The Met to feature photographs drawn from the famous collection of 19th-century photographs amassed by Schaeffer. In 2013, the Museum included more than a dozen Civil War views in Photography and the American Civil War. These are now part of the Museum’s collection through the direct support of another Museum trustee, Joyce Frank Menschel. The gifts by the Maritzes to The Met, as well as those by Joyce Menschel, mark a pinnacle in the institution’s ongoing effort to build the finest holdings of 19th-century American photography in the nation.

Exhibition Overview

In 1839, the invention of photography transformed the world. In December of that year, when the first daguerreotypes were exhibited in New York, former mayor Philip Hone marvelled in his diary at what he described as “one of the wonders of modern times,” adding that “like other miracles, one may almost be excused for disbelieving it without seeing the very process by which it is created.” 

The daguerreotype’s remarkable ability to hold permanently an unimaginably detailed likeness on its surface – an image heretofore only seen fleetingly in a mirror – seemed in equal measure unbelievable and perfectly real, darkly mysterious yet scientifically verifiable, a shadowy fiction and yet a beautiful truth. The supernatural quality of the new art was noted by many around the world. As one reviewer, writing for a Baltimore weekly in January 1840, admitted, “We can find no language to express the charm of these pictures painted by no mortal hand.”

Photography arrived almost simultaneously with the steam locomotive, the steam ship, and the electric telegraph – all inventions that dramatically shortened the distances between people and places and forever changed the way civilisations communicate. The medium developed during the age of the type-crazy broadside, the morning and the evening newspaper, and the illustrated weekly. It was also the time of the birth of mercantile libraries (previously only the wealthy had access to books and libraries), and, not surprisingly, of eye strain. The era saw the medical specialisation in the study of eye maladies and the development of optometry and ophthalmology. In 1835, just before the concurrent announcement of the invention of the new art in Paris and London, the American philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson noted in his private journal: “Our age is ocular.” 

Organised primarily by picture format across three galleries, The New Art illustrates what photography looked like for the average working citizen as well as those at the top of the economic scale. Exhibition visitors can see the clothes individuals wore at work and home, their attitudes to the camera singly and in groups, their ways of sitting or standing or touching, and how they honoured their children and respected their ailing and recently deceased family members. They can look at newly constructed storefronts, see how farmers worked their fields, and measure where new towns met the wilderness. They can observe the near total devastation of Native American communities, especially those living in the Plains, and confront the vicious cruelty of slavery and the influential role of the camera in the Civil War, still the crucible of American history. 

In daguerreotypes, tintypes, and paper prints, viewers can also begin to see and comprehend how African Americans during the Civil War, throughout the Reconstruction era, and leading into the 20th century slowly began to replace negative stereotypes with positive self-images. This effort was explicitly nurtured by Frederick Douglass, who had long advocated visits to photography studios. In his nearly constant lecturing circuit across the country, he argued persuasively that no one could be truly free until each individual could sit for and possess their own photographic likeness. In The New Art, men and women of color definitively hold the camera’s attention and the viewer’s as well. 

Seen together in The New Art, the subjects in these photographs are not just sitters molded by a camera operator, but the cocreators of their own portraits. One can see this clearly in their eyes and in their many small, seductive gestures. Confronting a photograph that left an artist’s studio more than 150 years ago can be a humbling experience. The magic of photography brings one face to face with the past, and the present is never more vital than it is in these early pictures. That is the medium’s essence, its beauty, and its pathos. 

Cameras

 The exhibition will also showcase a small selection of 19th-century American cameras to further immerse visitors in the photography process. These have been kindly lent to The Met by Eric Taubman and the Penumbra Foundation. 

Press release from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown Maker (American) 'Young Man with Rooster' 1850s

 

Unknown Maker (American)
Young Man with Rooster
1850s
Daguerreotype with applied color
Case (open): 3 5/8 × 6 1/4 in. (9.2 × 15.9cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901) 'Winter on the Common, Boston' early 1850s

 

Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901)
Winter on the Common, Boston
early 1850s
Salted paper print from glass negative
7 5/16 × 9 5/16 in. (18.5 × 23.7cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Unknown Maker. 'Studio Photographer at Work' c. 1855

 

Unknown Maker
Studio Photographer at Work
c. 1855
Salted paper print from glass negative
5 1/8 × 3 13/16 in. (13 × 9.7cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Unknown Maker (American) 'Laundress with Washtub' 1860s

 

Unknown Maker (American)
Laundress with Washtub
1860s
Ambrotype with applied colour
Case: 4 1/8 x 3 1/4 in. (4.2 x 3.2cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Unknown Maker (American) 'Actor Playing Hamlet, Holding a Skull' 1860s

 

Unknown Maker (American)
Actor Playing Hamlet, Holding a Skull
1860s
Tintype with applied colour
Case: 6 1/4 × 4 15/16 in. (15.8 × 12.6cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

John Moran (American born England, 1821-1903) 'Showing Weather Among the Alleghenies' 1861-1862

 

John Moran (American born England, 1821-1903)
Showing Weather Among the Alleghenies
1861-1862
Albumen silver print from glass negative
4 3/4 × 3 5/8 in. (12.1 × 9.2cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Unknown Maker. 'Roller Skate and Boot' 1860s

 

Unknown Maker
Roller Skate and Boot
1860s
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Mount: 4 1/8 × 2 7/16 in. (10.5 × 6.2cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Unknown Maker (American) Published by E. & H. T. Anthony (American, 1862-1880s) 'Specimens of New York Bill Posting, No. 897 from the series "Anthony's Stereoscopic Views"' 1863

 

Unknown Maker (American)
Published by E. & H. T. Anthony (American, 1862-1880s)
Specimens of New York Bill Posting, No. 897 from the series
“Anthony’s Stereoscopic Views”
1863
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Mount: 3 1/4 × 6 3/4 in. (8.3 × 17.1 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829–1916) 'View on the Columbia River, from the O.R.R., Cascades, No. 1286 from the series "Pacific Coast"' 1867

 

Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
View on the Columbia River, from the O.R.R., Cascades, No. 1286 from the series “Pacific Coast”
1867
Albumen silver prints from glass negatives
Mount: 3 1/4 × 6 3/4 in. (8.2 × 17.1cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Albert Cone Townsend (American, 1827-1914) 'A Politician' 1865-1867

 

Albert Cone Townsend (American, 1827-1914)
A Politician
1865-1867
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Mount: 4 × 2 7/16 in. (10.1 × 6.2cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

 

The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910

Introductory panel 

The world changed dramatically in September 1839 when photography was introduced to the public and quickly emerged as one of the wonders of modern times. Its invention marks the dawn of our own media-obsessed age in ways that become clear when we explore in depth the special language of daguerreotypes, tintypes, cartes de visite, stereographs, and other early photographic processes and formats. 

This exhibition presents an adventurous new history of American photography from the medium’s beginnings to the first decade of the twentieth century. Major works by established artists are shown in dialogue with superb, never-before-seen photographs by obscure or unknown practitioners working in large urban centres and small towns across the expanding country. Tracing technological advancements and the development of picture formats, The New Art charts the remarkable change in the nation’s sense of itself that was driven by the phenomenal success of photography as a cultural, commercial, and artistic preoccupation. 

All the works of art on view are drawn from an extraordinary promised gift to The Met of more than seven hundred rare photographs offered by Jennifer and Philip Maritz in celebration of the Museum’s 150th anniversary in 2020. The donors acquired the collection from William L. Schaeffer, a renowned Connecticut private photography dealer who had quietly built it over the last half century. 

Daguerreotypes 

The daguerreotype is a photographic image formed on the surface of a silver-plated sheet of copper fumed with iodine. Exposed in a wood box camera and developed with hot mercury vapours, each daguerreotype is unique. Invented in France by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and announced to the world in August 1839, it was the dominant form of photography in the U.S. for twenty years, until around 1860. The daguerreotype’s ability to permanently hold a detailed image – before then seen only fleetingly in a mirror – was astonishing. The shimmering result seemed in equal measure unbelievable and perfectly real, darkly mysterious yet scientifically verifiable, a shadowy fiction and a beautiful truth. In the U.S. the daguerreotype provided an opportunity for self-representation to many strata of society that were previously excluded from the realm of portraiture. 

Ambrotypes

The ambrotype is similar in its process to the daguerreotype, but it uses a sheet of glass rather than copper as the image support. Popular in the U.S. from 1854 to 1870, the technique – invented in England but named by an American – was the predictable next development of photography. Although less visually alluring, it had marked advantages over the daguerreotype: it was cheaper to produce, it was easier to see (without glare) in most lighting conditions, and it eliminated the lateral reversal of the image characteristic of the earlier process. This was especially helpful with certain patrons who were annoyed, for example, by a jacket buttoning backward or a wedding ring appearing on the incorrect hand. 

Tintypes

The tintype is a distinctively American style of photograph. Patented in February 1856 by Hamilton Lamphere Smith, the technique was inexpensive and relatively easy to master. It appealed as much to enterprising itinerant picture makers, who traveled to rural communities and made outdoor portraits and views, as it did to artists operating brick-and-mortar galleries. Rather than a coating of silver emulsion on copper (the daguerreotype) or glass (the ambrotype), the tintype’s support is a common sheet of blackened iron. Despite its misleading name, which was not in use until 1863, there is no tin present in a tintype. The process was wildly popular in the U.S. until the end of the nineteenth century.

Paper-print Photographs

From 1839 until the start of the Civil War in 1861, most photographs were made on metal (daguerreotypes and tintypes) or glass (ambrotypes). Beginning in the late 1850s, however, paper was widely adopted as the physical support for photographs. This gallery primarily features paper-print photographs and albums that date from 1850 to 1910. They are known by a variety of names that reflect changes in materiality and date of production: salted paper prints, generally made from paper negatives; albumen silver prints, made from glass negatives; and gelatin silver and platinum prints, made from glass or flexible film negatives. In this era, two formats of card-mounted paper-print photographs enjoyed remarkable success: the small carte-de-visite portrait and the stereographic view. 

Cartes de Visite

The carte de visite – commonly known as a “cdv” – is a small photograph, usually an albumen silver print made from a glass negative, affixed to a 4-by-2½-inch stiff paper card. Invented in France in the mid-1850s as a portrait medium, it was the world’s first mass-produced and mass-consumed type of photographic collectible. Most photographers marked the mounts with their gallery names as a means of self-promotion and what today we would call brand-building. Ubiquitous in the U.S. from just before 1860 to 1880, the democratic, Victorian-age novelty was wildly popular with the public. “Cartomania,” as the phenomenon was known, is worthy of attention today as a resonant precursor to our own obsession with sharing images of celebrities and ourselves via social media. 

Cabinet Cards

A cabinet card is essentially an oversize carte de visite. In vogue for three decades in the U.S. beginning around 1870, the 6 1/2-by-4 1/2-inch card-mounted photograph offered picture makers significantly more space and freedom to compose their visual narratives. After the deadly seriousness of the Civil War, cabinet cards frequently fulfilled a growing appetite for light-hearted diversion. They often feature elaborate props and accessories, exotic backdrops, and, as the century progressed, increasingly playful indoor and outdoor scenes.

Stereographs

Introduced in the late 1850s and prevalent into the twentieth century, the stereograph was not only a culturally significant invention but also a commercial boon to American photographers. When viewed through a device known as a stereoscope (or stereopticon), a pair of photographs of the same subject – made from two slightly different points of view – are perceived in the brain as a single, seemingly three-dimensional image. The dazzling binocular effect created an immersive experience, offering inexpensive armchair travel and a window on the world to millions of Americans. 

Cyanotypes

Invented in 1842 by the British scientist John Herschel, a cyanotype is a naturally blue photograph made with iron salts. Early on, most cyanotypes took the form of nature studies made without a camera by placing botanical specimens (or other objects) directly in contact with sensitised paper and then exposing the composition in the sun. In the 1870s architects and engineers began using the process to duplicate their drawings, resulting in what are generally known as “blueprints.” Both economical and easily developed, the cyanotype reemerged in the late 1880s as a favourite choice of professional photographers and amateurs alike. It was often selected for large municipal documentary projects such as those seen here. 

Intro and Section Wall Texts from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown Maker (American) 'Railroad Worker (?) with Wye Level' c. 1870

 

Unknown Maker (American)
Railroad Worker (?) with Wye Level
c. 1870
Tintype with applied color
Case (open): 6 5/16 × 10 3/8 in. (16 × 26.4cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Unknown Maker (American) 'Musician' 1870s

 

Unknown Maker (American)
Musician
1870s
Tintype, with lock of hair and cut paper
Case (open): 2 × 3 1/2 in. (5.1 × 8.9cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Golder & Robinson (American, active 1870s) 'Comic Novelty Portrait' 1870s

 

Golder & Robinson (American, active 1870s)
Comic Novelty Portrait
1870s
Tintype with applied colour
4 × 2 7/16 in. (10.1 × 6.2cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Wenderoth, Taylor & Brown (American, active 1864-1871) 'The Gallery of Arts & Manufacturers of Philadelphia' 1871

 

Wenderoth, Taylor & Brown (American, active 1864-1871)
The Gallery of Arts & Manufacturers of Philadelphia
1871
Albumen silver prints from glass negative
Open: 13 3/4 x 19 in. (34.9 x 48.3cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Anna K. Weaver (American, 1847/48-1913) 'Welcome' 1874

 

Anna K. Weaver (American, 1847/48-1913)
Welcome
1874
Albumen silver print from glass negative
10 7/8 x 17 1/2 in. (27.8 x 44.5cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Chauncey L. Moore (American, died 1895) 'Young Man Laying on Roof' 1880s-1890s

 

Chauncey L. Moore (American, died 1895)
Young Man Laying on Roof
1880s-1890s
Albumen silver print
Mount: 4 1/4 × 6 1/2 in. (10.8 × 16.5cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Alice Austen (American, 1866-1952) 'Group on Petria, Lake Mahopac' August 9, 1888

 

Alice Austen (American, 1866-1952)
Group on Petria, Lake Mahopac
August 9, 1888
Albumen silver print from glass negative
6 × 8 1/8 in. (15.2 × 20.7cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

Unknown Maker (American) '748. Schoolmaster Hill Tobogganing, Franklin Park, Roxbury, Massachusetts' 1905

 

Unknown Maker (American)
Schoolmaster Hill Tobogganing, Franklin Park, Roxbury, Massachusetts
1905
Cyanotype
7 × 9 1/4 in. (17.8 × 23.5cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection
Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary

 

 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York, New York 10028-0198
Phone: 212-535-7710

Opening hours:
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Closed Wednesday

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