Gyorgy Kepes (American born Hungary, 1906-2001) Lichtenberg figures: A. R. von Hippel
1951
Photographic enlargement on particleboard
Lent by Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
Way to go… Abstract Expressionists eat your heart out!
Marcus
Many thankx to the Cantor Arts Center for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
This exhibition explores the question of art’s relevance in a scientific age through the work of Hungarian-born American artist, designer, and visual theorist Gyorgy Kepes (1906-2001). Forty-five panels depict what Kepes, associated with Germany’s Bauhaus and Chicago’s New Bauhaus, called the “new landscape” of scientific imagery – microscopic minerals, cellular patterns, and tissue fibres – as well as Kepes’s own experiments with camera-less photographic techniques. The exhibition is one of the first projects resulting from a $500,000 grant awarded to the Cantor and the Department of Art & Art History from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to facilitate research conducted by Stanford Ph.D. candidates on the Cantor’s collection.
Text from the Cantor Arts Center website
Gyorgy Kepes (American born Hungary, 1906-2001) Lichtenberg figures: A. R. von Hippel
1951
Photographic enlargement on particleboard
Lent by Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
Gyorgy Kepes (American born Hungary, 1906-2001) Untitled
Date unknown
Photographic enlargement on particleboard, date unknown
Lent by Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
Gyorgy Kepes (American born Hungary, 1906-2001) Untitled
Date unknown
Photographic enlargement on particleboard, date unknown
Lent by Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
Gyorgy Kepes (American born Hungary, 1906-2001) Gate, Photogenic 1948
Photographic enlargement on particleboard, date unknown
Lent by Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
Gyorgy Kepes (American born Hungary, 1906-2001) Photogenic Painting, Photogenic 1942
Photographic enlargement on particleboard, date unknown
Lent by Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
Gyorgy Kepes (American born Hungary, 1906-2001) Light Graphic, Photogenic 1945
Photographic enlargement on particleboard, date unknown
Lent by Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
Gyorgy Kepes (American born Hungary, 1906-2001) Camel’s tongue: 10X
1951
Photographic enlargement on particleboard
Lent by Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
Gyorgy Kepes (American born Hungary, 1906-2001) Transverse section of Osmanthus wood: 50X
1951
Photographic enlargement on particleboard
Lent by Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
Gyorgy Kepes (American born Hungary, 1906-2001) Transverse section of wood: 250X
1951
Photographic enlargement on particleboard
Lent by Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University 328 Lomita Drive at Museum Way
Stanford, CA 94305-5060 Phone: 650-723-4177
End of the week. Not a lot of energy or time to write an in depth piece on the wonders of Walker Evans, so just a few observations…
I like this photographer, I like him a lot. No histrionics, little subjectivity being thrown at the audience. The images are -just -so. The compositions are seemingly simple but are actually very complex. Only a skilled craftsman can make the difficult look simple. As Thomas Struth has said of his photography: ‘for me it is more interesting to try and find out something from the real than to throw something subjective in front of the audience.’
“The uninflected image gives no hints as to how it is to be interpreted, and the viewer is led to linger over what might otherwise seem an un-noteworthy, everyday vista.” It’s recognising that vista in the first place for what it is, and what else it can be, so that it ‘gives pause’ to the viewer.
I really like the portrait of Berenice Abbott and it is also very educational. Look at the depth of field, with the view camera probably one stop past wide open. The sharpness plane is very tiny but look at the quality of the lens and how it renders the values that are slightly out of focus. What a very beautiful image and I suspect a top drawer lens. Notice also it is print 22. Walker Evans would keep a lot of prints and they were not the same. The next copy of this printmight have been better (he might have worked out something todo) or it might be worse – the developer might have gone off. So it is not strictly an “edition” it is just the numberingof the prints he made.
He used every sort of camera: 8 x 10 and the smallerview formats, roll film cameras, Colour polaroid! hence the different sizes of his prints. Occasionally he did crop his images but on other occasions he took “a stance” where you knew hewas about to perform and there would be no cropping. If you are really interested in this master photographer, the best Walker Evans book to get is First and Last (1978, available cheaply as a hardback on Amazon) which contains many pictures and “threads” that are dynamite… and the John Szarkowski book Walker Evans (1972) is a good one as well.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Martin-Gropius-Bau for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Walker Evans (1903-1975) was one of the great personalities of 20th century photography, being an exponent of what is called the “documentary style”. His work, which spans a period of over fifty years, will be represented by well over 200 original prints from the years 1928 to 1974, taken mostly from the considerable private collection of Clark and Joan Worswick, but also from various German collections.
For decades, right up to the present, the prolific photographic oeuvre of Walker Evans has acquired an increasingly model character. In the half century of his creative activity the photographer documented in sober documentary fashion a uniquely authentic picture of America, and like no other before him showed a particular feel for both the everyday and the subtle – the American Vernacular – creating a sense of identity and historic significance.
Visitors follow both Evans’ biography and the changing face of America, from the Great Depression to the onset of stability and business as usual: early impressions of the 1920s from the New York neighbourhood he lived in; portraits of his friends and fellow artists which give some indication of the ramified cultural ambience he inhabited; specimens of 19th century architecture that have blended into the evolving cultural life about them; picture cycles from Tahiti and Cuba; images of African sculptures and masks commissioned by the New York Museum of Modern Art; and numerous photographs taken in the 1930s in the rural south of the USA, which contrast starkly with the lifestyles of those who may be seen promenading in the fashionable streets of cities like New York.
In addition to street scenes, American monuments and shop window displays far from the world of “big business”, examples of his significant subway photographs are to be seen, taken with a hidden camera. We also see interiors whose modest appointments tell of the life of those who live in them, pictures that inevitably recall Evans’ remark that “I do like to suggest people by absence”. Evans’ predilection for typography, advertising and mass-produced articles give rise to strangely fascinating shots which seem to anticipate the soon-to-emerge Pop Art and its assemblages.
While the exhibition shows icons in the history of photography, it also highlights some of the photographer’s lesser known motifs dating from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. These include works done for Fortune, the magazine founded by Henry Luce in 1930; pictures taken on trips to London from 1945 onwards for the periodical Architectural Forum; or during stays at Robert Frank’s Nova Scotia house in the late 1960s.
This is a great project. The photographs are wonderful. At one time they could have almost been made here in Victoria, Australia.
Archie Foley who found the 500 or so railway related negatives taken by, at this stage, an anonymous British Railways engine driver was quite taken aback to get an email from half way around the world asking for some press images – but this is what this blog does, promote eclectic exhibitions of interesting photography from around the world, no matter how small they are.
I have always loved trains and the photographs of them (including the ones by Winston O. Link). Once I saw the images I think I shed a tear at the beauty of them. Archie informs me that the negatives are a mixture of 127; 6cm square and a larger 6cm x 8cm. There are notes of the cameras the photographer used and his favourite appears to have been an Isolette 11 (see below). However he also used Ikonta; Suprima; Isola and Super Isolette. These cameras have reasonable optical quality (not as good as a Rollei twin lens for example) with the advantage that they have a large negative and can be folded up and put in a jacket pocket, to be taken out when needed.
As a good friend of mine Ian Lobb observed,
“I nearly said 6×8 cm last night – I know its difficult to believe after the event, and the Isolette has the same basic shape as the Voigtlander I suspected. The Voigtlander was like some of the Rolleis and you could put in a metal mask that would allow 6 x 8, 6 x 6, 6 x 4.5 as well the full 6 x 9. I suspect the Voigtlander was a bit upmarket from the Isolette: the Agfa cameras at the time of these pictures were good cameras and (obviously) with German lenses. I don’t know if they had those masks but I am guessing you could do the same with the Isolette. One claim I have seen is that the lenses were more matched to emulsions of the 50’s and were contrasty with later emulsions. I would have to know a lot more to verify that. The pictures look optically good to me. There were some extraordinary European films in 120 stock – I caught the end of them – 12 ISO and wooden spools – and SENSATIONAL tonal scales.
Of all cameras (even 35mm), the drop front cameras like the Isolette had the best connection to the people you were photographing. I don’t mean through the viewfinder – I mean that the viewfinder was just for checking the composition – you really had to do a lot of looking over the camera. Probably the old Stieglitz Graflex was just as communicative. With the bellows extension there would be a scale on the focussing track that would tell you the distance the camera was focussed to – no other way to check!
As a kid I played with Marklin toy trains and they published a book that I still have called “The Marklin Miniature Railway and its Prototype”. It is old and faded now, but there were sections on how to do signalling etc. on your train set so that it matched the real thing etc…”
What interests me most about these stunning images is the use of space by the photographer. These railway photographs with their beautiful but naive space have an almost mythic quality to them. I know a little about photography and from my knowledge I cannot think of anyone else that handles space like this in a photograph (save for perhaps Thomas Struth and the space around the people in his museum photographs or his group portraits of people in Japan, and even then he blocks the exit for the eye behind his tableaux vivant).
I have been racking my brains but these are really unique, especially the square format portrait shots. Look at the first photograph Four men with loco 55210 (below) and notice the expanse of platform and line of the train that leads the eye into the depiction of the four men. The light that falls on them is superlative but notice how the photographer keeps a respectful distance for this is not portrait photography which attempts to capture a fleeting, revealing moment or expression. The photographer places them as though to “encourage contemplation and investigation, inviting the viewer to reflect upon the limits of his or her knowledge of other people.” The eye scans the image for clues, giving the viewer pause to take in the scene: and low and behold what opens up behind the four men is this most magnificent space with the curve of the platform, the girders and the silence of the dark train in the distance.
As in Thomas Struth’s photographs of architectural East Berlin these photographs bring about ‘a move to investigative viewing’ which is also a ‘call to interact’. But these photographs don’t possess the base objectivity of Struth for they are a little too engaging of their space (their antithesis being the photographs by Alec Soth from his series Niagara).
Further evidence of the sophistication of the composition of these images can be found in the two photographs Shotts Iron Work’s Signalbox and Man on platform in front of signal array (below). In the first photograph the man is embedded in the landscape, his weight shifting slightly to his right foot as his shadow falls on the fence beside him, the fence line and train tracks lead the eye into the image and off into an amorphous, infinite distance. Again, in the second photograph the figure is not front and centre but part of an ensemble as the eye is led this time by a massive horizontal plane into the image. He stands on the platform as if on the deck of an aircraft carrier. And then there are the two close up portraits, Jackie Collett at Beattock and A smiling fireman (below) where the photographer has climbed up into the intimate space of the drivers cab and got them to be comfortable enough to reveal themselves to the camera – in that light! – with those backgrounds!
The use of lenses today is proof of how difficult it is to think and feel space while taking a picture. These days everyone has a zoom lens but it is nearly always used by people to fill the frame with the main subject. But with a zoom there are infinite relationships between foreground and background if the photographer is free to move in relation to the main subject… and sometimes we are. Or to put it another way, we are able to control the degree of flattening of space with a zoom lens infinitely. If we have 2 fixed lenses we have 2 controls of space. This anonymous photographer and the German photographer Thomas Struth in particular seem to have the ability to think about this space control, and resolve it in different ways. Sometimes for Struth the quality of the space in the city streets or in a museum announces these places as pictures.
Struth is someone who has an affinity with the railway group photographs for his photographs, like these, resist immediate consumption. They make the viewer pause and think. “Discussing Struth’s work, the critic Richard Sennett has written: ‘We relate to these images as we might appreciate strangers in a crowd; we feel their presence without the need to transgress boundaries by demanding intimacy or revelation … people guard their separateness even as they present themselves directly to us.’ (Sennett p. 94.) Struth’s portraits encourage contemplation and investigation, inviting the viewer to reflect upon the limits of his or her knowledge of other people.”1 And, sotto voce, so do these photographs… The speaker gives the impression of uttering a truth which may surprise and delight.
As Archie has noted in his correspondence with me, the exhibition has been done on a shoestring budget but from small beginnings – and acorns – mighty oaks grow. All power to both Archie Foley and Peter Ross for arranging it. A book and larger exhibition would be a wonderful representation of this work. All I can say is this: that I hope this posting helps that process along for these photographs have a magnificent soul. Simply put, they are great.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Footnotes
1/ Richard Sennett, Thomas Struth: Strangers and Friends, exhibition catalogue, Institute of Contemporary Art, London 1994 quoted in “Thomas Struth: The Shimada Family, Yamaguchi, Japan 1986” Text summary on the Tate website [Online] Cited 04/11/2014
This exhibition has been compiled from a collection of photo negatives found by Archie Foley in a collector’s fair in Portobello. As he went through the collection he was able to extract 100s of railway related negatives dating from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s that showed that the photographer must have been a British Railways engine driver. A chance meeting and conversation with local photographer and video producer, Peter E. Ross, on a bus going into Edinburgh led to the decision to mount an exhibition of photographs made from selected negatives.
As a colleague the driver/photographer was able to snap drivers, shunters, platelayers, signalmen, cleaners and others at work in locations in and around Edinburgh and, occasionally, a bit further afield. The photographs are a unique behind the scenes record of the men and women who worked on the railway and how it looked before diesel power finally replaced steam in 1968.
This is the first time that the photographs have been on public show and Archie and Peter feel privileged to be able to display, and pay tribute to, the dedication and skill of the, as yet unidentified, photographer. Neither Archie nor Peter is an expert on railways and invite visitors to use the Visitors’ Book to suggest possible locations for photographs where these are not given. Please also suggest amendments if you believe any of the captions are incorrect.
The exhibition is at Portobello Library, Rosefield Avenue from Monday, 20th October to Friday, 7th November.
The two photographs above were obviously taken at the same time as each other (look at the tall trees in the background). I love how the photographer has moved across the tracks from the distance shot onto an oblique angle with the twin arches of the bridge in the background for the closer photograph. You can seen some unevenness in the development of the film in the foreground of both images but no matter, these images give real insight into how this artist was operating, what his thinking was when photographing their behemoths.
Agfa Isolette II (1950-60), showing the characteristic wide raised centre of its top housing. The thick knurled disc on the right (of the picture) is a film-type reminder dial.
Isolette II
The Isolette II (1950-1960) was sold alongside the ‘I’; it is an alternative model offering higher specification than the ‘I’, not a successor to it. The camera was available (for at least some time) with coated 85 mm f/4.5 Agnar or Apotar or 75 mm f/3.5 Solinar lenses; however, most examples seen have the Apotar. McKeown gives a very wide range of shutters (Vario, Pronto, Prontor-S and SV, Compur Rapid and Synchro-Compur). This reflects changes in the specification over the period the camera was made (i.e. not all of these shutters were available at the same time): for example, a user’s manual (of unknown date) only lists the Pronto and Prontor SVS. The range of shutter speeds is therefore variable between examples. Some of the shutters have a delayed action. Most are synchronised (some have switchable M and X-synchronisation). On some examples of the camera, there is a shutter locking lever on the back of the top housing, to provide ‘T’ shutter by locking the release button down, where the shutter itself does not have a ‘T’ setting.
Unlike the Isolette I and all the preceding models, the film advance knob is on the right. The camera still has a swing-out spool-holder on the supply side of the film chamber. There is a double-exposure prevention interlock; this engages after releasing the shutter, and is disengaged by advancing the film. It has a red (locked) or silver (unlocked) indicator in a hole in the top-plate, next to the advance knob. Like the ‘T’ lock, this interlock acts on the body release button, so if the lock engages accidentally, or a double exposure is desired, it is still possible to release the shutter by pressing the linkage on the shutter itself (or with a cable release, on versions of the camera on which the cable attaches directly to the shutter, not the body release; they vary in this respect).
Like the Isolette I, early versions of the II have a disc-type depth-of-field indicator on the left of the top plate. On later cameras this is replaced with a film-type reminder, and the DOF scale, if any, is on the shutter face-plate.
Installation photograph of one half of the exhibition From Steam to Diesel at the Portobello Library, Edinburgh. The other half of the exhibition is off camera to the right.
Victor Hugo (French, 1802-1885) Les Misérables vol. 1
1845-1862
Autograph manuscript
Bibliothèque nationale de France
Devour the main course but don’t stay for dessert
This is an exhibition in two galleries. In the first you are not allowed to take photographs but in the second you can take as many as you want. You are told this as you enter the exhibition but the import of this incantation only becomes apparent much later in your visit.
The first gallery is a profound experience: manuscripts, letters, photographs, paintings, and posters that all relate to the great man and his work Les Misérables. The Charles Marville photographs are sublime (as always) with the width of the vertical prints being the element that I noticed most on this viewing. The space that Marville manages to capture in these vertical images makes them seem almost as wide as they are high giving them an almost panoramic feel, as though the space of the image goes on forever, from side to side and into the distance. There is a wonderful sense of volume in the atmosphere, tones and textures of these images. One juxtaposition is particularly tantalising, the pairing of Marville’s Rue Tirechape (1865) with engravings such as the demolition work for constructing the Boulevard St. Germain by Maxine Lalanne (1827-1886). The illusion that one could be the other is enlightening, and there is an established association (especially in Pictorialist photography) between representation in etching and photography.1
As Philip Ebury observes,
“It has often been said that Pictorial photographs resemble works in other media. The analogy with etchings is especially striking and the comparison is more than physical. Between 1890 and the late 1920s, etching and Pictorial photography had a shared history and many similar aims. Parallels between the two disciplines in Australia had their antecedents in England. In the late nineteenth century many photographers in that country were consciously promoting artistic, as opposed to documentary work. At the same time, printmakers were reviving the art of original etching as an expressive rather than a reproductive medium.”2
But the Charles Marville photographs are not the star of the show, oh no. That is left to five things:
a) An album of which you can see only one leaf in the exhibition, Les Proscrits (‘The Exiles’) (1856, below), but that one leaf is enough. The enigma, light and intimacy of this one page is just magnificent.
b) Equally impressive are the very small intense portraits of Victor Hugo such as the silver gelatin photograph attributed to Arsène Garnier (1820-1909) – dark, atmospheric with Neo-classical sculptures and chandeliers reflected in expansive mirrors, VH propped up by a favourite chair; or Charles Hugo’s salted paper print from a collodion negative of his father in Jersey leaning on the back of a chair (1853-1855). The intensity of these portraits is remarkable.
c) Victor Hugo’s own paintings, usually pen and brown ink wash on paper, are also very powerful. In images such as Ma destinée (My destiny) (1867, below) where VH wrote in direct conversation with the ocean and The bowels of the Leviathan (1866) – dark, dank labyrinthine Parisian sewers – Hugo draws you into a world of the disenfranchised, the poor, the destitute and their (and his) destiny.
d) The beautiful theatre posters (1880s-1910s) worth the price of admission on their own
e) Leaving the best till last, the autographed manuscript Volume 1 of Les Misérables in all its glory (the first time it has ever left France), complete with revisions, crossings out and the final version in red, resting innocuously in a glass display cabinet. The psychological weight of the volume is immense. This is getting as close to the ‘source’ as you can possibly get without touching it. I remember once holding a first edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol in my hand. This had that same spine tingling effect.
The first gallery assembles this incredible story and builds a glorious intensity of experience. I was on such an elevated level it was great.
And then, in literally two minutes, it was gone… No, no, no, no!
The second gallery is such a let down. It features costumes, posters, pamphlets and video in an exploration of the musical ‘phenomena’ this is the (Disney-fied) Les Misérables. A stage set from the musical with cut our heads so people can have their photo taken, and for performances; very poor quality black and white images of the sets of the theatrical productions of Les Misérables; a cardboard cut-out two-wheeled cart that is the worst thing that you could possibly see; and videos of workshops with men explaining how they are using a bandsaw to create the stage for the musical (as if I want to see that after what has gone before!). From the sublime to the ridiculous. I’m sure the kids might like it but after seeing such an amazing first half of the exhibition, for me this was like being tied with a ball and chain and dropped over the side to sink like a stone. Why do curators insist on doing this. Do they think that they always have to have a “popular” space for the family and the kids these days. That more is really more?
In this case it quite ruined what was up till then an incredible experience. So visit the exhibition for the main course (and don’t take any photos), but if I were you I would turn around after the first gallery and walk out the way I came in, thinking to myself ‘less is more!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ See Ebury, Frances. “Engravers and Etchers, Pictorialists and Photographers,” Part 2, Chapter 2 in Making Pictures: Australian Pictorial Photography as Art 1897 – 1957 Volume 1. Phd thesis, The University of Melbourne, 2001, p. 73.
2/ Ibid.,
Many thankx to the State Library of Victoria for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“As long as social damnation exists, through laws and customs, artificially creating hell at the heart of civilization and muddying a destiny that is divine with human calamity; as long as the three problems of the century – man’s debasement through the proletariat, woman’s demoralisation through hunger, the wasting of the child through darkness – are not resolved … as long as ignorance and misery exist in this world, books like the one you are about to read are, perhaps, not entirely useless.”
Victor Hugo, Hauteville House, 1 January 1862
Victor Hugo (French, 1802-1885)
Title page of Les Misérables vol. 1
1845-1862
Autograph manuscript
Bibliothèque nationale de France
Victor Hugo (French, 1802-1885) Paris Paris, 1867
Maison Littéraire de Victor Hugo
Les Proscrits (‘The Exiles’)
1856
Album of photographs
Bibliothèque nationale de France
Album The Exiles – Victor Hugo and his circle of friends in exile started in Guernsey on the 1st January 1856. The album creates an allegorical portrait of VH. His family is represented by Victor Hugo’s hand (left), Adele’s hand (right), Marine Terrace their home in Jersey 1852-1856 (centre) and VH posing at his desk in his study at Hauterville House, Guernsey, where he completed Les Misérables surrounded by sunlight. The page appears in the posting the correct way up, as it appears in the album.
Victor Hugo’s hand From the album Les Proscrits (‘The Exiles’) (detail of page)
1856
Album of photographs
Bibliothèque nationale de France
Victor Hugo posing at his desk in his study at Hauterville House, Guernsey From the album Les Proscrits (‘The Exiles’) (detail of page)
1856
Album of photographs
Bibliothèque nationale de France
Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917) Victor Hugo, buste dit À l’Illustre Maître (Victor Hugo, bust known as ‘To the illustrious master’)
1883
Musée Rodin
Rodin states that Hugo would not pose. “I worked out on the veranda. I observed him swiftly, but carefully as he refused to pose. He accepted to be looked at, from all angles, but he would not pose. And so I looked at his conscience. And this is how I was able to capture the real Hugo.”
When the first two volumes of Les Misérables arrived in Paris in April 1862, all 6000 copies sold in a day. Public readings were organised when copies sold out. Everyone was reading it, from the literary intelligentsia to the common people. It was also quickly translated into nine languages to reach a global audience. After only three months, 100,000 authorised copies (and countless editions on the black market) had been sold worldwide, making the novel into an unprecedented literary bestseller of western literature. In 1870 after the fall of Napoleon III, Hugo returned to France and was hailed a national hero.
Victor Hugo’s legacy and the iconic story of Les Misérables endure to this day with various adaptations being created around the world. There have been at least 48 films, 14 animated films or TV series, radio plays, 12 television miniseries, numerous comic books, and at least 286 editions of Les Misérables published, sung and spoken. The stage musical of Boublil and Schönberg’s Les Misérables is in itself a worldwide phenomenon. It is the longest running theatre performance in London and has been seen by over 65 million people in 43 countries and in 21 languages. It returns to Melbourne in June 2014.
About Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo is considered one of the most important and influential authors of the 19th century. Through his transformative literary works and political activism, French society’s most vulnerable were given a voice in a nation ruled by those with power and privilege. Best known for his novels Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame Hugo is also acclaimed for his theatre, essays, drawings and poetry.
Born in Besançon, France in 1802, Hugo was the son of an atheist and anti-monarchist French General and a Catholic pro-monarchist mother. A precocious talent, Hugo’s first work was published at the age of 15. His debut as a professional writer soon followed with the release of his first volume of romantic poems; Ode et poésies diverses in 1822. Many of his early romantic works drew inspiration from his childhood sweetheart and wife Adele Foucher, with whom he had four children. Another powerful female influence on Hugo’s writings was his mistress of more than fifty years, Juliette Drouet.
As Hugo’s career progressed, his aptitude and fondness for romantic literature was matched by his passion for addressing themes of disadvantage and poverty. Hugo’s first major masterpiece The Hunchback of Notre Dame published in 1831 reflected his interest in highlighting such prejudices. However, it was his greatest masterpiece, Les Misérables, that first challenged and then changed the social and political understanding of poverty, disadvantage and inherited privilege in society. In Les Misérables Hugo casts an ex-convict, Jean Valjean, as the revered protagonist and paints a villain of the character representing authority and privilege, Inspector Javert.
Hugo dedicated 17 years of his life to plan and write the epic three part story beginning in the early 1840s and finally publishing the novel in 1862. In addition to his social and political sympathies, Hugo drew from many of his own personal experiences and professional turmoil to inform the characters and themes in Les Misérables. These included the tragic drowning of his eldest daughter, Leopoldine, in a boating accident in 1843, and Hugo’s exile from France by Louis Napoleon III in 1851 – a result of his public opposition to the increasingly authoritarian rule of the self-declared emperor.
From his exile on the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey where he lived for 19 years, Hugo maintained his trenchent opposition to the political status quo and the death penalty, while also publishing widely and spending three years finishing his magnum opus Les Misérables. When Les Misérables finally hit the stands in Paris in 1862 the response by the public was explosive. All 6000 copies sold out in a day, and three months later the book was an international best seller and had been translated into nine languages. Following the success of Les Misérables Hugo returned to France in 1870 after the fall of Napoleon III and was hailed a national hero. He continued to work until he died on 22 May 1885. At his state funeral it was estimated that close to two million people attended. Hugo’s wish to be buried in a pauper’s coffin was granted and his body lay in state under the Arc de Triomphe until he was interred in the Panthéon.
Today Victor Hugo’s extraordinary legacy continues. Les Misérables has been published in at least 250 editions since 1862, 48 films have been made of the story and the Boublil and Schönberg Les Misérables musical has been seen by over 65 million people worldwide in 42 countries and 22 languages, and is one of the most popular musicals of all time. Victor Hugo is remembered as an international literary giant and a French national hero.
Themes
The possibility that the condemned can rise above poverty and degradation to become good and honourable, and perhaps above all to fight for freedom of body and soul.
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Percement de l’avenue de l’Opéra (Clearing of the Avenue de l’Opéra)
c. 1876
State Library of Victoria
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Rue Soufflot (pendant la démolition) (Rue Soufflot [during demolition])
c. 1876-1877
State Library of Victoria
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Avenue d’Iéna c. 1877
State Library of Victoria
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Boulevard Haussmann c. 1877
State Library of Victoria
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Cour du Dragon, Rue de Taranne c. 1863-1869
State Library of Victoria
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Rue Tirechape c. 1863-1869
State Library of Victoria
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Rue de Fontaines c. 1863-1869
State Library of Victoria
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Rue du Marche aux fleurs
c. 1863-1869
State Library of Victoria
Charles Méryon (French, 1821-1868) Le petit pont (The little bridge)
1850
National Gallery of Victoria, purchased 1891
Ottavio Rodella Tavio (Italian, 1864-1910)
Poster for I Miserabili di Victor Hugo (Les Misérables by Victor Hugo)
1890
Bibliothèque nationale de France
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo New York, Classics Illustrated no. 9
1950
State Library of Victoria
Design by Slawomir Kitowski
Les Misérables poster
1989-2000
Teatr Muzyczny, Gdynia, Poland
Courtesy Cameron Mackintosh Ltd
State Library of Victoria
328 Swanston St,
Melbourne VIC 3000 Phone: (03) 8664 7000
This is the most difficult restoration of a photograph that I have ever undertaken. The photograph is of William the great grandfather of my friend Daniel who asked me to restore the photograph for him.
It was such a challenge because I had to reconstruct the parts of the photograph that were completely missing because of the cut and sellotape, match the different tonalities of the two halves and then also match the bicycle spokes across the gap (the two halves were misaligned meaning the spokes did not match up) … talk about a labour of love!
I hope it came out reasonably well as this image means a lot to Daniel, the only photograph he has of his great grandfather.
Marcus
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
You can see the difficulty with restoring such a bad tear and sellotape – the left hand side was even worse!
Whether there was, or he understood there to be, a “decisive” moment when Eugène Atget took a photograph is unknown… but I think that what he was trying to achieve was something different. In Atget there is a decisive exposure – or (seemingly extended) time – of the image. In Cartier-Bresson this perception has shrunk to a millisecond but it is still there. Not so different, just this intensity – COMPRESSED.
In Yousuf Karsh I believe that there is more an EXPANSION of time in the portraits – the decisive exposure is drawn out over the length of his engagement and dialogue with his sitters (with out seeing the caption you KNOW that is Robert Oppenheimer – I had not seen the image before butI sensed it instinctively, intuitively, it could be nobody else). He seems to ‘draw out’ some magical element in all of his sitters = they never just ‘sit’ for him, but actively engage in a dialogue that evidences some sense of being that is unique and timeless… an expansion of consciousness? an expansion of decisive exposure. Decisive – immediate; exposure – time / representation.
These are thoughts still forming in my head, a new way of looking at photography that relies less on instant gratification and more on intensities – of feeling, of thinking, of time, of representation.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the National Portrait Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
In celebration of a major gift to its collection of more than 100 portraits created by renowned photographer Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002), this exhibition features iconic photographs of Americans who have distinguished themselves in fields as diverse as business, medicine, entertainment, politics and the arts. Among the portraits included are those of artist Georgia O’Keeffe, physician and virologist Jonas Salk, singer Marian Anderson, actress Grace Kelly, businesswoman Elizabeth Arden, architect I. M. Pei and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Yousuf Karsh: American Portraits is the museum’s first exhibition devoted entirely to the work of this internationally recognised portrait photographer, and it will be presented in two installations.
A luminous beauty whose film career spanned just six years (1951-1956), Grace Kelly left an indelible legacy with her performances in eleven motion pictures, many of which remain Hollywood classics. After her 1951 film debut in a minor role, she received wide notice for her performance opposite Gary Cooper in High Noon (1952). A year later, Kelly garnered her first Academy Award nomination for her work in Mogambo (1953). In 1954 she starred in four major releases, including the Alfred Hitchcock thrillers Dial M for Murder and Rear Window, and the drama The Country Girl, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar. Kelly scored additional hits with To Catch a Thief (1955) and the musical High Society (1956) before ending her Hollywood career to marry Monaco’s Prince Rainier in April 1956.
When Grace Kelly posed for Karsh’s camera, she was recently engaged and about to begin her new life as Monaco’s Princess Grace.
In 1954, when Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature, the committee cited his “mastery of the art of modern narration.” In fact, through his short stories and such novels as The Sun Also Rises (1926) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Hemingway had, with his terse, powerful prose, in large measure invented a new literary style as he chronicled the disillusionment of the post-World War I “lost generation.” Hemingway’s own experiences – reporting foreign wars, living the bohemian life in Paris, and adventuring in Africa, Spain, and Cuba – fuelled his imagination and helped foster his larger-than-life public persona.
When Karsh traveled to Cuba in 1957 to photograph Hemingway, he “expected to meet in the author a composite of the heroes of his novels.” Instead, the photographer recalled, “I found a man of peculiar gentleness, the shyest man I ever photographed – a man cruelly battered by life but seemingly invincible.”
Albert Einstein transformed the world of physics with his groundbreaking theory of relativity, and in 1921 he received the Nobel Prize for “his services to theoretical physics” and “his discovery of the law of photoelectric effect.” The German-born physicist was visiting the United States when Hitler and the Nazis came to power in his homeland in 1933. Einstein never returned to Germany. Instead, he accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey – the newly established academic institution that would become a major centre for research in theoretical physics. In residence at the institute for the remainder of his life, Einstein continued to publish, work on the interpretation of quantum theory, and wrestle without success on his unified field theory. He became a U.S. citizen in 1940.
Karsh relished the opportunity to photograph Einstein, whose face, “in all its rough grandeur, invited and challenged the camera.”
In 1941, as war raged in Europe and the Pacific, British prime minister Winston Churchill traveled to Washington for meetings with President Franklin Roosevelt before continuing on to Ottawa, where he delivered a rousing speech before the Canadian Parliament on December 30. Canada’s prime minister, Mackenzie King – an early admirer of Yousuf Karsh’s work – arranged for Karsh to attend Churchill’s address and to be in position to photograph the British leader as he later passed through the Speaker’s Chamber. Surprised to discover that he was to be photographed, Churchill grudgingly agreed to give Karsh two minutes for the shot but declined the photographer’s gentle entreaty to relinquish his freshly lit cigar. Undeterred, Karsh deftly removed the cigar from Churchill’s mouth and quickly made his exposure as Britain’s “roaring lion” glowered at the camera. The resulting image – one of the 20th century’s most iconic portraits – effectively launched Karsh’s international career.
In 1963, Churchill became the first foreign national to be granted honorary U.S. citizenship by the U.S. Congress.
One of the most influential architects to emerge in the decades following World War II, I. M. Pei is recognised throughout the world for his striking, high-modernist designs. Drawn to the United States to study architecture in 1935, Pei earned his undergraduate degree from MIT and later completed graduate work at Harvard. After first directing the architectural division of a large real-estate concern, Pei founded his own architecture firm in 1955, one year after becoming a U.S. citizen. As his reputation grew, important projects – such as the 1964 commission for the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library – came his way. Pei went on to create such iconic structures as the critically acclaimed East Wing of the National Gallery of Art (1978) and the distinctive glass pyramid that forms the entrance to the Louvre (1988). He has received many major awards, including the coveted Pritzker Prize (1983).
In celebration of a major gift to its collection of more than 100 portraits created by master photographer Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002), the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is installing a special exhibition on the first floor of the museum, Yousuf Karsh: American Portraits. This is the second of two installations and will run from May 2 through Nov. 2. Yousuf Karsh: American Portraits is the museum’s first exhibition devoted entirely to the work of this internationally recognised photographer. Each phase of the installation displays 27 photographs. The photographs were a gift to the museum by Estrellita Karsh.
“Yousuf Karsh created some of the most iconic photographic portraits of our time,” said Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery. “He not only had the uncanny ability to amplify a person’s character, but also offered everyday people the opportunity to glimpse into the private lives of the men and women who shaped the 20th century in a way that feels both personal and real. I am thrilled to have his important work play an integral part in building the nation’s collection of portraits.”
A refugee from persecution in his native Armenia, Karsh immigrated to Canada in 1925. His uncle, a professional photographer, facilitated Karsh’s apprenticeship with the renowned Boston portrait photographer John H. Garo in 1928. By the time Karsh returned to Canada, he had “set [his] heart on photographing those men and women who leave their mark on the world.” In May 1933, he opened his portrait studio in Ottawa.
Karsh developed his distinctive portrait style by drawing inspiration from a variety of sources. Introduced to stage lighting techniques through his association with the Ottawa Drama League, he experimented with artificial lighting to achieve the dramatic effects that became the hallmark of his portraiture. Believing that “the heart and mind are the true lens of the camera,” Karsh also developed a genuine rapport with his sitters and partnered with them to fashion portraits that were both revealing and respectful.
During a distinguished career that spanned more than six decades, Karsh believed that “the heart and mind are the true lens of the camera,” and he developed a genuine rapport with his subjects to fashion evocative and revealing portraits. This installation features Americans who have distinguished themselves in fields as diverse as business, medicine, entertainment, politics and the arts. Among the portraits included are Martha Graham, Helen Keller, Jackie Kennedy, Andy Warhol, Ellie Wiesel, Muhammad Ali and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The museum has previously collected seven photographs by Karsh, including one of the most famous photographs of Winston Churchill, which became known as the “roaring lion,” and a colour photograph of the beloved creator of Peanuts, Charles Schultz. While the photographer is known for his work in black and white, the museum is also showing several works in colour.
Press release from the National Portrait Gallery website
As the nation’s first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt rapidly expanded her role from hostess to advocate and emerged as a vital force in her husband Franklin’s administration. She took public stands on issues ranging from exploitative labor practices to civil rights, but more important, she often urged her husband toward measures he might otherwise have avoided. When the challenges of World War II drew the president’s attention from domestic affairs, she continued to be a strong voice for the New Deal’s social welfare policies. The activism that characterised Eleanor Roosevelt’s years as first lady did not end with her departure from the White House. As a U.S. delegate to the United Nations (1945-1953), she was instrumental in formulating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and securing its ratification by the General Assembly in 1948.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s hands were seldom still, and Karsh captured their expressive qualities in this portrait.
Japanese Saddle and stirrups with crane and turtle design
Edo period 1665 Japan
Lacquer on wood (maki-e), gold foil, silver, pigment, plant fibre (cord), dyes, metal, leather, (other materials)
28.2 x 41.0 x 39.0cm (saddle)
Acquired, 1889
This is a most beautiful and refined exhibition. Despite the ferocity of the samurai, their armour is exquisite. The golden screens, the horse trappings, the swords and the pistols are all fabulously detailed. Walking into the darkened exhibition space is like entering another world. A must see exhibition before it closes!
Marcus
Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Utagawa Yoshitsuya (Japanese, 1822-1866) The death of Kusunoki Masatsura
19th century
Colour woodblock (triptych)
(a-c) 35.9 x 74.0cm (image) (overall) (a-c) 36.4 x 74.0cm (sheet) (overall)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1993
Utagawa Yoshitsuya (Japanese, 1822-1866) The death of Kusunoki Masatsura (detail)
19th century
Colour woodblock (triptych)
(a-c) 35.9 x 74.0cm (image) (overall) (a-c) 36.4 x 74.0cm (sheet) (overall)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1993
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1809-1909) (attributed to) No title (Samurai warrior)
1860s-1870s
Albumen silver photograph, colour dyes
24.2 x 19.6cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through the NGV Foundation by Thomas Dixon, Member, 2001
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) No title (Samurai in armour)
c. 1875; (c. 1877-1880) (printed)
Albumen silver photograph, colour dyes
24.4 x 19.6cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through the NGV Foundation with the assistance of The Herald & Weekly Times Limited, Fellow, 2001
Exquisite 300-year-old battle armour will bring the epic tales of Japanese history to life in a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Bushido: Way of the Samurai, which explores the fascinating world of the samurai; the warriors, rulers and aristocratic elite of Japanese society for more than 800 years.
The exhibition brings together over 200 objects from the NGV and Australian collections including many rediscovered and rarely seen treasures that were acquired by the NGV in the 1880s and 1920s, such as beautifully crafted armour, helmets, lacquered saddles and a full set of horse trappings. An exquisite group of 16th Century matchlock guns – weaponry used on the battlefield which irrevocably changed warfare and the ethics of the samurai in battle – and an elaborate suit of armour that has no record of being exhibited since its acquisition in 1889 will take centre stage in the exhibition.
Wayne Crothers, Curator, Asian Art, NGV said that Japanese armour, swords and guns are celebrated as refined artworks and are appreciated for their unsurpassed craftsmanship and beauty. “Such dramatic and visually foreboding attire worn by a fierce sword wielding warrior thundering into battle on horseback must have created an image of heart stopping ferocity embodying the spirit and the age of the samurai. It is extraordinary that we have these pieces from key historical periods in Japanese history to share today,” Mr Crothers said.
Bushido: Way of the Samurai also includes three golden screens that would adorn the villas and castles of the samurai elite, one of which is a magnificent seven metre panoramic view of the twelfth century battle of Ichinotani, and a group of dramatic woodblock prints depicting stories of legendary samurai and their super human feats of bravery.
The art and culture of the samurai encompasses over 800 years of Japan’s history and creative past. From the twelfth century through to the modernisation of Japan in 1868, the Shogun, or the military elite, ruled the country and lived to a rigorous code of ethics. This military aristocracy aspired to a life of spiritual harmony that not only perfected the art of war, but also embodied an appreciation of the fine arts that established their life as an art form itself. The refined cultural pursuits of the samurai are exhibited in the form of exquisite Noh theatre costumes and dramatic Noh masks, tea ceremony utensils, lacquered personal items, formal clothing and studio photographs from the 1860s-1870s that capture these noble warriors during the closing years of feudal Japan.
“Samurai virtues of honesty, courage, benevolence, respect, self-sacrifice, self-control, duty, and loyalty combined with a cultivated lifestyle established social stability and a legacy of art and culture in Japanese society that continues to this day,” Mr Crothers said.”
Press release from the NGV
Utagawa Yoshiiku (Japanese, 1833-1904) Fukushima Masanori, from the Heroic stories of the Taiheiki Edo period 1867 Japan
Colour woodblock
25.5 x 19.0cm (image and sheet)
Purchased, NGV Supporters of Asian Art, 2014
Utagawa Yoshiiku (Japanese, 1833-1904) Gamō Ujisato, from the Heroic stories of the Taiheiki Edo period 1867 Japan
Colour woodblock
25.5 x 19.0cm (image and sheet)
Purchased, NGV Supporters of Asian Art, 2014
Japanese Ceremonial helmet with octopus and Genji cart wheel crest
19th century
Edo period 1600-15-1868 Japan
Lacquer on (leather) (maki-e), wood, gold, pigment, glass, metal (nails), silk and cotton (thread), (other materials)
28.0 x 35.5 x 38.0cm
Felton Bequest, 1927
Japanese Armour
18th century
Metal, wood, pigment, lacquer, gold paint, silk, cotton, leather, metal thread
(a-k) 136.0 x 56.0 x 45.0cm (overall) (installation)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Mrs Henry Darlot, 1888
Japanese Armour
Edo period 1600-15-1868 Japan
Lacquer, leather, metal, silk, cotton, hemp, gold pigment, coloured dyes
144.0 x 71.0 x 53.0cm (overall) (installation)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Acquired, 1889
Japanese Armour
Edo period 1600-15-1868 Japan
Lacquer, leather, metal, silk, cotton, hemp, gold pigment, coloured dyes
144.0 x 71.0 x 53.0cm (overall) (installation)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Acquired, 1889
One of the most beautiful postings that I have ever done on the blog. The colours, the people, the faces, the places: magnificent.
This was Sarajevo two years before Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated there, catalyst that sparked the beginning of The Great War. Bread and dirty clothes, rough hands and mud-stained shoes.
Can you imagine the journey of Stéphane Passet in those days with plate cameras:
Turkey: September 1912 Morocco: December 1912 / January 1913 China: May 1913 Mongolia: July 1913 India: December 1913 – January 1914 France: June 1914
Marcus
Many thankx to 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.
Stéphane François Marie Passet (French, 1875-1941) was an amateur photographer and appointed operator on behalf of the Archives de la Planète (Archives of the Planet). This archival project began thanks to the rich French-based banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn (1860-1940), who became concerned about the Chinese cultural heritage after his part-business, part-pleasure trip to China between November 1908 and May 1909.
After his return to Paris, Kahn decided to launch the worldwide project Les Archives de la Planète. This three-decade long project distinguished itself from any other initiated at that time thanks to the compilation of a visual inventory of the world utilising ground-breaking types of media from that time, namely autochrome and film. With the utopian aim to ‘fix once and for all the aspects, the practices, and modes of human activity whose fatal disappearing is just a question of time’, Kahn hired a dozen operators to help him visualise the world, including Passet.
Biographical elements of Passet remain quite meagre. What is known is that he volunteered in the French Army for fifteen years, settled down in Paris in 1910, and worked for Kahn’s Archives de la Planète from 1912 onwards. The circumstances of his previous training as a photographer and cameraman, as well as his recruitment, remain unknown. The visual archive left to us today reveal that two trips were organised [to China] in 1912 (between May and August) and 1913 (between the end of May and the end of June). Passet and his team travelled across China, visiting and recording places such as Beijing (which composes a large part of the archive in China) and northern sites (Great Wall and Ming Tombs), Shenyang, Zhangjiakou, Qufu, Shanghai, places along the Yangtze River, and Mount Tai (hereinafter referred to as Taishan).
The Archives de la Planète ended in 1931 when Kahn was bankrupted.
Anonymous text. “Stéphane Passet,” on the Photography of China website Nd [Online] Cited 10/11/2022
Auguste Leon (French, 1857-1942), French photographer who worked for the project “Archives of the Planet” (French: Les Archives de la Planète) of millionaire French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn (1860-1940) since 1909. Together with Jean Brin, another French photographer, they visited Macedonia during the Balkan wars in the period of 1912-1913 where they made series of autochromes (very first colour photograps) which today are in the collection of Albert Kahn museum and were published later in the publication: Macedonia in 1913 – Autochromes from the collection of the Museum Albert Kahn.
The Archives of the Planet (French: Les Archives de la Planète) was photographical endeavour to document buildings and cultures.
In 1909, Kahn travelled with his chauffeur and photographer, Alfred Dutertre to Japan on business and returned with many photographs of the journey. On his return to Europe, he decided to go back, this time with the professional photographer Augustus Leon, for a second two-month trip to South America in 1909 where he visited Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. All materials became the first of the “Archives of the Planet” based in Paris: a collection of colour photographs (process autochrome plates, invented by the Lumiere brothers) and movies.
This prompted him to begin a project collecting a photographic record of the entire Earth. He appointed Jean Brunhes as the project director, and sent photographers to every continent to record images of the planet using the first colour photography, autochrome plates, and early cinematography.
Professional operators were recruited and sent around the world and in France to photograph (colour) and film (the movement) as evidence “aspects, practices and modes of human activity, including the fatal disappearance is only a matter of time.” Among them, the photographer Stéphane Passet conducted between 1912 and 1914, several trips to China, Mongolia and in the British Raj (India and Pakistan), yielding several thousand Autochromes and movies on the people and customs of these country. At the same time Kahn sent his operators, including Augustus Leon, to Scandinavia and more than twenty European countries on the eve of the Great War. Kahn’s photographers began documenting France in 1914, just days before the outbreak of World War I, and by liaising with the military managed to record both the devastation of war, and the struggle to continue everyday life and agricultural work. Other parts of France are not forgotten either, Kahn sending Brittany operators to take monochromes from 1909-1931. In 1926 and 1927, it was to Japan that he sends an operator, Roger Dumas.
Between 1909 and 1931 they collected 72,000 colour photographs and 183,000 meters of film. These form a unique historical record of 50 countries, known as The Archives of the Planet. Between 1909 and 1931, it is thus some 72,000 autochrome (first global fund of early colour photography), 4000 black-and-white, and a hundred hours of footage that will be reported from fifty country. These images are the iconographic side of a large documentation project that will take other forms (publications, documentation centres, etc.) and whose goal is a better understanding of other nations for a better deal in order to prevent conflicts. The images are also projected for this purpose to the guests, often prestigious people from around the world, as well as in higher education structures.
In commemoration of the outbreak of the First World War, the Martin-Gropius-Bau is presenting an exhibition entitled The World c. 1914 – Colour Photography Before the Great War, which features nearly forgotten colour photographs and films commissioned by the French banker Albert Kahn (1860-1940) before the First World War. As the nations of Europe were already arming themselves for battle, Kahn, who was excited by the Lumière Brothers’ colour photography process, dispatched photographers out into the world to develop a unique photo archive. Over 70,000 colour photos have survived in this collection. They represent an immense ethnographic treasure and were also intended to perform a mission of peace: Bringing the outside world closer to home. Kahn’s activities were intended to help secure the fragile peace. The exhibition brings this treasure trove of images from a long forgotten world to light.
For Albert Kahn, knowledge of peoples, buildings, landscapes and lifestyles was directly related to his desire for global peace: People who know and respect one another, and who encounter one another face to face, do not need to wage war. In 1908/09, excited by the new autochrome process of the brothers August and Louis Lumière, Kahn commissioned his photographers to document the world with the goal of assembling an archive of colour photographs from Europe, Asia and Africa. They photographed local scenes and people in typical clothing as well as monuments of cultural history. From this global treasure trove, more than 160 images have been selected for this exhibition. The autochromes from the Kahn archive form the centrepiece. The exhibition also displays images and projections by Adolf Miethe (1862-1927) and Sergei M. Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944).
Adolf Miethe, the inventor of a panchromatic film-coating process and thus the creator of three-colour printing, played a significant role in the development of colour photography. His presentation before the Kaiser led to a commission to create a colour documentation of German landscapes for the St. Louis World’s Fair. His work also enjoyed great popularity as collectible pictures sold with chocolate bars. This resulted in the “Stollwerck Album” – Germany’s first coloured photographic album.
Moreover, the Miethe Process inspired the Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. His work is present in the form of approximately twenty-five colour prints and fifty projected photos. A special item is on loan from the German Museum in Munich: The original projector with which Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii exhibited his work to Nicholas II, the last tsar. In 1909, as a result of this presentation, Prokudin-Gorskii received a commission to record the Russian Empire in 10,000 photos. Between 1909 and 1915, Gorskii made several thousand photographs of great brilliance. He documented the cultural diversity of the tsarist empire from the Crimean Peninsula to Siberia.
Another strong, passionate photographer has gone. One of his best images and one of my favourites is Men on a rooftop (1960, above). For more images see my earlier posting René Burri: A Retrospective at Flo Peters Gallery, Hamburg, November 2009 – January 2010.
Marcus
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“When Burri left Zurich in the 1950s, he set out to discover the world and some sense of man’s smallness within it. Switzerland was landlocked, bordered by mountains; a camera was a way out. Even then, he worried about what he could do that was new – “when shutters rattle from morning to night in every corner of the world … when every continent is lit with the flash of cameras.” His job, he believes, has been to “trace the enormous social changes taking place in our age, conveying my thoughts and images of them.” And, more poetically, “to put the intensity that you yourself have experienced into the picture – otherwise it is just a document.” He retired from reporting once that intensity, that sense of the bigness of the world, was gone.”
It is with great sadness that the Musée de l’Elysée has learned of the death of René Burri, on Monday October 20 in Zurich, at the age of 81. In his later years, René Burri wished to create a foundation for the preservation of his work. The Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne hosts the Fondation René Burri established in June 2013.
The members of the Fondation de l’Elysée as well as the Musée de l’Elysée team extend their deepest sympathies to the family. A member of Magnum, René Burri was without a doubt one of the most talented photographers of his generation. He was present wherever history was being made and an acute witness of the major events of his time.
On the occasion of his 80th year, René Burri wished to create a foundation for the conservation and promotion of his work in museums and among the public, both in Switzerland and around the world. The Musée de l’Elysée hosts the Fondation René Burri and has been working closely with the artist and his family since June 2013 toward this goal.
“Thanks to the work being undertaken by the Musée de l’Elysée, we feel confident that René Burri’s legacy, which is of universal importance, will be passed on to future generations in the best possible conditions,” says the family.
This major Swiss patrimony has been bestowed to the Musée de l’Elysée on a 20-year loan, with the possibility for renewal. The René Burri photographic archives consist of approximately 30,000 images (vintage and modern prints, contact sheets and slides), in black and white and in colour. One third of this collection has already been received by the museum and an open-air exhibition will be organised in Lausanne as early as next year.
Artists: Cherine Fahd, Vivian Maier, Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano, Debra Phillips, Patrick Pound, Clare Rae, Simone Slee, David Wadelton And Kellie Wells and Vivian Maier.
Curators: Naomi Cass, Louise Neri and Karra Rees
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) East 108th Street. September 28, 1959, New York, NY 1959 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Just slightly overrated…
Apologies to the wonderful and hard working Director of the CCP Naomi Cass for what I am about to say, but this is one of the most disappointing photographic exhibitions in Melbourne this year.
Let’s start with the Australian work. There is nothing at all wrong with any of the Australian work. Some of it is very strong, such as the found images of Patrick Pound and the social documentary work of David Wadelton. The problem comes with the lack of connection to the photographs of Vivian Maier. For work that is supposed to be “crossing paths” conceptually with the images of Maier many of the connections are so esoteric as to be almost indistinguishable, so obtuse (as Tim Robbins would say in the Shawshank Redemption) as to be almost unintelligible to the uninitiated. Where the work is conceptualised around the performative context of identity and the occupation of space(s), such as in Claire Rae’s digital colour lightbox images of people jumping in the air stopped in suspended animation or the beautiful reinscription of the body in the almost dance like video work of Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano, then the juxtaposition simply does not work. The ties that bind one to another simply are not strong enough to sustain the inquiry of the viewer. More interesting would have been the investigation of the concept of an artist taking photographs in her own time, hidden, secretive, and then being discovered later after she had died – which brings up issues of visibility (the cameras and her gendered own), celebrity, posthumous recreation of identity, the fame of the artist after death, and how the self-portraits fit into this theme etc…
The photographs by Vivian Maier printed by ? are far more disappointing.
Touted as the NEXT BIG THING by curators who are always looking for the next big thing and people out to make a healthy buck or two, VM is a person who has been “posthumously invented” and her work, which was largely unprinted during her lifetime, has been brought to market in a commercial process. As Abigail Solomon-Godeau notes at the end of her excellent essay “Inventing Vivian Maier” on the Jeu de Paume website:
“Here one can see how the terms of an “aesthetic” discourse within the world of contemporary photography, turning on the individual author and her work, and the far less lofty realities of market and marketing, property relations, public relations, media relations and all the other apparatuses, illuminate one another, or even collide. “Her big project,” remarks Michael Williams, “was her life,” but perhaps the even larger project is her posthumous invention.”
Abigail Solomon-Godeau. “Inventing Vivian Maier,” on the Jeu de Paume website, 16th September 2013 [Online] Cited 26/06/2021.
With this invention in mind (and the product that you want to sell being paramount), you would have thought that the people who now control her archive would have got a damn good black and white printer to print the work. But no. Some of the prints are appalling, so flat that there is little if any true black in them at all. As for the content of the images, they look better in reproduction than they do in real life.
Maier, as I have said elsewhere, is a competent photographer – but she will never be a great photographer. Periodically (and I use the word my female friend supplied) she is very good, but too often she lapses into cliche. There are lots of low depth of field photographs but the construction of the images is cold and stilted, there is little engagement it would seem but for the snap of the shutter as she wanders around city after city, keeping the resulting negatives securely hidden.
There is also little mystery in her photographs which is probably why they don’t rise to that next level: look at the photograph of the two men staring at a length of hose on the ground on a rainy street in NY. The hose just sits there, the men are caught mid-gesture… and that’s it. Lots of her photographs are like this. And there also seem to be some anger towards the world as well. If you compare the photograph of the two boys, Undated, Canada (below) with that of the twins by Diane Arbus, there seems to be a darkness and malevolence to VM’s photograph that contrasts with the mystery and joy in that of Arbus – not so much in the subject matter but in the feeling that the photographer projects towards what she is photographing.
There is a coldness when you see the prints in the flesh (like the wind whistling off Lake Michigan onto the Chicago streets), an ice chill, a lack of humour, something that is a little creepy and screwy (if you will pardon the colloquialism) about the work. She wants us to know she is there in the photograph, even when she is not physically present, as in the image September 18, 1962 (below) where the viewer understands that the photographer is down on one knee to get the shot.
There is also a healthy dose of narcissism in the photographs: the self-portraits with this serious woman peering back at us, one who’s eyes hardly ever smile (you can tell a lot from a person’s eyes!) are not psychological investigations like the self-portraits of Rembrandt as he ages throughout the years – portraits in which Rembrandt explores what it is to be him – they are something more obsessive which VM then hides under a bushel. The use of fragmentation and shadows in the two self-portraits that I have put together (New York City, September 10, 1955 and Self-Portrait; October 18, 1953, New York, NY, below) speak of a schism inside the person, one who exposes herself through photography and then possesses but disclaims the results.
People have been flocking to see the film with sold out sessions all over the city, and they were flocking into the CCP to see the exhibition last Saturday when we were there. People love the back story as it has been sold to them by “marketing, property relations, public relations, media relations and all the other apparatuses” and there has been a veritable feeding frenzy about this work: THE DISCOVERY OF KING TUT’S TOMB WITH 100,000 NEGATIVES AND ASSORTED ARTEFACTS!
Kudos to the CCP for getting these images to Australia and exhibiting them and its great to see so many people in the gallery but please, let’s understand the hype and then really look at the work. The ART in FACT is that these are not well printed images, and most of them are pretty prosaic in composition and feeling. There are maybe four really good images, but that is about it. As always, go and see for yourself and keep my words in mind.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the CCP for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) August 1960. Chicago, IL 1960 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, Canada Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Self-Portrait, 1950ies c. 1950s Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Armenian woman fighting on East 86th Street, September, 1956, New York, NY 1956 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) April 7, 1960. Florida 1960 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) January 1956 1956 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) January, 1953, New York, NY 1953 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Self-Portrait, 1953 1953 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Self-Portrait, 1953 1953 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, Canada Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) July 1957. Chicago Suburb, I 1957 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) January 9, 1957, Florida 1957 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
One of the most atmospheric and mysterious of Maier’s photographs.
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Self-Portrait, New York, February 3, 1955 1955 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) March 1954, New York, NY 1954 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) May 16, 1957. Chicago, IL 1957 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) June 1963. Chicago, IL 1963 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
During her lifetime, Vivian Maier (1926-2009) produced more than 100,000 photographic images, which remained largely undiscovered until after her death. CCP celebrates this reluctant artist’s timely relevance, juxtaposing her work with contemporary Australian photography, performance and video.
Maier’s prolific body of work recording both herself and the world around her – predominately with a distinctive medium format Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera – is a precursor to our age of compulsive photographic documentation via smart phones and digital media. The posthumous construction of her identity is almost as compelling as her images and her ability to determine and frame a gripping moment with poignancy and beauty. Time has been Maier’s collaborator, where nostalgia plays a significant role in the popularity of her archive.
In Crossing Paths with Vivian Maier, Maier’s photography – printed well after her death – is presented with contemporary Australian artists working in still, moving and found photography and who also document the street and themselves in an equally obsessive manner.
Against the gritty street life captured by her probing lens, Patrick Pound responds with second-hand images gleaned from junk shops and the Internet, while Debra Phillips and David Wadelton make an inventory of the city and its quirky features. Maier’s self-portraits reverberate with Australian women artists who turn the camera on themselves in performative ways, in the work of Cherine Fahd, Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano, Clare Rae, Simone Slee and Kellie Wells.
Text from the CCP website
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) May 27, 1970. Chicago, IL 1970 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) May 28, 1954, New York, NY 1954 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) New York City, September 10, 1955 1955 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Self-Portrait; October 18, 1953, New York, NY 1953 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, New York, NY Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, New York, NY Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, New York, NY Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, New York, NY Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, New York, NY Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) New York, NY 1954 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Self-Portrait, 1959 1959 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, New York, NY Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) October 31, 1954. New York, NY 1954 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) July 27, 1954. New York, NY 1954 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) September 18, 1962 1962 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) September 1956, New York, NY 1956 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Untitled, Undated Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Untitled, Undated Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Love this one, with feeling
~ The balloons for a celebration ~ The exit sign ~ How he looks distractedly off camera into the distance ~ How her hands are clenched anxiously together ~ How she looks sad and lonely, looking off camera
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Untitled, Undated Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, Vancouver, Canada Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Untitled, Undated Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Untitled, Undated Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
![Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) 'Rue Soufflot (pendant la démolition)' (Rue Soufflot [during demolition]) c. 1876-1877](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/210_slv_marville_rue-soufflot-web.jpg "Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) 'Rue Soufflot (pendant la démolition)' (Rue Soufflot [during demolition]) c. 1876-1877")
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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