Category: portrait

Cabinet card: William Bardwell, photographer – Alfred William Howitt, William Barak and unidentified man

April 2016

Caution: Art Blart advises that the subject of this posting may include images and names of deceased people that may cause distress to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

 

William Bardwell (Australian, active 1858-1895) Untitled (Alfred William Howitt, William Barak and unidentified man)' Melbourne, 1880-1888

 

William Bardwell (Australian, active 1858-1895)
Untitled (Alfred William Howitt, William Barak and unidentified man)
Melbourne, 1866-1870(?)
Albumen photograph
Cabinet card

 

 

This cabinet card (above) was offered for sale recently and went for a large sum of money. I have never seen this photograph before and, although I have searched for it on the National Library of Australia Trove website and online, I cannot find it anywhere. But I thought I recognised the figure in the middle of the photograph. Some research ensued…

Firstly, according to Alan Davis’ seminal 1985 book The mechanical eye in Australia: photography 1841-1900 William Bardwell, photographer, operated from 21 Collins Street East, Melbourne between 1880-88. But Bardwell was at 21 Collins Street from at least 1877, and may well have been there earlier, as he was listed as insolvent there in 1879 before reopening his business. It could have been the case that Bardwell took the photograph in the early 1870s and that he only issued it as a cabinet photograph after he recovered from bankruptcy.

Secondly – and I might be mistaken – I thought I recognised the distinctive countenance and piercing stare of that inspirational Indigenous leader, William Barak (c. 1824 – 15 August 1903) in the centre of the image. We can see he is wearing a roughly hewn jacket with waistcoat, stripped shirt and zigzag patterned necktie. His presence dominates the photograph – central, frontal, tallest and flanked by two sitting people, all placed idyllically against a lush backdrop of trees and an Arcadian stone fence. “Those who knew Barak described him unanimously as wise and dignified, with penetrating eyes and firm principles.”

If it is Barak, dating the photograph is something of a conundrum since Bardwell was known to be at 21 Collins Street officially from 1877 onwards but he could have taken this photograph much earlier. If we compare this cabinet card to other images of Barak from 1866 and 1875 and 1876 (see below), Barak’s hair and beard colour, with tinges or grey in the 1866 image and our cabinet card – compared to the grey bearded man in the 1875 images – leads us to the supposition that this image was taken between approximately 1866-1870(?). Florence Ada Fuller’s oil painting of Barak dated 1885 (LaTrobe Picture Collection, below) also shows his hair as being slightly grizzled but his beard as being fully white. What also supports the dating of the cabinet card to the mid-late 1860s is a comparison of the hair and beard of the other person we definitely know is in the photograph, that of Alfred William Howitt. If you compare Batchelder & O’Neill’s portrait of Alfred William Howitt (below) with the cabinet card, we can see that the hair and beard in both are very similar. Barak did travel to Gippsland in 1882 and 1884 to meet up with Howitt, so it is possible they knew each other much earlier.

My initial identification that the Indigenous Australian in the cabinet card was Barak was made on a comparison of the shape of the beard; the strong flared nose; the fact that the beard comes down over his cheek bones in both the 1866 and cabinet card images; the furrowed shape of the brow which to me is very distinctive; and those penetrating eyes. Admittedly the hair is slightly different and we also cannot see the scar on the right hand cheek of Barak which is present in the 1866 image, because of the size of the enlargement of the cabinet card. But I still stand by my recognition of Barak until we can prove substantially otherwise.

At the time this photograph was taken, Barak would have been anywhere between 42-46 years old, depending on the exact year it was taken.

Ahead in Barak’s life would be leadership, creativity … and heartache. From 1874 onwards, Barak would have been the sole ngurungaeta (clan-head) of the Wurundjeri-balluk clan of Woi wurrung,2 and would lead his people living on the Coranderrk Station, near Healesville. But there were unsettling times ahead. In 1866, sixty people were evicted from the station and the station lost half its land in 1893. So much for the Aboriginal Protection Board, what a misnomer the title of that organisation turned out to be. As Barak famously said, “Me no leave it, Yarra, my country. There’s no mountains for me on the Murray.”

All of this was happening when Barak was going through the most tremendous personal hardship as well. In 1882, his son David (see photograph by Fred Kruger below) fell ill from tuberculosis and arrangements were made to admit him to hospital in Melbourne. These were thwarted by Captain Page, secretary of the Aboriginal Protection Board, and Barak had to carry his sick child all the way from Coranderrk to Melbourne and the home of his supporter Anne Bon. David was admitted to hospital but died soon after, with his father not even allowed to be by his bedside. After David’s death there is a heavy sadness noticeable in Barak’s eyes (see the book First Australians by Rachel Perkins, Marcia Langton, p. 104).

I have much admiration for this man, for the hardships he personally endured and which his people went through, and continue to go through to this day.

And thirdly, the pith helmet was the give away to the identity of the person sitting at left in the photograph: Alfred William Howitt (1830-1908), explorer, natural scientist and pioneer authority on Aboriginal culture and social organisation. As an explorer, Howitt led the relief exhibition (June 1861) to rescue Robert O’Hara Burke, William Wills, John King and Charley Gray, to find only King alive and bring him back to Melbourne. He then returned a second time to Cooper’s Creek to repatriate the bodies of Burke and Wills (December 1861).

In 1863 he began a distinguished career of thirty-eight years as a public official, twenty-six of them as magistrate. In 1889 he became acting secretary of mines and water supply and in 1895 commissioner of audit and a member of the Public Service Board. But his real passion was as an anthropologist, his work stretching through fours phases between 1861-1907 (see the full biography for details).

“On his expedition to the Barcoo Howitt had met members of the Yantruwanta, Dieri and other tribes while they were uninfluenced by Europeans. He learned, though inexpertly, something of their ecology, languages, beliefs and customs. The experience confirmed in him a dissociation between the Aboriginals as an object of scientific interest and as a challenge to social policy. Family letters show that he went to central Australia sharing the racial and social prejudices of the day. His attitudes softened later but nothing in his writings suggests that he ever agreed with the condemnation of Europeans for their treatment of native peoples expressed in his father’s polemical Colonization and Christianity (1838). Even in official roles – he was for a time a local guardian of Aboriginals in Gippsland and in 1877 sat on the royal commission which inquired into their whole situation – his attitude appears always to have been that of the dispassionate scientist. His view of their problems did not extend beyond charitable paternalism and segregated training in institutions. His dealings with Aboriginals were cordial and appreciative if somewhat calculated, and he had no difficulty in finding long-serving helpers among them in all his inquiries. But he saw them as a people doomed to extinction by an extraordinary primitivity, and this quality aroused his scientific interest…

“More appreciative eyes … now recognise that Howitt greatly widened the base, improved the methods and deepened the insights of a nascent science. He wrote in a careful, informed way on a wealth of empirical topics – boomerangs, canoes, name-giving, cannibalism, migrations, wizardry, songs, message-sticks, sign-language – but most valuably on the kinship structures and intergroup relations of social life.”2

This is a fascinating cabinet card for its cultural implications… and for what it leaves unsaid of the attitudes and history of the men pictured in this bucolic scene. William Barak was a man, a leader and an elder who kept the flame of his people and his culture alive. Who after all of his travails, turned to creativity and painting to record his culture for future generations. Culture and creativity in any language is a powerful healing force in what is an ongoing story of injustice and persecution. I would have very much liked to have meet this wise man.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Box 1053/2 (b/c), ‘Notes by Howitt on the Kulin nation from information provided by William Barak’ c. 1882 quoted in Ian D. Clark. “The A.W. How Papers,” in La Trobe Journal No 43, Autumn 1989, p. 30 on the La Trobe Journal website [Online] Cited 06/10/2021.

2/ W. E. H. Stanner. “Howitt, Alfred William (1830-1908),” on the Australian Dictionary of Biography website Volume 4, (MUP), 1972 [Online] Cited 09/04/2016.

 

 

Carl Walter (Australian, 1831-1907) 'William Barak – age 42 – Yarra Yarra Tribe' 1866

 

Carl Walter (Australian, 1831-1907)
William Barak – age 42 – Yarra Yarra Tribe
1866
Albumen silver photograph
Approx. 10.0 x 6.7cm
State Library of Victoria

 

 

Carl Walter (c. 1831 – 7 October 1907), also known as Charles Walter, was a German-born botanist and photographer who worked in Australia. Walter was born in Mecklenburg, Germany in about 1831 and arrived in Victoria in the 1850s.

Walter set up a photographic studio in Melbourne, promoting himself as a “Country Photographic Artist” or “Landscape Photographic Artist”. For a twenty-year period starting from about 1862, he would periodically travel to eastern and alpine regions of Victoria with camera equipment and camping gear in a backpack.

In 1866 Walter took 106 photographs of Aboriginal people at Coranderrk east of Melbourne, which were exhibited at the Intercolonial Exhibition of Australasia in Melbourne in 1866-67.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Fred Kruger (Australian born Germany, 1831-1888) 'William and Annie Barak with their son, David, at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station' c. 1875

 

Fred Kruger (Australian born Germany, 1831-1888)
William and Annie Barak with their son, David, at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station
c. 1875

 

Fred Kruger (Australian born Germany, 1831-1888) 'William and Annie Barak with their son David at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station' c. 1875

 

Fred Kruger (Australian born Germany, 1831–1888)
William and Annie Barak with their son David at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station
c. 1875
Yarra Ranges Regional Museum, 9499

 

Fred Kruger (Australian born Germany, 1831-1888)

Fred Kruger (born Johan Friedrich Carl Kruger, 18 April 1831 – 15 February 1888) was a German-born photographer noted for his early photography of landscape and indigenous peoples in Victoria, Australia. …

In 1866, Kruger first registered his photography business at 133 Cardigan Street, Carlton, Melbourne, before moving it in August 1867 to High Street, Prahran, Melbourne, continuing there until 1871, then relocating in Preston to High Street and again to Regent Street in that suburb.

During this period, Kruger was achieving international recognition for his landscape photography, including the award of medals from both the 1872 Vienna Exhibition and the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. He became the first photographer to take group photos of the first Aboriginal cricket team in 1866, which became one of his most recognised images, and was subsequently commissioned in 1877 by the Aboriginal Protection Board to create a collection of work including portraits of the Aboriginal residents of the Coranderrk reserve, an Aboriginal reserve run by the colonial government of Victoria, which was made public in 1883. Kruger won more awards; a gold medal for the best collection of landscape views and another, for the best panoramic view of Geelong, at the Geelong Industrial and Juvenile Exhibition in 1879.

In March 1879 Kruger was photographing groups of Geelong residents, ensuring each person could easily be identified in his detailed views, as he did when photographing the Corio Bay rowing crew in November 1879. …

Kruger then settled in Geelong permanently, and his photography studio is registered on 29 December 1887 at Skene Street, in the Geelong suburb of Newtown. He created a collection in 1880 of twelve views of the streets and buildings of Geelong, winning him an award at the Melbourne International Exhibition (1880). The government of Victoria engaged him to photograph the Yan Yean Waterworks for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London. Kruger gained commissions from house owners to photograph their homes, most famous of which was from Lady Loch, the wife of the Governor.

Kruger made three visits to the Queenscliff region in 1881, 1882 and 1885, capturing views to include the buildings of the settlement and its marine setting. On 15 February 1888, Kruger died of peritonitis (inflammation of the membranes of abdominal wall and organs). Large holdings of his work have been showcased at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Read more about Fred Kruger:

1/ Fred Kruger (1831-88) by Jennie Boddington 1980 on the National Gallery of Victoria website
2/ Review on Art Blart by Dr Marcus Bunyan: Fred Kruger: Intimate Landscapes at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, 2012

 

Unknown photographer. 'William Barak' 1876

 

Unknown photographer
William Barak
1876
National Archives of Australia, A1200, L22062

 

Florence Ada Fuller (Australian born South Africa, 1867-1946) 'Barak – last chief of the Yarra Yarra tribe of Aborigines' 1885

 

Florence Ada Fuller (Australian born South Africa, 1867-1946)
Barak – last chief of the Yarra Yarra tribe of Aborigines
1885
Oil on board
State Library of Victoria
LaTrobe Picture Collection

 

William Barak (Australian, c. 1824-1903) and Coranderrk

William Barak (or Beruk), was the last traditional ngurungaeta (elder) of the Wurundjeri-willam clan, first inhabitants of present-day Melbourne, Australia. He became an influential spokesman for Aboriginal social justice and an important informant on Wurundjeri cultural lore.

Barak was born in the early 1820s at Brushy Creek near present-day Croydon, in the country of the Wurundjeri people… Barak attended the government’s Yarra Mission School from 1837 to 1839. When he joined the Native Mounted Police in 1844, he was given the name of William Barak. He was Police Trooper No.19. In early 1863, Barak moved to Coranderrk Station, near Healesville, Victoria with about thirty others… Upon the death of Simon Wonga in 1875, Barak became the Ngurungaeta of the clan. He worked tirelessly for his people and was a successful negotiator on their behalf. He was a highly respected man and leader, with standing amongst the Indigenous people and the European settlers.

Coranderrk Station

Coranderrk Station ran successfully for many years as an Aboriginal enterprise, selling wheat, hops and crafts on the burgeoning Melbourne market. Produce from the farm won first prize at the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1881; and other awards in previous years, such as 1872. By 1874, the Aboriginal Protection Board (APB) was looking for ways to undermine Coranderrk by moving people away due to their successful farming practices. Neighbouring farmers also wanted the mission closed as the land was now deemed ‘too valuable’ for Aboriginal people to occupy. Photographer Fred Kruger was commissioned to document the site and its inhabitants.

Coranderrk Petition

In the 1870s and ’80s, Coranderrk residents sent deputations to the Victorian colonial government protesting their lack of rights and the threatened closure of the reserve. A Royal Commission in 1877 and a Parliamentary Inquiry in 1881 on the Aboriginal ‘problem’ led to the Aborigines Protection Act 1886, which required ‘half-castes under the age of 35’ to leave the reserve.

Activist William Barak and others sent a petition on behalf of the Aboriginal people of Coranderrk to the Victorian Government in 1886, which reads: “Could we get our freedom to go away Shearing and Harvesting and to come home when we wish and also to go for the good of our Health when we need it … We should be free like the White Population there is only few Blacks now rem[a]ining in Victoria, we are all dying away now and we Blacks of Aboriginal Blood, wish to have now freedom for all our life time … Why does the Board seek in these latter days more stronger authority over us Aborigines than it has yet been?”

As a result of the Aborigines Protection Act of 1886, around 60 residents were ejected from Coranderrk on the eve of the 1890s Depression. Their forced departure crippled Coranderrk as an enterprise, with only around 15 able-bodied men left to work the hitherto successful hop gardens. Almost half the land was reclaimed by government in 1893, and by 1924 orders came for its closure as an Aboriginal Station, despite protests from Wurundjeri returned servicemen who had fought in World War I.

Barak is now best remembered for his artworks, which show both traditional Indigenous life and encounters with Europeans. Most of Barak’s drawings were completed at Coranderrk during the 1880s and 1890s. They are now highly prized and exhibited in leading public galleries in Australia. His work is on permanent display in the National Gallery of Victoria Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square, Melbourne.”

Text from the “William Barak” and “Coranderrk” Wikipedia web pages.

 

Fred Kruger (Australian born Germany, 1831-1888) 'David Barak at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station' c.1876

 

Fred Kruger (Australian born Germany, 1831-1888)
David Barak at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station
c.1876
Museum Victoria

 

“This small, carte de visite sized photograph says more to me than most of the other photographs in the exhibition put together. It is almost as though the photographer had a personal attachment and connection to the subject. This poignant (in light of following events) dark, brown-hued photograph shows the son of elder and leader William Barak about the age of 9 years old in 1876. In 1882, David fell ill from tuberculosis and arrangements were made to admit him to hospital in Melbourne. These were thwarted by Captain Page, secretary of the Aboriginal Protection Board, and Barak had to carry his sick child all the way from Coranderrk to Melbourne and the home of his supporter Anne Bon. David was admitted to hospital but died soon after, with his father not even allowed to be by his bedside. After David’s death there is a heavy sadness noticeable in Barak’s eyes (see the book First Australians by Rachel Perkins, Marcia Langton, p. 104).

Unlike other photographs of family groups taken at Coranderrk, Kruger places David front on to the camera in the lower 2/3 rds of the picture plane on his own, framed by the symmetry of the steps and door behind. David glasps his hands in a tight embrace in front of him (nervously?), his bare feet touching the earth, his earth. The only true highlight in the photograph is a white neckerchief tied around his throat. There is an almost halo-like radiance around his head, probably caused by holding back (dodging) during the printing process. Small, timid but strong, in too short trousers and darker jacket, this one image – of a child, a human being, standing on the earth that was his earth before invasion – has more intimacy than any other image Kruger ever took, even as he tried to engender a sense of intimacy with the environment.”

Dr Marcus Bunyan. Review of “‘Fred Kruger: Intimate Landscapes” at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne” on the Art Blart website 01/07/2012 [Online] Cited 08/04/2016.

 

Fred Kruger (born Germany 1831, arrived Australia 1860, died 1888) 'Aboriginal cricketers at Coranderrk' c.1877

 

Fred Kruger (born Germany 1831, arrived Australia 1860, died 1888)
Aboriginal cricketers at Coranderrk
c.1877
albumen silver photograph
13.3 x 18.6cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Mrs Beryl M. Curl, 1979

 

Unknown photographer. '[A group of Aboriginal men at Coranderrk Station, Healesville]' Nd

 

Unknown photographer
[A group of Aboriginal men at Coranderrk Station, Healesville]
Nd [perhaps c. 1895-1900 looking at the age of Barak]
Silver gelatin photograph
15.6 x 20.1cm
Collection of the State Library of Victoria

 

Studio portrait of sixteen Aboriginal men, five standing, five seated on chairs, the rest on the ground, all except two full face, wearing European dress. Barak back row 2nd left. Information provided by Aunty Joy Murphy, Wurundjeri Senior Elder confirming that Barak is correctly identified. Preferred title supplied by the Aboriginal Liaison Officer, Museum of Victoria.

 

Talma & Co. (1893-1932) 119 Swanston St. Melbourne 'Barak, Chief of the Yarra Yarra Tribe. [Barak drawing a corroboree]' c. 1895-1898

 

Talma & Co. (1893-1932) 119 Swanston St. Melbourne
Barak, Chief of the Yarra Yarra Tribe [Barak drawing a corroboree]
c. 1895-98
Gelatin silver photograph
13.3 x 8.5cm., on mount 22.7 x 16.5cm
Inscribed in ink on mount l.l.: From Mrs. A. Bon, / “Wappan”.
Collection of the State Library of Victoria

 

Barak working on a drawing attached to the wall of a vertical slab hut. There is a wooden picket fence at the right hand side.

 

William Barak (Yarra Yarra chief, 1824-1903) 'Aboriginal ceremony' c. 1880 - c. 1890

 

Barak (Yarra Yarra chief, 1824-1903)
Aboriginal ceremony
c. 1880 – c. 1890
Brown ochre and charcoal on cardboard
73.2 x 55.5cm
Collection of the State Library of Victoria

 

William Barak (Yarra Yarra chief, 1824-1903) 'Aboriginal ceremony, with wallaby and emu' c. 1880 - c. 1890

 

William Barak (Yarra Yarra chief, 1824-1903)
Aboriginal ceremony, with wallaby and emu
c. 1880 – c. 1890
Brown ochre and charcoal on cardboard
73.0 x 56.0cm
Collection of the State Library of Victoria

 

Alfred William Howitt (Australian born England, 1830-1908)

Alfred William Howitt (1830-1908), explorer, natural scientist and pioneer authority on Aboriginal culture and social organisation, was born on 17 April 1830 at Nottingham, England, the oldest surviving son of William Howitt and his wife Mary, née Botham. He was educated in England, Heidelberg and University College School, London. In 1852, under the press of family needs, he went with his father and brother Charlton to Melbourne where they had been preceded in 1840 by William’s youngest brother Godfrey. A reunion was one purpose of the visit but William and his sons also intended to try their fortunes on the new goldfields. They did so with modest success at intervals in the next two years. The experience turned the course of Alfred’s life. He learned to live with confidence in the bush, and its natural phenomena, so strange and as yet so little studied, stimulated his mind to their scientific study. In 1854 his father and brother returned to England but Howitt elected to remain, thoroughly at home in the Australian scene.

Young and handsome, of short and wiry build and notably calm and self-possessed, he fulfilled his mother’s prophecy that ‘someday Alfred will be a backwoodsman’. For a time he farmed his uncle’s land at Caulfield but, unattracted by the life, turned again to the bush and as a drover on the route from the Murray to Melbourne made the passing acquaintance of Lorimer Fison. An experienced bushman and ardent naturalist, Howitt was sent in 1859 by a Melbourne syndicate to examine the pastoral potential of the Lake Eyre region on which Peter Warburton had reported rosily. He led a party with skill and speed from Adelaide through the Flinders Ranges into the Davenport Range country but found it desolated by drought and returned to warn his sponsors. His ability as a bushman and resourceful leader came to public notice when, after briefly managing a sheep station at Hamilton and prospecting in Gippsland, he took a government party through unexplored alpine country to gold strikes on the Crooked, Dargo and Wentworth Rivers. He was an obvious choice as leader when in 1861 the exploration committee of the Royal Society of Victoria decided to send an expedition to relieve or, as the worst fears sensed, to rescue Robert O’Hara Burke, William Wills, John King and Charley Gray. Howitt’s discharge of this assignment was exemplary. Without blunder or loss he twice led large parties on the long journey to Cooper’s Creek. He soon found King, the only survivor, and took him to a public welcome in Melbourne but avoided the limelight for himself. Then, at request, he returned to bring the remains of Burke and Wills to the capital for interment. On the second expedition he had explored a large tract of the Barcoo country.

For his services Howitt was appointed police magistrate and warden of the Omeo goldfields, and in 1863 began a distinguished career of thirty-eight years as a public official, twenty-six of them as magistrate. In 1889 he became acting secretary of mines and water supply and in 1895 commissioner of audit and a member of the Public Service Board. He retired in January 1902 on a pension but served on the royal commission which in 1903 examined sites for the seat of government of the Commonwealth, and was chairman of the royal commission on the Victorian coal industry in 1905-06.

Such a career would have sufficed an ordinary man but Howitt attained greater things within it. Physical and intellectual fatigue seemed unknown to him. ‘What are they?’ he asked drily at 75 when Fison inquired if he never felt the infirmities of old age. In his long magistracy he travelled enormous distances annually (in one year, it was said, 7000 miles [11,265 km]) on horseback throughout Victoria. He read while in the saddle and studied the natural scene with such assiduous care that from 1873 onward he began to contribute to official reports, scientific journals and learned societies papers of primary value on the Gippsland rocks. He pioneered the use in Australia of thin-section petrology and chemical analysis of rocks. His fundamental contribution was his discovery and exploration of the Upper Devonian series north of Bairnsdale. He also made important studies of the Lower Devonian volcanics in East Gippsland and compiled magnificent geological maps of the area. In botany his Eucalypts of Gippsland (1889) became a standard authority and he collected hundreds of varieties of ferns, grasses, acacias and flowering plants. But his greatest eminence came from his work in anthropology, which was his main interest and relaxation after 1872…

Read the full biography by W. E. H. Stanner. “Howitt, Alfred William (1830-1908),” on the Australian Dictionary of Biography website Volume 4, (MUP), 1972 [Online] Cited 09/04/2016.

 

Alfred Howitt, the leader of the party to rescue Burke and Wills, circa 1861, from William Strutt album illustrating the Burke and Wills exploring expedition crossing the continent of Australia from Cooper's Creek to Carpentaria, June 1861, DL PXX 3

 

Alfred Howitt, the leader of the party to rescue Burke and Wills, circa 1861, from William Strutt album illustrating the Burke and Wills exploring expedition crossing the continent of Australia from Cooper’s Creek to Carpentaria, June 1861, DL PXX 3

 

Batchelder & O'Neill. 'Alfred William Howitt' c. 1863

 

Batchelder & O’Neill
Alfred William Howitt
c. 1863
Albumen silver carte-de-visite
9.0 x 5.2cm
Collection of the State Library of Victoria

 

Howitt full length in the photographers’ studio, leaning on a button-backed chair, wearing a three-piece winter suit, with a watch-chain and holding a pair of gloves in his right hand.

 

Batchelder & O'Neill. 'Alfred William Howitt' Nd

 

Batchelder & O’Neill
Alfred William Howitt
Nd
Albumen silver carte-de-visite
on mount 10.7 x 6.5cm approx.
Collection of the State Library of Victoria

 

 

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Exhibitions: ‘Werner Bischof: Point of View’ and ‘Helvetica’ at the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

Exhibition dates: 27th January – 1st May, 2016

Curators: Marco Bischof, Werner Bischof Estate, for the exhibition Point of View and Daniel Girardin, Musée de l’Elysée, for the exhibition Helvetica

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Plants' Zürich c. 1941 from the exhibition 'Werner Bischof: Point of View' and 'Helvetica' at the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, Jan - May, 2016

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Plants
Zurich, c. 1941
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

 

After seven years of curating Art Blart, finally I can talk about an exhibition on one of my favourite humanist/social documentary photographers. This fact alone shows how rare it is to get to see his photographs in an exhibition, let alone display them online, such is the control that agencies have over the artist’s work.

Personally, I prefer the earlier, more avant-garde work around the time of the Second World War which has more bite, more of a cutting edge. But then again how can you argue against the sheer beauty and formalism of Harbour of Kowloon (1952, below) or the “atmosphere” of that wondrous photograph Courtyard of the Meiji shrine (below) where the snow has been falling since 1951. I remember starting out as an artist, seeing this image and staring in disbelief at this vision.

Perhaps that is a good metaphor for Bischof’s work: that of a visionary, for you never sense the presence of the photographer in his work (unless he wants you to!) but always know that it is a Bischof photograph. The photographs are almost ego-less, which is one reason I suppose that they are so damn good. The artist gets physically close to the subject matter (as in Stallion Remus, 1944 and On the road to Cuzco, 1954) and then lets the subject reveal itself. This is such an art, to be present and absent in the work at the same time.

It is a great sadness that Bischof died so young (at age 38, when the jeep in which he was travelling plunged off a cliff in the area of Peña de Águila, in the Peruvian Andes) and that the work of such a sympathetic photographer is not as well known as the work of that other Swiss photographer, Robert Frank. Bischof’s work lives and breathes in the top echelons of photography but somehow, you never hear of him. In my humble opinion, one of the great photographers of all time.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

 

Werner Bischof, Point de vue et Helvetica

 

 

An Era Defined by Exile Korean War Photos by Werner Bischof

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Werner Bischof: Point of View' and 'Helvetica' at the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne

Installation view of the exhibition 'Werner Bischof: Point of View' and 'Helvetica' at the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne

Installation view of the exhibition 'Werner Bischof: Point of View' and 'Helvetica' at the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne

Installation view of the exhibition 'Werner Bischof: Point of View' and 'Helvetica' at the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne

Installation view of the exhibition 'Werner Bischof: Point of View' and 'Helvetica' at the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne

 

Installation views of the exhibition Werner Bischof: Point of View and Helvetica at the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne
Photo: © Yannick Lüthy / Musée de l’Elysée

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Oak Tree' Switzerland, c. 1941 from the exhibition 'Werner Bischof: Point of View' and 'Helvetica' at the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, Jan - May, 2016

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Oak Tree
Switzerland, c. 1941
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Demonstration on the Piazza del Duomo' Milan, Italy, 1946 from the exhibition 'Werner Bischof: Point of View' and 'Helvetica' at the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, Jan - May, 2016

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Demonstration on the Piazza del Duomo
Milan, Italy, 1946
© Werner Bischof / Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Enfants des rues (Street children)' Naples, Italy 1946

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Enfants des rues (Street children)
Naples, Italy, 1946
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'The Swiss Worker at the steelworks of Winterthur' 1943

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
The Swiss Worker at the steelworks of Winterthur
1943
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Stallion Remus' Avenches, Switzerland 1944

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Stallion Remus
Avenches, Switzerland, 1944
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Ruins of the Reichstag' 1946

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Ruins of the Reichstag
1946
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Brandenburg Gate' Berlin 1946

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Brandenburg Gate
Berlin, 1946
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Streams (darkroom drawing)' 1941

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Streams (darkroom drawing)
1941
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Zebra Woman' 1942

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Zebra Woman
1942
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Breast with grid' Zurich, Switzerland 1941

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Breast with grid
Zurich, Switzerland, 1941
© Werner Bischof / Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Army Boot' Zürich, Switzerland c. 1941

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Army Boot
Zurich, Switzerland, c. 1941
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos
From the exhibition Helvetica

 

 

To mark the centenary of the birth of Swiss photographer Werner Bischof (1916-1954), the Musée de l’Elysée is presenting a retrospective of his work entitled Point of View, produced by Magnum Photos (Paris). The exhibition offers almost 200 original and sometimes unpublished prints selected from the Werner Bischof Estate (Zurich). The exhibition will also display contact sheets, books, magazines and private letters. Several projections will give a contemporary approach to his work. The exhibition will present his work in Switzerland (1934-1944), Europe (1945-1950), Asia (1951-1952), and North and South America (1953-1954).

A second exhibition, produced by the Musée de l’Elysée and entitled Helvetica focuses exclusively on Bischof’s Swiss years, the period of training, studio work fashion and advertising and then the war years in Switzerland during which he became a press photographer working for the magazine DU. The exhibition Helvetica is the subject of the first publication of the “Collection – Musée de l’Elysée”.

Text from the Musée de l’Elysée website

 

“The Swiss genius is an exceptional photographer possessing tremendous technical knowledge and experience for his age (he’s only 32 years old), being able to make great pictures, both inside studio (a sphere in which she gets superb results thanks to his lighting mastery, the control on the depth of field, etc) and with persons in outdoor assignments, where by means of his great humanistic sensitiveness, intuition, precision in the timing on pressing the release shutter button of his cameras, outstanding grasping to capture the most representative moments and passion for his trade, also creates very powerful and meaningful images once and again, taking care of the most minute details, even when working under the most extreme contexts, since he’s a great perfectionist… Throughout all of his career as a professional photographer, Bischof proved to be an accomplished master of medium format made using a 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 (6 x 6 cm) Rolleiflex medium format cameras. He also used a rangefinder 35 mm Leica IIIc camera with Leitz Elmar 5 cm f/3.5 lens with which he likewise got great photographs.”

Extract from José Manuel Serrano Esparza. “Werner Bischof: A Master of Photography whose work goes on being very alive,” on the El Rectangle en Lamano website 23rd July 2013 [Online] Cited 07/04/2016.

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Americana, USA' 1954

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Americana, USA
1954
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Aerial view of New York City' 1953

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Aerial view of New York City
1953
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Cruising at night' New York 1953

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Cruising at night, New York
1953
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'S Beckenstein' New York 1953

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
S Beckenstein, New York
1953
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Reflecting house, New York' 1953

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Reflecting house, New York
1953
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Subway signal, New York' 1953

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Subway signal, New York
1953
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Pedestrian, New York' 1952

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Pedestrian, New York
1952
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Car in snowfall, New York' 1953

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Car in snowfall, New York
1953
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Bus commute, New York' 1953

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Bus commute, New York
1953
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Rushing cars, New York' 1953

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Rushing cars, New York
1953
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Two nuns, New York' 1953

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Two nuns, New York
1953
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Penguins of Edinburgh Zoo on a walk' 1950

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Penguins of Edinburgh Zoo on a walk
1950
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Harbour of Kowloon' Hong Kong, China 1952

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Harbour of Kowloon
Hong Kong, China, 1952
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'On the road to Cuzco' Valle Sagrado, Peru 1954

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
On the road to Cuzco
Valle Sagrado, Peru, 1954
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

“Another timeless photographic icon in which stands out the lavish level of detail in the garment of the boy and his typical hat, along with the intricate texture of the sack he is wearing on his back, the impression of volume of his right hand, the fibrous musculature in his calves, the soft bokeh in the mountainous area which can be seen in the background and above all a millenary synergy between man and nature that Werner Bischof realised was endangered.”

~ José Manuel Serrano Esparza

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'A pleasant sleeping' Island of Kau Sai 1952

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
A pleasant sleeping
Island of Kau Sai, 1952
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Courtyard of the Meiji shrine' Tokyo, Japan 1951

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Courtyard of the Meiji shrine
Tokyo, Japan, 1951
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

“Bischof creates a kind of living landscape highlighted by its unmatched formal and compositive precision, masterfully using the natural light, obtaining plentiful details and exceedingly delicate transitions and hues of grey scales, exploiting the capacities of square medium format to the utmost. The very pure whites of the snow on the ground, the temple roof and the tree tops are likewise worth being mentioned.”

~ José Manuel Serrano Esparza

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Famine stricken area' State of Bihar, India, April 1951

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Famine stricken area
State of Bihar, India, April 1951
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954) 'Mount Fuji, Japan' 1951

 

Werner Bischof (Swiss, 1916-1954)
Mount Fuji, Japan
1951
© Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘The world is beautiful: photographs from the collection’ at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Exhibition dates: 4th December, 2015 – 10th April, 2016

Curators: Dr. Shaune Lakin, Senior Curator of Photography at NGA with collaborator Anne O’Hehir, Curator of Photography at NGA

 

Man Ray (United States of America 1890 - France 1976) 'No title (Woman with closed eyes)' c. 1928 from the exhibition 'The world is beautiful: photographs from the collection' at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Dec 2015 - April 2016

 

Man Ray (United States of America 1890 – France 1976)
No title (Woman with closed eyes)
c. 1928
Gelatin silver photograph
Not signed, not dated. Stamp, verso, l.r., “Man Ray / 81 bis. Rue / Campagne Premiere / Paris / XIV”.
Image: 8.9 x 12.8cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1984

 

 

Despite a focus on the camera’s relationship to the beauty and pure form of the modern world – “the attraction and charm of the surface” – these photographs are more than just being skin deep. In their very straightforwardness the photographs propose a “rigorous sensitivity to form revealed patterns of beauty and order in the natural and man-made alike.” But more than the portrayal of something we would not see if it were not for the eye of the photographer, the lens of the camera, the speed of the film, the sensitivity of the paper, the design of the architect, the genetics of nature … is the mystery of life itself.

Modernist structures and mass-produced objects can never beat a good mystery. Just look at Man Ray’s Woman with closed eyes (c. 1928, above) or the look in the eyes of Robert Frank’s son, Pablo. You can never pin that down.

While form may be beauty, mystery will always be beautiful.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Please click on the photographs to view a larger version of the image.

 

 

Walker Evans (United States of America, 1903-1975) 'Graveyard and steel mill, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania' 1935 from the exhibition 'The world is beautiful: photographs from the collection' at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Dec 2015 - April 2016

 

Walker Evans (United States of America, 1903-1975)
Graveyard and steel mill, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
1935
Gelatin silver photograph
Image: 19.1 h x 24.0cm
Sheet: 20.2 x 25.2cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1980

 

 

“The world is beautiful is an exhibition of photographs taken over the last 100 years from the National Gallery of Australia’s magnificent photography collection, including work by Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Max Dupain, Bill Henson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Man Ray, Cindy Sherman and many more.

It draws its title from one of the twentieth-century’s great photographic moments, the publication of Albert Renger-Patzsch’s book The world is beautiful in 1928. Renger-Patzsch’s approach embodied his belief that ‘one should surely proceed from the essence of the object and attempt to represent it with photographic means alone’.

Inspired by this confidence in the medium, the exhibition looks at the way the camera interacts with things in the world. One of photography’s fundamental attributes is its capacity to adopt a range of relationships with its subject, based on the camera’s physical proximity to it. Indeed, one of the most basic decisions that a photographer makes is simply where he or she places the camera. The pictures in this exhibition literally take you on a photographic trip, from interior worlds and microscopic detail to the cosmic: from near to far away.

Together, these photographs capture some of the delight photographers take in turning their cameras on the world and re-imaging it, making it beautiful through the power of their vision and their capacity to help us see the world in new ways.”

Text from the National Gallery of Australia website

 

Near

Close up, the world can be surprising. There is an undeniable intensity and focus that comes with getting up close to people and objects. It is rude to stare, but photography has no such scruples.

Pioneers of the medium attempted to photograph organic forms through a microscope, making once-hidden worlds accessible. The pleasure photographers take in getting up close to their subject has followed the medium’s progress. This was especially the case during the twentieth century, when advances in photographic technology and profound shifts in our relationship to space brought about by events such as war often turned our attention away from the outside world.

For many photographers, the camera’s capacity to subject people and objects to close scrutiny has provided a way of paring back vision to its essence, to view the world unencumbered by emotion and sentiment. For others, getting up close is not just about physical proximity; it is also about psychological and emotional states that are otherwise difficult to represent. Experiences such as intimacy, love and emotional connection, as well as disquiet, anxiety and hostility, can all be suggested through the use of the close-up. Photographers have also used it literally to turn inwards, escaping into the imagination to create dreamworlds. The camera-eye really can see what the human eye cannot.

Text from the National Gallery of Australia website

 

Albert Renger-Patzsch (German, 1897-1966) 'Mantelpavian [Hamadryas Baboon]' c. 1925 from the exhibition 'The world is beautiful: photographs from the collection' at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Dec 2015 - April 2016

 

Albert Renger-Patzsch (German, 1897-1966)
Mantelpavian [Hamadryas Baboon]
c. 1925
Gelatin silver photograph
23.8 x 16.8cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

“In photography one should surely proceed from the essence of the object and attempt to represent it with photographic terms alone.”

~ Albert Renger-Patzsch

 

Renger-Patzsch’s primary interest was in the object as a document, removed from its usual context and unencumbered with sentiment. Die Welt ist schön [The world is beautiful], published in Munich in 1928, is one of the great photographic books in the history of photography and its influence across the world was profound. It is an astounding study of the world, celebrating beauty wherever the photographer found it – in modernist structures and mass-produced objects or in plants and animals. The connection and continuity of industry to the natural world is conveyed by emphasising underlying structural and formal similarities. The Gallery has a major holding of works by Renger-Patzsch, including a copy of Die Welt ist schön and 121 vintage prints, most of which were reproduced in the book.

Renger-Patzsch was always firmly committed to the principle of the photograph as a document or record of an object. While the title for his most famous contribution to photography came from his publisher, he wanted his now-iconic 1928 book Die Welt ist schön (The world is beautiful) to be titled simply Die Dinge (Things). In 1937 he wrote that the images in his book, ‘consciously portray the attraction and charm of the surface’. Indeed, the power of these pictures resides in their straightforwardness.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

“German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch was a pioneering figure in the New Objectivity movement, which sought to engage with the world as clearly and precisely as possible.

Rejecting the sentimentality and idealism of a previous generation, Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) emerged as a tendency in German art, architecture and literature in the 1920s. Applying this attitude to the field of photography, Renger-Patzsch espoused the camera’s ability to produce a faithful recording of the world. ‘There must be an increase in the joy one takes in an object, and the photographer should be fully conscious of the splendid fidelity of reproduction made possible by his technique’, he wrote.

This selection reflects the range of subjects that Renger-Patzsch returned to throughout his career. It includes his early wildlife and botanical studies, images of traditional craftsmen, formal studies of mechanical equipment, commercial still lifes, and landscape and architectural studies. His images of the Ruhr region, where he moved in 1928, document the industrialisation of the area in almost encyclopaedic detail. All of his work demonstrates his sustained interest in the camera’s relationship to the beauty and complexity of the modern world.

In 1928 Renger-Patzsch published The World is Beautiful, a collection of one hundred photographs whose rigorous sensitivity to form revealed patterns of beauty and order in the natural and man-made alike. Embodying a new, distinctly modern way of looking at the world, the book established Renger-Patzsch as one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century.”

Text by Emma Lewis on the Tate website [Online] Cited 01/04/2016. No longer available online

 

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958) 'Guadalupe de Rivera, Mexico' 1924

 

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
No title (Guadalupe, Mexico, 1924): from “Edward Weston fiftieth anniversary portfolio 1902-1952”
1924
Gelatin silver photograph
20.7 x 17.8cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1981

 

In 1923 Weston travelled from San Francisco to Mexico City with his son, Chandler and his model and lover, Tina Modotti. The photographs he made there represented a startling, revolutionary breakthrough. Everything got stripped down to its essence, with objects isolated against neutral backgrounds. For these heroic head shots, he moved out of the studio, photographing in direct sunlight, from below and with a hand-held camera. They are monumental but still full of life: Weston was excited by the idea of capturing momentary expressions, in people he found ‘intense and dramatic’.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) 'Pablo' 1959

 

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
Pablo
1959
Gelatin silver photograph
Image: 20.8 x 31.0cm
Sheet: 27.0 x 35.4cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1980

 

Frank set out on a two-year road trip across the States in 1955. The images he made of race and class divisions, poverty, alienated youth and loneliness expose America’s dark soul. Others, such as this haunting image of his son, Pablo, were more personal. A selection appeared in The Americans, published in Paris in 1958 and in the States the following year. Many saw it as a bitter indictment of the American Dream, others saw an evocative, melancholic vision of humanity that is deeply moving. As Jack Kerouac commented in his introduction to the American edition, Frank ‘sucked a sad, sweet, poem out of America’

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) 'Vale Street' 1975

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Vale Street
1975
St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Gelatin silver photograph
Image: 20.2 x 30.3cm
Sheet: 40.5 x 50.4cm
Gift of the Philip Morris Arts Grant 1982
© Ken Jerrems and the Estate of Lance Jerrems
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

“I try to reveal something about people, because they are so separate, so isolated, maybe it’s a way of bringing people together I don’t want to exploit people. I care about them.”

~ Carol Jerrems, 1977

 

Carol Jerrems became prominent in the 1970s as part of a new wave of young photographers. Influenced by the counter-culture values of the 1960s, they used art to comment on social issues and engender social change. Jerrems photographed associates, actors and musicians, always collaborating with her subjects, thereby declaring her presence as the photographer. Vale Street raises interesting questions about what is artifice and what is real in photography. She deliberately set up this image, employing her aspiring actress friend and two young men from her art classes at Heidelberg Technical School. Vale Street has achieved an iconic status in Australian photography; the depiction of a confident young woman taking on the world is an unforgettable one. It is an intimate group portrait that is at once bold and vulnerable. In 1975 it was thought to be an affirmation of free love and sexual licence. The image also appears to be about liberation from society’s norms and taboos – ‘we are all three bare-chested, we have tattoos and so what?’

The implication that this scene is perfectly natural is reinforced by locating the figures in a landscape. The young woman is strong and unafraid of the judgement of the viewer. The necklace around her neck is an ankh – a symbol of the new spiritualty of the Age of Aquarius and a re-affirmation of the ancient powers of women.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2010
From: Anne Gray (ed.,). Australian art in the National Gallery of Australia. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2002

 

Paul Outerbridge (United States of America, 1896-1958; Paris 1925-1928, Berlin and London 1928) 'Nude lying on a love seat' c. 1936

 

Paul Outerbridge (United States of America, 1896-1958; Paris 1925-1928, Berlin and London 1928)
Nude lying on a love seat
c. 1936
Carbro colour photograph
30.2 x 41cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1980

 

Like the Australian-born Anton Bruehl, Paul Outerbridge studied at the Clarence White School of Photography in New York. White was keen to see photography establish itself as a practical art that could be used in the service of the rapidly expanding picture magazine industry. Within a year of enrolling in the school, Outerbridge’s work was appearing in Vogue and Vanity Fair. During his lifetime, Outerbridge was known for his commercial work, particularly his elegant, stylish still-life compositions which show the influence of earlier studies in painting. He was also admired for the excellence of his pioneering colour work, which was achieved by means of a complicated tri-colour carbro process.

Much of Outerbridge’s fame now rests on work that he made following more private obsessions. His fetishistic nude photographs of women are influenced primarily by eighteenth-century French painters such as Ingres. Although the depiction of nudes was a genre pursued from the inception of photography, Outerbridge’s interest in breaking down taboos resulted in this material, if known at all, being passed over or vilified in his lifetime. Outerbridge sought to express what he described as an ‘inner craving for perfection and beauty’ through these often mysterious, languid and richly toned images.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2014

 

Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954) 'Untitled #92' 1981

 

Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954)
Untitled #92
1981
Type C colour photograph
61.5 x 123.4cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1983

 

This is one of 12 Centerfolds made by Sherman in 1981. The Centerfolds present Sherman posing in a range of situations, each suggesting heightened emotional states and violent narratives; these associations are augmented by the uncomfortably tight framing and the panoramic format used by Sherman across the series. Initially commissioned for the art magazine Artforum, the Centerfolds were never published because they were deemed, with their apparently voyeuristic points of view, to reaffirm misogynist views of women.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939) 'Untitled (Greenwood, Mississippi)' 1980

 

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939)
Greenwood, Mississippi
1973, printed 1979
Dye transfer colour photograph
Image: 29.5 x 45.4cm
Sheet: 40.2 x 50.8cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1980

 

With its intense red, Eggleston’s picture of the spare room in a friend’s home is one of the most iconic of all colour photographs. Often called The red room, this photograph was intended to be shocking: Eggleston described the effect of the colour as like ‘red blood that is wet on the wall’. But the radicalness of the picture is not just in its juicy (and impossible to reproduce) redness; it is also found in the strange view it provides of a domestic interior, one that Eggleston has described as a ‘fly’s eye view’.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976) 'Magnolia Blossom' 1925

 

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Magnolia Blossom
1925
Gelatin silver photograph
Image: 17.1 x 34.6cm
Mount: 38.2 x 50.7cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1978

 

During the 1920s, raising three young sons, Cunningham began to focus on her immediate surroundings. This restricted environment encouraged Cunningham to develop a new way of working, as she began to place her camera closer to the subject: to zebras on a trip to the zoo, to snakes brought to her by her sons, and perhaps most famously to the magnolia blossoms and calla lilies she grew in her garden. Observing what she termed the ‘paradox of expansion via reduction’, the intensity and focus attendant to this way of seeing flooded her work with sensuality and reductive power.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003) 'Skeleton Leaf' 1964

 

Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003)
Skeleton leaf
1964
Gelatin silver photograph
Image: 50.4 x 40.8cm
Sheet: 57.8 x 47.6cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1987

 

This leaf skeleton – a leaf that has had its pulp removed with heat and soda – was probably photographed in front of a window in Cotton’s home near Cowra, NSW. Since the 1930s Cotton had been drawn to the close study of nature, and many of her best photographs feature close-ups of flowers, tufts of grass and foliage. This photograph is notable because it was taken in the studio, and reflects the austerity and simplicity that pervaded Cotton’s work in the decades after the Second World War.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934) 'Nashville, 1963' 1963

 

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
Nashville, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver photograph
Image: 28.2 x 18.7cm
Sheet: 35.3 x 27.8cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1981

 

Middle distance

The further away we move from a subject, the more it and its story open up to us. While the close-up or compressed view tends to be very frontal (the camera presses up against the subject), the defining characteristic of much mid-century photography was its highly mobile relationship to space: its extraordinary capacity to survey and to organise the world.

The space between the camera and its subject can suggest impartiality and detachment. Documentary photographers and photojournalists, for example, open their cameras up to their subjects, as if to ‘let them speak’. But the depiction of the space between the camera and its subject, and the way that it is rendered through the camera’s depth of field, can also reflect decision making on the part of the photographer. By adjusting the camera’s settings, and thus choosing to render part of the subject in focus, the photographer can direct our focus and attention to certain parts of an image. In this way, photographers put forward an argument based on their world view. Photography can change the way we think about the world.

Text from the National Gallery of Australia website

 

Ilse Bing (Germany 1899 - United States of America 1998; France 1930-1941 United States from 1941) 'Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1931' 1931

 

Ilse Bing (Germany 1899 – United States of America 1998; France 1930-1941 United States from 1941)
Eiffel Tower, Paris
1931
Gelatin silver photograph
Signed and dated recto, l.r., pen and ink “Ilse Bing/ 1931”
Image: 22.3 x 28.2cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1989

 

Bing took up photography in 1928 and quickly developed a reputation as a photojournalist and photographer of modernist architecture. Inspired by an exhibition of modern photography and the work of Paris-based photographer Florence Henri, Bing moved to Paris 1930 and quickly became associated with the city’s photographic avant-garde. Bing worked exclusively with the fledgling Leica 35mm-format camera; her interest in the pictorial possibilities of the hand-held Leica can clearly be seen in this striking view of the Eiffel Tower.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

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

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
World’s Fair, New York
1964
Gelatin silver photograph
Image: 21.8 x 32.7cm
Mount: 37.4 x 50.1cm
Image rights: © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1978

 

Winogrand had a tremendous capacity to photograph people in public spaces completely unawares. This image records a group of visitors to the 1964 World’s Fair; it focuses on three young women – Ann Amy Shea, whispering into the ear of Janet Stanley, while their friend Karen Marcato Kiaer naps on Stanley’s bosom. The figures fill the space between the picture’s fore- and middle-grounds, to the extent of allowing the viewer to examine people’s expressions and interactions in close detail. This in turn allows us to encroach on the personal space of people we don’t know.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971) 'Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962'

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Child with toy hand grenade, in Central Park, New York City
1962
Gelatin silver photograph
Image: 20 x 17.2cm
Sheet: 32.8 x 27.6cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1980

 

During workshops with Lisette Model, Arbus was encouraged to develop a direct, uncompromising approach to her subjects. She did this using the square configuration of a medium-format camera which Arbus most usually printed full frame with no cropping. Model also convinced Arbus, who had been interested in myth and ritual, that the more specific her approach to her subjects, the more universal the message. In many ways this image of a boy caught hamming it up in Central Park, with his contorted body and grimacing face, captures and prefigures many of the anxieties of America during the sixties, a country caught in an unwinnable war in Vietnam and undergoing seismic social change.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004) 'Rue Mouffetard, Paris' 1954 prtd c. 1980

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Rue Mouffetard, Paris
1954, printed c. 1980
Gelatin silver photograph
Image: 35.9 x 24.2cm
Sheet: 39.4 x 29.6cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1982

 

Helen Levitt (United States of America, 1913 - 2009) 'New York' 1972

 

Helen Levitt (United States of America, 1913 – 2009)
New York
1972
Dye transfer colour photograph
Image: 23.9 x 36.2cm
Sheet: 35.6 x 42.9cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1984

 

“The streets of the poor quarters of the great cities are, above all, a theatre and a battleground.”

~ Helen Levitt

 

Inspired by seeing work by Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1935, Levitt took to the streets. Children became her most enduring subject. Like Evans, Levitt was famously shy and self-effacing, seeking to shoot unobserved by fitting a prism finder on her Leica. Her approach eschews the sensational; instead she is interested in capturing small, idiosyncratic actions in the everyday. Her images were often shot through with a gentle, lyrical humour though a dark strangeness also surfaces at times.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York' c. 1972

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York
1972
Dye transfer colour photograph
Image: 23.4 x 35.6cm
Sheet: 35.4 x 42.9cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1984

 

Ernst Haas (Austria 1921 - United States of America 1986; United States from 1951) 'Route 66, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA' 1969

 

Ernst Haas (Austria 1921 – United States of America 1986; United States from 1951)
Albuquerque, New Mexico
1969
Dye transfer colour photograph
Image: 44.9 x 67.8cm
Sheet: 52.3 x 75.7cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2000

 

For Haas, colour photography represented the end of the grey and bitter war years and he started seriously working in the medium after moving to America in 1951. Work on his photoessay, Land of Enchantment and film stills assignments for The Misfits, The Bible and Little Big Man took Haas to the Southwest. The desert landscape of Albuquerque, located on Route 66, had been totally transformed by progress since the 1920s. Photographing the street after rain, Haas has signified that evolution by way of his distinctive ability to translate the world into shimmering energy.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Faraway

Photography has a long-standing interest in faraway places. In 1840, right in photography’s infancy, astronomical photography was launched when the first photograph of the moon was made. As photographic imaging technology has improved, so has the medium’s capacity to make faraway places accessible to us.

Photography can bring foreign places and people closer to home, or collect together images of places and structures that are located in different places. It can also attempt to give a picture to experiences that are otherwise difficult to grasp or represent, such as complex weather events or transcendental phenomena.

Against the odds, there are photographers who make images that are about what cannot be seen. Faraway is often used as a metaphor for thinking about the ineffable and the inexplicable. Science and spirit go hand-in-hand. ‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious’, Albert Einstein believed. Photographers can take us to new worlds.

Text from the National Gallery of Australia website

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico' 1941

 

Ansel Adams (San Francisco, California, United States of America 1902 – Carmel, California, United States of America 1984)
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
1941
Ansel Adams Museum Set
Gelatin silver photograph
Image: 38.6 x 49cm
Mount: 55.6 x 71cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1980

 

Adams became the most famous landscape photographer in the world on the back of his images of America’s West. While mass tourism was invading these wilderness areas, Adams’s photographs show only untouched natural splendour. His landscapes are remarkable for their deep, clear space, distinguishable by an uncanny stillness and clarity. The story of Moonrise is legendary: driving through the Chama River Valley toward Española, Adams just managed by a few seconds to catch this fleeting moment before the dying sunlight stopped illuminating the crosses in the graveyard. Through hours of darkroom manipulation and wizardry, Adams created an image of almost mystical unworldliness.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Tracey Moffatt (Australian, b. 1960) 'Up in the sky' 1997

 

Tracey Moffatt (Australian, b. 1960)
Up in the sky [Up in the sky – a set of 25 photolithographs]
1997
No. 8 in a series of 25
Photolithograph
Image: 61.0 x 76.0cm
Sheet: 72.0 x 102.0cm
KODAK (Australasia) PTY LTD Fund 1997
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Up in the sky is unusual in Moffatt’s oeuvre for being shot out of doors on location. Her photomedia practice is informed by an upbringing watching television, fascinated by film and pop culture. This series takes many of its visual cues from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accattone of 1961 as well as the Mad Max series – the references, twisted and re-imagined, are like half-forgotten memories. She addresses race and violence, presenting a loose narrative set against the backdrop of an outback town. The sense of unease is palpable: Moffatt here is a masterful manipulator of mood.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Laurence Aberhart (Aotearoa New Zealand, b. 1949) 'Taranaki, from Oeo Road, under moonlight, 27-28 September 1999' 1999

 

Laurence Aberhart (Aotearoa New Zealand, b. 1949)
Taranaki, from Oeo Road, under moonlight, 27-28 September 1999
1999
Gelatin silver photograph
19.4 x 24.3cm
Gift of Peter Fay 2005
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

For four decades, Aberhart has photographed the Taranaki region of New Zealand’s North Island, including its settled landscape and its most distinctive feature, the sacred TeMounga (Mount) Taranaki. Using an 8 x 10-inch view camera, Aberhart has over time built up an important archive documenting the social geography and landscape of the Taranaki. Aberhart describes the conical mountain as a ‘great physical and spiritual entity’ and sees his photographs of it as a counterbalance to the countless images of the mountain that circulate on tea towels and postcards.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

 

National Gallery of Australia
Parkes Place, Canberra
Australian Capital Territory 2600
Phone: (02) 6240 6411

Opening hours:
Open daily 10.00am – 5.00pm
(closed Christmas day)

National Gallery of Australia website

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Review: ‘Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan’ at the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum

Exhibition dates: 15th January – 15th April, 2016

Curator: Laura Webster, Curator of Art at the Australian War Memorial (AWM)

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing from left to right, 'Trooper M, after Afghanistan' (2012); and 'Trooper M, after Afghanistan, no. 2' (2012)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing from left to right, Trooper M, after Afghanistan (2012); and Trooper M, after Afghanistan, no. 2 (2012)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

This is the most profound exhibition that I have seen so far this year. Simply put, the exhibition is magnificent … a must see for any human being with an ounce of understanding and compassion in their body.

While I am vehemently anti-war, and believe that we should have never have been in Afghanistan in the first place, these sensual and skeletal paintings represent the danger that these soldiers exposed themselves to in the line of duty. The sensuousness and vulnerability of their solitary, contorted poses – poses which they themselves chose to for Quilty to paint – reflect an actual event, such as taking cover to engage insurgents. That these naked poses then turn out to have a quiet eroticism embedded in them confirms the link between eroticism, death and sensuality as proposed by Georges Bataille. The three forms of eroticism (physical, emotional, religious) try to substitute continuity (life) for discontinuity (death). In these paintings the soldiers lay bare their inner self. They bring forth experiences that have been buried – their dissociation from the reality of what occurred, the experiences they have repressed, the post-traumatic stress – brought to the surface and examined in these paintings through the re-presentation of suppressed emotions, through a form of emotional eroticism, a primordial rising of eroticism, death and sensuality. An affirming act of life over death.

As an artist, Quilty intimately understands this process. I think a strong element of this exhbition is the feeling that there is something missing, that the range of concerns is lacking something. I suspect this is deliberate. Something is being withheld. And what is being withheld in the paintings is, I believe, narrative.

While there is an overarching text narrative – soldiers painted “after Afghanistan” – and individual paintings have titles such as Sergeant P, Troy Park, Trooper M and Trooper Daniel Westcott, these paintings could almost be of any human being who has been a soldier. Other than the specific triptych of Air Commodore John Oddie (and even then the portraits remind me of the ambiguity of Francis Bacon’s Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953), these paintings could be of any soldier. As Gerhard Ricther observes, “You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing, what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that.” After Richter, you might say that “there is no plan”, there is only feeling in the work of Ben Quilty, embodied through his brush. Here, I see links to the work of that great British painter, Francis Bacon.

“Bacon was deeply suspicious of narrative. For him, narrative seems to be the natural enemy of vision; it blinds… Bacon seems to propose an opposition between narrative as a product that can be endlessly reproduced, as re-presentation – the ‘boredom’ is inspired by the deja vu of repetition – and narrative as process, as sensation. Conveying a story implies that a pre-existing story, fictional or not, is transferred to an addressee. Narrative is then reduced to a kind of transferable message. Opposed to this ‘conveying of story’, ‘telling a story’ focuses on the activity or process of narrative. This process is not repeatable; it cannot be iterative because it takes place, it happens, whenever ‘story’ happens… Bacon’s hostility toward narrative is directed against narrative as product, as re-presentation, not against narrative as process.
(Bacon) does not paint characters, but figures. Figures, unlike characters, do not imply a relationship between an object outside the painting and the figure in the painting that supposedly illustrates that object. The figure is, and refers only to itself.”1

The figure is, and refers only to itself, and it is up to the viewer to actively interpret this telling of the story each time they view one of Quilty’s paintings. There is no transferable message.

Further, much like Bacon’s triptychs, Quilty’s paintings depict isolated figures or figural events on the panels. The figures are isolated in their space and their is never any clear interaction between the figures. “Bacon explains the use of the triptych as follows: ‘It helps to avoid storytelling if the figures are painted on three different canvases’ … The figures never fully become characters, while the figural events are never explained by being embedded in a sequence of events. The figures interact neither with each other nor with their environment. Although Bacon’s paintings display many signs which traditionally signify narrativity, by the same token any attempt to postulate narratives based on the paintings is countered.”2

In these paintings, Quilty does not turn away from the evidence of the soldiers before him who express through their bodies that life is violent. He does not attempt to save the viewer from such unpleasantries. As Bacon comments, “The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility.” Quilty stretches his sensibility as an artist and as a human being by getting down and dirty with his subject matter, both physically and emotionally. In fact, I would say Quilty becomes his subject, so close does the artist get to the object of his attention (after all, this is also Quilty’s experience of Afghanistan, as much as it is the soldiers who he is painting. The artist is always present in the work). The closer you get to one of his paintings, the more the detail vanishes and the more the paint becomes like blood and guts. The artist presses up against his subject which dissolves into abstraction. A bravura tour de force of painting that it so confident in its intent… [that there are] huge stretches of bare white canvas as flesh, with these striking gestures for throat and nipple executed without fear in one stroke of the brush. The black hole appearing out of the side of the soldiers head reminds me of Carl Jung’s ambivalent feelings toward his unconscious shadow; and at one end of the gallery you have a black hole (Trooper Luke Korman, Tarin Kot, 2012, below) and at the other a white hole (Trooper Luke Korman, 2012, below), such are the energies of yin yang that flow through the lighter of the gallery spaces.

Using what the photographer Imogen Cunningham termed the ‘paradox of expansion via reduction’ – closing in on subject (either physically and/or mentally), the intensity and focus attendant to a clear way of seeing – allows Quilty’s work to be flooded with sensuality and reductive power. The horror of the body, of how fragile we are (Damien Hirst) is expressed through the visceral paint. The viewer’s mind tells the story, creates the horror, the closer you get to the work. As I said earlier, there is no transferable message, no actual interpretation but universal triggers that impinge on the viewer’s mind.

Quilty plays with the flow of time and space, memory and war by disassociating himself from traditional narrative. As the quotation below from Peter Handke’s novel Across eloquently expresses it, it is a sense of “being-empty” (Zen), an empty form that is also full at the same time. Every object in Quilty’s opus moves into place and we pass over, quietly, into a place we have never been before, through paintings that picture the unknowable. Something we have never seen or felt before.

In painting, I don’t think there are many artists that could have achieved what Quilty has with this body of work.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Word count: 1,125


Many thankx to Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All installation photographs © Marcus Bunyan, the artist and Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum

 

1/ Ernst Van Alphen. Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self, 1992 quoted in “Francis Bacon and ‘Narrative’, the Natural Enemy of Vision,” on the ASX website, June 27 2013 [Online] Cited 29/03/2016.

2/ Ibid.,

 

 

“With the light of that moment, silence fell. The warming emptiness that I need so badly spread. My forehead no longer needed a supporting hand. It wasn’t exactly a warmth, but a radiance; it welled up rather than spread; not an emptiness, but a being-empty; not so much my being-empty as an empty form. And the empty form meant: story. But it also meant that nothing happened. When the story began, my trail was lost. Blurred. This emptiness was no mystery; but what made it effective remained a mystery. It was as tyrannical as it was appeasing; and its peace meant: I must not speak. Under its implosion, everything (every object) moved into place. “Emptiness!” The word was equivalent to the invocation of the Muse at the beginning of an epic. It provoked not a shudder but lightness and joy, and presented itself as a law: As it is now, so shall it be. In terms of image, it was a shallow river crossing.”


Peter Handke. Across. Ralph Manheim (translator). Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000, p. 5.

 

“I do not want to avoid telling a story, but I want very, very much to do the thing that Valery said – to give the sensation without the boredom of its conveyance. And the moment the story enters, the boredom comes upon you.”


Francis Bacon

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Introductory text from the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing from left to right, 'Sergeant P, after Afghanistan' (2012); 'Trooper Daniel Westcott, after Afghanistan' (2012); and 'Troy Park, after Afghanistan' (2012)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing from left to right, Sergeant P, after Afghanistan (2012); Trooper Daniel Westcott, after Afghanistan (2012); and Troy Park, after Afghanistan (2012)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Sergeant P, a Special Operations Task Group soldier, is a survivor of a Black Hawk helicopter crash that claimed the lives of three Australians. Some of the soldiers depicted in the other portraits witnessed the crash and were first on the scene to provide assistance. The memory of this experience, and the friends who did not make it, will stay with these men for a long time.

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Trooper Daniel Westcott, after Afghanistan' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Trooper Daniel Westcott, after Afghanistan (installation view)
2012
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Troy Park, after Afghanistan' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Troy Park, after Afghanistan (installation view)
2012
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing from left to right, 'Troy Park, after Afghanistan, no. 2' (2012); 'Trooper M, after Afghanistan' (2012); and 'Trooper M, after Afghanistan, no. 2' (2012)

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing from left to right, 'Troy Park, after Afghanistan, no. 2' (2012); 'Trooper M, after Afghanistan' (2012); and 'Trooper M, after Afghanistan, no. 2' (2012)

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing from left to right, 'Troy Park, after Afghanistan, no. 2' (2012); 'Trooper M, after Afghanistan' (2012); and 'Trooper M, after Afghanistan, no. 2' (2012)

 

Installation views of the exhibition Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing from left to right in the bottom three images, Troy Park, after Afghanistan, no. 2 (2012); Trooper M, after Afghanistan (2012); and Trooper M, after Afghanistan, no. 2 (2012)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Troy Park, after Afghanistan, no. 2' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Troy Park, after Afghanistan, no. 2 (installation view)
2012
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Quilty asked the soldiers to suggest a post that encapsulated some of the emotions that surrounded their experience in Afghanistan. Often the pose is quite contorted, as it reflects an actual event, such as taking cover to engage insurgents.

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Trooper M, after Afghanistan' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Trooper M, after Afghanistan (installation view)
2012
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

“You can’t really stop out there. You have to keep doing your job and keep moving forward … There is no time, until you get home, to stop and think about it.”

Trooper M

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Trooper M, after Afghanistan, no. 2' 2012 (installation view detail)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Trooper M, after Afghanistan, no. 2 (installation view detail)
2012
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

“Sitting for Ben is therapeutic; it does get a lot of stuff off your chest. And actually seeing your portrait on canvas, I think for me it’s definitely a chapter that I can close and leave there.”

Trooper M

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Bushmaster' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Bushmaster (installation view)
2012
Aerosol and oil on linen
Donated by Ben Quilty through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program in 2013
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Portraiture for Quilty can also take a vehicle as its subject. This destroyed Bushmaster reflects the soldiers’ identity and is a vestige of their physical experience. They risk their lives while carrying out their duties in these versatile military vehicles.

“I met a young man who’d been in the back of a Bushmaster that had blown up. The Bushmaster is the big armoured four-wheel-drive vehicle that’s saving a lot of Australian lives, but even so the explosion caused every single you man inside that vehicle to suffer from concussion and one of them was blown out of the gun turret and landed in front of the vehicle among possibly more hidden explosive devices.”

Ben Quilty

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Captain S, after Afghanistan' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Captain S, after Afghanistan (installation view)
2012
Oil on linen
Acquired under the official art scheme 2012
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

“I think when Ben paints, he’s not looking for what’s on the outside … He’s more after what they’re feeling o what they’ve been through … He’s looking at the inner instead of just the outer.”

Captain S

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Lance Corporal M, after Afghanistan' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Lance Corporal M, after Afghanistan (installation view)
2012
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Lance Corporal M, after Afghanistan' 2012 (installation view detail)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Lance Corporal M, after Afghanistan (installation view detail)
2012
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

The naked portraits have a sensuousness and vulnerability in their solitary, contorted poses. The rough surface signifies the uniform and body armour that have been stripped away in front of us, and them. We and they recognise what they have endured and achieved.

“I wanted [this soldier] to be naked, showing not only his physical strength but also the frailty of human skin and the darkness of the emotional weight of the war.”

Ben Quilty

 

Installation view of drawings from the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery including, at bottom left, 'Captain M II, Tarin Kot' (October 2011) and third from left top, 'Waiting, Tarin Kot' (October 2011)

 

Installation view of drawings from the exhibition Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan at the Castlemaine Art Gallery including, at bottom left, Captain M II, Tarin Kot (October 2011, below) and third from left top, Waiting, Tarin Kot (October 2011, below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

“This very wild place”

Sitting and talking with the Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, Quilty became intrigued by their experiences. He came to feel responsible for telling the stories of these young men and women.

“I started doing drawings of the soldiers, and hearing their stories about their experiences of being in this very wild place. I realised that I needed to just sit with them … making portraits of these guys in Tarin Kot or wherever I was … getting them to sit still and talk to me about their experience. Those little drawings are a reminder to me of the time that I spent with those people. I hoped that there’d be some remnant of that experience that I could then draw out … to put into the paintings when I returned to Australia.”

Ben Quilty

The trust that Quilty developed with these soldiers in Afghanistan was strong enough to continue at home in Quilty’s studio, where he invited some to sit for larger portraits.

 

Installation view of drawings from the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery

 

(top row, first three from left)

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Private C, Tarin Kot
October 2011
Drawn at Tarin Kot, Uruzgan province, Afghanistan
Coloured felt tip pen on paper
Acquired under the official art scheme 2012

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Trooper M, Special Forces, Tarin Kot
October 2011
Drawn at Tarin Kot, Uruzgan province, Afghanistan
Coloured felt tip pen, pencil and ink wash on paper
Collection of the artist

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Captain Kate Porter
27 October 2011
Drawn at Tarin Kot, Uruzgan province, Afghanistan
Coloured pencil and ink wash on paper
Acquired under the official art scheme 2012

(bottom row, first three from left)

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Sergeant M II, Tarin Kot
October 2011
Drawn at Tarin Kot, Uruzgan province, Afghanistan
Pencil and ink wash on paper
Collection of the artist

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Chinook pilot, Kandahar Airfield
October 2011
Drawn at Kandahar Airfield, Kandahar province, Afghanistan
Pencil and ink wash on paper
Collection of the artist

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Brigadier General Noorullah, Afghan National Army, Tarin Kot
22 October 2011
Drawn at Tarin Kot, Uruzgan province, Afghanistan
Coloured felt tip pen on paper
Acquired under the official art scheme 2012

Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

While in Tarin Kot, Quilty attended a marching out parade of 400 Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers who had completed training under the Australian Mentoring Task Fore. There he met a senior ANA commander, Brigadier General Noorullah. Just days later, three Australian soldiers were killed at a similar training parade being held at Forward Operating Base Sorkh Bed (aka Pacemaker). Quilty learnt of the incident the day after he left Afghanistan, giving him an even greater sense of the dangers that the soldiers he met face daily.

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Captain Kate Porter' 27 October 2011 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Captain Kate Porter (installation view)
27 October 2011
Drawn at Tarin Kot, Uruzgan province, Afghanistan
Coloured pencil and ink wash on paper
Acquired under the official art scheme 2012
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Quilty wanted to meet a cross-section of people serving in Afghanistan – soldiers driving Bushmasters, Chinook pilots, Special Forces soldiers, and both men and women of all ranks – to try to understand who makes up the Australian Defence Force. He met Captain Kate Porter at Tarin Kot. There he spoke to her about her experiences as female in the very masculine community of the Special Operations Task Group, as well as her general experience as a soldier in Afghanistan.

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Trooper M, Special Forces, Tarin Kot' October 2011 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Trooper M, Special Forces, Tarin Kot (installation view)
October 2011
Drawn at Tarin Kot, Uruzgan province, Afghanistan
Coloured felt tip pen, pencil and ink wash on paper
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Waiting, Tarin Kot' October 2011 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Waiting, Tarin Kot (installation view)
October 2011
Drawn at Tarin Kot, Uruzgan province, Afghanistan
Coloured felt tip pen on paper
Acquired under the official art scheme 2012
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Captain M II, Tarin Kot' October 2011 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Captain M II, Tarin Kot (installation view)
October 2011
Drawn at Tarin Kot, Uruzgan province, Afghanistan
Pencil and ink wash on paper
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

“Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan is an extraordinary Australian War Memorial Touring Exhibition by one of the nation’s most incisive artists, and is of great relevance to all Australians. The exhibition officially opens at Castlemaine Art Gallery on Friday 15 January 2016.

The exhibition itself was the result of the Archibald Prize-winning artist’s three-week tour across Afghanistan in October 2011. Engaged as an Official War Artist, his purpose was to record and interpret the experiences of Australians deployed as part of Operation Slipper in Kabul, Kandahar, and Tarin Kot in Afghanistan and at Al Minhad Airbase in the United Arab Emirates. In fulfilling his brief, Quilty spoke with many Australian servicemen and women, gaining an insight into their experiences whilst serving in the region, and ultimately leaving with an overwhelming need to tell their stories.

Quilty recently spoke on ANZAC Day 2015 and paid tribute not only to those who did not return from Afghanistan and their grieving families, but also to “the young men and women who live amongst us who have paid so dearly and will quietly wear the thick cloak of trauma for many years to come, after Afghanistan.”

The exhibition is a must see as Quilty is arguably one of Australia’s greatest living painters, and this exhibition, with its intense and emotional subject matter is particularly important to Castlemaine, a town with a history of young men and women serving their country far from home. The exhibition has been very well received across the country with over 70,000 visitors attending the works when on display most recently in Darwin. Dr Brendan Nelson, Director of the Australian War Memorial believes Quilty should be considered one of Australia’s great official war artists.

“Ben Quilty’s works follows a truly great tradition at the Australian War Memorial of appointing artists to record and interpret the Australian experience of war.”

“Ben brought to this task all his brilliance, sensitivity and compassion. The works he produced will leave Australians a legacy which informs them not only about the impact of war on our country, but even more importantly, about the effects on the men and women he has depicted,” said Dr Nelson.

Dr Jan Savage, President of the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum Committee of Management said the exhibition, “was significant in understanding the impact of war on serving members of the Australian armed forces and I encourage visitors to attend this most important exhibition.”

Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan is on display at Castlemaine Art Gallery from 15 January until 15 April 2016.

An Australian War Memorial Touring Exhibition, proudly sponsored by Thales.”

Text from the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum website

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Tarin Kot, Hilux' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Tarin Kot, Hilux (installation view)
2012
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Kandahar' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Kandahar (installation view)
2012
Oil on linen
Acquired under the official art scheme 2012
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Kandahar' 2012 (installation view detail)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Kandahar (installation view detail)
2012
Oil on linen
Acquired under the official art scheme 2012
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Kandahar Airfield is a multinational vase with approximately 35,000 people from the International Security Assistance Fore, aid organisations, and a pool of local civilian staff. Weapons are carried at all times by both military and civilian personnel, creating a tense atmosphere with a violent undercurrent. Quilty described Kandahar as being a cross between the worlds of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and Catch 22, a surreal, dusty, and violent place. “For the first week in Kandahar, I basically felt like I was dodging rockets. The first night we landed there, two or three rockets landed inside the compound.”

This painting was Quilty’s first visceral response on his return from Afghanistan and i sums up his emotions, particularly his personal experience of Kandahar and being a part of the maelstrom of war.

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing at centre, 'Tarin Kot, Hilux' (2012); and at right, 'Kandahar' (2012)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing at centre, Tarin Kot, Hilux (2012); and at right, Kandahar (2012)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing at left, 'Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, no. 3' (2012)

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing at left, 'Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, no. 3' (2012)

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing at left, 'Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, no. 3' (2012)

 

Installation views of the exhibition Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing at left in the bottom image, Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, no. 3 (2012, below)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Returning from war

“You can’t take the experiences out of your head.
You can’t take the damages out of your head.”

John Oddie

 

On his return to Australia, Ben Quilty contacted Air Commodore John Oddie (Ret’d), whom he had met during his Afghanistan deployment, to invite him to sit for a portrait in his studio. From February to October 2011, Oddie had been the Deputy Commander of Australian forces in the Middle east, a position of immense responsibility.

Quilty eventually produced three portraits over five months. These works reveal a man returning from war and its burden of responsibility, exhausted emotionally and mentally, and his progress towards a more positive view of life and of himself as a survivor.

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, no. 3' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, no. 3 (installation view)
2012
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, no. 3' 2012 (installation view detail)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, no. 3 (installation view detail)
2012
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

“I don’t necessarily see beauty, I see insight in what Ben does. That’s reflected in the way he paints … I think his later portraits, done after he’s got to know us better, are different from the raw emotion of the first ones.”

John Oddie

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, no. 1' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, no. 1 (installation view)
2012
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

“With through a lack of insight or through an unwillingness … I wasn’t always admitting the truth to myself about my life. Ben really took that out and put it on a table in front of me like a three-course dinner and said, well, how about that? And you know, I sort of thought well, I’m not going to come to this restaurant again in a hurry!”

John Oddie

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, no. 2' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, no. 2 (installation view)
2012
Oil on linen
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

“He’s got this one little gash of paint and it brings out this wry smile that I didn’t even know I had … When I stood back and had a look, I was just stunned at the honesty of the painting – until then I hadn’t really been fully honest with myself about what I was feeling.”

John Oddie

 

Introductory titles and text for the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery

Introductory titles and text for the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery

 

Introductory titles and text for the exhibition Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan at the Castlemaine Art Gallery
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing the work 'Trooper Daniel Spain, Tarin Kot' (2012)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing the work Trooper Daniel Spain, Tarin Kot (2012, below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Trooper Daniel Spain, Tarin Kot' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Trooper Daniel Spain, Tarin Kot (installation view)
2012
Oil on linen diptych
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

In some of the works, Quilty has used dramatic symbols to represent the emotional weight and the sense of emptiness he felt some soldiers brought home with them after Afghanistan. The black hole motif also reflects his own feelings of anxiety and uncertainty during his time there.

“I had such extreme feelings about the smell, sound, emotions of being in Afghanistan … I wanted to convey this.”

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Trooper Luke Korman' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Trooper Luke Korman (installation view)
2012
Aerosol and oil on linen
Acquired under the official art scheme 2012
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan' at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing on the far wall, 'Trooper Luke Korman, Tarin Kot' (2012, left) and 'SOTG, after Afghanistan' (2011, right)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan at the Castlemaine Art Gallery showing on the far wall, Trooper Luke Korman, Tarin Kot (2012, left) and SOTG, after Afghanistan (2011, right)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'Trooper Luke Korman, Tarin Kot' 2012 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
Trooper Luke Korman, Tarin Kot (installation view)
2012
Aerosol and oil on linen diptych
Collection of the artist
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951) 'SOTG, after Afghanistan' 2011 (installation view)

 

Ben Quilty (Australian, b. 1951)
SOTG, after Afghanistan (installation view)
2011
Oil on linen diptych
Acquired under the official art scheme 2012
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

As part of his initial idea for the war artist commission, Quilty photographed soldiers of the Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan in the same pose. He asked each of them to face the sun with their eyes closed, then open them and stare into the blinding light. At that instant Quilty would take the photograph. “To me, this symbolises what they’re facing, something immense, overwhelming.”

Back in Australia, Quilty attempted to work from these photographs, and created a handful of portraits. He was dissatisfied with the results. Determined to re-establish a personal connection with his subjects, he invited some of them to sit for portraits in his studio.

 

 

Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum
14 Lyttleton Street (PO Box 248)
Castlemaine, Vic 3450 Australia
Phone: (03) 5472 2292
Email: info@castlemainegallery.com

Opening hours:
Thursday – Saturday 11am – 4pm
Sunday 12pm – 4pm

Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Cosa Mentale: Art and Telepathy in the 20th century’ at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, Paris

Exhibition dates: 28th October, 2015 – 28th March, 2016

Curator: Pascal Rousseau, Professor of Contemporary History of Art at the University of Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne

 

Louis Darget (French, 1847-1923) 'Fluidic Thought-Image Photography' 1896 from the exhibition 'Cosa Mentale: Art and Telepathy in the 20th century' at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, Paris, Oct 2015 - March 2016

 

Louis Darget (French, 1847-1923)
Fluidic Thought-Image Photography
1896

(L) Inscribed: “Photo… of thought. Head obtained by Mr. Henning, having a plate wrapped in black paper on his forehead while he played the piano. Opposite him on the piano was a portrait of Beethoven. Could this be that [same] portrait reflected by the brain onto the plate through the black paper. Comt. Darget”

(R) “Photograph of a Dream: The Eagle.” 25 June, 1896.
Inscribed: “Obtained by placing a photographic plate above the forehead of Mme Darget while she was asleep.”

 

 

Telepathic art in the 20th century. What a fascinating subject for a spiritual, phantasmagoric exhibition which explores artists’ fascination with the direct transmission of thought and emotion. A lot of phenomena – for example telepathy, X-rays, psychoanalysis – were named or discovered in the last half of the nineteenth century or are concepts and things that began to gain popularity in the collective consciousness at that time, such as the unconscious mind, the anima and animus, the study of signs, photographs of thought, photographs of hysteria (Charcot) and notes and photographs on unexplained paranormal experiences.

“The exhibition enables the spectator to understand how, throughout the 20th century, attempts to give material and visible form to thought processes coincide with the experiments of avant-garde artists. This fantasy of a direct projection of thought not only had a decisive impact on the birth of abstraction but also influenced surrealism and its obsession with the collective sharing of creation and, in the post war period, it gave rise to numerous visual and sound installations inspired by the revolution in information technology, leading to the declaration of “the dematerialisation of art” in conceptual practices.”

Love the work of Émile Cohl and Len Lye, both a revelation to me.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the Centre Pompidou-Metz for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944) 'Madonna' 1895 from the exhibition 'Cosa Mentale: Art and Telepathy in the 20th century' at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, Paris, Oct 2015 - March 2016

 

Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944)
Madonna
1895
Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’Art moderne
© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Georges Meguerditchian

 

Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916) 'Portrait de Paul Gauguin' 1903-1906

 

Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)
Portrait of Paul Gauguin
1903-1906
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
© RMN-Grand Palais (musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski

 

 

Émile Cohl (French, 1857-1938)
Le retapeur de cervelles (The creators brain)
1910

 

Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917) 'Le Penseur [The Thinker]' 1903

 

Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917)
Le Penseur [The Thinker]
1903
Plâtre patiné / patinated plaster
72 x 37 x 57.50cm
© Photographe: Christian Baraja
© Musée Rodin, Paris

 

When conceived in 1880 in its original size (approx. 70cm) as the crowning element of The Gates of Hell, seated on the tympanum, The Thinker was entitled The Poet. He represented Dante, author of the Divine Comedy which had inspired The Gates, leaning forward to observe the circles of Hell, while meditating on his work. The Thinker was therefore initially both a being with a tortured body, almost a damned soul, and a free-thinking man, determined to transcend his suffering through poetry. The pose of this figure owes much to Carpeaux’s Ugolino (1861) and to the seated portrait of Lorenzo de Medici carved by Michelangelo (1526-31).

While remaining in place on the monumental Gates of Hell, The Thinker was exhibited individually in 1888 and thus became an independent work. Enlarged in 1904, its colossal version proved even more popular: this image of a man lost in thought, but whose powerful body suggests a great capacity for action, has became one of the most celebrated sculptures ever known. Numerous casts exist worldwide, including the one now in the gardens of the Musée Rodin, a gift to the City of Paris installed outside the Panthéon in 1906, and another in the gardens of Rodin’s house in Meudon, on the tomb of the sculptor and his wife.

Text from the Rodin Museum website [Online] Cited 22/03/2016. No longer available online

 

Stephen Haweis (British, 1878-1969) and Henry Coles 'Le Penseur' c. 1903-1904

 

Stephen Haweis (British, 1878-1969) and Henry Coles
Le Penseur
c. 1903-1904
Epreuve au charbon / Charcoal
23 x 16.60cm
© Musée Rodin, Paris

 

 

Cosa Mentale is a unique exhibition that offers a re-reading of the history or art from 1990 to modern day by exploring artists’ fascination with the direct transmission of thought and emotion. It invites the spectator to re-live one of the unexpected adventures of modernity: telepathic art in the 20th century. This exhibition traces a chronological path from symbolism to conceptual art with a collection of some one hundred works by major artists, ranging from Edvard Munch to Vassily Kandinsky, and from Joan Miró to Sigmar Polke. These artists provide innovative ways of communicating with spectators that take us beyond conventional linguistic codes.

The exhibition enables the spectator to understand how, throughout the 20th century, attempts to give material and visible form to thought processes coincide with the experiments of avant-garde artists. This fantasy of a direct projection of thought not only had a decisive impact on the birth of abstraction but also influenced surrealism and its obsession with the collective sharing of creation and, in the post war period, it gave rise to numerous visual and sound installations inspired by the revolution in information technology, leading to the declaration of “the dematerialisation of art” in conceptual practices.

The exhibition begins with the invention of the term “telepathy” in 1882, at a time when the study of psychology interacted with rapid developments in telecommunications. Endeavours ranged from the creation of “photographs of thought” in 1895 to the first “encephalograms” in 1924 (the year when the Surrealist Manifesto was published) and it was the actual activity of the brain which was to be shown in all its transparency, which encouraged artists to reject the conventions of representation by suppressing all restrictions of translation. Telepathy was far from remaining an obscure paranormal fantasy and consistently intrigued and enthralled artists throughout the 20th century. Always present in the world of science fiction, it resurfaced in psychedelic and conceptual art in the period from 1960 to 1970 before reappearing today in contemporary practices enraptured by technologies of “shared knowledge” and the rapid development of neuroscience.

Curator

Pascal Rousseau, professor of contemporary history of art at the University of Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne. Pascal Rousseau has also curated Robert Delaunay exhibitions: From impressionism to abstraction, 1906-1914, at the Centre Pompidou (1999) and To the origins of abstraction (1800-1914) at the Musée d’Orsay (2003).

Press release from the Centre Pompidou-Metz

 

Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983) 'La Sieste' July-September 1925

 

Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983)
La Sieste
July – September 1925
© Successió Miró/ ADAGP, Paris, 2015

 

Vassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866-1944) 'Bild mit rotem Fleck [Tableau à la tache rouge / Image with red spot]' 25 February 1914

 

Vassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866-1944)
Bild mit rotem Fleck [Tableau à la tache rouge / Image with red spot]
25 February 1914
Paris, Centre Pompidou – Musée national d’art moderne
© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Adam Rzepka

 

Frantisek Kupka (Czech, 1871-1957) 'Facture robuste' 1920

 

Frantisek Kupka (Czech, 1871-1957)
Facture robuste
1920
Strasbourg, Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain
© ADAGP, Paris, 2015
© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Jacques Faujour

 

 

Len Lye (New Zealand/America, 1901-1980)
Tusalava
1929
Film
10 min. 5 sec.

 

As a student, Lye became convinced that motion could be part of the language of art, leading him to early (and now lost) experiments with kinetic sculpture, as well as a desire to make film. Lye was also one of the first Pākehā artists to appreciate the art of Māori, Australian Aboriginal, Pacific Island and African cultures, and this had great influence on his work. In the early 1920s Lye travelled widely in the South Pacific. He spent extended periods in Australia and Samoa, where he was expelled by the New Zealand colonial administration for living within an indigenous community.

Working his way as a coal trimmer aboard a steam ship, Lye moved to London in 1926. There he joined the Seven and Five Society, exhibited in the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition and began to make experimental films. Following his first animated film Tusalava, Lye began to make films in association with the British General Post Office, for the GPO Film Unit. He reinvented the technique of drawing directly on film, producing his animation for the 1935 film A Colour Box, an advertisement for “cheaper parcel post”, without using a camera for anything except the title cards at the beginning of the film. It was the first direct film screened to a general audience. It was made by painting vibrant abstract patterns on the film itself, synchronising them to a popular dance tune by Don Baretto and His Cuban Orchestra. A panel of animation experts convened in 2005 by the Annecy film festival put this film among the top ten most significant works in the history of animation (his later film Free Radicals was also in the top 50).

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Rudolf Steiner (Austrian, 1861-1925) 'Untitled (drawing on blackboard at a conference of 14 May 1924)' Dornach, 14 May 1924

 

Rudolf Steiner (Austrian, 1861-1925)
Untitled (drawing on blackboard at a conference of 14 May 1924)
Dornach, 14 May 1924
Chalk on black paper
Rudolf Steiner Archive, Dornach
© Rudolf Steiner Archiv, Dornach
© ADAGP, Paris, 2015

 

A room of the exhibition features ten blackboards by Rudolf Steiner. They are the instructions of a new design language that the artist wants to develop. Steiner believes in the development of a supersensible consciousness, a big change for the future of humanity. He gives many lectures in which he details his research on the concept of transmission and its influence on the social. Whether true or not, artists such as Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and others are interested in the complex graphics of Steiner and his research. Mondrian will even write: “Art is a way of development of mankind.”

Text from the Culture Box website translated from the French

 

Victor Brauner (Romanian, 1903-1966) 'Signe' 1942-1945

 

Victor Brauner (Romanian, 1903-1966)
Signe
1942-45
© ADAGP, Paris, 2015

 

Exhibition layout

Introduction

The exhibition starts with a version of the famous figure of Rodin’s Thinker, set off against a sequence of seven photographs from the start of the century, in which the Pictorialist dimension seems to attempt to show lighting emissions produced by the cerebral concentration of the subject. This collection is presented opposite TV Rodin, a video installation created by the artist Nam June Paik who, in the 1970s, reinterpreted electromagnetic animation of closed-circuit thought, when interest in cybernetics was at its peak.

Auras

The direct visualisation of thought and emotional states and the impact of this on the beginnings of abstraction at the start of the 20th century.

The first room focuses on the passion during the century for “photography of thought.” As a direct response to the discovery of radiography by Röntgen, in 1895, numerous amateur researchers attempted to produce images of the brain on photosensitive plates. Since it was possible to see through opaque bodies, why not try to see through the skull, which was now transparent? A curiosity cabinet presents the photographic experiments of Hippolyte Baraduc and Louis Darget with “psychic ones” or “images of thought.” This selection of photographs interacts with two film animation extracts by Émile Cohl, showing, with some humour, the direct projection of thought onto the big screen with the arrival of the cinema.

In the second room, a collection of engravings from the theosophical works of Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, presented by the American artist Christian Sampson, reveals the close relationship between the representation of emotional states (thought-patterns) and early abstract painting. They inspired many pioneers of abstract painters, including Kupka and Kandinsky. A group of auras and halos is shown, associated with a colour code for different effects, captured by Kandinsky in order to paint authentic abstract (auto) portraits. In the same vein, paintings by Wilhelm Morgner, Janus de Winter and Jacob Bendien present “psychic portraits” which illustrate a psychological range of emotions by means of chromatic signs.

The third room presents a sequence of ten “blackboards” by Rudolph Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy (the “science of the mind” that was a major influence on some of the members of the avant-garde abstract movement), showing how he developed his theories of the “mental body” and “psychic force”. Next to this is a collection of watercolours by the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, a pioneer of abstract art. Around this area a multimedia installation by the artist Tony Oursler has been specially created for this exhibition reinterpreting the historical imagination of these “mental projections”.

Magnetic fields

The spread of telepathy in the inter-war period and its influence on surrealism.

In 1924, André Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto (1924) just when the neurologist Hans Berger invented the first electroencephalogram as a result of experimental research into telepathy: this being a less than accidental coincidence, relating to automated transcriptions of the mind. The “exquisite corpses” or “communicated drawings” of the surrealists are linked to experiments that took place at that time into the telepathic transfer of images.

The first room presents a sequence of photographs of the surrealist group in poses in which heads and bodies communicate with each other to produce a collective work under the mysterious influence of “magnetic fields.” Tusalava (1929), a film by the Australian artist Len Lye, illustrates the cinematographic solution found to make mental activity visible, in the form of abstract ideograms taken from aboriginal language.

The second room shows a collection of photographs from the 1920s, some of which are presented by the artist Frédéric Vaesen, relating to the materialisation of psychic entities, the famous “ectoplasms” which give a more tangible reality to imponderable thought. Next to this is a series of works by Joan Miró, in which the painter depicts coloured auras, including a mental map of emotional states, a “photograph of his dreams”.

Mind expander

With the reconstruction of the post war period, divided between the cybernetic model and psychedelic liberation, telepathy remained more than ever a creative horizon for artists in search of perception extended to the electromagnetic manifestations of consciousness.

The New Age spirit of the 1960s witnessed the curious revival of “photographs of thought” (Ted Serios and Salas Portugal), which influenced experimental cinema and psychedelic video (Jordan Belson), a well as some photographic practices (Anna and Bernhard Blume, Dieter Appelt, Suzanne Hiller, John Baldessari and Sigmar Polke).

Under the influence of psychotropic drugs or immersed in highly intense audiovisual devices, electric thought in motion is captured with a penetrating eye. Experimental and radical architectural patterns embody “expanded consciousness”, as is seen in the Mind Expander project (1967) by the Austrian group Haus Rucker Co, which invites the spectator to venture into “superception.” Music has its role here, with the rise in “biomusic” at the end of the 1960s, led by Alvin Lucier, Pierre Henry and David Rosenboom, who produced authentic “brain symphonies,” by means of the sound transcription of the activity of electric waves emitted by the brain, directly captured by electrodes.

Telepathy

The establishment of telepathic art in the 1970s influenced by conceptual practices.

On the margins of pop art, avant-garde artists in the 1970s produced a critique of both form and the art market, by means of strategies that emphasised language and sociological discourse. This also involved a major project in the dematerialisation of art works in which telepathy could be an ideal model for a new non-standard form of communication.

The American artist Robert Morris produced his own Autoportrait in the form of an encephalogram (EEG Portrait) at the same time as his compatriot Robert Barry, a central figure in conceptual art, produced Telepathic Pieces (1969) and Vito Acconci explored extra sensory perception through the form of video (Remote Control, 1971). Against this backdrop, we see considerable new interest in a utopia of shared creation (Robert Filliou and Marina Abramovic) in the era of global communication and the “noosphere” prophetically declared by Teilhard de Chardin and Marshall McLuhan.

The exhibition ends with a vast installation by the artist Fabrice Hyber, a major figure of contemporary art in France, with experimental telepathic booths, paintings, drawings and “prototypes of operating objects” (POF). Hyber invites the spectator to participate, alone or in groups, in an experience which has several surprises, reminding us how, today, under the influence of information networks, neuroscience and the globalised internet, telepathy (ultra democratic and utopian yet also obscure) is more topical than ever and can be explored by artists with the same spirit of derision or anticipation.

Press release from the Centre Pompidou-Metz

 

Haus-Rucker-Co (Viennese, founded 1967) Laurids, Zamp and Pinter with 'Environment Transformern (Flyhead, Viewatomizer and Drizzler)' 1968, from the 'Mind Expander project'

 

Haus-Rucker-Co (Viennese, founded 1967)
Laurids, Zamp and Pinter with Environment Transformern (Flyhead, Viewatomizer and Drizzler)
1968
From the Mind Expander project
Photo: Gert Winkler

 

Taking their cue from the Situationist’s ideas of play as a means of engaging citizens, Haus-Rucker-Co created performances where viewers became participants and could influence their own environments, becoming more than just passive onlookers. These installations were usually made from pneumatic structures such as Oase No. 7 (1972), which was created for Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany. An inflatable structure emerged from the façade of an existing building creating a space for relaxation and play, of which contemporary echoes can be found in the ‘urban reserves’ of Santiago Cirugeda. The different versions of the Mind Expander series (1967-1969), consisted of various helmets that could alter the perceptions of those wearing them, for example the ‘Fly Head’ disoriented the sight and hearing of the wearer to create an entirely new apprehension of reality; it also produced one of their most memorable images.

Haus-Rucker-Co’s installations served as a critique of the confined spaces of bourgeois life creating temporary, disposable architecture, whilst their prosthetic devices were designed to enhance sensory experience and highlight the taken-for-granted nature of our senses, seen also in the contemporaneous work of the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark. Contemporary versions of such work can be found in the pneumatic structures favoured by Raumlabor and Exyzt.

Anonymous text from the Spatial Agency website [Online] Cited 22/03/2016.

 

Installation view of Haus-Rucker-Co, 'Mindexpander 1' 1967 in the exhibition 'Cosa mentale' at the Centre Pompidou-Metz

 

Installation view of Haus-Rucker-Co, Mindexpander 1 1967 in the exhibition Cosa mentale at the Centre Pompidou-Metz.
Photo Pompidou Centre. MNAM CCI-distrib. RMN / G. Meguerditchian.

 

In 1968, the Austrian collective Haus-Rucker-Co designed the Mind Expander as an immersive capsule propelling the audience into a new mode of perception of reality: the “Superception”. This, then, is a synthesis of avant-garde utopias, throughout the twentieth century, influenced by the imagination that gave rise to the development of telecommunications, seeking to develop a way of live transmission of emotion. Its aim was to invent a new, immediate, relationship between the artist and the viewer.

 

Haus-Rucker-Co. 'Mind Expander' 1967

 

Haus-Rucker-Co (Viennese, founded 1967)
Mind Expander
1967 Vienna
Epreuve gélatino-argentique
Photo: Michael Plitz. Haus-Rucker-Co.

 

David Rosenboom (American, b. 1947) 'Portable Gold and Philosophers' Stones in Paris 1' 1975

 

David Rosenboom (American, b. 1947)
Portable Gold and Philosophers’ Stones in Paris 1
1975
© David Rosenboom 1975
All rights reserved

 

Pianist-composer J.B. Floyd, a long-time collaborator with David Rosenboom is seen with electrodes attached to his head while performing a solo version of Rosenboom’s brainwave music composition Portable Gold and Philosophers’ Stones at Centre Culturel Americain in Paris on 7 January 1975. The equipment shown includes a brainwave monitoring device and an ARP 2600 Synthesizer. The performance occurred simultaneously with a lecture given by David Rosenboom in a presentation titled Biofeedback and the Arts. Artist Jacqueline Humbert, who also participated in the performance, is seated off to the right of the picture frame.

 

Nam June Paik (American, 1932-2006) 'TV Rodin' 1976-1978 (detail)

 

Nam June Paik (American, 1932-2006)
TV Rodin (detail)
1976-1978
Plaster, video camera, tripod, monitor, pedestal
132 x 110 x 115 cm

 

Long considered the most important video artist since the advent of the form in the late 1960s, Nam June Paik’s TV Rodin is one of several related works that involve sculpture – in this case, a cast of Auguste Rodin’s Thinker, studying itself in a small video monitor via closed circuit television. As museum visitors walk around the work and look over the sculpture’s shoulder, their image also appears on the screen. Paik’s influential vision of television as a global cultural force found intelligent and witty form in his videotapes, video sculptures, and intercontinental satellite performances.

Text from the Carnegie Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 22/03/2016.

 

Nam June Paik (American, 1932-2006) 'TV Rodin' 1976-1978

 

Nam June Paik (American, 1932-2006)
TV Rodin
1976-1978
Plaster, video camera, tripod, monitor, pedestal
132 x 110 x 115cm
Photo: Primae / Claude Germain. The Estate of Nam June Paik

 

Marina Abramovic (Serbian, b. 1946) and Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen) (German, 1943-2020) 'That Self – Point of Contact' 1980

 

Marina Abramovic (Serbian, b. 1946) and Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen) (German, 1943-2020)
That Self – Point of Contact
1980
Performance au De Appel Art Centre, Amsterdam
© Adagp, Paris 2015
Courtesy Marina Abramovic Archives

 

Sigmar Polke (German, 1941-2010) 'Untitled (Blue)' 1992

 

Sigmar Polke (German, 1941-2010)
Untitled (Blue)
1992
Set of 10 Cibachromes trials
61 x 51cm
The estate of Sigmar Polke / ADAGP, Paris, 2015

 

Fabrice Hyber (French, b. 1961) 'screen+télépathy' 2013

 

Fabrice Hyber (French, b. 1961)
screen+télépathy
2013
Watercolour, charcoal on paper
76 x 57cm
Collection of the artist
© Photographie Marc Domage

 

Susan Hiller (American, 1940-2019) 'Homage to Marcel Duchamp: Aura (Blue Boy)' 2011

 

Susan Hiller (American, 1940-2019)
Homage to Marcel Duchamp: Aura (Blue Boy)
2011
© Susan Hiller

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart

Exhibition dates: 28th November, 2015 – 28th March, 2016

Curators: Gilbert & George with organising curators, Mona’s Co-Directors of Exhibitions and Collections, Olivier Varenne and Nicole Durling

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'FORWARD' 2008 from the exhibition 'Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition' at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart, Nov 2015 - March 2016

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
FORWARD
2008
Mixed media
381 x 604cm
Courtesy of the artists and White Cube

 

 

Gentlemen of the gutter

While I admire the mythology of Gilbert and George, that ever so British pair of deviant artists, they have never been among my favourites.

They had a tough road. Imagine meeting in 1967, pre-Stonewall and the beginning of gay liberation, and then moving into the roughest part of London, the East End, to live together and make art, dressed as a pair of besuited businessmen. The prejudice and the abuse would have been intense, but they stuck together, they stuck to their path as artists, and they stuck to each other as human beings. It is fascinating to see the trajectory of their development, to follow the development of the grid, the introduction of one colour and then multiple colours.

I understand what they do, empathise with their endeavour (anti-nationalism, religion, bigotry, racism, homophobia etc etc…) but wonder whether they have not painted themselves and their art into a corner. They are so well known for their long running performance – their vaudeville act reminding me of a contemporary Hieronymus Bosch with text ripped from the headlines / images riffed from hell (portraits of cut up reflections assembled to make surreal creatures with gaping mouths), the gridded works, the colours, the content AS graphic gothic cathedral with stained glass windows – that they seem incapable or willing to push themselves and their art further. To shock us in an altogether different way? Now that would be a greater surprise, than just semen, spit and shit.

What I am saying is that they have got their schtick down pat. They worked hard for their anti-establishment schlock horror. The work has presence and they do know how to reach people with a picture but with each repetition, with each ritual performance the cracks grow ever larger. As John McDonald observes, “They are iconoclastic non-entities making art that attracts and repels.”

What actually lies underneath all of this rhetoric. Two caring human beings, two compassionate souls? I think not, therefore I am.**

As can be seen in many of their works, the emperors literally have no clothes…

Dr Marcus Bunyan

** Perhaps it should have been “I care not, therefore I am” … because they don’t really give a dam what people think. This is part of the problem: their rather mean spirited view of the world.


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

 

 

“We are unhealthy, middle-aged, dirty-minded, depressed, cynical, empty, tired-brained, seedy, rotten, dreaming, badly-behaved, ill-mannered, arrogant, intellectual, self-pitying, honest, successful, hard-working, thoughtful, artistic, religious, fascistic, blood-thirsty, teasing, destructive, ambitious, colourful, damned, stubborn, perverted and good. We are artists.”


“Art has just become decoration for the very, very rich. We manage to keep our feet on the ground. We have never been part of an elitist art group. Our art is so confrontational that a lot of collectors would never touch it because they don’t want a naked shit picture in their living room… More and more it is difficult to speak as an artist. Nobody hears you because there are too many and there are too many different ways of making art today that there didn’t use to be when we started out in 1969.”


“We never go to the cinema, the theatre, or the ballet or opera. We stopped 40 years ago. We just didn’t want to become contaminated. We know what we’re interested in, we know how we can reach people with a picture. We have a feeling, what we put in that picture that will mean something to somebody.”


Gilbert & George

 

 

 

Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition

 

 

Gilbert & George In Conversation With Olivier Varenne

 

 

Two people, but one artist: the legendary Gilbert & George’s first ever exhibition in Australasia, Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition, is now open at the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, Australia, until March 28, 2016.

Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition is a major retrospective, including pictures spanning five decades; dating from 1970 to most recent pictures of 2014. Curated by Gilbert & George with organising curators, Mona’s Co-Directors of Exhibitions and Collections, Olivier Varenne and Nicole Durling, the pictures are installed across the entirety of Mona’s touring galleries, 14 metres underground.

“Our pictures deal with the great universals: death, hope, life, fear, sex, money, race and religion. Seeing is believing. See for yourself: Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition. This is your very first – and last – chance to see one hundred of our pictures, at the wonderful Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania.” ~ Gilbert & George


Since first meeting at St Martin’s school of Art, London, in 1967, Gilbert & George have lived and worked together as one single and fiercely independent artist, dedicated solely to the creation of their art. They have no allegiance to any other trend, school, movement, doctrine, theory or style of art.

Gilbert & George already knew that they were seeking for a form of art that was to them entirely rooted in the real world – in the streets and clamour and traffic and buildings and hearts of strangers: an “Art for All.”

Today, their art continues to be multi-allusive, contemporary and contentious, as their subject is literally at their feet – along countless streets, the thoroughfares of the passage of millions of lives, and dense with the sedimentary tracings of social existence.

Text from MONA

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, 'BOMBERS' (2006), and at right, 'FORWARD' (2008)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, BOMBERS (2006), and at right, FORWARD (2008)

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'BOMBERS' 2006 from the exhibition 'Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition' at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart, Nov 2015 - March 2016

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
BOMBERS
2006
From Bomb Pictures
Mixed media
336 x 493cm
Courtesy of the artists and White Cube

 

Gilbert & George created an important group of six pictures for their major retrospective at Tate Modern. The six Bomb Pictures, the only pictures created by the artists in 2006, comprise a 14 metre triptych entitled Bomb and five other pictures: Bombs; Bomber; Bombers; Bombing; and Terror. The artists have described this group of pictures as their most chilling to date. The artists intend the pictures to be seen as modern townscapes reflecting the daily exposure in urban life to terror alerts.

Barry Grayshon. “Gilbert and George – The Bomb Pictures (2006),” on the Pinterest website [Online] Cited 16/03/2016

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, 'TOPSY TURVY' (1989) from 'The Cosmological Pictures'

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, TOPSY TURVY (1989) from The Cosmological Pictures

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'DEAD HEAD' 1989

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
DEAD HEAD
1989
From The Cosmological Pictures
Picture courtesy of the artists and Mona, Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania, Australia

 

With this body of work Gilbert & George stress the power of human thought to remake life and so create the future through a process of communication, discussion and questioning, stimulated by the pictures. The word ‘cosmology’ derives from the Greek words for ‘world’ and ‘discourse’. Since September 1991, The Cosmological Pictures have been touring many European cities. Gilbert and George’s aim – to speak to many people in all of these cities – is at the heart of their cosmology.

Barry Grayshon. “Gilbert and George – The Cosmological Pictures (1989),” on the Pinterest website [Online] Cited 16/03/2016

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, 'NEXT DOOR' (2013), in the middle 'HANDBALL' (2008), and at right, 'SUICIDE STRAIGHT' (2011) from 'The London Pictures'

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, NEXT DOOR (2013), in the middle HANDBALL (2008), and at right, SUICIDE STRAIGHT (2011) from The London Pictures

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'KILLERS STRAIGHT' 2011

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
KILLERS STRAIGHT
2011
From The London Pictures

 

The London Pictures are made up of 292 of the 3,712 newspaper ‘bills’ the pair have doggedly pilfered from outside London newsagents over many years. The pictures present an epic survey of modern urban life in all its volatility, tragedy, absurdity and routine violence. They are Dickensian in scope and ultra-modern in sensibility.

Barry Grayshon. “Gilbert and George – London Photos (2011),” on the Pinterest website [Online] Cited 16/03/2016

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing in the middle 'HANDBALL' (2008), and at right, 'SUICIDE STRAIGHT' (2011) from 'The London Pictures'

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing in the middle HANDBALL (2008), and at right, SUICIDE STRAIGHT (2011) from The London Pictures

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing from left (large pictures), 'CITY DROP' (1991), 'FLAT MAN' (1991), 'EIGHT SHITS' (1994) and 'ILL WORLD' (1994), both from 'The Naked Shit Pictures'

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing from left (large pictures), CITY DROP (1991), FLAT MAN (1991), EIGHT SHITS (1994) and ILL WORLD (1994), both from The Naked Shit Pictures

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'ILL WORLD' 1994

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
ILL WORLD
1994
Mixed media
253 x 426cm
Courtesy of the artists

 

The frieze-like composition of The Naked Shit Pictures, with its striking contrasts of scale, was displayed high on the gallery walls. As the title indicates, works in the group depict the artists naked, or semi-dressed, often in conjunction with scaled-up images of faeces. These primary motifs are juxtaposed with urban/parkland scenes, giant anonymous suited bodies and the artists, or set against colour grounds. Marked contrasts in scale are a dominant feature in the series.

Barry Grayshon. “Gilbert and George – The Naked Shit Pictures (1994),” on the Pinterest website [Online] Cited 16/03/2016

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at middle, 'IN THEIR ELEMENT' (1998) from the series 'The Rudimentary Pictures' (1998) followed by 'FIVE' (1992)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at middle, IN THEIR ELEMENT (1998) from the series The Rudimentary Pictures (1998) followed by FIVE (1992)

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'IN THEIR ELEMENT' 1988

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
IN THEIR ELEMENT
1988
From the series The Rudimentary Pictures
Mixed media
254 x 528 cm
Courtesy of the artists

 

The Rudimentary Pictures, presents thirty-three new works, in which they explore such themes as alienation, sex, race, and human existence. Many of these striking pictures extend the distinctive range of images they have created exploring city life. In Gum City, City Sweat, Money City, Blood City, Piss City, Sex City and Crying City, backgrounds of London street plans are combined with map-like microscopic details of blood, sweat, tears, urine and semen, together with themselves.

Barry Grayshon. “Gilbert and George – The Rudimentary Pictures (1998),” on the Pinterest website [Online] Cited 16/03/2016

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at middle, 'FLYING SHIT WHEEL OF DEATH' (1998); and at right, 'RAIN WHEEL OF LIFE' (1998), both from 'The Rudimentary Pictures'

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at middle, FLYING SHIT WHEEL OF DEATH (1998) and, at right, RAIN WHEEL OF LIFE (1998), both from The Rudimentary Pictures

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'FLYING SHIT WHEEL OF DEATH' 1998 (installation view)

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
FLYING SHIT WHEEL OF DEATH (installation view)
1998
from the series The Rudimentary Pictures

 

Gilbert & George hardcover catalogue from MONA

 

Gilbert & George hardcover catalogue
Photo Credit: Mona/Rémi Chauvin
Image Courtesy Mona, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'RED MORNING DEATH' 1977

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
RED MORNING DEATH
1977
Mixed media
241 x 201cm
Private collection

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'BLACK JESUS' 1980

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
BLACK JESUS
1980
Mixed media
181 x 251cm
Private collection

 

In the early 1980s, Gilbert & George began to add a range of bright colours to their photographic images. They dramatically expanded their palette although black & white still remained. The series of photo-pieces that emerge during this vibrant period display a heightened reality, moving away from the earlier naturalism. They also began photographing each other as gargoyles, producing large close-ups of their faces, lit from below, grimacing horribly.

Barry Grayshon. “Gilbert and George – Mixed Media (1980),” on the Pinterest website [Online] Cited 16/03/2016

 

 

“… In a show as vast as the MONA survey, one sees the shit pictures as only a small chapter in their catalogue of would-be outrages. There are microscopic close-ups of their own sweat, blood, piss and sperm, presented as a form of decorative art. There are galleries of handsome young men, lined up like homoerotic altarpieces. There are works that excoriate religion – all forms of religion – and nationalism.

It would be an understatement to say these works sail close to the edge – they have plunged joyously over the precipice, beyond any conventions of good or bad taste. The “moral dimension” Gilbert & George seek is a systematic attempt to explode everything they see as false morality and hypocrisy. Homophobia is a constant target, as is racism and religious dogmatism. They are not the first to see organised religion as the root of all evil, but few artists or thinkers have been so consistently, so violently anti-religious.

The joke, of course, is that they look and act like conservative businessmen. Even their most confronting works are as bold and colourful as advertising billboards, or perhaps stained glass windows. They are iconoclastic non-entities making art that attracts and repels.

From behind a façade of consummate Englishness they set out to expose the grossness and depravity of the world around them. The Jack Freak Pictures (2008) use images of the Union Jack combined with grotesque morphings of their own figures that make them look like demons or mutants. The London Pictures (2011) use hundreds of daily newspaper banners, purloined from newsagents, to produce a chorus of sordidness and sensationalism.

We see two deadpan comedians enjoying the adolescent humour of exposing themselves to an audience, making wall-sized images of all those things not spoken of in ‘polite’ society. I could almost accept the idea of Gilbert & George as two overgrown children, intent on making mischief, but every so often they hit the mark with surprising force.”

John McDonald. “Gilbert & George,” on the John McDonald website December 4, 2015 [Online] Cited 11/03/2016.

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, 'MONEY' (2011) from 'The London Pictures' and, at right, 'Raack' (2005) from 'Ginkgo Pictures'

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, MONEY (2011) from The London Pictures and, at right, Raack (2005) from Ginkgo Pictures

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, 'VALLANCE ROAD' (2013); at centre left 'RIDLEY ROAD' (2013) and at centre right 'HABDABS' (2013) all from the series 'Scapegoating Pictures'

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, VALLANCE ROAD (2013); at centre left RIDLEY ROAD (2013) and at centre right HABDABS (2013) all from the series Scapegoating Pictures

 

There are 292 pieces in this series featuring whippets and hippy crack (laughing gas). The SCAPEGOATING PICTURES unflinchingly describe the volatile, tense, accelerated and mysterious reality of our increasingly technological, multi-faith and multi-cultural world. It is a world in which paranoia, fundamentalism, surveillance, religion, accusation and victimhood become moral shades of the city’s temper.

Barry Grayshon. “Gilbert and George – Scapegoating Pictures for London (2013),” on the Pinterest website [Online] Cited 16/03/2016

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, 'Citied Gents' (2005) from 'Ginkgo Pictures'; at left rear, 'COLOURED FRIENDS' (1982); and at right rear 'SPEAKING YOUTH' (1981)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, Citied Gents (2005) from Ginkgo Pictures; at left rear, COLOURED FRIENDS (1982); and at right rear SPEAKING YOUTH (1981)

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, 'RAIN WHEEL OF LIFE' (1998), and at right 'KINK' (1998), both from 'The Rudimentary Pictures'

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, RAIN WHEEL OF LIFE (1998), and at right KINK (1998), both from The Rudimentary Pictures

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, 'TONGUES' (1992) followed by 'IN THEIR ELEMENT' (1998) from the series 'The Rudimentary Pictures' followed by 'FIVE' (1992); to the right 'TOFF'S OUT!' (2014) followed by 'THEY SHOT THEM!' (2014), both from the series 'Utopian Pictures'

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, TONGUES (1992) followed by IN THEIR ELEMENT (1998) from the series The Rudimentary Pictures followed by FIVE (1992); to the right TOFF’S OUT! (2014) followed by THEY SHOT THEM! (2014), both from the series Utopian Pictures

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'THEY SHOT THEM!' 2014

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
THEY SHOT THEM!
2014
Mixed media
254 x 453 cm
Courtesy of ARNDT and Gilbert & George

 

The 26 UTOPIAN PICTURES convey, like an energy storm, the frenetic forces of an endlessly embattled state: between the voices of authority and civic order. These pictures depict a modern world in which authority and the resentment of authority, rules and rebellion, advertising and public information, dogma and warning, boasts and threats co-exist in seemingly endless proclamations.

Barry Grayshon. “Gilbert and George – Utopian Pictures (2014),” on the Pinterest website [Online] Cited 16/03/2016

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing from left to right, 'SHIT ON SPIT' (1997) from 'The New Testamental Pictures', 'BLOOD ROADS' (1998), 'BLOOD CITY' (1998) and 'PISS GARDEN' (1998) from 'The Rudimentary Pictures'

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing from left to right, SHIT ON SPIT (1997) from The New Testamental Pictures, BLOOD ROADS (1998), BLOOD CITY (1998) and PISS GARDEN (1998) from The Rudimentary Pictures

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'BLOOD CITY' 1988

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
BLOOD CITY
1988
Mixed media
151 x 127 cm
Courtesy of the artists

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, 'KINK' (1998), and at rear, 'COLD STREET' (1991)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, KINK (1998), and at rear, COLD STREET (1991)

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing from left to right, 'BLOODY LIFE No. 4' (1975), 'AKIMBO' (2005) from 'Sonofagod Pictures', 'SHITTY WORLD' (1994), 'DEAD HEAD' (1989), and 'CHRISTS' (1992) from 'The China Pictures'

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing from left to right, BLOODY LIFE No. 4 (1975), AKIMBO (2005) from Sonofagod Pictures, SHITTY WORLD (1994), DEAD HEAD (1989), and CHRISTS (1992) from The China Pictures

 

In the BLOODY LIFE pictures, from 1975, Gilbert & George strike poses with clenched fists and legs kicking. Even the introspective image of the artists in BLOODY LIFE NO.3 is embedded within a frame of alcohol and the boxing ring. The brutality of these pictures reflects their experience at the time. ‘We went through this big destructive period of the drunken scenery, exploring ourselves, exploring our dark side, going out, getting drunk, all those destructive elements’.

Barry Grayshon. “Gilbert and George – Bloody Life (1975),” on the Pinterest website [Online] Cited 16/03/2016

 

The SONOFAGOD PICTURES consist of 20 paintings that possess a darkly graven strangeness, at once archaic and ultra-modern, in which their temper no less than their signage appears deeply contemporary, ritualistic and disturbed and have all of the dramatic visual impact which one might expect to find in neo-Gothic medievalism.

Christs shows a local youth imagining a butterfly Christ with Gilbert and George wings.

 

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition’ at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, 'FORWARD' (2008) and in the middle right, 'SCAPEGOATING' (2013)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Art Exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart showing at left, FORWARD (2008) and in the middle right, SCAPEGOATING (2013)

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'ASTRO STAR' 2013

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
ASTRO STAR
2013
From Scapegoating Pictures
Picture courtesy of the artists and Mona, Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania, Australia

 

There are 292 pieces in this series featuring whippets and hippy crack (laughing gas). The SCAPEGOATING PICTURES unflinchingly describe the volatile, tense, accelerated and mysterious reality of our increasingly technological, multi-faith and multi-cultural world. It is a world in which paranoia, fundamentalism, surveillance, religion, accusation and victimhood become moral shades of the city’s temper.

Barry Grayshon. “Gilbert and George – Scapegoating Pictures for London (2013),” on the Pinterest website [Online] Cited 16/03/2016

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'FIGHT BACK' 2014

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
FIGHT BACK
2014
From the series Utopian Pictures
Mixed media
254 x 377cm
Courtesy of ARNDT and Gilbert & George

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'ONE WORLD' 1988

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
ONE WORLD
1988
Mixed media
226 x 254cm
Courtesy of the artists

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'ALL MY LIFE I GIVE YOU NOTHING AND STILL YOU ASK FOR MORE' 1970 (Gilbert)

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
ALL MY LIFE I GIVE YOU NOTHING AND STILL YOU ASK FOR MORE (Gilbert)
1970
Mixed media
Each 193 x 75cm
Private collection

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942) 'ALL MY LIFE I GIVE YOU NOTHING AND STILL YOU ASK FOR MORE' 1970 (George)

 

Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, British born Italy, 1943; George Passmore, British, b. 1942)
ALL MY LIFE I GIVE YOU NOTHING AND STILL YOU ASK FOR MORE (George)
1970
Mixed media
Each 193 x 75cm
Private collection

 

 

Museum of Old and New Art
655 Main Road Berriedale
Hobart Tasmania 7011, Australia

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Daily 10am – 6pm

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Exhibition: ‘Photo-Poetics: An Anthology’ at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Exhibition dates: 20th November, 2015 – 23rd March, 2016

Curators: Jennifer Blessing, Senior Curator, Photography, with Susan Thompson, Assistant Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

  

Photo-Poetics image

 

 

My apologies, I am feeling very poorly at the moment, so just a small comment on this exhibition.

After the trilogy of 19th century photography, now for something completely different… two consecutive postings on contemporary photography.

In this art, the photograph becomes a conceptual “speech” act, where the artists speak with photographs, working with the context of the image – the image as concept, as talk.

It’s not just that the artists make photographic objects, they push what the medium can do. As the press release observes, “Theirs is a sort of “photo poetics,” an art that self-consciously investigates the laws of photography and the nature of photographic representation, reproduction, and the photographic object.” It is art that requires contemplation and meditation on source by Self. I have included several videos and extra text to illuminate aspects of the work in the posting.

I like the intertextuality that the artists employ when pushing the boundaries of photographic practice and representation, particularly Claudia Angelmaier’s series Works on Paper (2008-) and Lisa Oppenheim’s series The Sun is Always Setting Somewhere Else (2006).

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

 

99 SECONDS OF: PHOTO-POETICS: An Anthology / Guggenheim New York

 

 

The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue examine an important new development in contemporary photography, offering an opportunity to define the concerns of a younger generation of artists and contextualise their work within the history of art and visual culture. Drawing on the legacies of Conceptualism, these artists pursue a largely studio-based approach to still-life photography that centres on the representation of objects, often printed matter such as books, magazines, and record covers. The result is an image imbued with poetic and evocative personal significance – a sort of displaced self-portraiture – that resonates with larger cultural and historical meanings. Driven by a profound engagement with the medium of photography, these artists investigate the nature, traditions, and magic of photography at a moment characterised by rapid digital transformation. They attempt to rematerialise the photograph through meticulous printing, using film and other disappearing photo technologies, and creating artist’s books, installations, and photo-sculptures. While they are invested in exploring the processes, supports, and techniques of photography, they are also deeply interested in how photographic images circulate. Theirs is a sort of “photo poetics,” an art that self-consciously investigates the laws of photography and the nature of photographic representation, reproduction, and the photographic object.

Text from the exhibition web page.

 

Anne Collier (American, b. 1970) 'Crying' 2005 from the exhibition 'Photo-Poetics: An Anthology' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Nov 2015 - March 2016

 

Anne Collier (American, b. 1970)
Crying
2005
Chromogenic print
99.1 x 134cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Purchased with funds contributed by Mr. and Mrs. Aaron M. Tighe
© Anne Collier

 

Collier’s photographs offer a straightforward presentation of found images and printed ephemera, and explore themes of appropriation, iconography, and surrogacy… Though implicitly layered with feminist critiques of mass media, Collier’s images of famous women – especially those of other artists, like Cindy Sherman, for example – can also be interpreted as oblique self-portraits.

Text from the Guggenheim artist’s web page

 

“Ephemera and mediation are at the quiet center of Collier’s Crying, one of her works in the exhibition. Seen from across the room, “Crying” looks like a photograph overlaid upon a painted surface, or perhaps a portrait integrated within a two-dimensional space. The image, indeed a photo, is divided horizontally; the upper two-thirds are white, the bottom third is black, and on the left-hand side there is a small square close-up of a distraught woman crying. The woman is Ingrid Bergman, and this is the cover of the LP that accompanied her 1943 film For Whom the Bell Tolls. The LP is upright, facing the viewer dead-on, and up close we can see that there are a number of records behind it and that the flat spaces above and below are actually a white wall and black floor. The work is in no way overwhelming; there is nothing bombastic about it. Rather, the thrill of it comes from the reading it requires. Collier deploys her references strategically – this brings to mind abstract painting, Bas Jan Ader’s I’m Too Sad to Tell You, Bergman’s films and unconventional life, and the joy of the collector in the record store. Should that not be enough, it also awakens the empathy centers that begin firing when we see someone cry. Crying is part of a series involving records – others are of The Smiths and Sylvia Plath – but it contains the tensions within all of her work: advertising and fine art, nostalgia and distance, the camera and the eye. Collier has said she is interested in photographing objects that have “had previous lives… been handed and used,” and these rely on a kind of slow intertextuality; the gradual unfolding of meaning and feeling working towards a dizzying remove. It’s disorienting and evocative, a poetics in which the camera is not just the set-up but the punchline, and all the previous lives can be felt lurking beneath the surface.”

Anonymous text from “Woman with Camera: Anne Collier’s Feminist Image Critique,” on the Deutsche Bank ArtMag 88 website Nd [Online] Cited 13/03/2016. No longer available online

 

Moyra Davey (American, b. 1958) 'Les Goddesses' 2011 from the exhibition 'Photo-Poetics: An Anthology' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Nov 2015 - March 2016

 

Moyra Davey (American, b. 1958)
Les Goddesses (still)
2011
HD colour video, with sound, 61 min.
Courtesy the artist and Murray Guy, New York
© Moyra Davey

 

In the mid-2000s, the moving image took on a renewed prominence in Davey’s work. Inspired by her deep interest in the process of reading and writing, the artist’s essayistic video practice layers personal narrative with detailed explorations of the texts and lives of authors and thinkers she admires, such as Walter Benjamin, Jean Genet, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Davey’s own writing is central to her videos. The transcript of Fifty Minutes (2006), in which the artist reflects on her years in psychoanalysis, was published as a personal essay in the artist book Long Life Cool White: Photographs and Essays by Moyra Davey (2008), and her text “The Wet and the Dry” formed the basis of the narration of Les Goddesses (2011).

Text from the Guggenheim artist’s web page

 

Erin Shirreff (Canadian, b. 1975) 'UN 2010' 2010

 

Erin Shirreff (Canadian, b. 1975)
UN 2010 (still)
2010
HD color video, silent, 17 min.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Purchased with funds contributed by Erica Gervais
© Erin Shirreff

 

 

Erin Shirreff (Canadian, b. 1975)
UN 2010 (excerpt)
2010
HD color video, silent, 17 min.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Purchased with funds contributed by Erica Gervais
© Erin Shirreff

 

Shirreff’s work in photography, video, and sculpture reflects on the distance between an object and its representation, exploring the capacities of photography in conveying a sculptural experience.

Since scale and presence were central concerns of much mid-century abstract sculpture, Shirreff often draws on images of such works as she explores the disjunction between photographs and their subjects. Sculpture Park (Tony Smith) (2006), Shirreff’s first video work, features small cardboard maquettes the artist made of five Tony Smith sculptures. Filmed against a black background, their dark forms become discernible only as “snow” (Styrofoam) slowly accumulates on their surfaces. For subsequent video works, including Ansel Adams, RCA Building, circa 1940 (2009), Roden Crater (2009), and UN 2010 (2010), Shirreff photographed printed pictures of her subjects – often landscapes or iconic modernist buildings – under varying lighting conditions in the studio, inputting the resultant images into video editing software. These videos appear at first to be long, static shots of the subjects pictured, but eventually belie their own artifice as the viewer becomes gradually aware of the texture of the image surface.

Text from the Guggenheim artist’s web page

 

Lisa Oppenheim (American, b. 1975) 'The Sun is Always Setting Somewhere Else' 2006 (detail)

 

Lisa Oppenheim (American, b. 1975)
The Sun is Always Setting Somewhere Else (detail)
2006
Slide projection of fifteen 35 mm slides, continuous loop, dimensions variable
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee

 

Oppenheim’s work explores the interactions between an image, its source, and the context in which it is encountered. The Sun is Always Setting Somewhere Else (2006) originates from photographs of the setting sun taken by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, which Oppenheim found on the image-sharing website Flickr. Holding each photograph at arm’s length in such a way that it aligns with the horizon of the setting sun in the artist’s native New York, the artist reshot the images as the sun set within the frame. Presented as a 35 mm slide show, the significance of seemingly quotidian sunsets shifts with the knowledge of who captured them and where.

Text from the Guggenheim artist’s web page

 

 

Guggenheim Examines New Developments in Contemporary Photography with Photo-Poetics: An Anthology

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Photo-Poetics: An Anthology, an exhibition documenting recent developments in contemporary photography and consisting of photographs, videos, and slide installations by ten international artists. With more than 70 works by Claudia Angelmaier, Erica Baum, Anne Collier, Moyra Davey, Leslie Hewitt, Elad Lassry, Lisa Oppenheim, Erin Shirreff, Kathrin Sonntag, and Sara VanDerBeek, the exhibition runs from November 20, 2015 – March 23, 2016, and presents a focused study into the nature, traditions, and magic of photography in the context of the rapid digital transformation of the medium.

Organised by Jennifer Blessing, Senior Curator, Photography, with Susan Thompson, Assistant Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Photo-Poetics: An Anthology offers an opportunity to define the concerns of a new generation of photographic artists and contextualise their work within the history of art and visual culture. These artists mainly pursue a studio-based approach to still-life photography that centres on the representation of objects, often printed matter such as books, magazines, and record covers. The result is often an image imbued with poetic and evocative personal significance that resonates with larger cultural and historical meanings.

The artists in the exhibition attempt to rematerialise the photograph through meticulous printing, using film and other disappearing photo technologies. Drawing on the legacies of Conceptualism and invested in exploring the processes and techniques of photography, they are also deeply interested in how photographic images circulate. Theirs is a sort of “photo poetics,” an art that self-consciously investigates the laws of photography and the nature of photographic representation, reproduction, and the photographic object. The works in the exhibition, rich with detail, reward close and prolonged regard; they ask for a mode of looking that is closer to reading than the cursory scanning fostered by the clicking and swiping functionalities of smartphones and social media. Both the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue are conceived as anthologies, as independent vehicles to introduce each artist’s important and unique practice. #photopoetics

Press release from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

 

Sara VanDerBeek (American, b. 1976) 'From the Means of Reproduction' 2007

 

Sara VanDerBeek (American, b. 1976)
From the Means of Reproduction
2007
Chromogenic print
101.6 x 76.2cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee
© Sara VanDerBeek

 

VanDerBeek’s photographs utilise a variety of formal strategies and references yet remain consistently engaged with issues of memory and the experience of time and space.

VanDerBeek first became known in the mid-2000s for photographs featuring her own makeshift sculptural configurations in which appropriated photos were combined into collages that resounded with personal and political meaning. Constructed in the studio out of found images and pieces of wood, metal, and string, these works, such as From the Means of Reproduction (2007) and Calder and Julia (2006), were created solely for the camera and were disassembled after being photographed.

Text from the Guggenheim artist’s web page

 

Kathrin Sonntag (German, b. 1981) 'Mittnacht' 2008 (detail)

 

Kathrin Sonntag (German, b. 1981)
Mittnacht (detail)
2008
Slide projection of eighty one 35 mm slides, continuous loop, dimensions variable
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee and Manuel de Santaren
© Kathrin Sonntag

 

Kathrin Sonntag (German, b. 1981) 'Mittnacht' 2008 (detail)

 

Kathrin Sonntag (German, b. 1981)
Mittnacht (detail)
2008
Slide projection of eighty one 35 mm slides, continuous loop, dimensions variable
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee and Manuel de Santaren
© Kathrin Sonntag

 

Encompassing sculpture, photography, film, and drawing, Sonntag’s work offers a complex analysis of the nature of objects and the division between fiction and reality. Using stools, tripods, tables, and mirrors to create unusual perspectives, her installations strip meaning from readily identifiable objects via photographic experiments within the confines of her studio. Mittnacht (2008) comprises eighty-one slides of found images of paranormal phenomena photographed among the artist’s studio tools and furniture. The supernatural elements are enhanced by their disorienting placement within the studio, which both creates illusions and allows errors and smudges in processing to cast an eerie shadow on certain images in the series.

Text from the Guggenheim artist’s web page

 

Claudia Angelmaier (German, b. 1972) 'Betty' 2008

 

Claudia Angelmaier (German, b. 1972)
Betty
2008
Chromogenic print, face-mounted to acrylic
130 x 100cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee with additional funds contributed by Mr. and Mrs. Aaron M. Tighe, and Rona and Jeffrey Citrin
© Claudia Angelmaier

 

Taking art historical masterpieces – and, by extension, art history itself – as her referents, Angelmaier traces the photographic representation of artworks across the pages of textbooks, classroom slides, coffee table monographs, and postcards. Cognisant that major artworks are most often encountered via reproduction rather than in person, she highlights the analogue media that have facilitated the circulation of such images for many decades…

The larger scope of Angelmaier’s concerns is particularly evident in the series Works on Paper (2008- ). Here, the artist photographs the backlit versos of postcards from museum gift shops. The artwork pictured on a card’s front appears muted yet faintly discernible, while the caption information and museum insignia on the back remain fully legible. By foregrounding the text, logos, and barcodes, Angelmaier not only examines the material realities of the postcard, but the social and economic systems both the souvenir and the work it depicts inhabit.

Text from the Guggenheim artist’s web page

 

Erica Baum (American, b. 1961) 'Jaws' (from the series 'Naked Eye'), 2008

 

Erica Baum (American, b. 1961)
Jaws (from the series Naked Eye)
2008
Inkjet print
47 x 41.6cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Purchased with funds contributed by Mr. and Mrs. Aaron M. Tighe
© Erica Baum

 

Baum takes the printed page as her primary subject, photographing fragments of found language at close range. Commingling image and text, her works often operate simultaneously as both photograph and poem… For the Naked Eye series (2008- ), Baum directs her camera into the partially opened pages of stipple-edged paperbacks from the 1960s and ’70s, capturing slivers of image and text separated by the vertical striations of adjacent pages’ brightly dyed edges. Although the compositions are each the result of a single, unaltered photograph, they operate visually as collages and veer toward abstraction.

Text from the Guggenheim artist’s web page

 

Elad Lassry (Israeli-American, b. 1977) 'Bengal' 2011

 

Elad Lassry (Israeli-American, b. 1977)
Bengal
2011
Chromogenic print in painted frame
36.8 x 29.2 x 3.8cm
A.P. 1/2, edition of 5
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee
© Elad Lassry. Photo: Kristopher McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

 

Elad Lassry (Israeli-American, b. 1977) 'Untitled (Woman, Blond)' 2013

 

Elad Lassry (Israeli-American, b. 1977)
Untitled (Woman, Blond)
2013
Chromogenic print in walnut frame with four-ply silk
36.8 x 29.2 x 3.8cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee
© Elad Lassry

 

Lassry positions his photographic works as “pictures,” entities that operate simultaneously as both objects and images. In doing so, he shifts their relationship to the viewer, inviting a broader examination of how photographs are seen and understood.

Lassry regularly presents his photographs in lacquered frames that match the colours of his bright, saturated images, or in warm walnut frames in the case of his work in black and white. The artist used this approach as early as 2008, in works such as Wolf (Blue) (2008). The continuity between frame and photo, heightened by the absence of matting, highlights the physicality of the picture without disrupting the illusion of depth in the photographic image. Lassry’s pictures derive from his own studio-based photographs as well as appropriated imagery. In both cases, the images reference the language of advertising and stock photography – and the attendant notions of desire therein. However, the would-be product is either obscured or excluded, removing the sense of purpose that drives such imagery. The artist sometimes employs techniques such as double exposure, blurring, superimposition, or collage that create an unsettling instability within his pictures. In more recent works, Lassry has incorporated sculptural elements, most often silk valances that cover significant sections of the image, as in Untitled (Woman, Blond) (2013), or looping coloured wires that penetrate it, as in Untitled (Dolphins, Two) (2014).

Text from the Guggenheim artist’s web page

 

Leslie Hewitt (American, b. 1977) 'Riffs on Real Time (3 of 10)', 2006-2009

 

Leslie Hewitt (American, b. 1977)
Riffs on Real Time (3 of 10)
2006-09
Chromogenic print
76.2 x 61cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee

 

Commingling photography and sculpture, Hewitt’s works often present arrangements of personally and politically charged materials – including historically significant books and magazines from the 1960s and ’70s as well as family photos (not necessarily her own) – that conjure associative meaning through juxtaposition.

In Hewitt’s series Riffs on Real Time (2006-2009), snapshots lay atop appropriated printed matter shot against a wood floor or carpet so that the contrasting textures of these layered materials build up and outward toward the viewer. In Hewitt’s various photo-sculptural series, the photographs begin to pointedly inhabit the space of the viewer. Positioned on the floor, their frames lean against the gallery walls, asserting their own materiality and calling attention to the space of the gallery.

Text from the Guggenheim artist’s web page

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘In Focus: Daguerreotypes’ at The J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 3rd November, 2015 – 20th March, 2016

Curator: Karen Hellman, Assistant Curator of Photographs in the Department of Photographs at The J. Paul Getty Museum

 

Unknown maker (American) 'Portrait of Young Girl with a Guitar' c. 1850 from the exhibition 'In Focus: Daguerreotypes' at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles, Nov 2015 - March 2016

 

Unknown maker (American)
Portrait of Young Girl with a Guitar
c. 1850
Daguerreotype
1/6 plate
Open: 9.2 x 15.2cm (3 5/8 x 6 in.)
Graham Nash Collection

 

 

The last in my trilogy of postings on 19th century photography features a rather uninspiring collection of daguerreotypes. Perhaps there were better ones in the exhibition.

Of most interest to me are two:

Nude Woman in Photographer’s Studio (c. 1850, below) with its almost van Gogh-esque perspective of the figure, chair and rug. The image is also notable for the daguerreotypes of men who stare down on the women from the wall behind: the objectification of the male gaze – of the photographer and of the observers. This daguerreotype also reminds me of the later haunting photographs by E. J. Bellocq (1873-1949) of the prostitutes of Storyville, New Orleans.

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey’s ghostly, evocative Facade and North Colonnade of the Parthenon on the Acropolis, Athens (1842, below). Can you imagine being shown this full plate, I repeat, full plate daguerreotype of one of the wonders of Ancient Greece just 3 years after the public announcement of the invention of photography. You would have never seen many, if any, images of foreign places in your life before, and that moment of initiation into the magic arts of photography would have taken on the deepest significance. Even now, the effect of this plate on the imagination and consciousness of the viewer is outstanding.

The rest of the daguerreotypes in this posting are more prosaic: vaguely interesting still life vanitas or portrait social documentation. If you were not told that these were images of a president of the United States, the inventor of the daguerreotype, or the writer Edgar Allen Poe they could be any “Portrait of a man” or “Portrait of a woman”.

It’s amazing how even at this early stage of photography the codification of the image, its semiotic language if you like, was intimately tied up with the caption and text that accompanied it. Of course, unless we know that it’s called the Eiffel Tower then a photograph of the object without that knowledge would mean very little; but as soon as that title is present in collective consciousness, then anywhere an image of that structure is found, it is already known as such.

Now there’s a good idea for an exhibition: the influence of the title on the interpretation of the photographic image. ‘(Un)titled images’ anyone?

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the J. Paul Getty Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

James Maguire (American, 1816-1851) '[Portrait of Zachary Taylor]' 1847 from the exhibition 'In Focus: Daguerreotypes' at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles, Nov 2015 - March 2016

 

James Maguire (American, 1816-1851)
[Portrait of Zachary Taylor]
1847
Daguerreotype
1/4 plate
Image: 7.9 x 5.4cm (3 1/8 x 2 1/8 in.)
Mat: 12.7 x 10.8cm (5 x 4 1/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

James Maguire (American, 1816-1851)

James Maguire (American, 1816-1851) Daguerreotypist, dealer in daguerreian supplies; active Tuscaloosa, Ala., before 1842; New Orleans 1842-50; Natchez, Miss., 184; Vicksburg, Miss., 1842; Plaquemine, La., 1842; Baton rouge, La., 1842; Belfast, Ireland, 1844; London, England, 1844; Paris, France, 1844.

According to his obituary, James Maguire was born in Belfast, Ireland, around 1815. By early 1842 he had learned the daguerreian art from Frederick A. P. Barnard and Dr. William H. Harrington in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Maguire was one of the earliest daguerreians to establish a permanent gallery in New Orleans. In that city on January 28, 1842 he advertised that he had opened a portrait gallery at 31 Canal Street, upstairs, where he would “remind a short time.” …

Maguire’s New orleans gallery flourished during the Mexican War, when the city enjoyed a boom as a key shipping centre and rendezvous for troops bound for Mexico…

When General Zachary Taylor passed through New Orleans in late 1847 on his triumphant return from the Mexican War, he favoured Acquire by sitting for his portrait. The Daily Picayune noted not January 11, 1848, that Macquire’s portrait was ‘the best and most striking likeness of ‘Old Zach’ we have yet seen of him anywhere.”

Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn. Pioneer Photographers from the Mississippi to the Continental Divide: A Biographical Dictionary 1839-1865. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005, pp. 411-412.

Zachary Taylor (American, 1784-1850)

Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was the 12th President of the United States, serving from March 1849 until his death in July 1850. Before his presidency, Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of major general.

Taylor’s status as a national hero as a result of his victories in the Mexican-American War won him election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs. His top priority as president was preserving the Union, but he died seventeen months into his term, before making any progress on the status of slavery, which had been inflaming tensions in Congress.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Unknown maker (American) 'Nude Woman in Photographer's Studio' c. 1850

 

Unknown maker (American)
Nude Woman in Photographer’s Studio
c. 1850
Daguerreotype
1/6 plate
Image: 9.5 x 7.6cm (3 3/4 x 3 in.)
Graham Nash Collection

 

Unknown maker (American) 'Nude Woman in Photographer's Studio' c. 1850 (detail)

 

Unknown maker (American)
Nude Woman in Photographer’s Studio (detail)
c. 1850
Daguerreotype
1/6 plate
Image: 9.5 x 7.6cm (3 3/4 x 3 in.)
Graham Nash Collection

 

Unknown maker (American) 'Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe' late May - early June 1849

 

Unknown maker (American)
Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe
late May – early June 1849
Daguerreotype
1/2 plate
Image: 12.2 x 8.9cm (4 13/16 x 3 1/2 in.)
Mat (and overmat): 15.6 x 12.7cm (6 1/8 x 5 in.)
Object (whole): 17.9 x 14.9cm (7 1/16 x 5 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Unknown maker (American) 'Portrait of a Nurse and a Child' c. 1850

 

Unknown maker (American)
Portrait of a Nurse and a Child
c. 1850
Daguerreotype, hand-coloured
1/6 plate
Image: 6.2 x 4.8cm (2 7/16 x 1 7/8 in.)
Mat: 8.3 x 7.1cm (3 1/4 x 2 13/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Charles Richard Meade (American, 1826-1858) 'Portrait of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre' 1848

 

Charles Richard Meade (American, 1826-1858)
Portrait of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre
1848
Daguerreotype, hand-coloured
1/2 plate
Image: 15.7 x 11.5cm (6 3/16 x 4 1/2 in.)
Mat: 16 x 12cm (6 5/16 x 4 13/16 in.)
Object (whole): 22.1 x 17.8cm (8 11/16 x 7 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Louis Daguerre (French, 1787-1851)

Louis Daguerre (1787 – 10 July 1851) was born in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d’Oise, France. He was apprenticed in architecture, theatre design, and panoramic painting to Pierre Prévost, the first French panorama painter. Exceedingly adept at his skill of theatrical illusion, he became a celebrated designer for the theatre, and later came to invent the diorama, which opened in Paris in July 1822.

In 1829, Daguerre partnered with Nicéphore Niépce, an inventor who had produced the world’s first heliograph in 1822 and the first permanent camera photograph four years later. Niépce died suddenly in 1833, but Daguerre continued experimenting, and evolved the process which would subsequently be known as the daguerreotype. After efforts to interest private investors proved fruitless, Daguerre went public with his invention in 1839. At a joint meeting of the French Academy of Sciences and the Académie des Beaux Artson 7 January of that year, the invention was announced and described in general terms, but all specific details were withheld. Under assurances of strict confidentiality, Daguerre explained and demonstrated the process only to the Academy’s perpetual secretary François Arago, who proved to be an invaluable advocate. Members of the Academy and other select individuals were allowed to examine specimens at Daguerre’s studio. The images were enthusiastically praised as nearly miraculous, and news of the daguerreotype quickly spread. Arrangements were made for Daguerre’s rights to be acquired by the French Government in exchange for lifetime pensions for himself and Niépce’s son Isidore; then, on 19 August 1839, the French Government presented the invention as a gift from France “free to the world”, and complete working instructions were published. In 1839, he was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician.

Daguerre died on 10 July 1851 in Bry-sur-Marne, 12 km (7 mi) from Paris. A monument marks his grave there.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

James P. Weston (American, active South America about 1849 and New York 1851-1852 and 1855-1857) '[Portrait of an Asian Man in Top Hat]' c. 1856

 

James P. Weston (American, active South America about 1849 and New York 1851-1852 and 1855 -1857)
[Portrait of an Asian Man in Top Hat]
c. 1856
Daguerreotype, hand-coloured
1/9 plate
Image: 5.4 x 4.3cm (2 1/8 x 1 11/16 in.)
Mat: 6.4 x 5.1cm (2 1/2 x 2 in.)
Open: 5.1 x 10.8cm (2 x 4 1/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

A “mirror with a memory,” a daguerreotype is a direct-positive photographic image fixed on a silver-coated metal plate. The earliest form of photography, this revolutionary invention was announced to the public in 1839. In our present image-saturated age, it is difficult to imagine a time before the ability to record the world in the blink of an eye and the touch of a fingertip. This exhibition, drawn from the Getty Museum’s permanent collection with loans from two private collections, presents unique reflections of people, places, and events during the first two decades of the medium.

Popularly described as “a mirror with a memory,” the daguerreotype was the first form of photography to be announced to the world in 1839 and immediately captured the imagination of the public. The “Daguerreotypomania” that followed may seem surprising today, as photographs have become an omnipresent part of contemporary life. In Focus: Daguerreotypes, on view from November 3, 2015 – March 20, 2016 at the Getty Center, offers the photography enthusiast and the general visitor alike a unique opportunity to view rare and beautiful examples of this early photographic process. The works in the exhibition are drawn from the Getty Museum’s exceptional collection of more than two thousand daguerreotypes alongside loans from the outstanding private collections of musician Graham Nash and collector Paul Berg.

“Today, photographs can be taken, edited, and deleted within seconds and are the principal record of our everyday lives,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “It takes a leap of the imagination to appreciate what they represented to the pioneer inventors and to the public of the day. This exhibition explores how these first captured images – fragile, one-of-a-kind works – were treasured, not only by those who were just discovering the possibilities of the medium, but by those being photographed as well.”

By the mid-1840s, exposure times and costs had decreased markedly and, as a result, daguerreotypes became more accessible to a broader audience. Over the years, attempts were made to enhance the capabilities of the daguerreotype. To make up for the deficiency of colour, many portrait daguerreotypists employed former miniature painters to hand-paint each plate; an example of which is Portrait of a Woman with a Mandolin (1860), where light specks of colour enhance the ornamentation on the costume. Daguerreotypes were also nearly impossible to reproduce, though some attempts were made, including making the daguerreotype plate into a printing plate. Examples of this process will be on view in the exhibition.

Inside the Portrait Studio

Daguerreotype studios were plentiful by the mid-19th century, and each studio developed novel ways to create distinctive and personal images for its customers. Confined to a well-lit indoor or outdoor location, many daguerreotypists would stage everyday scenes that might include painted backdrops of domestic interiors and subjects posing as if in conversation or seated at tables with everyday props. As it was extremely difficult to capture a smiling face without blurring the features, most sitters wore somber expressions. An unusual exception on view in the exhibition is Portrait of a Father and Smiling Child (about 1855).

Customers remarked on the incredible fidelity of the silver image and praised it as a means of preserving a loved one’s presence. Some family members – often children – passed away before they could pose for the camera, and their likenesses were preserved in post-mortem portraits, as in Carl Durheim’s (Swiss, 1810-1890) Postmortem Portrait of a Child (about 1852), which creates the illusion of quiet slumber rather than death.

Prominent and well-known members of society also had their daguerreotype portraits taken, which made their likenesses more accessible to the public than ever before. “The exhibition will include daguerreotypes of the Duke of Wellington, Edgar Allen Poe, and Queen Kalama of Hawaii,” says Karen Hellman, assistant curator of photographs in the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs and curator of the exhibition. “Because of the unique direct positive process, we find ourselves face to face with these historical figures.”

Outside the Portrait Studio

Some of the first subjects for the daguerreotype process were ancient monuments and far-off cityscapes that were previously accessible only to a small, educated elite. Some photographers traveled long distances to capture these remote locales; the exhibition includes images of the Parthenon in Athens, the Pantheon in Rome, and the Temple of Seti I in Egypt. Others trained their lenses closer to home, focusing on vernacular architecture or such structures of national significance as John Plumbe Jr.’s (American, born Wales, 1809-1857) 1846 image of the United States Capitol.

Despite its inability to capture fleeting moments, the daguerreotype nevertheless was used to document historical events. The exhibition includes images of parades and military festivals as well as pivotal historical moments, such as Ezra Greenleaf Weld’s (American, 1801-1874) image of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law Convention in Cazenovia, New York.

Because it was perceived as a faithful record, it was difficult to elevate the daguerreotype to the status of an art form. Nevertheless some photographers attempted to expand their studio practice to create more artistic scenes, such as The Sands of Time (1850-52), a still-life by Thomas Richard Williams (English, 1825-1871) that features books, glasses, an hourglass, and a human skull. Daguerreotypes were sometimes used for scientific experimentation, as is the case with Antoine Claudet, who used the medium as an instrument to measure focal distance.

The exhibition also features a selection of distinctive daguerreotype cases – wrapped in leather or decorated with oil painting, shell inlay, and gold foil. These elaborate cases emphasise the care that families took in protecting these treasured images, and the value they held from generation to generation.

In Focus: Daguerreotypes is on view November 3, 2015-March 20, 2016 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center. The exhibition is curated by Karen Hellman, assistant curator of photographs in the Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs.

Press release from the J. Paul Getty Museum

 

William Langenheim (American, born Germany, 1807-1874) 'Portrait of Frederick Langenheim' c. 1848

 

William Langenheim (American, born Germany, 1807-1874)
Portrait of Frederick Langenheim
c. 1848
Daguerreotype
1/4 plate
Image: 8.9 x 7cm (3 1/2 x 2 3/4 in.)
Mat: 10.6 x 8.3cm (4 3/16 x 3 1/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

As a young man, William Langenheim emigrated to the United States from Germany. He settled in Texas, where he served in the Mexican-American War under General Samuel Houston and helped to recapture the Alamo in 1836. In 1840 William moved to Philadelphia with his brother Frederick. They opened a daguerreian gallery in Philadelphia’s Mercantile Exchange, displaying samples of their work to build their clientele. Their daguerreotype business flourished, placing the brothers among the first successful commercial photographers in America. 

Upon learning of William Henry Fox Talbot’s calotype process, William Langenheim acquired the patent rights for the United States, but that investment proved to be a failure. Although the calotype was never commercially successful for them, the Langenheims used the process and exhibited a calotype panorama at the Crystal Palace Exposition in London in 1851. They were later pioneers in the use of the stereograph and the lantern slide. After William’s death, Frederick sold the photographic business.

Text from The J. Paul Getty Museum website

 

In 1841-1842, William and Frederick Langenheim opened a daguerreotype studio in Philadelphia. Known for their technical innovations the former journalists were not the city’s first but were certainly its most celebrated photographers. The brothers pioneered a technique of hand-coloring daguerreotypes (1846), purchased Henry Talbot’s United States patent for paper photography (1849), invented a system of making negatives and positives on glass (1848-1850), and introduced stereoscopic photography to the American public (1850).

Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website

 

Carl Durheim (Swiss, 1810-1890) 'Postmortem of a Child' c. 1852

 

Carl Durheim (Swiss, 1810-1890)
Postmortem of a Child
c. 1852
Daguerreotype, hand-coloured
1/4 plate
Image: 6.8 x 9.4cm (2 11/16 x 3 11/16 in.)
Object (whole): 12.7 x 15.1cm (5 x 5 15/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Carl or Charles Durheim was a lithographer and photographer with a studio in Bern, Switzerland. According to a label affixed on the back of one of his daguerreotypes, his studio specialized in lithography, pen and crayon drawings, cartes-de-visite, and daguerreotype portraits. The studio also featured a glass pavilion, a sure selling point in the early years when photographs were made using sunlight.

 

Unknown maker (American) 'Portrait of a Family' c. 1850

 

Unknown maker (American)
Portrait of a Family
c. 1850
Framed: 35.6 x 40.6cm (14 x 16 in.)
Graham Nash Collection

 

Unknown maker (American) 'Portrait of a Family' c. 1850 (detail)

 

Unknown maker (American)
Portrait of a Family (detail)
c. 1850
Framed: 35.6 x 40.6cm (14 x 16 in.)
Graham Nash Collection

 

Théodore Maurisset (French, active 1834-1859) 'La Daguerreotypomanie (Daguerreotypomania)' December 1839

 

Théodore Maurisset (French, active 1834-1859)
La Daguerreotypomanie (Daguerreotypomania)
December 1839
Lithograph
Image: 26 x 35.7cm (10 1/4 x 14 1/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Samuel J. Wagstaff, Jr.

 

Very little is known about Theodore Maurisset. He was a painter, lithographer, engraver, and caricaturist in Paris who is best remembered for his caricature of daguerreotypy published in 1839.


Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre began investigating the possibilities of copying an image from nature using sunlight and chemicals in the early 1820s and entered into a partnership in 1829 with Nicéphore Niépce, who was also experimenting with similar concepts. Daguerre made the first successful daguerreotype in 1837, four years after Niépce’s death. In the summer of 1839 the French government agreed to pay Daguerre along with Niépce’s son a pension for their lifetimes in exchange for patent rights to the daguerreotype process and then immediately transferred the rights into the public domain. Once the secret procedures and chemical formulas were made known, the need for users to pay royalties or license fees to Daguerre was eliminated, causing a great rush by opportunity seekers. The situation was very different across the Channel, where licensing fees still had to be paid to William Henry Fox Talbot for the right to use his processes. Similarly, in order to use Daguerre’s process in England, a licensing fee had to be paid to entrepreneur Richard Beard, who had the sole patent rights for daguerreotypes in England, Wales, and the British colonies.

Théodore Maurisset’s lithograph playfully presents a time when vast crowds would line up to have their likenesses made. It chronicles the many ways entrepreneurs hoped to cash in on the craze, from selling supplies and equipment to giving lessons on how to make a daguerreotype. 

Maurisset imagines a world dominated by photography and where even time, in the form of a camera-like clock, is measured by it. Notice the engravers to the right of center who are committing suicide because their jobs have been taken away by the advent of the camera. In a comically exaggerated way, Maurisset was expressing the fears of artists about a discovery many believed posed a threat to their profession.

Adapted from Weston Naef, The J. Paul Getty Museum Handbook of the Photographs Collection (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995), 32. © 1995 The J. Paul Getty Museum on The J. Paul Getty Museum website [Online] Cited 23/12/2025

 

Horatio B. King (American, 1820-1889) 'Seth Eastman at Dighton Rock, July 7, 1853' 1853

 

Horatio B. King (American, 1820-1889)
Seth Eastman at Dighton Rock, July 7, 1853
1853

 

Dighton Rock

The Dighton Rock is a 40-ton boulder, originally located in the riverbed of the Taunton River at Berkley, Massachusetts (formerly part of the town of Dighton). The rock is noted for its petroglyphs (“primarily lines, geometric shapes, and schematic drawings of people, along with writing, both verified and not.”), carved designs of ancient and uncertain origin, and the controversy about their creators. In 1963, during construction of a coffer dam, state officials removed the rock from the river for preservation. It was installed in a museum in a nearby park, Dighton Rock State Park. In 1980 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).

Seth Eastman (American, 1808-1875)

Seth Eastman (1808-1875) and his second wife Mary Henderson Eastman (1818 – 24 February 1887) were instrumental in recording Native American life. Eastman was an artist and West Point graduate who served in the US Army, first as a mapmaker and illustrator. He had two tours at Fort Snelling, Minnesota Territory; during the second, extended tour he was commanding officer of the fort. During these years, he painted many studies of Native American life. He was notable for the quality of his hundreds of illustrations for Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s six-volume study on Indian Tribes of the United States (1851-1857), commissioned by the US Congress. From their time at Fort Snelling, Mary Henderson Eastman wrote a book about Dakota Sioux life and culture, which Seth Eastman illustrated. In 1838, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician…

Having retired as a Union brigadier general for disability during the American Civil War, Seth Eastman was reactivated when commissioned by Congress to make several paintings for the US Capitol. Between 1867 and 1869, he painted a series of nine scenes of American Indian life for the House Committee on Indian Affairs. In 1870 Congress commissioned Eastman to create a series of 17 paintings of important U.S. forts, to be hung in the meeting rooms of the House Committee on Military Affairs. He completed the paintings in 1875.

Text from the Wikipedia website


In 1849 Horatio B. King operated a daguerreotypy studio in Boston at 121 Washington Street. In 1850 he moved to Taunton, Massachusetts, where he maintained various studios and residences until 1876. On at least one occasion, he collaborated with draftsman and painter Seth Eastman near Taunton. Little else is known about his life or career.

Text from The J. Paul Getty Museum website

 

Thomas Richard Williams (English, 1825-1871) 'The Sands of Time' 1850-1852

 

Thomas Richard Williams (English, 1825-1871)
The Sands of Time
1850-1852
Stereo-daguerreotype
Two 1/6 plates
Image (each): 7 x 5.9cm (2 3/4 x 2 5/16 in.)
Object (whole): 8.3 x 17.1cm (3 1/4 x 6 3/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Thomas Richard Williams (English, 1825-1871) 'The Sands of Time' 1850-1852 (detail)

 

Thomas Richard Williams (English, 1825-1871)
The Sands of Time (detail)
1850-1852
Stereo-daguerreotype
Two 1/6 plates
Image (each): 7 x 5.9cm (2 3/4 x 2 5/16 in.)
Object (whole): 8.3 x 17.1cm (3 1/4 x 6 3/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Thomas Richard Williams (British, 1824-1871)

Thomas Richard Williams (5 May 1824 – 5 April 1871) was a British professional photographer and one of the pioneers of stereoscopy.

Williams’s first business was in London around 1850. He is known for his celebrated stereographic daguerreotypes of the Crystal Palace. He also did portrait photography, now in the Getty Museum’s archives, which he regarded as his greatest success…

Williams’ first studio in Lambeth served both as business and home. Here, “Williams rapidly acquired a fine reputation as portraitist. One source describes how the vicinity of the studio was often ‘blocked with a dozen carriages awaiting the visitors at Mr. Williams’ studio.’ His portraits were exquisitely crafted, and displayed a restrained elegance which became his hallmark.”

Soon his success allowed him to open a studio separate from his home, in Regent Street in 1854. With over twenty photography studios nearby competition was keen – and included his former mentor and teacher, Claudet. “Williams, with his characteristic discretion and low-key approach, did not advertise his business or put up large signs to attract clientele. It seems, though, that the gentry beat a path to his door, and his stereoscopic portraits became highly popular.”

While the mainstay of his business was his stereoscopic (3-D) portraits, he was coming into his own with an artistic vision of what photography could and would become. He became one of the first photographers on record to shoot still life and other artistic compositions. These images became popular to the point that they became “part of the birth of a new genre that was to become the stereoscopic boom of the 1850s.” The Victorians loved them; sales boomed.

In the mid-1850s, Williams contracted with the London Stereoscopic Company to publish his images. The LSC published the work of many eminent stereo photographers, including William England, and was able to mass-produce his works, which helped meet growing demand for his prints.

The LSC published three stereoscopic series by Williams.

His “First Series” was made up of portraits, artistic compositions and still life, many taken in his studio. Dr. Brian May and Elena Vidal write: “The still life studies, with their fine detail and careful composition, showed a clear influence from the 17th century Dutch painting tradition, and a profound knowledge of the iconography surrounding this genre. Photographs such as ‘The Old Larder,’ ‘Mortality’ and ‘Hawk and Duckling’ are superb examples of the unique power of stereography, with their superb three-dimensional compositions, and wealth of detail, which, combined with an outstanding artistic sensibility, resulted in images of astonishing finesse. Another remarkable group of images in this series, entitled “The Launching of the Marlborough”, taken on 31 July 1855, was highly praised in the Victorian press, since they embodied the achievement of ‘instantaneous’ photography, executed as they were from a moving boat, and managing to ‘freeze’ the waves on the surface of the sea.”

The second series was “The Crystal Palace,” this time at Sydenham, as the original Palace in Hyde Park had been dismantled. “The quality of Williams’ original daguerreotypes from this event are such that, though they contain images of hundreds of people, individual facial features of Queen Victoria and her party are clearly discernible.” …

May and Vidal write, “Through his work, Williams is now widely recognised as pivotal in the history of stereoscopic photography, since his stereo cards were the first examples of photographic art for its own sake ever to achieve wide commercial success.”

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (French, 1804-1892) 'Facade and North Colonnade of the Parthenon on the Acropolis, Athens' 1842

 

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (French, 1804-1892)
Facade and North Colonnade of the Parthenon on the Acropolis, Athens
1842
Daguerreotype
Whole plate
Image: 18.8 x 24cm (7 3/8 x 9 7/16 in.)
Object (whole): 18.8 x 24cm (7 3/8 x 9 7/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (French, 1804-1892)

Until recently, pioneering daguerreotypist Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey was unknown in the world of fine-art photography. His extraordinary images were discovered in a storeroom of his estate in the 1920s and only made known some eighty years later. 

Girault de Prangey studied painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and learned daguerreotypy in 1841, the same year inventor Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre publicly demonstrated the process. Girault de Prangey may have learned photography from Daguerre himself, or from Hippolyte Bayard, with whom he shared a mutual artist friend. 

Aside from his creative interests, Girault de Prangey was an avid student of Ancient Near East architecture and in 1842 embarked on a three-year tour of Italy, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and Palestine. He carried hundreds of pounds of photography equipment and made more than 800 daguerreotypes. His pictures of the Acropolis are the earliest surviving photographs of the famous site. 

After returning to his home in Langres, France, Girault de Prangey made watercolor and pen-and-ink studies after his photographs and created a small-edition publication of lithographs from them. He also made stereographs of his estate and the exotic plants he collected. Girault de Prangey was apparently quite proud of his Near East photographs but did not exhibit or otherwise make them known before his death in 1892.

Text from The J. Paul Getty Museum website

 

Alphonse-Louis Poitevin (French, 1819-1882) 'The Pantheon, Paris' 1842

 

Alphonse-Louis Poitevin (French, 1819-1882)
The Pantheon, Paris
1842
Daguerreotype
1/2 plate
Image: 15.1 x 10.2cm (5 15/16 x 4 in.)
Mat: 21.5 x 15.6cm (8 7/16 x 6 1/8 in.)
Object (whole): 27.9 x 21.9cm (11 x 8 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Alphonse-Louis Poitevin, a chemical engineer, photographed landscapes near his family home, as well as his coworkers at the saltworks factory at Montmorot, France. He was known for his use of carbon printing and photolithography, both photomechanical processes. By the mid-1850s he was printing work by other photographers, including Nadar.

 

Unknown maker (American) 'Portrait of a Young Man in a Top Hat' c. 1850s

 

Unknown maker (American)
Portrait of a Young Man in a Top Hat
c. 1850s
Daguerreotype
1/9 plate
Open: 7.3 x 12.4cm (2 7/8 x 4 7/8 in.)
Graham Nash Collection

 

Attributed to Dr. Hugo Stangenwald (Austrian born Germany, 1829-1899) 'Portrait of Queen Kalama of Hawaii' c. 1853-1854

 

Attributed to Dr. Hugo Stangenwald (Austrian born Germany, 1829-1899)
Portrait of Queen Kalama of Hawaii
c. 1853-1854
Daguerreotype, hand-coloured
1/16 plate
Image: 3 x 2.5cm (1 3/16 x 1 in.)
Mat: 4.1 x 3.5cm (1 5/8 x 1 3/8 in.)
Open: 5.1 x 8.9cm (2 x 3 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Kalama Hakaleleponi Kapakuhaili (1817 – September 20, 1870) was a Queen consort of the Kingdom of Hawai’i alongside her husband, Kauikeaouli, who reigned as King Kamehameha III. Her second name is Hazelelponi in Hawaiian.

Dr Hugo Stangenwald was an Austrian physician and pioneer photographer who arrived in Honolulu in 1853.

“In January 1853m Stangenwald landed at Hilo, on the island of Hawaii, aboard a British brig. He was bound for Sydney, Australia, with his partner, Stephen Goodfellow, recently a resident of San Franciso. Together, as Stangenwald and Goodfellow, they found a profitable field of enterprise taking portraits of American missionaries and views of Hawaiian scenery during what was to have been a temporary stay. Missionary titus Coan called Stangenwald “the chief artist” and “a physician (so reported),” and summed him up as “a pleasant and pious young man.” On February 10, Coan wrote that Stangenwald and Goodfellow “are now using up all the faces in Hilo, and they soon with be through.” Can added that their prices were comparatively moderate; they charged “3$ for the smallest plates in a neat case, and a frame in proportion to the size, the amount of gold in ornamentation.” This helpful missionary went so far as to enlist the help of his colleagues in Honolulu to assist Stangenwald and Goodfellow in establishing themselves in that town.

By March 26, Stangenwald and Goodfellow were advertising the imminent opening of the daguerreian rooms next to the shoe store of J. H. Woods in Honolulu. After a week engaged in setting up their equipment and adjusting there work to the light, they were prepared to take portraits and “correct views of gentlemen’ residences, vessels, machinery and parts of the city … without reversing.” When a devastating outbreak of smallpox hit Honolulu in May, Goodfellow elected to dissolve his partnership with Stangenwald and resume his voyage to Australia. Stangenwald decided to remain in Hawaii.”

Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn. Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary 1840-1865. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000, p. 515.

 

Unknown maker (American) '[Portrait of an Unidentified Daguerreotypist Displaying a Selection of Daguerreotypes] / Daguerreotypist (?) Displaying Thirteen Daguerreotypes' 1845

 

Unknown maker (American)
[Portrait of an Unidentified Daguerreotypist Displaying a Selection of Daguerreotypes] / Daguerreotypist (?) Displaying Thirteen Daguerreotypes
1845
Daguerreotype, hand-coloured
1/6 plate
Image: 6.7 x 5.2cm (2 5/8 x 2 1/16 in.)
Mat: 8.3 x 7cm (3 1/4 x 2 3/4 in.)
Open: 8.9 x 15.2cm (3 1/2 x 6 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Unknown maker (American) '[Chinese Woman with a Mandolin]' 1860

 

Unknown maker (American)
[Chinese Woman with a Mandolin]
1860
Daguerreotype, hand-coloured
1/4 plate
Image: 9 x 6.5cm (3 9/16 x 2 9/16 in.)
Mat: 10.8 x 8.3cm (4 1/4 x 3 1/4 in.)
Open: 12.7 x 20.6cm (5 x 8 1/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Unknown maker (American) '[Chinese Woman with a Mandolin]' 1860 (detail)

 

Unknown maker (American)
[Chinese Woman with a Mandolin] (detail)
1860
Daguerreotype, hand-coloured
1/4 plate
Image: 9 x 6.5cm (3 9/16 x 2 9/16 in.)
Mat: 10.8 x 8.3cm (4 1/4 x 3 1/4 in.)
Open: 12.7 x 20.6cm (5 x 8 1/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Unknown maker (American) 'Portrait of a Girl Holding a Doll' c. 1845

 

Unknown maker (American)
Portrait of a Girl Holding a Doll
c. 1845
Daguerreotype
Framed: 24.1 x 19.1cm (9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in.)
Graham Nash Collection

 

Auguste Belloc (French, 1800-1867) 'Portrait of a Woman' May 1844

 

Auguste Belloc (French, 1800-1867)
Portrait of a Woman
May 1844
Daguerreotype
Image: 10.2 x 7.6cm (4 x 3 in.)
Framed: 24.8 x 22.9cm (9 3/4 x 9 in.)
Graham Nash Collection

 

Auguste Belloc (French, 1800-1867) 'Portrait of a Woman' May 1844 (detail)

 

Auguste Belloc (French, 1800-1867)
Portrait of a Woman (detail)
May 1844
Daguerreotype
Image: 10.2 x 7.6cm (4 x 3 in.)
Framed: 24.8 x 22.9cm (9 3/4 x 9 in.)
Graham Nash Collection

 

Auguste Belloc (French, 1800-1867)

Auguste Belloc (French, 1800-1867) was born in the beginning of the 19th century, in Montrabe, located in the Southwest of France (Haute-Garonne).

He began his career as a painter of miniatures and watercolours. Belloc’s first photographic studio was mentioned in 1851. Practicing daguerreotype, he became involved in wet collodion development and improved the wax coating process, helping the pictures to keep their wet-like luster.

But the most important research he led was about color stereoscopy (3 dimensional photography). Known for his nudes and portraits, he looked for the best way to express the reality and found a new method. This practice considered erotic photography and was declared illegal by the police in 1856 and 1860.

Marion Perceval. “Auguste Belloc,” in John Hannavy (ed.,). Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. Routledge, 2008, p. 146.

 

 

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Photography: Alexander Gardner: ‘Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review’ and Matthew Brady photographs of the Grand Review

March 2016

 

 

Mathew B. Brady. 'Untitled [Spectators massing for the Grand Review of the Armies, 23-24 May 1865, at the side of the crepe-draped U.S. Capitol, flag at half mast following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln]' 1865

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 – died New York City 1896)
Untitled [Spectators massing for the Grand Review of the Armies, 23-24 May 1865, at the side of the crepe-draped U.S. Capitol, flag at half mast following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln]
1865

 

 

The Grand Review of the Armies, Washington, 23-24 May, 1865

Location

Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D.C.

Participants

George Gordon Meade
Army of the Potomac
William T. Sherman
Army of the Tennessee
Army of Georgia

 

In this, the second of three consecutive postings on nineteenth century photography, I compare and contrast the photographs that Alexander Gardner and Mathew Brady took of the official celebrations that marked the close of the American Civil War: The Grand Review of the Armies held over two hot days in Washington, 23-24 May, 1865.

In the last post, Dark Fields of the Republic: Alexander Gardner Photographs, 1859-1872, we examined the establishment of the rivalry between Brady and Gardner. The latter had been assistant to Brady for many years including the first two years of the war, before setting up his own studio in Washington, only a few blocks from the studio of his former employer.

In this post we have a chance to compare the styles of the photographers side-by-side, an experience almost unique in the annals of early photography: two great photographers taking images of the same event, possibly at the same time (they could have been photographing on different days, it being a two day event). It is fascinating to compare the placement of the camera by each artist and the feeling that they wanted to convey in the representation of the event.

In the image Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand and mounted cavalry] (1865, below), Gardner places the camera at head high level and fills the foreground with a melee of swirling men on horses, the blurred movement of such belying the length of the exposure. In this photograph the Presidential reviewing stand beyond is of secondary importance for the photographer, compared to the atmosphere, the “air” that he creates with skirmish happening in front the camera.

By contrast, Brady positions his camera high up above the crowd looking down on the spectacle in his image Reviewing Stand in Front of the Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., May, 1865 (below), layering his image with four separate delineations: the crowd in front which grounds the image; the blur of the soldiers, wonderfully previsualised by Brady using the length of his exposure; the bulk of the Reviewing Stand; and the trees and sky beyond.

There is no right or wrong here, for they are both strong images. For a feeling of atmosphere, the surging and swirling of horses, then the Gardner is most effective but for me, the Brady is the more successful image in imparting the magic and cultural significance of the event. The reviewing stand still has a strong presence but it is the sea of blurred bodies that carries you along with the marching armies.

We can compare another two camera positions used by both artists, this time as they photographed the armies as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. In all of Gardner’s photographs of this location his camera is obliquely offset to the avenue and slightly above the crowd so that we, the viewer, only get a glimpse of the Capitol building in the distance through the dust raised by the horses hooves. There is no vanishing point in these images and the oblique perspective allows Gardner to give the viewer a wonderful sense of the scale of the Review, as wagons stretch away into the distance, as bayonets flash in the sun. Imagine the smell of such a scene, of horse shit, of sweating men in thick uniforms, the crowd with umbrellas open to protect them from the heat of the May day sun.

By contrast, in Brady’s stereocard and image Grand Review, Pennsylvannia Avenue, May, 1865 (both below), the artist positions his camera high up above the crowd with a view directly down Pennsylvania Avenue with the Capitol building clearly seen in the distance. In one image, Brady grounds his composition with the serried ranks of bystanders at the bottom of the image, while in the stereocard he allows the lines of advancing horses to lead the eye of the viewer back into the interior of the image. Again, there is no right or wrong to either approach and they both have elements to commend them. In this instance, I like the approach that Gardner has taken: the position of the camera is more intimate, and you really get a feeling of getting down and dirty in amongst the crowds at the event, viewing the bounteous strength of the army as it disappears into the hazy distance.

In general, having extensively viewed the photographs of each artist of this event, I can say that Mathew Brady seems to be the more inventive of the two artists. In the last two photographs in the posting, Brady’s Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865] (below) he does something that Gardner never did: photograph the reviewing stand from the reverse angle (as the cavalry march blearily away); and photograph the reviewing stand in the dying light, after the parade was over for the day. This is the most poignant image, focusing as it does on the empty wooden stands and the tree in front of it, not the reviewing stand. Brady could have easily moved further up the road but he pulls back and lets our eyes play over the empty scene.

Of course there is always a danger to presume that these differences have always been there. One photographer may have bitterly forced the other into taking a particular vantage point, considering that they may have been within shouting distance of each other. However, it is evident these two artists had a clear opinion of where history was going and only got reinforcement from their subject matter on these opinions. Today, we live in murky times – we can see everywhere – where nothing can be trusted in its appearance… it is a swamp. How different the “view” seemed to Brady and Gardner (mankind / war / peace / great men / great ideas) compared to the nexus in which we live today.

Finally, I note that other cultural markers of significance can be seen in one of Brady’s photographs. These are the names of the battles that appear on the canopy of the Presidential reviewing stand (see Reviewing Stand in Front of the Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., May, 1865, details below).

Elsevime (?)
Savannah
Vicksburg
Fort Donelson
Shiloh
Resaca
… River!
South Mountain
Bentonville
Pea Ridge
Stone River


These are not the names of the major battles that we remember as being the most important and mythical today: Gettysburg, Bull Run, Antietam, Atlanta. I was fascinated by these battles appearing on the Presidential Reviewing Stand, so I have included research and colour lithographs on each battle. At the time these engagements were obviously thought worthy of high honour even as now they fade from our memory.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

 

The Grand Review of the Armies: Twelve Alexander Gardner Albumens

“Beginning with the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, the Civil War was coming to an end. Two and a half weeks later, on April 26, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his Army of Tennessee to Gen. William T. Sherman. On May 10, President Andrew Johnson declared that armed resistance had essentially come to an end. The very same day down in Georgia, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, on the run since early April, was captured. As the conflict was winding down, the armies in the field were making their way back to the nation’s capital which was still in mourning from the death of President Lincoln one month earlier. President Johnson felt a change was needed in Washington and ordered a grand military parade through the streets.

Three armies – the Army of the Potomac, the Army of the Tennessee, and the Army of Georgia – participated in the Grand Review of the Armies on May 23 and 24, 1865, as thousands lined the streets. Prominent Washington photographer, Alexander Gardner, formerly the staff photographer for the Army of the Potomac under Gen. George B. McClellan, documented the procession.

Each photograph measures 3.75″ x 2.75″ and is affixed to an Alexander Gardner mount to an overall size of 9.25″ x 7.75″. Each photograph is surrounded by an ornate border, below which is printed: “Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review. Washington, D.C., May 23 and 24, 1865.” Five of the images show the review stand of the president, adorned in patriotic décor, where President Johnson, politicians, and prominent citizens of Washington sat to watch the parade. An additional five images show the soldiers, consisting of cavalry, infantry, and a wagon train, headed up Pennsylvania Avenue (in two of the photographs, the dome of the Capitol Building can be seen at the end of the street). The remaining two images show soldiers on the march and civilians in wagons and on horseback moving down unidentified streets.

Within a week of the review, the armies of the Republic began to disband and the men began their return home.”

Text from the Heritage Auctions website

 

Alexander Gardner. "Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand]," from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. "Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand]," from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. "Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand]," from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865 (detail)

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand] (and detail)
From the folio Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review.
1865
3.75″ x 2.75″
Albumen photograph on card

 

A Grand Review, Presidential Reviewing Stand

The Presidential Reviewing stand in front of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue during the Grand Review of the victorious Union armies in Washington, DC, May 23 and 24 of 1865. It is occupied by President Andrew Johnson and his cabinet, Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman and other military officers. President Johnson and General Grant are clearly visible seated next to each other in the front row.

 

Alexander Gardner. "Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand and mounted cavalry]," in the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. "Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand and mounted cavalry]," in the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. "Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand and mounted cavalry]," in the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865 (detail)

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand and mounted cavalry] (and detail)
From the folio Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review.
1865
3.75″ x 2.75″
Albumen photograph on card

 

Mathew B. Brady. 'Reviewing Stand in Front of the Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., May, 1865' 1865, printed early 1880s

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 – died New York City 1896)
Reviewing Stand in Front of the Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., May, 1865
1865, printed early 1880s
Albumen silver print
Sheet and image: 6 1/2 x 9 in. (16.5 x 22.9 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum

 

Mathew B. Brady. 'Reviewing Stand in Front of the Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., May, 1865' 1865

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 – died New York City 1896)
Reviewing Stand in Front of the Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., May, 1865
1865, printed early 1880s
Albumen silver print
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

 

Mathew B. Brady. 'Reviewing Stand in Front of the Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., May, 1865' 1865 (detail of name of battles)

Mathew B. Brady. 'Reviewing Stand in Front of the Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., May, 1865' 1865 (detail of name of battles)

Mathew B. Brady. 'Reviewing Stand in Front of the Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., May, 1865' 1865 (detail of name of battles)

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 – died New York City 1896)
Reviewing Stand in Front of the Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., May, 1865 (detail of name of battles)
1865, printed early 1880s
Albumen silver print
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

 

Elsevime (?)
Savannah
Vicksburg
Fort Donelson
Shiloh
Resaca
… River!
South Mountain
Bentonville
Pea Ridge
Stone River

 

Savannah

Throughout the war whites feared that the city was vulnerable to Union attack. Yet when the end came in late 1864, it originated not from the sea, but from the Georgia interior, as General William Tecumseh Sherman led his massive army southeast from Atlanta, sweeping through a largely defenseless state and entering Savannah on the morning of December 21, 1864. The night before, Confederate forces, several thousand strong, had staged an ignominious retreat across the Savannah River to South Carolina. The weary city, blacks and whites alike, rejoiced at the sight of U. S. troops marching down the Bay, the street running parallel to the river and showcasing the city’s largest warehouses and merchants’ offices. Truly, Sherman had liberated the city-and not only for black people, for most of the city’s whites were thoroughly sick of the carnage, and of the conflict that had robbed them of so much and turned their world upside down.

Jacqueline Jones. “Savannah in the Civil War”

 

Siege of Vicksburg

The Siege of Vicksburg (May 18 – July 4, 1863) was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate Army of Vicksburg led by Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

When two major assaults (May 19 and 22, 1863) against the Confederate fortifications were repulsed with heavy casualties, Grant decided to besiege the city beginning on May 25. With no reinforcement, supplies nearly gone, and after holding out for more than forty days, the garrison finally surrendered on July 4. This action (combined with the surrender of Port Hudson to Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks on July 9) yielded command of the Mississippi River to the Union forces, who would hold it for the rest of the conflict.

The Confederate surrender following the siege at Vicksburg is sometimes considered, when combined with Gen. Robert E. Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade the previous day, the turning point of the war. It cut off the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas from the rest of the Confederacy, as well as communication with Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department for the remainder of the war.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Kurz and Allison (American publisher, founded 1880) 'Siege of Vicksburg - 13, 15, & 17 Corps, Commanded by Gen. U.S. Grant, assisted by the Navy under Admiral Porter – Surrender, July 4, 1863' 1888

 

Kurz and Allison (American publisher, founded 1880)
Siege of Vicksburg – 13, 15, & 17 Corps, Commanded by Gen. U.S. Grant, assisted by the Navy under Admiral Porter – Surrender, July 4, 1863
1888
Lithograph, colour

 

Kurz and Allison were a major publisher of chromolithographs in the late 19th century. Based at 267-269 Wabash Avenue in Chicago, they built their reputation on large prints published in the mid-1880s depicting battles of the American Civil War. In all, a set of 36 battle scenes were published from designs by Louis Kurz (1835-1921), himself a veteran of the war. Kurz, a native of Salzburg, Austria, had emigrated to the United States in 1848.

While the prints were highly inaccurate and considered naive fantasies like Currier and Ives prints, they were still sought after. They did not pretend to mirror the actual events but rather attempted to tap people’s patriotic emotions.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Fort Donelson

The Battle of Fort Donelson was fought from February 11 to 16, 1862, in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. The capture of the fort by Union forces opened the Cumberland River, an important avenue for the invasion of the South. The success elevated Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant from an obscure and largely unproven leader to the rank of major general, earning him the nickname “Unconditional Surrender” Grant in the process (using his first two initials, “U.S.”).

The battle followed the capture of Fort Henry on February 6. Grant moved his army 12 miles overland to Fort Donelson on February 12 and 13 and conducted several small probing attacks. (Although the name was not yet in use, the troops serving under Grant were the nucleus of the Union’s Army of the Tennessee.) On February 14, U.S. Navy gunboats under Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote attempted to reduce the fort with naval gunfire, but were forced to withdraw after sustaining heavy damage from Donelson’s water batteries.

On February 15, with their fort surrounded, the Confederates, commanded by Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd, launched a surprise attack against Grant’s army, attempting to open an avenue of escape. Grant, who was away from the battlefield at the start of the attack, arrived to rally his men and counterattack. Despite achieving a partial success and opening the way for a retreat, Floyd lost his nerve and ordered his men back to the fort. On the following morning, Floyd and his second-in-command, Brig. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow, panicked and relinquished command to Brig. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner (later Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky), who agreed to accept the unconditional surrender terms offered by Grant.

Grant was courteous to Buckner following the surrender and offered to loan him money to see him through his impending imprisonment, but Buckner declined. The surrender was a humiliation for Buckner personally, but also a strategic defeat for the Confederacy, which lost more than 12,000 men, 48 artillery pieces and much equipment, as well as control of the Cumberland River, which led to the evacuation of Nashville. This army was the first of three Confederate armies that Grant would capture during the war. (The second was John C. Pemberton’s at the Siege of Vicksburg and the third Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox). Buckner also turned over considerable military equipment and provisions, which Grant’s hungry troops needed badly. More than 7,000 Confederate prisoners of war were eventually transported from Fort Donelson to Camp Douglas in Chicago; others were sent elsewhere throughout the North. Buckner was held as a prisoner at Fort Warren in Boston until he was exchanged that August.

The casualties at Fort Donelson were heavy primarily because of the large Confederate surrender. Union losses were 2,691 (507 killed, 1,976 wounded, 208 captured/missing), Confederate 13,846 (327 killed, 1,127 wounded, 12,392 captured/missing).

Text from Wikipedia website

 

Kurz and Allison (American publisher, founded 1880) 'Battle of Fort Donelson – Capture of Generals S.B. Buckner and his army, February 16th 1862' c. 1887

 

Kurz and Allison (American publisher, founded 1880)
Battle of Fort Donelson – Capture of General S.B. Buckner and his army, February 16th 1862
c. 1887
Lithograph, colour

 

L. Prang & Co. (American publisher, founded 1860) Thulstrup, Thure de, 1848-1930, artist. 'Battle of Shiloh / Thulstrup, April 6-7, 1862' c. 1888

 

L. Prang & Co. (American publisher, founded 1860)
Thulstrup, Thure de, (1848-1930), artist
Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862
c. 1888
Chromolithograph

 

Louis Prang (American, 1824-1909)

Louis Prang (March 12, 1824 – June 15, 1909) was an American printer, lithographer, publisher, and Georgist. …

In 1856, Prang and a partner created a press, Prang and Mayer, to produce lithographs. The company specialised in prints of buildings and towns in Massachusetts. In 1860, he bought out his partner, creating L. Prang & Company and began work in colour printing of advertising and other forms of business materials. The firm became quite successful, and became known for war maps, printed during the American Civil War and distributed by newspapers. …

In June 1886, Prang published a series of prints under the title Prang’s War Pictures: Aquarelle Facsimile Prints. These became popular and helped inspire a genre of such prints, particularly the series issued by Kurz and Allison. However, Prang aimed at a more modern and individual treatment, as opposed to the panoramic style of Kurz and Allison, and before them, Currier and Ives.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Shiloh

The Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, was a major battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought April 6-7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. A Union army under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had moved via the Tennessee River deep into Tennessee and was encamped principally at Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the river. Confederate forces under Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard launched a surprise attack on Grant there. The Confederates achieved considerable success on the first day, but were ultimately defeated on the second day.

On the first day of the battle, the Confederates struck with the intention of driving the Union defenders away from the river and into the swamps of Owl Creek to the west, hoping to defeat Grant’s Army of the Tennessee before the anticipated arrival of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio. The Confederate battle lines became confused during the fierce fighting, and Grant’s men instead fell back to the northeast, in the direction of Pittsburg Landing. A position on a slightly sunken road, nicknamed the “Hornet’s Nest”, defended by the men of Brig. Gens. Benjamin M. Prentiss’s and W. H. L. Wallace’s divisions, provided critical time for the rest of the Union line to stabilise under the protection of numerous artillery batteries. Gen. Johnston was killed during the first day of fighting, and Beauregard, his second in command, decided against assaulting the final Union position that night.

Reinforcements from Buell and from Grant’s own army arrived in the evening and turned the tide the next morning, when the Union commanders launched a counterattack along the entire line. The Confederates were forced to retreat from the bloodiest battle in United States history up to that time, ending their hopes that they could block the Union advance into northern Mississippi.

In the immediate aftermath of the battle, Northern newspapers vilified Grant for his performance during the battle on April 6. Reporters, many far from the battle, spread the story that Grant had been drunk, falsely alleging that this had resulted in many of his men being bayoneted in their tents because of a lack of defensive preparedness. Despite the Union victory, Grant’s reputation suffered in Northern public opinion. Many credited Buell with taking control of the broken Union forces and leading them to victory on April 7. Calls for Grant’s removal overwhelmed the White House. President Lincoln replied with one of his most famous quotations about Grant: “I can’t spare this man; he fights.” Sherman emerged as an immediate hero, his steadfastness under fire and amid chaos atoning for his previous melancholy and his defensive lapses preceding the battle. Today, however, Grant is recognised positively for the clear judgment he was able to retain under the strenuous circumstances, and his ability to perceive the larger tactical picture that ultimately resulted in victory on the second day.

The two-day battle of Shiloh, the costliest in American history up to that time, resulted in the defeat of the Confederate army and frustration of Johnston’s plans to prevent the joining of the two Union armies in Tennessee. Union casualties were 13,047 (1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, and 2,885 missing); Grant’s army bore the brunt of the fighting over the two days, with casualties of 1,513 killed, 6,601 wounded, and 2,830 missing or captured. Confederate casualties were 10,699 (1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded, and 959 missing or captured). The dead included the Confederate army’s commander, Albert Sidney Johnston; the highest ranking Union general killed was W. H. L. Wallace. Both sides were shocked at the carnage. None suspected that three more years of such bloodshed remained in the war and that eight larger and bloodier battles were yet to come.

Text from Wikipedia website

 

Resaca

The Battle of Resaca was part of the Atlanta Campaign of the American Civil War. The battle was waged in both Gordon and Whitfield counties, Georgia, May 13-15, 1864. It ended inconclusively with the Confederate Army retreating. The engagement was fought between the Military Division of the Mississippi (led by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman) on the side of the Union and the Army of Tennessee (Gen. Joseph E. Johnston) for the Confederates.

Johnston had withdrawn his forces from Rocky Face Ridge to the hills around Resaca. On May 13, the Union troops tested the Confederate lines to pinpoint their whereabouts. The next day full scale fighting occurred, and the Union troops were generally repulsed except on the Confederate right flank where Sherman did not fully exploit his advantage. On May 15, the battle continued with no advantage to either side until Sherman sent a force across the Oostanaula River, at Lay’s Ferry, using newly delivered Cumberland pontoon bridges and advanced towards Johnston’s railroad supply line. Unable to halt this Union turning movement, Johnston was forced to retire.

Unable to halt the Union turning movement caused by Sherman’s crossing of the Oostanaula, Johnston was forced to retire, burning the railroad span and a nearby wagon bridge in the early morning of May 16. After the Union repaired the bridges and transported more men over, they continued in the pursuit of the Confederates, leading to the Battle of Adairsville on May 17. There were 6,100 combined casualties: 3,500 for the Union and 2,600 for the Confederacy.

Text from Wikipedia website

 

Kurz and Allison (American publisher, founded 1880) 'Battle of Resaca – May 13-15, 1864' c. 1889

 

Kurz and Allison (American publisher, founded 1880)
Battle of Resaca – May 13-15, 1864
c. 1889
Lithograph, colour

 

Robert Knox Sneden (American, 1832-1918) 'The Battle of Crampton's Gap : 5 miles south of Turner's Gap, South Mountain, Md. September 14th 1862' 1862-1865

 

Robert Knox Sneden (American, 1832-1918)
The Battle of Crampton’s Gap : 5 miles south of Turner’s Gap, South Mountain, Md. September 14th 1862
1862-1865

 

A regional view of South Mountain in Frederick County, Md., showing the location of Crampton’s Gap in relation to Sharpsburg, Middletown, Burkittsville, and Brownsville, Md. Illustrates the position of Confederate forces (Anderson’s division commanded by Lafayette McLaws) and the Unions VI Corps, 1st and 2nd divisions during this engagement, part of the larger Antietam, or Maryland Campaign.

 

Robert Knox Sneden (American, 1832-1918)

Robert Knox Sneden (1832-1918) was an American landscape painter and a map-maker for the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was a prolific illustrator and memoirist documenting the war and other events. …

Civil War

Sneden left Brooklyn in 1861 to enlist in the 40th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, or the Mozart Regiment, of the Army of the Potomac. He served as a quartermaster when his regiment camped near Leesburg Turnpike. Starting from January 12, 1862, Sneden served on Samuel P. Heintzelman’s III Corps staff, at first, as a draughtsman on map work, later, as a topographical engineer. On March 22, 1862, Sneden embarked with Heintzelman for the Peninsula Campaign, participating in the Battle of Williamsburg, Battle of Seven Pines, Battle of Savage’s Station, and Battle of Glendale. Returning to Northern Virginia, he took part in the Second Battle of Bull Run. He was assigned to the defenses of Washington, D.C., first in Alexandria, Virginia, then at Arlington House.

In October, 1863, after the Battle of Bristoe Station, he was assigned to David B. Birney’s division, participating in the Battle of Kelly’s Ford. He was assigned to the staff of general William H. French, during the abortive Battle of Mine Run.

Prisoner-of-War

On November 27, 1863, Sneden was captured by Confederate rangers under John S. Mosby and became a prisoner-of-war for the next thirteen months. In November 1863, he was held at a tobacco warehouse next to Libby Prison, where he suffered from typhoid fever. On February 22, 1864, after a prison escape, prisoners were shipped to a new camp in Georgia. Sneden was placed in the notorious Andersonville Prison, but continued making clandestine drawings. Altogether, he sketched scenes of prison life in Savannah and Millen, Georgia, and in Florence and Charleston, South Carolina. On December 11, 1864, he was exchanged at Charleston.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

South Mountain

The Battle of South Mountain – known in several early Southern accounts as the Battle of Boonsboro Gap – was fought September 14, 1862, as part of the Maryland Campaign of the American Civil War. Three pitched battles were fought for possession of three South Mountain passes: Crampton’s, Turner’s, and Fox’s Gaps. Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, commanding the Union Army of the Potomac, needed to pass through these gaps in his pursuit of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Despite being significantly outnumbered, Lee’s army delayed McClellan’s advance for a day before withdrawing.

By dusk, with Crampton’s Gap lost and his position at Fox’s and Turner’s Gaps precarious, Lee ordered his outnumbered forces to withdraw from South Mountain. McClellan was now in position to destroy Lee’s army before it could concentrate. Union casualties of 28,000 engaged were 2,325 (443 killed, 1,807 wounded, and 75 missing); Confederates lost 2,685 (325 killed, 1560 wounded, and 800 missing) of 18,000. The Battle of South Mountain was an important morale booster for the defeat-stricken Army of the Potomac. The New York World wrote that the battle “turn[ed] back the tide of rebel successes” and “the strength of the rebels is hopelessly broken.” Lee contemplated the end of his Maryland campaign. However, McClellan’s limited activity on September 15 after his victory at South Mountain condemned the garrison at Harpers Ferry to capture and gave Lee time to unite his scattered divisions at Sharpsburg for the Battle of Antietam on September 17.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Bentonville

The Battle of Bentonville (March 19-21, 1865) was fought in Bentonville, North Carolina, near the town of Four Oaks, as part of the Carolinas Campaign of the American Civil War. It was the last battle between the armies of Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman and Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston.

As the right wing of Sherman’s army under command of Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard marched toward Goldsborough, the left wing under command of Maj. Gen. H. W. Slocum encountered the entrenched men of Johnston’s army. On the first day of the battle, the Confederates attacked the XIV Corps and routed two divisions, but the rest of Sherman’s army defended its positions successfully. The next day, as Sherman sent reinforcements to the battlefield and expected Johnston to withdraw, only minor sporadic fighting occurred. On the third day, as skirmishing continued, the division of Maj. Gen. Joseph A. Mower followed a path into the Confederate rear and attacked. The Confederates were able to repulse the attack as Sherman ordered Mower back to connect with his own corps. Johnston elected to withdraw from the battlefield that night.

As a result of the overwhelming enemy strength and the heavy casualties his army suffered in the battle, Johnston surrendered to Sherman little more than a month later at Bennett Place, near Durham Station. Coupled with Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender earlier in April, Johnston’s surrender represented the effective end of the war.

During the battle, the Confederates suffered a total of nearly 2,600 casualties: 239 killed, 1,694 wounded, and 673 missing. About half of the casualties were lost in the Army of Tennessee.[30] The Union army lost 194 killed, 1,112 wounded, and 221 missing, for a total of 1,527 casualties. The wounded were treated at the house of John Harper, with several of the wounded who died being buried next to the Harper family cemetery.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Kurz and Allison (American publisher, founded 1880) 'Battle of Pea Ridge, Ark., March 6-8, 1862' c. 1889

 

Kurz and Allison (American publisher, founded 1880)
Battle of Pea Ridge, Ark., March 6-8, 1862
c. 1889
Chromolithograph
56 x 71.8cm (sheet)

 

Pea Ridge

The Battle of Pea Ridge (also known as the Battle of Elkhorn Tavern) was a land battle of the American Civil War, fought on March 6-8, 1862, at Pea Ridge in northwest Arkansas, near Garfield. Union forces led by Brig. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis moved south from central Missouri, driving Confederate forces into northwestern Arkansas. Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn reorganised the Confederate army and launched a counter-offensive, hoping that a victory would enable the Confederates to recapture northern Arkansas and Missouri. In a two–day battle, Curtis held off the Confederate attack on the first day and drove Van Dorn’s force off the field on the second day. The outcome of the battle essentially cemented Union control of Missouri and northern Arkansas. The battle was one of the few during the war in which a Confederate army outnumbered its Union opponent.

Federal forces reported 203 killed, 980 wounded and 201 missing for a total of 1,384 casualties. Of these, Carr’s 4th Division lost 682, almost all in its action on the first day, and Davis’ 3rd Division lost 344. Both Asboth and Carr were wounded but remained in command of their divisions. Van Dorn reported his losses as 800 killed and wounded, with between 200 and 300 prisoners, but these are probably too low. A more recent estimate is that the Confederates suffered approximately 2,000 casualties in the Battle of Pea Ridge. These losses included a large proportion of senior officers. Generals McCulloch, McIntosh, and William Y. Slack were killed or mortally wounded, and Price wounded. Among colonels, Hébert was captured, and Benjamin Rives was mortally wounded, with two other colonels captured and one wounded.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Kurz and Allison (American publisher, founded 1880) 'Illustration of the Battle of Stones River, which occurred on December 31, 1862 and January 2-3, 1863' 1891

 

Kurz and Allison (American publisher, founded 1880)
Illustration of the Battle of Stones River, which occurred on December 31, 1862 and January 2-3, 1863. Commanding the forces were General Rosecrans for the Union and General Bragg for the Confederacy. General Rosecrans (left) rallies his troops at Stones River
1891
Lithograph, color

 

Stones River

The Battle of Stones River or Second Battle of Murfreesboro (in the South, simply the Battle of Murfreesboro), was fought from December 31, 1862, to January 2, 1863, in Middle Tennessee, as the culmination of the Stones River Campaign in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. Of the major battles of the Civil War, Stones River had the highest percentage of casualties on both sides. Although the battle itself was inconclusive, the Union Army’s repulse of two Confederate attacks and the subsequent Confederate withdrawal were a much-needed boost to Union morale after the defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, and it dashed Confederate aspirations for control of Middle Tennessee.

Union Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland marched from Nashville, Tennessee, on December 26, 1862, to challenge General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee at Murfreesboro. On December 31, each army commander planned to attack his opponent’s right flank, but Bragg struck first. A massive assault by the corps of Maj. Gen. William J. Hardee, followed by that of Leonidas Polk, overran the wing commanded by Maj. Gen. Alexander M. McCook. A stout defense by the division of Brig. Gen. Philip Sheridan in the right center of the line prevented a total collapse and the Union assumed a tight defensive position backing up to the Nashville Turnpike. Repeated Confederate attacks were repulsed from this concentrated line, most notably in the cedar “Round Forest” salient against the brigade of Col. William B. Hazen. Bragg attempted to continue the assault with the corps of Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge, but the troops were slow in arriving and their multiple piecemeal attacks failed.

Fighting resumed on January 2, 1863, when Bragg ordered Breckinridge to assault the well-fortified Union position on a hill to the east of the Stones River. Faced with overwhelming artillery, the Confederates were repulsed with heavy losses. Aware that Rosecrans was receiving reinforcements, Bragg chose to withdraw his army on January 3 to Tullahoma, Tennessee.

Total casualties in the battle were 24,645: 12,906 on the Union side and 11,739 for the Confederates. Considering that only about 76,400 men were engaged, this was the highest percentage of killed and wounded of any major battle in the Civil War, higher in absolute numbers than the infamous bloodbaths at Shiloh and Antietam earlier that year. Four brigadier generals were killed or mortally wounded: Confederate James E. Rains and Roger W. Hanson; Union Edward N. Kirk and Joshua W. Sill.

Text from Wikipedia website

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882) 'Grand Review' 1865

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Grand Review, Washington, D.C.
1865
Albumen photographs on Stereocard

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882) 'Grand Review' 1865 (detail)

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Grand Review, Washington, D.C. (detail)
1865
Albumen photographs on Stereocard

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 - died New York City 1896) 'Grand Review Pennsylvania Avenue, May, 1865' 1865

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 – died New York City 1896)
Grand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, May, 1865
1865
Stereocard

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 - died New York City 1896) 'Grand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, May, 1865' 1865

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 – died New York City 1896)
Grand Review, Pennsylvannia Avenue, May, 1865
1865

 

Civil War Slang

* indicates word is still in general use today

bark juice – alcohol
camp canard – army gossip
cracker line – supply line for moving troops
duds- clothes
greenbacks – money
*high-falutin – fancy
*in a huff – irritated or annoyed
knock into a cocked hat – to beat someone up
*let ‘er rip – to let something happen
lucifers – matches
not by a jug full – “no way”
*row – a fight
sawbones – surgeon
*skedaddle – run away
sparking – courting a girl
Sunday soldiers/parlor soldiers – bad soldiers, insult
*uppity – snobbish, arrogant
wallpapered – drunk
*forage – go through nearby farms for food
sacred soil – ground in Virginia
paper collar man – a rich man
vittles – food
fresh fish – new soldiers
bones – dice

 

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865 (detail)

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865] (and detail)
From the folio Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review
1865
3.75″ x 2.75″
Albumen photograph on card

 

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]
From the folio Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review
1865
3.75″ x 2.75″
Albumen photograph on card

 

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865 (detail)

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865] (and detail)
From the folio Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review
1865
3.75″ x 2.75″
Albumen photograph on card

 

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]
From the folio Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review
1865
3.75″ x 2.75″
Albumen photograph on card

 

Over a Two-day period in Washington, D.C., May 23-24, 1865, the immense, exultant victory parade of the Union’s main fighting forces in many ways brought the Civil War to its conclusion. With the nation’s new president, Andrew Johnson, declaring on May 10 that all armed resistance was “virtually at an end,” plans commenced for the review. It would far eclipse the two victory celebrations held before the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and bring Washington out of its formal mourning period for the slain president.

William Tecumseh Sherman’s Army of Georgia, just finishing its 2,000-mile march through the heart of the Confederacy, arrived from North Carolina and bivouacked around the capital near George Gordon Meade’s Army of the Potomac. Though the two armies camped on opposite sides of the river, the troops met up with one another in the taverns and brothels of Washington, D.C., where the customary rivalries led to numerous fistfights. Sherman, concerned that Meade’s army would outshine his own in the upcoming parade, was not immune from the rivalry either, ordering some last-minute drilling and spit and polish sessions to whip his ragged troops into marching shape, Sherman knew they could not match the close-order discipline that the Army of the Potomac perfected.

The parade’s first day was devoted to Meade’s force, which, as the capital’s defending army, was a crowd favorite. May 23 was a clear, brilliantly sunny day. Starting from Capitol Hill, the Army of the Potomac marched down Pennsylvania Avenue before virtually the entire population of Washington, a throng of thousands cheering and singing favourite Union marching songs. At the reviewing stand in front of the White House were President Johnson, General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant, and top government officials. Leading the day’s march, General Meade dismounted in front of the stand and joined the dignitaries to watch the parade. His army made an awesome sight: a force of 80,000 infantrymen marching 12 across with impeccable precision, along with hundreds of pieces of artillery and a seven-mile line of cavalrymen that alone took an hour to pass. One already famous cavalry officer, George Armstrong Custer, gained the most attention that day-either by design or because his horse was spooked when he temporarily lost control of his mount, causing much excitement as he rode by the reviewing stand twice.

The next day was Sherman’s turn. Beginning its final march at 9 A.M. on another beautiful day, his 65,000-man army passed in review for six hours, with less precision, certainly, than Meade’s forces, but with a bravado that thrilled the crowd. Along with the lean, tattered, and sunburnt troops was the huge entourage that had followed Sherman’s on his march to the sea: medical workers, labourers, black families who fled from slavery, the famous “bummers” who scavenged for the army’s supplies, and a menagerie of livestock gleaned from the Carolina and Georgia farms. Riding in front of his conquering force, Sherman later called the experience “the happiest and most satisfactory moment of my life.”

For the thousands of soldiers participating in both days of the parade, it was one of their final military duties. Within a week of the Grand Review, the Union’s two main armies were both disbanded.

Anonymous. “Review of the Grand Armies,” on Shotgun’s Home of the American Civil War website Nd [Online] Cited 03/03/2016. No longer available online

 

On May 10, Johnson had declared that the rebellion and armed resistance was virtually at an end, and had made plans with government authorities for a formal review to honour the troops. One of his side goals was to change the mood of the capital, which was still in mourning following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln the month before at Ford’s Theater. Three of the leading Federal armies were close enough to participate in the procession. The Army of the Tennessee arrived via train. The Army of Georgia, also under the command of William T. Sherman, had just completed its Carolinas Campaign and had accepted the surrender of the largest remaining Confederate army, that of Joseph E. Johnston. It arrived from North Carolina in mid-May and camped around the capital city in various locations, across the Potomac River from the Army of the Potomac, fresh off its victories over Robert E. Lee in Virginia. It had arrived in Washington on May 12. Officers in the three armies who had not seen each other for some time (in some cases since before the war) communed and renewed acquaintances, while at times, the common infantrymen engaged in verbal sparring (and sometimes fisticuffs) in the town’s taverns and bars over which army was superior. Sherman, concerned that his Westerners would not present as polished an image as the eastern army, drilled his forces and insisted that uniforms be cleaned, buttons and brass shined, and that bayonets glistened.

At 9:00 a.m. on a bright sunny May 23, a signal gun fired a single shot and Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, the victor of Gettysburg, led the estimated 80,000 men of Army of the Potomac down the streets of Washington from Capitol Hill down Pennsylvania Avenue past crowds that numbered into the thousands. The infantry marched with 12 men across the road, followed by the divisional and corps artillery, then an array of cavalry regiments that stretched for another seven miles. The mood was one of gaiety and celebration, and the crowds and soldiers frequently engaged in singing patriotic songs as the procession of victorious soldiers snaked its way towards the reviewing stand in front of the White House, where President Johnson, general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant, senior military leaders, the Cabinet, and leading government officials awaited. At the head of his troops, Meade dismounted when he arrived at the reviewing stand and joined the dignitaries to salute his men, who passed for over six hours.

On the following day at 10:00 a.m., Sherman led the 65,000 men of the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of Georgia, with an uncharacteristic semblance of military precision, past the admiring celebrities, most of which had never seen him before. For six hours under bright sunshine, the men who had marched through Georgia and those who had defeated John Bell Hood’s army in Tennessee now paraded in front of joyous throngs lining the sidewalks. People peered from windows and rooftops for their first glimpse of this western army. Unlike Meade’s army, which had more military precision, Sherman’s Georgia force was trailed by a vast crowd of people who had accompanied the army up from Savannah – freed blacks, labourers, adventurers, scavengers, etc. At the very end was a vast herd of cattle and other livestock that had been taken from Carolina farms.

Within a week after the celebrations, the two armies were disbanded and many of the volunteer regiments and batteries were sent home to be mustered out of the army.

Although there would be further guerrilla actions (particularly with respect to armed criminal factions, such as the James-Younger Gang) and racial violence in the South (including the rise of the Ku Klux Klan), military conflict between the North and the South had ended. The disbandment of the Union armies and the return home of fathers, brothers, and sons signalled to the population at large that they could begin their return to a normal life and that the end had come for the American Civil War.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Matthew Brady (American, 1822-1896) 'Self Portrait' c. 1861-1862

 

Matthew Brady (American, 1822-1896)
Self Portrait
c. 1861-1862

 

James Gardner (American, 1832 - ?) 'Portrait of Alexander Gardner' 1863

 

James Gardner (American, 1832 – ?)
Portrait of Alexander Gardner
1863
Albumen silver print

 

Alexander Gardner, shown here in an 1863 Albumen silver print, died at age 61 on Dec. 10, 1882 in his home on Virginia Avenue SW. He was buried two days later in Northeast Washington’s Glenwood Cemetery after a large, well-attended funeral that was noted by the press. Mathew B. Brady, his former employer and rival Civil War photographer, outlived him by almost 14 years. But Brady, who was in his early 70s, died penniless in New York City on Jan. 15, 1896. His body was shipped to Washington, where he was buried in Congressional Cemetery in his late wife’s family plot. He was placed in a grave already occupied by two relatives, after a funeral that cost $6. The two photography pioneers, who once had Washington studios blocks from each other, are now at rest just four miles apart.

Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]
From the folio Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review
1865
3.75″ x 2.75″
Albumen photograph on card

 

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865 (detail)

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865] (and detail)
From the folio Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review
1865
3.75″ x 2.75″
Albumen photograph on card

 

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865 (detail)

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]
From the folio Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review
1865
3.75″ x 2.75″
Albumen photograph on card

 

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner. 'Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865 (detail)

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Untitled [Gand Review, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., May, 1865] (and detail)
From the folio Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review
1865
3.75″ x 2.75″
Albumen photograph on card

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882) 'Untitled [Gand Review, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882) 'Untitled [Gand Review, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Untitled [Gand Review, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]
From the folio Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review
1865
3.75″ x 2.75″
Albumen photograph on card

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882) 'Untitled [Gand Review, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882) 'Untitled [Gand Review, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882) 'Untitled [Gand Review, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' from the folio 'Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review' 1865 (detail)

 

Alexander Gardner (Scottish-American, 1821-1882)
Untitled [Gand Review, Washington, D.C., May, 1865] (and detail)
From the folio Memories of the War. Illustrations of the Grand Review
1865
3.75″ x 2.75″
Albumen photograph on card

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 - died New York City 1896) 'Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' 1865

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 – died New York City 1896)
Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]
1865

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 - died New York City 1896) 'Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' 1865 (detail)

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 – died New York City 1896)
Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865] (detail)
1865

 

Detail of the photograph of the reviewing stand in front of the White House shows a number of VIPs, including (left to right) Ulysses S. Grant, the blurred figure of Edwin Stanton, President Andrew Johnson, Wesley Merritt (as commander of the cavalry corps in Philip Sheridan’s absence, he sat next to the president as his corps passed), George Gordon Meade, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, Postmaster William Dennison, William T. Sherman, and Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs

Text from the Library of Congress

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 - died New York City 1896) 'Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]' 1865

 

Mathew B. Brady (born Lake George, NY 1823 – died New York City 1896)
Untitled [Presidential reviewing stand, Washington, D.C., May, 1865]
1865

 

Presidential reviewing stand from the reverse angle. After the crowds have gone… exposure time can be gauged from the blurred figures.

 

 

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