Modelbau Schaarschmidt, Berlin Pan American World Airways Boeing 377 Stratocruiser model aircraft (detail) 1950s Scale 1:72 Metal, paint, decals SFO Museum Gift of Constance Ogilvie
Continuing the aeronautical theme, a selection of gorgeous photographs of model aircraft from the SFO Museum, mainly details from the intricate and beautiful models. The man and the shadow he casts atop the enormous Hughes H-4 Hercules (Spruce Goose) flying boat is just delightful.
I hope to post on all of these exhibitions in the near future.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Chad Anderson and the SFO Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation views of the exhibition Model Aircraft at SFO Museum, San Francisco International Airport
Model aircraft play a unique role in the imagination of aviation enthusiasts of all ages. They help contextualise the heroic stories and technological triumphs of flight. In many cases, the original aircraft are lost to history, but these small-scale representations remain as a reminder of that innovative past. The processes and materials employed by model makers are as varied as the aviation industry itself. This essay of images focuses on select examples from the more than two thousand models held in the collection of SFO Museum. We hope the enlargement of details provides an opportunity to return our gaze to the art of the model makers, which can be easily overlooked when focusing on the these historical recreations.
For more exhibitions featuring material from the collection of SFO Museum, visit the nearby San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation Library and Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum. The facility, an architectural adaptation of the Airport’s 1930s passenger lobby, is located pre-security and just minutes away on the departures level of the International Terminal. Exhibitions, research services, and educational programs are offered to the public free of charge with daily operating hours of 10.00 am to 4.30 pm, closed holidays. SFO Museum The mission of SFO Museum is to delight, engage, and inspire a global audience with programming on a broad range of subjects; to collect, preserve, interpret, and share the history of commercial aviation; and to enrich the public experience at San Francisco International Airport. SFO Museum programs more than thirty galleries throughout the terminals with a rotating schedule of art, history, science, and cultural exhibitions. To browse current and past exhibitions, research the collection, or for more information about the program, please visit the SFO Museum website.
Text from the SFO Museum
Modelbau Schaarschmidt, Berlin Pan American World Airways Boeing 377 Stratocruiser model aircraft (detail) 1950s Scale 1:72 Metal, paint, decals SFO Museum Gift of Constance Ogilvie
Pan American World Airways Boeing 377 Stratocruiser 1950s
The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was a long range double-deck airliner that first flew on 8 July 1947. Entering service on 1 April 1949 with Pan American, it was also operated by BOAC, Northwest Orient Airlines, United Airlines and American Overseas Airlines.
Seating generally between 50 and 75 passengers, the pressurised Stratocruiser featured sleeping berths for longer flights. Just 56 aircraft were produced, with Pan Am retiring the last one in 1961.
PAN AM AIRLINES INTRODUCES THE BOEING STRATOCRUISER
Edward Chavez (1917-2004) Granville Gee Bee Model R-1 Super Sportster model aircraft 1965 Scale 1:10 Fibreglass, balsa wood, metal, acrylic, rubber, paint SFO Museum
Edward Chavez (1917-2004) Granville Gee Bee Model R-1 Super Sportster model aircraft 1965 Scale 1:10 Polychrome fiberglass, balsa wood, metal, acrylic, rubber, paint SFO Museum
Granville Gee Bee Model R-1 Super Sportster aircraft 1965
A.C. Rehberger Company, Chicago United Air Lines Douglas DC-3 model aircraft (shield logo detail) c. 1937 Scale 1:50 Metal, enamel, paint, plastic, decals SFO Museum
H-4 Hercules “Spruce Goose” November 2, 1947 Public domain
Jim Lund Hughes H-4 Hercules (Spruce Goose) flying boat model aircraft (detail) 2002 Plastic, epoxy, resin, metal, paint Scale 1:72 SFO Museum Gift of Jim Lund
H-4 Hercules “Spruce Goose” on its only flight November 2, 1947 Public domain
Jones-Bause & Company, Los Angeles United Air Lines Douglas DC-8 cutaway model (interior detail) Late 1950s Scale 1:10 Metal, wood, paint, plastic, ink SFO Museum Gift of the Rollison Family
Modelbau Schaarschmidt, Berlin Northwest Orient Airlines Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation 1950 Paint, metal Scale 1:50 SFO Museum
Modelbau Schaarschmidt, Berlin Northwest Orient Airlines Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation model aircraft (detail) 1950s Paint, metal Scale 1:50 SFO Museum
Edward Chavez (1917-2004) U.S. Army Air Corps Boeing P-26A model aircraft 1972 Scale 1:10 Polychrome fibreglass, balsa wood, metal, acrylic, rubber, paint SFO Museum
Edward Chavez (1917-2004) U.S. Army Air Corps Boeing P-26A (Peashooter) model aircraft 1972 Scale 1:10 Polychrome fiberglass, balsa wood, metal, acrylic, rubber, paint SFO Museum
Martin Čížek Boeing P-26A Peashooter of the 34th Pursuit Squadron 17th Pursuit Group 1933-1936 (production run) CC BY-SA 4.0
The Boeing P-26 “Peashooter” was the first American all-metal production fighter aircraft and the first pursuit monoplane to enter squadron service with the United States Army Air Corps. Designed and built by Boeing, the prototype first flew in 1932, and the type was still in use with the U.S. Army Air Corps as late as 1941 in the Philippines. There are only two surviving Peashooters, but there are three reproductions on exhibit with two more under construction.
Deliveries to USAAC pursuit squadrons began in December 1933 with the last production P-26C aircraft coming off the assembly line in 1936. Ultimately, 22 squadrons flew the Peashooter, with peak service being six squadrons, in 1936. P-26s were the frontline fighters of the USAAC until 1938, when Seversky P-35s and Curtiss P-36s began to replace the P-26. A total of twenty P-26s were lost in accidents between 1934 and America’s entry into World War II on 7 December 1941, but only five before 1940.
Pan American Airways Sikorsky S-43 Baby Clipper amphibian model aircraft (detail) 1930s Scale 1:48 Wood, paint SFO Museum Gift of the Captain John B. Russell Family
Bill Larkins Sikorsky S-43 Baby Clipper 1938 CC BY-SA 2.0
This 12-passenger amphibian was owned by William K. Vanderbilt of New York City when it was photographed at Oakland, CA, in 1938
Pan American Airways Sikorsky S-42 flying boat model aircraft (detail) 1934 Scale 1:30 Wood, metal, paint SFO Museum
United Technologies Corporation One-quarter left front view of Pan American Airways Sikorsky S-42 “Pan American Clipper” (r/n NR-823M; c/n 4201) in flight over San Francisco Bay on its way to Hawaii. San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge construction is visible c. 1934 National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution Public domain
Delivered: December 1934 Left service: August 7, 1944
West Indies Clipper. Later renamed Pan American Clipper & surveyed trans-Pacific route, then re-named Hong Kong Clipper (1937). Sank at Antilla, Cuba.
Pan American Airways Sikorsky S-42 flying boat model aircraft (detail) 1934 Scale 1:30 Wood, metal, paint SFO Museum
SFO Museum San Francisco International Airport P.O. Box 8097 San Francisco, CA 94128 USA Phone: 650.821.6700
Exhibition dates: 26th June – 27th October, 2019 Visited September 2019 posted August 2020
Curators: Matthieu Rivallin and Pia Viewing
Entrance to the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours Photo: Marcus Bunyan
equilibrist, noun: an acrobat who performs balancing feats, especially a tightrope walker.
Part 1 of a large posting on the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours, which I saw in Tours in September 2019.
This was the most disappointing of the “grand master” exhibitions that I saw on my European photographic research tour, mainly because the photographs were all modern prints, and there seemed to be a lot of “filler” in the exhibition – namely, reproductions of late book layouts scattered generously throughout the rooms (see installation photographs below).
Having said that, it was still a great joy to see Kertész’s photographs, especially some of the photographs which are hard to find online. Here are images such as Görz, Italy 1915 and Abony 1921 which I have never seen before, together with rare Paris images such as Attelage, Paris 1925; Wooden horse, Paris c. 1926; The Quays after the rain, Paris 1963; Behind Notre-Dame, Paris 1925; Paris 1931; Legs, Paris 1928; Study of lines and shadow 1927 and Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, Savoie 1929 – none of which have been available in a large size online before.
Together with the three intense, brooding, suspended still life (The Fork, Paris 1928; Composition, Paris 1928 and Glasses and Pipe of Mondrian, Paris 1926) and the sublime, modernist Chez Mondrian, Paris 1926, one of the most outstanding photographs in the posting, and one of Kertész’s most famous images, is Burlesque dancer, Paris 1926. The circular tensioning of the image is immaculate. The form of the twisting male torso at left with its upraised right hand leads the eye to the drawing at top centre, which then descends to the framed female form at right which inverts the male form with the right hand of the female now raised. The eye then descends to the reclining dancer, the zig-zag arms and legs perfectly composed, her left hand touching the ground like the Bhumisparsha mudra which symbolises the Buddha’s enlightenment under the bodhi tree, when he summoned the earth goddess (quite apt) … while her left leg completes the circle, pointing towards the twisting legs of the male statue. The split of the male legs are reinforced by those in the female print, and complimented by the exquisite folds of the dancers silky dress, unnoticed until you really look at the print.
I will comment more comprehensively in Part 2 of the posting on Kertész’s Leica-ed world.
Exposition “L’équilibriste, André Kertész” au Jeu de Paume, Tours
Entrance to the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours, with a poster of Rainy Day, Tokyo 1968 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Entrance text to the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours with at left top, Friends, Esztergom 1917; at left bottom, Little geese, Esztergom 1918; at second left, Hungarian landscape 1914; at fifth left, Abony 1921; at seventh left, Young Gypsy 1918; at second right, Traveling violinist, Abony 1921 and at far right, Cellist 1916 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Les Amis, Esztergom (installation view) Friends, Esztergom 1917 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Petites oies, Esztergom (installation view) Little geese, Esztergom 1918 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Paysage hongrois (installation view) Hungarian landscape 1914 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Paysage hongrois (installation view) Hungarian landscape 1914 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Abony (installation view) 1921 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Abony (installation view) 1921 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Jeune Tzigane (installation view) Young Gypsy 1918 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Violoncelliste (installation view) Cellist 1916 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours with at left, Lovers, Budapest 1915 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Hungarian Memories (installation view) 1982 New York, New York Graphic Society / Boston, Little, Brown and Company Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Lovers, Budapest 1915 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Garçon endormi, Budapest (installation view) Sleeping boy, Budapest 1912 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Mon frère imitant le “scherzo” (installation view) My brother as a “Scherzo” 1919 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Mon frère imitant le “scherzo” My brother as a “Scherzo” 1919 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Mon frère tel Icare, Dunaharaszti (installation view) My brother like Icarus, Dunaharaszti 1919 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Mon frère tel Icare, Dunaharaszti (installation view) My brother like Icarus, Dunaharaszti 1919 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Text from the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Hungarian Memories (installation view) 1982 New York, New York Graphic Society Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours with at centre bottom, Görz, Italy 1915, and at far right, Forced march towards the front1915 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Görz, Italy (installation view) 1915 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Marche forcée vers le front, entre Lonié et Mitulen, Pologne (installation view) Forced march towards the front, between Lonie and Mitulen, Poland 1915 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours with at left, Meudon 1928 at second right top, Quai d’Orsay, Paris 1926 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Meudon 1928 Gelatin silver print
Text from the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Quai d’Orsay, Paris 1926 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours with at left, Attelage, Paris 1925; at second left, 60 years of photography 1912-1972; and at fifth left, Trottoir, Paris 1929 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Attelage, Paris (installation view) Coupling, Paris 1925 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Soixante ans de photographie (installation view) 60 years of photography 1912-1972 Paris, éditions du Chêne, 1972 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Trottoir, Paris Sidewalk, Paris 1929 Gelatin silver print
Installation views of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours with at second left, Cheval de bois, Paris c. 1926; and at third left, Colette, Paris 1930. In the display cabinet is Marquette originale du livre non publié ‘Paris Automne’ December 1963 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Marquette originale du livre non publié ‘Paris Automne’ (installation view) Original maquette from the unpublished book ‘Paris Automne’ December 1963 Collection Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Cheval de bois, Paris (installation view) Wooden horse, Paris c. 1926 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Colette, Paris 1930 Gelatin silver print
This summer at the Jeu de Paume Château de Tours, the retrospective exhibition The equilibrist, André Kertész: 1912-1982 is dedicated to the great Hungarian naturalised American photographer (1894-1985). His work was in tune with his life and his feelings: from his beginnings in Hungary to the development of his talent in France, from his years of isolation in New York to his international recognition.
A major player in the Parisian artistic scene during the interwar period, André Kertész, whose career spanned more than seventy years, is today recognised as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. His abundant work, with compositions marked by the European avant-garde – especially from Eastern Europe – finds its source in his Hungarian culture, which combines poetry and intimacy.
His beginnings in his native country are an important step for this autodidact whose realistic approach differs from the pictorial-influenced fine art photography dear to the Hungarian photographers of his generation. Enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War, he depicts the daily life of soldiers and develops a poetry of the moment, far from heroic or dramatic acts of arms. After the war, he tried to make photography his profession.
In October 1925, he landed in Paris where he frequented avant-garde literary and artistic circles and photographed his friends from the Hungarian diaspora, the street scenes and the Parisian gardens. In France as in Germany, the press, in particular the magazine VU, orders reports and illustrations from him. From 1927, he had a personal exhibition at the Au Sacre du Printemps gallery. In 1933, he produced his famous series of Distortions which shows naked bodies reflected in a distorting mirror. This intense activity led him to design his own books; over the course of his life, he published nineteen of them, including Paris vu par André Kertész (1934).
In 1936, Kertész left for New York to honour a contract with the Keystone agency. However, he struggles to find his place in the face of sponsors with requests far removed from his Parisian years. A few exhibitions as well as the publication of Day of Paris (1945) were not enough to establish him as one of the main representatives of avant-garde photography in the United States. From 1963, the largest museums offered him the opportunity to exhibit his images. This recognition is accompanied by the publication of numerous books which allow him to review his work.
Produced from the collection of negatives and contact prints bequeathed by the photographer to France in 1984, The equilibrist, André Kertész is the fruit of the joint work of the Mediatheque of Architecture and Heritage, which preserves these archives today, and the Jeu de Paume. Consisting of around a hundred modern silver prints made in 1995 by Yvon Le Marlec, the shooter with whom Kertész collaborated in Paris, this exhibition revolves around the major books that the latter published during his lifetime. Through prints, original models and reproductions of pages from her works, she traces the close relationship that Kertész has forged throughout her life between her photographic and editorial practices, composing a visual narration that describes the interwar period in Europe and nearly fifty years in the United States.
Text from the Jeu de Paume website
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Les Quais après la pluie, Paris (installation view) The Quays after the rain, Paris 1963 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Les Quais après la pluie, Paris (installation view) The Quays after the rain, Paris 1963 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Derrière Notre-Dame, Paris (installation view) Behind Notre-Dame, Paris 1925 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Derrière Notre-Dame, Paris (installation view) Behind Notre-Dame, Paris 1925 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) La Tour Eiffel, Paris (installation view) Eiffel Tower, Paris 1929 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Le pont des arts, Paris The bridge of Arts, Paris 1932 Gelatin silver print
Installation views of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours with at left, Touraine 1930; at right top, Paris 1931; and at right bottom, Carrefour, Blois 1930 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Touraine (installation view) 1930 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Paris 1931 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Carrefour, Blois (installation view) 1930 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Carrefour, Blois 1930 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours with at left, La Fourchette, Paris 1928; at second left, Composition, Paris 1928; at second right, Les Lunettes et la Pipe de Mondrian, Paris 1926; and at right, Burlesque dancer, Paris 1926 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) La Fourchette, Paris (installation view) The Fork, Paris 1928 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) La Fourchette, Paris (installation view) The Fork, Paris 1928 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Composition, Paris (installation view) Les Mains de Paul Arma (The Hands of Paul Arma) 1928 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Composition, Paris (installation view) Les Mains de Paul Arma (The Hands of Paul Arma) 1928 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Composition, Paris Les Mains de Paul Arma (The Hands of Paul Arma) 1928 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Les Lunettes et la Pipe de Mondrian, Paris (installation view) Glasses and Pipe of Mondrian, Paris 1926 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Les Lunettes et la Pipe de Mondrian, Paris Glasses and Pipe of Mondrian, Paris 1926 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Danseuse burlesque, Paris (installation view) Burlesque dancer, Paris 1926 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Danseuse burlesque, Paris Burlesque dancer, Paris 1926 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours with at left, Legs, Paris 1928; at third left, Fun fair, Paris 1931; and at right, Latin Quarter, Paris 1926 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Jambes, Paris (installation view) Legs, Paris 1928 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Soixante ans de photographie (installation view) Sixty years of photography 1912-1972 Paris, éditions du Chêne, 1972
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Fête foraine, Paris Fun fair, Paris 1931 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Quartier Latin, Paris Latin Quarter, Paris 1926 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Chez Mondrian, Paris (installation views) 1926 Gelatin silver print Photos: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Chez Mondrian, Paris 1926 Gelatin silver print
“I went to [Piet Mondrian’s] studio and instinctively tried to capture in my photographs the spirit of his paintings. He simplified, simplified, simplified. The studio with its symmetry dictated the composition. He has a vase with a flower, but the flower was artificial. It was coloured by him to match the studio.” ~ André Kertész
Decades after this photograph was made, André Kertész recalled the circumstances surrounding its creation. The composition is neatly divided in half: on the left is the intimate interior of the room in which Kertész stood, showing Mondrian’s straw boater on a peg and a table with the flower mentioned above. The vase perches precariously near the edge of the table, as if Kertész moved it to include it in the photographic frame. On the right, seen through a doorway, the curving banister and stairs soften the profusion of right angles and straight lines in the foyer.
Text from the J. Paul Getty website [Online] Cited 27/09/2020
Although Mondrian imposed rigid geometric order on everything in the apartment, Kertész found deviations in the curves of the staircase, vase, and the round boater hat hanging on the rack. (The hat belonged to the photographer’s friend Michel Seuphor, a painter and writer who authored a book on Mondrian, who had accompanied Kertész to the studio.) This photograph has become one of Kertész’s most famous, although it was not published until 1943. It was known previously only through exhibitions, including Kertész’s first exhibition in 1927 at the Parisian gallery Au Sacre du Printemps.
Text from the Art Institute of Chicago website [Online] Cited 27/09/2020
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours with at second left, Chairs, Champs-Elysées, Paris, 1930; at centre top, Study of lines and shadow 1927; and at right, Peintre d’ombre, Paris 1926 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Chairs, Champs-Élysées, Paris 1929 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Étude de lignes et d’ombre (installation view) Study of lines and shadow 1927 Gelatin silver print
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, Savoie (installation view) 1929 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) Peintre d’ombre, Paris Shadow painter, Paris 1926 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition L’equilibriste, André Kertész at Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jeu de Paume at the Château de Tours 25 avenue André Malraux, 37000 Tours Phone: 02 47 70 88 46
Exhibition dates: 13th September – 4th December 2019 Visited September 2019 posted July 2020
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam Photo: Marcus Bunyan
These are my thoughts at the time of my seeing the exhibition.
I have been blessed this trip by seeing an amazing selection of master photographers… Brassaï being no exception.
Every print in this exhibition is a vintage print. They were made by Brassaï before 1968. If larger than 30 x 40cm they were made after 1945 when he started printing with an enlarger.
As usual, the iPhone camera makes all the images too light and adds too much contrast. Think darker, less contrast in these vintage prints.
Brassaï’s prints are – just like those of Josef Sudek and August Sander that I have seen on this trip – much softer and with a more limited tonal range than I imagined. They are all the more atmospheric and magical because of it.
To walk around the exhibition and then arrive at an alcove (see walk through below)… to stand in front of Le Môme Bijou, the old lady with the jewellery and Billiard Player, is such a privilege. I am surrounded by the presence of these famous images. I peer intently at each of them, observing the details, feeling their eyes stare back at me. No deflection of intent, just these human beings and their spirit presented in a photograph. Brassaï captured their essence before they drifted away, just in that moment.
In the latter print the dark billiard ball was almost indistinguishable from the baize; in the former, the circular light in the woman’s eyes means that Brassaï must have set up a light, or that there was a light source, above and behind the camera. Specular highlights twinkle off jewellery and pearls. Even as she is draped in her bourgeois, bohemian ornamentation this dame of the night possesses a resilient, composed, determined air.
Personally, I think Brassaï’s Graffiti series are far stronger than Lee Friedlander’s series of the same name.
The juxtaposition of the photographs in Paris at Night is something I will always remember.
The more scrupulously [the photographer] has respected the independence and autonomy of his subject, and the closer he has gone toward it instead of bringing it nearer to himself, the more completely his own personality has become incorporated into his pictures.
Brassaï
Foam is proud to present the first retrospective of Brassaï in the Netherlands. The French photographer of Hungarian descent is considered a key figure of 20th-century photography.
Brassaï (1899-1984) created countless iconic images of 1930s Parisian life. He was famous for capturing the grittier aspects of the city, but also documented high society, including the ballet, opera, and intellectuals – among them his friends and contemporaries like Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Henri Matisse. The exhibition at Foam traces his career with over 170 vintage prints, plus a selection of drawings, a sculpture and documentary material.
Brassaï gathers many of the artistic facets of the photographer, from photos to drawings of female nudes. It is organised in twelve thematic sections: Paris by Day, and by Night, Minotaure, Graffiti, Society, Places and Things, Personages, Sleep, Pleasures, Body of a Woman, Portraits – Artists, Writers, Friends and TheStreet. Each is very different from the next – reflecting the diversity of Brassaï’s photographic work.
Digital walk through of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam in September 2019
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing at second right in the bottom image, Brassaï’s Paris 1937, and at right Paris c. 1932 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris (installation view) c. 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris (installation view) 1937 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris (installation view) 1937 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Foam is proud to announce the first retrospective of Brassaï in the Netherlands. This French photographer of Hungarian descent is considered as one of the key figures of 20th-century photography. Brassaï (1899-1984) created countless iconic images of 1930s Parisian life. He was famous for capturing the grittier aspects of the city, but also documented high society, including the ballet, opera, and intellectuals – among them his friends and contemporaries like Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Henri Matisse. The exhibition at Foam traces his career with over 170 vintage prints, plus a selection of drawings, a sculpture and documentary material.
Gyula Halász, Brassaï’s original name, was born in 1899 in Brassó, Transylvania (then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, nowadays Brasov, Romania). He studied at the University of Arts in Berlin before finally settling in Paris in 1924, a city that was to become the main subject of his work. He started as a painter but soon discovered that his strongest and most original talent lay in photography. To keep his real name for his paintings, he signed journalistic work, caricatures and photographs with ‘Brassaï’ (from Brassó). His photos would make this pseudonym more famous than his real name. Brassaï’s work of the 1930s would become a cornerstone of a new tradition as photography was discovered as a medium with aesthetic potential. A generation earlier photographers had merely emulated the established arts. Now photography became an art in itself and the perfect medium to capture modern life.
The nocturnal scenes collected in his book Paris by Night (1933) are complemented by his work that reveals the everyday life of the city by day. The monuments, picturesque spots, scenes from daily life and architectural details are present in his work as a reflection of the irresistible fascination the artist felt for the French capital. In his quest to cover all of the facets of Paris, he also immersed himself in the city’s darker side. For Brassaï the gang members, outcasts, prostitutes and drug addicts all represented the least cosmopolitan aspect of Paris, an aspect that was more alive and more authentic. He compiled a huge collection of images of entertainment venues, ranging from night clubs to popular festivals and featuring the people who frequented them. Brassaï was deeply immersed in a wide circle of friends among the writers and artists of Montparnasse, who also became the subjects for some of his portraits. Most of the portraits taken by Brassaï were of well-known people, putting him into a very comfortable position. He collaborated with the luxury art magazine Minotaure right from its very first issue and enjoyed a prominent role for the publication over the years. After the war, he also travelled regularly on commissioned shoots for the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar.
The exhibition at Foam gathers many of the artistic facets of the photographer, from photos to drawings of female nudes. It is organised in twelve thematic sections: Paris by Day, and by Night, Minotaure, Graffiti, Society, Places and Things, Personages, Sleep, Pleasures, Body of a Woman, Portraits – Artists, Writers, Friends and TheStreet. Each is very different from the next – reflecting the diversity of Brassaï’s photographic work.
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Les Escaliers de Montmartre, Paris 1936 Gelatin silver print
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) La rue Quincampoix (installation view) c. 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) La rue Quincampoix (installation view) c. 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Pillar of the Elevated, Metro Glacière (installation view) 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Near the rue Mouffetard (installation view) c. 1945 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing in the lower image at centre, Brassaï’s Concierge’s Lodge, Paris, 1933 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Concierge’s Lodge, Paris (installation view) 1933 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Concierge’s Lodge, Paris (installation view) 1933 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Concierge’s Lodge, Paris 1933 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Lovers at the gare Saint Lazare (installation view) c. 1937 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Sunday Painter, avenue du Général Leclerc (installation view) 1946 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Sunday Painter, avenue du Général Leclerc (installation view) 1946 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Hôtel de la Belle Étoile (installation view) 1945 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) A Corpse on the Banks on the Seine (installation view) 1931 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Les Fétes de Paris: La Nuit Féerique de Longhamp 1937 In L’illustration, no. 4, 923 (July 10, 1937) 13. Rue Saint-Georges, Paris (9°) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Regards, no. 155 (December 31, 1936) Back cover Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing at at left, Brassaï’s Meat Porters, Les Halles c. 1935 and at second left, Au Cochon Limousin 1935 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Meat Porters, Les Halles (installation view) c. 1935 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Au Cochon Limousin (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Les Halles (installation view) 1930-1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Cesspool cleaners (installation view) c. 1931 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Paris de nuit / Paris at night
Brassaï had been making photographs for barely two years when luck and ambition brought him a contract for a book on nocturnal Paris. When Paris de nuit (Paris at Night) was published to acclaim in December 1932, “Brassaï” became a familiar name in the world of photography. The book’s rich photogravures, marginalises pages, and bold design made it an icon of modernity. Many of Brassaï’s best night picture were made after Paris de nuit appeared, however, and many of his greatest images of Parisian nightlife were not published until 1976.
In the self-portrait here we see Brassaï’s first camera, a Voigtländer Bergheil that used 6.5 x 9 cm glass plates one at a time. The long exposures of night photography – often five minutes or more – required a tripod, which Brassaï frequently used for other pictures as well. While much of the adventurous European photography of the 1920s and 1930s celebrated mobility and speed, spontaneity was alien to Brassaï’s sensibility. He favoured images that are sharp, deliberate, and stable.
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing a modern enlargement of Brassaï’s Morris Column, avenue de l’Observatoire 1934 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Morris Column, avenue de l’Observatoire (installation view) 1934 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing at right, Brassaï’s Self portrait, On the boulevard Saint-Jacques 1930-1932 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Self portrait, On the boulevard Saint-Jacques 1930-1932 Gelatin silver print
Voigtländer Bergheil Built in 1932 6.5 x 9cm negative Green
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing in the bottom image at left, Brassaï’s The Tour Saint-Jacques 1932-1933, and at third right View through the pont Royal toward the pont Solférino c. 1933 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) The Tour Saint-Jacques (installation view) 1932-1933 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) View through the pont Royal toward the pont Solférino c. 1933 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing at right, Brassaï’s Avenue de l’Observatoire in the Fog c. 1937 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Avenue de l’Observatoire in the Fog (installation view) c. 1937 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Avenue de l’Observatoire in the Fog c. 1937 Gelatin silver print
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris de Nuit (Paris at Night) pp. 9-10 1932 Book
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris de Nuit (Paris at Night) pp. 13-14 1932 Book
Digital flick through of Brassaï’s Paris de Nuit (Paris at Night) book 1932 Video: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris de Nuit (Paris at Night) pp. 19-20 (installation view) 1932 Book Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Minotaure, no. 7 (June 1935) Pages 24-25: Photographs by Brassaï, “Nuits parisiennes” (Parisian Nights) Pages 26-29: Photographs by Brassaï Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Portraits – artists, writers and friends
In Brassaï’s era, portraits and nudes were bread-and-butter genres for any professional photographer. As a portraitist Brassaï made a speciality of artists and writers, who often were his friends, and in 1982 he collected many of the best pictures in Les artistes de ma vie (The Artists of My Life), for which he also wrote the lively text. He excelled at two distinct types of portraiture: In one, the artist is framed by his environment – the studio. In the other, the subjects confronts the photographer frankly, and the setting hardly matters. In an undated note, Brassaï summed up his approach to the second type: “To oblige the model to behave as if the photographer isn’t there really is to stage a comic performance. What’s natural is precisely not to dodge the photographer’s presence. The natural thing in that situation is for the model to pose honestly.”
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing in the top photograph at right, Oskar Kokoschka in his Studio, Paris 1931-1932 (below) and in the bottom photograph at third right, Brassaï’s Kiki de Montparnasse and her Friends, Thérèse Treize and Lily c. 1932 (below) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Oskar Kokoschka in his Studio, Paris (installation view) 1931-1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Kiki de Montparnasse and her Friends, Thérèse Treize and Lily (installation view) c. 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing in the bottom photograph at left, Brassaï’s Jean Genet 1948 (below) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Jean Genet 1948 Gelatin silver print
Graffiti
The appreciation of graffiti as a powerful if anonymous art form began to blossom in the twentieth century. Like African tribal objects and the art of children, graffiti was admired as more expressive and vital than the refined forms of traditional Western art. Brassaï was among the first to embrace it. He was an inveterate magpie who collected all manner of neglected artefacts and natural specimens throughout his life. Virtually as soon as he began making photographs, he used the medium to collect the graffiti that appeared abundantly on the walls of Paris – predominantly images that had been scratched or gouged rather than drawn or painted and, as he pointed out, in which irregularities of the wall itself played a role. He compiled hundreds of these pictures, a small sample of which is presented here.
Minotaure
Between arriving in Paris in early 1924 and taking up photography six years later, Brassaï developed a wide circle of friends among the international community of artists and writers in Montparnasse. Among them were Les deux aveugles (The Two Blind Men), as the art critics Maurice Raynal and E. Tériade called themselves. In December 1932 – the same month Brassaï’s book Paris de unit (Paris at Night) appeared – Tériade invited Brassaï to photograph Pablo Picasso and his studios in and near Paris for the first issue of Minotaure, a lavish art magazine launched in June 1933 by the Swiss published Albert Skira. Thus began one of the key friendships of Brassaï’s life. Over the next few years he played prominent role in Minotaure, notable as a collaborator of Salvador Dalí, as an illustrator of texts by André Breton, and, on a few occasions, as an artist in his own right.
Installation views of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing to the right, photographs from Brassaï’s series Graffiti Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Minotaure, nos. 3-4 (December 1933) Pages 6-7: Photographs and text by Brassaï, “Du mur des cavernes au mur d’usine” (From the Wall of the Caves to the Wall of the Factory). Photos: Marcus Bunyan
This was the first appearance in print of Brassaï’s series Graffiti.
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) The Sun King (installation view) 1945-1950 From the series Graffiti Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Untitled (installation view) 1950 From the series Graffiti Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Untitled (installation view) 1945-1955 From the series Graffiti Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Untitled (installation view) 1945-1955 From the series Graffiti Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from the section Personages including at left La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre 1932; and in the centre, Billiard Player, boulevard Rochechouart 1932-1933 and Market Porter, Les Halles 1939 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Personages
In the introduction to a book of his photographs that was published in 1949, Brassaï linked the modern arts of photography and film to the work of artists of the past who had depicted everyday life, among them Rembrandt van Rijn, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He praised them for the “desire to get beyond the anecdotal and to promote [their] subjects to the dignity of types.” Brassaï himself had a talent for rendering at the same time a generic social role and a particular individual who inhabited it, as if his attentiveness to the person would elevate him or her into a distinctive personage.
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from the section Personages including at left, Festival in Seville 1951; and at right, La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre 1932 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from the section Personages including at left, Festival in Seville 1951; at centre, La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre 1932; and at right, Billiard Player, boulevard Rochechouart 1932-1933 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing a photograph from the section Personages, La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre 1932 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre (installation view) 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre 1932 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from the section Personages including at left La Môme Bijou, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre 1932; and at right, Billiard Player, boulevard Rochechouart 1932-1933 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from the section Personages including at left Billiard Player, boulevard Rochechouart 1932-1933; and at right, Market Porter, Les Halles 1939 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Market Porter, Les Halles (installation view) 1939 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Bal des Quatre Saisons, rue de Lappe c. 1932 Gelatin silver print
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Chez Suzy 1931-1932 Gelatin silver print
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) At the Hôtel des Terrasses (installation view) c. 1932 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from Brassaï’s series Sleep Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Sleep
In 1945 Brassaï wrote a brief essay to accompany some of his pictures of sleepers. It reads in part “All things that stand against their inclination – a tree, a column, a tower, a rock – are regarded with a malign eye by gravity … She especially has a grudge against man, that foolhardy being who, in open collusion with the sunlight, alone among his brothers under the spell of gravitation, dares to stand up. For sunlight and gravity fight over living beings, the one turning over what the other has put up. Alas! Sunlight lives a long way away and can never be found when she is needed the most. Thus gravity is suited to have the last word.”
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï at Foam, Amsterdam showing photographs from Brassaï’s series Sleep with at left, Paris c. 1934; and at centre, Sleeping c. 1935 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Paris (installation view) c. 1934 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) Sleeping (installation view) c. 1935 Gelatin silver print Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Likely by Antoine-François-Jean Claudet (French, Lyon 1797 – 1867 London) Possibly by Nicolaas Henneman (Dutch, Heemskerk 1813 – 1898 London) The Chess Players (detail) c. 1845 Salted paper print from paper negative Sheet: 9 5/8 × 7 11/16 in. (24.5 × 19.6cm) Image: 7 13/16 × 5 13/16 in. (19.8 × 14.7cm) Bequest of Maurice B. Sendak, 2012 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
An excellent selection of photographs in this posting. I particularly like the gender-bending, shape-shifting, age-distorting 1850s-60s Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits by an unknown artist. I’ve never seen anything like it before, especially from such an early date. Someone obviously took a lot of care, had a great sense of humour and definitely had a great deal of fun making the album.
Other fascinating details include the waiting horses and carriages in Fox Talbot’s View of the Boulevards of Paris (1843); the mannequin perched above the awning of the photographic studio in Dowe’s Photograph Rooms, Sycamore, Illinois (1860s); and the chthonic underworld erupting from the tilting ground in Carleton E. Watkins’ California Oak, Santa Clara Valley (c. 1863).
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
When The Met first opened its doors in 1870, photography was still relatively new. Yet over the preceding three decades it had already developed into a complex pictorial language of documentation, social and scientific inquiry, self-expression, and artistic endeavour.
These initial years of photography’s history are the focus of this exhibition, which features new and recent gifts to the Museum, many offered in celebration of The Met’s 150th anniversary and presented here for the first time. The works on view, from examples of candid portraiture and picturesque landscape to pioneering travel photography and photojournalism, chart the varied interests and innovations of early practitioners.
The exhibition, which reveals photography as a dynamic medium through which to view the world, is the first of a two-part presentation that plays on the association of “2020” with clarity of vision while at the same time honouring farsighted and generous collectors and patrons. The second part will move forward a century, bringing together works from the 1940s through the 1960s.
Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Likely by Antoine-François-Jean Claudet (French, Lyon 1797 – 1867 London) Possibly by Nicolaas Henneman (Dutch, Heemskerk 1813 – 1898 London) The Chess Players c. 1845 Salted paper print from paper negative Sheet: 9 5/8 × 7 11/16 in. (24.5 × 19.6cm) Image: 7 13/16 × 5 13/16 in. (19.8 × 14.7cm) Bequest of Maurice B. Sendak, 2012 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
Lewis Carroll (British, Daresbury, Cheshire 1832 – 1898 Guildford) [Alice Liddell] June 25, 1870 Albumen silver print from glass negative Sheet: 6 1/4 × 5 9/16 in. (15.9 × 14.1cm) Image: 5 7/8 × 4 15/16 in. (15 × 12.6cm) Bequest of Maurice B. Sendak, 2012 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
Eighteen-year-old Alice Liddell’s slumped pose, clasped hands, and sullen expression invite interpretation. A favoured model of Lewis Carroll, and the namesake of his novel Alice in Wonderland, Liddell had not seen the writer and photographer for seven years when this picture was made; her mother had abruptly ended all contact in 1863. The young woman poses with apparent unease in this portrait intended to announce her eligibility for marriage. The session closed a long and now controversial history with Carroll, whose portraits of children continue to provoke speculation. In what was to be her last sitting with the photographer, Liddell embodies the passing of childhood innocence that Carroll romanticised through the fictional Alice.
Unknown photographer (American) [Surveyor] c. 1854 Daguerreotype Case: 1.6 × 9.2 × 7.9cm (5/8 × 3 5/8 × 3 1/8 in.) Gift of Charles Isaacs and Carol Nigro, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary, 2019 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
This portrait of a surveyor from an unknown daguerreotype studio was made during the heyday of the Daguerreian era in the United States, a time that coincided with an increased need for survey data and maps for the construction of railways, bridges, and roads. The unidentified surveyor, seated in a chair, grasps one leg of the tripod supporting his transit, a type of theodolite or surveying instrument that comprised a compass and rotating telescope. The carefully composed scene, in which the angle of the man’s skyward gaze is aligned with the telescope and echoed by one leg of the tripod, conflates its surveyor subject with an astronomer. As a result, the lands of young America are compared to the vast reaches of space, with both territories full of potential discovery.
Unknown photographer (American) [Surveyor] c. 1854 Daguerreotype Case: 1.6 × 9.2 × 7.9cm (5/8 × 3 5/8 × 3 1/8 in.) Gift of Charles Isaacs and Carol Nigro, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary, 2019 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
Alphonse Delaunay (French, 1827-1906) Patio de los Arrayanes, Alhambra, Granada, Spain 1854 Albumen silver print from paper negative 10 in. × 13 5/8 in. (25.4 × 34.6cm) Gift of W. Bruce and Delaney H. Lundberg, 2017 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
One of the most talented students of famed French photographer Gustave Le Gray, Delaunay was virtually unknown before a group of his photographs appeared at auction in 2007. Subsequent research led to the identification of several bodies of work, including the documentation of contemporary events through instantaneous views captured on glass negatives. Delaunay also was a particular devotee of the calotype (or paper negative) process, with which he created his best pictures – including this view of the Alhambra. Among a group of pictures he made between 1851 and 1854 in Spain and Algeria, this view of the Patio de los Arrayanes reveals the extent to which Delaunay was able to manipulate the peculiarities of the paper negative. He revels in the graininess of the image, purposefully not masking out the sky before printing the negative, so that the marble tower appears somehow carved out of the very atmosphere that surrounds it. In contrast, the reflecting pool remains almost impossibly limpid, its dark surface offering a cool counterpart to the harsh Spanish sky.
Hippolyte Bayard (French, 1801-1887) [Classical Head] probably 1839 Salted paper print 6 1/2 × 5 7/8 in. (16.5 × 15cm) Purchase, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, 2019 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
This luminous head seems to materialise before our very eyes, as if we are observing the moment in which the latent photographic image becomes visible. Nineteenth-century eyewitnesses to Hippolyte Bayard’s earliest photographs (direct positives on paper) described a similarly enchanting effect, in which hazy outlines coalesced with light and tone to form charmingly faithful, if indistinct, images. These works, which Bayard referred to as essais (tests or trials), often included statues and busts, which he frequently arranged in elaborate tableaux. In this case, he photographed the lone subject (an idealised classical head) from the front and side, as if it were a scientific specimen. The singular object emerges as a relic from photography’s origins and now distant past.
William Henry Fox Talbot (British, Dorset 1800 – 1877 Lacock) Group Taking Tea at Lacock Abbey August 17, 1843 Salted paper print from paper negative Mount: 9 15/16 in. × 13 in. (25.3 × 33cm) Sheet: 7 3/8 × 8 15/16 in. (18.7 × 22.7cm) Image: 5 in. × 7 1/2 in. (12.7 × 19cm) Bequest of Maurice B. Sendak, 2012 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
Although Talbot’s groundbreaking calotype (paper negative) process allowed for more instantaneous image making, works such as this one nevertheless reflect the technical limitations of early photography. Here, he adapts painterly conventions to the new medium, staging a genre scene on his family estate. The stilted arrangement of figures – rigidly posed to produce a clear image – belies Talbot’s attempt to show action in progress. To achieve sufficient light exposure, he photographed the domestic tableau outdoors, arranging his subjects before a blank backdrop to create the illusion of interior space.
Unknown artist (American or Canadian) [Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits] 1850s-1860s Albumen silver prints 5 15/16 × 5 1/8 × 2 1/16 in. (15.1 × 13 × 5.3cm) Bequest of Herbert Mitchell, 2008 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
Beginning in the late 1850s, cartes de visite, or small photographic portrait cards, were produced on a scale that put photography in the hands of the masses. This unusual collection of collages is ahead of its time in spoofing the rigidity of the format. The images play with scale and gender by juxtaposing cutout heads and mismatched sitters, thereby highlighting the difference between social identity – which was communicated in part through the exchange of calling cards – and individuality.
Unknown artist (American) [Studio Photographer at Work] c. 1855 Salted paper print Image: 5 1/8 × 3 13/16 in. (13 × 9.7cm) Sheet: 9 1/2 × 5 5/8 in. (24.1 × 14.3cm) William L. Schaeffer Collection, Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In this evocative image, picture making takes centre stage. Underneath a canopy of dark cloth, the photographer poses as if to adjust the bellows of a large format camera. The view reflected on its ground glass would appear reversed and upside down. Viewers’ expectations are similarly overturned, because the photographer’s subject remains unseen.
Unknown artist (American) [Boy Holding a Daguerreotype] 1850s Daguerreotype with applied colour Image: 3 1/4 × 2 3/4 in. (8.3 × 7cm) William L. Schaeffer Collection, Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The boy in this picture clutches a cased image to his chest, as if to illustrate his affection for the subject depicted within. Daguerreotypes were a novel form of handheld picture, portable enough to slip into a pocket or palm. Portraits exchanged between friends and family could be kept close – a practice often mimed by sitters, who would pose for one daguerreotype while holding another.
James Fitzallen Ryder (American, 1826-1904) Locomotive James McHenry (58), Atlantic and Great Western Railway 1862 Albumen silver print Image: 7 3/8 × 9 1/4 in. (18.7 × 23.5cm) Mount: 10 × 13 in. (25.4 × 33cm) William L. Schaeffer Collection, Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In spring 1862, the chief engineer in charge of building the Atlantic and Great Western Railway – which ran from Salamanca, New York, to Akron, Ohio, and from Meadville to Oil City, Pennsylvania – engaged James Ryder to make photographs that would convince shareholders of the worthiness of the project. Ryder’s assignment was “to photograph all the important points of the work, such as excavations, cuts, bridges, trestles, stations, buildings and general character of the country through which the road ran, the rugged and the picturesque.” In a converted railroad car kitted out with a darkroom, water tank, and developing sink, he processed photographs that make up one of the earliest rail surveys.
Attributed to Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, Wayland, Massachusetts 1808 – 1901 Crawford Notch, New Hampshire) Winter on the Common, Boston 1850s Salted paper print Window: 6 15/16 × 8 15/16 in. (17.6 × 22.7cm) Mat: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8cm) William L. Schaeffer Collection, Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Having originally set his sights on a career as a painter, Josiah Hawes gave up his brushes for a camera upon first seeing a daguerreotype in 1841. Two years later, he joined Albert Sands Southworth in Boston to form the celebrated photographic studio Southworth & Hawes. Turning to paper-based photography in the early 1850s, Hawes frequently depicted local scenery. This surprising picture, which presents Boston Common through a veil of snow-laden branches, shows that Hawes brought his creative ambitions to the nascent art of photography.
Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829-1916) [California Oak, Santa Clara Valley] c. 1863 Albumen silver print Image: 12 in. × 9 5/8 in. (30.5 × 24.5cm) Mount: 21 1/4 in. × 17 5/8 in. (54 × 44.8cm) William L. Schaeffer Collection, Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary The Metropolitan Museum of Art
For viewers today, the crown of this majestic oak tree, with its complex network of branches, might evoke the allover paintings of Abstract Expressionism with their layers of dripped paint. As photographed by Carleton Watkins, the dark, flattened silhouette of the tree feathers out across the camera’s field of view. The sloped horizon line, uncommon in Watkins’s output, both echoes the ridge in the distance and grounds the energy of the tree canopy, ably demonstrating his masterful command of pictorial composition.
George Wilson Bridges (British, 1788-1864) Garden of Selvia, Syracuse, Sicily 1846 Salted paper print from paper negative Image: 6 15/16 × 8 9/16 in. (17.7 × 21.7cm) Sheet: 7 5/16 × 8 13/16 in. (18.5 × 22.4cm) Bequest of Maurice B. Sendak, 2012 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
The monk’s gesture of prayer in this image by George Wilson Bridges is a touchstone of stillness against the impressive landscape and vegetation that rise up behind him. Bridges was an Anglican reverend and friend of William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of the calotype (paper negative), who instructed him on the method before it was patented. Bridges was also one of the earliest photographers to embark upon a tour of the Mediterranean region; he wrote to Talbot that he conceived of the excursion both as a technical mission to advance photography and as a pilgrimage to collect imagery of religious sites.
Pietro Dovizielli (Italian, 1804-1885) [Spanish Steps, Rome] c. 1855 Albumen silver print from glass negative Image: 14 11/16 × 11 5/16 in. (37.3 × 28.8cm) Sheet: 24 7/16 × 18 7/8 in. (62 × 48cm) Gift of W. Bruce and Delaney H. Lundberg, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary, 2019 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
Made in late afternoon light, Pietro Dovizielli’s picture shows a long shadow cast onto Rome’s Piazza di Spagna that almost obscures one of the market stalls flanking the base of the famed Spanish Steps. Rising above the sea of stairs is the church of Trinità dei Monti, its facade neatly bisected by the Sallustiano obelisk. In the piazza, a lone figure – the only visible inhabitant of this eerily empty public square – rests against the railing of the Barcaccia fountain. Keenly composed pictures like this led reviewers of Dovizielli’s photographs to proclaim them “the very paragons of architectural photography.”
Edouard Baldus (French (born Prussia), 1813-1889) [Amphitheater, Nîmes] c. 1853 Salted paper print from paper negative Overall: 12 3/8 × 15 3/16 in. (31.5 × 38.5cm) Gift of Joyce F. Menschel, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary, 2019 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Instead of photographing the entire arena in Nîmes, as he had two years earlier, Baldus focusses here on a section of the façade, playing the superimposed arches against the vertical, shadowed pylons in the foreground. The resulting composition manages to isolate and monumentalise the architecture, while creating a rhythmic play of light and dark that energises the picture. The photograph was part of a massive, four-year project, Villes de France photographiées, in which the views from the south of France were said to surpass all of the photographer’s previous work in the region.
William Henry Fox Talbot (British, Dorset 1800 – 1877 Lacock) View of the Boulevards of Paris 1843 Salted paper print from paper negative Mount: 9 in. × 10 1/16 in. (22.8 × 25.6cm) Sheet: 7 3/8 × 10 1/8 in. (18.7 × 25.7cm) Image: 6 5/16 × 8 1/2 in. (16.1 × 21.6cm) Bequest of Maurice B. Sendak, 2012 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
In May 1843 Talbot traveled to Paris to negotiate a licensing agreement for the French rights to his patented calotype process. His invention used a negative-positive system and a paper base – not a copper support as in a daguerreotype. Although his negotiations were not fruitful, Talbot’s views of the elegant new boulevards of the French capital were highly successful.
Filled with the incidental details of urban life, architectural ornamentation, and the play of spring light, this photograph appears as the second plate in Talbot’s groundbreaking publication The Pencil of Nature (1844). The chimney posts on the roofline of the rue de la Paix, the waiting horses and carriages, and the characteristically French shuttered windows evoke as vivid a notion of mid-nineteenth-century Paris now as they must have 170 years ago.
Lewis Dowe (American, active 1860s-1880s) [Dowe’s Photograph Rooms, Sycamore, Illinois] 1860s Albumen silver print Image: 5 7/8 × 7 5/8 in. (14.9 × 19.3cm) Mount: 8 × 10 in. (20.3 × 25.4cm) William L. Schaeffer Collection, Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Above a bustling thoroughfare in Sycamore, Illinois, boldface lettering advertises the services of photographer Lewis Dowe, a portraitist who also published postcards and stereoviews. Easier to miss in the image is a mannequin perched above the awning to promote the studio. The flurry of activity below Dowe’s storefront and the prime location of the outfit, poised between a tailor and a saloon, speak to the important role of photography in town life.
E. & H. T. Anthony (American) [Specimens of New York Bill Posting] 1863 Albumen silver prints Mount: 3 1/4 in. × 6 3/4 in. (8.3 × 17.1cm) Image: 2 15/16 in. × 6 in. (7.5 × 15.3cm) William L. Schaeffer Collection, Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Benefit concerts, minstrel shows, lectures, and horse races all clamour for attention in this graphic field of broadsides posted in the Bowery neighbourhood of Manhattan. The stereograph format lends added depth and dimensionality to the layered fragments of text, transporting viewers to a hectic city sidewalk. Published for a national market, the scene indexes a precise moment in the summer of 1863, offering armchair tourists an inadvertent trend report on downtown cultural life.
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) The Diamond and Wasp, Balaklava Harbour March, 1855 Albumen silver print from glass negative Image: 8 in. × 10 1/8 in. (20.3 × 25.7cm) Mount: 19 5/16 × 24 3/4 in. (49 × 62.9cm) Gift of Thomas Walther Collection, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary, 2019 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fenton’s view of the Black Sea port of Balaklava, which the British used as a landing point for their siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, shows a busy but orderly operation. The British naval ships, HMS Diamond and HMS Wasp, oversaw the management of transports into and out of the harbour, which explains the presence of ships and rowboats, as well as the large stack of crates near the rail track in the foreground. Against claims of “rough-and-tumble” mismanagement of Balaklava in the British press, Fenton (commissioned by a Manchester publisher to record the theatre of war) offers documentation of a well-functioning port.
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) The Mamelon and Malakoff from front of Mortar Battery April, 1855 Salted paper print from glass negative Image: 9 1/8 × 13 1/2 in. (23.1 × 34.3cm) Sheet: 14 3/4 × 17 13/16 in. (37.5 × 45.3cm) Gift of Joyce F. Menschel, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary, 2019 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fenton’s extensive documentation of the Crimean War – the first use of photography for that purpose – was a commercial endeavour that did not include pictures of battle, the wounded, or the dead. His unprepossessing view of a vast rocky valley instead discloses, in the distance, a site of crucial strategic importance. Fort Malakoff, the general designation of Russian fortifications on two hills (Mamelon and Malakoff) is just perceptible at the horizon line. Malakoff’s capture by the French in September 1855, five months after Fenton made this photograph, ended the eleven-month siege of Sevastopol and was the final episode of the war.
Felice Beato (British (born Italy), Venice 1832-1909 Luxor) and James Robertson (British, 1813-1881) [Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem] 1856-1857 Albumen silver print Image: 9 in. × 11 1/4 in. (22.9 × 28.6cm) Mount: 17 5/8 in. × 22 1/2 in. (44.8 × 57.2cm) Gift of Joyce F. Menschel, 2013 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
This detailed print showing the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem provides a sense of the structure’s natural and architectural surroundings. Felice Beato depicted the religious site from a pilgrim’s point of view – walls and roads are given visual priority and stand between the viewer and the shrine. Holy sites such as this were the earliest and most common subjects of travel photography. Beato made multiple journeys to the Mediterranean and North Africa, and he is perhaps best known for photographing East Asia in the 1880s.
R.C. Montgomery (American, active 1850s) [Self-Portrait (?)] 1850s Daguerreotype with applied colour Image: 3 1/4 × 4 1/4 in. (8.3 × 10.8cm) William L. Schaeffer Collection, Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The insouciant subject here may be the daguerreotypist himself, posing in bed for a promotional picture or a private joke. His rumpled suit and haphazard hairstyle affect intimacy, perhaps in an effort to showcase an informal portrait style. Because they required long exposure times, daguerreotypes often captured sitters at their most stilted. With this surprising picture, the maker might have hoped to attract clients who were in search of a more novel or natural likeness.
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Af Klint is one my favourite painters. At such an early date (preceding any man), she created new forms from her imagination, abstract forms, that connect to, and exist, on a celestial plane.
af Klint studied Theosophy and Rosicrucianism, expanding her consciousness, trusting that “knowledge of a deeper spiritual reality could be achieved through focused attention on intuition, meditation, and other means of transcending normal human consciousness.” All from 1906-1907 onwards.
Her paintings and drawings emit an aura, her aura “drawn” into a cosmic aura, as a revelation of spirit – invisible dimensions that exist beyond the visible world – a connection from our reality to the spirit of the cosmos. Childhood; youth; adulthood; primordial chaos; eros; evolution; the altar and the tree of knowledge. All knowledge that allows us access to the divine, that opens us not to phenomena, but to the noumenal experiences of the felt, spiritual sublime.
Imagine af Klint painting her huge canvases on the floor of her studio, so many years before Jackson Pollock attempted the same connection to altered consciousness, and creating these symbolic and sensation/al masterpieces. Then to have the prescience to understand that the world was not ready for her art, would not understand it, had no way of comprehending the enormity of her artistic enquiry. To leave “a radical body of work – unprecedented in its use of colour, scale and composition – which she hoped future audiences might be better able to sense and decode.” All in hope!
Leaving everything to her nephew, she instructed him not to even open the boxes of her abstract art (which she never exhibited during her lifetime) until 20 years after her death in the late 1960s. In the ultimate irony, in 1970 her entire collection was offered to the Moderna Museet as a gift – the very museum in which this exhibition is being staged – AND THEY REFUSED THE GIFT.
What were the big wigs and curators (probably all men) at the Moderna Museet thinking in 1970? Didn’t they use their eyes, didn’t they sense the bravery of af Klint’s artistic enquiry, or feel the ecstatic (involving an experience of mystic self-transcendence) ecstasy of her work – that rapture of an emotional divine!
I am SO happy her work is now being acclaimed. For the force was truly with her.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Moderna Museet Malmö for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
The exhibition opens with the joyful series dedicated to Eros, the Greek god of love, associated with fertility and desire. Full of life, these pink-hued works take up the theme of polarity between male and female as the driving force of evolution. These abstract works completely differ from the classic representation of Eros.
In the series “The Seven-Pointed Star”(1908), Hilma af Klint experimented with a greater economy of line, depicting spiralling energy expanding outwards and forming new centres. As is the case with most of af Klint’s work, there is no singular meaning. Seven is a sacred number in many cultures, associated with divine order, and also the eternal harmony of the universe. In Theosophy the star cluster, known as the Seven Stars or the Pleiades, transmits spiritual energy that eventually reaches the human plane.
During the spring and summer of 2020, Moderna Museet Malmö will give its visitors an opportunity to become acquainted with the fascinating and ground-breaking Swedish artist Hilma af Klint in a comprehensive presentation. The exhibition will present, among other works, the series “The Ten Largest,” which will be shown in it’s entirety.
Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was a pioneer of abstraction. As early as 1906 she had developed a rich, symbolic imagery that preceded the more broadly recognised emergence of abstract art. Since her retrospective at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 2013, interest in the Swedish artist has increased all over the world. The exhibition “Hilma af Klint – Artist, Researcher, Medium” further expands our understanding of this groundbreaking artist and researcher.
Hilma af Klint studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1882 to 1887 where she focused on naturalistic landscape and portrait paintings. Like many of her contemporaries, af Klint also had a keen interest in invisible dimensions that exist beyond the visible world. When painting she was convinced that she was in contact with higher consciousness, which conveyed messages through her. Her major series, “The Paintings for the Temple”, became the crux of this artistic inquiry.
The exhibition centres on three aspects of Hilma af Klint’s life and interests – as artist, researcher and medium – that are key to revealing and understanding her art. With few exceptions, af Klint never exhibited her abstract works during her lifetime. Yet she left us with a radical body of work – unprecedented in its use of colour, scale and composition – which she hoped future audiences might be better able to sense and decode.
Hilma af Klint made paintings for the future, and that future is now.
Artist and Medium
Like many of her contemporaries at the turn of the twentieth century, Hilma af Klint sought to expand her consciousness in order to gain a wider perspective on what we perceive as reality. Consciousness remains one of the deepest mysteries in our time, a subject eagerly explored in neurology, psychology, quantum physics and epigenetics. As part of her spiritual practice, af Klint meditated, adhered to a vegetarian diet, and studied Theosophy and Rosicrucianism. These two esoteric schools thought knowledge of a deeper spiritual reality could be achieved through focused attention on intuition, meditation, and other means of transcending normal human consciousness. Over a period of ten years, af Klint met weekly with four other women, known as De fem (“The Five”). They trained their capability to access or “channel” higher levels of consciousness through contact with spiritual guides known as De Höga (“The Masters”). Af Klint received a specific assignment, which she accepted, known as “The Paintings for the Temple”. She worked throughout her life to understand the deeper meaning embedded in these works.
“The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless, I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brushstroke.”
The artist described how she painted the series as a medium, where shapes, colours and compositions came to her. Although af Klint perceived these works as flowing uninhibitedly through her guided hand, she very much applied herself and all her skills in the process: she worked methodically and sequentially in series, divided into thematically and formally focused groups exploring different aspects of cosmic and human evolution.
The Paintings for the Temple
Between 1906 and 1915, Hilma af Klint created “The Paintings for the Temple”. It comprises 193 paintings and drawings, divided into series and groups. Works produced between 1906 and 1908 are on view in the Turbine Hall; works from the second part of the series from 1912 to 1915 are on view in the upstairs galleries at Moderna Museet Malmö.
The overall theme of the series is to convey different aspects of human evolution, instigated by polarity. “The Paintings for the Temple” also thematises different stages of development that every human being goes through during life on earth. The temple in the title refers not only to a physical building, which af Klint imagined would house the work, but also to the body as a temple for the soul.
Like many of the other series within “The Paintings for the Temple”, “The Ten Largest”seems somehow unfettered by limitations of place and time. Across ten canvases, swirling shapes in soft pastel colours rhythmically interact with cursive letters, forming a kind of visual poem. Petals, ovaries, flowers and spirals pulsate in constant sparks of creation. Hilma af Klint attributed this series to the exploration of the human life cycle, from childhood and youth to adulthood and old age. The artist created the ten works between November and December of 1907 on large sheets of paper later glued onto canvas. Given the unusual scale of the works, it is likely that af Klint painted each canvas, while it was lying flat on her studio floor.
On June 16, Moderna Museet Malmö opened again after having been closed for a time in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Finally, Hilma af Klint – Artist, Researcher, Medium, a comprehensive presentation of the artist with 230 works occupying the entire museum building, can be experienced by the public.
Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was an artist who allowed herself to take a broader perspective on life and who wanted to open up new ways of looking at reality. Her achievement as a pioneer of abstract art has been celebrated before, but with the exhibition Hilma af Klint – Artist, Researcher, Medium, Moderna Museet Malmö now wants to offer new insights into the artist’s systematic research.
“Hilma af Klint radically turned away from the portrayal of a visible reality,” says Iris Müller-Westermann. “For her, art making was about visualising contexts that lie beyond what the eye can see. Af Klint was convinced that she was connected to a higher level of consciousness when she was making her works. The exhibition argues that her spiritual practice was inextricably linked to her artistic practice. First and foremost, however, Hilma af Klint believed in the power of images.”
The whole Moderna Museet Malmö has been transformed into Hilma af Klint’s temple. The exhibition spans the artist’s entire career, and the selection of works examines the artist’s research into nature and the links between the visible and invisible worlds. In addition, the comprehensive exhibition touches on the artist’s own thoughts about her work and its various methods.
“Hilma af Klint had an inquisitive mind,” says Milena Høgsberg. “For her, painting was both an artistic activity and a spiritual one. When she was painting she meditatively allowed something bigger to pass through her and manifest itself in works of art. She then spent her life, systematically and analytically trying to understand the meaning behind her paintings, drawings, and writings.”
The heart of the exhibition are The Paintings for the Temple (1906-1915), which the artist considered her most important works. They also include the magnificent series The Ten Largest from 1907.
In conjunction with the exhibition, a comprehensive and richly illustrated catalogue has been produced, with essays by Iris Müller-Westermann, Milena Høgsberg in conversation with Tim Rudbøg, Hedvig Martin, Ernst Peter Fischer, and Anne Sophie Jørgensen. The exhibition catalogue has been published in two editions – one in Swedish and one in English.
Hilma af Klint – Artist, Researcher, Medium will be on view at Moderna Museet Malmö until September 27, 2020.
Text from the Moderna Museet Malmö website
Installation views, Hilma af Klint, Moderna Museet Malmö, 2020 Photos: Helene Toresdotter/Moderna Museet
“The Dove” (1915) depicts the creation process. It draws upon Christian symbols such as the dove for spirit, peace and unity. It also thematises the battle between the forces of light and darkness through the allegory of Saint George and the Dragon.
Installation view, Hilma af Klint, Moderna Museet Malmö, 2020 showing at left The Dove, No. 1, and at right The Dove, No. 9 Photo: Helene Toresdotter/Moderna Museet
“Primordial Chaos” (1906-1907) is devoted to the creation of the physical world. From the original unity a polarised world arose out of spirit, shown here as feminine (blue and the eyelet) and masculine (yellow and the hook), and also as W (material) and U (spirit). These works are full of spirals of energy and sparks of creation, of symbols of fertility and rebirth (sperm, snakes, crosses).
Installation view, Hilma af Klint, Moderna Museet Malmö, 2020 showing at left works from the series Evolution, and at centre works from the series Primordial Chaos Photo: Helene Toresdotter/Moderna Museet
The theme of the evolution of consciousness runs throughout “The Paintings for the Temple”. In the series “Evolution” (1908), the process of development is shown through the interplay between polarities: male and female, light and darkness, good and evil. Compositionally these works strive to find a balance, in horizontal and vertical mirroring. Hilma af Klint’s exploration seems aligned with the theosophist notion of evolution as a spiritual process, extending beyond the biological perspective on human development that, with the publishing of Darwin’s “The Evolution of the Species” fifty years earlier, had gained widespread notoriety. This series ends the first part of “The Paintings for the Temple”, as the commission was paused between 1908 and 1912.
When Hilma af Klint resumed her work on “The Paintings for the Temple”in 1912, her abstraction became more geometric in nature, and Christian symbols became increasingly pronounced. When working, the artist was still in contact with higher planes of consciousness but was encouraged to interpret spiritual messages more freely.
Viewed in sequence, “The Swan” (1914-1915) has a distinct visual rhythm. Often a horizontal line breaks the canvases into two sections where opposite forces meet – light and dark, male and female, life and death. These poles unfold as a black and white swan. Eventually, figuration gives way to abstraction in a fuller spectrum of colour. In the final work in the series, the swan pair returns, unified at the centre, intertwined yet distinct and balanced as male and female poles.
Hilma af Klint understood the three powerful “Altarpieces” (1915) as the essence of “The Paintings for the Temple”. These works capture the two directions of spiritual evolution: the ascension from the material world back to unity (the triangle pointing to the golden circle) and the descension from divine unity into the diversity of the material world (the inverted triangle). In the third and final painting, a small six-pointed star within the large golden circle is an esoteric symbol for the universe.
Text from the Moderna Museet Malmö website
Installation views, Hilma af Klint, Moderna Museet Malmö, 2020 showing work from the series Altarpieces Photo: Helene Toresdotter/Moderna Museet
The title of this series from 1916 may refer to the legend of King Arthur, in which Parsifal, one of the Knights of the Round Table, takes part in the quest for the Holy Grail. On 144 sheets, of which a selection is on view, Hilma af Klint depicts the search for knowledge as a journey through various levels of consciousness. In the first image this is marked by a winding path through the darkness towards the white light at the centre of the spiral. In other works, a young boy, shown in different ages, attempts to balance between matter and spirit, up and down. This exploration is continued in radically conceptual yellow monochromes, inscribed with words marking direction: “Nedåt” (downward), “Framåt” (forward), “Bakåt” (backward), “Utåt” (outward) and “Inåt” (inward). Parsifal’s journey also mirrors the artist’s own process in the inward journey she has undertaken by accepting, completing and trying to understand “The Paintings for the Temple”.
Between 1896 and 1906, Hilma af Klint and four other women formed the group “De Fem” (“The Five”). They met weekly to meditate, read spiritual literature and accesses higher consciousness through communication with spirit guides, “De Höga” (“The Masters”). These meetings were meticulously recorded in writing and led even to automatic drawings. The women took turns to wield the pen during their sessions, but individual authorship was not important, and rarely indicated on the drawings. The pastel works on view exhibit elements that recur in af Klint’s later work – for example, spiral, stylised floral motifs and other geometrical forms.
Installation views, Hilma af Klint, Moderna Museet Malmö, 2020 showing at bottom left, the Tree of Knowledge series 1915; and at centre right, work from Late Series Photo: Helene Toresdotter/Moderna Museet
New Gallery is dedicated to Hilma af Klint the researcher, specifically her effort to process and understand the deeper meaning of her spiritually guided work in paintings, drawings and writing, from the 1890s to 1930s. Af Klint had an inquisitive mind. She came from a family of naval officers and nautical cartographers and approached her artistic practice with structured rigour. While she had the courage to open herself to let something larger flow through her while painting, she approached the resulting body of work in asystematic and analytic way.
Throughout her life, af Klint took copious notes, regarding her experiences and interpretations of the messages she apprehended through her spiritual practice. After completing “The Paintings for the Temple”, the artist tried to methodically gain an overview of her work and its possible meanings. In the spirit of a scientific researcher, she edited and reorganised her early notes, created a dictionary of the symbols that appeared in her works and catalogued all the works in “The Paintings for the Temple” in a portable portfolio. Remarkably, af Klint understood all of her works of art as a unified project – a notion radical for the time, but also a testament to the fact that she believed her work to have a higher purpose.
In the series the “Tree of Knowledge” (1913-1915), Hilma af Klint maps the different spiritual planes of existence in order to picture the complexity of existence and the connection between the earth and the divine. In later series like “Series IV” (1920) and “VII” (1920), af Klint seems to focus her research on symbols such as the cross, the circle and the triangle as well as the six-pointed star and processes these sacred symbols instigate. Many of these works are characterised by a geometric idiom and involve analysis on both the macrocosmic and microcosmic level.
Installation view, Hilma af Klint, Moderna Museet Malmö, 2020
The Blue Books
In 1917, Hilma af Klint had a studio built on Munsö, where for the first time she had the possibility of seeing all “The Paintings for the Temple’s” different series in their entirety. Perhaps this is what precipitated the creation of the ten blue-bound books, a portable overview of “The Paintings for the Temple”. On each spread, a work is represented by a black-and-white photograph and a watercolour intended to give an accurate impression of the original. In some of the watercolours, af Klint adds close-ups and lets us examine the work as if through a microscope in order to further clarify what was not clear enough in the paintings. The works were organised in concordance with the order of the series. This tremendous effort demonstrates that af Klint wanted to reinvestigate and reflect on her life’s work in a systematic way and perhaps to share it more easily with others.
In “The Atom Series”from 1917, Hilma af Klint explored another aspect of life that could not be perceived by the human eye: the world of atoms and their energy, a science popular at the time. Apart from the first two drawings, all feature two renderings of an atom: a large one in the lower right, which represents the energy of a physical atom, and a smaller one in the upper left, which represents the atom on an etheric or metaphysical plane. In handwritten notes, af Klint describes the atom as embodying human properties. For the theosophists, whom the artist studied, the discovery of atoms, sub-particle waves etc., were seen as proof of an invisible reality beyond the perceptible world. For af Klint, atoms and thus humans were spiritual entities connected to the centre of the universe.
Throughout her life, Hilma af Klint had a deep interest in nature and botany. Her early botanical studies up to the late watercolours, convey that she was not only a keen observer, but also possessed a rigorously analytic mind, which she could apply in her endeavour to perceive aspects of existence beyond the visible.
Her botanical studies reveal a shifting focus from naturalistic renderings of plant-life as she observed it, to renderings intended to express the spiritual essence or presence beyond the visible body. In “The Violet, Blossoms with Guidelines, Series 1” (1919) she combines naturalistic renderings of the flower with a diagram of its essence. In “Blumen, Moose, Flechten” [Flowers, Moss, Lichens] (1919-1920), represented here as a facsimile, af Klint continues with her systematic investigation of the plant kingdom. She combines a diagram with the plant’s Latin name and the date of investigation, alongside properties such as joy, humility and devotion, which one can attempt to come in contact with through contemplation on the plant in question. By 1923, af Klint made yet another stylistic shift, influenced by Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophical views on aesthetics and her visits to the The Goetheanum, the centre for the anthroposophical movement in Dornach, Switzerland. Here af Klint gave up painting geometric compositions and began instead portraying the spiritual dimension of nature in fluid watercolours.
Moderna Museet Malmö is located in the city centre of Malmö. Ten minutes walk from the Central station, five minutes walk from Gustav Adolfs torg and Stortorget.
Exhibition dates: 7th September – 1st December, 2019
Visited September 2019 posted June 2020
Curator: Estrella de Diego, Professor of Modern Art at the Complutense University of Madrid
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Old New York, new New York
This was an impressive exhibition from this powerhouse of a photographer in that most beautiful of galleries, Huis Marseille in Amsterdam. While her debt to that French master photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927) is acknowledged through Abbott’s statement that she planned “to do for New York what Atget did for Paris,” Abbott’s photographs and her ‘point of view’ differ significantly to that of her Parisian hero.
Inflections of the influence of the Parisian master are present in the work, but in the project Changing New York Abbott develops a unique visual language through her representation of city life. Her photographs of shop fronts are more static and formal than that of Atget, more interested in the multiplicities of form than they are of reflections in glass, or ghostly people standing in doorways. Further, Atget would never have taken a photograph such as Gunsmith and Police Department, 6 Centre Market Place, Manhattan (1937, below) because the angle of the composition looking upwards is too severe, too modernist. Similarly, the placement by Abbott of the lamppost and U.S. Mail box in Old Law Tenements, 35-47 East 1st Street (1937, below) as the focus of attention, make this photograph uniquely her own.
Abbott photographs the co-mingled elements of old New York and new New York – the crowded tenements, rushing people, and “grand canyons” lined with monolithic skyscrapers of the bustling metropolis – as a city caught in the shadows of a piercing New York light. If you have been to New York you know that the city has that light, a hard, clinical light that bounces off surfaces until it sinks into the deepening shadows and recesses of overshadowed buildings. In her vital, still, intense, renditions of the cityscape Abbott’s photographs capture this light.
But what really changes her attitude (or altitude you might say) to the city is Abbott’s depiction of those edifices of modernism that are the crowning glory of New York: the skyscraper. Paraphrasing Karen Chambers from her article, “Paris to New York: Photographs by Eugène Atget and Berenice Abbott,” we can say that Abbott’s photographs of skyscrapers are different from the human scale of Atget’s photographs and of Abbott’s of a disappearing New York. Whether looking up from the bowls of the city (Canyon: Broadway and Exchange Place, 1936 below); across at the regimented forms of building (New York Telephone Company’s Lower Broadway Building, 1930-31 below); or down from a God-like perspective (Waterfront, from roof of Irving Trust Company Building, 1938 below), Abbott’s photographs of skyscrapers and the spaces they inhabit perfectly capture the layered forms and walls of isolation of the contemporary working metropolis, complete with Tempo of the City automatons.
Through the meritocracy of her talent, Abbott’s vision soars and plunges, meticulously, into the utopian / dystopian fabric of the city, Atget influences subsumed into American light, form and culture… the brooding hulks of towering skyscrapers; the skeletal form of bridges; and Abbott’s clear persistence of vision – seeing modernity clearly, with focus, in focus.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
All iPhone photographs by Dr Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. See Part 1 of the posting.
“When Abbott returned to New York in 1929, she planned “to do for New York what Atget did for Paris.” The project became known as ‘Changing New York’, and in her application for funding from the Federal Art Project (FAP), a part of the Farm Security Administration, best known for sending photographers, including Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, into the American heartland to document rural poverty, she wrote that the purpose of the project was “to preserve for the future an accurate and faithful chronicle in photographs of the changing aspect of the world’s greatest metropolis”.”
Karen S. Chambers. “”Paris to New York: Photographs by Eugène Atget and Berenice Abbott,” Taft Museum of Art, through January 20, 2019,” on the AEQAI website October 28th, 2018 [Online] Cited 08/06/2020
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing Abbott’s Gunsmith and Police Department Headquarters 1937 Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Gunsmith and Police Department Headquarters (installation view) February 4, 1937 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Gunsmith and Police Department, 6 Centre Market Place, Manhattan February 4, 1937 Gelatin silver print Wikipedia Commons, Public domain
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) New York Harbour (installation view) 1938 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Waterfront, from roof of Irving Trust Company Building (installation view) 1938 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Daily News Building, 42nd Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, Manhattan 1935 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Daily News Building, 42nd Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, Manhattan 1935 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Wikipedia Commons, Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) New York Telephone Company’s Lower Broadway Building (installation view) 1930-1931 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) New York Telephone Company Building, 140 West Street, Manhattan (installation view) 1936 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Canyon: Broadway and Exchange Place July 16, 1936 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) R.C.A. building (installation view) c. 1932 (printed before 1950) Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Manhattan Skyline: I. South Street and Jones Lane (installation views) 1936 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Manhattan Skyline: I. South Street and Jones Lane 1936 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Old Law Tenements, 35-47 East 1st Street (installation view) February 11, 1937 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Old Law Tenements, 35-47 East 1st Street February 11, 1937 Gelatin silver print Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Shelter on the Waterfront, Coenties Slip, Pier 5, East River, Manhattan (installation view) 1938 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Provincetown Playhouse, 133 MacDougal Street, Manhattan (installation view) December 29, 1936 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Country Store Interior (installation view) October 11, 1935 Gelatin silver print Gift of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1948 Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Country Store Interior October 11, 1935 Gelatin silver print Public domain
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Charles Lane, between West and Washington Street (installation view) September 20, 1938 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Charles Lane, between West and Washington Street September 20, 1938 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Newsstand, 32nd Street and 3rd Avenue, Manhattan (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Newsstand, 32nd Street and 3rd Avenue, Manhattan 1935 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Cheese Store, 276 Bleecker Street, Manhattan (installation view) 1937 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
New York must have seem to Abbott extremely photogenic, with its skyscrapers and street vendors on Hester Street on the Lower East Side. It is a city of contrasts; of light and shade, and bustling squares; of all manner of shoes overflowing with bread, bric-a-brac, ricotta in Little Italy, rope, metal objects… Abbott depicts a city that heralds the consumer society and its abundance – its excess, even.
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Cheese Store, 276 Bleecker Street, Manhattan 1937 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) A & P (Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.), 246 3rd Avenue, Manhattan (installation view) 1936 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Hardware Store, 316-318 Bowery (installation view) 1938 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Pingpank Barber Shop, 413 Bleecker Street, Manhattan (installation view) 1938 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Pingpank Barber Shop, 413 Bleecker Street, Manhattan 1938 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Sumner Healey Antique Shop, 942 3rd Avenue and 57th Street, Manhattan (installation view) 1936 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Sumner Healey Antique Shop, 942 3rd Avenue and 57th Street, Manhattan 1936 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Union Square, 14th Street and Broadway, Manhattan (installation view) 1936 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Union Square July 16, 1936 Gelatin silver photograph 6 7/8 x 8 7/8 in. (17.5 x 22.5cm) Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Museum Collection Public domain
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Lewis Hine (installation view) 1930 Gelatin silver photograph International Centre of Photography Purchase with funds provided by the Lois and Bruce Henkel purchase Fund, 1984 Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Edward Hopper (installation view) 1949 Gelatin silver photograph International Centre of Photography Gift of Jonathan A. Berg, 1984 Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Manhattan Bridge, Manhattan (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Penn Station, Manhattan (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) El’: 2nd & 3rd Avenue lines, looking W. from Second & Pearl St., Manhattan 1936 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Public domain
Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002) Portrait of Berenice Abbott, Monson, Maine August 1989 Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Gift of the photographer
Tamara Könen of the gallery (left) and Kristina Engels from August Sander Stiftung – at Galerie Julian Sander, standing in front of August Sander’s photographs.
On my European photographic research tour in late 2019, I had a memorable visit to Galerie Julian Sander to see some vintage and later prints from the August Sander Archive / August Sander Stiftung with Tamara Könen from the gallery (left) and Kristina Engels from August Sander Stiftung.
It was a privilege to be able to see about 10 prints… the highlights being a stunning 1929-1930 vintage landscape, a vintage carnivalesque image of the Cologne avant-garde and a later print by his son of Painter’s Wife [Helene Abelen] 1926. The vintage landscape, like the vintage prints of Sudek, possessed no true black or white, the tonal range prescribed between zones 2-8.
The use of low depth of field in the portraits was outstanding. For example the shoes of Helene are completely out of focus whereas her hands are as crisp and clear as a summer breeze. Most astonishing was the panache of the bohemians, with the outstretched arm top left… printed on matt brown toned paper with a thin gold edge.
Another vintage print that showed selective depth of field was the photograph of a man with his dog, Junglehrer (Young Teacher) 1928. The dog’s lower legs were completely out of focus (Sander tilting his large format camera) making this oh so German photograph seem so surreal!
Other prints had a thin black edge and the vintage press print landscape (c. 1920s) was printed on thin single weight paper, while the vintage photograph of the sculptor Professor Ludwig Benh shows an original Sander mount – the print mounted behind an artist cut window. All prints were enlargements from 4×5” glass negatives or German equivalent size.
Such a wonderful learning experience! Thank you to the gallery for their time and knowledge.
3 vintage silver gelatin prints, the left one with black edge floating free of the backboard; the second c. 1920s of a Communist rally; and the third of an industrialist (Großindustrieller / The Industrialist, 1927) Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Das Siebengebirge: Blick vom Rolandsbogen [The Siebengebirge: view from the Rolandsbogen] 1929-1930 (center) and Untitled [Remagen Bridge on the Rhine] c. 1930 (right) Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Das Siebengebirge: Blick vom Rolandsbogen [The Siebengebirge: view from the Rolandsbogen] 1929-1930 Vintage gelatin silver print Also titled: Siebengebirge von der linken Rheinseite gesehen [Siebengebirge seen from the left side of the Rhine] Blick vom Rolandsbogen auf das Siebengebirge mit Drachenfels [View from Roland Arch on the Siebengebirge with Drachenfels] Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Das Siebengebirge: Blick vom Rolandsbogen [The Siebengebirge: view from the Rolandsbogen] 1929-1930 Vintage gelatin silver print Also titled: Siebengebirge von der linken Rheinseite gesehen [Siebengebirge seen from the left side of the Rhine] Blick vom Rolandsbogen auf das Siebengebirge mit Drachenfels [View from Roland Arch on the Siebengebirge with Drachenfels] Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Das Siebengebirge: Blick vom Rolandsbogen [The Siebengebirge: view from the Rolandsbogen] 1929-1930 Vintage gelatin silver print
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Untitled [Remagen Bridge on the Rhine] c. 1930 Vintage gelatin silver press print Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Untitled [Bohemians: avant-garde of Cologne] 1920s (left) and Professor Ludwig Behn 1920s (right) Vintage gelatin silver print with gold edge printed on matt warm toned paper Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Untitled [Bohemians: avant-garde of Cologne] 1920s Vintage gelatin silver print with gold edge printed on matt warm toned paper Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Untitled [Bohemians: avant-garde of Cologne] 1920s Vintage gelatin silver print with gold edge printed on matt warm toned paper Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Professor Ludwig Behn, Bildhaver, Münich 1920s Gelatin silver print
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Professor Ludwig Behn, Bildhaver, Münich 1920s Vintage gelatin silver print with original Sander mount Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Painter’s Wife [Helene Abelen] 1926 Later gelatin silver print by Sander’s son Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
This photograph shows Helene Abelen, wife of the Cologne painter, Peter Abelen. During the 1920s August Sander befriended many Cologne artists because of his involvement with the Cologne Progressive Artists Group (Gruppe Progressiver Künstler Köln). In 1926 Sander was asked by Peter Abelen to create a portrait of his young wife. With her short, slicked-back hair, collared shirt, thin necktie and trousers, Frau Abelen is presented as a distinctly androgynous figure. Her masculine garb and haircut, as well as the cigarette held between her teeth, signal a defiance of traditional gender roles. Staring determinedly out at the viewer Helene Abelen’s animated expression is unusual for a Sander portrait and falls somewhere between bravado and agitation.
This portrait reflects the so-called ‘new woman’ of the Weimar Republic. The concept of the ‘new woman’ dates from before the First World War but became firmly rooted during it when women were mobilised in the workforce. Within Germany this created considerable anxiety about women’s roles, particularly in relation to the family. In 1928, on the tenth anniversary of the end of the war, the Münchner Illustrierte Presse showed on its cover a photograph of a young woman, with short hair and skirt, astride a motorcycle with a lit cigarette in hand, with the heading, ‘Only ten years – a different world’. Like this magazine image, Sander’s portrait of Helene Abelen reflected a consciousness about the blurring of gender roles in the wake of the ‘new woman’.
Painter’s Wife represents an anomaly in Sander’s work. For the most part, his depictions of women show them as wives and mothers, as the soul of the home and the family. Contrary to appearances, this portrait should not be taken to represent an unqualified vision of female independence. The costume Helene Abelen is wearing was created for her by Peter Abelen and the haircut she sports was also his choice. Her daughter later commented of this work: ‘This was the creation of my father. He wanted her to look like this. He always did our dresses’ (quoted in Greenberg 2000, p. 121).
Matthew Macaulay November 2011
Text from the Tate website [Online] Cited 24/06/2020
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Junglehrer (Young Teacher) 1928 Vintage gelatin silver print with black edge Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Junglehrer (Young Teacher) 1928 Vintage gelatin silver print with black edge Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Exhibition dates: 20th February – 17th May 2020? Coronavirus
Participating artists: Bas Jan Ader, Laurie Anderson, Kenneth Anger, Knut Åsdam, Richard Avedon, Aneta Bartos, Richard Billingham, Cassils, Sam Contis, John Coplans, Jeremy Deller, Rienke Dijkstra, George Dureau, Thomas Dworzak, Hans Eijkelboom, Fouad Elkoury, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Hal Fischer, Samuel Fosso, Anna Fox, Masahisa Fukase, Sunil Gupta, Peter Hujar, Liz Johnson Artur, Isaac Julien, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Karen Knorr, Deana Lawson, Hilary Lloyd, Robert Mapplethrope, Peter Marlow, Ana Mendieta, Anenette Messager, Duane Michals, Tracey Moffat, Andrew Moisey, Richard Mosse, Adi Nes, Catherine Opie, Elle Pérez, Herb Ritts, Kalen Na’il Roach, Collier Schorr, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Clarie Strand, Michael Subotzky, Larry Sultan, Hank Willis Thomas, Wolfgang Tillmans, Piotr Uklański, Andy Warhol, Karlheinz Weinberger, Marianne Wex, David Wojnarowicz, Akram Zaatari.
“As a writer Berger recognised that experience – whether it be personal, historical or aesthetic – will never conform to theories and systems. To read him today is to accept his failures and detours as a unique willingness to take risks.”
John MacDonald. “John Berger,” in the Sydney Morning Herald, 6 June, 2020
D-Construction: deliberate masculinities in a discontinuous world
Reviewers of this exhibition (see quotations below) have noted the preponderance of images of “traditional masculinity” – defined as “idealised, dominant (and) heterosexual” – and the paucity of images that show men as working, intelligent, sensitive human beings, “that men ever earned a living, cooked a meal or read a book… scarcely anything about the heart or intellect. Men are represented here almost entirely in terms of their bodies, sexuality or supposed type.” I need make no further comment. What I will say is that I believe the title of the exhibition to be a misnomer: a person cannot be “liberated” through photography, for photography is only a tool of a personal liberation. Liberation comes through an internal struggle of acceptance (thence liberation), one that is foremost FELT (for example, the double life one leads before you acknowledge that you are gay; or experiencing discrimination aimed at others and by proxy, yourself) and SEEN (the bashing of a mother as seen by a small child). Photographs picture the outcomes of this struggle for liberation, are a tool of that process not, I would argue, liberation itself.
What I can say is that I believe in masculinities, plural. Fluid, shifting, challenging, loving, working, intimate, spiritual masculinities that challenge normalcy and hegemonic masculinity, which is defined as “a practice that legitimises men’s dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of the common male population and women, and other marginalised ways of being a man.”
What I don’t believe in is masculinities, plural, that seek to fit into this [dis]continuous world (for we are born and then die) through the stability of their outward appearance, conforming to theories and systems – personal, historical or aesthetic – without reference to subversion, small intimacies, the toil of work, love and the passion of sexual bodies. In other words, masculinities that are not afraid to push the boundaries of being and becoming. To take risks, to experience, to feel.
While I was overjoyed at the “YES” vote on gay marriage that took place in December 2017 in Australia because I felt it was a victory for love, and equality… another part of me rejected as anathema the concept of a gay person buying into a historically patriarchal, heterosexual and monogamous institution such as marriage – too honour and obey. This is an untenable concept for a person who wants to be liberated. Coming out as I did in 1975, only 6 short years after the Stonewall Riots, the last thing I EVER wanted to be, was to be the same as a “straight” person. I was different. I fought for my difference and still believe in it.
Of course, in 2020 it’s another world. Today we all mix in together. But there is still something about “masculinities”, which in some varieties, have a sense of privilege and entitlement. Of power and control over others; of violence towards women, trans, other men and anyone who threatens their little ego, who leaves them, or jilts them. Their jealousy, their ego, bruised – they are so insecure, so insular, that they can only see their own world, their own minuscule problems (but massive in their eyes), and enforce their will on others.
My advice to “masculinities’, in fact any human being, is to go out, get yourself informed, experience, accept, and be the person that nobody thinks you can be. Be a human being. Examine your inner self, look at your dark side, your other side, your empathetic side, and try and understand the journey that you are on. Then, and only then, you might begin on that great path of personal enlightenment, that golden path on which there is no turning back.
Below I discuss some of these ideas with my good friend Nicholas Henderson, curator and archivist at the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Barbican Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Masculinities: Liberation through Photography is a major group exhibition that explores how masculinity is experienced, performed, coded and socially constructed as expressed and documented through photography and film from the 1960s to the present day.
Through the medium of film and photography, this major exhibition considers how masculinity has been coded, performed, and socially constructed from the 1960s to the present day. Examining depictions of masculinity from behind the lens, the Barbican brings together the work of over 50 international artists, photographers and filmmakers including Laurie Anderson, Sunil Gupta, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Isaac Julien and Catherine Opie.
In the wake of #MeToo the image of masculinity has come into sharper focus, with ideas of toxic and fragile masculinity permeating today’s society. This exhibition charts the often complex and sometimes contradictory representations of masculinities, and how they have developed and evolved over time. Touching on themes including power, patriarchy, queer identity, female perceptions of men, hypermasculine stereotypes, tenderness and the family, the exhibition shows how central photography and film have been to the way masculinities are imagined and understood in contemporary culture.
In fact, while there are a few gender-fluid figures here, they’re vastly outnumbered by manifestations of “traditional masculinity” – defined as “idealised, dominant (and) heterosexual”. Lebanese militiamen (in Fouad Elkoury’s perky full-length portraits from 1980), US marines (in Wolfgang Tillmans’ epic montage Soldiers – The Nineties), Taliban fighters, SS generals, Israel Defence Force grunts, footballers, cowboys and bullfighters fairly spring out of the walls from every direction. And what’s evident from the outset isn’t so much their diversity, as a unifying demeanour: a threatening intentness that comes wherever men are asked to perform their masculinity, but also a childlike vulnerability. …
Masculinity, the viewer is made to feel, criminalises men (Mikhael Subotzky’s images of South African gangsters on morgue slabs); isolates them (Larry Sultan’s poignant image of his elderly father practising his golf swing in his sitting room); renders them stupid (Richard Billingham’s excruciating, but now classic photo essay on his alcoholic father, ‘Ray’s a Laugh’). To be a man, it seems, is to be condemned to endlessly act out archetypal “masculine” behaviour, whether you’re an elderly drunk in a Birmingham high-rise or the elite American students taking part in the shouting competition staged by Irish photographer Richard Mosse.
Mark Hudson. “Does the Barbican’s Masculinities exhibition have important things to say about men?” on the Independent website Friday 21 February 2020 [Online] Cited 03/03/2020
There is not much here about work – unless you count the wall of Hollywood actors playing Nazis. You would never think, from this show, that men ever earned a living, cooked a meal or read a book (though there is a sententious vitrine of ‘Men Only’ magazines). Beyond the exceptions given, there is scarcely anything about the heart or intellect. Men are represented here almost entirely in terms of their bodies, sexuality or supposed type.
Laura Cumming. “Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography review – men as types,” on the Guardian website Sun 23 Feb 2020 [Online] Cited 03/03/2020
“The body can be taken as a reflection of the self because it can and should be treated as something to be worked upon … in order to produce it as a commodity. Overweight, slovenliness and even unfashionability, for example, are now moral disorders,” notes Don Slater
“The state of the body is seen as a reflection of the state of its owner, who is responsible for it and could refashion it. The body can be taken as a reflection of the self because it can and should be treated as something to be worked upon, and generally worked upon using commodities, for example intensively regulated, self-disciplined, scrutinized through diets, fitness regimes, fashion, self-help books and advice, in order to produce it as a commodity. Overweight, slovenliness, and even unfashionability, for example, are now moral disorders; even acute illnesses such as cancer reflect the inadequacy of the self and indeed of its consumption. One gets ill because one has consumed the wrong (unnatural) things and failed to consume the correct (‘natural’) ones: self, body, goods and environment constitute a system of moral choice.”
Slater, Don. Consumer Culture and Modernity. London: Polity Press, 1997, p. 92.
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing John Coplans’ work Self-portrait, Frieze No 2, Four Panels 1994 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Plan of the Masculinities: Liberation through Photography exhibition spaces
Introduction
Masculinities: Liberation through Photography explores the diverse ways masculinity has been experienced, performed, coded and socially constructed in photography and film from the 1960s to the present day.
Simone de Beauvoir’s famous declaration that ‘one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one’ provides a helpful springboard for considering what it means to be a male in today’s world, as well as the place of photography and film in shaping masculinity. What we have thought of as ‘masculine’ has changed considerably throughout history and within different cultures. The traditional social dominance of the male has determined a gender hierarchy which continues to underpin societies around the world.
In Europe and North America, the characteristics and power dynamics of the dominant masculine figure – historically defined by physical size and strength, assertiveness and aggression – though still pervasive today, began to be challenged and transformed in the 1960s. Amid a climate of sexual revolution, struggle for civil rights and raised class consciousness, the growth of the gay rights movement, the period’s counterculture and opposition to the Vietnam War, large sections of society argued for a loosening of the straitjacket of narrow gender definitions.
Set against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, when manhood is under increasing scrutiny and terms such as ‘toxic’ and ‘fragile’ masculinity fill endless column inches, an investigation of this expansive subject is particularly timely, especially given current global politics characterised by male world leaders shaping their image as ‘strong’ men.
Touching on queer identity, race, power and patriarchy, men as seen by women, stereotypes of dominant masculinity as well as the family, the exhibition presents masculinity in all its myriad forms, rife with contradictions and complexities. Embracing the idea of multiple ‘masculinities’ and rejecting the notion of a singular ‘ideal man’, the exhibition argues for an understanding of masculinity liberated from societal expectations and gender norms.
Room 1-4
Disrupting the Archetype
Over the last six decades, artists have consistently sought to destabilise the narrow definitions of gender that determine our social structures in order to encourage new ways of thinking about identity, gender and sexuality. ‘Disrupting the Archetype’ explores the representation of conventional and at times clichéd masculine subjects such as soldiers, cowboys, athletes, bullfighters, body builders and wrestlers. By reconfiguring the representation of traditional masculinity – loosely defined as an idealised, dominant heterosexual masculinity – the artists presented here challenge our ideas of these hypermasculine stereotypes.
Across different cultures and spaces, the military has been central to the construction of masculine identities – which has been explored through the work of Wolfgang Tillmans (below) and Adi Nes (below) among others, while Collier Schorr (below) and Sam Contis’s powerful works (below) address the dominant and enduring representation of the lone cowboy. Athleticism, often perceived as a proxy for strength which is associated with masculinity, is called into question by Catherine Opie’s and Rineke Dijkstra’s tender portraits (below). The male body, a cornerstone for artists such as John Coplans (above), Robert Mapplethorpe and Cassils (below), is meanwhile exposed as a fleshy canvas, constantly in flux.
Historically, the non-western male body has undergone a complex process of subjectification through the Western gaze – invariably presented as either warlike or sexually charged. Viewed against this context, the work of Fouad Elkoury and Akram Zaatari, as well as the found photographs of Taliban fighters that Thomas Dworzak discovered in Afghanistan (below), can be read as deconstructing the Orientalist gaze.
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing a detail from Wolfgang Tillmans’ epic montage Soldiers – The Nineties Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing a detail from trans masculine artist Cassils’ series Time Lapse, 2011 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing at left a detail from trans masculine artist Cassils’ series Time Lapse, 2011, and at right the work of Rineke Dijkstra Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation views of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs from Adi Nes’ series Soldiers, 1999 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Adi Nes (Israeli, b. 1966) Untitled 2000 From the series Soldiers Courtesy Adi Nes & Praz-Delavallade Paris, Los Angeles
Adi Nes (Israeli, b. 1966) Untitled 1999 From the series Soldiers Courtesy Adi Nes & Praz-Delavallade Paris, Los Angeles
Adi Nes was born in Kiryat Gat. His parents are Jewish immigrants from Iran. He is openly gay. Nes is notable for series “Soldiers”, in which he mixes masculinity and homoerotic sexuality, depicting Israeli soldiers in a fragile way.
Nes creates cinematic images that reference war, sexuality, life, and death with the kind of stylised polish you might expect from a photographer whose images have appeared in the pages of Vogue Hommes. His partially autobiographical work is deliberate and staged in an attempt to raise questions about sexuality, masculinity and identity in Israeli culture. “The beginning point of my art is who I am,” he says. “Since I’m a man and I’m an Israeli, I deal with issues of identity with ‘Israeli-ness’ and masculinity, but my photographs are multi-layered.”
“The challenge of the photographer is to catch the viewer for more than one second in front of the picture,” says Nes, explaining his provocative images. “If you catch the viewer in front of the picture, it can touch the viewer.”
Anonymous text “Adi Nes on masculinity, sexuality and war,” from the Phaidon website 2012 [Online] Cited 07/03/2020
Thomas Dworzak (Germany, b. 1972) Taliban portraits 2002 Kandahar, Afghanistan
While covering the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Magnum photographer Thomas Dworzak came across a handful of photo studios in Kandahar which despite the Taliban’s ban on photography had been authorised to remain open, for the sole purpose of taking identity photos. Complicating the conventional image of the hypermasculine soldier, the colour portraits Dworzak found in the back rooms of these studios depict Taliban fighters variously posing in front of scenic backdrops, holding hands, using guns or flowers as props or enveloped in a halo of vibrant colours, their eyes heavily made up with black kohl. These stylised photographs directly contradict the public image of the soldier in this overwhelmingly male-dominated patriarchal society.
Masculinities: Liberation through Photography catalogue cover
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs from Catherine Opie’s series High School Football, 2007-2009 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
‘Male Order’ invites the viewer to reflect on the construction of male power, gender and class. The artists gathered here have all variously attempted to expose and subvert how certain types of masculine behaviour have created inequalities both between and within gender identities. Two ambitious, multi-part works, Richard Avedon’s The Family, 1976, and Karen Knorr’s Gentlemen, 1981-1983, focus on typically besuited white men who occupy the corridors of power, while foregrounding the historic exclusion not only of women but also of other marginalised masculinities.
Male-only organisations, such as the military, private members’ clubs and college fraternities, have often served as an arena for the performance of ‘toxic’ masculinity, as chronicled in Andrew Moisey’s The American Fraternity: An Illustrated Ritual Manual, 2018. This startling book charts the misdemeanours of fraternity members alongside an indexical image bank of US Presidents, alongside leaders of government and industry who have belonged at one time or another to these fraternities. Richard Mosse’s film, Fraternity, 2007, takes a different tack by painting a portrait of male rage that is both playful and alarming.
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs from Richard Avedon’s series The Family (1976) Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Early in 1976, with both the post-Watergate political atmosphere and the approaching bicentennial celebration in mind, Rolling Stone asked Richard Avedon to cover the presidential primaries and the campaign trail. Avedon counter-proposed a grander idea – he had always wanted to photograph the men and women he believed to have constituted political, media and corporate elite of the United States.
For the next several months, Avedon traversed the country from migrant grape fields of California to NFL headquarters in Park Avenue and returned with an amazing portfolio of soldiers, spooks, potentates, and ambassadors that was too late for the bicentennial but published in Rolling Stone’s Oct. 21, 1976, just in time for the November elections.
Sixty-nine black-and-white portraits … were in Avedon’s signature style – formal, intimate, bold, and minimalistic. Appearing in them are President Ford and his three immediate successors – Carter, Reagan, and Bush. Other familiars of the American polity such as Kennedys and Rockefellers are here, and as are giants who held up the nation’s Fourth Pillar during that challenging decade: A. M. Rosenthal of the New York Times who decided to publish the Pentagon Papers, and Katharine Graham who led Woodward and Bernstein at Washington Post.
Alex Selwyn-Holmes. “The Family, 1976; Richard Avedon” on the Iconphotos website May 18, 2012 [Online] Cited 03/03/2020
Installation views of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs from Karen Knorr’s series Gentlemen, 1981-1983 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing Piotr Uklanski’s Untitled (The Nazis), 1998, a collage of actors dressed as Nazis, courtesy of Massimo De Carlo Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Room 7-8
Too Close to Home: Family and Fatherhood
Since its invention photography has been a powerful vehicle for the construction and documentation of family narratives. In contrast to the conventions of the traditional family portrait, the artists gathered here deliberately set out to record the ‘messiness’ of life, reflecting on misogyny, violence, sexuality, mortality, intimacy and unfolding family dramas, presenting a more complex and not always comfortable vision of fatherhood and masculinity.
Loss and the ageing male figure are central to the work of both Masahisa Fukase and Larry Sultan (both below). Their respective projects marked a new departure in the way men photographed each other, serving as a commentary on how old age engenders a loss of masculinity. An examination of everyday life, Richard Billingham’s tender yet bleak portraits of his father, as chronicled in Ray’s a Laugh, cast a brutally honest eye on his alcoholic father Ray against a backdrop of social decline (below).
Anna Fox’s disturbing autobiographical work undermines expectations of the traditional family album while revealing the mechanics of paternalistic power. Meanwhile, the father-daughter relationship is brought into sharp focus in Aneta Bartos’s sexually charged series Family Portrait which unsettles traditional family boundaries (below).
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing the photographs of Larry Sultan from the series Pictures from Home Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing Richard Billingham’s photographs from the series Ray’s a Laugh Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing the photographs of Aneta Bartos’s sexually charged series Family Portrait Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Aneta Bartos (Born Poland, lives New York) Mirror 2015 From the series Family Portrait Archival inkjet print 30 x 30.65 inches
Aneta Bartos (Born Poland, lives New York) Apple 2015 From the series Family Portrait Archival inkjet print 30 x 30.65 inches
Since 2013 New York based artist Aneta Bartos has been traveling back to her hometown Tomaszów Mazowiecki, where she was raised by her father as a single parent from the age of eight until fourteen. Then 68 years old, and having spent a lifetime as a competitive body builder, Bartos’ father asked her to take a few shots documenting his physique before it degenerated and inevitably ran its course. The original request of her father inspired Bartos to transform his idea into a long-term project called Dad. A few summers later Dad developed into a new series of portraits, titled Family Portrait, exploring the complex dynamics between father and daughter.
Text from the Antwerp Art website [Online] Cited 01/03/2020
“The pastoral setting is a romanticised portal to Bartos’s past. Her father’s poses are often heroic; at times the pictures are playful and flirty, almost seductive. Seen together, they display the sadness of a man who knows he is ageing, with the subtext of his waning sexuality. They are bittersweet, images of time passing and memories being preserved.”
Elisabeth Biondi quoted on the Postmasters website 2017 [Online] Cited 01/03/2020
Installation views of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs from Peter Hujar’s series Orgasmic Man 1969 (see below) Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Room 9-12
Queer Masculinity
In defiance of the prejudice and legal constraints against homosexuality in Europe, the United States and beyond over the last century, the works presented in ‘Queering Masculinity’ highlight how artists from the 1960s onwards have forged a new politically charged queer aesthetic.
In the 1970s, artists such as Peter Hujar (below), David Wojnarowicz, Sunil Gupta (below) and Hal Fischer (below) photographed gay lifestyles in New York and San Francisco in a bid to claim public visibility and therefore legitimacy at a time when homosexuality was still a criminal offence. Reflecting on their own queer experience and creating sensual bodies of work, artists such as Rotimi Fani-Kayode (below) and Isaac Julien (below) portrayed black gay desire while Catherine Opie’s seminal work Being and Having, 1991 (below), documented members of the dyke, butch and BDSM communities in San Francisco playing with the physical attributes associated with hypermasculinity in order to overturn traditional binary understandings of gender.
Installation views of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs by Karlheinz Weinberger Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing photographs from Sunil Gupta’s series Christopher Street 1976 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Gupta went on to study under Lisette Model at the New School and take his place among the most accomplished photographers, editors, and curators of his generation, exploring the way identities flower under various sexual, geographical, and historical conditions. But Christopher Street is where it all began. His subjects are engaged in an unprecedented moment in which it seemed possible to build a world of their own. He shows inner lives, barely concealed within the downturned face of a mustachioed man with his hands in his pockets, and outer ones as well, as other men cruise the lens right back, or laugh with each other, unbothered by the stranger with the camera. They were often just engaged in the everyday and extraordinary act of simply existing as gay. In each photograph, Gupta somehow projects a protective and versatile desire: to remember and be remembered at once.
Extract from Jesse Dorris. “Christopher Street Revisited,” on the Aperture website May 30th, 2019 [Online] Cited 29/02/2020
The 1976 Christopher Street series marks the first set of photographs Gupta made as a practicing artist, using the camera as a tool for open expression. His decision to use black and white film was partly aesthetic, yet also practical, as he was developing the prints in his bathroom. Although he uses a documentarian style, Gupta was by no means an impartial observer behind the camera, he was a participant, enthralled by his subjects.
The series … captures a specific moment in history – a cross section of a thriving community in one of New York’s most dynamic areas – Manhattan’s Christopher Street. Dressed in the latest fashions, moving confidently and relaxing on street corners, their visible presence is a signifier of a specific period of public consciousness. Un-staged and spontaneous, most of the artist’s subjects are unaware of the camera and are simply going about their day. Now, with hindsight, Gupta is struck by the routineness of the images, stating:
‘There is a poignancy they never had at the time… A few years later, the AIDS crisis took hold. The public nature of gay life was forced back into the shadows. Thousands of men died. New York shut down its bathhouses, gay parties became private, and this whole world became hidden again.’
Fusing the public with the personal, the Christopher Street series reflects the openness of the gay liberation movement, as well as Gupta’s own “coming out” as an artist. More than a nostalgic time capsule, the photographs reveal a community that shaped Gupta as a person and cemented his lifelong dedication to portraying people who have been denied a space to be themselves.
Extract from Anonymous. “Sunil Gupta: Christopher Street,” on the Monovisions website 24 May 2019 [Online] Cited 29/02/2020
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Handkerchiefs 1977 From the series Gay Semiotics Gelatin silver print
Hal Fischer (American, b. 1950) Street Fashion Jock 1977 From the series Gay Semiotics Gelatin silver print
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing at left, photographs from Isaac Julien’s series After Mazatlàn, 1999/2000 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing Catherine Opie’s series Being and Having 1991 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
The exhibition brings together over 300 works by over 50 pioneering international artists, photographers and filmmakers such as Richard Avedon, Peter Hujar, Isaac Julien, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Robert Mapplethorpe, Annette Messager and Catherine Opie to show how photography and film have been central to the way masculinities are imagined and understood in contemporary culture. The show also highlights lesser-known and younger artists – some of whom have never exhibited in the UK – including Cassils, Sam Contis, George Dureau, Elle Pérez, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Hank Willis Thomas, Karlheinz Weinberger and Marianne Wex amongst many others. Masculinities: Liberation through Photography is part of the Barbican’s 2020 season, Inside Out, which explores the relationship between our inner lives and creativity.
Jane Alison, Head of Visual Arts, Barbican, said: ‘Masculinities: Liberation through Photography continues our commitment to presenting leading twentieth century figures in the field of photography while also supporting younger contemporary artists working in the medium today. In the wake of the #MeToo movement and the resurgence of feminist and men’s rights activism, traditional notions of masculinity has become a subject of fierce debate. This exhibition could not be more relevant and will certainly spark conversations surrounding our understanding of masculinity.’
With ideas around masculinity undergoing a global crisis and terms such as ‘toxic’ and ‘fragile’ masculinity filling endless column inches, the exhibition surveys the representation of masculinity in all its myriad forms, rife with contradiction and complexity. Presented across six sections by over 50 international artists to explore the expansive nature of the subject, the exhibition touches on themes of queer identity, the black body, power and patriarchy, female perceptions of men, heteronormative hypermasculine stereotypes, fatherhood and family. The works in the show present masculinity as an unfixed performative identity shaped by cultural and social forces.
Seeking to disrupt and destabilise the myths surrounding modern masculinity, highlights include the work of artists who have consistently challenged stereotypical representations of hegemonic masculinity, including Collier Schorr, Adi Nes, Akram Zaatari and Sam Contis, whose series Deep Springs, 2018 draws on the mythology of the American West and the rugged cowboy. Contis spent four years immersed in an all-male liberal arts college north of Death Valley meditating on the intimacy and violence that coexists in male-only spaces. Complicating the conventional image of the fighter, Thomas Dworzak‘s acclaimed series Taliban consists of portraits found in photographic studios in Kandahar following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, these vibrant portraits depict Taliban fighters posing hand in hand in front of painted backdrops, using guns and flowers as props with kohl carefully applied to their eyes. Trans masculine artist Cassils‘ series Time Lapse, 2011, documents the radical transformation of their body through the use of steroids and a rigorous training programme reflecting on ideas of masculinity without men. Elsewhere, artists Jeremy Deller, Robert Mapplethorpe and Rineke Dijkstra dismantle preconceptions of subjects such as the wrestler, the bodybuilder and the athlete and offer an alternative view of these hyper-masculinised stereotypes.
The exhibition examines patriarchy and the unequal power relations between gender, class and race. Karen Knorr‘s series Gentlemen, 1981-83, comprised of 26 black and white photographs taken inside men-only private members’ clubs in central London and accompanied by texts drawn from snatched conversations, parliamentary records and contemporary news reports, invites viewers to reflect on notions of class, race and the exclusion of women from spaces of power during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Toxic masculinity is further explored in Andrew Moisey‘s 2018 photobook The American Fraternity: An Illustrated Ritual Manual which weaves together archival photographs of former US Presidents and Supreme Court Justices who all belonged to the fraternity system, alongside images depicting the initiation ceremonies and parties that characterise these male-only organisations.
With the rise of the Gay Liberation Movement through the 1960s followed by the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, the exhibition showcases artists such as Peter Hujar and David Wojnarowiz, who increasingly began to disrupt traditional representations of gender and sexuality. Hal Fischer‘s critical photo-text series Gay Semiotics, 1977, classified styles and types of gay men in San Francisco and Sunil Gupta’s street photographs captured the performance of gay public life as played out on New York’s Christopher Street, the site of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising. Other artists exploring the performative aspects of queer identity include Catherine Opie‘s seminal series Being and Having, 1991, showing her close friends in the West Coast’s LGBTQ+ community sporting false moustaches, tattoos and other stereotypical masculine accessories. Elle Pérez‘s luminous and tender photographs explore the representation of gender non-conformity and vulnerability, whilst Paul Mpagi Sepuya‘s fragmented portraits explore the studio as a site of homoerotic desire.
During the 1970s women artists from the second wave feminist movement objectified male sexuality in a bid to subvert and expose the invasive and uncomfortable nature of the male gaze. In the exhibition, Laurie Anderson‘s seminal work Fully Automated Nikon (Object/Objection/Objectivity), 1973, documents the men who cat-called her as she walked through New York’s Lower East Side while Annette Messager‘s series The Approaches, 1972, covertly captures men’s trousered crotches with a long-lens camera. German artist Marianne Wex‘s encyclopaedic project Let’s Take Back Our Space: ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures, 1977, presents a detailed analysis of male and female body language and Australian indigenous artist Tracey Moffatt‘s awkwardly humorous film Heaven, 1997, portrays male surfers changing in and out of their wet suits.
Further highlights include New York based artist Hank Willis Thomas, whose photographic practice examines the complexities of the black male experience; celebrated Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase‘s The Family, 1971-1989, chronicles the life and death of his family with a particular emphasis on his father; and Kenneth Anger‘s technicolour experimental underground film Kustom Kar Kommandos, 1965, explores the fetishist role of hot rod cars amongst young American men.
Press release from the Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing Hank Willis Thomas’ series Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America 1968-2008 2005-2008 (below) Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Room 13-14
Reclaiming the Black Body
Giving visual form to the complexity of the black male experience, this section foregrounds artists who over the last five decades have consciously subverted expectations of race, gender and the white gaze by reclaiming the power to fashion their own identities.
From Samuel Fosso’s playfully staged self-portraits, taken in his studio, in which he performs to the camera sporting flares and platforms boots or flirtatiously revealing his youthful male physique (below) to Kiluanji Kia Henda’s fictional scenarios in which he adopts the troubled personas of African men of power, the works presented here reflect on how black masculinity challenges the status quo (below).
The representation of black masculinity in the US is born out of a violent history of slavery and prejudice. Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America 1968-2008 by Hank Willis Thomas (below) draws attention to the ways in which corporate America has commodified the African American male experience while simultaneously perpetuating and reinforcing cultural stereotypes. Similarly, Deana Lawson’s powerful work Sons of Cush, 2016, highlights how the black male figure is often ‘idealised (in their physical beauty) and pathologised by the culture (as symbols of violence or fear)’.
Hank Willis Thomas (American, b. 1976) The Johnson Family 1981/2006 From the series Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America 1968-2008 2005-08
Concerned with the literal and figural objectifications of the African American male body, in his complex series Unbranded Hank Willis Thomas redeploys magazine adverts featuring African Americans made between 1968 – a pivotal moment in the struggle for civil rights – and 2008, which witnessed the accession of Barack Obama to the US presidency. By digitally stripping the ads of all text, branding and logos, Thomas draws attention to the ways in which corporate America has commodified the African American experience while simultaneously perpetuating and reinforcing cultural stereotypes.
Hank Willis Thomas (American, b. 1976) It’s the Real Thing! 1978/2008 From the series Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America 1968-2008 2005-2008
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing a photograph from Kiluanji Kia Henda’s series The Last Journey of the Dictator Mussunda Nzombo Before the Great Extinction Act I Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing part of Marianne Wex’s encyclopaedic project Let’s Take Back Our Space: ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures, 1977 Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Room 15-16
Women on Men: Reversing the Male Gaze
As the second-wave feminist movement gained momentum through the 1960s and ’70s, female activists sought to expose and critique entrenched ideas about masculinity and to articulate alternative perspectives on gender and representation. Against this background, or motivated by its legacy, the artists gathered here have made men their subject with the radical intention of subverting their power, calling into question the notion that men are active and women passive.
In the early 1970s pioneers of feminist art such as Laurie Anderson (below) and Annette Messager consciously objectified the male body in a bid to expose the uncomfortable nature of the dominant male gaze. In contrast, filmmakers such as Tracey Moffatt (below) and Hilary Lloyd (above) turn the tables on male representations of desire to foreground the power of the female gaze.
In his humorous series The Ideal Man, 1978 (below), Hans Eijkelboom invited ten women to fashion him into their image of the ‘ideal’ man. Through this act Eijkelboom reverses the male to female power dynamic and inverts the traditional gender hierarchy.
Laurie Anderson (American, b. 1947) Man with a Cigarette 1973 From the series Fully Automated Nikon (Object/Objection/Objectivity)
Laurie Anderson (American, b. 1947) Two men in a car 1973 From the series Fully Automated Nikon (Object/Objection/Objectivity)
Anderson photographed men who called to her or whistled her on the street. In her artist statement she writes about one experience,
“As I walked along Houston Street with my fully automated Nikon. I felt armed, ready. I passed a man who muttered ‘Wanna fuck?’ This was standard technique: the female passes and the male strikes at the last possible moment forcing the woman to backtrack if she should dare to object. I wheeled around, furious. ‘Did you say that?’ He looked around surprised, then defiant ‘Yeah, so what the fuck if I did?’ I raised my Nikon, took aim began to focus. His eyes darted back and forth, an undercover cop? CLICK.
As it turned out, most of the men I shot that day had the opposite reaction. When i confronted them, the acted innocent, then offended, like some nasty invisible ventriloquist had ticked them into saying dirty words against their will. By the time I took their pictures they were posing, like taking their picture was the least I could do.”
“I decided to shoot pictures of men who made comments to me on the street. I had always hated this invasion of my privacy and now I had the means of my revenge. As I walked along Houston Street with my fully automated Nikon, I felt armed, ready. I passed a man who muttered ‘Wanna fuck?’ This was standard technique: the female passes and the male strikes at the last possible moment forcing the woman to backtrack if she should dare to object. I wheeled around, furious. ‘Did you say that?’ He looked around surprised, then defiant. ‘Yeah, so what the fuck if I did?’ I raised my Nikon, took aim, began to focus. His eyes darted back and forth, an undercover cop? CLICK.”
Anderson takes the power from her male pursuers, allowing them nothing more than the momentary fear that their depravity has just been captured in a picture.
“A playful video that glories in the female gaze and objectification of men. It zeros in on the Australian national sport, surfing, and in particular on several dozen good-looking muscular men changing into or out of their swimming trunks. This ritual is usually conducted in parking lots or on sidewalks, always near cars and sometimes inside them; it usually but not always involves a beach towel wound carefully around the torso. Ms Moffatt begins by shooting her subject unseen from inside a house and gradually moves closer and closer, engaging some in conversations that are never heard. The soundtrack alternates between the ocean surf and the sounds of drumming and chanting, male rituals of another, more authentic Australian culture. By the tape’s end, the artist’s voyeurism has shifted to participation; the camera shows her free hand, the one not holding the camera, darting into view, trying to undo the towel of the last surfer.”
New York Times
Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England showing part of Hans Eijkelboom’s series The Ideal Man, 1978
Glossary of Terms by CN Lester
Homosociality: Typically non-romantic and/or non-sexual same-sex relationships and social groupings – may sometimes include elements of homoeroticism, as they are frequently interdependent phenomena.
Normativity: The process by which some groups of people, forms of expression and types of behaviour are classified according to a perceived standard of what is ‘normal’, ‘natural’, desirable and permissible in society. Inevitably, this process designates people, expressions and behaviours that do not fit these norms as abnormal, unnatural, undesirable and impermissible.
Hegemonic Masculinity: ‘Hegemonic’ means ‘ruling’ or ‘commanding’ – hegemonic masculinity, therefore, indicates male dominance and the forms of masculinity occupying and perpetuating this dominant position. The term was coined in the 1980s by the scholar R. W. Connell, drawing on the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony.
Hierarchy: Across many cultures throughout history, and continuing into the present moment throughout large parts of the world, gender functions as a hierarchy: some gender categories and gender expressions are granted higher value and more power than others. Men are often higher up the gender hierarchy than women, but the gender hierarchy is affected by racism, disablism, ageism, transphobia and other factors; in the West, men in their thirties are likely to be considered higher up the gender hierarchy than men in their eighties, for example.
Gender roles: Specific cultural roles defined by the weight of gendered ideas, restrictions and traditions. Men and women are often expected, sometimes forced, to occupy oppositional gender roles: aggressor versus victim, protector versus nurturer and so on. Many gender roles are specific to intersections of race, class, sexuality, religion and disabled status – examples of these types of gender roles can be seen in the stereotypes of the Jezebel or the Dragon Lady.
Patriarchy: Literally ‘the rule of the father’, a patriarchy is a society or structure centred around male dominance and in which women (and those of other genders) are not treated as or considered equal.
Queer: A slur, a term of reclamation and a specific and radical site of community and activism in solidarity with many kinds of difference, and specifically opposed to heteronormativity and cisnormativity. Queer studies and queer theory are important emerging fields of study.
Gender identity: Identity refers to what, who, and how someone or something is, both in the way this is understood as selfhood by an individual, and also the self as it is shaped and positioned by the world. Gender identity can be a surprisingly difficult term to pin down and is perhaps best understood as the stated truth of a person’s gender (or lack of gender), which is in itself the sum of many different factors.
Fetishisation: To turn the subject into a fetish, sexually or otherwise. Fetishisation in terms of gender and desire frequently occurs in conjunction with objectification and power. Men and women of colour are frequently fetishised by white people, in society and in artistic practice, through different stereotypes and limitations. Trans and disabled people are also subject to fetishisation, particularly in bodily terms. Kobena Mercer’s critical essay on Robert Mapplethorpe, ‘Reading Radical Fetishism’,1 and David Henry Hwang’s play and afterword to M. Butterfly (1988) both explore the notion of fetishisation.
1/ Kobena Mercer, ‘Reading Racial Fetishism: The Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe’, in Emily Apter and William Pietz, eds, Fetishism as Cultural Discourse (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 307-29.
Critical race theory: A branch of scholarship emerging from the application of critical theory to the study of law in the 1980s, critical race theory (CRT) is now taken as an approach and theoretical foundation across both academic and popular discourse. CRT names, examines and challenges the social constructions and functions of race and racism. Rejecting the idea of race as a ‘natural’ category, CRT looks instead to the cultural, structural and legal creation and maintenance of difference and oppression. Scholars working in this field include Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Patricia Williams.
Me Too movement: ‘#MeToo is a movement that was founded in 2006 to support survivors of sexual violence, in particular black and brown girls, who were in the program that we were running. It has grown since then to include supporting grown people, women, and men, and other survivors, as well as helping people to understand what community action looks like in the fight to end sexual violence’ – Tarana Burke, founder of the Me Too movement.
Male gaze: A term coined by film critic Laura Mulvey, the notion of the male gaze develops Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of le regard (the gaze) to take into account the power differentials and gender stereotyping inherent in ways of looking within patriarchal, sexist culture. The male gaze refers to how the world – and women in particular – are looked at and presented from a cisgender, straight, frequently white male perspective. In visual art the male gaze can be understood in multiple ways, from the male creator of the work, to men within the work viewing women or the world around them, to the (assumed) male viewer of the work itself. Many women artists have countered the male gaze through deconstruction and through the creation and promotion of works that centre the ‘female gaze’.
Installation views of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at Barbican Art Gallery on February 19, 2020 in London, England Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery
Exhibition dates: 7th September – 1st December, 2019
Visited September 2019 posted June 2020
Curator: Estrella de Diego, Professor of Modern Art at the Complutense University of Madrid
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) George Antheil (installation view) 1927 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
George Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author, and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the modern sounds – musical, industrial, and mechanical – of the early 20th century.
This was one of the most memorable photography exhibitions of my European sojourn during August – October 2019, in the most beautiful of gallery spaces. I was so very lucky to complete my time in Europe before the current pandemic arrived.
I will comment more on the exhibition in Part 2 of the posting, but suffice to say it was a real pleasure to see the work of Berenice Abbott side by side with the photographs of Eugène Atget, an artist she did much to champion (including printing his photographs). Her portraits of Atget taken in the year of his death were magnificent. They provide a portal between old and new, between the artist looking back on his work (his life), and the 20th century artist realising that they have to accommodate Atget within their future kinēsis … and in so doing, Abbott pictures an artist whose spirit possessed all of Old Paris.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
All iPhone photographs by Dr Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. See Part 2 of the posting.
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
This autumn Huis Marseille will present a large retrospective of the famous American photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991). This is the first time that an extensive selection of her work, held by important American collections, will be shown in the Netherlands. Abbott is one of the key figures in the history of 20th-century photography. Her legacy is not only an eclectic photographic oeuvre but also a strong opinion on the role of photography in society, to which she gave expression in numerous publications. Her work forms a bridge linking the artistic avant-garde in the ‘Old World’ with the emerging art scene of the 1920s and 1930s in New York.
Modernity
The idea of modernity pervades all of Berenice Abbott’s work: from her portraits of pioneering artists and intellectuals, and her astonishing views of the city of New York, to her photos of scientific themes, documenting the results of various physics experiments. Abbott’s oeuvre also reflects her own modernism, her constant desire to be on the front line, and her exceptional talent for not just noticing the changes that were going on around her but for depicting them to striking effect. Berenice Abbott was an enthusiastic proponent of modernism in photography, and was strongly opposed to pictoralism, the painterly style that dominated photography in the early 20th century. In her view a good photograph was shaped by the specific characteristics of photography itself, and not by those of painting.
Lost Generation
In 1918 Berenice Abbott left her birthplace Ohio and moved to New York to study sculpture, where she soon gravitated towards Greenwich Village, a hotbed of avant-garde and radical artists, bohemians, and others whose lifestyles put them outside the American mainstream. In 1921 she arrived in Paris and joined the artistic community of Montparnasse on the famous left bank of the Seine. Its writers and artists included many American expats who, disillusioned by the senseless violence of the First World War and by Prohibition in America, had taken refuge in Europe. The American writer Gertrude Stein called them the ‘lost generation’, a generation to which Abbott also belonged, which questioned traditional values and favoured an alternative kind of life. Abbott would go on to portray many of these writers, including Djuna Barnes and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Portrait photographer
Abbott’s life as a photographer began in 1923, in the Parisian studio of the famous American photographer, Dadaist and Surrealist Man Ray. As his assistant she learned the technical, artistic and commercial aspects of portrait photography. In 1926, with financial support from the immensely rich American art collector Peggy Guggenheim, she opened her own Paris studio. Her clients were mostly expats, socialites, bohemians, writers, artists and the ‘new women’ who, like herself, were willing to live on the margins of society in order to be free. Many had broken ties with their origins and their gender, such as the journalist Janet Flanner, the publisher Jane Heap, and the writer Sylvia Beach. Abbott immortalised them in assertive, powerful portraits. Beach was also the publisher of James Joyce’ Ulysses (1922), a book that Abbott greatly admired, and she portrayed the writer, his wife and daughter on several occasions.
Eugène Atget
Through Man Ray in Paris Abbott met the photographer Eugène Atget, with whose work she felt an immediate visual and artistic affinity. For decades Atget had documented Paris in plain, unadorned images, and with a keen eye for seemingly unimportant details. After his death in 1927 Abbott looked after a large part of his oeuvre, promoting it tirelessly in America through exhibitions and books. The present exhibition therefore also includes a small selection of photos by Eugène Atget, which Abbott printed from the original negatives in 1956.
Changing New York
The heart of the exhibition is formed by Abbott’s photos of New York City. When she returned to New York in 1929 she felt an immediate urge to photograph the city itself, with its enormous contrasts and contradictions, a city that changed constantly and was never the same from moment to moment. In 1935 she received a substantial grant from the Federal Art Project, a government initiative that was intended to create jobs and boost the economy following the crisis years, and this allowed her to begin work in earnest. She called her project Changing New York; it was also published in book form in 1939, with texts by her partner Elizabeth McCausland. Her camera transformed New York into a living being, with an extraordinary character, which visitors can experience to this day as they move through its busy streets and stare amazed at the modern beauty of its skyscrapers. Shops, people, bridges, streets, interiors, construction sites, iconic buildings seen from outside or from above – everything comes together to create a portrait of the city.
Science
In the late 1930s Abbott became deeply interested in science, and saw that photography could play a role as spokesperson. The cerebral world of science needed the vitality and imaginative powers of photography to reach a wider audience. Moreover, the scientific interpretation of the world was not reserved for scientists alone; any citizen ought to be able to consider a scientific question, and photography could serve as an intermediary. With this goal in mind, for years Abbott did darkroom experiments with all kinds of camera techniques. In 1957 the Physical Science Study Committee of the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology hired her services to provide photographic illustrations for new and influential schoolbooks.
Curation
The exhibition was created in collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE, a Spanish non-profit organisation with which Huis Marseille has worked regularly over the last ten years – most recently in 2016 for the Stephen Shore retrospective in Huis Marseille. It was curated by Estrella de Diego, Professor of Modern Art at the Complutense University of Madrid, and has been shown in Barcelona and Madrid.
Loans
The exhibition comprises almost 200 vintage photographs generously loaned from the New York Public Library, the Museum of the City of New York, the International Center of Photography (NY), the George Eastman House (Rochester, NY), the Howard Greenberg Gallery (NY) and the MIT Museum (Cambridge, Massachusetts), together with a selection of Abbott’s publications on loan from the Rijksmuseum library and other collections.
Publication
Estrella de Diego, Julia van Haaften, Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity, Madrid (Fundación Mapfre) 2019.
Text from the Huis Marseille website
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Jean Cocteau (installation views) 1927 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Jean Cocteau, the author of so many memorable films and works of literature, is shown embracing a sort of mask that perhaps alludes to the repeated play of mirrors that runs through his Orphic Trilogy. He represents the kind of masculinity that Abbott renders in her portraits of homosexual activists such as André Gide and Cocteau or the ‘new men’ who had ceased to be certain of their identity – like the characters in the novels of George Bernard Shaw or Thomas Hardy – and had adopted a less monolithic masculinity. This trait can also be found in D.H. Lawrence, and in James Joyce, who sat for Abbott in 1928.
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Janet Flanner in Paris (installation view) 1927 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing at right the image Janet Flanner in Paris, 1927 Photo: Eddo Hartmann
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Janet Flanner in Paris 1927 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Abbott’s portraits depict some of the modern intellectuals with whom she associated in New York’s Greenwich Village following her arrival there from the native Ohio. These included people who also had links with Paris, such as the writer and journalist Janet Flanner, a personal friend of the writer Djuna Barnes. Abbott gave Flanner an ambiguous aspect; with her cropped hair and masculine dress she is another representative of the strong ‘New Women’. Abbott photographed many of these New Women who were prepared to live on the margins of society in order to safeguard their freedom.
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing in the top image at left, the photograph of Janet Flanner (1927, above); and at second left, Eugène Atget (1927, below) Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Eugène Atget (installation view) 1927 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Eugène Atget 1927 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Eugène Atget (installation view) 1927 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
In 1927 Berenice Abbott produced two portraits, front-facing and in profile, of Eugène Atget, the photographer who was adored by the Surrealists and who captured the mood of late 19th-century Paris. The portraits, reminiscent of a documentary work – of police records, almost – highlight Abbott’s extraordinary skill as a portrait photographer. Atget provided the inspiration for Abbott’s wonderful portrait of New York City, Changing New York. She made generous efforts to promote the French photographer’s work, even acquiring his negatives after his death.
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Eugène Atget 1927 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing Abbott’s photographs of Eugène Atget Photo: Eddo Hartmann
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) James Joyce, Paris (installation view) 1920 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Audrey McMahon (installation view) 1925-1946 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Audrey McMahon was the Director of the New York region of the Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1943; the region she oversaw included New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. Born in New York City in 1898, she attended the Sorbonne, and she was the director of the College Art Association. …
Her approach to the administration of the Federal Art Project attempted to give the artists employed a great deal of freedom, and as she recalled later, “It is gratifying to note… that almost all of the painters, sculptors, graphic artists, and muralists who recall those days remember little or no artistic stricture.”
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Jane Heap (installation view) 1929-1931 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Jane Heap (November 1, 1883 – June 18, 1964) was an American publisher and a significant figure in the development and promotion of literary modernism. Together with Margaret Anderson, her friend and business partner (who for some years was also her lover), she edited the celebrated literary magazine The Little Review, which published an extraordinary collection of modern American, English and Irish writers between 1914 and 1929. Heap herself has been called “one of the most neglected contributors to the transmission of modernism between America and Europe during the early twentieth century.”
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Jane Heap 1929-1931 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam with in the bottom image at left, Eugène Atget’s photo Eclipse, Paris 1912 Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) L’éclipse (installation view) April 1912 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Pendant l’éclipse 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.
Text from the MoMA website
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing the photographs of Eugène Atget with at second right Avenue des Gobelins, 1925 Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Avenue des Gobelins 1925 Albumen print
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Interior of a worker’s room, Rue de Romainville, 19th arr. (installation view) c. 1910 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Courtyard, 7 Rue de Valence, 5th arr. (installation view) June 1922 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Courtyard, 7 Rue de Valence, 5th arr. June 1922 Gelatin silver print In portfolio: 20 photographs by Eugène Atget, 1856-1927. New York : Berenice Abbott, 1956, no. 13. Library of Congress
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Rue St. Rustique (installation view) March 1922 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Rue St. Rustique March 1922 Gelatin silver print In portfolio: 20 photographs by Eugène Atget, 1856-1927. New York : Berenice Abbott, 1956, no. 9. Library of Congress
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Ragpicker’s Hut (installation views) 1910 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Street diversions (or B organ) 1898-1899 Gelatin silver print In portfolio: 20 photographs by Eugène Atget, 1856-1927. New York : Berenice Abbott, 1956, no. 16 Library of Congress
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Street Pavers (installation views) 1899-1900 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Street Pavers 1899-1900 Gelatin silver print In portfolio: 20 photographs by Eugène Atget, 1856-1927. New York : Berenice Abbott, 1956, no. 12 Library of Congress
Abbott saw in Eugène Atget a documentary photographer who revealed in his photographs of Paris a city frozen in time, a city that one might almost describe as antiheroic. Abbott understood that all documentary photography (and an photograph can be documentary, free from fault lines) contains a larger amount of autobiography, and Atget’s photography tells the story of a man and his camera traipsing around the city to seek out its nooks and crannies. To take a photo is to think with your eyes and with your brain. To observe is to be part of the scene.
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Butcher’s shop, Rue Christine (installation view) c. 1923 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Butcher’s shop, Rue Christine c. 1923 Gelatin silver print In portfolio: 20 photographs by Eugène Atget, 1856-1927. New York : Berenice Abbott, 1956, no. 17 Library of Congress
The surrealists were fascinated by Eugène Atget and his shifting play with Paris’s innermost structure, his phantasmagorias. In contrast with this, Abbott emphasises the documentary characteristics of Atget, at first glance a ‘realist’ photographer who captured the deserted landscapes of the city described by Albert Valentin in 1928 as “cerebral landscapes”. Atget photographed the everyday, the events in the house next door, expressing the sense of encountering the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the strange – rather like Abbott did, years later.
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Mannequin (installation views) 1926-1927 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Mannequin 1926-1927 Gelatin silver print In portfolio: 20 photographs by Eugène Atget, 1856-1927. New York : Berenice Abbott, 1956, no. 15. Library of Congress
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Shop, Avenue des Gobelins (installation view) 1925 Printed in 1956 by Berenice Abbott Gelatin silver print Courtesy of George Eastman Museum Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Bar interior, 15 Rue Boyer, 20th arr. 1900-1911 Albumen print
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing Aerial View of New York by Night at centre and New York Stock Exchange at centre right Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing at left, Aerial View of New York by Night (1936, below) Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Aerial View of New York by Night March 20, 1936 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography
The changes in points of view in [the book] Changing New York – which sometimes seem like a juggling act or a pirouette, ways of seeing form above and from outside – are what convert the most emblematic or familiar places into landscape seen for the first time. And then there is the beautiful photograph of New York at night, the image that offers a full view, the one captured whole by our gaze” an exercise in light that prefigures Abbott’s later photographs on scientific themes.
Installation views of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing Abbott’s New York Stock Exchange (1933, below) Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) New York Stock Exchange 1933 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Washington Square, looking north (installation views) April 16, 1936 Gelatin silver print Museum of the City of New York Gift of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1949 Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) From Trinity Church Yard (installation view) March 1, 1938 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) John Watts statue, from Trinity Churchyard looking toward One Wall Street, Manhattan March 1, 1938 Gelatin silver print Wikipedia, Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Broadway near Broome Street, Manhattan (installation views) 1935 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Arts, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photos: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing at bottom left, Lamport Export Company, 507-511 Broadway, Manhattan October 7, 1935; and at top right, Broadway and Thomas Street 1936 Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Broadway and Thomas Street (installation view) 1936 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Arts, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing at third right, Abbott’s 5th Avenue, No’s 4, 6, 8 March 20, 1936 Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam showing Abbott’s 5th Avenue, No’s 4, 6, 8 March 20, 1936 Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) 5th Avenue, No’s 4, 6, 8 March 20, 1936 Gelatin silver print International Center of Photography
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Tempo of the City II, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street looking west from Seymour Building, 503 Fifth Avenue September 6, 1938 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection Wikipedia, Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Allen Street, No’s 55-57, Manhattan (installation view) 1937 Gelatin silver print The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Arts, Prints and Photographs, Photography Collection The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Unknown photographer Photograph of Allied War exhibition, Serbian Section, V&A (installation view) 1917 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The older I grow, the more exponentially I appreciate and love these early photographs. Imagine having a collection like this!
Wonderful to see Edward Steichen’s Portrait – Lady H (1908, below) as I have a copy of Camera Work 22 in my collection.
The V&A has been collecting photographs since 1856, the year the Museum was founded, and it was one of the first museums to present photography exhibitions. Since then the collection has grown to be one of the largest and most important in the world, comprising around 500,000 images. The V&A is now honoured to have added the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection to its holdings, which contains around 270,000 photographs, an extensive library, and 6,000 cameras and pieces of equipment associated with leading artists and photographic pioneers.
Take a behind-the-scenes look at our world class photography collection following the transfer of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Collection, which has enabled a dramatic reimagining of the way photography is presented at the V&A. The photographs curators introduce a series of five highlights that are on display in the new Photography Centre, which opened on 12th October 2018. The first phase of the centre will more than double the space dedicated to photography at the Museum.
Text from the V&A and YouTube websites
Unknown photographer Photograph of Allied War exhibition, Serbian Section, V&A (installation view) 1917 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The V&A has been collecting and exhibiting photographs since the 1850s. This image shows part o a photographic exhibition held over 100 years ago in the same galleries you are standing in today. The exhibition presented a densely packed display of images depicting the Allied Powers during the First World War.
Installation views of the V&A Photography Centre, London Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French, 1765-1833) Christ Carrying his Cross (installation views) 1827 Heliograph on pewter plate The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photos: Marcus Bunyan
The French inventor Niépce made the earliest surviving photographic images, which he called ‘heliographs’ or ‘sun-writing’. Only 16 are thought to still exist. Although Niépce experimented with light-sensitive plates inside a camera, he made most of his images, including this one, by placing engravings of works by other artists directly onto a metal plate. He would probably have had the resulting heliographs coated in ink and printed.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French, 1765-1833) Christ Carrying his Cross (installation view) 1827 Heliograph on pewter plate The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) and Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) The Adamson Family (installation view) 1843-1845 Salted paper print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The partnership between Scottish painter Hill and chemist Adamson merged the art and science of photography. The pair initially intended to create preliminary studies for Hill’s paintings, but soon recognised photography’s artistic potential. With Hill’s knowledge of composition and lighting, and Adamson’s considerable sensitivity and dexterity in handling the camera, together they produced some of the most accomplished photographic portraits of their time.
William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800-1877) The Haystack 1844 From The Pencil of Nature Salted paper print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Benjamin Brecknell Turner (British, 1815-1894) Hedgerow Trees, Clerkenleap (installation views) 1852-1854 Albumen print; Calotype negative The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Turner took out a licence to practice ‘calotype’ photography from Talbot in 1848. He contact-printed positive images from paper negatives. The negative (below) and its corresponding positive (above) are reunited here to illustrate this process, but the pairing as you see them would not have been the photographer’s original intention for display. Although unique negatives were sometimes exhibited in their own right, only showing positive prints was the norm.
Benjamin Brecknell Turner (British, 1815-1894) Hedgerow Trees, Clerkenleap (installation view) 1852-1854 Albumen print; Calotype negative The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Road to Chailly, Forest of Fontainebleau (installation view) 1852 Albumen print from a collodion glass negative Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the V&A Photography Centre, London Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Marseillaise (The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792), by Francois Rude, 1833-35, Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, Paris (installation view) 1852 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Marseillaise (The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792), by Francois Rude, 1833-35, Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, Paris (installation view) 1852 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup (installation view) 1860 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Fenton was one of the most versatile and technically brilliant photographers of the 19th century. He excelled at many subjects, including war photography, portraiture, architecture and landscape. He also made a series of lush still lives. Here, grapes, plums and peaches are rendered in exquisite detail, and the silver cup on the right reflects a camera tripod.
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup (installation view) 1860 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup (installation view) 1860 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup (installation view detail) 1860 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) Still Life with Fruit and Decanter 1860 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Oscar Gustaf Rejlander (British born Sweden, 1813-1875) Head of St John the Baptist on a Charger(installation view) c. 1856 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Rejlander probably intended this photograph to be part of a larger composition telling the biblical story of Salome, in which the severed head of John the Baptist was presented to her on a plate. Rejlander never made the full picture, however, and instead produced multiple prints of the head alone.
Oscar Gustaf Rejlander (British born Sweden, 1813-1875) Head of St John the Baptist on a Charger (installation view) c. 1856 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898) The Pyramids of Dahshoor [Dahshur], from the East, from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith (installation view) 1858 (published 1860 or 1862) Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Frith’s photographs were popular and circulated widely, both because of their architectural interest and because they often featured sites mentioned in the Bible. Photographs of places described in biblical stories brought a new level of realism to a Christian Victorian audience, previously only available through the interpretations of a painter or illustrator.
Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898) The Pyramids of Dahshoor [Dahshur], from the East, from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith (installation view) 1858 (published 1860 or 1862) Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898) The Pyramids of Dahshoor [Dahshur], from the East, from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith 1858 (published 1860 or 1862) Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) Solar Effect in the Clouds – Ocean(installation view) 1856-1859 Albumen Print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) Solar Effect in the Clouds – Ocean 1856-1859 Albumen Print Art Institute of Chicago Creative Commons Zero (CC0)
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Imperial Yacht, La Reine Hortense, Le Havre (installation view) 1856-1857 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Imperial Yacht, La Reine Hortense, Le Havre (installation view) 1856-1857 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Imperial Yacht, La Reine Hortense, Le Havre 1856-1857 Albumen print The Metropolitan Museum of Art Public domain
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris (installation view) 1857-1859 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris (installation view) 1857-1859 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) Balaclava from Guard’s Hill, the Crimea (installation view) 1855 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-69) Balaclava from Guard’s Hill, the Crimea (installation view) 1855 Albumen print Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815-1879) Lucia (installation view) 1864-1865 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Charles Lutwide Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll)(British, 1832-1898) Tea Merchant (On Duty) and Tea Merchant (Off Duty) (installation view) 1873 Albumen prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Lewis Carroll is best known as the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but he was also an accomplished amateur photographer. Approximately half of his photographs are portraits of children, sometimes wearing foreign costumes or acting out scenes. Here, Alexandra ‘Xie’ Kitchen, his most frequent child sitter, poses in Chinese dress on a stack of tea chests.
Charles Lutwide Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll)(British, 1832-1898) Tea Merchant (On Duty) (installation view) 1873 Albumen prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Charles Lutwide Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll)(British, 1832-1898) Tea Merchant (Off Duty) (installation view) 1873 Albumen prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815-1879) Pomona (installation view) 1887 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The South Kensington museum (now the V&A) was the only museum to collect and exhibit Julia Margaret Cameron’s during her lifetime. This is one of several studies she made of Alice Liddell, who as a child had modelled for the author and photographer Lewis Carroll and inspired his novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Cameron, Carroll and Liddell moved in overlapping artistic and intellectual circles. Here, surrounded by foliage, a grown-up Alice poses as the Roman goddess of orchards and gardens.
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815-1879) Pomona (installation view) 1887 Albumen print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Alvin Langdon Coburn (American 1882-1966) Frederick Holland Day (installation view) 1900 Gum platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The British-American photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic. Active in the early 20th century, he gained recognition from a young age as a talented photographer. His style ranged from the painterly softness of Pictorialism to the unusual vantage points and abstraction of Modernism. As well as being a practising photographer, Coburn was an avid collector. In 1930 he donated over 600 photographs to the Royal Photographic Society. The gift included examples of Coburn’s own work alongside that of his contemporaries, many of whom are now considered to be the most influential of their generation. Coburn also collected historic photographs, and was among the first in his time to rediscover and appreciate the work of 19th-century masters like Julia Margaret Cameron and Hill and Adamson.
Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933) Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia (installation view) 1905 Gum platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Day made this portrait when he visited the Hampton Institute in Virginia, which was founded after the American Civil War as a teacher-training school for freed slaves. The institute’s camera club invited Day to visit the school and critique the work of its students. Day’s friend and fellow photographer, Frederick Evans, donated this strikingly modern composition to the Royal Photographic Society in 1937.
Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933) Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia (installation view) 1905 Gum platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933) Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia (installation view) 1905 Gum platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933) Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia 1905 Gum platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Gertrude Käsebier (American, 1852-1934) The Letter 1906 Platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Käsebier studied painting before opening a photography studio in New York. Her Pictorialist photographs often combine soft focus with experimental printing techniques. These sisters were dressed in historic costume for a ball, but their pose transforms a society portrait into a narrative picture. In a variant image, they turn to look at the framed silhouette on the wall.
Installation views of the V&A Photography Centre, London Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Francis James Mortimer (British, 1874-1944) Alvin Langdon Coburn at the Opening of His One-Man Exhibition the Royal Photographic Society, London (installation view) 1906 Carbon print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Annie Wardrope Brigman (American, 1869-1950) The Spirit of Photography c. 1908 Platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Alvin Langdon Coburn (American 1882-1966) Kensington Gardens (installation view) 1910 Platinum print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Cover of Camera Work Number XXVI(installation view) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) Portrait – Lady H(installation view) 1908 Camera Work 22 1908 Photogravure The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) Portrait – Lady H 1908 Camera Work 22 1908 Photogravure The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976) New York (installation view) 1916 Camera Work 48 1916 Photogravure The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) was an American photographer, publisher, writer and gallery owner. From 1903-1917, he published the quarterly journal Camera Work, which featured portfolios of exquisitely printed photogravures (a type of photograph printed in ink), alongside essays and reviews. Camera Work promoted photography as an art form, publishing the work of Pictorialist photographers who drew inspiration from painting, and reproducing 19th-century photographs. It also helped to introduce modern art to American audiences, including works by radical European painters such as Matisse and Picasso.
Alvin Langdon Coburn (American 1882-1966) Vortograph (installation view) 1917 Bromide print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Rudolph Koppitz (American, 1884-1936) Bewegungsstudie (Movement Study) 1926 Carbon print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Koppitz was a leading art photographer in Vienna between the two World Wars, as well as a master of complex printing processes, including the pigment, gum and broccoli process of transfer printing. Tis dynamic and sensual composition captures dancers from the Vienna State Opera Ballet frozen mid-movement.
Herbert Bayer (Austrian American, 1900-85) Shortly Before Dawn (installation view) 1932-39 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Bayer had a varied and influential career as a designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director and architect. He taught at the Bauhaus school in Dessau, Germany, and later began to use photomontage, both in his artistic and advertising work. Using this process, he combined his photographs with found imagery, producing surreal or dreamlike pictures.
Herbert Bayer (Austrian American, 1900-85) Shortly Before Dawn (installation view) 1932-39 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Bernard Eilers (Dutch, 1878-1951) Reguliersbreestraat, Amsterdam (installation view) 1934 Foto-choma Eilers Given by Joan Luckhurst Eilers Photo: Marcus Bunyan
In the 1930s, the Dutch photographer Bernard Eilers developed an experimental new photographic colour separation process known as ‘Foto-chroma Eilers’. Although the process was short-lived, Eilers successfully used this technique to produce prints like this of great intensity and depth of colour. Here, the misty reflections and neon lights create an atmospheric but modern view of a rain-soaked Amsterdam at night.
Bernard Eilers (Dutch, 1878-1951) Reguliersbreestraat, Amsterdam (installation view) 1934 Foto-choma Eilers Given by Joan Luckhurst Eilers Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958) Valentine to Charis(installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
When Weston met the model and writer Charis Wilson in 1934, he was immediately besotted. This valentine to her contains a cluster of objects arranged as a still life, including the photographer’s camera lens and spectacles. Some of the objects seem to hold a special significance that only the lovers could understand. The numbers on the right possibly refer to their ages – there were almost thirty years between them.
Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999) Portrait of Gabrielle (‘Coco’) Chanel 1937 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Variant, American Vogue, 1 December 1937, p. 86: ‘Fashion: Mid-Season Prophecies’
Caption reads: Chanel in her fitted, three-quarters coat / Mademoiselle Chanel, in one of her new coats that are making the news – a three quarters coat buttoned tightly and trimmed with astrakham like her cap. 01/12/1937
Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965) Women with headscarf, McCall’s Cover, July 1938(installation view) 1938 Tricolour carbro print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Hardware Store(installation view) 1938 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Between 1935 and 1939, the Federal Art Project emptied Abbott to make a series of photographs entitled Changing New York, documenting the rapid development and urban transformation of the city. This picture shows the facade of a downtown hardware store, its wares arranged in a densely-packed window display with extend onto the pavement.
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Hardware Store(installation view) 1938 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Hardware Store 1938 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Walker Evans (American, 1903-75) Photographs of African masks, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
In 1935, the Museum of Modern Art commissioned Evans to photograph objects in its major exhibition of African art. Using his 8 x 10 inch view camera, he highlighted the artistry and detail of the objects, alternating between front, side and rear views. In total, Evans produced 477 images, and 17 complete sets of them were printed. Several of these sets were donated to colleges and libraries in America, and the V&A bought one set in 1936 to better represent African art in its collection.
The term ‘negro’ is given here in its original historical context.
Walker Evans (American, 1903-75) Photograph of African mask, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Walker Evans (American, 1903-75) Photograph of African mask, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Walker Evans (American, 1903-75) Photograph of African mask, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver prints The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Bill Brandt (British, 1904-1983) Dubuffet’s Right Eye Alberto Giacometti’s Left Eye Louise Nevelson’s Eye Max Ernst’s Left Eye (installation view) 1960-1963 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Bill Brandt (British, 1904-83) Dubuffet’s Right Eye (installation view) 1960-1963 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
German-born Brandt moved to London in the 1930s. In his long and varied career, he made many compelling portraits of people including Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas, the Sitwell family, Robert Graves and E.M. Forster. For this series he photographed the eyes of well-known artists over several years, creating a substantial collection of intense and unique portraits. The pictures play upon ideas of artistic vision and the camera lens, which acts as a photographer’s ‘mechanical eye’.
Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976) Simple Still Life, Egg (installation view) 1950 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Throughout his career, Sudek used various photographic styles but always conveyed an intensely lyrical vision of the world. Here, his formal approach to a simple still life presents a poetic statement, and evokes an atmosphere of contemplation. Sudek’s motto and advice to his students – ‘hurry slowly’ – encapsulates his legendary patience and the sense of meditative stillness in his photographs.
Otto Steiner (German, 1915-1978) Luminogram (installation view) 1952 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Otto Steiner (German, 1915-1978) Luminogram (installation view) 1952 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943) True Color (installation views) 1974-1987 Portfolio of thirty dye transfer prints, printed in 2007 American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of The Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Known for his dynamic street photography, Cohen’s work presents a fragmented, sensory image of his hometown of Wiles-Barre, Pennsylvania. This set of pictures was taken at a time when colour photography was just beginning to be recognised as a fine art. Until the 1970s, colour had largely been associated with other advertising or family snapshots, and was not thought of as a legitimate medium for artists. Cohen and other photographers like William Eggleston transferred this perception using the dye-transfer printing process. Although complicated and time-consuming, the technique results in vibrant and high quality colour prints.
Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943) True Color (installation view detail) 1974-1987 Portfolio of thirty dye transfer prints, printed in 2007 American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of The Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943) True Color (installation view detail) 1974-1987 Portfolio of thirty dye transfer prints, printed in 2007 American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of The Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Graham Smith (British, b. 1947) What she wanted & who she got (installation view) 1982 Gelatin silver print The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Since the 1980s, Graham Smith has been photographing his hometown of South Bank near Middlesbrough. His images convey his deep sensitivity towards the effects of changing working conditions on the former industrial north-east. In this photograph, despite the suggested humour of the title, we are left wondering who the couple are and what the nature of their relationship might be.
Jan Kempenaers (Belgian, b. 1968) Spomenik #3 2006 C-type print
The Kosmaj monument in Serbia is dedicated to soldiers of the Kosmaj Partisan detachment from World War II.
Jan Kempenaers (Belgian, b. 1968) Spomenik #4 2007 C-type print
This monument, authored by sculptor Miodrag Živković, commemorates the Battle of Sutjeska, one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in the former Yugoslavia.
Kempenaers toured the balkans photographing ‘Spomeniks’ – monuments built in former Yugoslavia in the 1960s and ’70s on the sites of Second World War battles and concentration camps. Some have been vandalised in outpourings of anger against the former regime, while others are well maintained. In Kempenaers’ photographs, the monuments appear otherworldly, as if dropped from outer space into a pristine landscape.
Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Victoria and Albert Museum Cromwell Road London SW7 2RL Phone: +44 (0)20 7942 2000
![Lewis Carroll (British, Daresbury, Cheshire 1832 - 1898 Guildford) '[Alice Liddell]' June 25, 1870 from the exhibition '2020 Vision: Photographs, 1840s-1860s' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Dec 2019 - Dec 2020](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/lewis-carroll-alice-liddell.jpg "Lewis Carroll (British, Daresbury, Cheshire 1832 - 1898 Guildford) '[Alice Liddell]' June 25, 1870 from the exhibition '2020 Vision: Photographs, 1840s-1860s' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Dec 2019 - Dec 2020")
![Unknown photographer (American) '[Surveyor]' c. 1854](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/anon-surveyor-a.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) '[Surveyor]' c. 1854")
![Unknown photographer (American) '[Surveyor]' c. 1854](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/anon-surveyor-b.jpg "Unknown photographer (American) '[Surveyor]' c. 1854")
![Hippolyte Bayard (French, 1801-1887) '[Classical Head]' probably 1839](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/bayard-classical-head.jpg "Hippolyte Bayard (French, 1801-1887) '[Classical Head]' probably 1839")
![Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/anon-collaged-portraits-a.jpg "Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s")
![Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/anon-collaged-portraits-b.jpg "Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s")
![Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/anon-collaged-portraits-c.jpg "Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s")
![Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/anon-collaged-portraits-d.jpg "Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s")
![Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/anon-collaged-portraits-e.jpg "Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s")
![Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/anon-collaged-portraits-f.jpg "Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s")
![Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/anon-collaged-portraits-g.jpg "Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s")
![Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/anon-collaged-portraits-h.jpg "Unknown artist. '[Carte-de-visite Album of Collaged Portraits]' 1850s-1860s")
![Unknown artist (American) '[Studio Photographer at Work]' c. 1855](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/unknown-artist-american-studio-photographer-at-work-c-1855.jpg "Unknown artist (American) '[Studio Photographer at Work]' c. 1855")
![Unknown artist (American) '[Boy Holding a Daguerreotype]' 1850s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/unknown-american-active-1850s-boy-holding-a-daguerreotype-1850s.jpg "Unknown artist (American) '[Boy Holding a Daguerreotype]' 1850s")
![Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829-1916) '[California Oak, Santa Clara Valley]' c. 1863](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/watkins-california-oak-santa-clara-valley.jpg "Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829-1916) '[California Oak, Santa Clara Valley]' c. 1863")
![Pietro Dovizielli (Italian, 1804-1885) '[Spanish Steps, Rome]' c. 1855](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/dovizielli-spanish-steps.jpg "Pietro Dovizielli (Italian, 1804-1885) '[Spanish Steps, Rome]' c. 1855")
![Edouard Baldus (French (born Prussia), 1813-1889) '[Amphitheater, Nîmes]' c. 1853](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/baldus-amphitheater.jpg "Edouard Baldus (French (born Prussia), 1813-1889) '[Amphitheater, Nîmes]' c. 1853")
![Lewis Dowe (American, active 1860s-1880s) '[Dowe's Photograph Rooms, Sycamore, Illinois]' 1860s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/lewis-dowe-dowes-photograph-rooms-sycamore-illinois-1860s.jpg "Lewis Dowe (American, active 1860s-1880s) '[Dowe's Photograph Rooms, Sycamore, Illinois]' 1860s")
![E. & H. T. Anthony (American) '[Specimens of New York Bill Posting]' 1863](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/e-h-t-anthony-specimens-of-new-york-bill-posting-1863.jpg "E. & H. T. Anthony (American) '[Specimens of New York Bill Posting]' 1863")
![Felice Beato (British (born Italy), Venice 1832-1909 Luxor) and James Robertson (British, 1813-1881) [Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem] 1856-1857](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/beato-dome.jpg "Felice Beato (British (born Italy), Venice 1832-1909 Luxor) and James Robertson (British, 1813-1881) [Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem] 1856-1857")
![R.C. Montgomery (American, active 1850s) '[Self-Portrait (?)]' 1850s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/r.c.-montgomery-self-portrait-1850s.jpg "R.C. Montgomery (American, active 1850s) '[Self-Portrait (?)]' 1850s")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964). 'Das Siebengebirge: Blick vom Rolandsbogen' [The Siebengebirge: view from the Rolandsbogen] 1929-30 (center) and 'Untitled [Remagen Bridge on the Rhine]' c. 1930 (right)](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sander-landscape-a.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964). 'Das Siebengebirge: Blick vom Rolandsbogen' [The Siebengebirge: view from the Rolandsbogen] 1929-30 (center) and 'Untitled [Remagen Bridge on the Rhine]' c. 1930 (right)")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Das Siebengebirge: Blick vom Rolandsbogen' [The Siebengebirge: view from the Rolandsbogen] 1929-1930](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sander-landscape-b1.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Das Siebengebirge: Blick vom Rolandsbogen' [The Siebengebirge: view from the Rolandsbogen] 1929-1930")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Das Siebengebirge: Blick vom Rolandsbogen' [The Siebengebirge: view from the Rolandsbogen] 1929-1930](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sander-landscape-b.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Das Siebengebirge: Blick vom Rolandsbogen' [The Siebengebirge: view from the Rolandsbogen] 1929-1930")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Das Siebengebirge: Blick vom Rolandsbogen' [The Siebengebirge: view from the Rolandsbogen] 1929-1930](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/sander-the-siebengebirge.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Das Siebengebirge: Blick vom Rolandsbogen' [The Siebengebirge: view from the Rolandsbogen] 1929-1930")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Untitled [Remagen Bridge on the Rhine]' c. 1930](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sander-landscape-c.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Untitled [Remagen Bridge on the Rhine]' c. 1930")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Untitled [Bohemians: avant-garde of Cologne]' 1920s (left) and 'Professor Ludwig Behn' 1920s (right)](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sander-installation-a.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Untitled [Bohemians: avant-garde of Cologne]' 1920s (left) and 'Professor Ludwig Behn' 1920s (right)")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Untitled [Bohemians: avant-garde of Cologne]' 1920s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sander-avant-garde-a.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Untitled [Bohemians: avant-garde of Cologne]' 1920s")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Untitled [Bohemians: avant-garde of Cologne]' 1920s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sander-avant-garde.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Untitled [Bohemians: avant-garde of Cologne]' 1920s")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Painter's Wife [Helene Abelen]' 1926](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sander-painters-wife.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Painter's Wife [Helene Abelen]' 1926")
![Francis Frith (British, 1822-98) 'The Pyramids of Dahshoor [Dahshur], from the East, from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith' 1858 (published 1860 or 1862) from the V&A Photography Centre, London 2019](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/frith-the-pyramids-of-dahshoor-web.jpg "Francis Frith (British, 1822-98) 'The Pyramids of Dahshoor [Dahshur], from the East, from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith' 1858 (published 1860 or 1862) from the V&A Photography Centre, London 2019")
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