Review: ‘Trace’ by Murray Fredericks at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 24th May – 18th June 2011

 

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970) 'Salt 271' 2011

 

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970)
Salt 271
2011
150 x 120cm
Pigment print on cotton rag

 

 

“Photographers tell me what I already know. The recognition of the beautiful, bizarre, or boring (the three photographic B’s) is not the problem. You would have to be a refrigerator not to be moved by the beauty of Yosemite. The problem is to deal with one’s total experience, emotionally as well as visually. Photographers should tell me what I don’t know.”


Duane Michals Real Dreams1

 

“While we cannot describe its appearance (the equivalent), we can define its function. When a photograph functions as an Equivalent we can say that at that moment, and for that person the photograph acts as a symbol or plays the role of a metaphor for something that is beyond the subject photographed.”


Minor White

 

 

Fredericks new infrared panoramic works show the strength of nature at it’s finest (9 out of 10 to nature especially when see through this type of filtration), excellent technical skills and good printing but somehow any revelation of spirit in the sublime has been lost in these photographs.

The photographer does not take me anywhere, there is no new space to step into, another view of the world that I want to spend time with. The relationship between the two series is also nebulous, the critical ice / fire space between the works adding little frisson to the exhibition.

I ask: Is it sufficient to use a digital scientific infrared back, if for no other reason that it is there? Is it sufficient to know that these climatic conditions take place in the same area each day, at the same time, place the camera down and just capture the scene? Is there really a non-decisive moment in these photographs, a poetic insight, or is this just what was, literally, hanging around so to speak?

The answer to all three questions I leave up to the reader.

Personally, I need photography to push the boundaries of elusiveness through an understanding in revelation, not just through an understanding of space and form, light and colour. I believe that conventional patterns of perception are there to be broken in ways that disrupt the technologies of the self – the self-regulating of our senses, the conventions of cultural capital – but too what do we open ourselves up to?

As Minor White says: ‘The sound of one hand clapping’.

While the photographs have the weight of serious equipment and professional acumen behind them after the initial awe on viewing they fall to earth, like the rainstorms they portray. As with my earlier review of Salt they seem to be more about the photographer than any revelation of the thing being photographed.

Duane Michals observes that, “The best artists give themselves in their work” but this giving is ego-less, the dropping away of the bells and whistles to let an’other’ emerge: in this sense I do not feel the total experience, emotionally as well as visually.

Paul Strand said that it took him 10 years to start to become an artist, to let go of ego in his work; paradoxically after this the work became more his own.

For me, these photographs never become a metaphor for something that is beyond the subject being photographed.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Michals, Duane. Real Dreams 1976 [Online] Cited 08/06/2011, on longer available online.


Many thankx to Angela Connor for her help and to Arc One Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970) 'Salt 272' 2010

 

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970)
Salt 272
2010
Pigment print on cotton rag
150 x 120cm

 

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970) 'Salt 273' 2011

 

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970)
Salt 273
2011
Pigment print on cotton rag
150 x 120cm

 

 

Salt began in 2003 and is a series of photographs of vast empty landscapes. Each image in the series is connected by the placement of the horizon running across the lower third of the frame. The horizon is the only referential form, breaking the void and providing the viewer with an element that paradoxically ‘defines’ the space. These new works add another dimension to Salt, with the water from last year’s rains now creating scenes diametrically opposed to the work occupying the adjacent walls as Hector.

Hector draws its title from an affectionately name atmospheric phenomenon that produces some of the world’s biggest thunderstorms. These new black and white works employ Murray’s methodical consistency of composition with distinctly different outcomes to the Zen-like vistas of Salt. In these works the expanse of the storm is consciously contained and forced into a barometric battle with the invisible air at its limits for the place of subject within the photograph…

By juxtaposing these series, each viewer is at once placed outside the containers which harbour these landscapes of remote territories – one calm and one facing the eye of the storm – and at the same time place in the centre of Murray’s minimal, ethereal representations of these places. In this way we can trace his exploration into these subjects – capturing the moment is our witness to a reverence to land and country.

Text from Arc One Gallery

 

Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775-1851) 'Valley of Aosta: Snowstorm, Avalanche, and Thunderstorm' 1836/37

 

Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775-1851)
Valley of Aosta: Snowstorm, Avalanche, and Thunderstorm
1836/37
Oil on canvas
36 1/4 x 48 in. (92.2 x 123cm)
The Art Institute of Chicago: Frederick T. Haskell Collection

 

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970) 'Hector 10' 2011

 

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970)
Hector 10
2011
220 x 120cm
Pigment print on cotton rag

 

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970) 'Hector 11' 2011

 

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970)
Hector 11
2011
204 x 120cm
Pigment print on cotton rag

 

 

Arc One Gallery
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Phone: (03) 9650 0589

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Review: ‘Ice Structure’ by Kirsten Haydon at Gallery Funaki, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 24th May – 18th June, 2011

Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) 'ice objects', 2011 Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) ice objects 2011 Enamel, copper, reflector beads Various dimensions
“Confronted by the immensity and power of desert and ice, one cannot simply stand to the side and evaluate as though one were standing before a landscape garden and other works of art. Conflicting emotions, including fear, are aroused and simultaneously absorbed or taken over by the overmastering presence of nature.”

Yi Fu Tuan. Desert and Ice: Ambivalent Aesthetics, 1993

There are many things to like about this exhibition: the fine craftsmanship, the forms, the observation and the beauty of some of the pieces. The symbolism is simple and effective – re-imaged relics of white, vitreous enamel objects from the huts of Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton, the use of reflector beads to imitate snow and Meccano-like steel girders to symbolise human construction and encroachment on a pristine land. Some of the ‘objects’ remind me of the beauty and simplicity of Etruscan vessels, seemingly delicate apports, being the transference of an article from one place and time to another; the use of reflector beads at the bottom of ice sample (2011, below) is also inspired. So too is the occlusion of the image in the brooch ice plane (2011, below) which adds further mystery to an already surreal landscape. One piece is absolutely stunning. The wonderful neckpiece ice movement (2011, see two photographs below) is ravishing in it’s articulation and form, its snow-covered twig-like coolness. Unfortunately where the exhibition fails is in the use of banal images in several works such as ice depot, ice runway, ice industry (brooch, all 2011, not pictured) and ice industry (2011, neckpiece, below). The obvious point being made is that of man made construction in a pristine landscape but the simple symbology used so effectively in other pieces becomes a little awkward in these pieces. The images used are quite ugly and while this fits the symbolic use of them it doesn’t make for very interesting or illuminating art. There needed to be more layering for the message to be effective – which is why the occluded brooch works so well, human construction blinded, dissolved. This is a pity because the rest of the exhibition is excellent. Enter this ice world and you will be delightfully surprised! Dr Marcus Bunyan Many thankx to Katie Scott for her help and Gallery Funaki for allowing me to publish the photographs and text in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) 'ice edge' and 'ice sheet flow' both 2011 Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) ice edge (left) Object 2011, enamel, reflector beads, copper, silver 60 x 350 x 210 mm ice sheet flow (right) Object 2011 Enamel, reflector beads, copper, silver 70 x 130 x 195 mm Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) 'ice plane', brooch, 2011 Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) ice plane Brooch 2011 Enamel, photo transfer, reflector beads, silver, copper, steel 80 x 80 x 10 mm Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) 'ice movement', neckpiece, 2011 Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) ice industry neckpiece 2011 enamel, copper, photo transfer, paint, silver 280 x 160 x 10 mm I make jewellery and objects that both connect to and explore human experience and place. Since Antarctica’s discovery explorers, expeditioners, artists and writers have attempted to record and visualise this isolated continent. In 2004 I was awarded a New Zealand Antarctic Arts Fellowship en joined those who communicate their experiences of Antarctica. Antarctica is often regarded as a pristine yet harsh environment, home to extraordinary wildlife and the domain of scientists. Due to its remoteness projects that are supported by international Antarctic programmes are predominantly science-based and as a result artistic research in Antarctica is limited. The cultural theorist, Yi Fu Tuan describes the experience of the explorer as: “the longing to be taken out of oneself and ones habitual world into something vast, overpowering and indifferent.” His statement resonates with my experience of Antarctica where I found myself drawn to the minutiae of the ice crystal and the structures and forms that I could associate with in the extraordinary landscape. While in that place, so removed from the conventions of civilisation, I came to understand the immensity of nature and to see that it exists without the necessity for human presence … Inside the historic huts of Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton I was captivated by the history, contained both in the interior spaces themselves and in the material artefacts left by the expeditioners … These seemingly mundane objects are transformed into a still life of significant artefacts of a previous time, preserving the memory and story of their parties of explorers. My interpretations engage through the iconography of personal jewellery, domestic objects and the environment of Antarctica. In the course of making I continue to investigate and portray Antarctica through my own and others’ personal experiences. The objects I produce reference valued souvenir jewellery and objects now displayed in museums as historical artefacts, which were once personal mementos … Excerpts from the catalogue text by Kirsten Haydon May 2011 Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) 'ice movement' neckpiece 2011 Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) 'ice movement' neckpiece 2011 Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) ice movement Neckpiece 2011 Enamel, copper, reflector beads, silver Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) 'ice sample', object, 2011 Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) ice sample Object 2011 Enamel, copper, reflector beads Gallery Funaki Sackville House Apartment 33 27 Flinders Lane Melbourne 3000 Australia Opening hours: Wednesday – Friday 12 – 5pm Saturday on occasion (check our socials) or by appointment Gallery Funaki website LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK Back to top

Review: ‘Time Machine: Sue Ford’ at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill, Victoria

Exhibition dates: 7th April – 19th June 2011

 

Sue Ford (1943-2009) 'Self-portrait' 1968

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Self-portrait 1968
1968, printed 2011
From the series Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006)
Selenium toned gelatin silver
22.8 x 24 cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

 

“Choosing to photograph oneself, one’s life and one’s time exemplified the now well-worn slogan ‘the person is political’. Ford’s self-examination across the decades is unflinching and exacting. As Janine Burke wrote in 1980, her ‘psychological history [is] etched in her face for everyone to see’. Burke concluded that Ford’s self-portraits are ‘as honest as one can ever be about oneself’.”


Helen Ennis. Faces are Maps: Sue Ford and Portraiture.1

 

“The search for the self is a journey into a mental labyrinth that takes random courses and ultimately ends at impasses. The memory fragments recovered along the way cannot provide us with a basis for interpreting the overall meaning of the journey. The meanings that we derive from our memories are only partial truths, and their value is ephemeral. For Foucault, the psyche is not an archive but only a mirror. To search the psyche for the truth about ourselves is a futile task because the psyche can only reflect the images we have conjured up to describe ourselves. Looking into the psyche, therefore, is like looking into the mirror image of a mirror. One sees oneself reflected in an image of infinite regress. Our gaze is led not toward the substance of our beginnings but rather into the meaninglessness of previously discarded images of the self.”


Patrick Hutton. Foucault, Freud,
and the Technologies of the Self.2

 

 

This is a solid exhibition of the work of beloved Australian photographer Sue Ford, essential looking for anyone wanting to have an overview of Australian photography.

The beautifully hung exhibition flows like music, interweaving up and down, the photographs framed in thin, black wood frames. It features examples of Ford’s black and white fashion and street photography; a selection of work from the famous black and white Time series (being bought for their collection by the Art Gallery of New South Wales) – small, snapshot size double portraits, the first portraits taken during the 1960’s, the second around 1974, formalist portraits in which the sitter is closely cropped around head and shoulders with the photographer using the camera as objectively as possible, the double portrait used to display changes in identity over time; a selection of Photographs of Women – modern prints from the Sue Ford archive that are wonderfully composed photographs with deep blacks that portray strong, independent, vulnerable, joyous women (see last four photographs below); and the most interesting work in the exhibition, the posthumous new series Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006) that evidence, through a 47 part investigation using colour prints from Polaroids, silver gelatin prints printed by the artist, prints made from original negatives and prints from scanned images where there was no negative available, a self-portrait of the artist in the process of ageing (see the two photographs above and below this review).

One of my favourite photographs in the exhibition was Margaret with Emma, Redcliffs, Queensland, 1971. The black and white photograph features a grandmother with her granddaughter, close to each other, both wearing floral dresses of different pattern, both staring intently out of the image at what is possibly a television with a weatherboard backdrop. A dark form hovers at the upper left of the photograph adding a disturbing note to the image but it is the look on the grandmother’s face – a look of shock, enthralment, blankness with eyes wide, that is matched by the intensity on the granddaughter’s face as she stares intently – that transcends the distance between photograph and viewer, between grandmother and granddaughter across time and space. The process of looking and ageing captured by the ‘time machine’, the camera, in one single image. The viewer understands this photograph for we all experience the evidence of our bodies, our mortality. We relate intimately to how the photograph reanimates in the present this moment from the past, the momenti mori of the photograph, the little death becoming our future death.

This notion is particularly poignant in the series Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006), a work that Sue Ford was actively engaged with before her death. Smaller colour prints from negatives and Polaroids are here interspersed with black and white photographs up to about 8″ x 10″ in size: the series contains 12 chromogenic photographs, 7 silver gelatin photographs, 6 dye fusion photographs and 22 selenium-toned photographs (printed 2011). In dark, contrasty prints the artist has photographed herself looking down into the camera shooting into a mirror, looking directly into the mirror with camera, with the camera on a timer, with the camera in/visible, being shot by other people with the camera pointed directly at her, with the camera perpendicular to the artist shot by someone else, with Ford behind a movie camera, with multiple refractions in mirrors. Sometimes Ford even becomes the camera (as in the 1986 self-portrait below: I am the camera, the camera is me).

Ford becomes the “one who looks” knowingly at herself, sometimes the author of that observation, sometimes oblivious to it (until later when she has collected these images). As Burke and Ennis note, these photographs of self-examination across the decades are as honest as one can ever be about oneself. This a deeply political but also deeply psychoanalytical investigation: not to “take care of yourself” as a form of knowing as in Greco-Roman antiquity but “knowing yourself” as the fundamental principle of understanding yourself: a procedure of objectification and subjection in which the photograph ‘marks’ our status and the passage of time, that makes us who we are – photographs as vital techniques in the constitution of the self as subject.3

The mirror is frequently used in these photographs to portray the self. While it is true that these are strong, intimate, unflinching and exacting images, in the use of the mirror the im(pose)tures of life are singled / doubled / tripled – a reflection of the psyche that lead to discarded images of the self that are of little use in understanding the substance of our beginnings … or the overall interpretation of the journey. What they do offer is cumulative evidence of a deep, personal conviction into the inquiry: who am I?

Rembrandt famously painted, drew and etched himself hundreds of times in the process of ageing; Ford has likewise done the same. If, as Victor Burgin observes, “An identity implies not only a location but a duration, a history,”4 then the nature of photography (including Ford’s self-reflexive project), concerned as it is with space and time, becomes the mirror in a search for identity. Photography as a mirror on the world constantly repeats moments of illumination in a re/vision of eternal recurrence, a performance that is a hybrid site: both a homogenous (the same “I”) and heterogenous (a different “I”) site of self-representation, different every time we look. To that end I would like you to look at the self-portrait from 1976 (below). The artist is completely absent, her silhouette, her dark shadow swallowed whole by the blank photographic plate on the left hand side of the image as though Ford, the camera and an image of infinite regress have become one, eternally engulfed by space-time but open to re/view at any time.

Whether looking down, looking toward or looking inward these fantastic photographs show a strong, independent women with a vital mind, an élan vital, a critical self-organisation and an understanding of the morphogenesis of things that will engage us for years to come. Essential looking.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Burke, Janine. Self-portrait/self-image 1980-1981. Melbourne: Australian Directors’ Council, 1981. p. 4 quoted in Ennis, Helen. “Faces are Maps: Sue Ford and Portraiture,” in Lakin, Shaune (ed.,). Sue Ford: Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006). Melbourne: Monash Gallery of Art, 2011, np.

2/ Hutton, Patrick. “Foucault, Freud, and the Technologies of the Self,” in Martin, Luther and Gutman, Huck and Hutton, Patrick (eds.,). Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock Publications, 1988, p. 139

3/ Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish, quoted in Gutman, Huck. “Rousseau’s Confessions: A Technology of the Self,” in Martin, Luther and Gutman, Huck and Hutton, Patrick (eds.,). Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock Publications, 1988, p. 99

4/ Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p. 36


Many thankx to Mark Hislop for his help and the Monash Gallery of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) 'Self-portrait 1986' 1986

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Self-portrait 1986
1986
From the series Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006)
Gelatin silver print, printed 2011
8.4 x 6.5cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) 'Self-portrait 1976' 1976

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Self-portrait 1976
1976, printed 2011
From the series Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006)
Selenium toned gelatin silver print
24 x 18cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

Sue Ford (1943–2009) 'Self-portrait 1974' 1974

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Self-portrait 1974
1974, printed 2011
From the series Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006)
Selenium toned gelatin silver print
19.9 x 18cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

 

On 16 April 2011, the first major exhibition of the work of the late Sue Ford for two decades will open at Monash Gallery of Art.

Sue Ford (1943-2010) was one of Australia’s most important photographers and filmmakers. Ford studied photography at RMIT and in 1974 was the first Australian photographer to be given a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Ford passed away in 2009. Before her death, she was working with Monash Gallery of Art on an exhibition of her work which would feature her final major project Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006). This series of 47 photographs has never been shown before, and presents a compelling self-portrait of an artist. It underscores the central role the camera played in Ford’s life. Self-portrait with camera will be shown alongside a survey of Ford’s black-and-white photographs from the 1960s and 70s and examples of her most iconic work, Time series (1960s-1970s).

The exhibition describes a period when photography was charged with political and personal meaning. As photographic historian and contributor to the publication accompanying the exhibition Helen Ennis states: “Ford’s approach to art making has always been straightforward … She does not cultivate a mysterious artistic persona [since] … her art practice is purposeful; it is the outcome of her view of art as a political activity that is democratic, liberating and relevant to contemporary society.”

As MGA Director and curator of the exhibition Shaune Lakin states: “This exhibition provides a great opportunity for Australian audiences to reassess the work of this important photographer, whose work was always at once political, beautiful and elegiac. In an era when the photograph has become a highly disposable thing, it is important to acknowledge its role as an agent of change and memory.”

Press release from the Monash Gallery of Art

 

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Helen, 1962; Helen, 1974
1974
From the series Time series
Gelatin silver prints
11.0 x 8.0cm; 11.5 x 8.3cm
Museum of Australian Photography, City of Monash Collection
Acquired with assistance from the Robert Salzer Foundation and the Friends of MGA Inc 2020

 

Sue Ford (1943-2009) was one of Australia’s most important twentieth-century photographers, and Time series is her most iconic body of work, widely recognised as a key moment in the history of Australian photography. First exhibited at the NGV and Brummels Gallery of Photography in 1974, the series highlights Ford’s interest in the camera’s ability to record the effects of time and history. To create this series, Ford made portraits of her friends and acquaintances during the early to mid-1960s then rephotographed the sitters around a decade later, showing the second portraits beside the first. In some cases Ford later added third and fourth portraits to create Time series II, which she made for exhibition at the 1982 Sydney Biennale. Ford described the camera as a ‘time machine’ and the works in these series bracket periods in the lives of her subjects. With a tender pathos, they evoke the inevitability of time’s passing along with the processes of human ageing and constant change.

Text from the Museum of Australian Photography website 2021

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) 'Annette 1962; Annette 1974' 1974

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Annette 1962; Annette 1974
1974
From the Time series
Gelatin silver prints
11.1 x 20.1cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with the assistance of the Visual Arts Board and the KODAK (Australasia) Pty Ltd Fund, 1974

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) 'Jim, 1964; Jim, 1969; Jim, 1974; Jim, 1979' 1982

  

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Jim, 1964; Jim, 1969; Jim, 1974; Jim, 1979
1982
From the series Time series
Gelatin silver prints
11.0 x 7.6cm (each)
Museum of Australian Photography, City of Monash Collection
donated by the Sue Ford Archive 2020

 

Sue Ford (1943-2009) 'Lynne and Carol' 1962

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Lynne and Carol
1962, printed 2011
Selenium toned gelatin silver print
38.0 x 38.0cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

Sue Ford (1943-2009) 'Carol, Little Collins St studio' 1962

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Carol, Little Collins St studio
1962, printed 2011
Selenium toned gelatin silver print
37.9 x 38.1cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

Sue Ford (1943-2009) 'St Kilda' 1963

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
St Kilda
1963, printed 2011
Selenium toned gelatin silver print
38.0 x 38.0cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

Sue Ford (1943-2009) 'Untitled [Bliss at Yellow House, King's Cross, Sydney]' c. 1972–1973

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Untitled [Bliss at Yellow House, King’s Cross, Sydney]
c. 1972-3, printed 2011
Selenium toned gelatin silver print
47.9 x 34.2cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change’ at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

Exhibition dates: 26th February – 7th June, 2011

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'Ruins of a Church, Antigua, Guatemala' 1875

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Ruins of a Church, Antigua, Guatemala
1875
Albumen print
Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal

 

 

While rightly famous for his work on animal locomotion it is the first group of photographs in this posting that shine most brightly. It is often overlooked how magnificent a photographer Eadweard Muybridge was and what a brilliant eye he had. The top three photographs, especially the first one (above), are knockouts – radiant jewels in which the tensional points of the composition and the atmosphere of the scene are captured magnificently. I also love the use of human figures to give scale to the scene.

It is rare to find Eadweard Muybridge photographs other than his locomotion studies on the Internet (do a search under Google and see for yourself!), so it is a particular pleasure to post these photographs. It is something I have been wanted to do for quite a while now and finally it has come to pass; earlier iterations of this exhibition had few press images so I must heartily thank the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'The Ramparts, Funnel Rock, Hole in the Wall, Pyramid, Sugar Loaf, Oil House, and Landing Cove on Fisherman's Bay, South Farallon Island (4150)' 1871

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
The Ramparts, Funnel Rock, Hole in the Wall, Pyramid, Sugar Loaf, Oil House, and Landing Cove on Fisherman’s Bay, South Farallon Island (4150)
1871
Albumen print
U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'Ruins of the Church of San Domingo, Panama' 1875

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Ruins of the Church of San Domingo, Panama
1875
Albumen print
Image courtesy The Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'Bridge on the Porto Bello, Panama' 1875

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Bridge on the Porto Bello, Panama
1875
Albumen print
Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'Tenaya Canyon. Valley of the Yosemite. From Union Point. No. 35,'1872

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Tenaya Canyon. Valley of the Yosemite. From Union Point. No. 35
1872
Albumen print
Collection National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'First-Order Lighthouse at Punta de los Reyes, Seacoast of California, 296 Feet Above Sea (4136)' 1871

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
First-Order Lighthouse at Punta de los Reyes, Seacoast of California, 296 Feet Above Sea (4136)
1871
Albumen print
U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) Pi-Wi-Ack. Valley of the Yosemite. (Shower of Stars) “Vernal Fall.” 400 Feet Fall. No. 29, 1872

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Pi-Wi-Ack. Valley of the Yosemite. (Shower of Stars) “Vernal Fall.” 400 Feet Fall. No. 29
1872
Albumen print
Collection San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; gift of Jeffrey Fraenkel and Frish Brandt

 

 

From February 26 through June 7, 2011, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will showcase the first-ever retrospective examining all aspects of artist Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering photography. Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change brings together more than 300 objects created between 1857 and 1893, including Muybridge’s only surviving zoopraxiscope – an apparatus he designed in 1879 to project motion pictures. Originally organised by Philip Brookman, Corcoran Gallery of Art chief curator and head of research, the San Francisco presentation is organised by SFMOMA Associate Curator of Photography Corey Keller.

Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change includes numerous vintage photographs, albums, stereographs, lantern slides, glass negatives and positives, patent models, zoopraxiscope discs, proof prints, notes, books, and other ephemera. The works have been brought together from 38 different collections and include a number of Muybridge’s photographs of Yosemite Valley, including dramatic waterfalls and mountain views from 1867 and 1872; images of Alaska and the Pacific coast; an 1869 survey of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads in California, Nevada, and Utah; pictures from the Modoc War, pictures from Panama and Guatemala; and urban panoramas of San Francisco. The exhibition also includes examples from Muybridge’s experimental series of sequential stop-motion photographs such as Attitudes of Animals in Motion (1881) and his later masterpiece Animal Locomotion (1887).

The exhibition is organised in a series of thematic sections that present the chronology of Muybridge’s career, the evolution of his unique sensibility, the foundations of his experimental approach to photography, and his connections to other people and events that helped guide his work. The sections include: Introduction: The Art of Eadweard Muybridge (1857-1887); The Infinite Landscape: Yosemite Valley and the Western Frontier (1867-1869); From California to the End of the Earth: San Francisco, Alaska, the Railroads, and the Pacific Coast (1868-1872); The Geology of Time: Yosemite and the High Sierra (1872); Stopping Time: California at the Crossroads of Perception (1872-1878); War, Murder, and the Production of Coffee: the Modoc War and the Development of Central America (1873-1875); Urban Panorama (1877-1880); The Horse in Motion (1877-1881); Motion Pictures: the Zoopraxiscope (1879-1893); and Animal Locomotion (1883-1893).

Muybridge and San Francisco

Best known for his groundbreaking studies of animals and humans in motion, Muybridge (1830-1904) was also an innovative and successful landscape and survey photographer, documentary artist, inventor, and war correspondent. Born in Kingston upon Thames, England, in 1830, Muybridge immigrated to the United States around 1851. He worked as a bookseller in New York and San Francisco and returned to London in 1860 following a serious injury. Muybridge learned photography in Britain and by 1867 returned to the United States, where began his career as a photographer in San Francisco. He gained recognition through innovative landscape photographs, which showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the American West. Between 1867 and 1871, these were published under the pseudonym “Helios.”

Muybridge spent most of his career in San Francisco and Philadelphia during a time of rapid industrial and technological growth. In the 1870s he developed new ways to stop motion with his camera. Muybridge’s legendary sequential photographs of running horses helped change how people saw the world. His projected animations inspired the early development of cinema, and his revolutionary techniques produced timeless images that have profoundly influenced generations of photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists.

Press release from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) website [Online] Cited 02/06/2011 no longer available online

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) Savings and Loan Society, Clay Street (340), 1869

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Savings and Loan Society, Clay Street (340)
1869
albumen stereograph
Collection of Leonard A. Calle

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) Contemplation Rock, Glacier Point (1385), 1872

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Contemplation Rock, Glacier Point (1385)
1872
Albumen stereograph
Collection of California Historical Society

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'Group of Indians (489)' 1868

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Group of Indians (489)
1868
Albumen stereograph
Collection of Leonard A. Walle

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'The Brandenburg Album of Bradley & Rolufson "Celebrities" and Muybridge Photographs, page 104' 1874

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
The Brandenburg Album of Bradley & Rolufson “Celebrities” and Muybridge Photographs, page 104
1874
Albumen prints
Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Museum Purchase Fund

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'Cockatoo; flying. Plate 759' 1887

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Cockatoo; flying. Plate 759
1887
Collotype
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'Boxing; open-hand. Plate 340' 1887

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Boxing; open-hand. Plate 340
1887
Collotype
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'Horses. Running. Phryne L. Plate 40, 1879, from 'The Attitudes of Animals in Motion'' 1881

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Horses. Running. Phryne L. Plate 40
1879
From The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, 1881
Albumen print
Image courtesy The Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'Studies of Foreshortenings. Horses. Running. Mahomet. Plates 143-144, 1879, from 'The Attitudes of Animals in Motion'' 1881

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Studies of Foreshortenings. Horses. Running. Mahomet. Plates 143-144
1879
From The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, 1881
Albumen print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'Leland Stanford, Jr. on his pony “Gypsy” - Phases of a Stride by a Pony While Cantering' 1879

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Leland Stanford, Jr. on his pony “Gypsy” – Phases of a Stride by a Pony While Cantering
1879
Collodion positive on glass
Wilson Centre for Photography

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'General view of experiment track, background and cameras, Plate F, from The Attitudes of Animals in Motion' 1881

 

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
General view of experiment track, background and cameras, Plate F
1881
From The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, 1881
Albumen print
Courtesy Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries

 

 

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
151 Third Street (between Mission + Howard)
San Francisco CA 94103

Opening hours:
Friday – Tuesday 10 am – 5 pm and Thursday 10 am – 9 pm
Wednesday Closed

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art website

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Exhibition: ‘The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker’ at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Exhibition dates: 15th January – 5th June, 2011

 

Many thankx to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'City Whispers, Philadelphia' 1983

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
City Whispers, Philadelphia
1983
Gelatin silver print
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
© Ray K. Metzker, courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Couplets: Atlantic City/New York City' 1969/1968

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Couplets: Atlantic City/New York City
1969/1968
Gelatin silver print
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
© Ray K. Metzker, courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Couplets: New York City' 1968

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Couplets: New York City
1968
Gelatin silver print
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Double Frames: Philadelphia' 1965

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Double Frames: Philadelphia
1965, printed 1984
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Double Frames: Philadelphia' 1965, printed 1972

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Double Frames: Philadelphia
1965, printed 1972
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Couplets: Philadelphia' 1968

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Couplets: Philadelphia
1968, printed 2002
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Pictus Interruptus: Philadelphia' 1977

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Pictus Interruptus: Philadelphia
1977
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

 

Works by Ray K. Metzker, one of the most original and influential photographers of the last half century, will be on view from Jan. 15 to June 5, 2011, at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker will reveal Metzker’s ability to turn ordinary subjects, including the urban experience and nature, into the visual poetry of the finely crafted black-and-white print.

At the age of nearly 80, Metzker is greatly admired for his passionate engagement with both photography and the world. He has explored the use of high contrast and selective focus, the potentials of multiple and composite images, and the infinite gradations of daylight, from dazzling white to inky shadow.

This is great and lasting work – the very best of a classic form of American modernism, said Keith F. Davis, senior curator of photography at the Nelson-Atkins. Metzker has led a life of deep devotion to understanding the potential, challenge and pleasure of photographic seeing. In so doing, he has transcended any simple notion of technical experimentation or formalism to illuminate a vastly larger human realm – one of uncertainty, isolation and vulnerability, as well as of unexpected beauty, grace and transcendence.

Thanks to a major gift from the Hall Family Foundation, the Nelson-Atkins now has the largest holding of Metzker’s work (92 prints) in the United States.

Born in Milwaukee, Wis., in 1931, Metzker first took up photography as a teenager. After two years in the army, he entered the graduate program at the Institute of Design, Chicago, in the fall of 1956. His professors, Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan, were acclaimed artists and inspiring teachers, and they emphasised the medium’s remarkable range and visual potential. Metzker’s artistic vision grew from a union of ideas: the realities of modern life, the medium’s myriad technical possibilities, and the quest for a distinctly individual vision.

Metzker has lived and worked in Philadelphia since 1962, and as he approaches the age of 80, he continues to make new pictures there.

The photographs in the exhibition feature examples from all his major series, including his earliest mature work from Chicago (1957-1959); photographs from an extended visit to Europe (1960-1961); the street activity, people, and structures of Philadelphia (from 1962 to the present); beachgoers at the New Jersey shore, Sand Creatures (1968-1977); the starkness of the Southwestern light and landscape, New Mexico (1971-1972); and the lush mysteries of the natural realm, in his Landscapes (1985-1996) from Italy, France and the United States.

The exhibition features a host of innovative and ingenious approaches to photography, including the use of the double image, Double Frame (1964-1966) and Couplets (1968-1969); single works created from an entire roll of film, Composites (1964-1966); and the creative control of focus in both Pictus Interruptus (1976-1980) and Landscapes (1985-1996).

Press release from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art website

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Chicago' 1957

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Chicago
1957
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Chicago' 1959

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Chicago
1959, printed 1989
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Philadelphia' 1963

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia
1963, printed 1986
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Man in Canoe' 1961

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Man in Canoe
1961
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014) 'Philadelphia, 1963' 1963

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014) 'Philadelphia, 1963' 1963

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014) 'Philadelphia' 1963

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014) 'Philadelphia' 1964

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia
1964, printed 1989
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Philadelphia' 1964

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia
1964, printed 1989
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Composite: Atlantic City' 1966

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Composite: Atlantic City
1966
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Composites: Night at the Terminal' about 1966

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Composites: Night at the Terminal
about 1966
Gelatin silver print
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
© Ray K. Metzker, courtesy of Lawrence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014) 'Philadelphia' 1981

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia
1981
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014) 'Philadelphia' 1964

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1964
1963
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014) 'Philadelphia' 1963

 

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

 

 

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak Street
Kansas City, MO 64111

Opening hours:
Thursday – Monday 10am – 5pm
Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art website

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Review: ‘Penelope Davis: Smack’ at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 12th May – 11th June 2011

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963) 'Smack' installation 2011

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Smack installation
2011
Silicone, nylon thread
Dimensions variable

 

 

A beautiful, hypnotic installation; one outstanding photograph (out of four); and a distance between elements, installation and photographs that, in the gallery space, seemed almost insurmountable.

The installation is intoxicating, taking the viewer into a world outside of reality – inverted, convoluted creatures “after the things of nature” (me ta physika) – in this case mobile phones, camera lenses and electrical plugs and leads, the skin of these objects flayed, extruded and made in silicone. These filamentary ‘jellies’ are wondrous. As Susan Fereday observes they are like detached skin, which “can become a kind of negative, a reversed memory, a perverse relic of its previously animated form … Detached, distraught, dangling. But there is also something slippery in these forms, something visceral, uterine, umbilical …”. The installation reminded me of the chthonian nature of the womb, our birth and that first gasp of breath – do you remember? was it all that you ever needed?

Water, blood, the detritus of birth and the emergence of life into light. Floating, gliding to the surface.

Only one photograph, Fluther (2011, below), approaches this detachment. A beauty it is too. The other three photographs felt more like addendum than adding anything further to the work and failed to achieve a ‘presence’ when compared to the installation. I suspect one of the problems was the scale of the three photographs and the fact that they are so tightly framed. Evidence of this can be seen in the installation shot below, the photograph of the blue ‘jellie’ so tightly prescribed and enclosed so as to not allow any interaction between installation and photograph. Perhaps making the photographs slightly larger and face mounting them behind PlexiGlass would have softened the edges of the photographs allowing a malleable (meta)physical air to breathe across the gallery space.

The highlight is the installation. Go and see, it is well worth the visit.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to Nellie Castan Gallery for allowing me to publish the text and the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs courtesy and © the artist and Nellie Castan Gallery.

 

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963) 'Smack' installation 2011

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Smack installation
2011
Silicone, nylon thread
Dimensions variable

 

Stretched Skin

“Where my inside meets the outside, where my body’s surfaces curve or stretch, dimple or fold, they create sensory cavities that are designed to respond to the outside world, at least to some degree. More difficult to resolve is the place that’s made when my inside turns out and there and no pickets to hide the private things – things I don’t want to look at myself, things too fleshy for the world to see, too soft, raw and pink to be exposed. Bringing the inside out, I am turned outside in and where does that leave me? In the edgeless space of the everyday saturated by grief.

Penelope Davis’ ‘jellies’ make me think about how a person’s skin can record their body’s history through marks – scars, distentions, swellings, bruises and wrinkles – just as a photograph can record a body’s outward appearance through light. We could say that skin is an index to its experiences, but it is not iconic. Skin does not reproduce the body’s image the way a photograph does, unless the skin is lifted to make a new shape. Then, just as hot wind can suck the life out of a fallen leaf and turn its veins into a street map, or sun and sea can batter a plastic bottle into a miraculous Marian figurine, detached skin can become a kind of negative, a reversed memory, a perverse relic of its previously animated form.

That’s what the ‘jellies’ look like: skin, turned inside out, photographic skin turned outside in. Detached, distraught, dangling. But there is also something slippery in these forms, something visceral, uterine, umbilical …”

Except from pamphlet text by artist and writer Susan Fereday, March 2011

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963) 'Fluther' 2011

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Fluther
2011
Type C photograph
120 x 100cm

 

In Smack, Penelope Davis’ latest body of work, jellyfish-like forms have been assembled from a collage of components. These elements include the detritus of contemporary technologies. Among these are cameras, computer parts, mobile phones, wiring and electrical parts. Organic source materials such as leaves and seaweed (many sourced from the community garden plots surrounding Davis’ studio) are cast and intermixed with these forms. After being cast in silicone, the works are sewn together to create forms that resemble jellyfish. The resulting swarm – or smack, as the collective noun is properly known – is displayed as an installation of semi transparent, suspended forms.

A selection of these ‘jellies’ have also been placed in the digital scanner and ‘photographed’. Some digital post-production work is also employed to create large scale photographic images.

The materials and techniques used allow Penelope Davis to play with some of the procedures and assumptions central to photographic practice. The central motif of the jellyfish is a vehicle to examine critical contemporary issues of consumption and environmental degradation.

Text from the Nellie Castan website [Online] Cited 28/05/2011 no longer available online

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Penelope Davis: Smack' at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne showing at right the photograph 'Bloom' (2011)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Penelope Davis: Smack at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne showing at right the photograph Bloom (2011, below)

  

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963) 'Bloom' 2011

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Bloom
2011
Type C photograph
120 x 100cm

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
'Smack' installation 2011 (detail)

  

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Smack installation (detail)
2011
Silicone, nylon thread
Dimensions variable

 

 

Nellie Castan Gallery

This gallery has now closed

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Exhibition: ‘Garry Winogrand. Women are beautiful’ at Fundació Foto Colectania, Barcelona

Exhibition dates: 23rd February – 4th June 2011

 

Many thankx to Fundació Foto Colectania for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Centennial Ball, Metropolitan Museum' New York, 1969

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Centennial Ball, Metropolitan Museum
New York, 1969, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Untitled', New York, 1965

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled
New York, 1965, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Untitled', New York, 1968

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled
New York, 1968, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

 

Foundation Foto Colectania presents for the first time in Barcelona the famous series Women Are Beautiful by Garry Winogrand.

Garry Winogrand is considered one of the greatest innovators of photography of the twentieth-century in America. He knew like no other how to capture the social transformation of females in the 60’s and 70’s through his portraits of women who stand as an allegory of women’s emancipation and their new role in society. The Foundation Foto Colectania presents his series Women Are Beautiful, including 85 photographs taken between 1960 and 1975 and collected in the book with the same title by the legendary director of photography at the MoMA, John Szarkowski. The exhibition from the collection of Lola Garrido, is part of the programming line of the foundation which is dedicated to authors who changed the course of the history of photography. The exhibition can be seen in Barcelona until June 4, 2011. In the 60’s ended the era of big images as symbols of timeless truths, by the devastating influence first from Walker Evans, and later from Robert Frank and William Klein. The pictures are focused on the reflection of reality, no retouching or other ideas added. Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander represent “the new American style” which broke new ground in the so-called Street Photography.

Winogrand combines spontaneity with an apparent confusion, which is more than aware of the complexity of the photography world: “I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.” The presence of human beings, contrasting with the crowds and the streets in his photographs reveals a new way of looking, in which the anarchy results in a wealth of shapes and structures. The biased and cold style of Winogrand is associated with Abstract Expressionism and its sharp diagonals are similar to paint brush strokes of those years. If the photographer Robert Frank was critical of the 50’s, Garry Winogrand is one of the largest photographers of the 60’s.

Press release from the Fundació Foto Colectania website

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'World's Fair', New York, 1964

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
World’s Fair
New York, 1964, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'New York City' 1967, printed 1981

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
New York City
1967, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Central Park, New York' 1968, printed 1981

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Central Park, New York
1968, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Untitled' New York, c. 1970, printed 1981

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled
New York, c. 1970, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'New York' 1961, printed 1981

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
New York
1961, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
33 x 22cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Untitled', New York, 1969

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled
New York, 1969, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
33 x 22cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Untitled', New York, 1968

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled
New York, 1968, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
33 x 22 cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

 

Fundació Foto Colectania
Julián Romea 6, D2
08006
Barcelona

Opening hours:
Wednesday to Saturday: 11am – 2.30pm and 4pm – 8 pm
Sunday: 11am – 3pm

Fundació Foto Colectania website

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Exhibition: ‘When the Curtain Falls: Margarita Broich – Photographs’ at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin

Exhibition dates: 18th March – 30th May 2011

 

Many thankx to the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Vaginal Davis, Performance, Rising Stars, Falling Stars, Arsenal, Berlin, 13.11.2010' 2010

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Vaginal Davis
Performance, Rising Stars, Falling Stars, Arsenal, Berlin, 13.11.2010

2010
© Margarita Broich

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Martin Wuttke with poodle Taxi, Gretchens Faust, Berliner Ensemble, 11-05-2009' 2009

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Martin Wuttke with poodle Taxi
Gretchens Faust, Berliner Ensemble, 11.05.2009

2009
© Margarita Broich

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Veronica Ferres, Unter Bauern, 1.9.2008' 2008

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Veronica Ferres
Unter Bauern, 01.09.2008

2008
© Margarita Broich

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Melanie and Daniela Reichert, Unter Bauern, 27-08-2008' 2008

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Melanie and Daniela Reichert
Unter Bauern, 27.08.2008

2008
© Margarita Broich

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Rosebud, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 21-12-2001' 2001

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Margarita Broich
Rosebud, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 21-12-2001

2001
© Margarita Broich

 

 

As an actress Margarita Broich is one of the big names, but it may come as a surprise to many that she is also a photographer. For the first time the Martin-Gropius-Bau is showing an exhibition of her work consisting of over 60 portraits of her fellow artists, including Ben Becker, Kate Winslet, Veronika Ferres, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Christoph Schlingensief, Thomas Quasthoff and many more. Margarita Broich has captured those fleeting moments when the actor sheds the role in the intervals or a few minutes after the end of a performance. The role can still be discerned on the features of the players when they are still surrounded by the world of scenery and mirrors but not acting any more. They have been sought out in changing rooms, theatre foyers, or with the make-up artist, taking off their make-up while still surrounded by the tools of their transformation.

Broich portrays the artists with the instinct of a colleague. Her photographs capture famous artists from her circle of acquaintances at those moments when they are returning from the stage after playing their role. However matter-of-fact the situation of the subject may occasionally appear, each photograph has its own charm. The beholder is granted glimpses of scenes that must be among the most intimate in show business: whether they show Martin Wuttke with a blonde, Andy Warhol mane and his poodle, Taxi, smoking a cigarette after a performance of “Gretchens Faust”, or Klaus Maria Brandauer at the end of a 10-hour Wallenstein epic, sitting on a stool with a bottle of beer, the snapshots are full of tension.

Born in Neuwied in 1960, Margarita Broich initially studied photo design in Dortmund and worked as a theatrical photographer at the Bochum Schauspielhaus (Theatre) under Claus Peymann, before studying dramatic art herself at Berlin’s College of Arts. Since then she has appeared in numerous German-language stage performances and television dramas, working with such directors as Claus Peymann, Robert Wilson and, earlier, with Christoph Schlingensief.

Text from the Martin-Gropius-Bau website [Online] Cited 26/05/2011 no longer available online

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Kate Winslet, The Reader, 20-04-2008' 2008

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Kate Winslet
The Reader, 20-04-2008

2008
© Margarita Broich

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Klaus Maria Brandauer Wallenstein, Berliner Ensemble in the Preuss-Halle, Berlin, 09-06-2007' 2007

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Klaus Maria Brandauer
Wallenstein, Berliner Ensemble in the Preuss-Halle, Berlin, 09-06-2007

2007
© Margarita Broich

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Ben Becker Jedermann, Salzburger Festspiele, 17-08-2010' 2010

 

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Ben Becker
Jedermann, Salzburger Festspiele, 17-08-2010
2010
© Margarita Broich

 

 

Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin
Niederkirchnerstraße 7
Corner Stresemannstr. 110
10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30 254 86-0

Opening hours:
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Tuesday closed

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Exhibition: ‘You Are Here: Architecture and Experience’ at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Exhibition dates: 5th March – 29th May 2011

 

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) 'Ballettzentrum Hamburg III' 2000

 

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Ballettzentrum Hamburg III
2000
Chromogenic print
Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery

 

 

Inspired curating conjoins the monumental, classicist purity of Höfer with the picturesque, dystopian (dis)quietude of Gaillard in an exhibition that investigates our relationship to buildings and their environments and their relationship to us – the ‘i’ in our histor-i-city.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the Carnegie 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.

 

 

Cyprien Gaillard (French, b. 1980) 'Belief in the Age of Disbelief (L'arbre incliné/étape VI)' 2005

 

Cyprien Gaillard (French, b. 1980)
Belief in the Age of Disbelief (L’arbre incliné/étape VI)
2005
Etching
36 x 47cm
© Cyprien Gaillard
Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin, London

 

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) 'Fundação Bienal de São Paulo XI' 2005

 

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Fundação Bienal de São Paulo XI
2005
Chromogenic print
81 3/8 x 71 7/8 in.
Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery

 

 

Carnegie Museum of Art presents the powerful work of two contemporary artists – Candida Höfer and Cyprien Gaillard – who explore architectural environments and how they influence experiences and perceptions of the world.

“We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” With that simple but profound insight, Winston Churchill conveyed people’s complex relationship to architecture: The physical form of a building is controlled by its designer, but the impact a constructed environment has can be unpredictable, emotional, and even visceral. That dynamic is evident in the upcoming exhibition You Are Here: Architecture and Experience, which brings together the photographs of German artist Candida Höfer and a video and etchings by French artist Cyprien Gaillard. Both artists express the formative power of architecture in different but complementary ways, according to Tracy Myers, curator of architecture at the Heinz Architectural Center and organiser of the exhibition.

Candida Höfer’s lush colour photographs of ornate historical and contemporary interior spaces are usually devoid of humans, yet they reveal details that draw the viewer into a consideration of what each place means. Höfer’s photographs usually focus on spaces of cultural and social activity. Printed very large (from about 4 x 4 feet to a massive 6 x 8 feet), the 17 photographs in You Are Here represent the range of Höfer’s work in terms of scale, point of view, building type, and geographical location.

By contrast, Cyprien Gaillard’s video Desniansky Raion and his meticulously detailed etchings probe the human legacy of Modernist high-rise housing blocks. Constructed after World War II throughout the United States, Europe, and the Eastern Bloc to provide decent housing, these buildings often became warehouses for the poor and incubators of crime and antisocial behaviours.

Named for an administrative district in Kiev, Desniansky Raion poignantly reflects on the gap between the utopian Modernist aspiration for universal housing and the banal reality that instead prevailed. It comprises three parts. In the first section, weekend fight clubs of 50 or 100 people face off against each other in a pugilistic ritual set against the backdrop of housing towers in St. Petersburg, Russia. The second part shows the implosion of a similar tower in Meaux, a small city near Paris; the demolition of the building was treated by the city government as a literal spectacle, with a light show and fireworks preceding the destruction. The final third is a very long panning aerial shot of seemingly endless ranks of virtually identical housing blocks in Kiev, Ukraine. The video is accompanied by a soundtrack composed by Koudlam, a young musician born in the Ivory Coast. Also featured are six etchings by Gaillard, collectively titled Belief in the Age of Disbelief, in which the Modernist housing tower is placed in classic picturesque landscapes.

“Gaillard’s video packs a powerful and direct emotional punch: each time I view it, I experience physically the anticipation that ebbs and flows through the course of the work,” said Myers. “By contrast, Höfer’s photographs embody a kind of quietude that encourages slow, sustained exploration of the meaning that builds through accumulation of detail. But both works are equally affecting and bring the viewer with compelling intensity into the realm of architectural experience. Höfer and Gaillard capture the constant oscillation between what we make of our buildings, and what they make of us.”

Artists’ Biographies

Candida Höfer has been creating photographs for more than 30 years. Born in Eberswalde, Germany, in 1944, she studied with Berndt Becher and is identified with a group of German artists – Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Axel Hütte, and Thomas Struth – best known for their unsentimental photographs of architecture, landscapes, and urban developments. Höfer has made interiors her focus.

Cyprien Gaillard, born in Paris in 1980 and currently based in Berlin, explores contemporary landscapes and buildings in a variety of media, including video, painting, and etchings. Much of his work is concerned with the legacy and inheritance of buildings and landscapes that are left to us, and the ways in which we interact with them.

Press release from the Carnegie Museum of Art website

 

Cyprien Gaillard (French, b. 1980) 'Desniansky Raion' video still, 2007

 

Cyprien Gaillard (French, b. 1980)
Desniansky Raion
2007
Video still
DVD, 30 min.
Edition of 5
© Cyprien Gaillard. Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin, London

 

 

Cyprien Gaillard – Desniansky Raion, Part 1, 2008

The video takes place in a parking lot of a drab housing complex in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he witness two large groups of men – one mostly wearing red shirts and the other blue – slowly walking towards each other. Set by Gaillard to the hypnotic electronic beats of French composer Koudlam’s I See you All, the video shows the colour-coordinated groups marching in loose formation, reminiscent of ancient armies confronting each other on some distant battlefield. Suddenly, signal flares billowing smoke arc through the air and the two groups come together, clashing in flurry of fists – a breathtaking display of raw physical violence set against the stark backdrop of the housing block. As the sounds of Koudlam’s pulsing music draw louder and more urgent, the furious hand-to-hand combat intensifies while bodies of the fallen lay strewn on the pavement. Before long, the blue faction beats a hasty retreat, only to regroup moments later on one side of a nearby pedestrian bridge. The two sides come together again, this time clashing on the impossibly narrow span of the footbridge. The blue group is once more chased off, and the victors in red erupt in victorious celebration.

Text from the YouTube website

 

Cyprien Gaillard (French, b. 1980) 'Belief in the Age of Disbelief (Banja Luca)' 2005

 

Cyprien Gaillard (French, b. 1980)
Belief in the Age of Disbelief (Banja Luca)
2005
Etching
36 x 47cm
© Cyprien Gaillard
Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin, London

 

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) 'Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia Venezia I' 2003

 

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia Venezia I
2003
Chromogenic print
60 15/16 x 73 in
Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery

 

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) 'Palacio Nacional de Mafra VII' 2006

 

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Palacio Nacional de Mafra VII
2006
Chromogenic print
61 x 69 1/8 in
Collection Zibby and Andrew Right, New York

 

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) 'Musee du Louvre Paris XX' 2005

 

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Musee du Louvre Paris XX
2005
Chromogenic print
78 3/4 x 95 5/8 in
Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'You Are Here: Architecture and Experience' at the Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Installation view of the exhibition 'You Are Here: Architecture and Experience' at the Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Installation view of the exhibition 'You Are Here: Architecture and Experience' at the Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

 

Installation views of the exhibition You Are Here: Architecture and Experience at the Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

 

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
'Palacio Real Madrid V' 2000

 

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Palacio Real Madrid V
2000
Chromogenic print
47 x 47 in. (119.3 x 119.3cm)

 

 

Carnegie Museum of Art
4400 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-4080
Phone: 412.622.3131

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

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Exhibition: ‘A Ballad of Love and Death: Pre-Raphaelite Photography in Great Britain, 1848-1875’ at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Exhibition dates: 8th March – 29th May 2011

 

Julia Margaret Cameron – you are one of my heroes!


Many thankx to the Musée d’Orsay for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

Henry White (British, 1819-1903) 'Ferns and brambles' 1856

 

Henry White (British, 1819-1903)
Fougères et ronces (Ferns and brambles)
1856
Albumen print
19.1 x 24.1cm
Collection particulière
© Droits réservés

 

John Ruskin (English, 1819-1900) 'Fribourg' 1859

 

John Ruskin (English, 1819-1900)
Fribourg
1859
Pencil, ink, watercolour and gouache on paper
22.5 x 28.7cm
London, The British Museum
© The Trustees of The British Museum. All rights reserved

 

Frederick Crawley, under the direction of John Ruskin (English, 1819-1900) 'Fribourg, Switzerland, Palm Street and Berne Bridge' about 1854 or 1856

 

Frederick Crawley, under the direction of John Ruskin (English, 1819-1900)
Fribourg, Suisse, Rue de la Palme et Pont de Berne (Fribourg, Switzerland, Palm Street and Berne Bridge)
about 1854 or 1856
Daguerréotype
11.5 x 15.1cm
Angleterre, Courtesy K. and J. Jacobson
© Droits réservés

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Bolton Abbey' 1854

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Bolton Abbey, West window
1854
Albumen print
25.1 x 34.5cm
Bradford, National Media Museum
© National Media Museum, Bradford/Science & Society Picture Library

 

John William Inchbold (English, 1830-1888) 'La Chapelle de Bolton Abbey' 1853

 

John William Inchbold (English, 1830-1888)
La Chapelle de Bolton Abbey (The Vault of Bolton Abbey)
1853
Oil on canvas
50 x 68.4cm
Northampton, Museum and Art Gallery
© Northampton, Museum and Art Gallery

 

Henry Peach Robinson (English, 1830-1901) 'Fading Away' 1858

 

Henry Peach Robinson (English, 1830-1901)
Fading Away
1858
Albumen print
28.8 x 52.1cm
Bradford, The Royal Photographic Society Collection au National Media Museum.
© National Media Museum, Bradford/Science & Society Picture Library

 

Henry Peach Robinson (English, 1830-1901) 'She Never Told her Love' 1857

 

Henry Peach Robinson (English, 1830-1901)
She Never Told her Love
1857
Albumen print
18.6 x 23.3cm
Paris, musée d’Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay (dist. RMN)/Patrice Schmidt

 

Consumed by the passion of unrequited love, a young woman lies suspended in the dark space of her unrealised dreams in Henry Peach Robinson’s illustration of the Shakespearean verse “She never told her love,/ But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,/ Feed on her damask cheek” (Twelfth Night II,iv,111-13). Although this picture was exhibited by Robinson as a discrete work, it also served as a study for the central figure in his most famous photograph, Fading Away, of 1858.

Purportedly showing a young consumptive surrounded by family in her final moments, Fading Away was hotly debated for years. On the one hand, Robinson was criticised for the presumed indelicacy of having invaded the death chamber at the most private of moments. On the other, those who recognised the scene as having been staged and who understood that Robinson had created the picture through combination printing (a technique that utilised several negatives to create a single printed image) accused him of dishonestly using a medium whose chief virtue was its truthfulness.

While addressing the moral and literary themes that Robinson believed crucial if photography were to aspire to high art, this picture makes only restrained use of the cloying sentimentality and showy technical artifice that often characterise this artist’s major exhibition pictures. Perhaps intended to facilitate the process of combination printing, the unnaturally black background serves also to envelop the figure in palpable melancholia.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 27/01/2020

 

Frederick Pickersgill (English, 1820-1900) 'Sunshine and Shade' 1859

 

Frederick Pickersgill (English, 1820-1900)
Sunshine and Shade
1859
Albumen print
16.4 x 19.4cm
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum.
© National Media Museum, Bradford/Science & Society Picture Library

 

 

The historian and art critic, John Ruskin, had a great influence in Great Britain not only on the Pre-Raphaelite movement created in 1848, but on the development of early photography in the 1850s. The leading Pre-Raphaelite painters, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Ford Madox Brown and their followers, wished to change the pictorial conventions laid down by the Royal Academy, and in order to demonstrate the transformations in modern life, invented a radically new idiom marked by bright colours and clarity of detail.

Pre-Raphaelite painters and photographers frequently made similar choices of subjects, and the photographers, particularly Julia Margaret Cameron, David Wilkie Wynfield and Lewis Carroll, were often had close links with the painters.

When painting landscapes, the Pre-Raphaelite artists answered Ruskin’s call, meticulously observing nature in order to capture every nuance of detail. For their part, photographers, such as Roger Fenton, Henry White, William J. Stillman and Colonel Henry Stuart Wortley, experimented with the new process of wet plate collodion negatives that allowed much greater image detail, and achieved similar effects. Although highly impressed at first by the daguerreotype, which enabled the eye to see tiny, overlooked details, Ruskin was nonetheless still very critical of landscape photography, which could not reproduce the colours of nature and in particular of the sky. This failing also gave rise to a major debate amongst photography critics.

In portraiture, there were clear links between the painted portraits of Watts and Cameron’s photographic portraits. By using special lenses and photographing her models in close-up, Cameron, achieved, with a glass negative, exactly the opposite effect to the clear image advocated by Ruskin, and her work was distinctive for the breadth of relief and contour, as well as the compositions evoking Raphael’s paintings, also a source of inspiration for Watts.

The painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti repeatedly drew and painted Jane Morris, a model with whom he was infatuated, and he asked Robert Parsons to produce a series of photographs, under his personal direction, which captured the fascinating presence of the young woman as effectively as his own paintings.

Just like the Pre-Raphaelite painters, Victorian photographers would turn to religious or historical subjects, finding a shared inspiration in the poems of Dante, Shakespeare and possibly Byron, and above all in the Arthurian legend made popular once more by Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate. From a formal point of view, Millais’ Ophelia, one of his most successful paintings, was a source for Henry Peach Robinson’s photograph, The Lady of Shalott, even though it had a different theme.

Finally, Pre-Raphaelite painters and Victorian photographers both liked to present scenes from modern life with a moralising undertone: hence She Never Told Her Love, a photograph by Robinson that was very successful when exhibited at the Crystal Palace in 1858, William Holman Hunt’s painting, Awakening of Conscience, and Rossetti’s Found, a painting depicting a countryman who comes across his former sweetheart, now a prostitute in the city.

In the 1880s, Pre-Raphaelite painting would be transformed, with artists and writers like William Morris, Burne-Jones, Whistler and Oscar Wilde, into a very different movement concerned only with the cult of beauty and rejecting Ruskin’s concept of art as something moral or useful. British photographers, however, inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites would inspire the Pictorialist movement that flourished in the 1890s, encouraged by the writings of Henry Peach Robinson and Peter Henry Emerson, extolling artistic photography.

Press release from the Musée d’Orsay website

 

James Sinclair 14th Earl of Caithness (Scottish, 1821-1881) 'Weston Avenue, Warwickshire' c. 1860

 

James Sinclair 14th Earl of Caithness (Scottish, 1821-1881)
Avenue à Weston, Warwickshire (Weston Avenue, Warwickshire)
c. 1860
Albumen print
23 x 18.3cm
New York, Courtesy George Eastman House Rochester
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) 'The sunflower' 1866-1870

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879)
Le tournesol (The sunflower)
1866-1870
Albumen print
35.2 x 24.3cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art, Fond Paul Mellon
© National Gallery of Art, Washington

 

John Robert Parsons (Irish, 1826-1909), under the direction of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828-1882) 'Jane Morris posing in the house of Rossetti' summer 1865

 

John Robert Parsons (Irish, 1826-1909), under the direction of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828-1882)
Jane Morris posant dans la maison de Rossetti (Jane Morris posing in the house of Rossetti)
Summer 1865
Modern print
22.6 x 17.5cm
London, Victoria and Albert Museum
© V&A Images / Victoria and Albert Museum, London

 

John Robert Parsons (Irish, 1826-1909) 'Jane Morris posing in the garden of the house of Rossetti' summer 1865

 

John Robert Parsons (Irish, 1826-1909)
Jane Morris posant dans le jardin de la maison de Rossetti (Jane Morris posing in the garden of the house of Rossetti)
Summer 1865
Albumen print
Private collection
© Tim Hurst Photography

 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828-1882) 'Jane Morris, the blue silk dress' 1868

 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828-1882)
Jane Morris, the blue silk dress
1868
Oil on canvas
110.5 x 90.2cm
Londres, The Society of Antiquaries
© Kelmscott Manor Collection, by Permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London

 

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Caroll) (English, 1832-1898) 'Amy Hughes' 1863

 

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Caroll) (English, 1832-1898)
Amy Hughes
1863
Austin, The University of Texas, Harry Ransom Center, Gernsheim Collection
© Droits réservés

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) 'Maud' 1875

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879)
Maud
1875
Charcoal print
30 x 25cm
Paris, musée d’Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay (dist. RMN)/Patrice Schmidt

 

Sir John Everett Millais (British, 1829-1896) 'A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew's Day Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge' 1851-1852

 

Sir John Everett Millais (British, 1829-1896)
A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew’s Day Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge
1851-1852
Oil on canvas
91.4 x 62.2cm
Collection Makins
© The Makins Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library

 

Sir Edward Burne-Jones (British, 1833-1898) 'Princess Sabra (The King's Daughter)' 1865-1866

 

Sir Edward Burne-Jones (British, 1833-1898)
Princess Sabra (The King’s Daughter)
1865-1866
Oil on canvas
105 x 61cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay (dist. RMN)/Patrice Schmidt

 

Julia Margaret Cameron  (British, 1815-1879) 'And Enid Sang' 1874

 

Julia Margaret Cameron  (British, 1815-1879)
And Enid Sang
1874
Print on albumen paper, collodion glass negative, laminated on cardboard
35 x 28cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay (dist. RMN)

 

 

Musée d’Orsay
62, rue de Lille
75343 Paris Cedex 07
France

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 9.30am – 6pm
Thursdays 9.30am – 9.45pm
Closed on Mondays

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