Wishing all readers of Art Blart a Happy New Year … but first, a glorious posting to finish the year 2023!
What a joy it is to see a young seventeen-year-old artist spreading their wings and taking such accomplished photographs. “Her photographs of street scenes, of buildings cut by subtle lighting effects, her poetic and touching images” are remarkable for their pictorial construction – framing, understanding and use of light and shadow, perspective – and how they tell the story in a single, beautiful image.
Of particular interest is
1/ How Orkin uses the bicycle and its shadow to frame subject matter, showing an implicit understanding of modernist photography. Images such as Thru the wheels of Commerce, Frisco dockyards on the photo album page San Francisco 1939 (below) are almost Duchampian in their conceptualisation. The artist’s use of near / far, high / low and the reverse of that perspective is exceptional.
2/ How Orkin constructs the pages of the photo album, neatly gridded in either horizontal or vertical photographs (never mixed). Through collective images and text this girded visualisation formalises the journey in her mind, illuminating what a transformative experience it must have been – a rite of passage between youth and adulthood (I have no details on when or why the photo album was constructed). What adventures she must have had, shooting-the-streets at 6am in the morning before going to an Italian grocery store for breakfast!
Further, in the photo album page San Francisco 1939 No’s 33-39 (below) we can observe in the young artist an understanding of how to sequence photographs in their ebb and flow: the bicycle framing the vanishing point in 33 leads to its inversion in Orkin’s shadow in 34; this shadow is echoed in the positive in the sculpture of Voleenteer Firemen (complete with misspelling) in 35 which then leads into the thrusting Italian Church of 36 … but here it is the hanging vegetation which is of import, for the vertical drapery is then inverted in the perspective of the ground shadow in 37 Weeping willows; the opening of the light in that image is echoed in the vista between the bicycle frame in 38 Bay from Cort Tower, this negative space then itself inverted in the self-portrait in 39.
3/ How the addition of text can provide a different interpretation to the images for the viewer. The media images were shorn of the text from the photo album pages (being cropped without text) – lack of con/text which to my eyes denudes them of Orkin’s interpretation and feelings about her images.
For example, the photograph captioned in the press images These people are standing in the middle of Washington St & reading the blackboard wall bulletins, on a newspaper office, Boston, 1939 (below) – reminiscent of Atget’s photograph Pendant l’éclipse (During the eclipse) 1912 (below) – is actually inscribed, These people are standing in the middle of Washington St & reading the blackboard wall bulletins, on a newspaper office. Sept 1.
Some may wonder why the deletion of “Sept 1” is so important… until you realise that Sept 1, 1939 was the day that Hitler’s Nazi Germany invaded Poland leading to the official start of World War 2 (although war had been raging in Manchuria between China and Japan since 1931). Without that word and number all we have in that photograph is a varied group of people looking up at news bulletins. But with their addition, and Orkin knew this only too well, the photograph assimilates the significance of world events into its very being … and then reflects back to the viewer an understanding of how those events will subsequently affect every person in that photograph. If that word and number is not there (as in the press images title) we would have never known the import of the moment that Orkin captured.
Finally, I would acknowledge the precocious talent of Ruth Orkin and her perspicacious (from Latin perspicax, perspicac– ‘seeing clearly’) nature. On this road trip she was young and full of joys of taking photographs, perceptive and aware of the world around her. For me the photographs are more than sketches that map out the beginnings of her photographic style – they are her style, fully formed and eloquent in their subtle, formal beauty. What an accomplishment for any artist no matter their age.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
L’exposition Ruth Orkin – Bike Trip, USA, 1939
Curator: Clément Chéroux
In 1939, at the age of 17, Ruth Orkin crossed the United States alone with her bike, her camera and only $25 in her pocket. This “bike trip” across the United States took her from Los Angeles to New York, where she planned to visit the World’s Fair. Her journey and her audacity, exceptional for the time, aroused the curiosity of the local press, which devoted numerous reports to her while she was there. It was during this epic bicycle trip that Ruth Orkin sketched out the beginnings of her photographic style. Her photographs of street scenes, of buildings cut by subtle lighting effects, her poetic and touching images, in which she doesn’t hesitate to stage her metal steed, will be shown for the first time in France at an exhibition at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation. In 1951, having become a professional photographer (after working as a courier for MGM studios), Ruth Orkin produced her most famous image, American Girl in Italy, showing a woman travelling alone, under the gaze of the men who surround her and occupy public space, as a nod to her personal experience.
Text from the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson website
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Pendant l’éclipse (During the eclipse) 1912 Albumen print
Although the moon is not visible in this photograph by Eugène Atget, its presence and appeal are implied. The crowd gathered in Paris’s Place de la Bastille on April 17, 1912, was observing a solar eclipse through viewing apparatuses. Atget, rather than recording the astronomical event itself, turned his attention to its spectators. Though Atget made more than 8,500 pictures of Paris and its environs in a career that spanned over thirty years – most documenting the built environment – this photograph is an unusual example that focuses on a crowd of people.
For the first time in France, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson presents a solo exhibition on American photographer Ruth Orkin (1921-1985), internationally known for her photograph American Girl in Italy (1951), an iconic image of a women travelling alone. While still a teenager, Orkin undertook a pioneering journey across the United States from West to East.
In 1939, at 17 and still living with her parents in Los Angeles, Ruth Orkin decided to cross the United States solo, from the Pacific to the Atlantic. She travelled less by bicycle than with a bicycle, crossing long distances by car, train, and bus, using her bicycle to explore big cities: Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Boston and San Francisco.
Over a four-month period, she took 350 photographs: urban scenes, numerous self-portraits and striking compositions framed by her bicycle. In each city she visited, local newspapers covered her story, interviewing and photographing her. With the unexpected publicity, she was invited everywhere, given tickets to shows, and even received a new two-wheeler.
Orkin’s stated aim upon departure was to visit the New York World’s Fair, but the transcontinental adventure proved far more decisive. It was a defining moment in her personal and artistic development, confirming the old adage: it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.
The exhibition brings together around forty photographs and archival documents, including Ruth Orkin’s manuscript on this adventure.
Biography
Born in Boston in 1921, Ruth Orkin grew up in Hollywood. At the age of 10, she received her first camera and began photographing her friends and teachers at school. In 1938, at 17 years old, she took a monumental bicycle trip across the United States from Los Angeles to New York City to see the 1939 World’s Fair, and she photographed along the way.
In 1943, the photographer moved to New York where worked for all the major magazines, including LIFE, which sent her to Israel in 1951. She then went to Italy, where she met Jinx Allen, an art student and fellow American, who became the subject of American Girl in Italy. The photograph was part of a series titled When You Travel Alone, about what they encountered as women traveling alone in Europe after the war.
On her return to New York, Orkin married the photographer and filmmaker Morris Engel. Together they produced two feature films, including Little Fugitive, which was nominated at the Oscar in 1953. From their New York apartment overlooking Central Park, Orkin photographed numerous events (marathons, parades, concerts) and the beauty of the changing seasons. Ruth Orkin passed away in 1985.
Text from the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson website
Long Island Sound is a marine sound and tidal estuary of the Atlantic Ocean. It lies predominantly between the U.S. state of Connecticut to the north and Long Island in New York to the south. From west to east, the sound stretches 110 mi (180 km) from the East River in New York City, along the North Shore of Long Island, to Block Island Sound. A mix of freshwater from tributaries, and saltwater from the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island Sound is 21 mi (34 km) at its widest point and varies in depth from 65 to 230 feet (20 to 70 m).
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) John Sabatine and Molly 1980 Gelatin silver print
“To try to see more and better is not a matter of whim or curiosity or self-indulgence. To see or to perish is the very condition laid upon everything that makes up the universe, by reason of the mysterious gift of existence.”
Teilhard de Chardin, “Seeing” 1947
Being human
Another master photographer has died. We are losing so many important visionaries who were born pre-Second World War, during the war and post-war period.
While I have sequenced this posting to highlight the dichotomy in Fink’s exploration of social class in America, that is, between the haves and the have-nots, between the hedonistic party people of Studio 54, the urban New Yorkers of “high society” and rural, working-class Pennsylvanians1 – as ever in life, Fink’s work is much more complex and nuanced than that.
Fink acknowledged that the photographs in his series “Social Graces” of New York “high society” at play were hard of heart. “I used to judge people out of the hardness of my heart. So, I went into these very voluptuous and elegant bourgeois circumstances, and I would judge these people as if they were the enemy.” That does not make these photographs any less valuable as a record of that brief moment of encounter between photographer and subject. For he observed, “The moment that we have is the only moment we will ever have, insofar as it is fleeting. Every breath counts. So does every moment and perception.”
Thus, in any of his photographs you have to admire his skill at capturing that fleeting moment: marvel at the flying pigtail in Studio 54 (1977, below) and feel the immediacy of hand gesture in Pat Sabatine’s 8th Birthday Party (1977, below) or the contemptuous look on the woman’s face in Pat Sabatine’s 11th Birthday Party (1980, below) to understand that.
In later life Fink – an empathetic human with an inquiring mind who obviously worked on his inner growth, who had acquired knowledge and a little wisdom – was aware how he had wronged himself and others during the taking of the photographs for “Social Graces”.
“When age had given me entry into life’s harder organic experiences – my back, my heart, my prostate, my hip – I started to look at my own face in the mirror and see the results of pain. I would see that many of the judgments I had made in the early days, based on an ideal sense of a physical equilibrium, were absolutely and horrendously bigoted. I was not at all sensitive to either the inner or external trappings of what it means to just be alive and all its various, vulnerable complexities.”2
With every breath he understood that when he took photographs he was attempting to touch the eternal, an expression of admiration and gratitude at being alive.
“I am involved with the idea of reaching deeply into the pulsing matter of what it means to be alive and being vulnerable and seeing if I can cast an emotional legacy about being human.”
The emotional legacy of his photographs attests to his enduring spirit.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ “He paired the tales of these two worlds – the chilly anomie of the haute monde and the lively, messy domesticity of the Sabatines – in a collection of photographs he called “Social Graces,” which was first shown in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1979 and then published in a book of the same title in 1984, now considered a collector’s item.”
2/ Larry Fink quoted in Adriana Teresa. “A Moment With Larry Fink,” on The New York Times website Jan. 6, 2011 [Online] Cited 02/12/2023
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“The goal, I suspect, through harmonies and edges and everything that we have in our command, is to take a dumb two-dimensional picture and make it something that a viewer enters and doesn’t want to leave.”
Larry Fink
“It’s about empathy. But the necessary methodology is conventionally in-your-face. Not like other practitioners, who are in your face for the sake of being in your face, I am in your face because I want to be your face. I like to say that if I was not a photographer, I would be in jail. I want to touch everything. My life is profoundly physical. Photography for me is the transformation of desire. …
I don’t like to hurt people. I go after something and I start pointing the camera at somebody, looking for those hard, edgy things I know I am going to find. My pictures will be out of bounds in terms of the convention of how this person wants to be represented. It gives me pause. I don’t feel I have the right to do that. But I do it nevertheless. After all, a picture is not a murder. It is simply a moment which suggests so many things. …
I was severely analytical when I was young, like when I was doing “Social Graces.” I was a good-looking kid. My mother was very vain, competitive and judgmental, and I took on the same characteristics as a younger person. I used to judge people out of the hardness of my heart. So, I went into these very voluptuous and elegant bourgeois circumstances, and I would judge these people as if they were the enemy. I believed the work to be analytical, in a political fashion.
When age had given me entry into life’s harder organic experiences – my back, my heart, my prostate, my hip – I started to look at my own face in the mirror and see the results of pain. I would see that many of the judgments I had made in the early days, based on an ideal sense of a physical equilibrium, were absolutely and horrendously bigoted. I was not at all sensitive to either the inner or external trappings of what it means to just be alive and all its various, vulnerable complexities. …
The moment that we have is the only moment we will ever have, insofar as it is fleeting. Every breath counts. So does every moment and perception. It’s a way to be alive. I am involved with the idea of reaching deeply into the pulsing matter of what it means to be alive and being vulnerable and seeing if I can cast an emotional legacy about being human.”
Larry Fink quoted in Adriana Teresa. “A Moment With Larry Fink,” on The New York Times website Jan. 6, 2011 [Online] Cited 02/12/2023
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Studio 54 1977 Gelatin silver print
Larry Fink was born in Brooklyn in 1941. In the 1960s, he studied with noted photographer Lisette Model. This photograph from Studio 54, made in 1977 in the hedonistic heyday of the disco era, is a well know image from Fink’s series “Social Graces,” which explored social class in America by comparing two different worlds: that of urban New Yorkers of “high society” and that of rural, working-class Pennsylvanians through social events like birthday parties. Fink has described his approach to his subject in a straightforward, non-judgmental manner, “The one thing I was trained in being was non-hierarchical. I don’t have an internal class system. Who you are is who is in front of me and who I am in the same, and that’s how we have to relate to each other.”
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Pat Sabatine’s 8th Birthday Party 1977 Gelatin silver print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Russian Ball, New York City 1976 Gelatin silver print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Pat Sabatine’s 11th Birthday Party 1980 Gelatin silver print
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Benefit, MoMA, New York 1977 Gelatin silver print
Larry Fink, a kinetic photographer whose intimate black-and-white on-the-fly portraits of rural Pennsylvanians, Manhattan society figures, Hollywood royalty, boxers, musicians, fashion models and many others were both social commentary on class and privilege and an exuberant document of the human condition, died on Saturday at his home in Martins Creek, Pa. He was 82. …
… in the early 1970s he turned to overt social commentary, infiltrating the society benefits, debutante parties and watering holes of Manhattan’s privileged tribes and their hangers-on. He was fueled, he once wrote, both by curiosity and by his own rage at the privileged class – “its abuses, voluptuous folds, and unfulfilled lives.”
A few years later, he and his wife at the time, the painter Joan Snyder, moved to a farm in Pennsylvania, where he began photographing his rural neighbors, a charismatic family called the Sabatines who embraced him as one of their own. He went on to capture years’ worth of the family’s baptisms, birthdays and graduations.
He paired the tales of these two worlds — the chilly anomie of the haute monde and the lively, messy domesticity of the Sabatines – in a collection of photographs he called “Social Graces,” which was first shown in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1979 and then published in a book of the same title in 1984, now considered a collector’s item.
“Social Graces” placed Mr. Fink firmly in the photographic canon. It drew comparisons to the street photos of Weegee and Diane Arbus and even to the paintings of Caravaggio. (Mr. Fink was a master of shadow and light.) When the pictures were shown in 2001 at the Yancey Richardson gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea section, Ken Johnson, writing in The New York Times, described them as “wonderfully absorbing, funny, skewed, ethereally glowing documents of human situations.”
Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) New York City 1955 Gelatin silver print
The essence of what happens
Elliott Erwitt’s “art of observation” is a gift of the eye and the mind, where the artist must be truly aware of the world around them in order to capture the mosaic of reality.
Look at the photograph Jackie Kennedy, Arlington, Virginia (1963, below). Observe the split second that particular look of despair was present on Jackie’s face. And there was Erwitt fully aware, in the moment, with his gift of the eye and the mind – and he knew, he absolutely knew that was the moment to take the photograph.
As with much of his work it is the subtle cadences within the image that create their emotional power and magic: sadness, happiness, whimsy, comedy, anger, loneliness, joy – all captured through the reality of the visual language of the image, fully acknowledged in the heart and the mind of the viewer when they imbibe (absorb the ideas) of their spirit.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“The work I care about is terribly simple … I observe, I try to entertain, but above all I want pictures that are emotion.”
Elliott Erwitt. Personal Exposures. W. W. Norton & Company, 1988
“You either see, or you don’t see.”
“You can take a picture of the most wonderful situation and it’s lifeless, nothing comes through… Then you can take a picture of nothing, of someone scratching his nose, and it turns out to be a great picture.”
“The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words. To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”
“All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice.”
Elliott Erwitt
Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) Pasadena, California, USA Nd Gelatin silver print
Elliott Erwitt (American born France, 1928-2023) USA. California. Berkeley 1956 Gelatin silver print
Photographers with a comic outlook on life seldom win the acclaim granted to exalters of nature or chroniclers of war and squalor. Elliott Erwitt, who died at 95 on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan, was an exception.
For more than six decades he used his camera to tell visual jokes, finding material wherever he strolled. His sharp eye for silly, sometimes telling conjunctions – a dog lying on its back in a cemetery, a glowing Coca-Cola machine amid a public display of missiles in Alabama, a mangy potted plant in a tacky Miami Beach ballroom – earned him constant assignments as well as the affection of a public that shared his sweet, Chaplin-esque sense of the absurd.
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Again
Why are the waves,
Coming straight at me?
Fold upon fold
Waves in wind –
And why is the wind
Becoming my breath,
And my breath, the wind?
So now you
Beautiful friend
Breathe my friend
Jump the wave,
Jump up, laughing
The sun right above you,
Here on the coast
Among waves and trees.
Enter your home
Like a nest
Beautiful friend,
Dear friend,
Read till you sleep –
Your breath on the pages
That tell of the road and
On that road where you meet
Those twilight lit:
One, two,
Then three again.
Ian Lobb
“His prints are direct and emotionally clean records of a rare and subtle perception, and represent perhaps the earliest expression of true photographic art.”
Ansel Adams
“There is nothing I could ask for better than to roll myself between sheets of Atgets, each new one I find (and there are thousands) is a revelation.”
Julien Levy
“In looking at the work of Eugène Atget, a new world is opened up in the world of creative expression.”
Atget used a view camera with a bellows placed on a tripod, typical of the second half of the 19th century. He worked with 18 × 24 cm negative glass plates, oriented to obtain either a vertical or horizontal photograph. A tilt-shift technique was used to make perspective corrections. This resulted in vignetting (a circular shadow around the edges of the image), a phenomenon seen in a number of Atget’s photographs.
Atget always used gelatin-silver negative glass plates, 1.5mm thick. The plate was held in the camera in a wooden frame by clips that left characteristic marks on many of the prints. A long exposure time resulted in numerous blurs caused by the presence of moving people or objects. Atget developed the negatives himself and wrote the negative number directly onto the gelatin with a pointed stiletto.
Atget made all of his own photographic prints using a technique in which light-sensitive paper, in contact with the glass negative, was printed-out in natural light (never developed). The printing-out process proceeded until Atget determined that the image had the proper density. The photograph was then washed, gold toned, fixed and washed again. Atget’s prints are never black-and-white; their tone varies from deep sepia to violet-brown. Atget was capable of producing high-quality prints but there is great variation in these today depending on his printing and toning techniques and the way his photographs were preserved and exhibited. He never enlarged his photographs.
Atget’s paper
Atget used three types of paper:
Albumen
The light-sensitive emulsion was formed by silver chloride introduced into an albumen binder (beaten egg whites). The majority of Atget’s prints were on albumen paper. He turned to other processes after the First World War, when such paper could no longer be found on the market.
Matt albumen
After the war Atget used another kind of industrially produced printing-out paper with a matt surface.
Aristotype
Atget chose a commercially manufactured printing-out paper made with gelatin. Aesthetically similar to albumen prints, although thicker and with a glossier surface, the process was the same for toning and printing. Some of these prints have yellow stains from sulphuration due to poor processing of the image (such as the use of an exhausted fixing bath or insufficient washing).
Anonymous. “Atget’s technique,” on the Art Gallery of New South Wales website Nd [Online] Cited 03/10/2023
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Balcon, [15] rue du Petit Pont
1913
Albumen print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Pavilion du Hanovre, boulevard des Capucines 33
1913
Albumen print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Fête du Trône
1914
Albumen print
“My excitement at seeing these few photographs would not let me rest. Who was this man? I learned that Atget lived up the street from where I worked – at 17 bis rue Campagne Premiere, and that his prints were for sale. Perhaps I could own some. I wanted to see more, and lost no time in seeking him out. I mounted the four flights to his fifth floor apartment. On the door was a modest handmade sign, “Documents pour Artistes”. He ushered me into a room approximately fifteen feet long, the ordinary room of a small apartment, sparsely and simply furnished. Atget, slightly stooped, impressed me as being tired, sad, remote, appealing. He was not talkative. He did not try to “sell” anything. He showed me some albums, which he had made himself, and I selected as many prints as I could afford to pay for from my meager wages as a photographer’s assistant. I returned many times, and we became more friendly.” Several years passed and Berenice Abbott became a portrait photographer. “By that time I had become a portrait photographer on my own, and I persuaded Atget to come to my studio at 44 rue du Bac to sit for his portrait. To my surprise he arrived in a handsome overcoat. I had always seen him in his patched work clothes. It would have been desirable to photograph him in these too, since they were exquisitely photogenic, but time is a fickle unpredictable master and did not permit another sitting. After developing the portraits she took the images to show Atget. Abbott missed the sign and made one more flight of stairs to find the concierge.” She asked about Atget and was shocked to hear that he had died. “Youth is little equipped to accept or even anticipate the fact of death. And I had just finished his portraits.” Inquiring about his collection of photographs, she found that they had been left to Andre Calmette. It took months of correspondence and convincing, but she eventually acquired Atget’s entire collection. Abbott also wrote a book about Atget and published many of his prints. Many critics have attacked Atget’s work, saying Atget was merely a disappointed painter or actor, and a little ashamed of his medium. Claims have been made that Atget did not really know what he was doing, that reflections in his shop front windows were accidents which he did not even see. Berenice Abbott fiercely defended Atget and his work. Goethe had said, “there is no variety of Art that should be looked upon lightly. Each has delights which great talent can bring to fulfillment.” If Atget had not had this talent he would have been just another record producer of the travel guide variety – tourist fare. I believe the photographer’s eye develops to a more intense awareness than other people’s, as a dancer develops his muscles and limbs, and a musician his ear. The photographer’s act is to see the outside world precisely, with intelligence as well as sensuous insight. This act of seeing sharpens the eye to an unprecedented acuteness. He often sees swiftly an entire scene that most people would pass unnoticed. Capturing the city of Paris and its people was the photographic art of Atget. How one becomes a photographer, well-schooled or self-taught, does not matter. Ultimately, it is the test of time. As with many of the world’s great photographer’s, their images are timeless and still have the appeal as when first developed. Not only did Atget document a city; he also captured its essence.
Lori Oden. “Eugène Atget,” on the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum website Nd [Online] Cited 03/10/2023
This is a strange group of photographs with which to investigate the “long-intertwined relationship between fashion as a tool for self-expression and photography’s role in chronicling it,” for while the many historical portrait photographs depict a link between fashion and photography of the self (through the need to fit into a regimented cultural norm), many of the vernacular images are not about fashion, are a kind of non-fashion, where the people who “pose” for the photographs are just wearing whatever they are in at the time… thereby undermining the premise of the exhibition, that the performance of self becomes a visual language through the picturing of fashion.
Indeed, despite the assertion that historical genres such as street photography “inform contemporary evolutions, such as selfies and carefully crafted social-media platforms”, most selfies taken today through the ubiquity of the phone camera are not carefully crafted, are the very antithesis of the old purpose of a portrait: that is, to picture how we choose to dress, adorn, and re/present ourselves at a particular moment in time.
In today’s contemporary age self is more about the style and context of the individual (as pictured in a photograph) rather than about the fashion (the latest style; the manner of doing something) of the individual or the collective.
Today, style is casual, informal, ephemeral, temporary… which leads us to pose the questions, are historical photographs evidence of a self-expression of more substance, compared to the rapid self, the throw away self, the narcissistic self of today? Are selfies today just a shallow expression of self or are they intended to be more, can they be more?
Today, there is less a consciousness of fashionability than there is the ability to enact the self without resort to fashion. As Yves Saint Laurent once said, “Fashion fades, style is eternal.”
While visual representations of identity continue to shape our understandings of self and each other “with intimate details that alert viewers to who we are, as filtered through the photographic medium” this is no longer achieved through the definition of self as “fashionable” (as defined on a hierarchical scale of who is fashionable and who isn’t, who is beautiful and who isn’t) – rather, it is through the equivalence of a nonhierarchical expression of self where everything becomes valuable, every selfie and portrait of equal awareness and importance in a collective and individual consciousness of self.
The very non-fashion of contemporary self expression is a non-performance, an anti-ritual if you like (which destroys the ritual of production of consumable fashion), which negates fashion as defining the self, much as photography of the self does not define who we are but is only a very small facet of a multi-layered identity.
All of which makes the premise of this exhibition (that the performance of self becomes a visual language through the picturing of fashion) and the first part of its title – Fashioning Self – highly problematic.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
PS. Many thankx to my friend and artist Elizabeth Gertsakis for her help in providing thoughts and inspiration for this text.
Many thankx to the Phoenix Art Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Louis Carlos Bernal (1941-1993) was born in Douglas, Arizona, and grew up in Phoenix. After completing his M.F.A. at Arizona State University in 1972, he joined the faculty of Pima Community College in Tucson, where he remained for the duration of his career, developing and heading its photography program. In 1979, Bernal, along with four other photographers – Morrie Camhi, Abigail Heyman, Roger Minick, and Neal Slavin – received funding from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund to photograph Chicano culture in the Southwest for an exhibition and a book project entitled ESPEJO: Reflections of the Mexican American. The commission brought him closer to his ethnic roots and fueled a passionate direction for his work that gained him international recognition for championing regional diversity while symbolizing his exploration of identity as a Mexican American.
Following a tradition of Latin American documentary street photography, Bernal photographed in the barrio – a young girl and her grandfather in a corner barber shop, a girl taking her quinceañera, or locals posing in front of colourful wall murals – images that captured the unique character of Chicano life. He wrote, “My images speak of the religious and family ties I have experienced as a Chicano. I have concerned myself with the mysticism of the Southwest and the strength of the spiritual and cultural values of the barrio.”
Bernal also centered on the family and the home, believing these two elements combined to form the most significant structure within the Mexican-American community. As he wandered streets from Texas to Los Angeles, and met people who were soon drawn to charismatic personality, he was often invited into their homes. He asked permission to photograph them surrounded by their treasured possessions, their family portraits and mementos, and their shrines decorated with saints, candles, and flowers. His subjects appear at ease and confident in front of his camera, a product of Bernal’s deep respect for them. Bernal’s interest in what people chose to surround themselves with led him to photograph the interiors of homes without people. These sensitive portraits of both prized and everyday items in living rooms, bedrooms and gardens were perhaps his most significant innovation.
Bernal’s interest in strong compositional design and technical expertise are evident in both his skilfully printed black-and-white images and his colour work that luminously captures the bright pinks, blues, and greens of interior painted adobe walls, window curtains, and religious icons. He felt a particular urgency to document the streets, people, homes, and artefacts in historic neighbourhoods, as many were undergoing rapid changes or being bulldozed to make way for urban renewal. In recording the Mexican- American experience of Southwest towns and barrios, Bernal created a visual document that preserves the specific iconography and reveals many aspects of this distinct culture.
The Louis Carlos Bernal Collection contains 98 fine prints, both black-and-white and colour, and research materials that include project records, correspondence, clippings, writings and publications.
Anonymous. “Louis Carlos Bernal,” on the Centre for Creative Photography website Nd [Online] Cited 28/09/2023
Kozo Miyoshi was born in Chiba, Japan in 1947. He graduated from the Department of Photography at Nihon University College of Art in 1971. He began his photographic career in the 1970s and started shooting an 8 × 10-inch large format camera in 1981. In 2009 he upgraded to an ultra large format 16 × 20-inch camera which he continues to use on his travels. Miyoshi’s photographs have received international acclaim for their unique and sincere approach to his fleeting subjects.
From the seedy streets of Los Angeles to empty living rooms and apartments across the United States, the photographs of Dennis Feldman (b. 1946) explore the ways popular entertainment seeps into American consciousness. Pictures from his most acclaimed series, Hollywood Boulevard, 1969-1972, invite subjects from social parade of Los Angeles’s famed sidewalk to animate their self-styled identities. His American Images series, published in 1977, pursues other disclosures, revealing tensions that have come to define the underside of the American dream. In some pictures, people relish the escape and freedom symbolised by cars and movieland, while others seem to search for more elusive horizons. Like Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Frederick Sommer – pioneering photographers whom he considers mentors – Feldman carefully crafts compositions that do not judge their subjects. Instead, they pry apart the world of appearances to reflect on fantasy and desire as they intertwine with paths of everyday life.
Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression examines the role of photography in shaping, sharing, and shifting identity.
About the exhibition
Whether for a selfie or formal portrait, we all craft our appearance and identity for a public audience. We consider cultural and social norms, the emotions we wish to express or hide away, where we’re going and with whom, and the purpose of the photograph when choosing how we dress, adorn, and present ourselves. The resulting images serve as a window into a particular moment of our life, with intimate details that alert viewers to who we are, as filtered through the photographic medium.
Organised by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography (CCP), Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression features 54 works of street, documentary, and self-portrait photography from 1912 to 2015 that explore this long-intertwined relationship between fashion as a tool for self-expression and photography’s role in chronicling it. Iconic views by Dennis Feldman, Laura Volkerding, Linda Rich, John Simmons, David Hume Kennerly, Teenie Harris, and more illuminate the dialogue that occurs between photographer and subject – the give-and-take between self-performance and art making.
Alongside these works drawn from CCP’s outstanding collection, Fashioning Self also features a rotating display of social media images reflecting community members and individuals from across the United States. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the Museum and CCP will invite visitors, Arizona residents, and our collective social media followings to take their own selfies and portraits in the galleries or in their environments and share them via the hashtag #FashioningSelf for display in Norton Gallery. By placing these contemporary, real-time images in conversation with works by renowned photographers of the Americas, the exhibition interrogates what it means to be an artist or maker in a world where cameras are commonplace and everyone curates a feed.
Yasuo Kuniyoshi (国吉 康雄, Kuniyoshi Yasuo, September 1, 1889 – May 14, 1953) was an eminent 20th-century Japanese-American painter, photographer and printmaker.
Social documentary photographer Max Yavno (1911-1985) identified the odd charm that constitutes the identity of a place and people. Born in New York, Yavno was a social worker from 1932-1936; this background clearly informed his photographic career. His humanistic sensibility is revealed in his work, which includes street photographs made in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Yavno is best known for his depictions of these great American cities and the cultural and social detail of their inhabitants, many of which distinctively reflect their era.
In 1936, Yavno began photographing New York street life for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Theater Project. As his interest in photography burgeoned, Yavno joined the Photo League and served as its President in the late 1930s. Through this organisation he met Aaron Siskind who became his roommate and lifelong friend. During World War II, Yavno served in the United States Army Air Force as a film and photography instructor. Following the war, he relocated to San Francisco and continued teaching. There, Yavno began a freelance career with clients including Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. During this time Yavno achieved success both as a fine art and a commercial photographer.
Yavno was included in “Seventeen American Photographers,” a 1947 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This placed him alongside established photographers Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Man Ray, and Edward Weston. Following this pivotal exhibition, Yavno published The San Francisco Book in 1948 and The Los Angeles Book in 1950, both of which chronicled the urban landscape and its population. By 1952, Edward Steichen had purchased Yavno’s prints for The Museum of Modern Art, New York. With recommendations by Edward Weston and Steichen, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1953. From 1954-75, Yavno owned and operated a thriving commercial photography studio in Los Angeles.
In 1975, the sixty four year old photographer closed his studio to allow for more personal pursuits. Yavno continued to photograph California, but also worked in Mexico, Morocco, Israel, and Egypt, securing funds for the later trips from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Photography of Max Yavno was published by University of California press in 1981, to accompany a retrospective at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Yavno continued to make and exhibit photographic works until his death in 1985.
The Max Yavno Archive contains papers, records of commercial assignments, correspondence, information regarding the Photo League, memorabilia, photographic materials and over 800 fine photographs.
Anonymous. “Max Yavno,” on the Centre for Creative Photography website Nd [Online] Cited 28/09/2023
Marion Post Wolcott was born in Montclair, New Jersey, and educated at the New School for Social Research, New York University, and at the University of Vienna. Upon graduation in 1932, she returned to New York to pursue a career in photography and attended workshops with Ralph Steiner. By 1936, she was a freelance photographer for Life, Fortune, and other magazines. She became a staff photographer for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in 1937 and remained there until Paul Strand recommended her to Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration, where she worked from 1938 to 1942. Wolcott suspended her photographic career thereafter in order to raise her family, but continued to photograph periodically as she traveled and taught, in Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, and New Mexico. In 1968 she returned to freelance photography in California and concentrated on colour work, which she had been producing in the early 1940s. Wolcott’s photographs have been included in group and solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in 1962, ICP, and elsewhere. Among other honours she has received are the Dorothea Lange Award, and the 1991 Society of Photographic Education’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The several books on her life and career include Paul Henrickson’s Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life of Marion Post Wolcott (1992).
Wolcott’s documentary photographs for the FSA are notable for their variation in subject matter. Because she joined the organisation late in its existence, Stryker often gave her assignments intended to complete projects already begun by others. Wolcott’s photographs show wealthy and middle-class subjects in addition to the poor people and migrant workers who appeared in most FSA photographs. Her body of work provides a view into another side of the 1930s in America, among that small percentage of people who could afford to escape the damaging effects of the Depression.
Lisa Hostetler
Handy et al. Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection, New York: Bulfinch Press in association with the International Center of Photography, 1999, p. 232 “Marion Post Wolcott,” on the International Center of Photography website Nd [Online] Cited 28/09/2023
Francis J. Bruguière (American, 1879-1945) Self-portrait with Friend c. 1912 Gelatin silver print Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona Gift of James Enyeart
This spring, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) presents Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression, a new major photography exhibition organised by PhxArt and the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) in Tucson. It will be on view from March 8 through November 12 in the Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography at Phoenix Art Museum.
Spanning the 1910s through the present, Fashioning Self explores the long-intertwined relationship between self-expression, fashion, and the photographic medium, with more than 50 works by Dennis Feldman, Laura Volkerding, Louis Carlos Bernal, Tseng Kwong Chi, David Hume Kennerly, Helen Levitt, Teenie Harris and others drawn from the CCP collection. These fine-art photographs are displayed alongside a social-media feed of community photos and selfies to spark reflection on the dynamic between photographer and subject, particularly as new technologies, self-styling, and the photographic medium continue to shape visual culture and personal and collective identities around the globe.
“Since the mid-1800s, photographers have captured our world and the captivating cast of characters who inhabit it, documenting all the varied and nuanced presentations of style and expression,” said the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum, Jeremy Mikolajczak. “Fashioning Self: The Photography of Everyday Expression sparks fascinating conversations around historical photography genres, including street photography, and how they inform contemporary evolutions, such as selfies and carefully crafted social-media platforms, while also exploring the give-and-take between self-performance and art making.”
Fashioning Self showcases 54 works of street, documentary and self-portrait photography that present slices of everyday public life in the United States from 1912 through 2015. Featured works include those by Garry Winogrand, Marion Post Wolcott, Kozo Miyoshi, Laura Volkerding, Tseng Kwong Chi, Joan Liftin and Rosalind Solomon.
The exhibition’s fine-art images are complemented by a rotating display of social-media photos reflecting community members and individuals from across the United States. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the museum and CCP will invite visitors, Arizona residents and the institutions’ collective social-media followings to snap their own selfies and portraits in the galleries or other environments and share them via the hashtag #FashioningSelf for display in Norton Gallery. By placing these contemporary, real-time images in conversation with works by renowned photographers of the Americas, the exhibition interrogates what it means to be an artist or maker when cameras are commonplace and everyone curates a feed.
“I am excited for visitors to contribute their own photos to Fashioning Self and engage with works from CCP’s collection in a fun and unique way,” said Rebecca A. Senf, chief curator at CCP and curator of Fashioning Self. “By participating in the gallery’s regularly updated social-media feed, they will be included in a century-long history of photographers who have fashioned, captured and distributed visual representations of identity, while considering how technology, digital platforms, and the ubiquity of the camera continue to shape our understandings of self and each other.”
Educator and photographer Laura Volkerding (1939-1996) began her artistic career making prints and drawings, and discovered her passion for photography in 1972, at age thirty-three. Volkerding studied fine arts at the University of Louisville and the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology where she received a Master’s degree in graphic design. She taught at University of Chicago from 1970 to 1980, and then served as a senior lecturer in photography at Stanford University until her death in 1996.
Citing photographs by Walker Evans and Art Sinsabaugh, as well as Chicago’s modernist architecture as visual influences, Volkerding’s early photographic work depicts quirky vernacular architecture, campgrounds and suggestive landscapes. In the late 1970s, Laura Volkerding, Nicholas Nixon, Stephen Shore, Frank Gohlke, and Lewis Baltz were among twenty-four photographers chosen to participate in an intensive project entitled Court House that documented historic court house architecture across America. Published in 1979, the monograph Court House: A Photographic Document exhibits a diverse and inclusive examination of America’s architectural heritage. In 1980, Volkerding moved to California and embarked on a project documenting the development of the San Francisco and San Pablo Bay waterfronts creating panoramic images by joining continuous frames of 5 x 7 inch negatives into a more expansive view.
Volkerding experimented with multiple photographic formats before settling, in 1984, on the rich clarity of prints produced with a Deardorff 8 x 10 inch view camera. This same year, Volkerding discovered the subject that would drive her work for over a decade: Les Compagnons du Devoir, a French sculpture apprentice community founded in medieval times. Their history of sculptural practice and reverence for craftsmanship resonated for Volkerding. She was attracted to the figurative and architectural forms that populated their work space. Volkerding photographed classrooms and apprentice projects, foundries and workshops, and cathedral restoration projects. The images suggest the presence of the craftsmen, but are devoid of the actual artisans, thus alluding to the longer craft tradition rather than the contemporary individuals. In addition to making many photographs of Les Compagnons in France, Volkerding photographed other sculpture workshops in Quebec, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Italy, and the United States. This body of work was exhibited at Stanford in 1986; in 1988 she was awarded her second Guggenheim fellowship. The Center for Creative Photography published a related monograph, Solomon’s Temple: the European Building-Crafts Legacy, shortly before Volkerding’s death.
The Laura Volkerding Endowment and the naming of the Laura Volkerding Reading Room at the Center for Creative Photography serve to perpetuate her important role in photography. The Laura Volkerding Archive contains photographic work prints, negatives, personal papers, and a substantial collection of multi-colour intaglio prints and one-colour lithographs, as well as 968 fine prints.
Anonymous. “Laura Volkerding,” on the Centre for Creative Photography Nd [Online] Cited 28/09/2023
“Our choices about clothing, makeup, hairstyles and accessories are a component of the way we communicate who we are, what we value, and what is important to us,” says Rebecca A. Senf, Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography …
“These prints are not just evidence of the photographer’s process; they are also evidence of the self presentation process of the people who appear in the pictures,” says Senf. “When you have your portrait made, there’s a process that goes behind thinking about what you’ll wear, how you’ll do your hair and what kind of sense of yourself are you trying to convey through the picture.”
Featuring works by Helen Levitt, Tseng Wong Chi, Charles “Teenie” Harris and Dennis Feldman, among others, Fashioning Self considers both the formal and informal ways in which people employ visual signifiers to transit their identities to the world. Whether donning ball gowns and fur wraps, cowboy hats and boots, bandana and chest tattoos, or unironic trucker hats, each subject conveys an intuitive sense of ease and authenticity that comes from being true to who they are.
Senf brings this integrity to the curation of the show, offering a broad array of images sparkling with individual expressions of character and poise that can resonate with the widest possible audience. “One of the most exciting things about photography is that it’s functioning as a visual language and people are using it to communicate ideas,” she says.
John Gutmann received his bachelor’s degree from the State Academy of Arts and Crafts in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) and studied with master painter Otto Mueller, one of the founding members of the New Realist movement in Germany. Gutmann moved to Berlin in 1927 where he earned his master’s degree at the State Institute for Higher Education. The arts were flourishing in Berlin, and the city’s vibrant social scene provided inspiration for subject matter and aesthetic. Gutmann’s paintings were done in the vein of well-known German painter Otto Dix, who represented Berlin nightlife as both dizzily exciting and darkly isolating. In 1933, due to the rise of the Nazi regime, Gutmann was no longer able to exhibit his paintings or teach and began to experiment with photography as a means of supporting himself. He bought a Rolleiflex camera, shot three rolls of film, and immediately secured a contract with a German agency, Presse-Foto, to photograph in America and send pictures back for German publications. That same year he arrived in San Francisco and started to document America from the detached eye of an anthropologist. By 1936 he had secured a teaching position at San Francisco State College, where a decade later he founded its creative photography program, one of the first in the country. By the end of the thirties, Gutmann switched agencies to Pix, Inc., a New York-based agency, which promoted his work for publication in magazines such as Time, The Saturday Evening Post, Life, and Look. During World War II, he studied at the Signal Corps Motion Picture School in Queens and made still and motion pictures for the United States Army Signal Corps. He focused much of his work during this time on China, Burma, and India. Gutmann retired from teaching in 1973 and began to print and edit his earlier work for exhibition and publication. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art held a two-man exhibition in 1976 of John Gutmann and Walker Evan’s work focusing on images of the Great Depression and the American culture that emerged from it. Two years later he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. In 1984 his first publication titled The Restless Decade was published by Harry N. Abrams, showcasing his work from the 1930s. Beginning in 1989 a major retrospective, Beyond the Document, traveled from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and then to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Gutmann died on June 12, 1998 in San Francisco.
Gutmann brings a strong modernist sensibility to his black-and-white documentary photographs. Using a Rolleiflex camera and shooting from the waist, he combines unusual angles, close cropping, and careful – almost classical – framing to create works that are as poetic as they are impactful. Like Walker Evans, he finds beauty in ordinary and everyday subjects such as advertisements, street scenes, and automobiles–subjects he would return to throughout his career. His straight-style depictions of Depression-era America often include an element of humour, capturing quiet moments of human drama, charged with anxiety, but also hope.
Anonymous. “John Gutmann,” on the International Center of Photography website Nd [Online] Cited 28/09/2023
David Noyes Jackson (September 16, 1922 – July 13, 2001) was the life partner of poet James Merrill (1926-1995).
A writer and artist, Jackson is remembered today primarily for his literary collaboration with Merrill. The two men met in May 1953 in New York City, after a performance of Merrill’s play, “The Bait.” They shared homes in Stonington, Connecticut, Key West, Florida, and Athens, Greece. “It was, I often thought, the happiest marriage I knew,” wrote Alison Lurie, who got to know both men in the 1950s and thought enough of the relationship to write a memoir about it more than forty years later, Familiar Spirits (2001).
Over the course of decades conducting séances with a Ouija board, Merrill and Jackson took down supernatural transcriptions and messages from otherworldly entities. Merrill’s and Jackson’s ouija transcriptions were first published in verse form in The Book of Ephraim (printed for the first time in Divine Comedies, 1976, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1977).
Jackson collaborated with James Merrill on much of his most significant poetic output. The Book of Ephraim (1976), Mirabell: Books of Number (1978), and Scripts for the Pageant (1980) were all written with Jackson’s assistance. Together, they constitute the epic trilogy The Changing Light at Sandover, a 560-page apocalyptic poem published in its entirety in 1982.
He and James Merrill are buried side by side at Evergreen Cemetery, Stonington. Jackson’s former wife and Merrill’s friend, Doris Sewell Jackson is buried behind them.
Rosalie Thorne “Rollie” McKenna (November 15, 1918 – June 14, 2003) was an American photographer. Writers photographed by McKenna include Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, and Truman Capote. McKenna had a long-term friendship with John Malcolm Brinnin, who helped her come in contact with many of the people she photographed. In addition to portraiture, McKenna also had an interest in architecture, particularly the architecture of Stonington, Connecticut.
John Yang (1933-2009) was an American architect and photographer. Born in China, he settled in the United States with his family in 1939. His interest in photography began as a child and was later developed when he was a student at The Putney School in Vermont where he was classmates with other future photographers such as Tim Asch. In the summer of 1951, he studied with Minor White at The California School of the Fine Arts. He graduated from Harvard College majoring in Philosophy, and in 1957 he earned a MA in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania studying under Louis Kahn. Before becoming a photographer full-time, Yang worked as an architect and continued in that practice until 1978.
Yang photographed the architecture and streets of New York as well as the surrounding landscape and gardens. Using traditional equipment and alternative darkroom techniques, he produced exquisite large format contact prints, often toned rich magentas: 11″ x 14″, 8″ x 10″, 5″ x 7″ and 10″ x 78″ panoramas. All work was printed by Yang himself.
Harold Jones (born 1940) has contributed to photography as an artist, educator, curator and arts administrator. Born in Morristown, New Jersey in 1940, he graduated from the Maryland Institute with a BFA in Painting and Photography, and from the University of New Mexico with an MFA in Art History and Photography. After graduation Jones worked as an assistant curator at the George Eastman House and in 1971 became the first director of LIGHT Gallery in New York City, the first gallery to exclusively represent contemporary photographers, such as Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer. In 1975 Jones became the founding director of the Center for Creative Photography and then went on to start the photography program at the University of Arizona where he taught for the next 30 years. Presently he is professor emeritus and volunteer coordinator of the Voices of Photography oral history project at the Center. Jones continues to be a constant student and practitioner of photography.
Harold Jones’s photography is difficult to categorise, and there are no generalisations that satisfactorily describe his varied body of work. His original training in painting and photography led to a practice that Jones referred to as “photodrawings” – gelatin silver prints worked with a variety of hand-coloured surfaces. Over the years, Jones used ink, food colouring, and oil paints as well as a variety of chemical toners to produce effects that range from subtle to direct. The resulting images are unique and cannot be duplicated. Initially he was ambivalent about altering the surfaces of his prints, feeling that it was an impure practice, but ultimately concluded that creating the photograph was the first phase of drawing, and surface treatments and colouring constituted the second phase. Jones’ approach has varied even within his unaltered prints. He has worked with both multiple and long-duration exposures to capture motion. Jones’s subjects are everyday objects arranged in compositions that require viewing and re-viewing. The photographer has described his delight in the process in which a person moves beyond a superficial reading of his work for closer inspection. His images reinforce the idea that a world continues beyond the picture plane; that one is seeing a fragment of a larger whole. Although he often photographs mundane objects, such as a water tower or laundry hanging, his unusual vantage points or unexpected cropping, produce a range of effects from humour to mystery.
The Harold Jones Archive contains over 150 prints, including a number of unique photodrawings, correspondence, biographical materials, teaching and exhibition files, records of the Society for Photographic Education, publications and clippings, and ephemera covering his career. Correspondents include Robert Heinecken, Jim Alinder, Robert Fichter, Beaumont Newhall, Jerry Uelsmann, and many others. An archive highlight is: University: A Photographic Inquiry, 1984-85: a 2-volume maquette from a project titled Universe City, containing 44 gelatin silver prints and 3 colour prints. Jones’s career can also be studied at the Center for Creative Photography through the LIGHT Gallery archive.
Anonymous. “Harold Jones,” on the International Center of Photography website Nd [Online] Cited 28/09/2023
David Hume Kennerly (born March 9, 1947) is an American photographer. He won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his portfolio of photographs of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden. He has photographed every American president since Lyndon B Johnson. He is the first presidential scholar at the University of Arizona.
The photographer Rosalind Fox Solomon turned her camera on Washington, D.C., between 1977 and 1979. With access to spaces ranging from artist studios to the White House, Solomon made probing portraits, such as this one of First Lady Rosalynn Carter aboard Air Force 2. During her years as first lady, Carter (born in Plains, Georgia, in 1927) expanded the role of the presidential spouse, regularly attending cabinet meetings and representing her husband, Jimmy Carter, in an official capacity at home and abroad.
Carter continues to devote her life to public service. For more than four decades, she has championed the needs of people with mental illness while also advocating on behalf of numerous other causes, including the Equal Rights Amendment, early childhood immunisation, the Cambodian refugee crisis, and homelessness. In 1982, she and her husband co-founded the Carter Center to promote peace and human rights worldwide. They jointly received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999.
Text from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery website
Curators: Dr Grace Blakeley-Carroll and Shelly McGuire
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Students Protesting during a May Day March on Flinders Street, Melbourne 1951 Photograph Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
At far-left, John Clendenin, philosopher and president of University of Melbourne SRC. Banner-bearer Jill Warwick, later a TV Producer, vice-president UniMelb SRC. The Forum Theatre on Flinders Street in the background.
That bohemian force of nature who was Australian artist, curator, teacher, writer, philanthropist, poet, gallery owner and collector Joyce Evans OAM (1929-2019) would have been the first to admit that she was not the most naturally gifted photographer the world has ever known. But Joyce worked assiduously at her craft for over 70 years and became a very fine image maker, picturing her beloved Australia through landscape, documentary and portrait photographs for many a decade.
Joyce had an innate knack of putting people at their ease when having their photograph taken. Never without a camera close at hand, she would approach complete strangers anywhere and ask them whether she could take their portrait… and she was never refused. She had the most gracious way about her, as though she was speaking in communion with her subject: whether that be the contemplation of the Australian landscape, Indigenous Australians, or up close and personal portraits of the ordinary or famous. As author Professor Sasha Grishin observes in his book Joyce Evans (National Library of Australia, 2022) she “was an artist who possessed a definite photographic personality… [who] pursued an agenda that shone a light on racism, social inequality and environmental degradation.”
Joyce worked hard at her craft and it rewarded her soul in so many unconditional ways. Her energy for life and photography was full of unbridled enthusiasm. It is therefore a blessing that this passion has now found a permanent home: her complete photographic archive, the Joyce Evans Archive, is now housed at the National Library of Australia in Canberra, an institution for which she did much work over the years. And it is wonderful that they have staged this small exhibition of 27 of her photographs. My only quibble would be the lack of photographs of Indigenous Australians in the exhibition. Other than the portrait of Aboriginal activist Faith Bandler (1951, below) there are no other photographs of her immense engagement with Aboriginal communities and peoples in this exhibition – which is a great shame. Joyce was very proud of her photography of and relationship with remote Aboriginal communities and their people and it would have been nice to see that energy reflected in the photographs in this exhibition.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Joyce Evans was a cherished friend of Marcus Bunyan.
Many thankx to the National Library of Australia for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
The career of Joyce Evans OAM (1929-2019) spans more than six decades of landscape, documentary, and portrait photography. Her work is preserved through the Library’s Joyce Evans Archive, one of our largest collections of images by a contemporary Australian photographer, and contains images which capture essential aspects of Australian life.
“We believed we had an obligation, neither social nor political, to make a difference. We were brought up as children to believe that we had an obligation to make that difference.
If we can find out what we are… that is the artist. This goes to the core element of your being, and the core element of your enquiry remains the same.
If the core part of your life is the search for the truth then that becomes a core part of your identity for the rest of your life. It becomes embedded in your soul.”
Joyce Evans
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Richard Woolcott AC at NUAUS Conference, Largs Bay, S.A. 1951, printed by David Chisolm and Joyce Evans, 2013 Photograph Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Richard Arthur WoolcottAC (11 June 1927 – 2 February 2023) was an Australian public servant, diplomat, author, and commentator.
The [photographic] form that Joyce found so early in her life was the music and poetry of humanist photographs, images that are subjective, lyrical, and reveal a state-of-mind. Here is passion and belief in the life of human beings, and the exquisiteness, beauty (and death) of the lived moment. You could label them “social documentary photography” if you were so inclined, but labels don’t capture the frisson of the creative process nor the joyous outcome of Joyce’s portraits. It’s as though Joyce, in a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, is making love to the world through her images: neither rational nor cerebral they evoke sensations and feelings, of being here and there, in that past space and time, now, all these years later. These were epic days of change and transformation – of nations, of continents, of cultures and of people. There was death and destruction but there was also such happiness, hope and joy.
Further, what her photographs also depict is the rise of an informed Australian social consciousness after the Second World War. Her important historical and personal photographs shine a light on forgotten people, times, places and actions, such as the broad based youth movements opposition to the atomic bomb, associations and friendships which eventually form the basis for the progressive social and political protest movements of the 1960s. The voices raised later in support of feminism, gay liberation, free love and Vietnam anti-war protests did not appear fully formed, for there was a history of activism… a slow build, a groundswell of public opinion that was the basis for such emerging actions. Nothing ever emerges from nothing.
Marcus Bunyan. “Nothing emerges from nothing,” foreword from the book We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2019
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Faith Bandler 1951, printed 2012 Photograph Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Faith Bandler AC MBE (27 September 1918 – 13 February 2015; née Ida Lessing Faith Mussing) was an Australian civil rights activist of South Sea Islander and Scottish-Indian heritage. A campaigner for the rights of Indigenous Australians and South Sea Islanders, she was best known for her leadership in the campaign for the 1967 referendum on Aboriginal Australians.
‘I don’t know what sort of photographer I am, but I try to be an honest one.’ ~ Joyce Evans.
The career of Joyce Evans OAM (1929-2019) spans more than six decades of landscape, documentary, and portrait photography. Her work is preserved through the Library’s Joyce Evans Archive, one of our largest collections of images by a contemporary Australian photographer, and contains images which capture essential aspects of Australian life.
This collection-in-focus display contains highlights from the Library’s Joyce Evans Archive, and can be seen in our Treasures Gallery from Tuesday 4 April 2023. Entry to the Gallery is free and no bookings are required.
You can read more about Evans’ life in the NLA Publishing title, Joyce Evans by Sasha Grishin.
Text from the National Library of Australia website.
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Cotswold Farm, Menzies Creek, Victoria 1982 Colour photograph Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Moon over Coober Pedy, South Australia 1988, printed by David Chisolm and Joyce Evans, 2013 Colour photograph 35.2 x 35cm Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Windmill on Weerewa/Lake George, New South Wales c. 1983-2012 Colour photograph 35.6 x 37.2cm Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Desert Car on Gunbarrel Highway, Northern Territory 1991 Colour photograph 21 x 50.6cm Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Mud Football, Derby, Western Australia 2000, printed 2012 Inkjet on Hahnemuhle photo rag paper 34.3 x 41cm Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) The Big Galah and Tourist Gift Shop, Kimba, South Australia c. 2006-2012 Colour photograph 33.6 x 50.7cm Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Gertrude, Boola Boolka Station, New South Wales 2006 Colour photograph 33.9 x 50.7cm Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Evidence of Severe Drought at Menindee Dam, Menindee, New South Wales 2006 Colour photograph Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Uluru, Northern Territory 1987 Colour photograph Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Joyce Evans was an unusual phenomenon in the Australian photography scene. Her conversion to photography did not occur until she was already in her 40s, while her engagement in professional photography had to wait until she was 50. She never developed a signature style, nor had she become a template photographer, but she possessed a definite photographic personality. …
As a documentary photographer, Evans considered herself a hunter and gatherer waiting to find the image. She remarked, “as an artist, you channel the energy of the place – the image comes to you as a gift.”
Her oeuvre is remarkable for its diversity and includes landscapes, roadkill, portraiture, social documentation, brothels and erotica – all brought together through a unifying sensibility, the Evans photographic moment. She was also an artist with a social conscience and pursued an agenda that shone a light on racism, social inequality and environmental degradation.
Many of Evans’s photographs demand slow viewing and open up gradually. Uluru, Northern Territory, 1987 (above), shows the rock as if carved by nature. In one sense, it is a very simple photograph in which two colours meet – the brilliant red ochre of the rock and the fathomless blue of the sky. It is also an immensely complex photograph with the mysterious slit – like the womb of the earth – in the centre of the composition and galvanising the viewer’s attention.
Gradually, as you focus into the image, there are signs of human presence at the top of the rock: two climbers on the chain pathway, contrasted with organic shapes created through centuries of erosion – a contrast between the temporal and the eternal. Despite the sense of stillness and silence, there is also considerable movement as the light plays over the textured surfaces.
The photograph is rare in that it defines a space but also distils the spiritual essence of the place and asserts an atmosphere of mystery and contemplative presence.
In 2016, when I was working on a monograph on Evans’s work, she noted: “As a photographer – I have a voice – it is an Australian voice, as I do not know intimately any other culture. It comes at a time when you say: ‘This is my country’. One of the sub-texts, when I pick up a camera, is that I always try to identify the stereotypical that is always defined by that which is on the edge.”
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Barbara Blackman 1989 Photograph 30 x 40.7cm Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Barbara Blackman AO (née Patterson; born 22 December 1928) is an Australian writer, poet, librettist, broadcaster, model and patron of the arts. In 2004, she donated $1 million to a number of Australian music organisations, including Pro Musica, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Australian National University’s School of Music and the Stopera Chamber Opera Company. In 2006, she was awarded the Australian Contemporary Music Award for Patronage. Barbara Blackman was married for 27 years to renowned Australian artist Charles Blackman.
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Philanthropist Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, Langwarrin, Victoria 1995 Photograph 24.9 x 37.0cm Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Dame Elisabeth Joy Murdoch, Lady Murdoch AC DBE (née Greene; 8 February 1909 – 5 December 2012), also known as Elisabeth, Lady Murdoch, was an Australian philanthropist and matriarch of the Murdoch family. She was the wife of Australian newspaper publisher Sir Keith Murdoch and the mother of international media proprietor Rupert Murdoch. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1963 for her charity work in Australia and overseas.
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Bernard Smith, Victoria 2004, printed 2013 Colour photograph 47.5 x 37.5cm Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Bernard William Smith (3 October 1916 – 2 September 2011) was an Australian art historian, art critic and academic, considered the founding father of Australian art history, and one of the country’s most important thinkers. His book Place, Taste and Tradition: a Study of Australian Art Since 1788 (1945) is a key text in Australian art history, and influence on Robert Hughes. Smith was associated with the Communist Party of Australia, and after leaving the party remained a prominent left-wing intellectual and Marxist thinker.
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) Stephen Dupont 2009, printed by David Chisolm and Joyce Evans, 2013 Photograph 35.6 x 35.6cm Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
Stephen Dupont (b. 1967) is an Australian photographer and director working on films, commercials, magazine and newspaper assignments and long term personal projects.
Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) William Yang 1996 Photograph Joyce Evans Archive National Library of Australia
“William Yang [Aust., b.1943] belongs to a generation of artists who used photography to document alternative lifestyles and celebrate social diversity during the latter decades of the 20th century…Yang is the type of social documentary photographer who carries a camera around his neck, ready to capture things with a certain immediacy, as they happen around him.” ~ Museum of Contemporary Art
Joyce Evans was an unusual phenomenon in the Australian photography scene. Her conversion to photography did not occur until she was already in her forties, while her engagement in professional photography had to wait until she was fifty. She never developed a signature style, nor did she become a template photographer, but she possessed a sensibility that has become characteristic of her work, so that you can quickly recognise a Joyce Evans photograph. She was an artist who possessed a definite photographic personality.
Evans combined documentary photography, social photography, landscape photography and studio practice. She also had a social conscience. Although avoiding didactic images or illustrative propaganda, in her documentary work and in her choice of subjects, she had pursued an agenda that shone a light on racism, social inequality and environmental degradation.
This stylish and generously-illustrated monograph shows how Evans’ photography was about capturing not only the surface appearances, but ultimately the essences, of her subjects. It illustrates the Evans’ belief that in silence and stillness you come to feel the spirit of the subject, and that capturing this spirit was the photographer’s goal.
About the author
Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA established the academic discipline of Art History at the ANU and was the Sir William Dobell Professor of Art History and Head of Art History and Curatorship at the ANU until December 2013. He works internationally as an art historian, art critic and curator. In 2005 he was awarded the Order of Australia (AM) for services to Australian art and art history. He has published over 25 books and over 2,000 articles and catalogue essays dealing with various aspects of art.
Text from the National Library of Australia website.
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Victorian Continent Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
A historical posting this week: stereographs of soldiers of the two Victorian Contingents leaving from Melbourne for the Boer War in South Africa, the first in October 1899 and the second contingent in January 1900.
I have digitally scanned and cleaned these stereographs (that is, two nearly identical photographs or photomechanical prints, paired to produce the illusion of a single three-dimensional image, usually when viewed through a stereoscope, usually mounted on card) that I borrowed from my friend Terence Hodgkinson. I have added bibliographic information where possible: a small history of Australia and the Boer War; enrolment and embarkation details of the contingents; photographs and details of both ships that the men departed on; and information on the Rose Stereograph Company and its founder.
These 3D stereographs really give you a feeling of what it would have been like to live in Australia in last year of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century: a society full of pomp and circumstance with banners and bunting, ceremony and marches supporting a militarised society, where Australia was still a colony and not yet a nation (Federation of Australia only occurred on 1 January 1901).
In the stereograph The Victorian Continent (Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899, above) a crowd of spectators on Swanston Street, Melbourne (viewed from Flinders Street Station with people on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral at back right) celebrates the departure for South Africa of the 1st Victorian Continent to the Boer War. Notice the flags of the United States of American, Japan, Scotland, United Kingdom and St. George (England) flying above the procession and the absence of the Australian flag (the current Australian flag was first flown on 3rd September 1901). Also note the girl at bottom right clinging onto the corrugated iron roof of wooden sheds where you can book tickets to the Moonee Valley Races and Port Melbourne.
In the series of three stereographs Victorian Continent, S.S. “Medic” Leaving the Pier (Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899, below) we can observe the passage of time as the ship pulls away from the pier as the crowd of onlookers walks towards us, and in the two following stereographs Victorian Continent, S.S. “Medic” off to South Africa and The Victorian Continent, Last View of Boat (both Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899, below) we note that the photographer on top of his high perch has swung his large plate camera through 180 degrees to photograph the crowd and stern of the ship as she passes from view. Again, in the series of stereographs of the departure of the 2nd Victorian contingent The Bushman’s Contingent. “Euryalus” Leaving Pier (Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900, below) we an see how the photographer captures the ship as she slides past, closing in on the troops piled high on the deck to wave goodbye. With their layered geometric forms and serried ranks these are very modernist photographs for their time in Australia. Finally, note another photographer with his large format camera and tripod standing above the crowd at left in the stereograph 2nd Victorian Contingent. The Troops at the Pier (Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900, below)
It’s been a lot of hard work but it’s great to have this record of Melbourne life online as large format jpg for as far as I can tell they are not available otherwise. If anyone needs high resolution scans of the images please get in touch, always happy to send them.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to my friend Terence Hodgkinson for allowing me to scan and publish his stereographs. Digital clean and colour balance by Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“It was national sentiment in Canada and Australia which demanded that they share in the dangers of empire as well as the benefits they had long known. Self-appreciation would no longer permit colonial peoples in such advanced areas to feel that they could make no significant contribution to the war in which Britain was engaged.”
Donald C. Gordon, The Dominion Partnership in Imperial Defense 1870-1914 (Baltimore, 1965), p. 152.
“South Australia was still a colony, and Australia not yet a nation, when the Boer War broke out in South Africa in 1899. The colonies of Australia each provided contingents. When the war was over the colonial contingents had been merged, reflecting Australia’s emergence as a nation. Its soldiers had already begun the process of forging a reputation for courage, initiative, and endurance, which would later be reinforced during the Great War.”
Adapted by Steve Larkins from original work by Will Clough as featured in “Tributes of Honour”. “Boer War (11 October 1899 to 30 May 1902),” on the Virtual War Memorial Australia website Nd [Online] 03/10/2023
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Victorian Contingent Procession Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
A crowd of spectators watching a parade of the 1st Victorian Contingent to the Boer War. The white helmets of the soldiers are visible as a line passing through the arch emblazoned with the words “For Queen”. The soldiers are on their way to embark on a ship bound for South Africa.
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Victorian Contingent Procession Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Victorian Contingent Procession Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) Victorian Continent Procession (Governor’s Carriage) Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
The enrolment of Victorian volunteers for service in the Transvaal should war break out began on 20 September at Victoria Barracks. Members of all branches of the service were invited to register, as well as citizens with previous military training,22 and by 28 September 760 men of the defence forces and 280 civilians had volunteered.23 But after 3 October, when Victoria committed itself to sending 125 infantry and 125 mounted infantry, the call for recruits became more specific. By 12 October 260 mounted men from a volunteer regiment of 800, and 250 infantry men from a militia regiment of 1900, had given in their names. This was hardly an enthusiastic response to the call to arms, but worse was to follow. When called up for medical and military efficiency tests, only 128 mounted infantry men and 107 infantry men reported.24 The medical examination also produced a surprise: forty percent of the applicants failed to pass a test considered not strict. The failure rate among the Victorian Mounted Rifles might be explained by the fact that as a volunteer regiment its recruits were not subject to any medical examination; but the same excuse could not be made for the militia, and their failure rate was just as high.25 To complete the numbers in both the mounted and unmounted units, the authorities called on the Victorian Rangers,a volunteer infantry regiment; but still lacking five men for the infantry unit they gave the places to members of the permanent artillery!26 Victoria had set out to enlist preferably single men of twenty to forty years of age, and it is a further measure of recruiting difficulties that twenty-seven married men embarked for South Africa.27
It was common for press reporters to regard the Victorian contingent as being composed of bushmen, but that could not have been so for about eighty percent of the infantry were recruited from Melbourne, with the remainder coming from Castlemaine, Ballarat, and Bendigo. Only the mounted unit was filled from country areas. A summary of the occupations of the Victorian contingent shows a preponderance of townmen, with rural areas being represented by landowners rather than rural workers.
Selection of the officers for the contingent on grounds that ignored seniority was questioned in the Legislative Assembly, but defended by the premier who claimed that efficiency had been the criterion.29 An Age report regarded the officers, who had been selected from “numerous volunteers”, as “young, intelligent and enthusiastic”,30 but when one considers the favourable connections of several of them, another factor in their selection seems likely. A biographical summary of the officers is given below. It indicates possible sources of influence, but more importantly, it gives an idea of the type of leader who sailed with the first and the second contingents. All the Victorians were colonials and in personal and professional details they appeared fairly typical of Australian militia officers of the time.31
…
From existing sources, fragmentary though they may be at times, there emerges a reasonably clear picture of the men who were to lay the foundations of Australian military tradition. They were predominantly unmarried men, on an average in their mid-twenties. The average physique might have approximated a man five feet eight and a half inches in height, ten stone twelve pounds in weight, and thirty-five inches around the chest.47 This suggests a tallish, lithe soldier, and the suggestion is supported by numerous contemporary references to the Australians’ admirable physique. If members of infantry units, the contingenters were most likely to have come from the cities; if members of mounted infantry and cavalry units they would have come mainly from country towns and rural areas. They would have had a liking for the military life, a modicum of discipline, but only a limited knowledge of the science of war.
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Victorian Continent Taking Horses Abroad Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Victorian Continent Going Aboard Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) Victorian Continent, S.S. “Medic” Leaving the Pier Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
A crowd of onlookers walk down Railway Pier in Port Melbourne to farewell the Victorian Contingent aboard the S.S. Medic as it departs for the Boer War in South Africa.
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) Victorian Continent, S.S. “Medic” Leaving the Pier Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
A crowd of onlookers walk down Railway Pier in Port Melbourne to farewell the Victorian Contingent aboard the S.S. Medic as it departs for the Boer War in South Africa.
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) Victorian Continent, S.S. “Medic” Leaving the Pier Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
A crowd of onlookers walk down Railway Pier in Port Melbourne to farewell the Victorian Contingent aboard the S.S. Medic as it departs for the Boer War in South Africa.
Unknown photographer S.S. Medic leaving Sydney Probably 1900s State Library of New South Wales Public domain
S.S. Medic
SS Medic was a steamship built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast for the White Star Line which entered service in 1899. Medic was one of five Jubilee-class ocean liners (the others being the Afric, Persic, Runic and Suevic) built specifically to service the Liverpool – Cape Town – Sydney route. The ship’s name pertained to the ancient Persian region of Media and was pronounced Mee-dic.
Medic was the second Jubilee-class ship to be built for the Australia service. Like her sisters she was a single funnel liner, measuring just under 12,000 gross register tons (GRT), which had capacity for 320 passengers in third class on three decks, she also had substantial cargo capacity with seven cargo holds, most of them refrigerated for the transport of Australian meat.
After a long career with White Star, Medic was sold in 1928 and was converted into a whaling factory ship and renamed Hektoria, she remained in service in this role until being torpedoed and sunk during World War II in the Atlantic Ocean whilst sailing in a convoy in 1942. …
White Star Line career
Medic was launched at Belfast on 15 December 1898, but her completion was delayed until 6 July the following year, so that improvements that were being made to her earlier sister Afric could be incorporated into her construction.
Medic inaugurated White Star’s new Australia service with her maiden voyage, which started from Liverpool on 3 August 1899, she was then the largest ship ever to sail to Australia. Although Afric was the first ship built for the service, she did not make her first voyage to Australia until the following month. On board the maiden voyage was Charles Lightoller on his first assignment as fourth mate, he would later become the only senior officer to survive the sinking of the Titanic. Upon Medic‘s arrival in Australia she was greeted with a rapturous reception. Lightoller wrote:
“She was a show ship, the biggest that had ever been out there, and the people in Australia gave us the time of our lives. Everything and everywhere it was Medic“
On her first return trip to the UK, Medic carried Australian troops to South Africa for the Boer War which had started in October 1899, and continued to carry troops to the conflict until it concluded in 1902. In October 1900, while Medic was anchored in Neutral Bay, Sydney Harbour, Charles Lightoller and some shipmates were involved in the “Fort Denison Incident”, a prank intended to fool locals into believing a Boer raiding party was attacking the city. The culprits were never apprehended but Lightoller confessed to his company’s superiors, after which he was transferred to the Atlantic route.
Allan C. Green (Australian, d. 1954) The steamship and White Star Liner Medic Before 1940 State Library of Victoria, Allan C. Green collection of glass negatives Public domain
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) Victorian Continent, S.S. “Medic” off to South Africa Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
A crowd of onlookers on Railway Pier in Port Melbourne waves off the Victorian Contingent aboard the S.S. Medic as it departs for the Boer War in South Africa.
The Victorian government took additional steps to ensure the success of the Melbourne farewell by making available holiday excursion fares from all stations to the city. It also approved the issue of free rail passes to the immediate relatives of country members of the contingent.107
…
The Victorian contingent was given a taste of the morrow by the crowds who thronged inside and outside the Melbourne Town Hall for the mayor’s farewell. “For the first time in the history of Victoria the thrill of patriotism vibrated through the nerves of the people”, and their hearts were stirred by the colony’s first plunge into “the great deeps of international warfare”. After the ceremony, the troops headed a triumphal procession back to barracks, and as the men disappeared within the gates the huge crowd sang Soldiers of the Queen. 111
The thronged streets were lined by 2000 school cadets for the march the following day, Saturday 28 October, and the contingent had an escort of 4000 members of the defence forces. Included in the column, and basking in a glory they must have thought gone forever, were former Imperial soldiers, “ambling but proud old wrecks” who wore the medals of Crimea and the Mutiny.112 Lieutenant Tremearne, in writing of the occasion later, told of people, perfect strangers to him, rushing into the ranks with tear filled eyes and murmuring, “Good luck, old man”.113 Followed by a flotilla of smaller craft, the Medic, largest ship ever to enter an Australian port, sailed down the bay and turned to the open sea. Long after the cheering had died and the launches had turned back, Victoria continued to salute her first contingent with huge bonfires which blazed along miles of coastline.114
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Victorian Continent, Last View of Boat Melbourne, Victoria, 28th October 1899 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
The Rose Stereograph Company
The publishing output of this long-lived firm (which operated from about 1880 until it went into liquidation in 2017) was phenomenal, and when the remains of what must have been a vast photographic archive went on sale in June 2021 with Lloyds Auctions…
According to a brief history by postcard collector Leo Fitzgerald, the Rose story began when Cornish sea captain William Rose came to the Victorian Ballarat gold fields from California and married Grace Ash at Ballarat in 1861. The couple’s son, George, was born in 1862 at the town of Clunes. He worked in his father’s shoe shop in Chapel Street, Prahran, between 1877 and 1880 (apparently producing his earliest photos from those premises) and began spending his Sundays selling photos to picnic parties in the Dandenong hills. Finding his niche in photography, he moved to a new address at Armadale and founded his own firm publishing stereographic views. Over the years he travelled to many countries and recorded numerous important historic events with his stereographic camera equipment, opening offices in Sydney, Wellington and London. His images from Korea have become especially celebrated in Korea, where they represent an extremely rare glimpse of the nation in 1904, before the onset of the destruction wrought by the wars of the 20th century. …
Collector and researcher Ron Blum, whose excellent books built on Leo Fitzgerald’s work, wrote that George’s son Walter took over the business sometime before 1931, selling it in that year to long-time employees Edward Gilbert and Herbert Cutts… George’s wife, Elizabeth, died in 1929, and both George’s sons died before him. With no longer any legal interest in the company he had founded, George kept on taking photographs for the old firm, travelling around Australia in a mobile darkroom and camping along the way. He worked almost until his death in 1942, aged 80… The Rose Stereographic Company continued under the stewardship of Herbert “Bert” Cutts, who brought his son Neil into the business in the 1950s.
George Rose was born in Clunes, Victoria, in 1861. He did not follow his father into boot-making, but was interested in astronomy and natural history. He was unconventional, of rather eccentric and Bohemian character. After moving to Melbourne in 1876, George developed his skills as a photographer, especially in the stereoscopic field – what is known as 3D photography today. He founded the Rose Stereographic Company in 1880. In 1901 George recorded the celebrations for the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York, and in the following years travelled across Australia and over 35 countries taking three-dimensional photos. By 1907 his business employed six people – two males and four females; at its peak, staff numbered around 20. In 1913 the Rose Stereographic Company began manufacturing “real photo” postcards. George’s son Walter managed the company, allowing his father to concentrate on taking the photographs. In 1931 the business was sold to two long-time employees, Edward Gilbert and Herbert (Bert) Cutts. George Rose died of cancer in 1942, having outlived both his sons, but the business remained in the Cutts family for many years before it finally closed down in March 2017.
Information from the book George Rose – The Postcard Era by Ron Blum.
2nd Victorian Contingent
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Bushman’s Contingent at Camp, Langwarrin Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Bushman’s Contingent at Langwarrin Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Bushman’s Contingent Lining up for Grub Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Bushman’s Contingent. Capt. Patterson Giving Instructions to Officers Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Bushman’s Contingent. Group of Officers Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) 2nd Victorian Contingent, at the Showgrounds Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) 2nd Victorian Contingent. Procession (Scottish Regiment) Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
The Scottish Regiment parading down Collins Street (looking east), Melbourne. The building on the left appears to be the Colonial Mutual Life Building (demolished) and further along, the clock tower is the town hall and the spire is Scots Church. Interesting to note the American flag flying the building at left. I wonder why?
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) 2nd Victorian Contingent. Procession Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
The 2nd Victorian Contingent parading down Collins Street (looking east), Melbourne. The building on the left appears to be the Colonial Mutual Life Building (demolished) and further along, the clock tower is the town hall and the spire is Scots Church. Interesting to note the American flag flying the building at left. I wonder why?
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) 2nd Victorian Contingent. Horses alongside Boat Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Departed Melbourne: SS Euryalus 13 January 1900.
Raised predominantly on the Mounted Rifle Regiment, formed by Lt-Col Tom Price in 1885, and Victorian Rangers, Militia including the battalions of the Infantry Brigade and some from the Royal Australian Artillery. Colonel Price was initially made CO of the Hanover Road Field Force, including one battalion of Lancashire Militia, two companies of Prince Albert’s Guards and Tasmanians. Price was the only Australian Colonial Officer placed in command of British units during the Boer War.
A seminal moment in the Boer War was the capture of Pretoria in 1900 by British commander, Lord Roberts. The Victorian 2nd (Mounted Rifles) Contingent was the first unit to enter the city. A large number of this unit were invalided back to Victoria, having experienced starvation and extreme exhaustion on some treks.
Strength: 265 Service period: Feb 1900 – Dec 1900.
Text from the Defending Victoria website
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) 2nd Victorian Contingent. Soldiers Taking Saddles Aboard Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) 2nd Victorian Contingent. Horses Going Aboard Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
The horses of the 2nd Victorian Contingent to the Boer War about to be put aboard the steamship “Euryalus”, bound for South Africa. The 2nd Victorian Contingent consisted entirely of mounted rifles.
Unknown photographer S.S. Euryalus Between 1898 and 1913? Albumen silver print 13.8 x 19.7cm State Library of Victoria, R.J. French photographic collection of ships Gift of Mr R. J. French 1979 Public domain
S.S. Euryalus
The steamer Euryalus returned from South Africa last night, berthing at the Port Melbourne Town Pier at about a quarter-past 9 o’clock. It was thought that she, like the Moravian, might have had some invalided Australian troops on board, but there were not any, although the vessel brought a number of saloon and steerage passengers. She had an uneventful voyage. Durban was left on the 5th inst., and normal weather was experienced until the Euryalus reached lat. 41deg. S. and lon. 97deg. E., where foggy conditions set in, and these continued to lon. 109deg. E. She passed Cape Otway at 11.30 a.m. yesterday, and entered Port Phillip Heads at 5.30 p.m.
Name: EURYALUS Type: Passenger Cargo Ship Launched: 08/06/1898 Completed: 08/1898 Builder: Palmers’ Shipbuilding & Iron Co Ltd Yard: Jarrow Yard Number: 732 Dimensions: 3570grt, 2286nrt, 360.0 x 45.7 x 24.1ft Engines: T3cyl (27, 45.5 & 74 x 48ins), 458nhp Engines by: Palmers’ Shipbuilding & Iron Co Ltd, Jarrow Propulsion: 1 x Screw, 11.5knots Construction: Steel
History
04/11/1898: A Currie & Co, Melbourne 1913: British India Steam Navigation Co Ltd, Glasgow 1913: Placed on the India to Australia service 1919: Accommodation increased to include 2441 x deck passengers 31/12/1923: Arrived for breaking up at La Spezia. Cost £6,500
Comments
1898: Completed at a price of £47,500 Accommodation for 22 x 1st and 24 x 2nd Class passengers
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) 2nd Victorian Contingent. Going Aboard the “Euryalus” Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) 2nd Victorian Contingent. Going Aboard the “Euryalus” Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) 2nd Victorian Contingent. Horses Going Aboard Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Australia and the Boer War, 1899-1902
As part of the British Empire, the Australian colonies offered troops for the war in South Africa. Australians served in contingents raised by the six colonies or, from 1901, by the new Australian Commonwealth. For a variety of reasons many Australians also joined British or South African colonial units in South Africa: some were already in South Africa when the war broke out; others either made their own way to the Cape or joined local units after their enlistment in an Australian contingent ended. Recruiting was also done in Australia for units which already existed in South Africa, such as the Scottish Horse.
Australians served mostly in mounted units formed in each colony before despatch, or in South Africa itself. The Australian contribution took the form of five “waves”. The first were the contingents raised by the Australian colonies in response to the outbreak of war in 1899, which often drew heavily on the men in the militia of the colonial forces. The second were the “bushmen” contingents, which were recruited from more diverse sources and paid for by public subscription or the military philanthropy of wealthy individuals. The third were the “imperial bushmen” contingents, which were raised in ways similar to the preceding contingents, but paid for by the imperial government in London. Then were then the “draft contingents”, which were raised by the state governments after Federation on behalf of the new Commonwealth government, which was as yet unable to do so. Finally, after Federation, and close to the end of the war, the Australian Commonwealth Horse contingents were raised by the new Federal government. These contingents fought in both the British counter-offensive of 1900, which resulted in the capture of the Boer capitals, and in the long, weary guerrilla phases of the war which lasted until 1902. Colonial troops were valued for their ability to “shoot and ride”, and in many ways performed well in the open war on the veldt. There were significant problems, however, with the relatively poor training of Australian officers, with contingents generally arriving without having undergone much training and being sent on campaign immediately. These and other problems faced many of the hastily raised contingents sent from around the empire, however, and were by no means restricted to those from Australia…
The Australians at home initially supported the war, but became disenchanted as the conflict dragged on, especially as the effects on Boer civilians became known…
Conditions for both soldiers and horses were harsh. Without time to acclimatise to the severe environment and in an army with a greatly over-strained logistic system, the horses fared badly. Many died, not just in battle but of disease, while others succumbed to exhaustion and starvation on the long treks across the veld. Quarantine regulations in Australia ensured that even those which did survive could not return home. In the early stages of the war Australian soldier losses were so high through illness that components of the first and second contingents ceased to exist as viable units after a few months of service.
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Bushman’s Contingent. Horses Going Aboard Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Bushman’s Contingent. “Euryalus” Leaving Pier Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Bushman’s Contingent, “Euryalus” Leaving Pier Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Bushman’s Contingent, “Good-bye, Lads.” Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) The Bushman’s Contingent, “Good-bye, Lads.” Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) 2nd Victorian Contingent. The Troops at the Pier Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Soldiers and sailors lined up on the pier, at a farewell parade for the troops of the 2nd Victoria Contingent to the Boer War. The troops of the 2nd Victoria Contingent, all Mounted Rifles, are aboard the steamship “Euryalus”, which is about to depart for Cape Town, South Africa. Note the photographer with his large format camera on tripod at left.
Unknown photographer George Rose (Australian, 1861-1942) (publisher, Windsor, Melbourne) 2nd Victorian Contingent. The Last View of the “Euryalus” Melbourne, Victoria, 13th January 1900 2 photographic prints on stereocard 9 x 18cm
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Husband and wife] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Salt of the Earth
Little is known of the life of photographer Richard Jenkins but that matters little for the images the artist left behind captured on glass-plate negatives give clear insight into the nature of the man. His images are sensitive, full of feeling for the people he is photographing, direct and enigmatic at the same time.
An association can be made between Jenkins’ work and that of German photographer August Sander (1876-1964) as can be seen in the examples I have assembled in this posting. Both artists came from farming stock. Both artists took up photography to escape their proletarian roots. Both artists used an old-fashioned large-format camera with glass negatives. Shooting from a single (face-to-face) perspective both artists work possesses a frontality which places the subject front and centre in the pictorial plane with the background thrown out of focus by the use of low depth of field. Both artists planned compositions pictured their subjects within familiar surroundings and “considered the relationship between location and sitter to be the most essential ingredient for communicating both the status and essence of his or her personality.”1
But while Sander’s portraits tell of an uncertain cultural landscape during the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis during the interwar years through a set of typologies – ‘The Farmer’, ‘The Skilled Tradesman’, ‘The Woman’, ‘Classes and Professions’, ‘The Artists’, ‘The City’ and ‘The Last People’ – based on the tenants of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement “which advocated a return to realism and social commentary in art with a respectful and unadorned neutrality, and always within their familiar surroundings”2 rejecting all forms of expressionism and romanticism, Jenkins’ portraits picture the stable cultural landscape of Britain’s farming working class, a class of people that had existed since feudal times in the Britain: in sure and certain hope that hard work will be their salvation.
I grew up belonging to this working class. We were very poor. My mother had to boil a large kettle on the stove and then bathe us boys in a cowper on the floor of the kitchen for we had no hot running water when I was a child, and we only existed on what my father could shoot on the farm… pheasant, pigeon, rabbit, hare, partridge. But what we lacked for in creature comforts we made up in spirit. The energy of the land and its people. The connection to nature, the trees and birds, the crops and earth. In some ways it was a magical childhood amongst the forest, cowslips, fields, granaries – in others, not good at all. This spirit is what you can feel in Jenkins’ photographs. The essentialness of being of the people he photographed. As curator Hilary Engel insightfully observes, “He took photographs of them working, and the beautiful, useful things they made. Although Richard was not interested in farm work himself, he admired the skills that it entailed… You can sense their strength, their resilience – the spirit that has enabled them to survive the hard work and challenges of life in this remote farming community. Richard simply presents them, honestly, as they are: and you sense that they trust him.”
Jenkins’ photographs are not mere facades. They reveal in intimate detail, through every hard earned line on a human face, the triumphs and travails of that person’s existence. Observe if you will Jenkins’ photograph Untitled [Family group] (Nd, below) and note the intimacy of the scene with the two children balanced on the knee of their parents, the daughter held by the mother and the son clasped firmly by one of the stocky, dirty, hardened hands of the father who stares straight at the camera with a slight smile and a twinkle in his eye. Notice his patterned waistcoat peeking out from beneath his thick woollen jacket, thick workman’s trousers surmounting his WWI era puttees and likely army boots with studs. Did he serve during the First World War and survive? Observe also Jenkins’ photograph Untitled [Family group probably at a wedding] (Nd, below) where the family group are all in their Sunday best. What fascinates here is the sitters attitude towards the camera: the aloofness and stiff upper lip of the old gentleman (for that is what he would have been called) at top left, the quizzical look of the man at top right, the contemptuous defiance of the girl at lower left, the inscrutability on the man’s face at bottom right and, dominating them all, the openness and straight forward stare towards the camera of the woman at centre, she clutching a bouquet of flowers, wearing a prominent cross and surmounted by an enormous hat bedecked with blooms. High collars, bowlers hats, stiff upper lips, flowers and finery. It would have been a grand day…
“Sander once said ‘The portrait is your mirror. It’s you’. He believed that, through photography, he could reveal the characteristic traits of people. He used these images to tell each person’s story…”3 Jenkins’ photographs also tell each person’s story but my feeling is that he does it with a more humanist approach than those qualities Sander brought to photographic portraiture. There is a warm and empathy in photographs such as Untitled [Group of men with Romford & Evershed Ltd Pershorf 1885 steam engine] (Nd, below), Untitled [Man and dog](Nd, below) and Untitled [Three women, sheep and dog] (Nd, below replete with sheep and dog) which Sander’s more Germanic portraits (with their rejection of all forms of expressionism and romanticism) shy away from. If as Sander believed, the portrait is your mirror, it’s you… it’s also a reflection of the soul of the photographer evinced through the portraits of his subjects.
Richard Jenkins must have been one hell of a human being to capture such revealing, intimate, celestial portraits of the people he loved.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Anonymous. “August Sander,” on The Art Story website Nd [Online] Cited 18/09/2023
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Family group] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins was born in 1890 on a farm ten miles from Hay and he became a brilliant pioneering photographer. He longed to escape the drudgery of farming – to go away and study. Instead he had to console himself by learning to wield a cumbersome camera, taking and developing spontaneous and moving portraits of his friends and neighbours going about their everyday lives. He had a gift for capturing his subjects’ personalities, paying tribute to their fortitude and skills. Miraculously, nearly a thousand of his glass-plate images survived decades of neglect and since the publication of Golden Valley Faces in 2020, his work has begun to be recognised as a remarkable record of life in rural Herefordshire at the start of the twentieth century.
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Bauernpaar – Zucht und Harmonie [Peasant couple – breeding and harmony] 1912 Gelatin silver print
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Working-class Mother 1927 Gelatin silver print
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins was born in 1890 in south west Herefordshire, close to the Black Mountains of Wales. He grew up to be a bright, curious young man: he longed to go to college to study engineering, to be part of the technological revolution that was going on in the outside world. But because he was the only son of a farmer it was not allowed: he had to stay on the farm. Even in this remote valley, new machinery was beginning to take over tasks that had always been done by hand, or with horses – like the mobile steam engine which travelled from farm to farm. Travel was being transformed, with the opening of railways. And country people were beginning to discover a new freedom with bicycles – or even motorbikes.
Communication was revolutionised during Richard’s childhood, with the invention of wireless and telephones. Electricity was reaching across the country. Any one of these burgeoning industries offered enticing prospects for a would-be engineer in the first decade of the twentieth century. But for Richard, it was not to be. As he grew up, Richard found a way to escape the prison of farming. He acquired a camera, and somehow mastered the art of composing telling images, as well as the science of developing and printing. It was his way of celebrating the world that he saw around him. He photographed every stage in the lives of his Golden Valley neighbours: their weddings, their babies, their graves.
He portrayed their children growing up, at school concerts and at chapel anniversaries. He took photographs of them working, and the beautiful, useful things they made. Although Richard was not interested in farm work himself, he admired the skills that it entailed. Richard’s subjects were not used to being photographed. Some of them look uncomfortable, apprehensive. But Richard was evidently charming, and had a knack for getting people to relax. They have various props to put them at their ease – dogs, cats, even sheep or horses. Or a favourite bicycle or motorbike. Richard saw that these additions helped to express his subjects’ personalities. Many of them stare resolutely into the camera. You can sense their strength, their resilience – the spirit that has enabled them to survive the hard work and challenges of life in this remote farming community. Richard simply presents them, honestly, as they are: and you sense that they trust him.
Richard’s portraits differ markedly from the conventional style of the time. A professional photographer might place his subjects in a studio against an elegant setting, and get them to take up a certain pose, gazing into the distance. Or they would be portrayed with objects representative of their status – splendid horses, or impressive houses. Instead, Richard’s subjects appear in their natural, often very modest, habitat. Richard adored his beautiful sister, Eva, and photographed her repeatedly. Her form lights up many of the pictures. She poses, elegantly composed, amongst the bracken at Quarrelly Farm.
Richard Jenkins died in 1964, having lived at Quarrelly Farm all his life. For decades his glass plate negatives were stored in shoeboxes and cupboards in the farmhouse – never catalogued or published. But in 2010 the Jenkins family generously decided to place the collection in the care of the Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre, where it has since been digitised. Since the publication of Golden Valley Faces in 2020, Richard Jenkins has begun to be recognised as a remarkable photographer. Many of his subjects remain unknown: but their faces speak with all the freshness and vigour they had a hundred years ago. His images of the life around him form a unique portrait of rural Herefordshire at the start of the twentieth century.
Text by Hilary Engel on the Golden Valley Faces website Nd [Online] Cited 02/08/2023
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Child and bull] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Family group probably at a wedding] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Family group probably at a wedding] (detail) Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Woman lying among the ferns] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Woman lying among the ferns] (detail) Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Loading the hay] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Group of men with Romford & Evershed Ltd Pershorf 1885 steam engine] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Three men and a press] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Man with buttonhole posy] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Couple] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Mother and Daughter 1912 Gelatin silver print
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Nurse, group of children and candles] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Man and dog] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Three women, sheep and dog] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Two heavy horses, two men and a plough] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) Untitled [Two men with pipes, bicycles and dog] Nd Digital scan from a glass plate negative
The first published selection of Richard Jenkins’ work, telling the story of his life and his photography
Author: Hilary Engel 112 pages, 240 x 200 mm 140 black and white photographs ISBN 978-1-5272-6998-9 Available in bookshops, or order online Retail price £12 Postage and packing within the UK: £5
Profits from sales of the book will go to the Laurie Engel Fund for Teenage Cancer Trust
Hay Castle Oxford Road Hay-on-Wye HR3 5DG Phone: 01497 820079
Unknown photographer Oud Batavia / Ancient Batavia April 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Holland menu. Tuesday October 4th, 1938 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland luncheon menu. Tuesday October 4th, 1938 Commander P.M. Verstelle K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
ephemeran. things that exist or are used or enjoyed for only a short time.
It is incredible that these ephemera(l) menus with their attendant rotogravures (a form of gravure printing of superb contrast and quality) have lasted 85 years, probably stored away in someone’s bookcase, only to be purchased by me in an op shop (charity shop) in Melbourne, Australia just recently.
This is probably the first time these images have seen the light of day and been published for decades… most likely since they were given to the passengers aboard the K.P.M. ships T.S.S. Nieuw Holland, T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland and T.S.S. Op Ten Noort in 1938-1939.
Information and details on the ships construction are detailed in the posting but I could ascertain nothing about who took the photographs for the menus. In all likelihood the photographs were either a) taken by a (most likely) Dutch photographer employed by the shipping line or b) taken by a Western photographer living in Asia under brief from the shipping line or c) taken by a local photographer under similar direction. Whoever took the photographs (and I believe these images to be the eye of one person) displayed a magnificent understanding of portrait and landscape photography in the Western tradition… whilst also exoticising the Indigenous people and places (with their “heathen tombs”) for consumption – pardon the pun, as the images are on menus – by a Western clientele. Nevertheless the photographs are incredibly beautiful and direct. There is no flim flam here. And in that sense these images remain constant, constant in their historical link to cultures which they depict and valuable as such.
Just imagine being a first class passenger literally only a few months before the outbreak of the Second World War traversing the Java Sea in absolute luxury, wearing black tie, and dining on “stuffed eggs with caviar,” “veal cutlets a la Richelieu,” “larded Calfsliver,” and “Coupe Peche Melba” while being attended to by uniformed waiters! And then on the front cover of your menu (note different photographs on menus from the same day) photographs of barefoot Indigenous people from the various stops that the liner will make on its journey.
However, the status of humans will matter very little in the maelstrom that will engulf the region after the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, for people from Burma through Thailand, Singapore, Malaya, Indonesia, Dutch East Indies, Philippines, and New Guinea and more, and those defending those countries, will all suffer under the yoke of Japanese aggression and brutality. The very waters that these glamorous liners sailed would become the scene of sea battles, death and destruction.
If anybody has any information on the photographer(s) if you could please contact me at bunyanth@netspace.net.au I would be most grateful. Thank you.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Unknown photographer Krugdansers op Nias / War Dancers at Nias April 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Holland menu. Friday September 23rd, 1938 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
Nias (Indonesian: Pulau Nias, Nias language: Tanö Niha) (sometimes called Little Sumatra in English) is an island located off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Nias is also the name of the archipelago (Kepulauan Nias) of which the island is the centre, but also includes the Batu Islands to the south-east and the small Hinako Islands to the west.
Location of Nias, Indonesia Public domain
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland luncheon menu. Friday September 23rd, 1938 Commander P.M. Verstelle K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer Chineezenwuk in Oud-Batavia / Ancient Batavia – Chinatown April 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Holland menu. Friday September 23rd, 1938 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
Old Batavia, the Jewel of Asia
In its heydays in the 16th century, Batavia was known as “The Queen of the East” and “the Jewel of Asia”. Its Sunda Kelapa harbour was abuzz with merchant vessels from Europe, China, India and from throughout the Indonesian archipelago, loading in and sailing away with precious nutmegs, pepper, tea, coffee, ceramics, cloths and other exotic products of the time. The warehouses were stacked with spices, tin and copper. The successful trade in Batavia filled the coffers of the Netherland’s Treasury.
Center of the VOC Dutch East India Company’s administration was the Stadthuis with its wide front plaza, around which were the Court of Justice, banks and other important buildings. Later the city expanded to the west bank of the Ciliwung river, where the Dutch built a fortress, a city wall and canals, outside which was Chinatown and the homes of the indigenous people.
This entire area, covering 1.3 square kilometers is today called the Old Batavia, present day part of North and West Jakarta.
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland luncheon menu. Friday September 23rd, 1938 Commander P.M. Verstelle K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer Rustschuren in de Toradjalanden / Rice Barns in the Toradja Country April 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Holland menu. Friday September 23rd, 1938 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
The Torajans are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja (“Land of Toraja”). Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk (“the way”). The Indonesian government has recognised this animistic belief as Aluk To Dolo (“Way of the Ancestors”).
The word Toraja comes from the Buginese language term to riaja, meaning “people of the uplands”. The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colourful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland luncheon menu. Friday September 23rd, 1938 Commander P.M. Verstelle K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer Type van Timor Koepang / Timor Koepang Type April 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Holland menu. Friday September 23rd, 1938 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
Kupang (Indonesian: Kota Kupang, Indonesian pronunciation: [ˈkupaŋ]), formerly known as Koepang, is the capital of the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. At the 2020 Census, it had a population of 442,758; the official estimate as at mid 2022 was 468,913. It is the largest city and port on the island of Timor, and is a part of the Timor Leste – Indonesia – Australia Growth Triangle free trade zone. Geographically, Kupang is the southernmost city in Indonesia.
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland luncheon menu. Friday September 23rd, 1938 Commander P.M. Verstelle K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Rotogravure
A printing system using a rotary press with intaglio (a design incised or engraved into a material) cylinders, typically running at high speed and used for long print runs of magazines and stamps.
The rotogravure printing process (commonly shortened to gravure) is a method of intaglio printing. Gravure printing works by applying ink to a substrate with the use of a metal plate that is typically mounted onto a cylinder. This plate is often made of copper or chrome.
Diagram of rotogravure process CC BY-SA 3.0
Unknown photographer Heidengraf Te Samosir (Toba Meer – Sumatra) / Heathen Tomb at Samosir (Lake Toba – Sumatra) April 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Holland menu. Sunday September 25th, 1938 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
Samosir, or Samosir Island, is a large volcanic island in Lake Toba, located in the north of the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Administratively, Samosir Island is governed as six of the nine districts within Samosir Regency. The lake and island were formed after the eruption of a super volcano some 75,000 years ago.
Lake Toba (Indonesian: Danau Toba, Toba Batak; romanized: Tao Toba) is a large natural lake in North Sumatra, Indonesia, occupying the caldera of a super volcano. The lake is located in the middle of the northern part of the island of Sumatra, with a surface elevation of about 900 metres (2,953 ft), the lake stretches from 2.88°N 98.52°E to 2.35°N 99.1°E. The lake is about 100 kilometres (62 miles) long, 30 kilometres (19 mi) wide, and up to 505 metres (1,657 ft) deep. It is the largest lake in Indonesia and the largest volcanic lake in the world. Toba Caldera is one of twenty geoparks in Indonesia, and was recognised in July 2020 as one of the UNESCO Global Geoparks.
Bisajunisa Lake Toba, Samosir Island and the surrounding hills taken from Tele Samosir 17 February 2019
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland luncheon menu. Sunday September 25th, 1938 Commander P.M. Verstelle K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer Passer Te Fort de Kock (Sumatra) / Market at Fort De Kock (Sumatra) April 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Holland menu. Thursday September 29th, 1938 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
Fort de Kock was a 19th-century Dutch sconce fortification established over a hill in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra, Indonesia. Around the fortification, a new settlement grew, which eventually grew into the city of Bukittinggi, the second largest city in West Sumatra. Although the remnants of the mound and some cannons can still be seen, the original buildings on top of the sconce have been demolished.
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland luncheon menu. Thursday September 29th, 1938 Commander P.M. Verstelle K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer Vrouwen van Nias / Women of Nias Nd T.S.S. Nieuw Holland menu. Friday September 30th, 1938 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Single sheet recto
The Great Barrier Reef. T.S.S. “Nieuw Holland” September 30th, 1938 K.P.M. line Single sheet verso
Unknown photographer Early photograph of the newly built T.S.S. Nieuw Holland c. 1927-1928 Courtesy of Dr Reuben Goossens
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland, K.P.M. Line
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland was built for KPM (Koninklijke Paketvaart Mij) by the Nederlandsche Scheepsbouw Co (Netherlands Shipbuilding Co) in Amsterdam. She was launched on December 1, 1927. After her completion on April 20 1928, she headed for Asia and commenced regular services from Malaya, via Singapore, Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia), to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Nieuw Holland and her newer sister, T.S.S. Nieuw Zealand, maintained a regular service between Australia and Asia until the outbreak of the war. These two KPM sisters were regarded as two of the most graceful pre-war liners to operate between Australia and Asia, with their magnificently decorated lounges clad with fine timbers featuring elaborate carvings. Their external appearance gave them a casual tropical feel being pained all white and buff to yellow funnels.
In 1940, Nieuw Holland headed for Melbourne where she was modified to become a troop transport ship for up to 1,000 troops. Upon completion she joined the Royal Navy, but she continued to be operated by her Dutch crew. She and T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland joined regular convoys between Europe and the Middle East, although Nieuw Holland did operate in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean for a short time. Late in 1941, she received yet another modification but his time in the UK increasing her capacity up to 2,000 troops. Both T.S.S. Nieuw Holland and her sister T.S.S. Nieuw Zealand were part of the November 1942 invasion of North Africa.
Specifications
Built: 1928 by Nederlandsche Scheepsbouw Co, Amsterdam – Yard 187 Engines: 2 Stork steam turbines – 7.500 SHP Propeller: One Speed: 15.5 knots Length: 160.60m – 527ft Width: 19.00m – 62.30ft Tonnage: 10.903 GRT – 1958 11.215 GRT Passengers: 123 First class – 50 Third class passengers 1958 – 155 all first class passengers Crew: 200 Troops: 1940 – 1,000. 1941 – 2,000
Unknown photographer Bataksche Vrouw / Batak Woman April 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Holland menu. Saturday October 1st, 1938 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
Batak is a collective term used to identify a number of closely related Austronesian ethnic groups predominantly found in North Sumatra, Indonesia, who speak Batak languages. The term is used to include the Karo, Pakpak, Simalungun, Toba, Angkola, and Mandailing ethnic groups. Which are related groups with distinct languages and traditional customs (adat).
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland luncheon menu. Saturday October 1st, 1938 Commander P.M. Verstelle K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer Danser van Tanimbar / Dancer from Tanimbar April 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Holland menu. Sunday October 2nd, 1938 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
The Tanimbar Islands, also called Timur Laut, are a group of about 65 islands in the Maluku province of Indonesia. The largest and most central of the islands is Yamdena; others include Selaru to the southwest of Yamdena, Larat and Fordata to the northeast, Maru and Molu to the north, and Seira, Wuliaru, Selu, Wotap and Makasar to the west. The Indonesian phrase timur laut means “east of the sea” or “northeast”.
Tanimbar Islands in the south of Maluku Islands
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland luncheon menu. Sunday October 2nd, 1938 Commander P.M. Verstelle K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer Prauwen in Oud Batavia / Praos in Ancient Batavia April 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Holland menu. Tuesday October 4th, 1938 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland dinner menu. Tuesday October 4th, 1938 Commander P.M. Verstelle K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer Prauwen in Oud Batavia / Fishing Craft in Ancient Batavia April 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Holland menu. Wednesday October 5th, 1938 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
T.S.S. Nieuw Holland luncheon menu. Wednesday October 5th, 1938 Commander P.M. Verstelle K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland
Unknown photographer Tempel Te Koeboetambahan (Bali) / Temple at Koeboetambahan (Bali) December 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland. Monday 2nd May, 1939 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
Kubutambahan is a district in the regency of Buleleng Timur in northern Bali, Indonesia. It contains a number of notable temples such as Pura Meduwe Karang which have been painted in recent years.
T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland luncheon menu. Monday 2nd May, 1939 Commander C.L. Van Dierendonck K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer KPM postcard of the T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland 1928-1939 Courtesy of Dr Reuben Goossens
T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland, KPM Line
T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland was launched on January 6 1928 and was completed on April 12 1928. She departed Rotterdam and headed for Asia where she commenced regular services from Malaya, via Singapore, Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia), to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Like her sister the T.S.S. Nieuw Holland, she maintained a regular service between Australia and Asia until the outbreak of the war. Her external appearance had that tropical look which was unusual for that time being pained all white and with her twin buff to yellow funnels. In 1935 due to engine problems, she was fitted with a new set of more efficient turbines at Mij Fijenoord in Rotterdam.
In 1940, with the war having commenced the SS Nieuw Zeeland was stripped of her passenger fittings and refitted into a troop ship in Singapore to accommodate up to 1000 troops and just a small number of passengers. She, like her sister the Nieuw Holland was handed over to the British Royal Navy, but the Dutch crew continued to serve onboard with an additional 43 members. She joined convoys sailing to the Middle East and Europe. Then in 1942 SS Nieuw Zealand was involved in “Operation Torch” being the invasion of North Africa, however, after she had disembarked her troops successfully and was heading homeward and sailing in the Mediterranean, she was suddenly tragically torpedoed by a German U-Boat, number U407, on November 11, 1942, in position 3557′ N-03° E.. With the damage being severe she sunk reasonably fast, but most on board were able to get off the ship, although there were 15 lives lost due to the torpedo explosions and subsequent fires.
Specifications
Built: 1927 by Rotterdamsche DD Mij. Rotterdam – Yard 142c Engines: 2 x Geared Steam Turbines by Mij Fijennoord – 8,000 SHP Propeller: One Speed: 15.5 knots Length: 160.60m – 527ft Width: 19.00m – 62.30ft Tonnage: 10.906 GRT Passengers: 123 First class – 50 Third class passengers Crew: 200 As a Troop ship in 1940 Troops: 1,000 Passengers: 14 Crew: 243
Unknown photographer Raksassa Te Sanoer (Bali) / Temple Guard at Sanoer (Bali) December 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland. Friday 26th May, 1939 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
Sanur is a seaside town in the southeast of the island of Bali, in Indonesia. Its long stretch of beach offers shallow waters. Colourful jukung fishing boats rest on the sand, backed by a paved cycling path. The Pura Blanjong temple is built from coral and has inscriptions dating from the 10th century. Sanoer is a popular tourist destination thanks to its monuments and memorials.
T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland luncheon menu. Friday 26th May, 1939 Commander C.L. Van Dierendonck K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer Lègong-Meisje (Bali) / Lègong Girl (Bali) December 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland. Sunday 26th May, 1939 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland luncheon menu. Friday 26th May, 1939 Commander C.L. Van Dierendonck K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer Tempel Te Koeboetambahan (Bali) / Temple at Koeboetambahan (Bali) December 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland. Sunday 28th May, 1939 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland luncheon menu. Sunday 28th May, 1939 Commander C.L. Van Dierendonck K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer Nias-Kruger / Nias’ Warrior December 1938 T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland. Wednesday 31st May, 1939 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
T.S.S. Nieuw Zeeland luncheon menu. Wednesday 31st May, 1939 Commander C.L. Van Dierendonck K.P.M. line Bifold pamphlet interior
T.S.S. Op Ten Noort
Unknown photographer Oude Balinees / Old Type of Bali December 1938 ss. “op ten NOORT”. Thursday 8th June 1939 K.P.M. line Rotogravure De Unie Bifold pamphlet recto
ss. “op ten NOORT” DINNER a la Carte menu. Thursday 8th June 1939 K.P.M.. line Bifold pamphlet interior
Unknown photographer T.S.S. Op Ten Noort at Circular Quay, Sydney Nd Australian National Maritime Museum Object no. ANMS0047[155]
T.S.S. Op Ten Noort was a 6,076 ton Dutch merchant ship built in 1927 for the Dutch Royal Packet Steam Navigation Company (KPM). It was based in Batavia, Java. The vessel arrived in Sydney on 4 January 1936 and berthed at West Circular Quay, departing just over two weeks later on 20 January.
In 1941, during World War II, Op Ten Noort was taken over by the Royal Netherlands Navy and was refitted as a hospital ship. The vessel was bombed by Japanese aircraft in 1942 and soon after being repaired it came under Japanese control and was renamed Tenno Maru, operating for the Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Company. In 1944, it was yet again renamed Hikawa Maru and was still used as a hospital ship.
The vessel was scuttled in August 1945 at Wakasa Bay. In 1953, the Dutch Government lodged a claim against the Japanese Government for 700 million yen as compensation. The Japanese Government paid about 100 million yen in compensation to the Dutch Government in 1978.
Text from the Australian National Maritime Museum Flickr website
KPM registered the ship at Batavia, Dutch East Indies, where the company was headquartered. Her code letters were TFCQ. She began her maiden voyage on November 9, 1927. She joined Plancius on the route from Singapore to Tanjung Priok via Bangkok, Saigon, Manila, the Maluku Islands, and Bali. In later years, KPM transferred Plancius and Op Ten Noort to serve the east coast of Java, from Batavia to Deli Serdang Regency via Muntok, Singapore and Belawan.
Her first class cabins each had one or two berths. Her first class public areas included lounges, bars, a smoking room, and a tropical verandah. In 1933 part of her first class accommodation was converted into two two-person de luxe suites with lounge, bedroom, two bathrooms, and private deck (veranda). She had 18 second class cabins, which had either two or four berths. Deck passengers were accommodated on her tween deck, which had a lounge and a cafeteria. In 1934 the call sign PKEA superseded her code letters.
Unknown photographer T.S.S. “Op ten Noort” of the KPM as a passenger ship Nd Public Domain
Unknown photographer T.S.S. Op Ten Noort, photo taken late twenties early thirties(?), probably in port of Belawan (Medan), Dutch East Indies c. late 1920s-1930s Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Shiba Temple, Japan c. 1870 Albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
After the latest burst of exhibition postings there seems to be a paucity of exhibitions that I would like to post on until the end of the year… and as I have been pushing it pretty hard lately and not feeling so well (needing a hip replacement), now is the time to take things a little easier.
While the photographs taken by Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried of Japanese culture and landscape portray a Western, romanticised, exoticised, staged and persistently Eurocentric view of Japan (linked to Edward Said’s concept of “Orientalism” which denotes the exaggeration of difference, the presumption of Western superiority, and the application of clichéd analytical models for perceiving the “Oriental”, namely those societies and peoples who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East world) … there is no doubting the sheer beauty of some of the photographs and the dignity of the sitters.
As such the photographs remain valuable documents of a time far removed from present day Japan but linking Japanese culture to long past ancestors and ways of life.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) The Ford at Sakawa Nagawa, Japan c. 1870 Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Ferry boat, Japan c. 1870 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Miyanoshita Onsen, Japan c. 1870 Albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Garden, Japan c. 1870 Albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Single-storied Pagoda, Hachiman Shrine, Kamakura 1867-1868 Albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative Getty Center Public domain
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Samurai of the Satsuma Clan, during the Boshin War period (1868-1869) 1860s Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative Public domain
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Noble in dress, Japan c. 1870 Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Koboto Santaro, a Japanese military commander, wearing traditional armour c. 1868 Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative Wellcome Library Public domain
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Samurai, Yokohama 1864-1865 Albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative Gilman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art Purchase, Robert Rosenkranz Gift 2005
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Buddhist Priests 1870s Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Barbers 1868 Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative Getty Center Public domain
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Mukojima, Tokyo 1870s Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Mukojima, Tokyo 1870s Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) Uyeno Park, Tokyo 1870s Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Felice Beato
Felice Beato (1832-1909), also known as Felix Beato, was an Italian-British photographer. He was one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. He is noted for his genre works, portraits, and views and panoramas of the architecture and landscapes of Asia and the Mediterranean region. Beato’s travels gave him the opportunity to create images of countries, people, and events that were unfamiliar and remote to most people in Europe and North America. His work provides images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War, and represents the first substantial body of photojournalism. He influenced other photographers, and his influence in Japan, where he taught and worked with numerous other photographers and artists, was particularly deep and lasting.
Early life and identity
A death certificate discovered in 2009 shows that Beato was born in Venice in 1832 and died on 29 January 1909 in Florence. The death certificate also indicates that he was a British subject and a bachelor. It is likely that early in his life Beato and his family moved to Corfu, at the time part of the British protectorate of the Ionian Islands, and so Beato was a British subject.
Because of the existence of a number of photographs signed “Felice Antonio Beato” and “Felice A. Beato”, it was long assumed that there was one photographer who somehow photographed at the same time in places as distant as Egypt and Japan. In 1983 it was shown by Chantal Edel that “Felice Antonio Beato” represented two brothers, Felice Beato and Antonio Beato, who sometimes worked together, sharing a signature. The confusion arising from the signatures continues to cause problems in identifying which of the two photographers was the creator of a given image.
Japan
By 1863 Beato had moved to Yokohama, Japan, joining Charles Wirgman, with whom he had travelled from Bombay to Hong Kong. The two formed and maintained a partnership called “Beato & Wirgman, Artists and Photographers” during the years 1864-1867, one of the earliest and most important commercial studios in Japan. Wirgman again produced illustrations derived from Beato’s photographs, while Beato photographed some of Wirgman’s sketches and other works. (Beato’s photographs were also used for engravings within Aimé Humbert’s Le Japon illustré and other works.) Beato’s Japanese photographs include portraits, genre works, landscapes, cityscapes, and a series of photographs documenting the scenery and sites along the Tōkaidō Road, the latter series recalling the ukiyo-e [17th-19th century woodblock prints and paintings] of Hiroshige and Hokusai. During this period, foreign access to (and within) the country was greatly restricted by the Tokugawa shogunate. Accompanying ambassadorial delegations and taking any other opportunities created by his personal popularity and close relationship with the British military, Beato reached areas of Japan where few westerners had ventured, and in addition to conventionally pleasing subjects sought sensational and macabre subject matter such as heads on display after decapitation. His images are remarkable not only for their quality, but also for their rarity as photographic views of Edo period Japan.
The greater part of Beato’s work in Japan contrasted strongly with his earlier work in India and China, which “had underlined and even celebrated conflict and the triumph of British imperial might”. Aside from the Portrait of Prince Kung, any appearances of Chinese people in Beato’s earlier work had been peripheral (minor, blurred, or both) or as corpses. With the exception of his work in September 1864 as an official photographer on the British military expedition to Shimonoseki, Beato was eager to portray Japanese people, and did so uncondescendingly, even showing them as defiant in the face of the elevated status of westerners.
Beato was very active while in Japan. In 1865 he produced a number of dated views of Nagasaki and its surroundings. From 1866 he was often caricatured in Japan Punch, which was founded and edited by Wirgman. In an October 1866 fire that destroyed much of Yokohama, Beato lost his studio and many, perhaps all, of his negatives.
While Beato was the first photographer in Japan to sell albums of his works, he quickly recognised their full commercial potential. By around 1870 their sale had become the mainstay of his business. Although the customer would select the content of earlier albums, Beato moved towards albums of his own selection. It was probably Beato who introduced to photography in Japan the double concept of views and costumes / manners, an approach common in photography of the Mediterranean. By 1868 Beato had readied two volumes of photographs, “Native Types”, containing 100 portraits and genre works, and “Views of Japan”, containing 98 landscapes and cityscapes.
Many of the photographs in Beato’s albums were hand-coloured, a technique that in his studio successfully applied the refined skills of Japanese watercolourists and woodblock printmakers to European photography.
Since about the time of the ending of his partnership with Wirgman in 1869, Beato attempted to retire from the work of a photographer, instead attempting other ventures and delegating photographic work to others within his own studio in Yokohama, “F. Beato & Co., Photographers”, which he ran with an assistant named H. Woollett and four Japanese photographers and four Japanese artists. Kusakabe Kimbei was probably one of Beato’s artist-assistants before becoming a photographer in his own right. These other ventures failed, but Beato’s photographic skills and personal popularity ensured that he could successfully return to work as a photographer.
In 1871 Beato served as official photographer with the United States naval expedition of Admiral Rodgers to Korea. Although it is possible that an unidentified Frenchman photographed Korea during the 1866 invasion of Ganghwa Island, Beato’s photographs are the earliest of Korea whose provenance is clear.
Beato’s business ventures in Japan were numerous. He owned land and several studios, was a property consultant, had a financial interest in the Grand Hotel of Yokohama, and was a dealer in imported carpets and women’s bags, among other things. He also appeared in court on several occasions, variously as plaintiff, defendant, and witness. On 6 August 1873 Beato was appointed Consul General for Greece in Japan.
In 1877 Beato sold most of his stock to the firm Stillfried & Andersen, who then moved into his studio. In turn, Stillfried & Andersen sold the stock to Adolfo Farsari in 1885. Following the sale to Stillfried & Andersen, Beato apparently retired for some years from photography, concentrating on his parallel career as a financial speculator and trader. On 29 November 1884 he left Japan, ultimately landing in Port Said, Egypt. It was reported in a Japanese newspaper that he had lost all his money on the Yokohama silver exchange.
Death and legacy
Although Beato was previously believed to have died in Rangoon or Mandalay in 1905 or 1906, his death certificate, discovered in 2009, indicates that he died on 29 January 1909 in Florence, Italy.
Whether acknowledged as his own work, sold as Stillfried & Andersen’s, or encountered as anonymous engravings, Beato’s work had a major impact:
For over fifty years into the early twentieth century, Beato’s photographs of Asia constituted the standard imagery of travel diaries, illustrated newspapers, and other published accounts, and thus helped shape “Western” notions of several Asian societies.
Photographic techniques
Photographs of the 19th century often now show the limitations of the technology used, yet Beato managed to successfully work within and even transcend those limitations. He predominantly produced albumen silver prints from wet collodion glass-plate negatives.
Beato pioneered and refined the techniques of hand-colouring photographs and making panoramas. He may have started hand-colouring photographs at the suggestion of Wirgman, or he may have seen the hand-coloured photographs made by partners Charles Parker and William Parke Andrew. Whatever the inspiration, Beato’s coloured landscapes are delicate and naturalistic and his coloured portraits, more strongly coloured than the landscapes, are appraised as excellent.
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Akindo, Japan c. 1870 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Middle-class Woman, Japan c-1870 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Obasan, Japan c. 1870 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Japanese man in armour 1881 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative Art and Design Library Public domain
A portrait of a Japanese soldier from the waist up. He is standing facing his left whilst wearing ornate armour consisting of a chest plate and chainmail undershirt. His hair is swept back and is dressed in a topknot.
This item is part of a collection of prints from the studio of Baron Franz von Stillfried-Ratenicz, an Austrian photographer practising in Japan in the late 1870’s. Von Stillfried ran a studio in Yokohama at the same time as his brother Raimund, who was also known as ‘Baron Stillfried’. This caused a great deal of confusion with the local residents and visitors to Japan in the Meiji Period, and with art historians today.
This album, which dates from 1879-1883, comprises 67 separate mounted prints presented in a lacquerware box. Albums of this kind were popular among foreign tourists, who frequently selected the individual prints they wished to include from the studio’s collection. Many of these albumen prints were hand tinted. This was a laborious process for which von Stillfried employed, at the height of his success, a substantial number of Japanese workers.
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Woman, Japan c. 1870 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Baron Raimund von Stillfried, also known as Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Rathenitz (6 August 1839, in Komotau – 12 August 1911, in Vienna), was an Austrian photographer.
He was son of Baron (Freiherr) August Wilhelm Stillfried von Rathenitz (d. 1806) and Countess Maria Anna Johanna Theresia Walburge Clam-Martinitz (1802-1874).
After leaving his military career, Stillfried moved to Yokohama, Japan and opened a photographic studio called Stillfried & Co. which operated until 1875. In 1875, Stillfried formed a partnership with Hermann Andersen and the studio was renamed, Stillfried & Andersen (also known as the Japan Photographic Association). This studio operated until 1885. In 1877, Stillfried & Andersen bought the studio and stock of Felice Beato. In the late 1870s, Stillfried visited and photographed in Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Greece. In addition to his own photographic endeavours, Stillfried trained many Japanese photographers. In 1886, Stillfried sold the majority of his stock to his protégé, the Japanese photographer Kusakabe Kimbei, he then left Japan.
He left Japan forever in 1881. After travelling to Vladivostock, Hong Kong and Bangkok, he eventually settled in Vienna in 1883. He also received an Imperial and Royal Warrant of Appointment as photographer (k.u.k. Hof-Photograph).
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Hodo Falls at Nikko, Tochigi between 1871 and 1885 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative Rijksmuseum Public domain
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Group of men, Japan c. 1870 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Minzoku, Japan c. 1870 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Umbrella maker, Japan c. 1870 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Pipe maker, Japan c. 1870 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Japanese woman on her head between 1871 and 1885 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative Rijksmuseum Public domain
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Portrait of two Buddhist monks with rosary, bell and slit drum c. 1875 Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative Rijksmuseum Public domain
Kusakabe Kimbei (Japanese, 1841-1934) and Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Japanese Tattoo between 1870 and 1899 Height: 26cm (10.2 in) Width: 20cm (7.8 in) Getty Center Public domain
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Fille de Sootchow (Suzhou Girl) 1870s Albumen silver print from glass negative with applied colour Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection Museum Purchase 2005
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Portrait of an Old Chinese Woman 1870s Albumen silver print from glass negative with applied colour Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection Museum Purchase 2005
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Courios Shop c. 1875 Hand-coloured albumen silver print from glass negative Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Old beggar 1870s Albumen silver print from glass negative with applied colour Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection Museum Purchase 2005
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Double portrait c. 1880 Albumen silver print from glass negative with applied colour
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Untitled (Accountant with newspaper and his servant with folding fan) 1870s Albumen silver print from glass negative with applied colour
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Portrait of Irezumi Tattooed man – Post Runner 1880-1890 Albumen silver print from glass negative with applied colour
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Young Lady c. 1875 From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876 Hand-coloured albumen silver photograph 23.8 × 19.1cm La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) and Uchida Kuichi (Japanese, 1844-1875) Untitled [The Fishmonger] 1870s Hand-coloured albumen silver photograph
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Sleeping beauties 1876 From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876 Hand-coloured albumen silver print from glass negative Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Hairdressing 1876 From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876 Hand-coloured albumen silver print from glass negative Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Tomiyoka 1876 From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876 Albumen silver print from glass negative Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Komagatake Volcano 1876 From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876 Albumen silver print from glass negative Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Ainu Village 1876 From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876 Albumen silver print from glass negative Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Odji Teahouse 1876 From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876 Albumen silver print from glass negative Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Views of Nagasaki, Japan 1876 From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876 Albumen silver print from glass negative Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) Views of Tokyo, Japan 1876 From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876 Albumen silver print from glass negative Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria
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![Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Man with buttonhole posy]' Nd](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ck18-228.jpg "Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Man with buttonhole posy]' Nd")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) [Farmer, Westerwald (Bauer, Westerwald)] 1910](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/sander-farmer.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) [Farmer, Westerwald (Bauer, Westerwald)] 1910")
![Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Couple]' Nd](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ck18-218.jpg "Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Couple]' Nd")
![Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Nurse, group of children and candles]' Nd](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ck18-180.jpg "Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Nurse, group of children and candles]' Nd")
![Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Man and dog]' Nd](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ck18-142.jpg "Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Man and dog]' Nd")
![Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Three women, sheep and dog]' Nd](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ck18-138.jpg "Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Three women, sheep and dog]' Nd")
![Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Two heavy horses, two men and a plough]' Nd](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ck18-076.jpg "Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Two heavy horses, two men and a plough]' Nd")
![Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Two men with pipes, bicycles and dog]' Nd](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ck18-070.jpg "Richard Jenkins (British, 1890-1964) 'Untitled [Two men with pipes, bicycles and dog]' Nd")
![Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) and Uchida Kuichi (Japanese, 1844-1875) 'Untitled [The Fishmonger]' 1870s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/stillfried-and-kuichi-the-fishmonger.jpg "Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) and Uchida Kuichi (Japanese, 1844-1875) 'Untitled [The Fishmonger]' 1870s")
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