“Frank was not afraid to put himself out there as an artist, challenging himself to see differently, to develop further as an artist and as a human being.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
While the photographs from his groundbreaking photobook The Americans (1958) have defined the artistic reputation and legacy of Swiss-American photographer Robert Frank and his influence on a later generation of documentary photographers, I am so grateful to the man for not retreating into his shell as so many artists do, finding a style which makes them famous and makes them money and then repeating the formula over and over again ad nauseam.
Frank was ever creative, always exploring new ways of filmic and photographic expression. I admire that. While “his perpetual experimentation and collaborations across various mediums” did not produce another seminal body of work – indeed Arthur Lubow has argued that if the aim of this exhibition is to reposition Frank’s reputation through showcasing six decades of later work the problem being that his genius as a photographer did not carry over into filmmaking1 – no matter!
Frank was not afraid to put himself out there as an artist, challenging himself to see differently, to develop further as an artist and as a human being. As he said, “I think of myself, standing in a world that is never standing still … I’m still in there fighting, alive because I believe in what I’m trying to do now.”
Critical to his new way of seeing after The Americans was Frank’s move beyond a single, static image into combining multiple negatives, images, text together. Recently I again delved through my copy of Frank’s 1972 photobook The Lines of My Hand, which “demonstrates Frank’s particular interest in the visual effects and meaning produced from combinations of images, either within a single photograph or formed by printing multiple negatives together to create a dense montage.” (Text from MoMA)
What’s so striking about the photobook is its tightly packed nature, its pages filled with ideas and images. Frank was using his intuition to construct a new language of photography: multiple, diverse and overlaid perspectives complicit with narratives not external to the self but an internal vision of a felt reality, visions that exist somewhere between documentary and fiction.
Here is abstraction and isolation, loneliness in the dream… the white line eternally disappearing into the distance in 34th Street (1949); tickertape floating in the air in Wall Street (1951); stiff men in bowler hats in City of London (1951) and the lines of the hand in Untitled [The Lines of the Hand] (Paris, 1949-1951, below) with the declaration ‘Sciences and Mysteries’. Sciences and mysteries, realities and abstractions, the known and unknown. The Lines of My Hand are the song lines of Frank’s life, the photographs breathing into existence his innermost thoughts and truths. Who am I? What do I believe in?
“Outside it is snowing, no waves at all. The beach is white, the fence posts are grey. I am looking back into a world gone forever. Thinking of a time that will never return. A book of photographs is looking at me. Twenty-five years of looking for the right road. Post cards from everywhere. If there are any answers I have lost them.” (Opening words from The Lines of My Hand)
“Frank felt trapped by the expectations and pigeonholing that the lionization of “The Americans” induced, and he recoiled in horror at the prospect of repeating himself. Beyond that, he gave various explanations over the years for why he abandoned the 35 mm camera that he brandished like a sorcerer’s wand. He explained that he had lost faith in the capacity of a single photograph to convey the truth. And his search had turned inward. “The truth is the way to reveal something about your life, your thoughts, where you stand,” he said.”2 This turning inwards was facilitated by his move in 1970 with his wife June Leaf to the rural town of Mabou on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada: “what I wanted to photograph was not really what was in front of my eyes but what was inside.”
Personally I don’t think it matters that the later photographs are not as memorable as those in The Americans. What matters is that Frank believed in what he was doing: it was his truth telling. “I am no longer the solitary observer turning away after the click of the shutter,” Frank declared. “Instead I’m trying to recapture what I saw, what I heard and what I feel. What I know!”
Finally, in the film Life Dances On (1980), his wife looks at the camera and asks Frank, “Why do you make these pictures?” In an introduction to the film’s screening, he answered: “Because I am alive.”
The Museum of Modern Art announces Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue, an exhibition that will provide new insights into the interdisciplinary and lesser-known aspects of photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank’s expansive career. The exhibition will delve into the six decades that followed Frank’s landmark photobook The Americans (1958) until his death in 2019, highlighting his perpetual experimentation and collaborations across various mediums. Coinciding with the centennial of his birth and taking its name from the artist’s 1980 film, Life Dances On will explore Frank’s artistic and personal dialogues with other artists and with his communities. The exhibition will feature more than 200 objects, including photographs, films, books, and archival materials, drawn from MoMA’s extensive collection alongside significant loans.
Text from the MoMA website
Unknown photographer Robert Frank, shown from behind, making “Pull My Daisy” 1959 John Cohen/John Cohen Irrevocable Trust, via The Museum of Modern Art, NY
Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) Pull My Daisy 1959 Robert Frank/The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, via the Museum of Modern Art
Pull My Daisy incorporated improvisation by actors, artists and poets.
“I think of myself, standing in a world that is never standing still,” the artist Robert Frank once wrote. “I’m still in there fighting, alive because I believe in what I’m trying to do now.” Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue – the artist’s first solo exhibition at MoMA – provides a new perspective on his expansive body of work by exploring the six vibrant decades of Frank’s career following the 1958 publication of his landmark photobook, The Americans.
Coinciding with the centennial of Frank’s birth, the exhibition will explore his restless experimentation across mediums including photography, film, and books, as well as his dialogues with other artists and his communities. It will include some 200 works made over 60 years until the artist’s death in 2019, many drawn from MoMA’s extensive collection, as well as materials that have never before been exhibited.
The exhibition borrows its title from Frank’s poignant 1980 film, in which the artist reflects on the individuals who have shaped his outlook. Like much of his work, the film is set in New York City and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where he and his wife, the artist June Leaf, moved in 1970. In the film, Leaf looks at the camera and asks Frank, “Why do you make these pictures?” In an introduction to the film’s screening, he answered: “Because I am alive.”
The Museum of Modern Art presents Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue, an exhibition that provides new insights into the interdisciplinary and lesser-known aspects of photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank’s expansive career. On view from September 15, 2024, to January 11, 2025, the exhibition delves into the six decades that followed Frank’s landmark photobook The Americans (1958) until his death in 2019, highlighting his perpetual experimentation and collaborations across various mediums. Coinciding with the centennial of the artist’s birth, and taking its name from his 1980 film, Life Dances On explores Frank’s artistic and personal dialogues with other artists and with his communities. The exhibition features more than 250 objects, including photographs, films, books, and archival materials, drawn from MoMA’s extensive collection alongside significant loans. Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue is organised by Lucy Gallun, Curator, with Kaitlin Booher, Newhall Fellow, and Casey Li, 12 Month Intern, Department of Photography.
“This exhibition offers visitors a fresh perspective on this beloved and influential artist,” said Gallun. “The enormous impact of Frank’s book The Americans meant that he is often remembered as a solo photographer on a road trip, a Swiss artist making pictures of an America that he traversed as an outsider. And yet, in the six decades that followed, Frank continually forged new paths in his work, often in direct artistic conversation with others, and these contributions warrant closer attention. The pictures, films, and books he made in these years are evidence of Frank’s ceaseless creative exploration and observation of life, at once searing and tender.”
Organised loosely chronologically, Life Dances On focuses on the theme of dialogue in Frank’s work and reflects on the significance of individuals who shaped his outlook. Frank’s own words are present throughout the exhibition – in the texts he scrawled directly onto his photographic negatives, in the spoken narrative accompanying his films, and in quotes woven into the exhibition catalogue published by MoMA in conjunction with the exhibition. Also revealed throughout the exhibition is Frank’s innovation across multiple mediums, from his first forays into filmmaking alongside other Beat Generation artists, with films such as Pull My Daisy (1959), to the artist’s books he called “visual diaries,” which he produced almost yearly over the last decade of his life.
By focusing on dialogue and experimentation, the exhibition explores such enduring subjects as artistic inspiration, family, partnership, loss, and memory through the lens of Frank’s own personal traumas and life experiences. Among the works presented in the exhibition is a selection of photographs drawn from Frank’s footage for his 1980 film Life Dances On. These works reflect on the significance of individuals who shaped Frank’s own outlook – in this case, his daughter Andrea and his friend and film collaborator Danny Seymour. Like much of his work, the film finds its setting in Frank’s own communities in New York City and in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where he and his wife, the artist June Leaf, moved in 1970. An abundance of material was loaned to the exhibition by the June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, including works from the artist’s archives that are shown publicly for the first time, as well as personal artefacts, correspondence, and book maquettes. …
MoMA has been exhibiting Frank’s work since 1950, early in his career. In 1962, the Museum featured Frank’s work in a two-person exhibition alongside photographer Harry Callahan. Since then, the Museum has regularly collected and exhibited his work, and today the Museum’s collection includes over 200 of Frank’s photographs. That collection has been built through important gifts from Robert and Gayle Greenhill in 2013, and more recently, a promised gift to the Museum from Michael Jesselson, comprising a remarkable group of works, many of which are presented at MoMA for the first time in this exhibition. In 2015, the artist made an extraordinary gift of his complete film and video works, spanning the entirety of his career in filmmaking. MoMA’s Department of Film has since been engaged in a multiyear restoration project of these materials. Building upon this significant history with the Museum, Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue is the first solo exhibition of Robert Frank’s work at MoMA.
Publication
The accompanying publication, edited by Gallun, features photographs, films, books, and archival materials, layered with quotes from Frank on his influences and process. Three scholarly essays, excerpts from previously unpublished video footage, and a rich visual chronology together explore Frank’s ceaseless creative exploration and observation of life. 192 pages, 150 illustrations. Hardcover, $60. ISBN: 978-1-63345-164-3. Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Press release from MoMA
Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) Beauty Contest, Chinatown c. 1968 Robert Frank/The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, via The Museum of Modern Art, NY
Frank collaged multiple prints of news photographers to convey a sense of the frenzy.
When Frank was moving to Nova Scotia, Frank photographed a bulletin board in his East Village loft, making one picture out of many.
The Beginning of Something New
The summer of 1958 marked a shift in Frank’s work. He had already finalised the selection of pictures that would appear in his photobook The Americans. For a new series, Frank photographed passersby from the window of a New York bus as it traversed Fifth Avenue. The pictures – a sequence of frames that appear linked by his own movement – indicated a notable moment of change beyond a single, static image. In 1972 he reflected on their significance: “When I selected the pictures and put them together I knew and I felt that I had come to the end of a chapter. And in it was the beginning of something new.”
Frank was also on the lookout for cinematic scenes. On the night of Independence Day, he photographed revelers sleeping on the beach among the holiday detritus. The stillness of the nighttime images contrasts with the daylit beach scenes he captured of his family on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where Frank also shot his first film that same summer. Although it would remain unfinished, the film anticipated the collaborative and experimental spirit of his work to come.
The Way These Painters Lived
From his window across a courtyard, Frank could watch the painter Willem de Kooning as he paced in his studio and contemplated his canvas. “I think that the people that influenced me most were the abstractionist painters I met; and what influenced me strongly was the way these painters lived,” Frank said of his time embedded in New York City’s vibrant arts community. “They were people who really believed in what they did. So it reinforced my belief that you could really follow your intuition. … You could photograph what you felt like.”
During these years, Frank continued to earn a living by photographing artists and writers for magazine print commissions, while also embracing the creative challenges of filmmaking alongside photography. His proximity to a diverse group of painters, sculptors, writers, and poets in the late 1950s would lead to boundary-pushing explorations like his first finished film, Pull My Daisy (1959), co-directed with artist Alfred Leslie, and filmed in Leslie’s own loft.
The Truth is Somewhere Between the Documentary and the Fictional
In 1968 Frank premiered his first feature-length film, Me and My Brother, at the Venice Film Festival. Built as a film within a film, the story prompts questions about participation in traditional society and culture, and about what experiences of life are understood as valid. “The truth is somewhere between the documentary and the fictional, and that is what I try to show,” Frank explained. “What is real one moment has become imaginary the next.”
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as Frank turned his camera toward friends and neighbours, he also captured events of the time – manifested in political protests, music, poetry, and other aspects of social change and counterculture. During this period, Frank contributed cinematography to films directed by others and also spearheaded his own projects, which featured both recognisable figures and everyday folks on the street. In Me and My Brother, one character advises another: “Don’t make a movie about making a movie. MAKE IT. … Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you didn’t even have to have a piece of celluloid between you and what you saw?”
The Lines of My Hand
Frank’s photobook The Lines of My Hand offers a retrospective view of his career up until the date of its publication, in 1972. Pairing text and image, the book begins with early photographs made in Switzerland in the 1940s and ends with montages of film strips from Frank’s films of the 1950s and ’60s. Its title, perhaps a rumination on one’s past and one’s fate, is drawn from a sign pictured in a 1949 photograph of a Paris fortuneteller’s booth, on view here. This section of the exhibition also brings together a selection of older photographs that appear in the first Lustrum edition of the book.
The Lines of My Hand demonstrates Frank’s particular interest in the visual effects and meaning produced from combinations of images, either within a single photograph or formed by printing multiple negatives together to create a dense montage. In later editions, in keeping with his practice of revisiting and rearranging his images, Frank made changes to the photographs and graphic design and updated the book with his most recent works, using photocopies and notebooks to sequence the book’s new iterations.
In Front of Me I Have the Sea
In 1970 Frank and Leaf relocated from New York City to the rural town of Mabou on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. The photographer Walker Evans, Frank’s friend and mentor, came to visit them soon after at their old fisherman’s cabin overlooking the sea. Evans’s photographs capture the house’s hulking wood stove and the clothesline strung outside it, elements of the couple’s daily routine that also became material for artistic work. Living there, they “learned a completely different rhythm of life.”
In Mabou, Frank’s work shifted its focus, becoming a means of processing his feelings, including profound grief. His change of environment, he acknowledged, had been significant: “All of a sudden you are in the company of something very powerful. … [But] what I wanted to photograph was not really what was in front of my eyes but what was inside.” For Frank, the sea was a dynamic ground against which to measure his life. He reflected, “I have a lot in back of me and that’s a tremendous pull, of what has happened in my life, backward. And in front of me I have the sea.”
There Are Ways of Strengthening the Feeling
In the 1970s, Frank began regularly incorporating an instant print process, commonly known by the brand name Polaroid, into his work. He valued the immediacy of Polaroids, which enabled him to create an image instantly but then consider a work’s full composition over time. “I am no longer the solitary observer turning away after the click of the shutter,” Frank declared. “Instead I’m trying to recapture what I saw, what I heard and what I feel. What I know!”
Throughout the rest of his career, Frank experimented with images by scratching words directly into the negatives and collaborating with printers to enlarge them into bigger prints and combinations. This process became especially significant for him after the sudden death of his daughter, Andrea, late in 1974. Frank began constructing monuments out of wood and materials around him in the landscape, which then figured into photographic memorials. “The Polaroid negative allows me to add that on it if it isn’t in the picture – I can put a word in it, I can combine two pictures – there are ways of strengthening the feeling I have,” Frank described.
The Video Camera Is Like A Pencil
In the early 1980s, Frank started using a Sony Portapak, a portable video camera that allowed him to instantly play back recordings. He could then erase, edit, and add new content on the tape. On video, Frank brought together fragments that at first seem unrelated, but through the choices he made while assembling them, offer a window into his personal preoccupations. Video, he noted, is “like a pencil. You can say things that you could never say with film.”
Home Improvements (1985), Frank’s first work in video, was made between New York City and Mabou. From it, the artist made a new work in which he captured still images of the footage using a large-format Polaroid camera. The resulting photographs feature snippets of found text; portraits of family members; and – in the last image – Frank himself, captured in a reflection behind his camera. “I’m always looking outside, trying to look inside,” Frank narrates in the video. “Trying to say something that’s true. But maybe nothing is really true. Except what’s out there. And what’s out there is always different.”
Memory Helps You – Like Stones In A River Help You To Reach The Shore
In his last decades, Frank’s work centered ever more upon his own life. Instead of travelling and looking outward, he found stories and compositions by panning his camera around his homes. His camera lingered on collected objects: figurines on the windowsill, postcards pinned to the wall, the typewriter on the table, and – always – photographs from years earlier. “I want to use these souvenirs of the past as strange objects from another age,” he once wrote. “They are partly hidden and curiously resonant, bringing information, messages which may or may not be welcome, may or may not be real.”
Frank also collected memories in his “visual diaries,” small, softcover books in which he, with his assistant, the photographer A-chan, arranged new and old pictures in sequences with personal resonance. Toward the end of his life, these photobooks became his main artistic output. Looking back at the souvenirs of his life – the settings in which it had taken place and the people who populated it – was incredibly generative: “Memory helps you,” he mused. “Like stones in a river help you to reach the shore.”
Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) Bonjour – Maestro, Mabou 1974 Robert Frank/The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, via The Museum of Modern Art, NY
Frank hung an earlier landscape collage from a clothesline in a see-through frame, with the same landscape visible behind it.
After the death of Andrea Frank, his young daughter, in a plane crash, Frank memorialised her in a collage that he embellished with paint and a heartfelt, handwritten message.
Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) Los Angeles – February 4th – I Wake Up – Turn On TV 1979 Robert Frank/The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, via The Museum of Modern Art, NY
In words and pictures he expressed a forlorn mood in a hotel room.
Robert Frank never recovered from the success of “The Americans.” On its publication in the United States in 1959, the book was initially excoriated as un-American, particularly in the photography magazines, for its sour, disillusioned take on life in this country. The rich looked bored, the poor desperate, the city fathers fatuous, and the flags threadbare or soiled. What’s more, specialists in photography faulted his technique for muddiness, grain and blur.
But in a slow burn, Frank’s willful violation of the conventional rules of photography was understood to serve the purpose of personal expression, and his dissection of national alienation and social divides was deemed prophetic. The smoke blew away, and “The Americans” stood clearly as a towering monument, one of the most important and influential books in the history of photography.
Frank hated that. In the early ’60s, he renounced still photography in favor of filmmaking. When he went back in the ’70s to making photographs – “in the time left over between films or film projects,” as he put it – he eschewed the street photography that had established his reputation. Instead, he mostly made studio or landscape pictures, which he liked to splice together into montages or embellish with scratched and stenciled words.
It’s this late work – if such a rubric can be applied to the six decades of movie, video and photo production that preceded his death at 94 in 2019 – that is the focus of “Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue,” opening Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art. Curated by Lucy Gallun, the exhibition marks the centenary of Frank’s birth and is his first solo show at MoMA. Although there are some omissions (his return to documentary photography in Beirut in 1991, for example), it presents as eloquent a case as can be made for this later art, often left in the shade by what came before.
Frank felt trapped by the expectations and pigeonholing that the lionization of “The Americans” induced, and he recoiled in horror at the prospect of repeating himself. Beyond that, he gave various explanations over the years for why he abandoned the 35 mm camera that he brandished like a sorcerer’s wand. He explained that he had lost faith in the capacity of a single photograph to convey the truth. And his search had turned inward. “The truth is the way to reveal something about your life, your thoughts, where you stand,” he said. He believed film was a better way to do that.
Film (joined by video in the ’80s) allowed Frank to record his feelings directly. In addition to clips from his movies and videos, the museum is showing “Robert Frank’s Scrapbook Footage,” an assemblage of previously unseen diaristic moving images, stitched together by Frank’s longtime editor, Laura Israel, and art director Alex Bingham – most ambitiously, in a five-screen installation that jumps between shots taken in the house in Mabou, Nova Scotia, and the apartment on Bleecker Street in the East Village in New York that Frank shared with his wife, artist June Leaf, as well as visits he made to his parents in Switzerland (where he was born) and to Russia. Topping it off, MoMA, which received Frank’s entire film and video archive as a gift from the artist, will present a complete motion-picture retrospective, from Nov. 20 to Dec. 11.
The aim is to reposition Frank’s reputation by showcasing the art that occupied most of his life. The trouble is: His genius as a photographer did not carry over to filmmaking. That was evident from the outset. His first completed movie, “Pull My Daisy,” a collaboration with artist Alfred Leslie, incorporated improvisation by the actors within the framework of a rehearsed script. With a voice-over by Jack Kerouac and appearances by Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso and Larry Rivers, the film resonates as a historical document of the Beat movement. As a movie, though, its madcap bohemianism is a clunky, leaden bore. First screened publicly in 1959 on a double bill with John Cassavetes’ similarly improvised “Shadows,” it wilts, woefully dated, when viewed today alongside that other milestone of independent American cinema.
A self-portrait of the artist, in September 1993. Frank caught himself studying a strip of filmed images.
Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) The Suffering, the Silence of Pablo 1995 Robert Frank/June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, via Museum of Modern Art, NY
After the suicide of his son, Pablo Frank, the photographer composed this testament to his young, painful life.
“In the cinematic quality of Sternfeld’s photographs lies everlasting revelation into the human condition as we live and die on this, our one Earth.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Joel Sternfeld – along with artists like William Eggleston, Paul Outerbridge Jr., Stephen Shore and Saul Leiter among others – was a pioneer of colour photography, his large format photographs picturing American contemporary life and identity.
His elegant, luxurious, and slightly twisted if not surreal look at the American landscape and life can be seen as “a darkly funny, bleak, but not unromantic vision of America.” Sternfeld, “peels back layers of familiar landscapes to reveal the ironies, contradictions, and hidden stories that shape the American experience.”
Both utopian and dystopian at one and the same time, Sternfeld’s photographs have both a quiet eloquence and an unsettling kick in the pants within the same image, for example updating the historical lineage of Walker Evans (documentary) and Robert Frank (outsider) in colour photographs framing the uneasy nature of American life.
Sternfeld’s Pendleton, Oregon (1980, below) reformulates in colour the tract housing photographs of Bill Owens, William A. Garnett or Robert Adams. His Domestic Workers Waiting for the Bus, Atlanta, Georgia (April 1983, below) comments sublimely, subliminally, to the ongoing racism in the genteel South. “There’s no need for a “white’s only” sign, it’s implied… The picture speaks to America’s structural racism and its racial wealth gap with a whisper, not a scream. Doing so reveals how it’s not just the racist sheriffs and brutes who poured milkshakes over the head of sit-in protesters at the Woolworth’s counter back in the day who are complicit in those systems.”1
Sternfeld’s photographs are full of felt insecurities and idiosyncrasies.
The crumpled car indicative of the alienated landscape the barefoot youth is growing up in that is Kansas City, Kansas (May 1983, below); the family with their myriad possessions in a battered Ford pickup truck heading who knows where (riffing on the FSA photographs of the 1930s) in Interstate 79, Bridgeport, West Virginia (March 1983, below); the migrant family “existing” in their wooden shack in South Texas (January 1983, below); and the baby protected, isolated, left to its own devices in Glen Canyon Dam, Page, Arizona (August 1983, below) as the family peers over the precipice into the existential depths.
On and on and on we go… from exhausted renegade elephants to realtors in the desert to abandoned uranium mines to limousines and glaciers. The real and the absurd, ludicrous even, living cheek by jowl, on the edge of oblivion.
There is one particular image of Sternfeld’s that is my favourite and that I think sums up the art of this wonderful artist: After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California (1979, below). To me it perfectly pictures the dichotomy of American life. The have and have nots. The large expensive car and the beautiful, probably gated, community homes – and the desire for money that provides that lifestyle – dashed away by a force of nature, sweeping both the lifestyle, homes and car into the ravine, like Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1490-1510), the ‘garden of lusts’ (and desires for money, home, possessions) descending into the hell of the chthonic earth. Be careful what you wish for.
Sternfeld’s work is worthy of our kind, calm meditation for in the stillness and cinematic quality of his photographs lies everlasting revelation into the human condition as we live and die on this, our one Earth.
Many thanks to the Bruce Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Joel Sternfeld doesn’t just capture America; he exposes it. With each photograph, he peels back layers of familiar landscapes to reveal the ironies, contradictions, and hidden stories that shape the American experience. A pioneer in colour photography, Sternfeld’s lens turns everyday scenes into striking narratives where beauty meets decay, and hope intersects with abandonment. His images, timeless, yet hauntingly relevant – a cross-country journey that invites us to look deeper and question what lies beneath the surface.
The Bruce Museum’s American Prospects offers a rare encounter with Joel Sternfeld’s profound exploration of the American Dream – its triumphs, fractures, and quiet absurdities. Since its first release in 1987, this series has stood as a seminal work in colour photography, redefining the medium and reshaping our perception of American landscapes. Like his contemporaries William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, Sternfeld used colour to move beyond documentation, crafting layered narratives that invite both reflection and critique. On view through January 5, 2025, Sternfeld’s lens frames America as it is – flawed, resilient, and enduringly hopeful.
In Abandoned Uranium Refinery, Near Tuba City, Arizona, Sternfeld confronts us with a haunting testament to industrial intrusion on sacred land. The muted pinks and warm ochres spread across the landscape, evoking the natural beauty of the Navajo Nation’s desert. Yet, at its heart, the photograph holds a darker, fractured reality – the scars of industry etched deeply into the land, an intrusion upon both the environment and the community’s heritage. Sternfeld’s light is gentle yet harsh, and his careful composition balances the serenity of nature against the unease of contamination. It’s a scene that commands attention, evoking reverence while quietly asking us to grapple with the unsettling impact of human intervention.
Coeburn, Virginia brings Sternfeld’s eye for subtle irony to life within the seemingly serene environment of a small town. Here, the frame captures the tension between the landscape’s lushness and signs of quiet disrepair houses sitting precariously against a verdant backdrop, hinting at lives lived in the margins. Through muted earthy tones and a sparing splash of green, Sternfeld avoids romanticising rural life, instead highlighting the fragile balance between nature’s persistence and the impermanence of human structures. The result is a scene that feels both intimate and detached, inviting us to see Coeburn not as a forgotten place but as a testament to resilience and transience.
In Canyon Country, California, Sternfeld turns his lens to the sublime – a canyon that feels at once vast and void, a sprawling testament to the untouched beauty of the American West. Here, the land stretches endlessly, exuding a calm that contrasts sharply with the bustling, culturally charged image of California we often imagine. Sternfeld’s framing, balanced with a quiet geometry, amplifies the canyon’s emptiness while subtly pointing to the tension between this natural expanse and the human inclination to intrude, consume, and commercialise. It’s a scene that invites introspection, leaving viewers to consider California as both escape and spectacle, a space layered with expectation yet stripped bare.
The Bruce Museum’s American Prospects invites us to traverse Sternfeld’s America – a land as haunting as it is beautiful. With a careful eye for color, geometry, and narrative tension, Sternfeld transforms these landscapes into timeless scenes, at once grounded and surreal. Each photograph holds a sense of melancholic grandeur, inviting viewers not just to observe but to confront the quiet dramas embedded in America’s vast, varied, and vulnerable terrain. In Sternfeld’s vision, America is an open road of paradoxes – where beauty meets desolation, and where each mile reveals a new truth we can’t ignore.
Giuliana Brida. “Oct 30 Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects | The Bruce Museum,” in Musee: Vanguard of Photography Culture on the Bruce Museum website Nd [Online] Cited 28/11/2024
Installation views of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s Kansas City, Kansas, May 1983 (below); at centre, Putney, Vermont, October 1978; and at right, Canyon Country, California June 1983 (above)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at centre, Sternfeld’s A Bus Stop in Tucson, Arizona (July 1979)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at right, Sternfeld’s The Space Shuttle Columbia Lands at Kelly Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas (March 1979, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing Sternfeld’s The Space Shuttle Columbia Lands at Kelly Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas (March 1979, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s Bikini Contest, Fort Lauderdale, Florida (March 1983, below); and at right, The Space Shuttle Columbia Lands at Kelly Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas (March 1979, above)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Two punks sit together in Studio City, California (June 1982); and at right, Wet’n Wild Aquatic Theme Park, Orlando, Florida (September 1980, below)
Installation views of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing in the bottom photograph at left, Sternfeld’s Interstate 79, Bridgeport, West Virginia (March 1983, below); and at right, Two punks sit together in Studio City, California (June 1982)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s South Texas (January 1983, below); at second left, Interstate 79, Bridgeport, West Virginia (March 1983, above); and at right, Wet’n Wild Aquatic Theme Park, Orlando, Florida (September 1980, above)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s McLean, Virginia (December 1978, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at right, Sternfeld’s McLean, Virginia (December 1978, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s McLean, Virginia (December 1978, above); at second right, Glen Canyon Dam, Page, Arizona (August 1983, below); and at right, After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California (1979, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing in the bottom photograph at left centre, Sternfeld’s Glen Canyon Dam, Page, Arizona (August 1983, below); at centre, After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California (1979, below); and at right, Exhausted Renegade Elephant, Woodland, Washington (June 1979, below)
Widely acclaimed when it was published in 1987, Joel Sternfeld’s American Prospects has come to be regarded as one of the important early monuments of colour photography. Sternfeld (American, b. 1944) was one of a small cohort of pioneers, including William Eggleston, Helen Levitt, and Stephen Shore, who in the 1960s and 1970s began exploring the potential of colour photography as a fine art.
Sternfeld developed a unique aesthetic for the use of colour and a distinctive personal vision. Inspired by the photographers Walker Evans and Robert Frank, he embarked on an ambitious quest to document America, traversing the continent from 1978 to 1983 with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship. American Prospects is the result.
Although Sternfeld saw deep fissures and contradictions in the country at the time, he also went on the road with a sense of optimism and discovery. His goal was not to document the failure of the American Dream, but to record what was great, vital, and regenerative about this nation. On one hand, Sternfeld’s imagery includes damaged landscapes and industry in decline. He delights in the curious, bizarre, and accidental in the everyday. Scenes of an elephant collapsed on the road or a firefighter buying a pumpkin while a fire rages in the background convey a sense of absurdity. And yet underlying the series is a vision of a beautiful land and the eternal cycle of the seasons, and of the variety and resiliency of the American people. Even today, Sternfeld is optimistic about the American prospect: “America has a tremendous capacity to right itself,” he noted recently. Sternfeld’s vision is as complicated as the nation. His images are deep, rich, and powerful specifically because they are complex and conflicted, at once both critical and affectionate.
Guest curated by Robert Wolterstorff, Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects will mount more than forty large scale colour prints, among them many of the most iconic images from the series, along with others that have never before been exhibited. It coincides with a new edition of American Prospects published by Steidl Press.
Text from the Bruce Museum website
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s Earl Garvey Realtor, The Mojave Desert, California (July 1979, below); and at right, Wyoming (1994)
Installation views of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s Abandoned Freighter, Homer Alaska (July 1984, below); and at second right, Matanuska Glacier, Matanuska Valley, Alaska (July 1984)
Installation views of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing in the bottom photograph at left, Sternfeld’s Matanuska Glacier, Matanuska Valley, Alaska (July 1984); and at right, Abandoned Uranium Refinery, Near Tuba City, Arizona, Navajo Nation (1982)
Beauty, sadness and humor are woven through complex portraits of America in “Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects.” On view at the Bruce Museum Oct. 3, 2024 – Jan. 5, 2025, the exhibition is an ode to the artist’s 1987 landmark photography book, “American Prospects,” and coincides with a new edition published by Steidl Press. The Bruce mounted more than 40 large-scale color prints, ranging from Sternfeld’s most iconic images to never-before-exhibited photographs.
Sternfeld (American, b. 1944) was an early adopter of color photography as fine art. He explored the medium’s potential in the 1960s and 70s with a small cohort of pioneers, including William Eggleston, Helen Levitt and Stephen Shore. Sternfeld initially focused on New York street photography and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978. Longing to explore beyond the confines of the urban grid, the award supported his purchase of a Volkswagen camper and a wooden 8 x 10 view camera, his tools as he embarked on a multi-year quest to capture scenes across the country.
The work of documentary photographers Walker Evans and Robert Frank inspired Sternfeld to observe people and places across the United States and record what was great, vital and regenerative about the nation. Despite sensing deep fissures and contradictions in the country at the time, he went on the road with a sense of optimism and discovery, delighting in the curious, bizarre and accidental moments in everyday life.
Sternfeld traversed the nation from 1978 to 1987, taking thousands of photographs. His large-format view camera accommodated 8 x 10-inch sheets of color negative film, with a small shutter opening that achieved great depth of field. Ansel Adams and Edward Weston used the same methods in their famous black-and-white photographs, producing razor-sharp detail and an infinite range of tones. Sternfeld’s pictures were composed carefully around color harmonies, often focusing on pastel hues of two or three dominant colors and were guided by a strong sense of geometry and order despite the visual chaos of life they portrayed.
The resulting images revealed beautiful land and the eternal cycle of the seasons, damaged landscapes and industry in decline and the variety and resiliency of the American people. The artist has referred to the underlying theme of his work as the utopian vision of America contrasted with the dystopian one. The first edition of “American Prospects” featured 55 images created from four-colour plates that capture both America’s beauty and its flaws. The book was published to wide acclaim and is regarded as an important early monument of color photography.
“Joel Sternfeld developed a unique aesthetic for the use of color and a distinctive personal vision,” said guest curator Robert Wolterstorff, the former Susan E. Lynch executive director of the Bruce Museum. “His powerful images are imbued with a sense of irony and depict a vision of Americans that is as complicated as the nation, inviting contemplation on ideas of paradise versus reality through modern conceptions of landscape.”
“American Prospects” includes a 1978 photograph of a farm market in McLean, Virginia that depicts a uniformed fireman shopping for pumpkins as a house fire rages in the background, the autumnal colours coordinating with the flames. Published in Life magazine, the absurd image is one of the most recognised scenes of Sternfeld’s career. Other subjects include an elephant collapsed on a road in Washington state, clouds approaching a busy waterpark in Florida and the landing of the space shuttle Columbia at Kelly Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
Sternfeld’s work captures details of specific moments in time, serving as an archive for the future as well as a caution toward photography’s manipulative power. In a 2004 interview with The Guardian, Sternfeld said, “No individual photo explains anything. That’s what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium. It is the photographer’s job to get this medium to say what you need it to say.”
Sternfeld is based in New York and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships and the Rome Prize. His work has been exhibited in institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago), the Albertina Museum (Vienna, Austria) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco).
Press release from the Bruce Museum
Joel Sternfeld short biography
Joel Sternfeld is an artist-photographer whose work is concerned with utopic and dystopic possibilities of the American experience.
Ever since the publication of his landmark study, American Prospects in 1987 his work has maintained conceptual and political aspects, while also being steeped in history, art history, landscape theory and attention to seasonal passage. It is a melancholic, spectacular, funny and profound portrait of America. The curator Kevin Moore has claimed that the work embodies the “synthetic culmination of so many photographic styles of the 1970s, incorporating the humor and social perspicacity of street photography with the detached restraint of New Topographics photographs and the pronounced formalism of works by so many late-decade colorists” (Kevin Moore, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980).
On This Site (1996) examines violence in America while simultaneously raising significant epistemological questions about photographs as objects of knowledge.
Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America (2006) “can be seen as a generous respite from the traumatic history in On This Site… It is a survey of American human socialization, alternative ways of living, of hopeful being” (Elin O’Hara Slavik, 2018).
All his subsequent work has sought to expand the narrative possibilities of still photography primarily through an authored text. All of his books and bodies of work converse with each other and may be read as a collective whole.
His work represents a melding of time and place that serves to elucidate, honor, and warn. The images hold a certain urgency, as their histories survive solely through their photographic representation – they are an archive for the future.
Sternfeld is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and spent a year in Italy on a Rome Prize. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, where he holds the Noble Foundation Chair in Art and Cultural History.
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s Brattleboro, Vermont (October 1978)
Installation views of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing in the bottom photograph at left, Sternfeld’s Roadside Rest Area, White Sands, New Mexico (September 1980); and at right, The Eagles of Kayenta, Junior High School at Football Practice, Kayenta, Arizona, Navajo Nation (August 1986)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s Portage Glacier, Alaska (August 1984, below); and at right, Coeburn, Virginia (April 1981)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s Coeburn, Virginia (April 1981)
Installation views of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at right, Sternfeld’s After a Tornado, Grand Isle, Nebraska (June 1980, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s Grafton, West Virginia (February 1983); and at right, Prince Manufacturing, Bowmanstown, Pennsylvania (November 1982)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s Buckingham, Pennsylvania (August 1978); and at right, Pendleton, Oregon (1980)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing at left, Sternfeld’s Pendleton, Oregon (1980); and at right, Lake Oswego, Oregon (June 1979)
Installation view of the exhibition Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects at the Bruce Museum showing in the bottom photograph at right, Sternfeld’s Near Interlochen, Michigan (February 1981)
“What did it mean for these women artists, at what level was it a recognition of their undoubted skill as artists, when so many largely vanished without trace?” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Short biography: Aline Meyer Liebman (1879-1966). Born in Los Angeles, Aline Meyer Liebman studied at the Art Students League in New York and received the support of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. By the 1930s she had already become a consolidated artist and was the subject of a solo show at Walker Galleries in 1936. Meyer Liebman was also known for her work as a collector of art and photography. She acquired works by O’Keeffe, Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Max Ernst, among others. Liebman kept a broad circle of relationships with key people in the New York art world, such as Peggy Guggenheim, who included her work Painted Dream (1935) in Exhibition by 31 Women. Other notable facets include her political and philanthropic work: aside from supporting President Roosevelt, she became a member of the New York League of Women Voters and designed a poster for the organization in 1944.
While it is fantastic to see this “recreation” (many of the original art works are unknown or missing and others have been substituted by the same artist in their place) of Peggy Guggenheim’s 1943 Exhibition by 31 Women “organised in her New York gallery ‘Art of This Century’, one of the first exhibitions in the United States to showcase works exclusively by European and American women,” I am conflicted by this exhibition. Conflicted, conflicted, conflicted.
Wealthy white women uses influence and money to promote women artists when no one else would, a patron reinforcing female participation introducing “well-established figures within the artistic landscape as well as emerging talent.” But I have a feeling that this group of female artists was part of an elite cohort – a privileged, internalist, internationalist, undoubtedly incestuous (in terms of knowing each other) clique of humans that knew the right people, especially through their connections with male artists.
As ever with the art world, it’s not what you know it’s who you know. Which artist has the ear of which curator; which artist is “fashionable” at the moment; and which artist is supported by which patron and gallery. It’s all about connections, and these women, whether emerging or established, had those connections. They were part of an educated elite that was at one and the same time, both exclusive and excluding (no Black American or Asian artists here… think of the times!)
And while the relationship between art and bourgeois life central to an earlier ideal of culture (the artist and their patron) has changed since the Second World War and the playing field has become much more egalitarian, my cynicism and socialism still rails at those with power and how they withhold their largesse. You only have to look at the photograph of Peggy Guggenheim in the entrance hall of her eighteenth century Venetian palace or the naming of so many galleries in art museums after wealthy patrons to understand what I mean.
What did it mean for these women artists, at what level was it a recognition of their undoubted skill as artists, when so many largely vanished without trace?
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Fundación MAPFRE for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
The idea of the artist as central member of a spiritual elite embodying an alternative to Philistine commercialism, or even pointing the way to humankind’s salvation, has powered a variety of movements as different as Aestheticism, Realism, Dada, De Stijl, and Russian Constructivism. This was the conception of culture that crystallized in the notion of the avant-garde, whose “function” – in Clement Greenberg’s classic formulation of 1939 – was “to find a path along which it would be possible to keep culture moving in the midst of ideological confusion and violence.”[1]
Greenberg’s text touchingly reveals the double sense of the idea of culture, as both redeeming force of the existing system and as a sort of critique by enactment of an alternative set of values. In this conception, the essence of art, incarnated in the avant-garde, is its alienation from the norms of bourgeois society (hence, in the case of modernist abstraction, its abandonment of going systems of representation). On the other hand, Greenberg acknowledged that “No culture can develop without a social basis, without a source of stable income” and even that “in the case of the avant-garde, this was provided by an elite among the ruling class of that society from which it assumed itself to be cut off, but to which it has always remained attached by an umbilical cord of gold. The paradox is real.”[2]
This paradox is nothing but the place of culture in capitalist society, in its most concentrated form. Given the distinctive social character of art objects, as handmade luxury goods in a world dominated by mechanized mass production, they offer both their producers and their consumers an experience outside the “everyday life” of the market. Expressive, in its very freedom from monetary considerations, of the power of money and of the access to free time made possible by money, art is a token and a perk of social distinction for those who own and even for those who merely appreciate it. The artist, as producer of this token, shares in the distinction, though (for the most part) not in the wealth that supports the social practice of art as a whole. It was the very separation of the world of cultural production from the norm of capitalist investment and production that made it potentially so valuable. By means of critique, culture cleanses modern society of the sin of commercialism, allowing its dominating classes to see themselves as worthy inheritors of the position of the aristocracy they displaced.
The picture I have sketched here, hardly a novel one, evidently owes a great deal to Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of what he calls “the field of cultural production.” That analysis reveals in particular the close relation between, on the one hand, the social antagonism between the producers of culture and the upper-class consumers from whom they are separated by style of life and self-conception as well as degree of social power, and, on the other, the fact that “the cult of art and the artist… is one of the necessary components of the bourgeois ‘art of living,’ to which it brings a ‘supplément d’âme,’ its spiritualistic point of honor.”[3] This cultural system, evolved during the nineteenth century, survived until well into the twentieth. But the last twenty years have seen the acceleration of a process of change, whose origin is traceable to the end of the Second World War.[4] What changed was not the centrality of the “cult of art” to the bourgeois “art of living” but the felt antipathy between art and bourgeois life central to the earlier ideal of culture.
Paul Mattick. “After the Gold Rush,” on the American Society for Aesthetics website 2010 [Online] Cited 12/12/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
1/ C. Greenberg, “Avant-garde and Kitsch,” in idem, Art and Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), p. 5. 2/ Ibid., p. 8 3/ P. Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 44. 4/ For an in-depth discussion, see Katy Siegel, Since ’45: American Art in the Age of Extremes (London: Reaktion, 2016)
Installation view of the exhibition 31 Women. An Exhibition by Peggy Guggenheim at Fundación MAPFRE showing at left, Milena Pavlovic-Barilli’s Juno and Vulcan (1936, below); at second left, Leonora Carrington’s The Horses of Lord Candlestick (1938, below); and at right, Buffie Johnson’s The Middle Way / The Great Mother Rules the Sky (Astor Mural) (1949-1959, below)
In 1943, the renowned art collector Peggy Guggenheim organised in her New York gallery ‘Art of This Century’, one of the first exhibitions in the United States to showcase works exclusively by European and American women, titled Exhibition by 31 Women. The show was conceived by Guggenheim in collaboration with Marcel Duchamp, and the artists were selected by a jury whose members included André Breton, Max Ernst and Duchamp himself. Guggenheim, as the sole woman on the jury, was in a privileged position to provide a female perspective in the selection process.
These women, many of whom were associated with Surrealism or abstraction, maintained an ambiguous position within both trends. Often, they employed these styles to reformulate and challenge them, preserving their independence and shedding light on the patriarchal assumptions underlying these artistic movements.
31 Women. An Exhibition by Peggy Guggenheim presents a curated selection and reinterpretation of that initiative, including all the artists featured in the original show. With this exhibition, the Foundation aims not only to honor Peggy Guggenheim’s significant role as one of the foremost patrons and collectors of the 20th century, but also shift the narrative away from viewing these women primarily through their connections with male artists. Instead, it highlights the networks of collaboration, solidarity, and friendship they established among themselves.
Short biography: Sonja Sekula (1918-1963). Born in Lucerne from a Hungarian father and a Swiss mother, Sonja Sekula emigrated to New York in 1936, where her father had moved their family business. In 1938 she attempted suicide for the first time and from that point onward began suffering from mental health issues. Through her well-connected family, Sekula was able to meet André Breton and other European Surrealists in the early 1940s. In mid-decade, she travelled to Mexico and came into contact with Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington. Later, she traversed the northeastern United States, discovering the imagery of Native American people. The primitivist symbols in her canvases are interwoven with decorative patterns, intense colours, and a juxtaposition of viewpoints. At the time, Sekula’s work was well received by critics, some suggesting that there was a hidden symbolism related to her homosexuality. Aside from including her painting Composition at Exhibition by 31 Women, Peggy Guggenheim dedicated a solo exhibition to Sekula’s work in 1946. Two years later Sonja Sekula joined the Betty Parsons Gallery, which would host five solo exhibitions between 1948 and 1957. In 1951, a day after the opening of her third exhibition, she suffered a nervous breakdown. The artist spent the following years coming in and out of mental health clinics in the United States and Switzerland. In 1963 she committed suicide in her Zurich studio.
Short biography: Louise Nevelson (1899-1988). Born in Ukraine, Louise Nevelson emigrated to the United States with her family at the age of six. After studying in Germany under Hans Hofmann, she settled in New York, where she met Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Nevelson collaborated on one of Rivera’s murals while receiving lessons from George Grosz and Chaim Gross. Her first terracotta works – painted in black and often subject to the application of a form of engraving – reveal the influence of Central American art that she had come to know through Kahlo and Rivera. Furthermore, Louise Nevelson participated in the association American Abstract Artists (AAA) and was often in the company of Frederick Kiesler and Peggy Guggenheim, who selected her work Column for Exhibition by 31 Women. In the 1950s she began to accumulate a large collection of wooden fragments, which would give rise to her most characteristic working method. First, she painted each piece black, white, or gold. Later, she piled and stored the fragments. Finally, she assembled the pieces in large abstract constructions. In 1956 she began to use milk cartons and wood to produce small embedded reliefs, combining them to create increasingly large ensembles. Her work received much critical acclaim after her participation in the Moon Garden Plus exhibition in New York, in 1958.
Highlight
Fundación MAPFRE presents 31 Women. An Exhibition by Peggy Guggenheim, featuring works by thirty-one artists who participated in Exhibition by 31 Women, a show organised in 1943 by Peggy Guggenheim at her Art of This Century gallery in New York. Most of these creators, who came from Europe and the United States, were linked to the Surrealist movement or to abstraction, and included both well-established figures within the artistic landscape as well as emerging talent.
The exhibition highlights Peggy Guggenheim’s important role as a patron, addressing the context in which the artists she became associated with at her New York gallery developed their work, as well as the networks of collaboration that were established between them.
KEYS
Art Also Belongs to Women
In her famous article of 1971, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists”, Linda Nochlin stated: “In the field of art history, the white Western male viewpoint, has been unconsciously accepted as the viewpoint of the art historian.” This text finally advocated the role played by many women who had been dismissed on the basis of their gender throughout the history of art and have only recently begun to occupy the place they deserve – along with writers, mathematicians, philosophers, etc. The artists featured in 31 Women. An Exhibition by Peggy Guggenheim, such as Frida Kahlo, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Valentine Hugo, and Dorothea Taning, could easily figure in Nochlin’s list, which included figures such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffmann, Safo, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and Emily Dickinson.
Surrealism
Surrealism, a term coined by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917, refers to the movement led by André Breton, who defined it as “Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought.” Rooted in Dadaism and Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis, Surrealists expressed themselves through writing, photography, performance, painting, collage, and music. Although Surrealism in principle advocated gender equality and supported the work of women artists, in practice women were considered almost as objects, rather than creative subjects.
Peggy Guggenheim
Patron and art lover, Peggy Guggenheim (New York, 1898 – Padova, 1979) was one of the most important collectors and promoters of avant-garde art of the 20th century. The daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim and Florette Seligman, and niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, founder of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, she decided to move to Europe in 1921. In Paris she established relationships with Marcel Duchamp, Constantin Brancusi, and Djuna Barnes, among others. Later, she settled in London, where she opened her first gallery in 1938. Under the name Guggenheim Jeune, the gallery featured works by Vasili Kandinsky and Yves Tanguy. Prior to the Nazi occupation of France, Guggenheim returned to Paris and acquired some of the most important works in her collection, which she managed to take with her when she fled to the United States.
In 1942, once she had settled in New York, Guggenheim opened the Art of This Century Gallery on West 57th street. Aside from displaying her own collection, the space became a platform for young artists, among which were the women who took part in Exhibition by 31 Women.
THE EXHIBITION
In 1943 the renowned collector Peggy Guggenheim organised one of the first exhibitions dedicated exclusively to the work of European and North American women artists at her New York gallery Art of This Century. Titled Exhibition by 31 Women, the show was conceived by Guggenheim in collaboration with Marcel Duchamp. The selection of artists was carried out by a jury whose members included André Breton, Max Ernst, and Duchamp himself. As the only woman in the jury, Guggenheim was able to contribute a female perspective to the process. In the press release, the gallerist herself presented the exhibition as a “testimony to the fact that the creative ability of women is by no means restricted to the decorative vein, as could be deduced from the history of art by women throughout the ages.” Her objective was to present the work of these creators as independent artists, distancing them from the traditional roles they had been given as muses or models.
The list of works published for the exhibition did not contain photographs, only titles, which were often quite unspecific, such as “still life” or “composition”. With the exception of a few cases, it is difficult to ascertain which works were on display at 31 Women.
31 Women. An Exhibition by Peggy Guggenheim presents a selection and a reinterpretation of The 31 Women Collection repository; a collection created by the North American producer and collector Jenna Segal in 2020, featuring works by the same artists who participated in the historic exhibition of 1943.
Through this exhibition, Fundación MAPFRE aims to disseminate the work and vision conceived by Peggy Guggenheim at her New York Gallery, further breaking with the narrative that has often valued the contributions of women artists in terms of their relationships with male artists, while focusing more specifically on the networks of collaboration, solidarity, and friendship that were established between them. Associated mostly with Surrealism or abstraction, these women used said languages in an effort to reformulate and question them, maintaining their independence and highlighting the patriarchal precepts such movements were based on.
All of the works on display – close to forty – belong to The 31 Women Collection. Likewise, the exhibition also features photographs, publications, and other pieces; contextualising and complementing the show’s approximation to the scene of North American women artists of the time. Along with the exceptional loan from The 31 Women Collection, the exhibition is also supported by the Vitra Design Museum, the Lafuente Archive, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Documentation Center.
The exhibition discourse is articulated in different sections, the first of which introduces the viewer to the work carried out by Peggy Guggenheim at her Art of This Century gallery, and in particular her support of women artists of the time. The following sections pose an approximation to some of the main thematic axes and strategies explored by the creators featured in Exhibition by 31 Women, who sought to assert their independence and avoid clichés associated with the label “female artist” that were commonplace in the world of art at the time.
Art of This Century
In 1942 Peggy Guggenheim opened the Art of This Century gallery on the top floor of a building on West 57th Street in New York. Determined to create a space that would generate expectation, she hired the Austrian architect Frederick Kiesler, who designed custom furniture – one piece being featured in this exhibition – and projected a groundbreaking exhibition device to stimulate interactions between viewers and artworks.
The space had a profound impact on the artistic scene through a program of solo exhibitions that Guggenheim dedicated to numerous artists who would later become some of the most renowned creators of their time. The gallery also became an essential meeting point for European and North American avant-gardes. Among the most important initiatives developed by Guggenheim at her gallery were her support and promotion of the work of women artists, not only through group exhibitions, such as Exhibition by 31 Women and later The Women (1945), but also through the solo shows dedicated to some of the participants in said exhibitions, such as Sonja Sekula or Irene Rice Pereira.
The “Self” as Art
The role played by self-representation in the work of these artists was fundamental in their claim for independence and in their efforts to assert their identity versus traditional art historiography, in which women – when mentioned – appeared as secondary figures relegated to the roles of muses, wives, or companions of their male counterparts. Furthermore, in order to construct identities that were different to those assigned to them and escape from the gender roles imposed by the patriarchal society of the time, they adopted a number of languages that included autobiographical components, costumes, performances, and self-portraiture. This can be observed in works such as Woman in Armor I, by Leonor Fini, or Untitled (Self-Portrait), by Dorothea Tanning, for example.
In their quest to escape from social expectations and gender roles, self-representation became one of the creative strategies most widely adopted by women artists in the first half of the 20th century. Through elaborate costumes and extravagant make-up, which they wore in their daily lives or during improvised performances, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Leonor Fini constructed alternate identities that allowed them to elude the rigid female behavioral models determined by bourgeois ideology. Likewise, Hedda Sterne, Dorothea Tanning, and Meret Oppenheim spoke of their interest in blurring the boundaries of conventionally constructed identities through doubling, masquerades, and the confusion of reality against its reflection, which can be observed in their self-portraits. Similarly, Gypsy Rose Lee reinvented the genre of striptease – traditionally linked to popular culture – by challenging the contemporary understanding of the pose and of female nudes.
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Leonora Carrington completed their self-creation work with the writing of their autobiographies, which seamlessly combined reality and invention. Writing novels about themselves allowed these artists to reflect on aspects of their past that might have been considered lurid – for instance, becoming the victim of rape by a group of men in Madrid as Carrington recounted in Down Below – or imagining alternative narratives of their lives. In similar fashion, Leonor Fini frequently took photographs of herself posing in black feather wigs and other props through which she fabricated imaginary personalities. Both Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Gypsy Rose Lee, who had worked as dancers and strippers in burlesque shows and as professional models in art schools, were very aware of the need to take control of their own image, subverting the passive role that muses and female models still played within the avant-garde.
Gypsy Rose Lee (American, 1911-1970) Gypsy Rose Lee images for Tru-Vue stereoscope film: Striptease Stereoview #1306 Burlesque (detail) 1933 Vintage Tru-Vue 16 pictures in film (13 of Gypsy Rose Lee) The 31 Women Collection
Gypsy Rose Lee began performing as a stripper in burlesque shows and went on to appear in Broadway theaters. Her stripteases were greatly successful, allowing her to transform the genre. The fact that she talked while striping was truly groundbreaking and enabled her to draw attention away from the mere act of stripping, while presenting herself as a modern and entertaining woman. Likewise, her enunciation was unlike street slang: she recited with an outlandish high-class accent and incorporated phrases in French.
Short biography: Gypsy Rose Lee (1911-1970). Born under the name Rose Luise Hovick into a working-class family that performed in vaudeville theaters in Seattle, Washington, Gypsy Rose Lee began to work as a stripper in burlesque shows at the age of sixteen and went on to perform at important Broadway theaters. Her acts were enormously popular at the time, granting the genre respect and transforming it into something beyond the act of stripping. She began to collect works of art in the 1940s. Among such purchases were works by Max Ernst. This opened the doors to meetings with Peggy Guggenheim, who at that time was married to the German painter and would host the encounters at her house. In Exhibition by 31 Women, she exhibited a collage titled Self-Portrait. In 1957 Gypsy Rose Lee published her autobiography, culminating the life-long self-promotion and self-invention work that drove her entire career.
In this self-portrait from the early 1940s, Dorothea Tanning experimented with the limits of reality and representation. In a style akin to fashion figurines that often appeared in women’s magazines of the time, the artist portrayed herself in a room full of empty canvases. Her naked legs are reflected onto a framed glass that is pointed at the viewer, creating an impossible interplay of mirrors and altering the relationship between reality and reflection; inside and out.
Short biography: Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012). Born in a small town in Illinois, where she lived a solitary childhood, Dorothea Tanning developed an interest in dreams and fantasy since she was a child. After visiting Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism (1936) at MoMA, she felt attracted to Surrealism and travelled to Paris three years later with the objective of coming into contact with said group. Although she was forced to cut her stay short due to the outbreak of the war, the paintings she created upon her return to New York are proof of her strong Surrealist bias. In 1942, following the advice of gallerist Julien Levy, Max Ernst visited her studio and selected the works Birthday and Children’s Game for Exhibition by 31 Women. The visit also signified the beginning of a relationship between Tanning and Ernst, who separated from Peggy Guggenheim and married the artist in 1946. From the 1930s to the late 90s Tanning developed a prolific career. Her paintings, ballet designs, soft sculptures, and literary works reflect some of her recurring obsessions: the subversion of the bourgeoise domestic space, metamorphosis, the power of imagination, the gothic novel, and non-conventional images of girls and feminine figures.
The autobiographical component of this work has been linked to the closed umbrella, which lies uselessly at the center of the image and represents the loneliness felt by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven at a point when she had been abandoned by those who supported her both emotionally and financially. The treading foot that appears on the left of the composition symbolizes the passing of the years. The title of the work also expands on this notion, which is a direct interpellation to her friend and patron Berenice Abbott. On the other hand, the silhouette of the urinal alludes to the famous readymade by Marcel Duchamp, a work that a number of recent studies have attributed to Freytag-Loringhoven.
Short biography: Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927). Born in Germany under the name Else Plötz, she became known as Else Endell, Else Greve, and finally Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven through her numerous marriages over the course of several decades; evidence of her early interest in constructing herself as a character. At the age of eighteen she settled in Berlin, where she began to study art and worked as a variety artist and model. In 1913 she emigrated to New York and joined the Dadaist circle that gathered around the collectors Louise and Walter Arensberg. Elsa von Freytag’s work spanned several genres: poetry, autobiography, art, and artistic self-representation. Aside from producing sculptures with found elements, she used materials rescued from the streets and objects stolen from department stores to create costumes that she wore at Greenwich Village balls and during her walks through New York, combining them with striking make-up, extravagant hairdos, and other decorations. One of the objects she created with fragments from plumbing materials was on display at Exhibition by 31 Women. In 1923 she returned to Berlin and shortly after settled in Paris, where she scraped a living with the help of friends like Berenice Abbott and Djuna Barnes. She died under uncertain circumstances in 1927. Very few of her performances where documented and her work remained invisible to a great extent until the early 21st century. Some research suggests that she was the author of the famous readymade Fountain, considered one of Marcel Duchamp’s key works.
Strangely Familiar
In 1919 Freud coined the term unheimlich – which roughly translates into English as “ominous” or “uncanny”, and into French as “unsettling strangeness”. This aesthetic category, which is verging on beautiful, was adopted by the Surrealist movement and generally alludes to things that are familiar and attractive, but simultaneously produce a sense of unease and rejection. This is the underlying feeling in Gray Day (Sand Dunes), by Aline Meyer Liebman, or in the still lives by Meraud Guinness Guevara and Meret Oppenheim, which portray decontextualised familiar objects, provoking a sense of unease that is hard to explain. This sensation is accentuated in Spanish Customs by Dorothea Tanning and in Kay Sage’s The Fourteen Daggers, in which two mysterious figures covered in fabric seem to ascend a staircase to the sky.
Hence, Aline Meyer Liebman’s yellowish dunes are striking for their anthropomorphic forms, the Connecticut night sky appears as a fantastic explosion of flowers and stars in Jacqueline Lamba’s painting, and the viewer is unsettled by the incongruent characters and scenes that disrupt the peacefulness in Hazel McKinley and Pegeen Vail’s colourful landscapes. Furthermore, familiar objects seem to have lost their usual meaning in the puzzling dreamlike still lives by Meraud Guinness Guevara, Anne Harvey, Meret Oppenheim, and Gypsy Rose Lee, while Eyre de Lanux and Evelyn Wild’s rug designs combine primitivist and avant-garde elements that question the ideals of purity associated with modern domestic interiors. Kay Sage and Dorothea Tanning’s paintings are particularly unnerving as they transform the bourgeois house into a strange territory inhabited by ghostly figures and elongated shadows.
Produced in 1972, this piece is a reinterpretation of one of Meret Oppenheim’s most renowned works, Déjeuner en Fourrure, which was on display for the first time in 1936 – the year it was produced – at an exhibition dedicated to Surrealist objects. The work garnered much recognition and was selected by Peggy Guggenheim for Exhibition by 31 Women. Dipleased by always seeing her name associated with this work, the artist wanted to make an ironic version of her infamous mug, recreating it with cheap materials: a perfect kitsch souvenir of the iconic work.
Short biography: Meret Oppenheim (1913-1985). Born in Berlin into a family of the liberal bourgeoisie, Meret Oppenheim studied at Rudolf Steiner’s school in Basel. Between 1932 and 1937 she spent much of her time in Paris, where she became close to the Surrealist movement. The photographs in which she posed for Man Ray and the enormous success of her objects – in particular Déjeuner en Fourrure [Breakfast with Furs] from 1936, acquired by MoMA and also on display at Exhibition by 31 Women – make her a Surrealist muse of sorts. Later, she expressed her irritation at seeing her name associated solely to that work and to Surrealism. In 1937 Oppenheim returned to Basel, where she battled depression and produced very little until 1954, when she resumed her artistic work with great impetus. Myths, dreams, literary sources, Jung’s psychoanalysis, gender roles, and social stereotyping were interwoven within her work, which also incorporated magical objects, poems, photographs, theatre costumes, and textile designs.
In the mid-1940s, Jacqueline Lamba and the North American Surrealist artist David Hare took a trip together through the western United States, where they came into contact with the cosmology and art of the indigenous peoples of North America. The typical brown colours of Amerindian fabrics dominate the palette of this canvas, in which Lamba portrayed the surroundings of her house in Roxbury and captured the unexpected reality that lies hidden behind a seemingly mundane landscape.
Short biography: Jacqueline Lamba (1910-1993). Born in France, Jacqueline Lamba spent her early years in Egypt, where her father – an engineer – passed away in a car accident in 1914. She returned to Paris with her mother and attended the École de l’Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs. After the passing of her mother in 1927 Lamba survived with the meager wages she earned from her design work. Fascinated by André Breton’s Communicating Vessels, she began an intense and difficult romantic relationship with him. The couple married shortly after and had a daughter named Aube. Jacqueline Lamba always lamented being more recognised as Breton’s muse than for her collages, cadavre exquis, objects, and paintings, which would soon be on display at Surrealist exhibitions. In 1938 she travelled to Mexico with her husband. The couple was hosted by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, whom she established a profound relationship with. Thanks to the patronage of Peggy Guggenheim, Lamba and Breton settled in New York in 1941 as they fled from the Nazis. Lamba exhibited her work at the inaugural show of the Art of This Century Gallery and participated in Exhibition by 31 Women. In 1944 she divorced Breton and began a relationship with David Hare. They settled in Connecticut in 1948 and had a son. Lamba lost interest in Surrealism and veered toward abstraction, focusing on the mythologies of indigenous populations from Mexico and the United Sates. In 1954, after separating from Hare, she returned to Paris and destroyed much of her prior work. She later confessed that she had first tried to please Breton and then Hare with her paintings, ensuring that she would only paint to please herself from that point onward. In 1967 the most comprehensive exhibition dedicated to her work in her lifetime was hosted at the Musée Picasso in Antibes.
The conversion of domestic space into unusual territory reached its pinnacle in works such as this one. Sage imagined a bizarre interior space that opens up to a door behind which lies a staircase leading to the sky. The scene is inhabited by two ghostly figures covered in fabric that cast elongated shadows on the ground and accentuate the air of mystery. The motif of the open door reappears in Dorothea Tanning’s oil painting Spanish Customs, also on display in this room.
Short biography: Kay Sage (1898-1963). Born under the name Katherine Linn Sage into a wealth family from Albany, Kay Sage spent most of her childhood travelling through Europe with her mother, who had divorced her father in 1908. Although she never received a formal education, she went on to study at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D. C. and at the British Academy in Rome, where she settled in 1920. Aside from coming into contact with the local artistic scene, Sage met Prince Ranieri di San Faustino, whom she married in 1925. During their ten years as a married couple, Sage dedicated little time to art. In 1937 she moved to Paris, where she came into contact with the members of the Surrealist group and began a romantic relationship with the painter Yves Tanguy, whom she married in 1941. With the outbreak of World War II, the couple migrated to Connecticut, where they would reside for the following years. During that period Sage developed her own style: uninhabited landscapes intersected by austere architectural forms, shadows, and floating fabrics that are simultaneously recognisable and enigmatic. Peggy Guggenheim selected her painting from 1942 At the Appointed Time – today preserved at the Newark Museum of Art – for Exhibition by 31 Women. In 1955 Tanguy died suddenly. This event led Sage into depression. Coupled with eyesight problems, she drifted away from painting. In the late 1950s she began to produce collages and write poetry. However, in January of 1963 Sage took her own life.
Bestiaries
Many of the artists featured in this exhibition – particularly those whose works are more closely linked with Surrealism – experimented with multiple personalities, which led them to identify themselves with animals that became their alter egos. As noted by Patricia Mayayo, curator of the show, “the animals embodied the search for other mythical or imaginary worlds where they could finally be free”. Hence, the female body is transformed into an eagle, a crow, or a deer in the works of Barbara Poe-Levee Reis, Milena Pavlovic-Barilli, Julia Thecla, and Frida Kahlo, while in Leonora Carrington’s The Horses of Lord Candlestick, the horse simultaneously embodies the dreaded paternal figure and the artist herself.
Women artists close to Surrealism granted particular importance to the representation of animals. Such is the case with works by Barbara Poe-Levee Reis and Milena Pavlovic-Barilli, in which animals often inhabited fictional landscapes or mythical worlds where women could imagine themselves freed from patriarchal norms. Likewise, in works by Julia Thecla, Frida Kahlo, and Leonor Fini, the depiction of women’s bodies being transformed into crows, deer, and cats refers to an alternate reality in which humans and animals are hybridized. Djuna Barnes imagined a collection of grotesque women with animal-like traits that challenged normative understandings of the feminine in an illustrated book of poems published in 1915. Valentine Hugo was inspired by the animals of the zodiac when designing costumes for a theatrical performance that took place at the Théâtre Champs-Elysées in Paris. Lastly, in Leonora Carrington’s painting, the horse appears as a more ambivalent figure that simultaneously embodies patriarchal authority and the liberation of women.
Since the 1930s, women had a growing presence in Surrealist initiatives. For example, in 1936 Leonor Fini, Valentine Hugo, Meret Oppenheim, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp participated in the exhibition Art, Dada, Surrealism hosted at MoMA. Six years later, Leonora Carrington and Kay Sage exhibited their work at First Papers of Surrealism, organised by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp in New York . Women also collaborated on the movement’s publications, either as authors or as illustrators; an example of which includes the series of eighteen drawings that Hugo produced in 1951 for Paul Éluard’s book of poems Le Phénix. Peggy Guggenheim’s work as a patron undoubtedly helped to reinforce female participation. Many of the artists included in the exhibition of 1943 had attended the meetings between North Americans and exiled Europeans organised by the collector at her house in New York. Some of the works on display at 31 Women were reproduced in the double issue of the Surrealist magazine VVV in 1943; an acknowledgement that most likely contributed to the show’s repercussion.
Short biography: Valentine Hugo (1887-1968). Born in Boulogne-sur-Mer under the name Valentine Gross, Valentine Hugo possessed a natural talent for drawing since her childhood. She studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, produced illustrations for fashion magazines, and frequently attended Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Inspired by the subject of dance, her drawings and paintings were on display at the Thèatre des Champs-Elysées in 1913. A friend of Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau, she also collaborated she also collaborated on thaeatrical sets and designs with Jean Hugo, her husband at the time. In 1926 she met André Breton – whom she would establish a short-lived romantic relationship with – and joined the circle of Surrealists. She participated in the exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism (MoMA, 1936), in the development of numerous cadavre exquis, and the illustration of Surrealist books. The influence of Surrealism can be perceived in her constructions, which are based on the unexpected encounter with objects and materials, as well as in the importance she grants to motifs such as dreams, night-time atmospheres, the marvelous, and ghostly apparitions. The drawing that was featured at Exhibition by 31 Women – which has since been lost – was poignantly titled Dream of 17/1/34. Hugo remained in France during the war, after which she focused on illustration, writing books of poems, and the production of theater costumes and sets.
Short biography: Leonor Fini (1907-1996). Born in Argentina into a family marked by a dominant father, Leonor Fini fled with her mother to Trieste, Italy, when she was still a young girl. Fini taught herself art. At the age of seventeen she left the family home and moved to Milan and later to Paris, where her interest in the world of dreams and the unconscious led her to come into contact with the Surrealists. Although she was not officially part of the group, she participated in important Surrealist exhibitions such as Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at MoMA in 1936. Hybrid figures such as the sphynx dominate her paintings, a motif she also explored through costumes and self-representation. The painting that was on display at Exhibition by 31 Women was in fact titled The Shepherdess of the Sphinxes. During the war she remained in Europe. Between 1944 and 1972, aside from continuing to paint, she focused intensely on the design of theatrical costumes and sets.
The painting by Pavlovic draws from various sources: Mannerist art from the 16th century, Magical Realism, and Surrealism. It also incorporates motifs and mythical figures from classical antiquity, such as the Roman goddess Juno and her son Vulcan, protagonists of this canvas. The use of diluted colours, the impression that the characters are floating in space, and the apparently incongruent combination of a wide range of elements (the eagle, the piano, the wheel, the drapery, the bouquet of flowers, and the mirror) grant this painting a dreamlike and mysterious atmosphere.
Short biography: Milena Pavlovic-Barilli (1909-1945). Born in Serbia into a family with artistic inclinations, Milena Pavlovic-Barilli studied art in Munich between 1926 and 1928. There she was introduced to painting, fashion illustration, and drawing, creating an iconography based on stylised figures and wavy lines in which the influence of Art Nouveau is combined with echoes of orient. In 1931 she settled in Paris, where she came into contact with figures of Surrealism, such as André Breton, Jean Cocteau, and Paul Valéry. Regardless, her work drifted into a style that critics considered closer to Magical Realism. Everyday life was fused with fantasy in her paintings, while space was filled with enigmatic symbols: ancient columns that levitate, veiled faces of women, winged youths painted in pale hues, all of which grants her work a supernatural feel. She lived in New York between 1939 and 1945, where she focused on fashion illustration and costume and set designs for the theater. Her paintings, populated with elongated figures in architectural environments that seem rooted in the Renaissance, reflect her admiration for Mannerism. In 1940 she exhibited her work at the Julien Levy Gallery and established ties with the group of Surrealist immigrants. Her work Insomnia (1942) – which has since been lost – was on display at Exhibition by 31 Women. Her premature death in an accident in 1945 cut her career shot. In 1962 the Milena Pavlovic-Barilli Museum opened its doors at the house where she was born. The museum includes a broad selection of her paintings, drawings, letters, and personal objects.
Short biography: Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). Born into a wealthy English family, Leonora Carrington was fascinated by fairy tales and fantasy literature since she was a young girl. She studied art in Florence, Paris, and London under the guidance of Amédée Ozenfant. Her first works recreate legendary worlds populated by hybrid animal species and powerful female figures. In 1936 she discovered Surrealism during a visit to the International Surrealist Exhibition. Two years later she settled in the south of France with Max Ernst – whom she had established a relationship with – in an old house that the couple transformed into a work of total art. Carrington began to publish her first books containing short stories. In 1940, after the outbreak of the war and the arrest of Max Ernst, she fled to Madrid, where she became the victim of rape and was subsequently admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Santander; she would recount this experience in her book Down Below. After managing to migrate to New York in 1941 she participated in a number of initiatives promoted by exiled Surrealists, such as the exhibition First Papers of Surrealism and the magazine VVV. Peggy Guggenheim included two of her works The Horses of Lord Candlestick (1938, above) and the Joy of Skating (1941, below) in Exhibition by 31 Women. In 1943 Carrington settled in Mexico, where she would live until her death. She integrated into the community of exiled artists along with Kati Horna, Remedios Varo, and Benjamin Péret. Her paintings re-elaborated old themes and she delved into new ones: fantasy literature, female divinities, alchemy, magic, and Mexican mythologies.
Djuna Barnes (American, 1892-1982) The Book of Repulsive Women, 4th image in the 1st edition 1915 The 31 Women Collection
In the modern age of Taylorism and Fordism, women played a vital role in the functioning of the American system by efficiently arranging domestic life with a precision similar to that of the nation’s industry. In contrast with this mechanical monotony, Barnes imagined the “repulsive women” that appear in her poems and drawings as the antithesis of the model housewife. Some of these figures, such as the woman with donkey ears and animal-like features that can be observed in one of her illustrations, manage to question the very the boundaries of humanity.
Short biography: Djuna Barnes (1892-1982). Born in a colony of artists north of New York, Djuna Barnes studied art at the Pratt Institute and at the Art Students League. In 1915 she settled in the bohemian neighborhood of Greenwich Village, where she began her career as an artist and a writer. That same year she published The Book of Repulsive Women, a collection of poems that included her own illustrations, and began to work as a journalist. Best known for her experimental novel from 1936, Nightwood, Barnes cultivated all genres: narrative, poetry, theater, and journalism. In 1921 she moved to Paris, where she began a romantic relationship with the sculptor Thelma Wood and began to frequent the avant-garde circles of the Rive Gauche, establishing friendships with Gertrude Stein, Berenice Abbott, Natalie Clifford Barney, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, and Peggy Guggenheim herself. With the outbreak of World War II, she moved back to New York, where her work Portrait of Alice was put on display at Exhibition by 31 Women.
The Middle Way: Languages of Abstraction
Although many of the artists who participated in 31 Women fell within the sphere of influence of Surrealism, some of them were more inclined toward abstract languages. In the 1930s the North American art scene was dominated by social realism and regionalism. In an effort to promote abstraction, the association American Abstract Artists (AAA) was founded, an association which included members such as Suzy Frelinghuysen, Louise Nevelson, Irene Rice Pereira, and Esphyr Slobodkina. Abstraction began to progressively dominate the artistic landscape of North America and was configured in a way that highlighted the ideal of masculinity, whose epitome was Jackson Pollock. In the face of a discourse that hailed the language of expressionism as a reflection of the North American male, many of these artists opted to explore a “middle way” that could account for all of the possibilities afforded by abstraction. A great example of this can be found in The Middle Way / The Great Mother Rules the Sky (Astor Mural) by Buffie Johnson.
The association American Abstract Artists (AAA) was founded in 1936 with the objective of fostering the development of abstraction in the United States. It included members such as Suzy Frelinghuysen, Louise Nevelson, Irene Rice Pereira, and Esphyr Slobodkina. It is no coincidence that Slobodkina was one of the artists included by Ad Reinhardt in his vignette “How to Look at Modern Art in America” (1946), in which he traced the family tree of North American modern art. Other creators participated in key initiatives for the renovation of abstract practice in the United States, such as Gretchen Schoeninger, who attended the experimental art school New Bauhaus, founded by László Moholy-Nagy – a former professor at the historic German Bauhaus – in Chicago in 1947. Regardless, few artists who took part in 31 Women occupy an important place in the dominant narratives of North American abstract art. As Xenia Cage jokingly suggested in a collage produced from one of Jackson Pollock’s action paintings, perhaps the value of these artist’s works is compromised by the strong exaltation of masculinity, which at the time was characteristic of discourse. Buffie Johnson became aware of the marginalisation suffered by women in Abstract Expressionist circles early on. In the 1940s, determined to give value to female legacies, she undertook a research project on the imagery of the goddess mothers of antiquity, culminating in a book published in 1988.
The exhibition concludes with a relationship map detailing the connections established between the thirty-one artists who participated in the exhibition and Peggy Guggenheim. By highlighting the network of professional and personal links they constructed, the chart depicts the important role these artists played as agents in the art scene of the time beyond traditional conceptions of women artists as supporting characters.
Suzy Frelinghuysen (American, 1911-1988) Untitled (Brahms Abstract) 1945 Oil and collage on Masonite
Suzy Frelinghuysen was part of the group of artists known as The Park Avenue Cubists, who proposed a reinterpretation of European Cubist heritage from a North American perspective. In her works, Frelinghuysen combined the influence of Synthetic Cubism, which she expanded on through the use of blue, lavender, and rusty hues, with constant references to the world of music; a field in which the artist also excelled as an opera singer.
Short biography: Suzy Frelinghuysen (1911-1988). Born into a wealthy family from Newark, New Jersey, Suzy Frelinghuysen was part of the group of artists knowns as The Park Avenue Cubists, along with Albert Eugene Gallatin, Charles G. Shaw, and George L. K. Morris – whom she married in 1935 – who advocated for a reinterpretation of European Cubist heritage from a North American perspective. In 1937 Frelinghuysen joined the association American Abstract Artists (AAA), founded in an effort to promote the development of abstract art in the United States, whose members included Louise Nevelson, Irene Rice Pereira, and Esphyr Slobodkina. After the war she temporarily quit art to focus on music, becoming a renowned opera singer. In her work, which was included in important group shows such as Exhibition by 31 Women, the influence of Synthetic Cubism was combined with constant references to the world of music.
Esphyr Slobodkina (American born Russia, 1908-2002) Peacock Garden 1938 Oil on board
From the late 1930s, Slobodkina developed a style of her own based on the poetic combination of curved forms painted in lyrical hues. Along with the influence of Cubism and the technique of collage, the artist also demonstrated her interest in sewing and working with scraps, which she learned from her mother, a professional seamstress. One of the defining traits of her work was its interdisciplinary nature: aside from painting, Slobodkina created assemblages, produced murals, illustrated children’s books, and designed costumes and jewellery.
Short biography: Esphyr Slobodkina (1908-2002). Originally from Siberia, Esphyr Slobodkina moved to Manchuria with her family in order to escape from the Soviet Revolution. Since she was a child, she studied in the fields of art and music. In 1928 she moved to New York on her own, where she continued her studies at the National Academy of Design. From the late 1930s she developed her own style based on a combination of wavy forms in lyrical tones that, along with the influence of Cubism and collage, reflect her interest in the tradition of decorative arts from her native country. Her work stands out for its interdisciplinary nature: aside from painting, Slobodkina focused on assemblage, murals, the illustration of children’s books, and on jewelry and costume design. As one of the founders of the association American Abstract Artists (AAA), which she presided – also acting as treasurer and secretary – Slobodkina played an important role in the promotion of abstraction in the United States. Alfred H. Barr, director of MoMA, recommended her work to Peggy Guggenheim, who decided to include Memories (1942) – which has since been lost – in Exhibition by 31 Women.
Between 1949 and 1959, Buffie Johnson produced what is considered one of her most important works: a great mural intended to decorate the Astor Theater in New York. This project was a true challenge for all those who negated women’s ability to create large format paintings. Thanks to the recovery of the mural by part of the Women’s Caucus prior to the theater’s demolition in 1982, some fragments, such as the one on display in this exhibition, are today part of public and private collections.
Short biography: Buffie Johnson (1912-2006). Born in New York, Buffie Johnson studied art at the University of Los Angeles. She later spent two years in Paris, where she established a friendship with Sonia Delaunay and other painters of the Parisian avant-garde. After completing her studies at the Académie Julian, she settled in New York in 1939. Johnson began to frequent several artistic circles, such as Peggy Guggenheim’s, who invited her to participate in Exhibition by 31 Women with the painting Déjeuner sur mer (1942). Outraged by the response of a Time Magazine critic who refused to review the exhibition arguing that he had never heard of outstanding women creators, Johnson attempted to publish an article on women artists that was rejected by several art magazines. This experience entailed the first awakening of her feminist consciousness. During the 1950s her work pivoted toward Abstract Expressionism. In parallel to her artistic career, she received a grant to study the imagery of the goddess mothers of antiquity, a work she would publish in 1988. Johnson’s early interest in the matriarchal tradition, which would also be reflected in many of her paintings, was embraced by second wave feminism in the late 1960s; a movement the artist would be actively involved in.
Sophie Taeuber-Arp produced works that were marked by the dissolution of artistic hierarchies and were very much her own. She experimented with painting, dance, sculpture, tapestry design, and puppet making. Vertical-Horizontal Composition might be related to the designs that the artist produced for the Café Aubette in Strasbourg. Taeuber-Arp’s protagonism in this work of total art, conceived on the basis of a dialogue between different artistic disciplines, has nevertheless been overshadowed by Jean Arp and Theo Van Doesburg’s participation in the project.
Short biography: Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943). Born in the Alpine city of Davos, Sophie Taeuber-Arp studied in Munich and Hamburg, where she absorbed the ideals of artistic fusion from the Arts and Crafts movement. She moved to Zurich during the outbreak of World War I and became involved in the Dada movement along with her future husband Hans Arp. She taught arts and crafts at the Zurich School of Commerce – a job that would support the couple for the following years – while attending expressive dance classes under Rudolf von Laban. She developed a style of work very much of her own, marked by the dissolution of artistic hierarchies. Taeuber-Arp experimented with painting, dance, furniture design, tapestries, interior design, and the construction of puppets and assemblages. In 1929 she quit teaching and moved to a house on the outskirts of Paris with her husband. Like other creators linked to non-objective art, she reacted to the push of Surrealism by becoming involved in associations such as Cercle et Carré and Abstraction-Création. In 1941 the couple left Paris fleeing from the arrival of the Nazis. They stayed at Peggy Guggenheim’s house in Veyrier for a few days before heading to the south of France. They decided not to leave Europe and sought refuge in Zurich. In 1943 Taeuber-Arp died in Zurich due to accidental poisoning from a heater.
Catalogue
Along with the reproduction of works on display and other materials within the exhibition, the catalogue includes an essay by Patricia Mayayo, curator of the show and professor of Art History at the Universidad Autónoma in Madrid, and a text by Lekha Hileman Waitoller, curator at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The publication also includes a succinct biography of each artist and a relationship map depicting the connections between Peggy Guggenheim and the artists featured in Exhibition by 31 Women.
Meret Oppenheim (Swiss born Germany, 1913-1985) Untitled (Helene Mayer) 1936 The 31 Women Collection
Helene Julie Mayer (1910-1953) was a German-born fencer who won the gold medal at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, and the silver medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. She competed for Nazi Germany in Berlin, despite having been forced to leave Germany in 1935 and resettle in the United States because she was of Jewish descent.
Hedda Sterne (American born Romania, 1910-2011) Self Portrait 1936-1939 The 31 Women Collection
Short biography: Hedda Sterne (1910-2011). Born in Bucharest, Romania, under the name Hedwig Lindenberg, Hedda Sterne came into contact with her city’s Dada and Constructivist scenes from a young age. In 1928 she moved to Vienna and later to Paris, where she continued her studies attending the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the studios of Fernand Léger and André Lhote. The following year she began to study philosophy and art history at the University of Bucharest. In 1932 she married her classmate Frederick Stern, whom she separated from a few years later. She came into contact with Parisian Surrealism through Romanian Surrealist Victor Brauner, which would greatly influence her early work. Thanks to recommendations by Brauner and Jean Arp, Peggy Guggenheim included several of Sterne’s collages in a group exhibition at her Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London. In 1941 she settled in New York, in an apartment close to Guggenheim’s mansion, who invited her to participate in her meetings of “exiled Surrealists” and included her work in Exhibition by 31 Women and The Women. Sterne also participated in important Surrealist exhibitions such as First Papers of Surrealism (1942). After the war she joined the Betty Parsons gallery, taking part in the circles of Abstract Expressionism. She was the only woman present in the famous image of the North American abstraction group “The Irascibles”, published in Life Magazine in 1951. Sterne would later express her discomfort in being more famous for her presence in said photograph than for her extensive career.
Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) in the entrance hall of her eighteenth century Venetian palace. Hanging from the ceiling is a 1941 Alexander Calder mobile and behind her is a 1937 painting by Picasso titled On The Beach. The 31 Women Collection Photo: Keystone Features/Getty Images
“in the derivation of the word “autopsy” we may understand that these photos are as much our discontinuous nature (we die) as they are about the pictured bodies.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
I’ve posted on this exhibition once before when it was shown at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris. While there some photographs that are the same in both postings there are new photographs to admire here. So, let’s have some fun with the text!
I started playing around with ideas in my head… and instead of the “autopsy of the spectacle” – an examination to discover the cause of the spectacle – I inverted that statement to make it the “spectacle of the autopsy”.
What immediately came to mind when I did this was the spectacle, the spectacular, painting that is Rembrandt’s early masterpiece The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632, below), that tableau – French, late 17th century (in the sense ‘picture’, figuratively ‘picturesque description’) – of figures, spectators, gathered around the corpse of the “criminal Aris Kindt (alias of Adriaan Adriaanszoon), who was convicted for armed robbery and sentenced to death by hanging.”1
Fast forward a few centuries to the “Murder is my business” photographs of Arthur Fellig (alias Weegee) and I again observe spectators gathered around the body of a corpse, either physically examining it or wilfully ignoring it (Drowning victim, Coney Island c. 1940, below), where the men “examine” the drowning victim surrounded by men that stare and the women who smiles for the camera. With the crowd behind, all are physically and metaphorically drawn in to the spectacle of the autopsy and the presence of the camera. “”Spectacle is Capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image,” explained Guy Debord in 1967. Weegee understood this well.”
In other photographs such as Body of Andrew Izzo, killed by off-duty policeman Elegio Sarro (1942, below) and Body of Dominic Didato (1936, below) Weegee’s camera becomes the spectator, standing in for us as we crane our necks to get a better view of the action. Together, the camera and the viewer, perform what could be seen as a form of “necropsy” – from the Greek words nekros (meaning “corpse”) and opsis (meaning “to view”), and together they mean “to look at the dead body with naked eyes” – that is, a macroscopic examination of a dead body.
Witness, and we do stand witness in Weegee’s photographs looking at dead bodies with naked eyes, the perspectival viewpoint of the bodies of both Andrew Izzo and Dominic Didato similar to the elongated perspective in the painting by Rembrandt, the shading of the face in that painting – the umbra mortis (shadow of death) – now supplanted by the reversed body, head shaded / covered in blood, surmounted with out flung gun and boater.
While these photographs fail “to give shape to feelings of compassion, grief, horror (as if the pictorial repetition of events were a way of understanding these events, being able to live with them)”2 finally, in the derivation of the word “autopsy” – and in the spectacular images of Weegee – we may begin to understand that these photographs are as much about us, the spectator and viewer, and our discontinuous nature (we die) as they are about the pictured bodies. For the meaning of the word autopsy – early 17th century (in the sense ‘personal observation’): from modern Latin autopsia, from Greek, from autoptos ‘self-revealed’, from autos ‘self’ + optos ‘seen’ – reveals as much about ourselves as it does the object of our attention.
Looking at mortality with naked eyes, our self-revealed, our self seen, reflected back to us in the photographs of Weegee.
Many thankx to Fundación MAPFRE for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Weegee knew the power of imagery to speak to larger truths about human nature and society. He captured New York as it truly was: gritty, raw, and filled with contrasts. His work turned the everyday violence and chaos of the city into art, making the mundane extraordinary. In Weegee’s own words, “I picked a story that meant something.” He had an instinct for identifying moments that held deeper significance, even if they were just snapshots of daily life in a chaotic metropolis.”
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669) The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp 1632 Oil on canvas 216.5cm x 169.5cm (85.2 in x 66.7 in) Mauritshuis, The Hague
Installation view of the exhibition Weegee. Autopsy of the Spectacle at Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid showing at right Weegee’s Self-portrait, Distortion (1955, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Weegee. Autopsy of the Spectacle at Fundacion Mapfre, Madrid showing at left Weegee’s Body of Andrew Izzo, killed by off-duty policeman Elegio Sarro (1942, below); at second left, [Outline of a Murder Victim] (1942); and at right, Body of Dominic Didato, (1936, below)
Dominick Didato, aka Terry Burns, who you see above in a photo made by Arthur Fellig, aka Weegee, lies dead on a New York City street where he was gunned down today in 1936. He was killed for interfering with rackets run by Lucky Luciano. It was a low percentage play. Luciano was literally the most powerful mobster in the U.S. at the time, and as the saying goes, you come at the king, you best not miss.
Anonymous. “Urban Decay,” on the Pulp International website August 22, 2024 [Online] Cited 11/11/2024
The work of Arthur H. Fellig, known as Weegee (Zolochiv, Ukraine, 1899 – New York, 1968), is, in a sense, an enigma that this exhibition seeks to unravel. His photographs of the underworld and the fringe circles of New York nightlife in the 1930s and 1940s quickly gained wide international recognition. However, the same cannot be said for the photographs he took after settling in Hollywood in 1948: images of Californian high society and the social life of major film celebrities, whom he often portrayed in a markedly ironic or satirical manner, sometimes (as in the case of the “photocaricatures”) as a result of his later work in the laboratory. At the time, critics emphasised the radical opposition between the two periods, openly praising the former and dismissing the latter. In these photographs of his Californian experience (1948-1951), Weegee expressed his critical vision of society and culture from a perspective that anticipated the well-known cultural and social analyses of ‘the society of the spectacle’ (Guy Debord).
Weegee. Autopsy of the Spectacle aims to show the profound coherence that, beyond their stylistic and thematic differences, links these two stages, as well as to highlight the relevance of the critical perspective from which Weegee’s images expose the features and mechanisms of our time as a ‘society of the spectacle’.
Exhibition organised by the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE.
The above photo shows the murder scene of a mid-level gangster named Joseph “Little Joe” La Cava, and occurred in New York City on Mulberry Street at the Feast of San Gennaro today in 1939. We’ll go out on a limb and say the festive atmosphere took a fatal hit too. Luckily, the celebration usually went for a week, so we suppose it was salvaged. La Cava was gunned down along with Rocco “Chickee” Fagio… Also interesting, cops being cops, the flatfoot closest to La Cava looks incongruously jocular as he chats with a higher-up. If this wasn’t the most unforgettable Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy’s history it had to be close.
Anonymous. “Urban Decay,” on the Pulp International website August 22, 2024 [Online] Cited 11/11/2024
“Distraught and pale with grief, Irma Twiss Epstein, 32-year-old nurse, whose own baby died 18 months ago, is booked on a homicide charge in the death of a baby whose crying, she said, ‘drove me crazy.’ Miss Epstein, Bronx Maternity Hospital nurse, is accused of giving a powerful drug to the 20 hour-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Castro Vallee, whose only other child died after birth 11 years ago. Another infant, 4 days old, was revived by nurses and doctors after Miss Epstein was found in a hallway hysterically sobbing: ‘eyedropper, baby.’ Hospital records showed she entered service there in 1940 and after nine months took a leave of absence to have a baby. Police said she had been in Bellevue’s psychopathic ward two years ago for observation after tasking an overdose of sleeping tablets. She told police at Morrisania Station she expected to be married soon.”
PM Daily, December 23, 1940 quoted on the International Center of Photography website
A pivotal figure of American photography in the first half of the twentieth century, Arthur H. Fellig, known by his pseudonym Weegee (Zolochiv, 1899 – New York, 1968) was an immensely popular artist thanks to the news photographs he took in New York in the 1930s and 1940s. This new exhibition aims to reveal a lesser-known facet of his career: the work he did between 1948 and 1951 in Hollywood, where he focused on the “society of the spectacle”.
Key themes
High-impact photographs
Some of Weegee’s photographs were veritable “visual punches”. This is true of the pictures he took of murders, corpses, fires and prisoners during the years spent covering crimes and accidents in New York, as well as of his later work, like the series showing circus artist Egle Zacchini being fired from a cannon at a speed of 100 metres per second, or his photo-caricatures of Marilyn Monroe, President Kennedy and other prominent personalities. His images almost always had a powerful impact on viewers, making them think not only about the scene they were contemplating but also about how they were looking at it.
The society of the spectacle
First published in 1967, Society of the Spectacle is one of the most important books by the philosopher Guy Debord, founding member of the Situationist International. It paints an incisive portrait of contemporary society, presumably replaced by its represented image. Throughout the work, Debord critically exposes the theory and practice of the spectacle, explaining how it governs our experience of time, history, goods, territory and happiness. In the twenty-first century, when immediacy reigns supreme, Debord’s ideas resound as the severest, most lucid assessment of the meanness and bondage of a society – the society of the spectacle – in which we all live.
Critique of the society of the spectacle
Class consciousness and empathy for the disadvantaged permeate Weegee’s work, as he never forgot his humble beginnings. Yet his most famous images are snapshots of accidents, fires and murders, in which he underscores the idea that bystanders are also spectators of the tragedies they contemplate, watching a scene in much the same way as cinema-goers watch Hollywood films (which are not all that different to the events captured by Weegee’s camera). He also used trick photography to critique the image of actors, singers, broadcasters, politicians and other public figures.
Weegee’s “satires”, as he called them, were visionary, appearing several years before the Situationist International first posited its theories. As Clement Che roux, curator of the exhibition, has pointed out, during his first period in New York, Weegee proved that the tabloids were selling news as a spectacle, and after 1945 he exposed how the media system radically spectacularised celebrities.
Biography
Weegee was born Usher Felig on 12 June 1899 to a Jewish family in Zolochiv, now in western Ukraine. At the age of ten he travelled to the United States to be reunited with his father, and immigration officers on Ellis Island registered him as Arthur Fellig. At 14, having settled into New York’s Lower East Side, a poor neighbourhood at the time, he left school and started working to help support his family. After trying several jobs, he became an itinerant photographer. He subsequently worked for the photographers Duckett & Adler and later in the ACME Newspictures agency laboratories. In 1935, he went into business for himself as a freelance photojournalist. He began using the pseudonym Weegee around 1937, and in 1941, the year he joined the Photo League (a group of freelance photographers who firmly believed in the emancipating power of images and fought for social justice), he started signing his prints as “Weegee the Famous”. In 1943, his work was included in a group exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
In 1945 he compiled his best photos in a book titled Naked City, which was a huge critical and commercial success. In the spring of 1948 Weegee moved to Hollywood, where he worked in cinema as a technical consultant and occasionally as an actor. In addition to photographing parties, he devised several trick photography techniques and used them to caricature celebrities. After four years on the West Coast, in December 1951 he returned to New York, although he did not resume his former practice. From that moment until his death on 26 December 1968, Weegee mainly capitalised on his fame to publish more books, do lecture tours, and widely circulate his photo-caricatures in the press.
The exhibition
There is a mystery in Weegee’s work which the exhibition now on view at Fundacio n MAPFRE aims to unravel. From very early on, the artist was internationally renowned for his photographs taken in the 1930s and 1940s and printed in the New York tabloids: corpses, fires, detainees in police wagons, etc. But Weegee had another group of works which, at first glance, might seem diametrically opposed to his reportage: the photo-caricatures of public figures created in Hollywood between 1948 and 1951. Critics highlighted the opposition between these two periods, praising the former and rejecting the latter. Weegee: Autopsy of the Spectacle attempts to reconcile both bodies of work by showing that, stylistic differences aside, they are fundamentally consistent in their portrayal of the “society of the spectacle” which was taking shape in the United States at that time.
In his early years, the artist photographed lurid, violent subjects, but those shots were often deeply ironic and exposed the “spectacular” nature of the depicted events. His images were printed in newspapers, and Weegee often included spectators or fellow photographers – individuals gawking at a traffic accident or murder scene – in the fore or background of his compositions. In a consistent manner, during the second part of his career the artist mocked the Hollywood spectacle: the short-lived fame, the adoring crowds who flocked to see “celebrities”, and the banal society scene. Weegee personally edited and altered these ironic, satirical images in the lab, anticipating the theories of the Situationist International and the critique of the society of the spectacle and its commodification, and always acted in consonance with his own political convictions.
The exhibition curated by Clement Che roux, director of Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, features over one hundred photographs and a variety of documentary material. With a new perspective on Weegee’s oeuvre, the itinerary is divided into three sections and offers a sweeping overview of his work.
The spectacle of news reportage
In 1935, Weegee went into business for himself as a freelance photojournalist. Thanks to a radio tuned to the police frequency which he installed in his car – basically a mobile office where he kept everything he needed to take photos – Weegee was always one of the first to arrive at the scene of a crime, fire or traffic accident. It was the Prohibition era, and gang violence was rampant in New York. Every night for ten years, Weegee covered the city’s accidents and crimes with flash photographs and, starting in 1940, did the same for the NP Daily, a newspaper with Marxist leanings. As the artist himself confessed, “Murder is my business.”
In addition to fires and crimes, during this period Weegee also took highly expressive portraits of the individuals who emerged from police wagons after a raid. At a time when it was considered criminal for a man to wear women’s clothes, some of those detainees tried to hide their faces while others basked in the attention, exiting the vehicle as if making a stage entrance. With these images, the artist emphasised the idea that social relations and the world in general were becoming pure spectacle.
At the same time, Weegee never forgot his roots as the son of poor Jewish immigrants and was keenly aware of the living conditions of the most destitute. For this reason, he also captured homeless people and acts of racial and everyday discrimination against the underprivileged, making his photographs “genuine social documents”.
The society of spectators
“The Curious Ones” is the title of a chapter in Naked City, the compilation of Weegee’s best photographs that he published in 1945. Thanks to that book, which was a huge critical and commercial success, he began to attend New York’s important society events much more frequently, photographing them exactly as he would a crime or accident scene. This is illustrated by two images taken in New York on 22 November 1943, The Critic and In the Lobby at the Metropolitan Opera, Opening Night. The artist was particularly interested in representing human emotions and tried to prevent his subjects from altering their expressions to pose for the camera. Little by little, he began to portray the witnesses to events that happened after dark in New York City, attempting to reflect the entire range of possible human reactions to a tragedy, from astonishment to nervous laughter or tears. Other photographers who came to the same scenes also caught his interest, prompting him to reflect on the very act of taking photos.
With all this repertoire, Weegee showed how ordinary individuals became voyeurs by treating the scene of the crime as a theatrical stage. Recalling the moment in 1939 when he took the photograph Balcony Seats at a Murder, he explained, “The detectives are all over […]. To me this was drama. This was like a backdrop. I stepped back about a hundred feet. I used flash powder and I got this whole scene. The people on the fire escapes, the body, everything!”
The comedy of the spectacular
In 1967, Guy Debord wrote that “the spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image” in his book Society of the Spectacle. Weegee, who understood this very well, photographed every sight that struck him as out of the ordinary. Fascinated by the makeup of crowds, he portrayed them enjoying a peaceable Sunday afternoon at the beach on Coney Island or celebrating the end of World War II in Chinatown; but he was also drawn to carnival and circus attractions and to cinemas, where he photographed movie-goers in the dark, engrossed in the film on screen.
Tired of murders and crime scenes, in 1948 Weegee moved to Hollywood and traded the direct, documentary-style photography he had practised in New York for manipulated images that required hours in the lab. During his stint in California, he turned his lens upon actors, singers, broadcasters and society figures. His vision of these individuals was not usually very flattering, photographing them from behind or in awkward situations. In some cases he would later distort the images using a kaleidoscope, photomontage or multiple exposure. Weegee created what he called “photo-caricatures”, a tradition that started among amateur photographers in the late nineteenth century and was originally known as “photographic amusements”, although he stated in his autobiography that his photo-caricatures had never been done before. Though a celebrity himself, the artist used photography to criticise the star system.
Catalogue
The exhibition, organised by Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in partnership with Fundacion MAPFRE, is accompanied by a publication titled Weegee. Autopsia del espectáculo, in which the majority of the images on display are reproduced. The catalogue contains a text by Clement Che roux, the show’s curator and director of Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, and two more essays by Cynthia Young, a curator specialised in photojournalism, and Isabelle Bonnet, a lecturer at the Sorbonne and photography expert. The writer, curator and photography lecturer David Campany has also made an important contribution to the volume, in which he compares Weegee and Stanley Kubrick based on their collaboration on Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
The original edition in French was published by Éditions Textuel with Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, and the Spanish-language edition has been co-published with Fundación MAPFRE.
There’s still a mystery to Weegee. The American photographer’s career seems to be split in two. First are his stories for the New York press from 1935-1945. Then, photo-caricatures of public personalities developed during his Hollywood period, between 1948 and 1951, which he continued to produce for the rest of his career. How can these diametrically opposed bodies of work coexist? Critics have enjoyed highlighting the opposition between the two periods, praising the former and disparaging the latter. This project seeks to reconcile the two parts of Weegee by showing that, beyond formal differences, the photographer’s approach is critically coherent.
The spectacle is omnipresent in Weegee’s work. In the first part of his career, coinciding with the rise of the tabloid press, he was an active participant in transforming news into spectacle. To show this, he often included spectators or other photographers in the foreground of his images. In the second half of his career, Weegee mocked the Hollywood spectacular: its ephemeral glory, adoring crowds, and social scenes. Some years before the Situationist International, his photography presented an incisive critique of the Society of the Spectacle.
The News Spectacle
“News photography is my meat.” After many years as a printer for press agencies, Weegee started his own business as a photojournalist in 1935. In order to be the first to arrive at the site of a murder, fire, or traffic accident, he set up a radio in his car, tuned to the police frequency. For a decade, using a flash, he took photographs of news in New York every night.
Weegee Himself
“I have always been a doer and not a thinker.” Weegee enjoyed putting himself in front of the camera, re-enacting circumstances he was confronted with in his daily work. In the name of pedagogy, and probably a little out of narcissism and self-advertisement, he took pictures of himself writing captions for his photographs in the back of his car, in police wagons and behind bars, never without his camera.
Murder Is My Business
“I used to be an expert on murder.” From 1935 to 1945, Weegee spent his nights roaming the city looking for shocking images. Even after Prohibition, New Yorkers’ dreams were punctuated by explosion sounds caused by rival gangs settling scores. The photographer learned to create expressive images which the booming tabloids were particularly fond of.
Off Road
“Sudden death for one…, sudden shock for the other.” American culture is fascinated by twisted metal. In the 19th century, a railroad company staged public collisions between locomotives destined for the junkyard. Weegee photographed many traffic accidents, introducing the “car crash” genre, later adopted by other figures, such as Andy Warhol, J. G. Ballard, David Cronenberg, etc.
The Tragedy of Fire
“Murders and fires (my two best sellers, my bread and butter).” In the darkness of the city, like a moth to a flame, Weegee took photographs of fires. The urban landscape of New York, with its many substandard buildings, provided him with many such opportunities. The combination of fire, smoke and gushing water offered a particularly photogenic spectacle that the press adored.
On The Spot
“The Parade never ceases as the ‘pie’ Wagons unload.” When he wasn’t in the field, Weegee waited at the entrance of the police station for the prison wagon to return with its load of offenders arrested in the night. At a time when it was a criminal act for a man to dress as a woman, some tried to hide their faces, while others took the opportunity to step out of the wagon as if onto a stage.
In Flagrante Delicto
“When criminals tried to cover their faces, it was a challenge to me. I literally uncovered not only their faces, but their black souls as well.” Faced with Weegee’s scrutinising lens, defendants often tried to conceal their identities. In his autobiography, the photographer recounts the many stratagems he developed to oblige them to reveal themselves. Clearly, they didn’t always work.
Social Documents
“The people in these photographs are real.” Coming from a Jewish family who emigrated to the United States from Ukraine at the beginning of the 20th century, experiencing extreme poverty upon their arrival, Weegee was quite aware of standards of living among the underprivileged. He took photographs of ordinary forms of discrimination, people with small trades, and the homeless. His photographs can be seen, in his own words, as “veritable social documents.”
Society of the Spectators
“The Curious ones” is a chapter title from Weegee’s best-seller: Naked City. The photographer takes an interest in people who, like himself, indulge unreservedly in the act of looking. He often includes them in the scenes he photographs, framing them in close-up to create veritable portraits of on-lookers. His work is a particularly striking testimony to the society of spectators developing in the United States at the time.
Meta Photo Co.
“I have no time for messages in my pictures.” Yet Weegee often included other photographers in his compositions as if, through this mise en abyme, he was inciting people to reflect on what it meant to take a photograph. An image from 1942, published in PM’s Weekly, is a good example. Three reporters and the words “Meta Photo Co.” on a window in the background of the photograph indicate there is something to be learned here about photography itself.
The Critic
“‘What is the best picture you ever took?’ Without hesitation I answer, ‘A picture I took at the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House. I consider this to be my masterpiece.'” The circumstances were contrived. Weegee went to a working-class neighbourhood to pick the woman up, then brought her to the entrance of this gala. The image illustrates the widening gap between the rich and the poor under American capitalism. It also reflects the critical power of a simple look.
Looking at Death
“I stepped back far enough to take in the whole scene: the puzzled detectives examining the body, the people on the fire escape, watching… it was like a stage setting.” Balcony seat at a murder: by including spectators in many of his images, Weegee imagines crime scenes as theatrical scenes, underscoring how American society transforms news into spectacle.
Spectators
“When I take a picture of a fire, I forget all about the burning building and I go out to the human element.” After years of tirelessly documenting events of the New York night, Weegee began taking photographs of the individuals who witnessed them. He was thus able to take portraits of groups expressing the full range of human reactions to tragedy, from surprise and tears to nervous laughter.
Out of Frame
“The curious […] ones always rushing by […] but always finding time to stop and look at.” On July 28, 1945, at 9:40 a.m., as a thick fog enveloped New York, a small plane crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building. Weegee photographed spectators trying to catch a glimpse of it. People discovering his photographs in newspapers found themselves in the same position as these observers, a voyeuristic one.
Seeing in the Dark
“It’s hard to photograph people and get natural expressions. The minute they see the camera, they ‘freeze’ up on you.” Weegee was especially interested in depicting emotions on the faces of observers. Concerned that his presence would change their reaction, he had the ingenious idea of taking their photographs in the darkness of a theatre using infrared film. The result is a series of stunning portraits of wide-eyed spectators.
She Gestures of Art
“I used the same technique […] whether it was a murder, a pickpocket, or a society ball.” Following the success of his book Naked City, Weegee was routinely invited to high society events in New York, which he took pleasure in photographing as news items. In October 1945, at the opening of an exhibition by painter Stuart Davis at the MoMA, he captured the strange gestures of the art world.
The Theatre of the Spectacular
“Spectacle is Capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image,” explained Guy Debord in 1967. Weegee understood this well. He took photographs of all that was visually uncommon: crowds at Coney Island, fairground attractions, stars, acrobats, clowns… and finally, himself. A few years before the Situationist International, he pioneered a visual form of critique of the Society of the Spectacle.
In the Company of Crowds
“And this is Coney Island on a quiet Sunday afternoon […]. A crowd of over a MILLION is usual and attracts no attention.” On a Brooklyn beach, in Times Square or in Chinatown celebrating victory over Nazi power, Weegee never missed the opportunity to photograph crowds. Beyond “mass ornament,” theorised a few years earlier by Siegfried Kracauer, he was fascinated by the ways in which the people constitute themselves as images.
The Cannonball Woman
“Punch in Pictures.” That’s how one magazine described an article on Weegee. The scoop-hunter knows better than anyone else how to produce hard-hitting images. In 1943, Weegee photographed circus performer Egle Zacchini, nicknamed Miss Victory, or The Cannonball Woman, shot out of a cannon at 360 feet per second. As war was raging in Europe, it was a strange metaphor for the role of women in the conflict.
A Circus Community
“Someday they, too, will be stars.” Weegee especially enjoyed hanging around behind the scenes of fairgrounds in the suburbs. He photographed the way a performer at Sammy’s Bar placed her money in her stocking. Elsewhere, a dwarf with a forced smile, a melancholy clown slumped in his dressing room, what remains of the parade after the crowd passes by. Many of his photographs display the ambiance of a sad party.
Photo-caricatures
“I was tired of gangsters lying dead with their guts spewed in the gutter, of women crying at tenement-house fires, of automobile accidents […]. I was off to Hollywood.” In the City of Angels, Weegee not only photographs the celebrities he meets, he delights in making caricatures of them with what he calls his “elastic lens,” now mocking the star system.
The Spyglass
“I have used the camera to provoke good old-fashioned belly laughs.” In 1963, Weegee was invited to the set of Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove. The director was a great fan of Weegee, and had begun his own career as a press photographer. On set, Weegee applied a new technique for the tubular distortion of faces, as if one were looking through the small end of a spyglass.
Trick Inventory
“Their originality was such that they sold like hot cakes.” This is how Weegee described his photo-caricatures, the first of which appeared in papers in 1947. For 20 years and up until his death in 1968, he would regularly publish these works. Around fifty of the publications are known today. There are most likely many more. In his daily work, the photo-caricature came to definitively replace the news item.
Weegee, Ouija
“I’m called Weegee which comes from Ouija.” The pseudonym Weegee refers to the name of a board used in seances to decipher messages from the beyond. Weegee liked to describe himself as a “psychic photographer”, able to predict in advance where a story will take place. On the scene, he said he photographed using his “third eye.” Whether clairvoyant or voyeur, Weegee was able to see, better than anyone else, transformations in American society.
I wrote this philosophical text as a flow of consciousness, a layered exposition of my thoughts on space, photography, identity and belonging. I hope I have done the subject justice… in freedom.
within, bridge and fissure
The struggle for identity, for culture, for nation is a struggle inscribed in space. So observes Wendy Garden.1
The spaces that bodies move in, through and over are fluid spaces, permeable spaces, fragmentary and transitory spaces. They are also spaces of displacement and distance which form a kind of ‘alienation’ which derives from the Latin alienare: to render foreign, other.2
Thus the “border” between one and the other – that fluid penumbra (a peripheral or indeterminate area or group), that oscillation of energy across the line – must be constructed to be legible and fixed by those that seek to control such spaces, through the imposition of a coded representation of space itself.3 The border wall between Mexico and America is one such imposition of a coded representation of space which, seeks to control an/other. It is a “direct translation of ideology and temporality into material and spatial culture”3 which masks as much as it represents, through a selective representation of history and memory.
Through systems of surveillance (e.g. CCTV, aerial surveillance, phone taps) and control (e.g. police, government, the judiciary), in which one reinforces the other in a never ending circle, and in the of naming of the ‘other’ (Foucault) – those with privilege embedded and thus emboldened within colonial and imperial systems seek to confirm hegemonic structures of power: for example, who can travel where, who has access adequate to health care, who is seen as an ill/legal alien. “Although Foucault rarely alludes to it in a clear-cut manner, what he describes in Discipline and Punish is the formation of the discursive regime of surveillance which is a central element in the expression of the modern state.”4
But we can counter this narrative.
In his influential book Thirdspace (Blackwell, 1996), the American postmodern political geographer and urban theorist Edward Soja (1940-2015) proposes the concept of First, Second and Thirdspace to demarcate the various spatial dimensions. Firstspace “is the ‘real’, the concrete materiality of spatial forms of the world, while Secondspace interprets this reality through imagined representations of spatiality.”5 Much early photographic practice is rooted in Firstspace, in the passive representation of an undeniable truth, the veracity of the image and its representation of the referent: this existed because it was captured by the camera.
Thirdspace on the other hand, “contains both real and imagined spaces simultaneously. Thirdspace permits an intermingling of the knowable and the unknowable, the real and the imagined by the experiences, events and political choices that are shaped by the interplay between centres and peripheries (Soja, Thirdspace 1996: 31). According to Soja, Thirdspace is a place where issues of race, class and gender can be addressed simultaneously without privileging one over the other. It is a space which enables an-‘other’ way of understanding and acting to change the spatiality of human life (Soja, Thirdspace 1996: 10). Photographic space, as a Thirdspace, is a site from which to contest the dominant ideologies of Firstspace. This has important ramifications for ‘others,’ especially those disenfranchised by colonialism.”6
Thus photographic Thirdspace is an amorphous space of both the real and imagined and is the vibration of energy, doubled! – the real and imagined spaces of everyday life, and the real and imagined spaces of photography through which we can contest the contexts of becoming, belonging.
These Thirdspaces of the real and imagined are not spaces of universalising totality which then would be constitutive of history or memory, but in-between spaces in which differences, memories and histories are not denied or negated, hidden, forgotten or repressed. It is not the segregation of black and white, either/or, but the grey areas in-between that interest me: those fluid zones of difference – think Tarkovsky’s film Stalker 1979, in which a guide helps a writer and a professor to infiltrate a restricted area, the Zone.
“The Thirdspace – in which “everything comes together… subjectivity and objectivity, the abstract and the concrete, the real and the imagined, the knowable and the unimaginable, the repetitive and the differential, structure and agency, mind and body, consciousness and the unconscious, the disciplined and the trans-disciplinary, everyday life and unending history”a – allows that none of these couples, such as the phenomenal and the noumenal, can be divided by an either/or attitude. “This… does not mean differences are denied, instead, it most of all means the inevitable reciprocity of any pair of definitions. In such a case both leave a mark on the other. It is a question of both-and – how each of the pair influences the other”b.”7
Both leave a mark on each other. And it is in this marking that social and political relations can be reconfigured, “in such a way as to suspect, neutralise, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror or reflect.”8 Thus, the physical aspects as well as the attitudes and habitual practices of ‘space’, the arrangements of space and the socialisation of space, “is an order that is itself always undergoing change from within through the actions and innovations of social agents. In short, all ‘space’ is social space ….”9
Following, we can say that social and spatial relationships are dialectically inter-reactive, interdependent (Soja).
“Social and spatial relationships are dialectically inter-reactive and interdependent. Cultural landscapes reflect social relations and institutions, and they shape subsequent social relations. While elites create spatial inequalities and homogeneity simultaneously through their hegemony, non-elites create counter-hegemonic landscapes which reflect their own values. Behavioural resistance to the dominant culture leads to distinctive cultural landscapes: for example, cultural resistance by Maori.
Indeed, dominant ideologies such as those which are religious, political, economic, ethnic or racial, continually define or redefine ‘deviance’ or ‘otherness’ to maintain their power and landscapes of dominance. Space and place are key factors in the definition of deviance and of order and propriety.”10
But as Wael Salah Fahmi insightfully observes, we must not fall into the idea that juxtapositions of social space are just alternating choices of “either/or” or acts of simple resistance: “But “juxtaposition” might imply alternating choices, an “either/or.” Perhaps instead we might think of Lefebvre’s image of interpenetrating spaces, one violating another, yet rising up from within the very “fundament” of the space that wishes to ignore its existence. Here, perhaps, is a spatial dialectic that does not fall into a binary opposition of simple resistance.”11
Spaces that rise up from within each other!
Change that emanates from within through the actions and innovations of social agents… human beings, artists!
Here, the thoughts of that glorious Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator Coco Fusco (b. 1960) – quoted by Jean Fisher – whose work explores gender, identity, race, and power through performance, video, interactive installations, and critical writing are particularly cogent.
“Two imperatives are set in motion: to alter the perceptions of those with privileged access to hegemonic structures of power, and to change the sense of disempowerment of those deprived of political agency. “What is more fundamentally at stake than freedom,” Fusco argues, “is power – the power to choose, the power to determine value, and the right of the more powerful to consume without guilt”: entitlements that Eurocentric cultures have assumed for themselves at the expense of others. These aims are advanced through an exploration of the relationship between the politics and practices of cultural difference and social inequity, in which intellectual, experiential, and artistic alliances are built across nationalistic and geographical boundaries …””12
As Wael Salah Fahmi notes, “spaces constantly juxtapose themselves one against the other” – in real life, in art, in photography. The media saturated world of the “total flow” of images is resistant to interpretation, yet in real life – and in this exhibition – the juxta/position (mapping of space), juxta/posing (posing for the camera) of one space against another, “of image to image calls to attention a line of conflict, either fissure or bridge.”13
The images in this posting draw our attention to fissures (George Rodriguez, Susan Meiselas, Ada Trillo) and bridges (Graciela Iturbide, Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello with Colectivo Chopeke). They also possess a multivalent narrative, allowing the work to be accessible to different interpretations, meanings, and values: a new door or path opens up on the basis of very diverse needs and objectives. These images, untraceable gifts from photography itself, are marks of candour and authenticity, both descriptions of a stable object and the fleeting glance (Firstspace and Thirdspace) interacting upon each other. They are an investigation into our fluid identity and shifting place in our worlds.14
In spatial dialectics and in the nuances of contradictions we proceed onwards, paying no heed to the dangers which lie ahead, journeying on to fulfil our desires: to be seen, to be heard, in our difference and uniqueness, enacting change from within.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Word count: 1,435
PS. My friend and Melbourne artist Elizabeth Gertsakis insightfully observes, “The philosophical arguments resonate with the vacillation of the photograph meanings/non-meanings. Spaces that implode from within to further generate the unknown which even in definition become dispersed. The photography around the border/wall is beautiful as well as tortuous as well as unspoken.”
Well said Liz 🙂
Footnotes
1/ Wendy Garden. “Photographic Space and the Indian Portrait Studio,” in On Space Issue Seven, Winter 2007
2/ Rob Shields. Lefebvre, Love and Struggle. London: Routledge, 1999, pp. 40-41.
3/ Ibid., pp. 79-80.
4/ Jon Stratton. The Desirable Body. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996, p. 19
5/ Garden, Op cit.,
6/ Garden, Op cit.,
7/ A: Edward W. Soja. Thirdspace. Malden (Mass.): Blackwell, 1996, p. 57; B: Mika Hannula. “Third space – a merry-go-round of opportunity,” on the Kiasma Magazine website No. 12, Vol. 4, 2001 [Online] Cited 01/05/2016. No longer available online quoted in Marcus Bunyan. “Thirdspace,” on the Marcus Bunyan website 2021 [Online] Cited 29/11/2024
8/ Michel Foucault. “Of Other Spaces,” in Diacritics Spring 1986, p. 24
9/ Shields, Op cit., pp. 154-155
10/Alexander Trapeznik. “Introduction,” from Public History Review, Vol. 13, 2006, p. 2
11/ Wael Salah Fahmi. “Reading of Post Modern Public Spaces As Layers Of Virtual Images and Real Events,” from The 37th International Planning Congress “HONEY, I SHRUNK THE SPACE” Planning in the Information Age. Utrecht, The Netherlands, 16-20 September, 2001
12/ Jean Fisher. “Witness for the Prosecution: The Writings of Coco Fusco,” in Coco Fusco. The Bodies That Were Not Ours. London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 226-227
13/ Wael Salah Fahmi, op cit.,
14/ Marcus Bunyan. “Thirdspace,” on the Marcus Bunyan website 2021 [Online] Cited 29/11/2024
Many thankx to the Cleveland Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“And do you know what “the world” is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by “nothingness” as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be “empty” here or there, but rather a force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there […]”
Frederick Nietzsche, The Will to Power
“Edward Soja employs the concept of First, Second and Thirdspace to demarcate the various spatial dimensions. For Soja Firstspace is the ‘real’, the concrete materiality of spatial forms of the world, while Secondspace interprets this reality through imagined representations of spatiality (Soja 1996: 6). Much early photography participated in perpetuating the belief that photographic space was a Firstspace. The camera lens merely passively and objectively recorded all that was placed before it. However even in the nineteenth century, many practitioners acknowledged the ability of photographs to lie or distort reality.
For Soja, Thirdspace contains both real and imagined spaces simultaneously. Thirdspace permits an intermingling of the knowable and the unknowable, the real and the imagined by the experiences, events and political choices that are shaped by the interplay between centres and peripheries (Soja, Thirdspace 1996: 31). According to Soja, Thirdspace is a place where issues of race, class and gender can be addressed simultaneously without privileging one over the other. It is a space which enables an-‘other’ way of understanding and acting to change the spatiality of human life (Soja, Thirdspace 1996: 10). Photographic space, as a Thirdspace, is a site from which to contest the dominant ideologies of Firstspace. This has important ramifications for ‘others,’ especially those disenfranchised by colonialism. It may account for the rise of photography as the preferred medium for many artists today interested in issues of identity and the colonial gaze. …
Photographic space can create a spatial reality which allows those who access it to contest, enlarge or in someway recreate their experiences of Firstspace. It never attempts to close off subjectivity or pin identity down, but rather allows fluid and transitory experiments with other ways of being that can then be carried over and inform experiences of Firstspace.”
Wendy Garden. “Photographic Space and the Indian Portrait Studio,” in On Space Issue Seven, Winter 2007. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Picturing the Border presents photographs of the US-Mexico borderlands from the 1970s to the present taken by both border residents and outsiders. They range in subject matter from intimate domestic portraits, narratives of migration, and proof of political demonstrations to images of border crossings and clashes between migrants and the US Border Patrol. The earliest images in this exhibition form an origin story for the topicality of the US-Mexico border at present, and demonstrate that the issues of the border have been a critical point of inquiry for artists since the 1970s. Many serve as counter-narratives to the derogatory narratives of migration and Latino/as in the US that tend to circulate in the mass media.
Capitalising on the prevalent issues of the border today, Picturing the Border aims to spark vital conversations of what constitutes citizenship, as well as complex negotiations of personal identity as it relates to the border. The exhibition shows through these images that Latinx, Chicano/a, and Mexican photographers have significantly rethought what defines citizenship, nationality, family, migration, and the border beyond traditional frameworks for decades.
Text from the Cleveland Museum of Art website
George Rodriguez (American, b. 1937) Los Angeles police arrest a Chicano student protester in the neighbourhood of Boyle Heights 1970 Gelatin silver print
Photojournalism from the US-Mexico border currently emphasises stark, divisive images: walls, fences, surveillance devices, border patrols, “coyotes,” and crossing migrants. Yet some of the most compelling artwork dealing with this region attests to several generations of cross-border familial relationships, personal identities that carry markers of both countries, and hybrid cultures that meld influences from the United States, Mexico, and farther south in Latin America. This more complex work demonstrates how border residents have resisted being defined by the border and its conflicts, concentrating instead on a deterritorialised notion of home, along with a sense of self that often transcends both nationalism and gender politics.
The photographs and video works included in Picturing the Border offer a more nuanced portrayal of life in the borderlands. The exhibition positions the US-Mexico border as a cultural framework and highlights how Latinx photographers – many of whom are border residents themselves – have instead formulated alternative photographic vocabularies with regard to place, identity, and race. Photographs range in subject matter from intimate domestic portraits, extended family gatherings, and political demonstrations to images of border crossings and clashes between migrants and the US border patrol. The earliest images in this exhibition form an origin story for the topicality of the US-Mexico border at the present moment and demonstrate that the issues of the border have been a critical point of inquiry for artists since the 1970s.
The exhibition is accompanied by an important scholarly publication that brings new insights to the subject of Latinx photography and the history of the US-Mexico border. Picturing the Border has also brought about the opportunity to grow our permanent collection in this area, precipitating recent acquisitions by Laura Aguilar and the donation of an important work by Ada Trillo, who has witnessed firsthand the perils of the unbelievably extensive journey migrants have taken from Central America to the United States.
Although Cleveland is far from the southern border, stories of global migration are woven throughout the CMA’s encyclopeadic collection as well as throughout the community in Northeast Ohio. Picturing the Border puts faces on stories and brings to life the various threads that stitch together an ever-growing understanding of, and empathy for, the migrant experience.
Nadiah Rivera Fellah, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art. “Picturing the Border,” on the Cleveland Museum of Art website June 1, 2024 [Online] Cited 19/07/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Featuring more than four dozen photographs, Picturing the Border aims to spark vital conversations of what constitutes citizenship, as well as complex negotiations of personal identity as it relates to the border. Through these images the exhibition shows that Latinx, Chicano/a, and Mexican photographers have significantly rethought what defines citizenship, nationality, family, migration, and the border beyond traditional frameworks for decades.
Opening on July 21, 2024, in the Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Gallery, this free exhibition will be on view through January 5, 2025. From intimate domestic portraits, narratives of migration, and political demonstrations to images of border crossings and clashes between migrants and the US Border Patrol, this one-of-a-kind exhibition presents photographs taken by both border residents and outsiders, many of whom are Latinx, Chicano/a, and Mexican, and tells the story of the US-Mexico borderlands from the 1970s to the present.
“Borders have long been spaces of contention,” says Nadiah Rivera Fellah, curator of contemporary art. “The mainstream media in the United States tends to present nationalistic narratives about imminent threats at the border. This reductive and divisive narrative does not often portray the identities, languages, cultures, and social ties among communities. The photographs featured in this exhibition tell a different story that can serve as a counter-narrative and timely new perspective on life in this region.”
The earliest images in Picturing the Border form an origin story for the topicality of the US-Mexico border at present and demonstrate that the issues of the border have been a critical point of inquiry for artists since the 1970s. In addition, they showcase artists who were ahead of their time in presenting ideas about spaces and exclusion as they relate to issues of the borderlands and Latinx identities in the United States.
Exhibition catalogue
A beautifully illustrated 134-page exhibition catalogue accompanies Picturing the Border by Nadiah Rivera Fellah, curator of contemporary art, with contributions from Natalie Scenters-Zapico.
The US-Mexico border has undergone dramatic changes over the past six decades, becoming increasingly industrialised, urbanised, and militarised, especially in the aftermath of 9/11 and the War on Terror. Mainstream and conservative news coverage has often reinforced or exacerbated such developments, characterising the border as out of control and describing migrants in derogatory terms, in the process fuelling xenophobic sentiment.
A foil to this reductive and dehumanising narrative, this presentation of Latinx photography offers more nuanced portrayals of life in the borderlands. Ranging from the 1970s to the 2020s, images by Louis Carlos Bernal, Graciela Iturbide, and Laura Aguilar, as well as emerging artists such as Ada Trillo, Guadalupe Rosales, and Miguel Fernández de Castro display alternative photographic vocabularies regarding place, identity, and race. With subject matter spanning from intimate domestic portraits and youth counterculture to border crossings and clashes involving the US Border Patrol, this richly illustrated volume also features scholarly essays and new work by fronteriza poet Natalie Scenters-Zapico, providing new insights on this fraught and misunderstood region.
Graciela Iturbide’s Cholo/as series from 1986 Los Angeles is perhaps the best encapsulation of the show’s thesis. The women in Cholos, White Fence, East Los Angeles told Iturbide that they wanted to be photographed under a mural of some mariachis. In fact, these were images of Emiliano Zapata, Benito Juárez and Pancho Villa. We might as well admire their freedom from context. After all, isn’t America all about freedom?
Graciela Iturbide (Mexican, b. 1942) Rosario y Boo Boo en su casa, Los Angeles (Rosario and Boo Boo in their home, Los Angeles) 1986 Gelatin silver print
“Without the camera you see the world one way, with it, you see the world another way. Through the lens you are composing, dreaming even, with that reality, as if through the camera you are synthesising who you are… So you make your own image, interpreting.”
As Los Angeles is located over 100 miles north of Mexico, Iturbide’s work demonstrates that while the border is a physical space, its communities defy any single geographical boundary.
This argument echoes in photos made over 1,500 miles away by photographer Ada Trillo, who grew up on the liminal lands between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In her photobook on view in the exhibition, titled La Caravana del Diablo (2022), the artist documents three journeys: two alongside migrant people in caravans attempting to cross into Mexico on their way to the US border and a third aboard La Bestia, the infamous freight train that hundreds of thousands of Central American migrants ride each year to the north of Mexico – risking injury and death in the process. Trillo’s works are primarily populated by people from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, representing deep friendships the artist formed over days and weeks of gruelling travel. …
Trillo’s works, like those of other artists in the exhibition, capture how the border forces migrants and other communities to weave their stories within a maddening architecture of violence that is both systematic and capricious. “Many of the photographers in this show were inspired by one another,” Rivera Fellah explained. “And many have used their politically engaged photographic practices as a counter-narrative to derogatory images of the border that have circulated in the media since the 1970s and 1980s.”
Ada Trillo – La Caravana del Diablo Hardcover/Sewn bound 192 pages/30.5 x 24.8cm Language: English ISBN: 978-94-91525-93-3 November 2021
Every day, thousands of people leave in processions from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador via Mexico for America because of flaring violence, murder (on women) and poor economic conditions in their own country. A journey covering hundreds of kilometres, often on foot, full of fear of being arrested and sent back. Some people even ‘disappear’. Under the Trump administration, despite fierce opposition, ‘The Wall’ was built to keep these immigrants out of ‘The Northern Triangle’, making their passage into America even more perilous.
Photographer Ada Trillo considers it her mission to portray this distressing situation. In ‘La Caravana del Diablo’ she doesn’t look away but confronts us. Ada shows that each of these thousands of migrants is a human being. A human being with a family, with fear, hope and dreams.
More than three thousand kilometers of border have unified the United States and Mexico since the mid-nineteenth century. Some 8,000,000 people live, sometimes in suspense, on both shores of a division as arbitrary as it is controversial. A dividing line that has changed throughout history, affecting those who have remained on one side or the other.
This same space, mythical, liminal, polemic, has become, in the last half-century, above all, one of the most watched and controlled landscapes of the entire planet. It has also become one of the most vulnerable: millions of Mexicans, Central Americans, and many other nationalities have crossed – or tried to cross – the border.
Picturing the Border, a photographic exhibition curated by Nadiah Rivera Fellah[2] and open to the public from July 21, 2024, to January 5, 2025, at the Cleveland Museum of Art, shows other aspects of those living there. The exhibition gathers images taken between the 1970s and the present by North American and Mexican artists such as Louis Carlos Bernal, Graciela Iturbide, Laura Aguilar, Ada Trillo, Guadalupe Rosales, and Miguel Fernández de Castro. The photographs present alternative proposals for understanding and reading the border by placing the people who inhabit it in the spotlight, thus challenging fixed and stereotypical conceptions of identity and culture.
In this exhibition, as in real life, the border stands as a third space, in the same sense proposed by Homi Bhabha: that intermediate space of cultural encounters and dis-encounters from which a new site of enunciation emerges and in which the binary is deconstructed[3]. Edward Soja, in an approach similar to Bhabha’s, regarding the ‘hybridity’ of the spaces of encounters of cultures, defines the thirdspace as the place where “everything comes together… subjectivity and objectivity, the abstract and the concrete, the real and the imagined, the knowable and the unimaginable, the repetitive and the differential, structure, and agency, mind and body, consciousness and the unconscious, the disciplined and the transdisciplinary, everyday life and unending history.”[4] According to Gloria Anzaldúa, “the convergence [of Mexico and the United States] has created a shock culture, a border culture, a third country, a closed country”[5].
But, what do the exhibited photos tell us about this ‘third space,’ this ‘third hybrid country’ that exists between the United States and Mexico? That third country is occupied not only by illegal migration and drug trafficking – the primary approach from the media – but also by symbols deeply rooted in Mexican and border life, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Cholo culture, the use and appropriation of iconic North American products (such as cars) by Mexican Americans, the Day of the Dead celebrations. These photos open a window for us to look, with respect and wonder, at the life that goes on in private and public spaces, often in a very different way than that imagined by those of us who are not directly associated with that geography. It also reminds us of the student and labor protests and strikes that have taken place in that region.
[3] See: Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. Routledge, New York, 1994. [4] See: Soja, Edward W. Thirdspace. Malden (Mass.): Blackwell, 1996, p. 57. [5] This phrase presides over the exhibition.
Far from being a flash in the proverbial pan, the border has long incarnated questions about the arbitrary nature of insider and outsider dynamics, legality, and citizenship.
Among the works exploring these themes is the late photographer Laura Aguilar’s black-and-white portrait “Yrenia Cervantes” (1990), in which the titular Chicana muralist and artist stares at her reflection in her dresser mirror. Her bedroom is decorated in the elaborate style of an altar: It includes photos, iconography, and handmade objects. Cervantes is simultaneously of the border and beyond it – the viewer can’t easily determine to which side she belongs.
“In looking through the body of work I feel what is envisioned by the photographer in his images is a wonderful empathy for the miners and their families in the situation of their becoming.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Mrs. Manuel Alcala and son in corner of their kitchen. The family lives in company housing project for miners. National Fuel Company, Monarch Mine, Broomfield, Boulder County, Colorado July 2, 1946 National Archives Public domain
The history of today and every day
Continuing Art Blart’s support of photographers with a social conscience, this latest posting complements recent postings on the exhibitions Miners’ Strike 1984-85, and Roger Mayne: Youth. In the United States of America this type of attuned social documentary photography has a long history, both prior to and after Russell Lee’s photographs were taken.
From Danish-American social reformer Jacob Riis’ who used his “photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City” to the famous American sociologist and photographer Lewis Hine whose images “were instrumental in bringing about the passage of the first child labor laws in the United States”, onward to the work of the photographers employed by the Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information (FSA / OWI) between 1935-1944,* (notably Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Jack Delano, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott) which “form an extensive pictorial record of American life” … and thus to these photographs taken by Russell Lee just after the end of the Second World War. Lee’s photographs were then followed by Gordon Parks‘ photographs of racial intolerance, Marion Palfi‘s photographs of American injustice, Milton Rogovin‘s photographs of “the forgotten ones” and, more recently, James Nachtwey‘s photographs of drug use in America. Of course, there are many other photographers who could be mentioned.
It has been a fascinating journey to engage with over 1000 of Russell Lee’s Coal Survey photographs that are available in the National Archives Catalog to try to fully understand the vision of this artist during the 1946 project picturing miners in their homes, mines, and communities. “Lee provided the photographs for the study which included 90 communities in 22 states… Over the course of the survey, Lee took over 4000 photographs, more than 200 of which are included in the exhibit.”
As with any large of body of work the quality of the photographs varies incredibly – some poor, others prosaic, some insightful, others powerful portraits, some dynamic, others occasionally revelatory. This is only to be expected. In the selection in this posting I have chosen what I think are the best photographs from the 1000 photographs available online. Please note, these photographs are not necessarily in the exhibition.
In looking through the body of work I feel what is envisioned by the photographer in his images is a wonderful empathy for the miners and their families in the situation of their becoming. What Lee pictures are communities that support each other but which are under stress.
Having worked through the Second World War to aid the American war effort, men and women were hard at work in a dangerous job, the families were living in run down houses owned by the coal mining companies, were buying food at the company store, were borrowing money on their earnings from the company to survive and living a subsistence life – having the minimal resources necessary for survival, having just enough food or money to stay alive. Rickety wooden houses with no running water [The only houses with running water inside in this camp are those in which their tennants [sic] have made the installations at no expense to the company], dead animals in streams where water is gathered, roofs lined with newspaper, children with no shoes, men holding serpents praying to an unseen god.
I believe that Lee’s most powerful photographs in the project are the images of the miners at work. There is an intimate directness to these photographs of working men and women. Nothing extraneous, nothing superfluous, just an honest directness picturing their everyday lives, in tiredness, laughter, and desperation.
In these photographs of miners we can see that Lee loved his diagonals, horizontals and verticals in the construction of the image plane. Right to left diagonals in J. M. Hawkins (left) former pharmacists mate in the U.S. Navy and Wm. Smith, former Marine, read notice on the bulletin board at the mine (July 9, 1946, below) and Women pick foreign matter out of coal (July 9, 1946, below); left to right diagonals in Miners boarding buses which will take them to washhouse from lamp house where they have checked out (August 20, 1946, below) and Miners checking in at the lamp house at completion of morning shift (August 22, 1946, below); and verticals in James Robert Howard has gotten his safety lamp at lamp house (August 13, 1946, below).
My two favourite photographs in the posting are both crackers. Firstly, Miners waiting at drift mouth for the afternoon man trip. Koppers Coal Divison, Kopperston Mines, Kopperston, Wyoming County, West Virginia (August 22, 1946, below) in which the languid easiness of the men’s postures are perfectly assimilated within the structure of the buildings and rocks to form an almost Renaissance tableaux of figures. And secondly, Miners bring in their checks and see the sign that there is no Saturday work. P V & K Coal Company, Clover Gap Mine, Lejunior, Harlan County, Kentucky (September 13, 1946, below) in which the languorous flow of bodies moves as in the stillness of a quietly flowing river, revealing a reversed “N” and misspelt “to-morrow” as if the morrow will bring more heartache.
What clarity of vision, what panache in the execution of that vision. You could only wish to be such an accomplished artist taking pictures of the history of yesterday that still have relevance today and every day.
* FSA photographers: Arthur Rothstein (1935), Theodor Jung (1935), Ben Shahn (1935), Walker Evans (1935), Dorothea Lange (1935), Carl Mydans (1935), Russell Lee (1936), Marion Post Wolcott (1936), John Vachon (1936, photo assignments began in 1938), Jack Delano (1940), John Collier (1941), Marjory Collins (1941), Louise Rosskam (1941), Gordon Parks (1942) and Esther Bubley (1942) * OWI photographers: David Bransby (1942), John Collier (1943), Marjory Collins (1943), Jack Delano (1942-1943), Howard Hollem (1941-1943), Fenno Jacobs (1942), Alfred Palmer (1941-1943), William M. Rittase (1942), John Rous (1941), Mark Sherwood (1942), Arthur Siegel (1942), John Vachon (1942-1943), Miscellaneous photographers (Jack Downey, Andreas Feininger, unidentified)
Many thankx to the National Archives for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs have been digitally cleaned and balanced by Marcus Bunyan. Please note the photographs in this posting are not necessarily in the exhibition.
“I’m taking pictures of the history of today.”
Russell Lee
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) The Sergent Family on their front porch. Reading from L. to R., Franklin D., Louis, Lucy, Mr. Blaine Sergent, Bobbie Jean, Mrs. Sergent, Wanda Lee and Donald. Mr. and Mrs. Sergent have two married sons living nearby, Rufus, who lives next door and is a coal cutter in the same mine and Junior who lives and works at Verda Mine several miles away. P V & K Coal Company, Clover Gap Mine, Lejunior, Harlan County, Kentucky September 15, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) The Sergent Family on their front porch. Reading from L. to R., Franklin D., Louis, Lucy, Mr. Blaine Sergent, Bobbie Jean, Mrs. Sergent, Wanda Lee and Donald. Mr. and Mrs. Sergent have two married sons living nearby, Rufus, who lives next door and is a coal cutter in the same mine and Junior who lives and works at Verda Mine several miles away. P V & K Coal Company, Clover Gap Mine, Lejunior, Harlan County, Kentucky (detail) September 15, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) The Blaine Sergent family’s house. P V & K Coal Company, Clover Gap Mine, Lejunior, Harlan County, Kentucky September 15, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Power & Light: Russell Lee’s Coal Survey is an exhibition of photographs of coal communities by American documentary photographer Russell Lee. These images tell the story of labourers who helped build the nation, of a moment when the government took stock of their health and safety, and of a photographer who recognised their humanity.
About the Exhibit
Power & Light is free and open to the public. The exhibition features more than 200 of Russell Lee’s photographs of coal miners and their families in the form of large-scale prints, projections, and digital interactives from a nationwide survey of housing and medical and community facilities of bituminous coal mining communities. The survey was conducted by Navy personnel in 1946 as part of a strike-ending agreement negotiated between the Department of the Interior and the United Mine Workers of America. The full series of photographs, which numbers in the thousands, can only be found in the holdings of the National Archives. These images document inhumane living and working conditions but also depict the joy, strength, and resilience of the miners’ families and communities.
Note: All photograph captions are original, as provided by the photographer. Unless otherwise noted, the images are in the holdings of the National Archives, Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War.
Power & Light features Russell Lee’s 1946 coal survey photographs of miners in their homes, mines, and communities.
About Russell Lee
Russell Werner Lee (1903-1986) was born in Ottawa, Illinois. Originally trained as an engineer, he was methodical in his work, but approached his subjects with warmth and respect. The quiet Midwesterner put people at ease, enabling him to capture scenes of surprising intimacy. Many of his photographs reveal worlds through small details – keepsakes on the mantel, lined and calloused hands. What may be most distinctive about these images is their reflection of the photographer’s compassion for his subjects. Despite their plight, it is their strength, dignity, and humanity that strike the viewer.
If you recognise Lee’s photos – but not his name – you’re not alone.
Although the coal survey photos represent some of Lee’s finest work, his best-known photographs are from an earlier project. Lee was one of several photographers hired by the federal government in the 1930s to document the toll of the Great Depression and drought on rural Americans. While he worked alongside famous colleagues including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, Lee eschewed celebrity. His aim was to inspire social change, believing visual evidence of struggle and hardship could generate support for reforms.
Text from the National Archives Museum website
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Miners’ wives and children on the front porch of a typical, fifty year old house. Kentucky Straight Creek Coal Company, Belva Mine, abandoned after explosion [in] Dec. 1945, Four Mile, Bell County, Kentucky (Original Caption) September 4, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee: Home
Lee’s photographs of miners at home reflect his respect for their individuality and resourcefulness, his fascination with families, and his meticulous attention to the details of everyday life.
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Gonzalla Sullivan, miner, with his two children and another child who lives in the neighborhood. Koppers Coal Division, Federal #1 Mine, Grant Town, Marion County, West Virginia June 13, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Quarters of Japanese miner who lives in company housing project. Hudson Coal Company, Hudson Mine, Sweet Mine, Carbon County, Utah July 4, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) The only houses with running water inside in this camp are those in which their tennants [sic] have made the installations at no expense to the company. Gilliam Coal and Coke Company, Gilliam Mine, Gilliam, McDowell County, West Virginia (Original Caption) August 13, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) There are ten children in the Lawson Mayo family, the older taking care of the youngest ones. Three of the daughters are now attending high school in Mullens and have part time jobs during summer months. Mullens Smokeless Coal Company, Mullens Mine, Harmco, Wyoming County, West Virginia (Original Caption) August 23, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Mrs. John Whitehead, wife of miner, and two of her children (or grandchildren) in the kitchen of her three room house. Mr. and Mrs. John Whitehead, their six children and six grandchildren live here. This house, built on company owned land was built by Mr. Whitehead’s half brother at no expense for materials or labor to the company; the builder (half brother) was to receive the use of the house rent-free for three years and at the end of this period the ownership of the house would revert to the company. The brother moved away at the end of one year, receiving no cash settlement from the company. The house now rents for $6 monthly. It has no running water, no electricity, access is over a mountain trail; there are three rooms. Coleman Fuel Company, Red Bird Mine, Field, Bell County, Kentucky (Original Caption) August 31, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Mrs. John Whitehead, wife of miner, and two of her children (or grandchildren) in the kitchen of her three room house. Mr. and Mrs. John Whitehead, their six children and six grandchildren live here. This house, built on company owned land was built by Mr. Whitehead’s half brother at no expense for materials or labor to the company; the builder (half brother) was to receive the use of the house rent-free for three years and at the end of this period the ownership of the house would revert to the company. The brother moved away at the end of one year, receiving no cash settlement from the company. The house now rents for $6 monthly. It has no running water, no electricity, access is over a mountain trail; there are three rooms. Coleman Fuel Company, Red Bird Mine, Field, Bell County, Kentucky (Original Caption) (detail) August 31, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Houses along the railroad tracks. Fox Ridge Mining Company, Inc., Hanby Mine, Arjay, Bell County, Kentucky August 31, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Mrs. Edna Lingar getting wash water from dirty stream; stock wade this stream, privies drain into it, garbage decay in it, a dead animal was in the stream about fifteen feet above where she was getting water. Kentucky Straight Creek Coal Company, Belva, Mine, abandoned after explosion, Four Mile, Bell County, Kentucky (Original Caption) September 4, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee: Mines
Russell Lee was attentive to miners’ issues, documenting deductions to their pay, lost work days, perilous conditions, and the union meetings where they fought for a better deal.
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Telesfro Deluna, miner, walking on crutches. He is recovering from a foot injury in mine a accident. He has received medical care at this company owned hospital. Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, Pueblo, Colorado July 1, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) J. M. Hawkins (left) former pharmacists mate in the U.S. Navy and Wm. Smith, former Marine, read notice on the bulletin board at the mine. Union Pacific Coal Company, Reliance Mine, Reliance, Sweetwater County, Wyoming July 9, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Women pick foreign matter out of coal as it is carried on conveyor thru tipple. Union Pacific Coal Company, Stansbury Mine, Rock Springs, Sweetwater County, Wyoming (Original Caption) July 10, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) James Robert Howard has gotten his safety lamp at lamp house. Of the 232 employees at this mine, 60% are Negroes. Gilliam Coal and Coke Company, Gilliam Mine, Gilliam, McDowell County, West Virginia (Original Caption) August 13, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Miners boarding buses which will take them to washhouse from lamp house where they have checked out. Koppers Coal Divison, Kopperston Mine, Kopperston, Wyoming County, West Virginia August 20, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Miners waiting at drift mouth for the afternoon man trip. Koppers Coal Divison, Kopperston Mines, Kopperston, Wyoming County, West Virginia August 22, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Miners checking in at the lamp house at completion of morning shift. Koppers Coal Division, Kopperston Mines, Kopperston, Wyoming County, West Virginia August 22, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Furman Currington and his son, miners. Black Mountain Corporation, 30-31 Mines, Kenvir, Harlan County, Kentucky September 6, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Miners bring in their checks and see the sign that there is no Saturday work. P V & K Coal Company, Clover Gap Mine, Lejunior, Harlan County, Kentucky (Original Caption) September 13, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Blaine Sergent, left, comes out of the mine at the end of the day’s work. P V & K Coal Company, Clover Gap Mine, Lejunior, Harlan County, Kentucky September 13, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Rufus Sergent, married son, who is now coal cutter and general all around miner. Rufus did not like school and quit before finishing grade school. He went to work in the mines ten years ago when he was thirteen years old. P V & K Coal Company, Clover Gap Mine, Lejunior, Harlan County, Kentucky September 15, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Changing shifts at the mine portal in the afternoon. Inland Steel Company, Wheelwright #1 & 2 Mines, Wheelwright, Floyd County, Kentucky (Original Caption) September 23, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Harry Fain, coal loader. Inland Steel Company, Wheelwright #1 & 2 Mines, Wheelwright, Floyd County, Kentucky September 23, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Harry Fain, coal loader, drills coal with hand auger. Powder charges are then placed and ignited. Inland Steel Company, Wheelwright #1 & 2 Mines, Wheelwright, Floyd County, Kentucky September 24, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Mining the Catalog – Exploring records from the Exhibit Power & Light
In March, a new exhibit opened at the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. titled “Power & Light: Russell Lee’s Coal Survey.” The exhibit features over 200 photographs of miners and mining communities in the 1940’s from Record Group 245: Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War.
Russell Lee began his work for the federal government during the Great Depression when he was one of the photographers hired by the Farm Security Administration to document rural poverty. He later photographed the forced relocation of Japanese Americans to detention camps.
The photographs that are the subject of our exhibit come from Lee’s final project for the federal government. In 1946, he was sent to document the lives of coal miners and their communities by the Truman administration. The United Mine Workers’ 400,000 members had gone on strike demanding safer working conditions, improved health benefits, and better pay. As part of the agreement that ended the strike, the federal government agreed to survey the miners’ living conditions.
The photographs, which are part of the series “Photographs of the Medical Survey of the Bituminous Coal Industry,” show homes with backyard outhouses that were often owned by the mining companies themselves and rented to the miners. We also see miners and their families going about their everyday tasks, having fun in recreation halls, and playing outside.
Lee provided the photographs for the study which included 90 communities in 22 states. The program led to improvements in the mining communities, including the building of 13 new hospitals. Over the course of the survey, Lee took over 4000 photographs, more than 200 of which are included in the exhibit. Over 1000 of the photographs are available in the Catalog. Lee focused on three major themes for the project: home, mines, and community, capturing a moment of mid-century American life. His photographs show not just miners but their families, their homes, and their churches.
Text from the National Archives Catalog email
Russell Lee: Community
To fulfil the mandate of the survey, Lee photographed sanitary, medical, and recreational facilities and services. But he also captured moments of joy and connection that characterised the strong community bonds forged by the miners.
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Some of the members of the baseball team of Exeter-Warwick Mines. Kingston Pocahontas Coal Company, Exeter Mine, Welch, McDowell County, West Virginia (Original Caption) August 10, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Children of miner living in company housing project. Note the homemade baby buggy made of a powder box. Union Pacific Coal Company, Reliance Mine, Reliance, Sweetwater County, Wyoming (Original Caption) August 10, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Children of miners on the fence in front of the Howard house. Gilliam Coal and Coke Company, Gilliam Mine, Gilliam, McDowell County, West Virginia (Original Caption) August 13, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) The meat and vegetable and fruit department in the company store. Raven Red Ash Coal Company, No. 2 Mine, Raven, Tazewell County, Virginia August 29, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Handling serpents at the Pentecostal Church of God. Company funds have not been used in this church and it is not on company property. Most of the members are coal miners and their families. Lejunior, Harlan County, Kentucky September 15, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Local UMWA union meeting is held on Sunday morning in schoolhouse. Inland Steel Company, Wheelwright #1 & 2 Mines, Wheelwright, Floyd County, Kentucky (Original Caption) September 22, 1946 National Archives Public domain
Lee’s next big project, and the topic of the National Archives Power & Light exhibit, came after the war. It was Lee’s last, large federally funded photo documentation project. In 1946 the Truman administration made a promise to striking coal miners that if they resumed work, the federal government would sponsor a nationwide survey of health and labor conditions in mining camps. Lee became an instrumental member of the survey.
Lee’s survey photos give an unprecedented accounting of medical, health, and housing conditions in coal-mining communities. Located in remote areas, these communities were not normally accessible to outsiders. Lee’s photographs demonstrate the difficult circumstances in which miners and their families lived but also show us the strength and resilience of these mining communities.
The National Archives has the complete series of more than 4,000 images, the bulk of which were taken by Russell Lee. They feature mining communities in several states, including Utah, West Virginia, Colorado, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming.
His photographs cover a complete range of activities in mining communities including: interior and exterior shots of both company-owned and private dispensaries; miners at work; mining grounds, equipment, and wash houses; women in the home; children at play; recreation facilities, churches, schools, and clubs; scenes of mining townspeople in and around company stores and town streets; family portraits; members of the medical survey group inspecting grounds and speaking to mine company administrators; and local mine operators and union officials.
The images are great primary sources, particularly because of the way Lee documented his photographs. In his extensive cataloging, he recorded the elements and details of home, workplace, and community, giving us an even greater glimpse into the daily life of miners and their families.
The Department of the Interior used many of Lee’s photographs when it published the final report in 1947, “A Medical Survey of the Bituminous Coal Industry,” and its supplemental report titled “The Coal Miner and His Family.”
“A social history that stretched back centuries had been disembowelled, obliterated. This is the great sadness of those times. This cold, freezing winter of our discontent.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Exhibition dates: 20th September – 19th October, 2024
This is another excellent exhibition with a social conscience from Four Corners, ably supported by the Martin Parr Foundation.
THE LEGACY: “The strike was lost, Scargill defeated. But the greatest losers were not just the miners, but the whole labour movement which soon found itself trampled by the global restructuring of business by Thatcher and her successors on both sides of the Atlantic.
Workers in Britain and the world would soon awake to the reality of the new Thatcher – and Reagan – industrial revolution; a huge rise in ‘compensation’ for a few executives, and gutted workplaces, leading to low-paying McJobs for the rest.”
Audsley Edwards
This freezing winter of our discontent
Pardon my language but, in a guttural English accent, I declare Thatcher and her minions, police and media, bastards … bloody bastards!
Her name still sends shivers down my spine. Vindictive, unbending, inhuman.
Class warfare has never been far from the surface in British society. Upstairs downstairs, the haves and the have nots. New wealth devolved from the British Industrial Revolution 1750-1900 (which produced machine-made, mass produced goods) used man power and child power – in the factories, down the pits.
Trade unions were legalised in 1871 in the UK and sought to reform socio-economic conditions for people in British industries. They were especially strong in the coal mining industry. Coal mining in the UK has a long history dating back to Roman times and this history has long been celebrated, as can be seen in Bill Brandt’s photographs of the tough life of miners and their families (1937, below) and the ACKTON HALL COLLIERY commemorative plate (1985, below).
After the Second World War, “All the coal mines in Britain were purchased by the government in 1947 and put under the control of the National Coal Board (NCB).”1 Pit closures became a regular occurrence in many areas. “Between 1947 and 1994, some 950 mines were closed by UK governments.”1 “In early 1984, the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher announced plans to close 20 coal pits which led to the year-long miners’ strike which ended in March 1985.”2
“A strike was called by the Yorkshire region of the NUM in protest against proposed pit closures, invoking a regional ballot result from 1981. The National Executive Committee, led by Arthur Scargill, chose not to hold a national ballot on a national strike, as was conventional, but to declare the strike to be a matter for each region of the NUM to enforce. Scargill defied public opinion, a trait Prime Minister Thatcher exploited when she used the Ridley Plan, drafted in 1977, to defeat the strike. Subsequently, over several decades, almost all the mines were shut down.”3
“Scargill stated, “The policies of this government are clear – to destroy the coal industry and the NUM.” … This was denied by the government at the time, although papers released in 2014 under the thirty-year rule suggest that Scargill was right.”4
In the era of anti-Apartheid (in June 1984 Thatcher received a visit from P. W. Botha the South African premier), anti-war, pro abortion, nuclear disarmament, Gay Liberation, Women’s Liberation, Clause 28, anti-fascist marches and student protests – in the era of Thatcherism (“deregulation, privatisation of key national industries, maintaining a flexible labour market, marginalising the trade unions and centralising power from local authorities to central government”),5 Thatcher saw strong trade unions as an obstacle to economic growth through the implementation of neoliberal economic policies.
“Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency…. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers.”5
The losers from the Miners’ Strike were the working class communities and people of the mining villages… and the power of the unions. Thatcher wanted to destroy their power more than anything else and bugger the cost to communities and human beings. Their side of this conflict is portrayed in this exhibition through artefacts and photographs using photography as a tool of resistance.6
The photographs depict the miners struggle for existence through nuance, context and detail and set out to portray the essence of the mining communities identity under duress. There is a wonderful sense of empathy from the photographers towards the people they are photographing, a warts and all approach documenting their class struggle. But we must also be aware that photographs were used by the government and the media to portray the miners as the villains of the conflict, for photography is situated ‘within the reproduction of certain forms of power that can reorganise, map, and penetrate the body’.7 This power is then used in exploitative and controlling ways… as in when the “BBC reversed footage on the Six O’Clock News to suggest the miners had attacked the police, and that the police had simply retaliated. [Despite an Independent Police Complaints Commission report in 2015 confirming the reversal, the BBC has never officially accepted this.]”8 Other examples of the exploitative use of photographs and biased reporting to denigrate the fight and plight of the miners appeared in the tabloid press with newspapers facing allegations that the coverage of the strike amounted to a “propaganda assault on the miners.”9
Photography and film, then, was used to reorganise the truth, map the conflict on tv and in the media, and penetrate the political and social “body” of the United Kingdom, used by the powers that be in controlling and exploitative ways to demonise the miners’ cause in the eyes of the British public.
Susanna Viljanen perceptively, directly and sadly observes that,
“While technically Thatcher was right – most of the mines were unprofitable, many worked at loss and each tonne of coal produced negative cash flow – the aftermath was sad. Thatcher was not only a crank, she was utterly vindictive. The Unions had brought down Edward Heath’s cabinet 1974, and now the Conservatives extracted revenge on the Unions – and on the British working class. Many of the former mine towns fell into bankruptcy, poverty and despair.
It also turned out that her theory of self-correctiveness of the market economy was simply wrong. New businesses did not emerge and the miners did not get relocated on job markets, but mass unemployment ensued. The aftermath also destroyed the social fabric and the networks of the mining towns and the working class, exacerbating the situation even worse. The destruction wasn’t creative, it was merely destructive.”10
While I realise the coal mining industry would have eventually closed with the move to renewables (the United Kingdom has just become the first major country to announce the closure of all coal fired power stations ending its 142-year reliance on the fossil fuel) – there is still a double loss from the British state’s abuse of power and the outcome of the Miners’ Strike, the results of which are still being felt today – namely that Britain lost any form of empathy for the working man, and it lost the history of its working people, its culture and social community.
Men had to move away to find jobs as new industries did not emerge where old ones were closed. Country towns and mining towns were depopulated and became even more impoverished than they were before. Colliery bands and choirs vanished, a sense of community was eviscerated and with the closure of the pits the life energy of the villages was destroyed. Bankruptcy, poverty and despair ensued. A social history that stretched back centuries had been disembowelled, obliterated.
This is the great sadness of those times. This cold, freezing winter of our discontent.
6/ “Photography has long been associated with acts of resistance. It is used to document action, share ideas, inspire change, tell stories, gather evidence and fight against injustice.”
7/ Michael Hayes. “Photography and the Emergence of the Pacific Cruise: Rethinking the representational crisis in colonial photography,” in Eleanor M. Hight and Gary D. Sampson (eds.,). Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place. Routledge, 2002, pp. 172-87.
“The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it…
Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination.
In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted.”
9/ “My recent research, which involved analysis of both news language and press photographs of the time, shows that this year-long strike was portrayed by newspapers – on all sides – as a metaphorical war between the government and the National Union of Mineworkers.
It shows how the media used “war framing” words, phrases and photographs while reporting the strike – often drawing on iconic texts and images associated with World War I. This framing presented the miners as “the enemy”, while at the same time, it justified the actions of the government and the police as necessary and even noble.”
“The 1984-1985 miners’ strike was a defining moment in British industrial relations. Shafted, edited by Yorkshire freelance Granville Williams and published by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (CPBF), to which the NUJ is affiliated, has been published to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the start of the strike. It bravely explores the ways in which the media covered the strike and looks into the devastating impact of the pit closure programme on mining communities.
It analyses the pressures on journalists who reported the strike, with accounts from prominent reporters, among them Pete Lazenby of the Yorkshire Evening Post, Nick Jones of the BBC, and Paul Routledge of The Times. But the book also looks at the important contribution from the alternative media and the coverage of the long conflict by freelance photographers and filmmakers.”
Julio Etchart. “Shafted,” on the Freelance website May 2009 [Online] Cited 03/10/2024
Many thankx to Zena Howard for her help, and to the Martin Parr Foundation and Four Corners for allowing me to publish the photographs and art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“We face not an employer, but a government aided and abetted by the judiciary, the police and you people in the media.”
Arthur Scargill
“For those who have lived through this strike, its enormity cannot be underestimated. We have brought together some of the best-known photographs – including John Harris’s image of a policeman with a truncheon held from a horse swinging at a cowering woman, and John Sturrock’s photograph of the confrontation between mass pickets and police lines at Bilston Glen – to rarely seen snapshots taken by Philip Winnard, a striking miner himself.”
Martin Parr
“The exhibition is an attempt to commemorate and reflect on the miners’ strike of 1984-85, a seismic, yet often overlooked event in the recent history of Britain. By focusing on the complex role photographs played during the year-long struggle we hope for the show to transcend the purely historical or nostalgic and take the visitor on a journey through a series of timeless images that show the resilience, camaraderie and violence of the strike, to reconnect and consider it again in relation to the present. The ephemera materials show the urgent use of images and the creativity that was deployed in support of the striking miners. Together, the works tell a story of the battle against Margaret Thatcher and the National Coal Board’s pit closures, but what ultimately shines through is the unity and imagination of people coming together in defence of their communities and the basic rights to work and to survive.”
Isaac Blease, Exhibition Curator
ONE YEAR! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984-85 explores the vital role that photography played during this bitter industrial dispute. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strike, Four Corners is delighted to tour this exhibition from the Martin Parr Foundation. One of Britain’s longest and most violent disputes, the repercussions of the miners’ strike continue to be felt today across the country.
The exhibition looks at the central role photographs played during the year-long struggle against pit closures, with many materials drawn from the Martin Parr Foundation collection. Posters, vinyl records, plates, badges and publications are placed in dialogue with images by photographers, investigating the power and the contradictions inherent in using photography as a tool of resistance. They include photographs by Brenda Prince, John Sturrock, John Harris, Jenny Matthews, Roger Tiley, Imogen Young and Chris Killip, as well as Philip Winnard who was himself a striking miner.
The photographs show some familiar imagery – the lines of police and the violence – but also depict the remarkable community support from groups such as Women Against Pit Closures and the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. Photography was used both to sway public opinion and to document this transformative period in British history.
The catalyst for the miners’ strike was an attempt to prevent colliery closures through industrial action in 1984-85. The industrial action, which began in Yorkshire, was led by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and its President, Arthur Scargill, against the National Coal Board (NCB). The Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher opposed the strikes and aimed to reduce the power of the trade unions. The dispute was characterised by violence between the flying pickets and the police, most notably at the Battle of Orgreave. The miners’ strike was the largest since the General Strike of 1926 and ended in victory for the government with the closure of a majority of the UK’s collieries.
Text from the Four Corners website
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.
Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.
Bill Brandt (British, born Germany 1904-1983) Unemployed miner returning home from Jarrow 1937 Gelatin silver print
Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Installation view of the exhibition ONE YEAR! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984-85 at Four Corners, London showing:
At top left
Unknown maker (British) Dartboard with Margaret Thatcher photograph Nd Martin Parr Foundation Collection
At left,
John Sturrock (British) In the wake of an earthmoving machine, men search for small lumps of coal on an old colliery tip at South Kirby 13th December, 1984
At second left,
Unknown maker (British) When They Close A Pit They Kill A Community Welsh Congress in Support of Mining Communities 1984-1985 1985 Poster
Bill Brandt (British, born Germany 1904-1983) Coal-Miner’s Bath, Chester-le-Street, Durham 1937 Gelatin silver print
Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Bill Brandt (British born Germany, 1904-1983) Northumbrian Miner at His Evening Meal 1937 Gelatin silver print
Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Installation view of the exhibition ONE YEAR! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984-85 at Four Corners, London showing below the text from the magazine at left:
The Women’s Support Group
“This Time We Didn’t Want To Be On The Outside”
At Lea Hall women came to play a crucial role in the dispute. And the same was true throughout the country. In the past women have often been criticised for putting pressure on their husbands during strikes, pressures that come from the responsibilities of paying the rent or the mortgage, of keeping the house nice and making sure that the children are well clothed and fed. But the Lea Hall women stood by their husbands, their sons and their fathers for the whole twelve months. To being with they set up the Lea Hall Women’s support Group, and organised it along similar lines to the Strike Committee. They appointed their own officials, and they met on a regular basis. At first their main concern was with raising money and making sure that everyone was fed. But later they came to be concerned with the whole running of the strike, and demanded that they should have their own representatives on the Strike Committee. In December four of their members were admitted, and in that way the women came to be unbolted in organising everything from picketing to fundraising to welfare.
“It started one Sunday. We talked about it and walked around the estate trying to find out if women were interested. We got quite a good response. The first meeting was at Chris’ house, 30 women turned up, we chose a Chairwoman, a Secretary and a Treasurer. After that we met at the Social Club. We had weekly meetings where we discussed things like correspondence, what we can afford to buy, food parcels and collections. We organised ourselves as Lea Hall Women’s Support Group; it was something separate from the Strike Committee.”
Installation view of the exhibition ONE YEAR! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984-85 at Four Corners, London showing at left, Jenny Matthews’ quilt commissioned by the Martin Parr Foundation to mark the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strike
Detail from a quilt commissioned by the Martin Parr Foundation to mark the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strike.
Installation view of the exhibition ONE YEAR! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984-85 at Four Corners, London showing at left the wall text below; in the four photographs from top left clockwise, John Sturrock’s Miners’ Strike 1984 mass picket confronting police lines, Bilston Glen. Norman Strike at the front of a mass picket, Scotland, unknown photographer Carcroft NCB Central Store 1984, Howard Sooley’s Rossington Main Colliery 1984, Roger Tiley’s ‘Scabs’ returning to work, Newbridge, South Wales, 1984-1985; and at right, the poster VICTORY TO THE MINERS, VICTORY TO THE WORKING CLASS (below)
To mark the 40th anniversary of the 1984-85 miners’ strike, Four Corners is delighted to present this exhibition from the Martin Parr Foundation, which looks at the vital role that photographs played during the year-long struggle against pit closures.
The miners’ strike was one of Britain’s longest and most bitter industrial disputes, the repercussions of which continue to be felt throughout the country today. This industrial action was led by the National Union of Mineworkers and its president, Arthur Scargill, against planned colliery closures by the National Coal Board which threatened 20,000 job losses.
Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government strongly opposed the strike and aimed to reduce the power of the trade unions. It was a dispute characterised by weaponised news coverage and visual media created sway public opinion against the strike. Photographs documenting the events in 1984-85 are exhibited here in dialogue with selected ephemera created in support of the miners – including posters, vinyl records, plates, badges and publications.
The exhibited works cover a variety of approaches, from photo-journalism to photo-montage, as well as vernacular photographs taken by Philip Winnard, himself a striking miner. They include some iconic imagery of the lines of police and picket violence – most notably at the infamous Battle of Orgreave. But they also depict the remarkable community solidarity from groups including Women Against Pit Closures and Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.
The strike ended in defeat for the miners on the 3rd March 1985, with most of Britain’s coal mines shut down. It was a running point in British society, leading to weakened trade unions and loss of workers’ rights, the privatisation of nationalised industries, and today’s insecure jobs market. Forty yeas on, ex-mining communities face a legacy of mass unemployment and social inequality. This exhibition offers a unique account of the strike, but also a space to reflect on power, community and the relationship between photography and societal change.
The exhibition features work by John Harris, Chris Fillip, Jenny Matthews, Brenda Prince, Neville Pyne, Howard Sooley, John Sturrock, Roger Tiley, Philip Winnard, Imogen Young and uncredited photographers of original press prints. It includes many materials drawn from the Martin Parr Foundation collection. The original exhibition was curated by Isaac Blease at Martin Parr Foundation. A book to accompany the exhibition is published by Bluecoat Press.
This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of Alex Sainsbury, Foyle Foundation, Hallett Independent, National union of Mineworkers and the Society for the Study of Labour History. With many thanks to the Martin Parr Foundation, Mary Halpenny-Killip, Matthew Fillip, Ceri Thompson, National Museum of Wales, Craig Oldham, Graham Smith, Bluecoat Press, British Journal of Photography, Isaac Blease, Tom Booth Woodger, Mick Moore and Safia Mirzai.
Wall text from the exhibition
Unknown maker (British) VICTORY TO THE MINERS, VICTORY TO THE WORKING CLASS Nd Poster
Installation view of the exhibition ONE YEAR! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984-85 at Four Corners, London showing closed colliery commemorative plates:
Commemorative Plates
Left, top to bottom
Clayton West NUM Yorkshire Area The Dirty Thirty No Surrender Durham Miners Association
Right, top to bottom
Justice for Mineworkers Littleton Miners’ 1984 Struggle 1985 Loyal to the Last Ollerton Miners
Unknown maker (British) ACKTON HALL COLLIERY commemorative plate 1985
A series of commemorative plates was made for closed collieries. As shaft sinking began in 1873 the year 1877 may indicate when coal production began.
Installation view of the exhibition ONE YEAR! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984-85 at Four Corners, London showing at second left in the bottom image, Brenda Prince’s photograph Women’s’ picket at Bevercotes Colliery, night shift, 11pm. Nottingham, February 1985 (below); and at third right top, Roger Tiley’s photograph NUM union officials, Maerdy Miners’ Hall, Rhondda Fach, South Wales, 1984-1985
We were all documentary photographers who had our own projects and interests. We would work on our own stories and my miners’ strike images came out of that. As a working class woman, I became aware of the inequalities in society; not just between men and women but also relating to race, class, people with disabilities and sexuality. The miners’ strike gave me the opportunity to document working class people who were really struggling to keep their jobs and keep their communities alive.
…on starting to document the miners’ strike
My brother lived in Calverton, a small pit village so I was able to stay with him. I got in touch with Women’s action groups in the area (Hucknall & Linby, Ollerton) and they put me in touch with others (Clipstone, Blidworth). I began by photographing the striking miners’ communal kitchens or soup kitchens and they gradually got to know me. I was accepted by the men because they knew I was on their side and perhaps because I was a woman, they didn’t take me seriously as a ‘Press’ photographer. The more I went up there the more I got to know people. They’d say, ‘oh you should come with us to so and so’. I think that’s how I heard about the night pickets at Blidworth.
…on covering the role played by women in the miners’
strike:
There was so much the women were doing. What I found important about the miners’ strike and women getting involved, is that up till then many hadn’t taken so much interest in what was happening in this country politically, but the strike politicised them – they began to take note and watch the news and realise that a lot of politicians are hypocrites, and you can’t trust them and you still can’t.
Women became more confident as a result of the strike, which I thought was great. It was good for other women and young girls to see their Mums and daughters speaking out at the meetings, doing things they wouldn’t have done before, eg. picketing. Most of them would have been typical mothers and wives, cleaning, cooking, shopping, looking after their children instead of going on the picket line, visiting and supporting other collieries, getting together with other women and planning days of action, e.g., Women Against Pit Closures.
After the strike, as told to me and recorded in interviews about the strike, the saw things differently, so it was a positive experience for some women despite the hardship but hard for the men who lost their jobs.
Extract from ONE YEAR interview with Brenda Prince on the Martin Parr Foundation website [Online] Cited 24/09/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Photographer uncredited Three coaches used to take miners to Hem Heath Colliery, burning fiercely at a depot at Trentham near Stoke-on-Trent 1984 Press print
The last picket line at Darfield Main. Monday morning March 4th 1985.
Houghton Main scabs had been taken in 2 hours early (we called at Darfield on way home)
The last picket line of the strike. This was at Corton Wood waiting for scabs comeing out at dinner time. Mont 4th March 85. The Picket’s were joined by Women from the Support Group.
Text from the photo album pages above
“The media was a very important aspect of the miners’ strike – the photographs were used against the miners in terms of demonising them,” Blease explains. “Images were used to illustrate violence and chaos in quite demonising and weaponised ways, but then on the other hand photographs were used to debase that media bias – through posters, photojournalists working for left-wing and union press, and people like Sturrock, John Harris, Prince and Imogen Young who were photographing the strike in a more holistic way.” …
Many of the photographers featured were part of the communities that they were documenting. Philip Winnard was one such example, as he was on strike himself from the Barnsley Main Colliery. “When he went on strike, he took his camera along and started recording his experiences when he was picketing,” Blease says. “We wanted to focus on how photographs were used in different ways and shared with friends and colleagues. He compiled these really amazing photo albums and they follow the strike chronologically, starting with the first picket lines and finishing with the return to work marches a year later.”
“They feel like family albums and spare no punches in how they record the strike,” he continues. “There’s violence, the intimidation of strike breakers, fundraising community activities, newslettering – there’s everything, and it gives an intimate familiarity with the event.”
Women also feature heavily throughout the exhibition, highlighting the oft-overlooked role they played in supporting – from those making food in the striking miners’ kitchens to all female picket lines at the collieries. Photographers such as Brenda Prince, who was a member of women’s only photography agency Format, documented this.
“Prince was focusing a lot on women’s roles in the strike,” Blease says. “So miners’ wives, community work, fundraising, picketing themselves, gathering food packages, and they played a very important role. These photographers were not just focusing on the sensational battle that was going on, they were showing how communities were coming together, but also how communities were being destroyed by the dispute, and photography was the medium that was catching this.”
Isaac Muk. “In Photos: The miners’ strike, 40 years on,” on the Huck website 6th March, 2024 [Online] Cited 24/09/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
ONE YEAR! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984-85 explores the vital role that photography played during this bitter industrial dispute.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strike, Four Corners is delighted to tour this exhibition from the Martin Parr Foundation. One of Britain’s longest and most violent disputes, the repercussions of the miners’ strike continue to be felt today across the country.
The exhibition looks at the central role photographs played during the year-long struggle against pit closures, with many materials drawn from the Martin Parr Foundation collection. Posters, vinyl records, plates, badges and publications are placed in dialogue with images by photographers, investigating the power and the contradictions inherent in using photography as a tool of resistance. They include photographs by Brenda Prince, John Sturrock, John Harris, Jenny Matthews, Roger Tiley, Imogen Young and Chris Killip, as well as Philip Winnard who was himself a striking miner.
The photographs show some familiar imagery – the lines of police and the violence – but also depict the remarkable community support from groups such as Women Against Pit Closures and the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. Photography was used both to sway public opinion and to document this transformative period in British history.
The catalyst for the miners’ strike was an attempt to prevent colliery closures through industrial action in 1984-85. The industrial action, which began in Yorkshire, was led by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and its President, Arthur Scargill, against the National Coal Board (NCB). The Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher opposed the strikes and aimed to reduce the power of the trade unions. The dispute was characterised by violence between the flying pickets and the police, most notably at the Battle of Orgreave. The miners’ strike was the largest since the General Strike of 1926 and ended in victory for the government with the closure of a majority of the UK’s collieries.
Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Photographer Lesley Boulton is attacked by a truncheon-wielding policeman at Orgreave. The picture was published by only one of 17 national newspapers in Britain.
On 18 June, miners came from all over the country to picket the coking plant outside Orgreave village, near Rotherham. I arrived at about 9.15am, with my camera – I was documenting life on the picket line. It was a glorious day: miners were sitting in the sun, or playing football, when suddenly police horses charged out in small groups. They did this twice, then there was a massive charge and they started attacking people. I didn’t see any trigger for this.
People tried to escape across the railway line, which led to a lot of injuries. And there were policemen on foot with short shields, laying about people with truncheons. I was numb with shock. This was violence far in excess of anything I’d ever witnessed: they were whacking people about the head and body with impunity. Some men tried to defend themselves. We couldn’t believe it when the BBC reversed footage on the Six O’Clock News to suggest the miners had attacked the police, and that the police had simply retaliated. [Despite an Independent Police Complaints Commission report in 2015 confirming the reversal, the BBC has never officially accepted this.]
It was chaos. I ran back to the village and hid in a car repair yard. After a few minutes, I came out and photographed one man pinned to a car bonnet, being beaten terribly. At the bus stop, a man was lying on the ground with a chest injury. I was calling to a policeman standing in the road, asking him to get an ambulance, when these two mounted police bore down on me. A man pulled me out of the way just as one of them took a full swipe at my head with his truncheon, and missed.
When I look at this photograph, I wonder what was going through his mind. The police claimed the image was doctored; when I tried to press charges for assault, the director of public prosecutions’ office told me there wasn’t enough evidence. How much did they need?
I don’t take this image personally, because it’s not about me; it’s about something much bigger: an expression of arbitrary power, and what can happen when our masters decide to put us in our place. Besides, I didn’t suffer the way the miners and their families did.
The Battle of Orgreave was a violent confrontation on 18 June 1984 between pickets and officers of the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) and other police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, at a British Steel Corporation (BSC) coking plant at Orgreave, in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. It was a pivotal event in the 1984–1985 UK miners’ strike, and one of the most violent clashes in British industrial history.
Journalist Alastair Stewart has characterised it as “a defining and ghastly moment” that “changed, forever, the conduct of industrial relations and how this country functions as an economy and as a democracy”. Most media reports at the time depicted it as “an act of self-defence by police who had come under attack”. In 2015, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) reported that there was “evidence of excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners, perjury by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent cover-up of that perjury by senior officers”.
Historian Tristram Hunt has described the confrontation as “almost medieval in its choreography … at various stages a siege, a battle, a chase, a rout and, finally, a brutal example of legalised state violence”.
71 picketers were charged with riot and 24 with violent disorder. At the time, riot was punishable by life imprisonment. The trials collapsed when the evidence given by the police was deemed “unreliable”. Gareth Peirce, who acted as solicitor for some of the pickets, said that the charge of riot had been used “to make a public example of people, as a device to assist in breaking the strike”, while Michael Mansfield called it “the worst example of a mass frame-up in this country this century”.
In June 1991, the SYP paid £425,000 in compensation to 39 miners for assault, wrongful arrest, unlawful detention and malicious prosecution.
Poster for the exhibition ONE YEAR! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984-85 at Four Corners, London showing in the background, Brenda Prince’s photograph Riot police await orders in fields surrounding Orgreave coke works, S. Yorkshire, Miners’ dispute, 1984
Poster for the exhibition ONE YEAR! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984-85 outside of Four Corners, London
Martin Parr Foundationsupports emerging, established and overlooked photographers who have made and continue to make work focused on Britain and Ireland. We preserve a growing collection of significant photographic works and strive to make photography engaging and accessible for all. We are committed to making the Martin Parr Foundation a place for everyone and to reflect the diversity of British and Irish culture.
Four Corners
Four Corners centre for film and photography has been based in East London for 50 years. We champion creative expression for social change, connecting communities and image-makers to learn skills and create new work. Drawing on our radical history, our exhibitions explore how photography and film can tell stories from the margins, looking to the past to inspire the future.
Four Corners 121 Roman Road, Bethnal Green, London E2 0QN Nearest tube: Bethnal Green, Central Line
Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11am – 6pm Thursday 11am – 8pm (July and on 31 Aug)
“Art does not live in a bubble isolated from society and society itself is influenced by new ideas, new concepts of art. It’s not the chicken and the egg, it’s the scramble to make sense of living in this world using art as an expression…” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Exhibition dates: 16th May – 13th October, 2024
Curator: Tabitha Barber
Attributed to Levina Teerlinc (Flemish, 1510-1576) Portrait of a Lady holding a Monkey 1560s Watercolour and bodycolour heightened with gold and silver Image: 46 × 46 mm Frame, circular: 62 × 62 mm Victor Reynolds and Richard Chadwick
There have been some mixed reviews of this exhibition – “tremendous show… an archaeological dig into the nation’s cultural past” (Jonathan Jones in The Guardian); “niggardly photography section… Only rarely do women’s art and women’s history spark together in this show… For even the best of the artists here are occasionally represented by the least of their works, quite apart from the mystifying omissions.” (Laura Cumming in The Guardian).
Indeed, Laura Cumming poses an interesting question: “Here is a dilemma straight away: which should take precedence, the painting or the fact? Should the show present art on its own terms, or as instance, evidence, expression of social history? It is an extremely complex remit…”
Having not been to London to see the exhibition I can only make generalised comment, but in my opinion the presentation should be a combination of both – art and social history – recognising that one does not exist, emerge, without the other. Art does not live in a bubble isolated from society and society itself is influenced by new ideas, new concepts of art. It’s not the chicken and the egg, it’s the scramble to make sense of living in this world using art as an expression, a (real, surreal, revolutionary, dream, abstract etc…) vision of the world that surrounds us.
Just from compiling this posting I have been enlightened as to the lives of many artists that I had never heard of before. I have admired their work and learnt about their lives and the conditions under which they worked. The exhibition has brought into my consciousness (and the consciousness of others) artists that I would have never have known about. It tells their stories in however fragmented a way … but at least it tells them. And that is a very good thing.
My particular favourites in the posting are three portraits where the sitter stares directly at you: Joan Carlile’s perceptive Portrait of a Lady Wearing an Oyster Satin Dress (1650s, below) so captivating of gaze, so incisive in its simplicity; Maria Cosway’s beautifully rendered Self Portrait (Nd, below) such a luminous and engaging presence; and Gwen John’s powerful Self-Portrait (1902, below) vibrant of colour, full of self-assurance. Wonderful evocations of humanity.
Scottish artist Dame Ethel Walker observes,
“There is no such thing as a woman artist. There are only two kinds of artist – bad and good.”
Bad or good. We must educate ourselves. We must use our brain, eyes, and heart to make up our own mind about the merit of the work.
I for one are very grateful for that opportunity.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
PS. I have added relevant text from the large print guide and other bibliographic information from accredited sources to illuminate the works presented.
Many thankx to the Tate for allowing me to publish the art work and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing at right, Lucy Kemp-Welch’s Colt Hunting in the New Forest 1897
Spanning 400 years, this exhibition follows women on their journeys to becoming professional artists. From Tudor times to the First World War, artists such as Mary Beale, Angelica Kauffman, Elizabeth Butler and Laura Knight paved a new artistic path for generations of women. They challenged what it meant to be a working woman of the time by going against society’s expectations – having commercial careers as artists and taking part in public exhibitions.
Including over 150 works, the show dismantles stereotypes surrounding women artists in history, who were often thought of as amateurs. Determined to succeed and refusing to be boxed in, they daringly painted what were usually thought to be subjects for male artists: history pieces, battle scenes and the nude.
The exhibition sheds light on how these artists championed equal access to art training and academy membership, breaking boundaries and overcoming many obstacles to establish what it meant to be a woman in the art world.
Text from the Tate Britain website
Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura) c. 1638-1639 (below)
Gentileschi claimed that ‘all the … Princes’ displayed her self-portrait in their galleries. In addition to this work, Charles I owned another self-portrait, which is now lost. Here, Gentileschi uses her own image to portray the allegorical figure of Pittura (also the Italian feminine noun for painting), who she depicts in a working apron before an easel absorbed in the act of creation.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
As a self-portrait the painting is particularly sophisticated and accomplished. The position in which Artemisia has portrayed herself would have been extremely difficult for the artist to capture, yet the work is economically painted, with very few pentiments. In order to view her own image she may have arranged two mirrors on either side of herself, facing each other. Depicting herself in the act of painting in this challenging pose, the angle and position of her head would have been the hardest to accurately render, requiring skilful visualisation.
Installation view of the exhibition ‘Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920’ at Tate Britain showing Artemisia Gentileschi’s Susanna and the Elders c. 1638-1640 (below)
Likely commissioned by Queen Henrietta Maria, this work was displayed in her Withdrawing Chamber in Whitehall Palace. The subject is an Old Testament narrative on virtue and faith. Susanna, bathing in privacy, is spied on by two elders who attempt to sexually assault her. When she resists them, the men accuse her of adultery. Susanna is arrested and about to be put to death until the men are questioned, and her innocence is revealed. Here, Gentileschi depicts Susanna as vulnerable and fearful, shielding her nakedness. She returned to the subject throughout her career.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
This spring, Tate Britain will present Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920. This ambitious group show will chart women’s road to being recognised as professional artists, a 400-year journey which paved the way for future generations and established what it meant to be a woman in the British art world. The exhibition covers the period in which women were visibly working as professional artists, but went against societal expectations to do so.
Featuring over 100 artists, the exhibition will celebrate well-known names such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman, Julia Margaret Cameron and Gwen John, alongside many others who are only now being rediscovered. Their careers were as varied as the works they produced: some prevailed over genres deemed suitable for women like watercolour landscapes and domestic scenes. Others dared to take on subjects dominated by men like battle scenes and the nude, or campaigned for equal access to training and membership of professional institutions. Tate Britain will showcase over 200 works, including oil painting, watercolour, pastel, sculpture, photography and ‘needlepainting’ to tell the story of these trailblazing artists.
Now You See Us will begin at the Tudor court with Levina Teerlinc, many of whose miniatures will be brought together for the first time in four decades, and Esther Inglis, whose manuscripts contain Britain’s earliest known self-portraits by a woman artist. The exhibition will then look to the 17th century. Focus will be given to one of art history’s most celebrated women artists, Artemisia Gentileschi, who created major works in London at the court of Charles I, including the recently rediscovered Susanna and the Elders 1638-40, on loan from the Royal Collection for the very first time. The exhibition will also look to women such as Mary Beale, Joan Carlile and Maria Verelst who broke new ground as professional portrait painters in oil.
In the 18th century, women artists took part in Britain’s first public art exhibitions, including overlooked figures such as Katherine Read and Mary Black; the sculptor Anne Seymour Damer; and Margaret Sarah Carpenter, a leading figure in her day but little heard of now. The show will look at Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, the only women included among the Founder Members of the Royal Academy of Arts; it took 160 years for membership to be granted to another woman. Women artists of this era are often dismissed as amateurs pursuing ‘feminine’ occupations like watercolour and flower painting, but many worked in these genres professionally: needlewoman Mary Linwood, whose gallery was a major tourist attraction; miniaturist Sarah Biffin, who painted with her mouth, having been born without arms and legs; and Augusta Withers, a botanical illustrator employed by the Horticultural Society.
The Victorian period saw a vast expansion in public exhibition venues. Now You See Us will showcase major works by critically appraised artists of this period, including Elizabeth Butler (née Thompson)‘s monumental The Roll Call 1874 (Butler’s work prompted critic John Ruskin to retract his statement that “no women could paint”), and nudes by Henrietta Rae and Annie Swynnerton, which sparked both debate and celebration. The exhibition will also look at women’s connection to activism, including Florence Claxton‘s satirical ‘Woman’s Work’: A Medley 1861 which will be on public display for the first time since it was painted; and an exploration of the life of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, an early member of the Society of Female Artists who is credited with the campaign for women to be admitted to the Royal Academy Schools. On show will be the student work of women finally admitted to art schools, as well as their petitions for equal access to life drawing classes.
The exhibition will end in the early 20th century with women’s suffrage and the First World War. Women artists like Gwen John, Vanessa Bell and Helen Saunders played an important role in the emergence of modernism, abstraction and vorticism, but others, such as Anna Airy, who also worked as a war artist, continued to excel in conventional traditions. The final artists in the show, Laura Knight and Ethel Walker, offer powerful examples of ambitious, independent, confident professionals who achieved critical acclaim and – finally – membership of the Royal Academy.
Press release from Tate Britain
Joan Carlile (English, 1606-1679) The Carlile Family with Sir Justinian Isham in Richmond Park 1650s Oil on canvas Lamport Hall CC BY-NC-ND
Joan Carlile (English, 1600-1679) Portrait of a Lady Wearing an Oyster Satin Dress 1650s Oil on canvas 30.8 x 25.5cm National Portrait Gallery, London Government Art Collection Purchased from Philip Mould Ltd, 2018
Joan Carlile or Carlell or Carliell (c. 1606-1679), was an English portrait painter. She was one of the first British women known to practise painting professionally. Before Carlile, known professional female painters working in Britain were born elsewhere in Europe, principally the Low Countries.
Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing at left, Joan Carlile’s Portrait of an Unknown Lady known as Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart and Duchess of Lauderdale 1650s (below); and at right, Portrait of an Unknown Lady 1650-1655 (below)
Joan Carlile (English, 1606-1679) Portrait of an Unknown Lady (installation view) 1650-1655 Oil on canvas Support: 1107 × 900 mm Frame: 1205 × 1012 × 73 mm Photo: Tate
Joan Carlile (English, 1606-1679) Portrait of an Unknown Lady known as Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart and Duchess of Lauderdale 1650s Oil on canvas The Bute Collection at Mount Stuart
Here, Carlile uses the same white satin dress seen in a nearby painting. The pose, with the sitter elegantly gathering a handful of fabric, is taken from works by Charles I’s portrait painter, Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641). The sitter is sometimes identified as Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart and Duchess of Lauderdale. She was Carlile’s near neighbour in Petersham, at Ham House. The broken columns in the background are often used to symbolise loss.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Joan Carlile (English, 1606-1679) Portrait of an Unknown Lady 1650-1655 Oil on canvas Support: 1107 × 900 mm Frame: 1205 × 1012 × 73 mm Photo: Tate
Portraits by Joan Carlile are rare and this is one of only approximately ten that can be identified. Of these, two are in public collections (Ham House, Surrey, and National Portrait Gallery, London), while others are held in historic house collections and family trusts in the United Kingdom, for example Lamport Hall, Burghley House and Berkeley Castle. Carlile seems to have specialised in small-scale full length portraits of figures, usually female, set in large landscape or garden settings. The composition employed here, in which the figure holds the skirt of her dress with one hand and shawl with another, was most likely a template arrangement. It appears in two other portraits, one showing the figure facing the same way as here, the other in reverse, but with both figures wearing the same white satin dress. This repeated composition adds weight to the proposition that Carlile was a professional artist. The wife of Lodowick Carlile (or Carlell), a minor poet and dramatist who also held the office of Gentleman of the Bows to Charles I, Joan Carlile lived with her husband in Petersham, a suburb of London. However, in 1653 their neighbour, Brian Duppa, recorded that ‘the Mistress of the Family intends for London, where she meanes to make use of her skill to som more Advantage then hitherto she hath don’ (quoted in Toynbee and Isham 1954, p.275). In 1654 Carlile is recorded as living in London’s Covent Garden, then the heart of the artistic community (see Burnett 2004/2010, accessed 2 October 2015).
Joan Carlile challenged societal expectations by becoming one of Britain’s first professional women artists in the 1600s, earning her living as an oil painter. Initially employed in King Charles I’s household, Carlile liked to paint in her spare time. With the outbreak of the Civil War, she began painting to support herself.
Carlile moved to Covent Garden in the 1650s – then the centre of the art world – and set up a successful commercial portrait business. Her template of carefully posed figures in silk gowns against landscape backgrounds, seen here in Portrait of an Unknown Lady (1650-5), proved extremely popular. Admired as a professional artist in her lifetime, only a small number of her portraits still exist, some which have never been seen in public.
In her Portrait of an Unknown Lady (1650-1655) the astonishing nacreous lustre of the sitter’s white silk gown, shown full length, shines against the foil of the dull brown foliage behind her. At this point, the Civil War had ended but the restoration of the monarchy was still in the future, and Carlile’s painting, with its overt celebration of luxury and leisure (the spotless pale fabric speaks of both) seems provocative.
It is possible that Carlile taught Anne Killigrew (1660-1685), an accomplished painter and poet whose family encouraged her creative pursuits, although it’s not clear if she ever painted professionally. Only a handful of Killigrew’s works survive today, including Venus Attired by the Three Graces, which reveals her interest in mythological scenes.
Although she died of smallpox aged just 25, Killigrew stands alongside Beale and Carlile as one of Britain’s first female artists.
Anne Killigrew (English, 1660-1685) Venus Attired by the Three Graces c. 1680 Oil on canvas Support: 1120 × 950 mm Frame: 1282 × 1102 × 63 mm Falmouth Art Gallery Purchased with the assistance of the Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, Heritage Lottery Fund, the Art Fund, the Beecroft Bequest, Falmouth Decorative and Fine Arts Society, the Estate of Barry Hughes in memory of Grace and Thomas Hughes and generous donations from local supporters Public domain
Anne Killigrew has been described as the most celebrated female English prodigy of the Seventeeth Century. A poet and artist of great beauty and repute, Killigrew died of smallpox at the age of just 25. Anne’s exceptional qualities as an artist and a poet were highly praised in her short lifetime. The poet John Dryden dedicated a poem to her in which he refers directly to this picture: ‘Where nymphs of brightest form appear, and shaggy satyrs standing near’ (from ‘To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady Mrs Anne Killigrew Excellent In The Two Sister-Arts of Poesy And Painting: An Ode’). Anne Killigrew worked at the Royal Court of King James II as Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen. Anne’s grandfather, Sir William Killigrew, was the Governor of Pendennis Castle, and his son, Dr Henry Killigrew moved to London to work as chaplain to King Charles I. He later became master of the Savoy Hospital.
Mary Beale (English, 1633-1699) Sketch of the Artist’s Son, Bartholomew Beale, Facing Left c. 1660 Oil on paper Support: 325 × 245 mm Frame: 421 × 340 × 32 mm Tate Purchased 2010 Photo: Tate
In the late 1650s and early 1660s Beale and her family were living on Hind Court, off Fleet Street in London. She painted privately and had a painting room in her home. Her husband had a civil service position as Deputy Clerk of the Patents. Portrait sittings of family and friends were often social occasions, with conversation and dinner afterwards. It is in this period that Beale produced small oil sketches on paper of family members, particularly her two young sons. Whether they relate to larger oil on canvas portraits is unclear.
This oil sketch of a young boy, shown in three-quarter profile, is of Mary Beale’s eldest son Bartholomew, baptised in 1656. His appearance, both in age and costume, is very similar to that in Mary Beale’s Self-portrait with her family (Geffrye Museum, London), painted c. 1659-60, before the birth of her youngest son Charles. It relates closely to another sketch of Bartholomew in oil on paper painted at the same time, Sketch of the Artist’s Son, Bartholomew Beale, in Profile c. 1660 (Tate T13245). Whether these sketches are connected to the production of the Geffrye Museum portrait, or were simply executed at around the same time, is not known. They are painted in oil on paper, which seems to have been a feature of Beale’s working method in the early 1660s but is not known in her later career, when she made preparatory sketches in chalk on paper or in oil on canvas (see, for example, Portrait of a Young Girl c. 1679-81, Tate T06612). When this sketch was made, the Beale family was living in Hind Court, off Fleet Street in London, where Mary Beale’s husband, Charles, was employed as Deputy Clerk of the Patents Office. It is difficult to determine whether Beale had much of a commercial portrait practice at this date, but documents certainly record the production of portraits of family and friends. In her ‘painting room’, Beale had ‘pencills [sic.], brushes, goose & swan fitches’, as well as ‘quantities of primed paper to paint on’ (George Vertue, transcription of Charles Beale’s 1661 notebook, now lost, quoted in Barber 1999, p. 16).
Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing Mary Beale’s Anne Sotheby 1676-1677 (below)
Mary Beale (English, 1633-1699) Anne Sotheby 1676-1677 Oil on canvas Tate Purchased with funds provided by the Nicholas Themans Trust 2024
Beale’s husband kept a daily record of her activities in the studio. Two of his over 30 notebooks and a few partial transcripts are still known. They record Beale’s sitters, her painting stages, her painting materials and her prices. For her commissioned works, she borrowed poses from the portraits of the court artist Peter Lely (1618-1680). Anne Sotheby’s pose is taken from his portrait of Lady Essex Finch. Beale charged £10 for paintings of this size. Her sons acted as studio assistants; her youngest, Charles, was paid to paint the drapery in this portrait.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Mary Beale (English, 1633-1699)
Mary Beale (née Cradock) (1633-1699) was an English portrait painter. She was part of a small band of female professional artists working in London. Beale became the main financial provider for her family through her professional work – a career she maintained from 1670/71 to the 1690s. Beale was also a writer, whose prose Discourse on Friendship of 1666 presents a scholarly, uniquely female take on the subject. Her 1663 manuscript Observations, on the materials and techniques employed “in her painting of Apricots”, though not printed, is the earliest known instructional text in English written by a female painter. Praised first as a “virtuous” practitioner in “Oyl Colours” by Sir William Sanderson in his 1658 book Graphice: Or The use of the Pen and Pensil; In the Excellent Art of PAINTING, Beale’s work was later commended by court painter Sir Peter Lely and, soon after her death, by the author of “An Essay towards an English-School”, his account of the most noteworthy artists of her generation.
Mary Beale (English, 1633-1699) Mary Beale c. 1666 Oil on canvas 109.2 x 87.6cm National Portrait Gallery, London Purchased, 1912 CC BY-NC-ND
Beale is shown holding an unframed canvas on which are sketch portraits of her two sons, Bartholomew (1656-1709) and Charles (1660-1714?)
Mary Beale (English, 1633-1699) Self Portrait c. 1675 Oil on sacking 89 x 73cm West Suffolk Heritage Service Purchased CC BY-NC-ND
The early English portrait painter Mary Beale (1622/1623-1699) had a father who was an amateur artist, miniature painter and a collector of paintings (her family owned work by Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck) and her husband, Charles, was also an amateur painter and ran her studio in London’s fashionable Pall Mall.
Unusually, in her case, her talent was matched by her spouse’s high regard of it, and she was allowed to supersede him and establish a professional career. She took on female apprentices, though no records of their subsequent careers survive.
Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 celebrates over 100 women who forged public careers as artists. The exhibition begins with the earliest recorded women artists working in Britain. It ends with women’s place in society fundamentally changed by the First World War and the first women gaining the right to vote. Across these 400 years, women were a constant presence in the art world. Now You See Us explores these artists’ careers and asks why so many have been erased from mainstream art histories.
Organised chronologically, the exhibition follows women who practised art as a livelihood rather than an accomplishment. The chosen works were often exhibited at public exhibitions, where these artists sold their art and made their reputations. Most of the women featured belonged to a social class that gave them the time and opportunity to develop their talents. Many were the daughters, sisters or wives of artists. Yet even these women were regarded differently. Now You See Us charts their fight to be accepted as professional artists on equal terms with men.
Many of the exhibited works reflect prejudiced notions of the most appropriate art forms and subjects for women. Others challenge the commonly held belief that women were best suited to ‘imitation’, proving they have always been capable of creative invention. From painting epic battle scenes to campaigning for access to art academies, these women defied society’s limited expectations of them and forged their own paths. Yet so many of their careers have been forgotten and artworks lost. Drawing on the artists’ own writings, art criticism, and new and established research, this exhibition attempts to restore these women to their rightful place in art history. Now You See Us aims to ensure these artists are not only seen but remembered.
Women at the Tudor Courts
There are significant gaps in our knowledge of women’s artistic lives in the sixteenth century. As is the case for many artists in this exhibition, their lives are poorly documented and often hidden behind those of their husbands and fathers. The problems this presents are evident in this room.
Susanna Horenbout (1503-1554) and Levina Teerlinc (c. 1510s-1576) are among the earliest women in Britain to be named as artists. Their reputations are clearly recorded. In 1521, Horenbout’s skill was admired by the German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), and in 1567, both artists were praised by the Italian historian Lodovico Guicciardini (1521-1589). Yet no works by Horenbout have been identified, and those attributed to Teerlinc are not certain.
Horenbout and Teerlinc were both daughters of Flemish manuscript illuminators and were likely trained in their family workshops. Both arrived in England to work at the court of Henry VIII. But as women, they were not employed as artists. While Horenbout’s brother Lucas Horenbout (1490-1544) was Henry VIII’s painter, she served Anne of Cleves as one of her Gentlewomen of the Privy Chamber. Teerlinc served Elizabeth I likewise. This does not mean that they did not paint – at court, their artistic talents would have been a distinguishing skill – but, as is a common feature of this exhibition, written histories have failed to record their activities.
Working in a different context – as a scribe and calligrapher – the works of Esther Inglis (1571-1624) can be identified. Inglis authored more than 60 manuscript books and included her name and self-portrait in many. Raised in Scotland, she may have learnt the art of calligraphy from her mother, Marie Presot (active 1569-1574).
Artemisia Gentileschi
Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi arrived in London in c. 1638-9 by invitation of Charles I. Like other European rulers, Charles I employed artists of international reputation to signal the cultural sophistication of his court. Gentileschi had prestigious patrons across Europe, including the Grand Duke of Tuscany and Philip IV of Spain. She was the first woman to be a member of the Academy of the Arts of Drawing in Florence, and in Rome, her house had been ‘full of cardinals and princes’. Gentileschi’s fame as an artist was augmented by her status as a woman.
In London, Gentileschi worked for Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. Records suggest she produced seven works for the royal collection. These included self-portraits and large history paintings, with subject matter drawn from classical history, mythology, and the Bible. Only the two displayed here are still known. Gentileschi often placed women at the centre of her works, depicting narratives that celebrate their strength and virtue. Susanna and the Elders is an example of the kind of work for which Gentileschi was celebrated.
Gentileschi achieved in her lifetime what many women who came after her had to fight to attain: she was a professional artist who ran her own studio, was a member of an art academy, worked from life models and was ranked as a serious artist alongside men. Despite this, Gentileschi’s status has fluctuated over time, and the artist has faded in and out of art history.
Early accounts of Gentileschi’s work focus on her personal life as much as her painting. Like many of the women artists who came after her, the details of her biography continue to dictate interpretations of her work.
The First Professionals
In 1658, historian William Sanderson (c. 1586-1676) published Graphice. The use of the pen and pensil. Or, The most excellent art of painting. The publication lists contemporary artists practising in England. He includes four women working in oil paint: ‘Mrs Carlile’ (Joan Carlile), ‘Mrs Beale’ (Mary Beale), ‘Mrs Brooman’ (probably Sarah Broman) and ‘Mrs Weimes’ (Anne Wemyss). Carlile and Beale are believed to be two of the earliest British women to have worked as professional artists. Very little is known about Broman or Wemyss beyond snatches of information in archives.
This short list highlights how unusual it was for British women to pursue art as a profession in the seventeenth century. Women had little agency over their own lives and were subject first to their fathers and then their husbands. Limited to the domestic sphere, they were not expected to conduct public lives. Many women painted privately with no thought of turning it into a career. While young men began as apprentices or assistants in the studios of professionals, this route was not open to most women.
In the seventeenth century women writers, poets, playwrights and artists began to give voice to those questioning their secondary status and petitioning for women’s rights. They argued that it was lack of education, not ‘weak minds’ that limited their opportunities. This fight for equality and access to education runs throughout the exhibition.
The First Exhibitors
The first public art exhibition in Britain took place in London in 1760, and art shows soon became an important part of the city’s social calendar. Founded in 1768, the Royal Academy quickly emerged as a driving force in cultural life, with its Summer Exhibition attracting tens of thousands of visitors every year. Other venues, including the Society of Artists and the British Institution also hosted exhibitions.
Women artists played an active part in this competitive world. An estimated 900 women exhibited their work between 1760 and 1830. Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser were both founding members of the Royal Academy (although, as women, they weren’t awarded full membership and were excluded from the Academy’s council meetings and governance). Despite this precedent, it would take more than 150 years for the next woman to be elected to membership.
Kauffman is one of the few women artists of the eighteenth century whose profile has been sustained. Many others made names for themselves, but their careers are not well documented. Even Moser is less well known, perhaps because she painted flowers while Kauffman pursued the ‘high genre’ of history painting, depicting historical, mythological and biblical narratives.
Art critics of the time often criticised women for their ‘weak’ figurative work, yet they were denied access to life-drawing classes. Women artists also had to battle social expectations. Publishing a private or studio address in an exhibition catalogue was a signal of commercial practice, but painting for money was considered improper. Women artists of higher social rank were listed as ‘honorary’ exhibitors; some exhibited simply as ‘a Lady’, and after marriage, many switched their status from ‘commercial’ to ‘amateur’.
‘Just What Ladies Do For Amusement’
In 1770, the Royal Academy banned ‘Needle-work, artificial Flowers, cut Paper, Shell-work, or any such baubles’ from its exhibitions. They also banned works that were copies. Other categories of art that the Academy considered ‘lower’, such as miniature painting, pastel and watercolour were also treated dismissively. Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the Academy’s President, said that working in pastel was unworthy of real artists and was ‘just what ladies do when they paint for their own amusement’.
These ‘lower arts’ were ones that women practised the most. Small in scale and considered less technically challenging than oil painting, they demanded less equipment and could be pursued at home. They were taught to middle and upper-class girls and were the realm of women who pursued art as amateur accomplishment.
Despite this, these art forms offered opportunities for women to earn a living. Many turned miniature painting, needlework and pastel into lucrative professional careers, supplementing their income through tutoring. Their patrons were often women, and some boasted large, fashionable clienteles and even galleries which became tourist attractions.
Founded in 1754, the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (the Society of Arts) offered cash prizes and medals in many categories, including the ‘polite arts’. Awards were given for patterns for embroidery, copies of prints, drawings of statues and of ‘beasts, birds, fruit or flowers’, as well as landscapes. Some prizes were specifically intended for young women. The Society was a stepping stone to a career and many of the artists in this exhibition won medals. Yet most of the women recorded as submitting work for competition can no longer be identified beyond their names.
Flowers
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, painting flowers was considered a suitably delicate pursuit for women. Imitating nature (rather than demonstrating creative or imaginative flair) was thought to be an appropriate outlet for women’s artistic skills. Flowers were also at the heart of respectable hobbies like embroidery, botany and gardening. In the 1850s, the women’s periodical the Ladies’ Treasury called flower painting ‘a ladylike and truly feminine accomplishment’. When Mary Moser exhibited Cymon and Iphigenia (based on a poem by John Dryden, 1631-1700) at the Royal Academy in 1789, a reviewer urged her to stick to flowers. She painted flowers ‘transcendently’, he noted, and should do ‘nothing else’.
Many women were employed as professional illustrators, recording plant species for horticulturists and botanical publishers. Some conducted hybrid careers, working as illustrators and drawing tutors while exhibiting flower paintings for a wider market. In the Victorian era, critics applauded several women artists as leaders of the genre. Yet the idea that flower painting, especially in watercolour, was an exclusively amateur pastime has damaged the legacies of many accomplished artists who successfully worked within this genre.
Victorian Spectacle
Grand exhibitions were a defining part of the Victorian art world. The Royal Academy, the leading art institution since 1768, was still Britain’s most prestigious exhibition venue, but was later criticised for its traditional conservatism. New venues, such as London’s Grosvenor Gallery, which opened in 1877, became rival spaces, and exhibitions in Liverpool and Manchester offered fresh opportunities for exhibiting artists. The Victorian era was also the age of World Fairs. Major exhibitions were held in London and Paris, and in 1893, the World’s Exposition in Chicago was visited by over 25 million people.
This room explores the successes of women artists on this public stage. Many of the works on display were shown in these exhibitions. They won international medals, praise from art critics and public recognition. Yet women tackling ‘male’ subjects, such as battle scenes, caused surprise. Opinion was also divided on women painting the nude: some thought it immoral, others brave.
Exhibitions gave women a public platform to build substantial reputations, and some became popular names. Despite this, membership of the Royal Academy, which was a mark of professional recognition, remained out of reach. As a result, women had no automatic exhibiting rights and were reliant on committees of men selecting their works for exhibition. Without institutional support, they had to navigate the commercial art market on their own.
Women artists’ campaigns for access to the Academy joined calls for greater equality in society. From the 1850s, women petitioned for equal rights to education and work, as well as women’s suffrage. These causes are reflected in the works in this room.
Watercolour
Watercolour was considered one of the ‘polite arts’ best suited to women. However, there were few opportunities to practice professionally. The principal watercolour societies – the Old (founded in 1804) and the rival New (founded in 1807 and reconstituted in 1831) – restricted the membership of women. Membership of the Old was limited to six women (in practice, usually four), while the New admitted around ten.
In both societies, women were confined to the category of ‘Lady Members’ until the end of the nineteenth century. They had no say in governance and were denied access to the financial premiums awarded to full members. Since the annual exhibitions of both societies were closed to non-members, most women had limited opportunities to exhibit their work.
Against these odds, many women water colourists achieved significant commercial and critical success. They enjoyed solo shows and developed commercial relationships with dealers, taking control of their careers.
In 1857, a group of women founded the Society of Female Artists (later, the Society of Lady Artists in c. 1869, then the Society of Women Artists in 1899) to promote the work of women artists in Britain.
Photography
The announcement of photography in 1839 marked a major shift in the art world. In its first decades, photography was a laborious practice that required an understanding of chemistry and optics, as well as expensive equipment. It needed more money, specialist instruction and time than most other art forms. For women who had access to these privileges, the medium provided new opportunities.
From its foundation in 1853, the Photographic Society of London welcomed women members. However, they rarely attended meetings, which were scheduled in the evenings when women required a chaperone to leave the house. The atmosphere of the meetings was described as a ‘men’s club’ and it wasn’t until 1898 that the Society belatedly banned smoking ‘in respect of ladies’ attendance’. Meetings often included papers on new techniques and equipment, providing significant benefits to those who were able to join.
Women participated in London’s first public photographic exhibitions at the Royal Society of Arts in 1852-3 and at the Photographic Society in 1854. The Amateur Photographic Association, established in 1861, also welcomed women from its outset. In the 1890s and early 1900s, London’s Photographic Salon became a key venue. Founded by the Linked Ring Brotherhood, who promoted photography as a fine art, Salon exhibitors included women from across Europe and the US. A photograph of British photographer Carine Cadby in silhouette, examining one of her glass plate negatives, featured on the cover of the 1896 Salon catalogue. Despite this, women were not elected as members of the Linked Ring until 1900. By 1909, they numbered just 8 among 63 men.
Art School
Women were excluded from enrolment at the Royal Academy Schools, Britain’s principal art academy, until 1860. Laura Herford (1831-1870) was the first woman admitted. She had submitted her work for consideration using only her initials and was assumed to be a man. Once women gained entry, they were determined to achieve equal access to training.
Women were barred from the Academy’s life-drawing classes until 1893. Their exclusion from this vital component of art education was justified on many grounds. Chiefly, it was to ‘protect’ women’s supposed modesty, but also because they were considered amateurs who lacked the intellectual capacity to practice art at the highest level. Women students marshalled critical support for their cause and submitted petitions. Life drawing was considered essential to the training of men pursuing careers as artists. Why, they argued, was it not also essential for women?
The Female School of Art, founded in 1842, provided another route into art education. Like several regional schools, such as that in Manchester, it encouraged women into vocational careers in design. Women also had access to private academies, including Sass’s and Leigh’s (later Heatherleys) in London, which prepared students for admission to the Royal Academy Schools. And some women artists, such as Louise Jopling, established their own art school.
In 1871, the founding of the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London signalled a fundamental change of attitudes. From the outset, the Slade offered women an education on equal terms with men. Studying from life models was a central focus of teaching and by the turn of the century, women students outnumbered men by three to one. Access to life drawing had been regarded as the last barrier to equal opportunity. Now they could study from life, some critics argued it was up to women to prove they could be successful artists.
Being Modern
The first two decades of the twentieth century saw rapid change for women, with their rights, roles and opportunities evolving at an unprecedented pace. The First World War signalled a decisive change for women’s place in society and in 1918, after decades of campaigning, some women finally gained the right to vote.
At the same time, the art world was also changing. New art groups and exhibiting societies rejected tradition and promoted modernist aesthetics. Instead of figurative realism, they privileged form, colour and experimentation. Many saw modernism as an opportunity for greater artistic freedom. However, despite growing liberalism in art and society, women artists still faced challenges. The New English Art Club became a rival exhibiting venue to the Royal Academy but was slow to admit women. The Camden Town Group labelled itself ‘progressive’ but openly excluded women.
While modernism is often presented as the dominant movement of the early twentieth century, it doesn’t account for all artistic production of the period. Membership of the Royal Academy, an exhibiting venue many now regarded as too traditional, remained a symbolic goal for many women. When Annie Swynnerton was elected an Associate Member in 1922, Laura Knight said she had broken down the ‘barriers of prejudice’. In 1936, Knight was elected a Royal Academician, becoming the first woman to achieve full membership since the eighteenth century.
The artworks in the final room of the exhibition explore this complex period. Their variety reveals women forging their own paths and pursuing professional careers with purpose and confidence. While many chose not to challenge traditional artistic values, they pushed the boundaries of what was expected of them, paving the way for generations of women artists who came after them.
Text from the Tate exhibition guide
Mary Delany (English, 1700-1788) Rubus Odoratus 1772-1782 The British Museum Bequeathed by Augusta Hall, Baroness Llanover in 1897
Delany was not a professional artist. However, she pursued art with a seriousness of purpose, working in a range of artistic and decorative mediums. She was in her early seventies when she turned to botanical collage, which stemmed from the Dutch art known as knipkunst or schaarkunst. Over the course of a decade, Delany created nearly one thousand botanically accurate collages of plants made from intricately cut pieces of coloured paper. In this collage, Delany shows a flowering raspberry, which was introduced to Britain from North America in 1770.
Mary Morris Knowles, born of a Quaker family in Rugeley, Staffordshire, was celebrated as much for her intellect, religious conviction and unusual powers of conversation as for her skill with the needle. A friend of the poetess Anna Seward (‘The Swan of Lichfield’) and of Dr Johnson, she is now regarded as an important early protagonist of the feminist viewpoint in English cultural life. Her support for the abolition of slavery, her investigation into mystical science and her knowledge of garden design, in addition to her accomplishment as a needlewoman, suggest the breadth of her interests. In 1771 she was introduced by her fellow Quaker Benjamin West to Queen Charlotte, who remained on terms of friendship with her over the next thirty years and whose interest in female accomplishments, notably needlework, was well known. Mrs Knowles’s visits to Buckingham House included an occasion in 1778 on which she presented her 5-year-old son George to the King and Queen.
Following the first visit in 1771, the Queen commissioned Mrs Knowles to make a copy of Zoffany’s portrait of George III in needlework or ‘needle painting’ as it was also known. This technique ‘so highly finished, that it has all the softness and Effect of painting’ was achieved with a combination of irregular satin-stitch and long-and-short stitch, worked on hand-woven tammy in an arbitrary pattern and at speed, using fine wool dyed in a wide range of colours under her own supervision. Eight years later Mrs Knowles embroidered the self portrait showing her at work on the Zoffany which, like the earlier piece, she signed with initials and dated. This appears always to have been in the Royal Collection and was presumably also commissioned by Queen Charlotte.
Mary Black (English, c. 1737-1814) Messenger Monsey (1693-1788) 1764 Oil on canvas 127 x 101.6cm Gift from Frederick Walford, 1877 Royal College of Physicians, London CC BY-NC-ND
This portrait of the physician Messenger Monsey (1694-1788) is Black’s only known oil painting. Black likely hoped it was a step towards establishing herself as a professional artist, but the issue of payment caused friction. Black hope to charge her client £25, half the amount charged by leading portraitist Joshua Reynolds, but after Monsey’s complaint offered to drop it to a quarter. Monsey considered Black’s expectation of a fee improper. He claimed it would damage her reputation if word got out, and even referred to her as a ‘slut’ in a letter to his cousin.
Wall text from the exhibition
Little is known of the father-and-daughter artists Thomas and Mary Black. Thomas was mainly employed painting draperies for more successful painters, and Mary usually painted copies of old masters. In a letter from Monsey to Mary Black, the doctor wrote: ‘I was bedevilled to let you make your first attempt upon my gracefull person… drawn like a Hog in armour’.
Black was clearly unfazed by awkward sitters. She built a flourishing artistic practice, painting and teaching the aristocracy, earning enough to live independently (she never married) and keep servants and a horse and carriage at her London home. She died there in old age just as the nineteenth century began.
Mary Moser RA (English, 1744-1819) Standing Female Nude Nd Black and white chalk on grey-green paper 49 x 30.2cm The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
As women were excluded from life drawing classes, many took their own steps to improve their anatomical knowledge. They sketched from casts and statues and copied from other artists’ drawings and anatomy books. These rare works show that some artists found ways around these restrictions, although little is known about how Moser and Stone accessed life models.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Mary Moser RA (English, 1744-1819) Flowers in a vase, which stands on a ledge 1765 Watercolour and bodycolour on paper The Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge
From the same series as the work nearby, this watercolour represents Sagittarius. The vase is filled with a cascade of late flowering plants: asters, chrysanthemums and rare pale nerines, captured in the cold light of winter. In addition to her professional profile as a Royal Academician, Moser acted as a royal tutor. She was part of Queen Charlotte’s circle and taught the princesses botany, embroidery and flower painting. She worked alongside other artists, including Meen and Delany, whose work is also displayed in this room.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Admired for her striking paintings of flowers, Mary Moser was recognised for her talent from a very young age. She trained with her father, an acclaimed artist and goldsmith, winning her first medal for flower drawing at 14. At just 24, she became one of only two female founders of the Royal Academy, alongside Angelica Kauffman.
Moser painted portraits and historical scenes, but her skilled floral still life works, like Flowers in a vase, which stands on a ledge (1765), were praised by critics. Though still life was traditionally seen as a ‘lesser subject’, her floral works were so widely appreciated she received royal commissions, including one from Queen Charlotte. Despite recognition and the exhibition of many paintings, few of Moser’s works survive today.
Mary Moser RA (English, 1744-1819) Vase of Flowers Between 1758 and 1819 Oil on canvas 72.1 x W 53.6cm The Fitzwilliam Museum Gift from Major the Hon. Henry Rogers Broughton, 1966
The exquisite attention to detail in her painting, with its beads of dew and butterflies on the wing, was perhaps nurtured by seeing her father’s work; as a goldsmith and medallion maker, this was also his talent. But the gorgeous sensuality – seen also in her approach to the nude figure – was entirely her own. She married, aged 53, but also had an affair with the estranged husband of another artist: Maria Hadfield Cosway (1759-1839).
Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing Angelica Kauffman’s Colouring 1778-1780 (below)
This painting is part of a set of the four [titled ‘Elements of Art’] commissioned from Kauffman by the Royal Academy to decorate the ceiling of the Royal Academy’s new Council Room in Somerset House which opened in 1780. …
Kauffman represented each of her four Elements of Art as women. Female personifications of abstract concepts and values were commonplace in European art but depicting all four as women was unusual. Design (or Disegno), in particular, was known as ‘the father of all the arts’ and was traditionally depicted as a man, often in contrast to Colour or Painting personified as a woman (see Baumgartel). In Design and Colouring, the women are physically engaged in the act of creating whereas in Composition and Invention they are shown in contemplation. In Invention the figure looks to the sky for inspiration and in Composition she is deep in thought with her head resting on her hand in the traditional gesture of melancholy or reverie.
Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing at centre, Maria Cosway’s Georgiana as Cynthia from Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’ 1781-1782 (below); and at right, Cosway’s A Persian Lady Worshipping the Rising Sun 1784 (below)
Maria Cosway (Italian-English 1760-1838) Georgiana as Cynthia from Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’ 1781-1782 Oil on canvas Chatsworth House Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees / Bridgeman Images Public domain
Maria Cosway (Italian-English 1760-1838) A Persian Lady Worshipping the Rising Sun 1784 Oil on canvas 61 x 73.7cm Sir John Soane’s Museum Gift from the artist, 1822 By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum, London CC BY-NC-ND
As well as portraits, Cosway exhibited history paintings. This work was shown at the Royal Academy in 1784. Although only a few of Cosway’s history pictures can be located now, paintings such as this one were well known through reproductions made by leading engravers and print publishers. Cosway’s success was hindered by her husband, who did not like her to paint professionally. She reflected later that had he permitted it, she would have ‘made a better painter, but left to myself by degrees, instead of improving, I lost what I brought from Italy of my early studies.’
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Maria Cosway (Italian-English 1760-1838) Bouquet of Flowers 1780 Watercolour on paper The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust) Bequeathed by Sir Robert Clermont Witt, 1952 CC BY-NC-ND
Maria Cosway (Italian-English 1760-1838) The Judgement of Korah, Dathan and Abiram c. 1801 Pen, ink and oil on canvas 37.5 x 29.2cm Yale Center for British Art Paul Mellon Collection CC BY-NC-ND
Maria Cosway (1759-1838) (after) Self Portrait Nd Oil on canvas 61 x W 50.8cm Temple Newsam House, Leeds Museums and Galleries Bequeathed by Sam Wilson, 1925 CC BY-NC-ND
Sarah Biffin (English, 1784-1850) Self-portrait c. 1821 Watercolour and bodycolour on ivory Private collection
Biffin, whose baptism record notes that she was born ‘without arms or legs’, taught herself to sew, write and paint using her mouth and shoulder. She wrote that, as a child, ‘I was continually practising every invention; till at length I could, with my mouth – thread a needle – tie a knot – do fancy work – cut out and make my own dresses’.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing at left, Clara Maria Pope’s Peony 1822 (below); and at right, Pope’s Peony 1821 (below)
Clara Maria Pope (British, 1767-1831) Peony 1822 Bodycolour on card The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London Courtesy the Natural History Museum
Clara Maria Pope (British, 1767-1831) Peony 1821 Bodycolour on card The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London Courtesy the Natural History Museum
Pope appears in museum records under many names: Clara Leigh, Clara Wheatley (her first husband was the artist Francis Wheatley, 1747-1801), Clara Maria Pope (she married actor Alexander Pope in 1807) and Mrs Alexander Pope. Her changes of name have obscured her career as an artist. She exhibited watercolour landscapes and portraits, miniatures and genre works, but above all, Pope was an artist of flowers. She worked for the leading botanical publisher Samuel Curtis (1779-1860). The scientifically accurate peonies depicted here are 2 of 11 designs. They may have been intended as plates for a work that was never published.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Augusta Innes Withers (English, 1792-1877) The Canon Hall Muscat Grape c. 1825 Watercolour on paper 444 × 352 mm RHS Lindley Collections Courtesy the Royal Horticultural Society, Lindley Library
Withers was employed by the Horticultural Society to make official ‘portraits’ of varieties of fruit growing in their orchards. The quality of Withers’s work meant her high fees were not questioned. Here, she paints sunlight glowing through grapes and the translucency of the skin of gooseberries in great detail. Withers drew and handcoloured engraved illustrations in the Horticultural Society’s Transactions and made illustrations of fruit for John Lindley’s Pomological Magazine in 1828 (Lindley was Secretary of the Society). Withers was also regarded as one of the best teachers of botanical illustration.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing at left, Rebecca Solomon’s Sherry, Sir? c. 1858-1862 (below); and at right, Solomon’s A Young Teacher 1861 (below)
Rebecca Solomon (English, 1832-1886) Sherry, Sir? c. 1858-1862 Oil on canvas Private collection
Solomon often painted scenes of domestic life and interiors, which were considered more suitable subjects for women artists than history painting. Solomon’s domestic scenes include subtle commentary on social hierarchies. Sherry, Sir? depicts a maid with a silver tray. It reprises a well-known painting of the same title, painted by William Powell Frith (1819-1909) in 1851, but unlike Frith’s painting, Solomon draws attention to domestic labour and the hierarchies of a middle-class home. Solomon was the sister of artists Abraham Solomon (1823-1862) and Simeon Solomon (1840-1905).
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Rebecca Solomon (London 26 September 1832 – 20 November 1886 London) was a 19th-century English Pre-Raphaelite draftsman, illustrator, engraver, and painter of social injustices. She is the second of three children who all became artists, in a prominent Jewish family. …
Solomon’s artistic style was typical of popular 19th-century painting at the time and falls under the category of genre painting. She used her visual images to critique ethnic, gender and class prejudice in Victorian England. When Solomon started painting genre scenes, her work demonstrated an observant eye for class, ethnic and gender discrimination. Solomon’s paintings reflect a combination of interest in the theatre and commitment to social consciousness that is not exist in other artist’s painting in the nineteenth century.
Solomon painted in a more equivocal manner… She [the subject of the painting] is equally attractive and demure, but, by being painted from the side and against the background of a middle-class interior, the viewer is invited to reflect on her social status.
This is framed in a genre painting and by no means a piece with pretensions to social realism, but Solomon seems to be underlining the definite restrictions on this young woman’s position in society.
The pictures hanging behind her may contribute to that interpretation of the artist. They are not yet identified, but it seems that on the left we are shown an allegorical subject later than Gainsborough or Reynolds, depicting a young peasant boy or young peasant girl holding a dog in a landscape. On the right, a more specific engraving of a genre painting from Solomon’s own time showing what appears to be an itinerant family of street vendors. By placing his servant girl between these two paintings, Solomon seems to be asking us to compare.
José Luis Jiménez García. “La otra versión de la ‘Sherry Girl’,” on the Diario de Jerez website 07 June 2023 [Online] Cited 28/08/2024 Translated from the Spanish by Google Translate. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Rebecca Solomon (English, 1832-1886) A Young Teacher 1861 Oil on canvas 61 by 51cm Tate and the Museum of the Home
Rebecca Solomon’s painting is a complex reflection on gender, race, religion and education in mid-nineteenth century London. As with many of her works, it considers women who worked in better-off households as professional carers. In A Young Teacher, Solomon modifies a traditional domestic scene between mother and child, with the surrounding books stressing the theme of learning. The woman at the centre of the image was modelled by Jamaican-born Fanny Eaton, who became a prominent muse for many Victorian artists and featured in some of the most iconic paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite period. …
Believed to be the first Jewish woman to become a professional artist in England, Rebecca Solomon’s work shone a light on inequality and prejudice at a time when these subjects were far from mainstream. She was active in social reform movements, including as part of a group of 38 artists who petitioned the Royal Academy of Arts to open its schools to women.
Emily Osborn (English, 1828-1925) Nameless and Friendless. “The rich man’s wealth is his strong city: the destruction of the poor is their poverty” (Proverbs: 10:15) 1857 Oil on canvas Support: 825 × 1038 mm Frame: 1042 × 1258 × 75 mm Tate Purchased with assistance from Tate Members, the Millwood Legacy and a private donor 2009 Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED
Osborn exhibited widely and was supported by wealthy patrons. She was also part of the ‘rights of woman’ debate, campaigning for more public roles for women. Nameless and Friendless, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1857, dramatises the difficulties faced by women artists. Osborn shows a young woman offering a painting to a sceptical dealer. With no reputation (‘Nameless’) and no connections (‘Friendless’), she has little chance of a sale. Behind her, two leering men emphasise the impression of her isolation and vulnerability.
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Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing Emily Mary Osborn’s Barbara Bodichon (1827-1891)Nd (below)
Emily Mary Osborn (1828-1925) Barbara Bodichon (1827-1891) (installation view) Nd Oil on canvas 120 x 97cm Girton College, University of Cambridge
Martha Darley Mutrie (British, 1824-1885) Wild Flowers at the Corner of a Cornfield 1855-1860 Oil on canvas Support: 821 × 632 mm Frame: 958 × 781 × 65 mm Photo: Tate (Seraphina Neville)
Martha Darley Mutrie is considered one of the leading painters of flowers active in Britain in the nineteenth century. She was born in Ardwick, near Manchester. She trained together with her sister, the painter Annie Feray Mutrie (1826-1893), under George Wallis (1811-1891) at the Manchester School of Design from 1844 to 1846, and also undertook private lessons with him. The sisters began exhibiting at the Royal Manchester Institution from 1845 and at the Royal Academy, London, showing there consistently from the early 1850s. Their work was regularly well received by the critics. Mutrie and her sister moved to London in 1854, where they painted flowers in interior settings, carefully arranged, and also outdoors in mock natural settings.
Despite the prominence of women artists painting still lifes and flowers, the men practitioners of the genre, such as George Lance (1802-1864) and William Henry ‘Birds Nest’ Hunt (1790-1864), received greater critical and institutional attention. Martha and Annie Mutrie achieved success that was otherwise rare for women working as artists at the time.
The art critic John Ruskin admired both artists’ work and wrote about one of Annie’s pictures in his review of the 1855 Royal Academy exhibition. In his review Ruskin suggested that she abandon artificial compositions and paint instead ‘some banks of flowers in wild country, just as they grow’ (John Ruskin, Notes on Some of the Principal Pictures Exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, 1855). This painting might be seen as a response to Ruskin’s insight and the advances in science that in the 1850s brought a new focus to the study of nature, with arguments over beauty and truth.
Florence Claxton (British, 1838-1920) ‘Woman’s Work’: A Medley 1861 Oil on canvas Martin Beisly Fine Art, London
In the 1850s, Claxton became part of the UK’s first organised movement for women’s rights. Woman’s Work satirises women’s opportunities for professional employment. At its centre a group of women fawn at the feet of a man seated below a statue of the Golden Calf – a false idol. Confined by
a surrounding wall, doors to professions such as medicine are shut to the women. Only the artist Rosa Bonheur has managed to scale the wall’s heights. The painting was exhibited at London’s National Institution for Fine Arts in 1861 and received mixed reviews. Some praised its comic strength but others described it as ‘vulgar’.
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Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty 1865 Albumen print Wilson Centre of Photography
Annie Keene (1842/3-1901) was an artist’s model at the Royal Academy Schools. Cameron showed Keene’s portrait at the 1866 Hampshire and Isle of Wight Loan Exhibition, and it was for sale at her 1868 exhibition at London’s German Gallery. In this photograph, Cameron’s shallow depth-of-field gives a bold effect. Her friend, the scientist and photographic innovator John Herschel (1792-1871), praised the portrait as ‘a most astonishing piece of high relief – She is absolutely alive and thrusting out her head from the paper into the air’.
Butler specialised in battle paintings, challenging society’s expectations of women artists. The exhibition of The Roll Call at the Royal Academy in 1874 was one of the greatest art sensations of the nineteenth century. It was praised by Academicians and hung ‘on the line’ (the most prestigious, eye-level position). The painting proved so popular with the public that a policeman had to be stationed nearby to protect the adjacent paintings. Queen Victoria summoned the work to Buckingham Palace for a private viewing, and the copyright sold for the enormous sum of £1,200.
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The Roll Call captured the imagination of the country when exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874, turning the artist into a national celebrity. So popular was the painting that a policeman had to be stationed before it to hold back the crowds and it went on to tour the country in triumph. The painting’s focus on the endurance and bravery of ordinary soldiers without reference to the commanders of the army accorded with the mood of the times and the increasing awareness of the need for social and military reforms.
Though the public had been exposed to other images of the Crimean War, primarily prints, photographs and newspaper illustrations, never before had the plight of ordinary soldiers been portrayed with such realism. Butler researched her subject by studying A. W. Kinglake’s seminal history of the Crimean War, as well as by consulting veterans of the Crimea, several of whom served as models for the painting. She also painstakingly sought out uniforms and equipment from the Crimean period in order to be correct in the smallest military details. The sombre mood and simple yet dramatic composition Butler achieved in The Roll Call vividly epitomised the grimness not only of the Crimean War but of all wars.
Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing at left, Louise Jopling’s Through the Looking-Glass 1875 (below); and at right, Jopling’s A Modern Cinderella 1875 (below)
Louise Jopling (English, 1843-1933) Through the Looking-Glass 1875 Oil paint on canvas Support: 539 × 437 mm Tate Purchased with funds provided by the Nicholas Themans Trust and Tate Patrons 2024 Photo: Tate (Sonal Bakrania)
This is a self-portrait Jopling made while pregnant with her son, Lindsay, in 1875.
Jopling was one of the most successful and best-known women artists of the late nineteenth century. She exhibited regularly and, from the 1880s, ran her own art school for women. Jopling hosted receptions and established connections with many artists and art dealers. She carefully planned the exhibition of her work by choosing venues appropriate to each painting’s scale and ambition. Jopling sent this self-portrait to the Society of Lady Artists in 1875. In the same year, A Modern Cinderella, hanging nearby, was shown at the Royal Academy. Both works were purchased by the dealer Agnew: this work for £26, but Cinderella for £262.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Tabitha Barber, curator of the exhibition, said: “What’s happened to Jopling’s legacy is the story of what’s happened to most women artists … They have been regarded, studied and judged differently.”
Jopling, who in 1901 became one of the first women admitted to the Royal Society of British Artists, was a celebrated artist in her day, Barber said. Her patrons included the de Rothschild family, and the Grosvenor Gallery founders Sir Coutts and Lady Lindsay. “At a time when women weren’t allowed to be members of the Royal Academy, her works were exhibited there almost every year and spoken about in the press. She was reviewed by male art critics, and reviewed well.”
Jopling’s paintings were also commercially successful, selling for some of the highest prices that British female artists could command – albeit far less than their male contemporaries.
“She is among a handful of female artists who were society figures and household names – and it just seems so astonishing that they’re so little known now,” said Barber.
Louise Jopling (English, 1843-1933) A Modern Cinderella 1875 Oil on canvas Support: 910 × 700 mm Private collection
Louise Jopling (English, 1843-1933) A Modern Cinderella 1875 Oil on canvas Support: 910 × 700 mm Private collection
A Modern Cinderella shows a model removing her fine clothes at the end of a painting session. A glimpse of Jopling’s easel can be seen in the mirror’s reflection. In 1875, Jopling exhibited this work at the Royal Academy. There, the model’s naked shoulder was cause for criticism. Although one reviewer thought it was ‘quite harmless’, a picture dealer’s wife reportedly said that ‘she could never hang such a thing in her house’. Jopling also showed the painting at the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where she had also trained.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
If this is, indeed, a self-portrait, Jopling has painted herself as somewhere in the liminal space between the social groups she simultaneously belonged to and was excluded from. Despite Jopling’s notoriety and prominence among high-class Pre-Raphaelite artist circles, she experienced a high degree of discrimination. In 1883, she was commissioned to paint a portrait for 150 guineas but lost her employment in favour of Sir John Everett Millais, who requested 1000 guineas for the same project (Clement). In the traditional circles of high society, Jopling was looked down upon for pursuing a career in the fine arts, which was inherently a masculine task. The woman in the image is either taking the dress off or putting it on, but either way, has turned her back to her easel, which could be interpreted as forfeiting a part of her true identity to fit either end of the accepted spectrum of femininity. The underclothing she portrays herself in fit the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic style of dress, which fit natural waists and emphasised a woman’s beauty through medieval and Greek-inspired silhouettes (Shrimpton, Jayne. Victorian Fashion. Shire Publications, 2016). The inclusion of this white aesthetic dress, as well as the scandalous drop of the strap is a signal of societal rebellion against traditional beauty norms. The woman in the image could also be read as shedding the skin of the two dresses before her to reveal her true, natural, artistic self below.
Marianne Stokes (Austrian, 1855-1927) The Passing Train 1890 Oil on canvas Support: 600 × 760 mm Frame: 885 × 955 mm Private collection
Marianne Stokes (née Preindlsberger; 1855-1927) was an Austrian painter. She settled in England after her marriage to Adrian Scott Stokes (1854-1935), the landscape painter, whom she had met in Pont-Aven. Stokes was considered one of the leading women artists in Victorian England.
Annie Louisa Swynnerton ARA (British, 1844-1933) Mater Triumphalis 1892 Paris, musée d’Orsay Donated by Edmund Davis, 1915
Swynnerton campaigned for women’s suffrage, access to professional training, and equal opportunities. She rebelled against the belief that ‘women could not paint’. Exhibited at the New Gallery in 1892, Mater Triumphalis was regarded as a bold work. It brought Swynnerton international recognition, winning a medal at the 1893 World Exposition in Chicago. Despite this, Swynnerton received mixed reviews from British critics. They were impressed by the artist’s skill and the painting’s ‘quivering life’ but found the ‘frank realism’ of the woman’s naked body disconcerting.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing Henrietta Rae’s Psyche before the throne of Venus 1894 (below)
Henrietta Rae (British, 1859-1928) Psyche before the throne of Venus 1894 Oil paint on canvas Support: 1941 × 3058 × 31 mm Frame: 2525 × 3826 × 270 mm Lent from a private collection, courtesy of Martin Beisly Fine Art
Rae was determined not to be pigeonholed as a ‘woman artist’. She painted classical nude compositions despite the belief that they were not a suitable subject for women artists. Against these odds, Psyche Before the Throne of Venus was a success at the 1894 Royal Academy Exhibition, and Rae received praise from critics as well as members of the Academy. The periodical The Englishwoman’s Review described the painting as ‘the most ambitious and successful woman’s work yet exhibited – one which could not have been executed a few years ago, when we had not the opportunity of studying from the life’.
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Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing Lucy Kemp-Welch’s Colt Hunting in the New Forest 1897
One of the most important pieces of art ever inspired by the New Forest was a painting by Lucy Kemp-Welch (1869-1958), entitled ‘Colt Hunting in the New Forest’. This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1897, when she was only 26 years old. It was an impressive canvas measuring 1537 x 3060 mm (approximately 5ft x 10ft) and was described as depicting ‘a wide glade in the forest, along which race a number of colts unwilling to relinquish their liberty and to fall into the hands of the four mounted lads who try to catch them’.[1] Lucy Kemp-Welch was born in Bournemouth, in 1869, and spent much of her time wandering in the New Forest, where she ‘personally studied the wild ponies in this pleasant part of England’.[2] Her love of horses and wild ponies remained with her all her life. In order to capture the energy and excitement of the pony drifts for ‘Colt Hunting’ she actually had the full-sized canvas transported to the Forest, where she sketched from life, as the commoners galloped their ponies past her. When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy it caused a sensation and was promptly purchased for £525.00.[3] The buyers were trustees of the Chantrey Bequest, who administered a large sum of money left in the will of Sir F. L. Chantrey to obtain works of art by British artists, in order to create a national collection. It was only the third time, since its creation in 1875, that the Chantrey Bequest had purchased artwork by a woman. Lucy Kemp-Welch became a celebrity overnight.[4]
In the same year that Lucy Kemp-Welch exhibited ‘Colt Hunting in the New Forest’, the Tate Galley was built and her painting was transferred to this new, public collection. However, ‘Colt Hunting’ was immediately archived and has never been publicly exhibited. Indeed, there are rumours that the Tate Gallery loaned the painting to the Royal Academy during the Blitz ‘in the hope that the Luftwaffe’s friendly bombs might rid them of this monstrous woman’s work for good’.[5] It is difficult to conceive of the prejudice against women in the late Victorian period and early 20th century, particularly women such as Lucy Kemp-Welch, who stepped out of the roles proscribed to them by a patriarchal society.[6] Her sympathies for the suffragette movement certainly didn’t endear her to the male-establishment figures that controlled the art world. She nevertheless continued to paint and made a successful, and award winning (Paris Salon) career as an artist.
newforestcommoner. “Lucy Kemp-Welch: Colt Hunting in the New Forest,” on the New Forest Commoner website November 27, 2016 [Online] Cited 28/08/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Gwen John (Welsh, 1876-1939) Self-Portrait 1902 Oil on canvas Tate Purchased 1942 Photo: Tate (Mark Heathcote and Samuel Cole)
John exhibited this self-portrait at the New English Art Club (NEAC) in 1900. It was her debut as an exhibitor. The NEAC had been founded as a forward-thinking artists’ group, created out of dissatisfaction with the art establishment, exemplified by the conservative Royal Academy. Tutors from the Slade, where John had trained, were on the NEAC committee. Despite its progressive stance, in 1900 John was one of only 16 women exhibitors among 75 men. John’s choice to show a self-portrait was perhaps a deliberate assertion of her presence.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Here is a dilemma straight away: which should take precedence, the painting or the fact? Should the show present art on its own terms, or as instance, evidence, expression of social history? It is an extremely complex remit…
[Laura] Knight is strongly represented with a sequence of cliff-edge paintings; but what about her near-namesake, Winifred Knights? The Deluge is a shattering masterpiece of British modernism, painted in 1920 and thus eligible, yet not here. And why are the ethereal and supremely original blue cyanotypes of Anna Atkins (1799-1871) missing from the niggardly photography section, along with Christina Broom (1862-1939), pioneering photojournalist, whose stirring portraits of suffragettes would have been so apt?
The show is thick with flowers, descending from Delany right down to Helen Allingham’s twee cottage gardens, all ready for their postcard reproductions. And if Allingham, then why not the visionary genius of Beatrix Potter? Weak pre-Raphaelite schlock fills the largest gallery, along with Victorian pieties such as Emily Osborn’s distressed gentlewoman, eyes downcast, awaiting the verdict of a dealer on her latest canvas, while two male artists leer in the background. Nameless and Friendless is terminally mawkish.
Only rarely do women’s art and women’s history spark together in this show. You see it in Ethel Wright’s fabulous 1912 portrait of the suffragette Una Dugdale Duval, in an arsenical green dress beneath a wallpaper of ludicrous fighting cocks, where Wright’s modern bravado exactly meets that of her sitter. And you see it in Gwen John’s immortal 1902 self-portrait, small and distanced, light catching her eyelashes in an atmosphere of hushed stillness, so direct and yet so self-contained: the momentous assertion of reticence.
That epochal image appears on the exhibition posters, perhaps promising too much. For even the best of the artists here are occasionally represented by the least of their works, quite apart from the mystifying omissions. The theme of Now You See Us is undoubtedly riveting. The captions (and the excellent catalogue) are superbly written. But art is trumped by social history too often in this show, words overshadowing images.
Gwen John (Welsh, 1876-1939) Chloë Boughton-Leigh (1868-1947) 1904-1908 Oil on canvas 58.4 x 38.1cm Tate Purchased 1925
Gwendolen Mary John (Welsh, 1876-1939)
Gwendolen Mary John (22 June 1876 – 18 September 1939) was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. Her paintings, mainly portraits of anonymous female sitters, are rendered in a range of closely related tones. Although in her lifetime, John’s work was overshadowed by that of her brother Augustus and her mentor and lover Auguste Rodin, awareness and esteem for John’s artistic contributions has grown considerably since her death.
Gwen John trained at the Slade School of Art in London, where her brother Augustus was also a student. She settled in Paris in 1904, working as a model, becoming Rodin’s mistress and immersing herself in the artistic world of the metropolis. She lived in France for the rest of her life, exhibiting on both sides of the Channel. The portrait shown here is of a Paris friend, Chloë Boughton-Leigh. The subdued colouring, short foreground and self-absorption of the sitter create a deeply intense atmosphere. John showed it in London, at the New English Art Club.
Text from the WikiArt website
Minna Keene (née Bergmann, Canadian born Germany, 1861-1943) Decorative Study No. 1, Pomegranates c. 1906 Carbon print
The subject of this photograph is believed to be of Violet Keene, Minna Keene’s daughter.
Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing Ethel Wright’s The Music Room, Portrait of Una Dugdale 1912 (below)
Ethel Wright (British, 1866-1939) The Music Room, Portrait of Una Dugdale (installation view) 1912 Oil on canvas Private collection
This portrait of suffragette and women’s rights activist Una Dugdale Duval (1879-1975) was exhibited at the Stafford Gallery in October 1912. Its flat areas of colour and bold outlines represent a stylistic shift for Wright, who had exhibited at the Royal Academy since the 1880s. Wright shows Duval as cultured and sophisticated, dressed in green, a suffrage colour. Wright made the work the same year Duval made national news for her refusal to promise to obey her husband during their marriage vows. In 1913, Duval published a pamphlet, Love and Honour but Not Obey.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Ethel Wright (British, 1866-1939) The Music Room, Portrait of Una Dugdale 1912 Oil on canvas Private collection
In 1913, Bell left the Friday Club for the short-lived exhibiting society, the Grafton Group. It included artists who were experimenting with post-impressionism. She was also a founding member of the Omega Workshops. Based in Bloomsbury’s Fitzroy Square, the Workshops aimed to remove the false divisions between fine and decorative arts. The mantelpiece in this painting was in Bell’s house at 46 Gordon Square in London. The objects on it include handmade paper flowers from the Omega Workshops. Bell’s use of an unconventional low viewpoint, fractured, abstracted forms and bright colours show her exploring different techniques associated with twentieth-century art movements.
In 1918, Airy received a commission from the Imperial War Museum, thereby becoming Britain’s first official woman war artist. Her 1.7 by 1.8-metre canvases depict munitions production and war-related heavy industry. She later recalled the hot and dangerous conditions in which she worked. A former Slade student, Airy enjoyed a high public profile, won through exhibition and good reviews at the Royal Academy. In 1915, an art critic hailed her as ‘the most accomplished artist of her sex’. Airy was aware, however, of the prejudice women artists still faced. Galleries and buyers, she said, felt ‘safer with a man’.
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Anna Airy (English, 1882-1964) Study for ‘The L Press: Forging the Jacket of an 18-inch Gun, Armstrong-Whitworth Works, Openshaw’ 1918 Oil on canvas Private collection
Olive Edis (British, 1876-1955) War 1919 Carbon print on paper Wilson Centre for Photography
Edis was Britain’s first woman war photographer. She was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to photograph the activities of servicewomen on duty in France and Flanders. This bleak, blasted landscape captures the impact of the First World War.
Text from the exhibition large print guide
Installation view of the exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 at Tate Britain showing Dame Ethel Walker’s Decoration The Excursion of Nausicaa 1920 (below)
Dame Ethel Walker DBE ARA (Scottish, 1861-1951) Decoration: The Excursion of Nausicaa 1920 Oil on canvas 1835 × 3670 mm Tate Purchased 1924 Photo: Tate
Writing to J. B. Manson (Monday, 2 June, no year given, but almost certainly 1924), the artist described her work thus:’… Nausicaa early one lovely summer’s morning goes to her father and mother – the King and Queen – to ask permission to have a waggon and mules given to her to take her and her attendants and to fill it with the clothes of the palace that require washing, also with dainties and wine and good food for a forthcoming picnic – and go down to the river adjoining the sea to wash them – which he gives her. On arriving at the river they unharness the mules and are unpacking or unloading the waggons of the clothes and the food for the picnic, and are beginning to wash them in the river. A little wood divides the sea from the river where the goat girl – kneeling by the tree near her goats – hears the strange voices that are sounding in her usually silent little wood. To show it is the sea a girl, nude, has stepped up on to the bank after bathing….’ The story is based on Book VI of the Odyssey: ‘… they spread/The raiment orderly along the beach/Where dashing tides …/… leaving the garments, stretch’d/ In noon-day fervour of the sun, to dry.’
In her lifetime Scottish artist Ethel Walker was celebrated for her trailblazing paintings of the female form. A teacher before she painted fulltime, she developed her own unique style – large, mural-like paintings, which she called her ‘decorations.’ Walker often painted male and female nudes confidently placing female sensuality at the centre of her work, as seen in Decoration: The Excursion of Nausicaa (1920). Its dream-like vision of a feminist utopia was ahead of its time.
Working steadily for decades, she achieved many professional milestones, exhibiting around the world and representing Britain at the Venice Biennale four times. In 1943, Walker was made a Dame of the British Empire, and after her death The Times called her ‘the most important woman artist of her time.’ Despite this, it is only now that her artistic legacy is finally being recognised.
Exhibition dates: 24th April – 22nd September, 2024
Curator/Artist: David Trullo
Kaulak (Antonio Cánovas del Castillo y Vallejo) (Spanish, 1862-1933) Studio portrait 1921-1922 Photographic positive Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid
Kaulak (22 December 1862 – 13 September 1933), was a Spanish photographer, art critic, editor and amateur painter. His uncle was prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, assassinated in 1897 by an anarchist, hence his use of a pseudonym; the meaning of which is unexplained, although the word appears to be of Basque origin.
What fabulousesness!
An archive of ‘galant photography’ and other art works illustrating the intimate public and private scenes of a couple in Spain in the 1920s-1930s which builds a memory, a narrative. The exhibition combines photographs and documentation of the most varied kinds, with elements of the daily life of its time.
“… above all [the exhibition] makes us reflect on our own archives: what we keep and what we discard, what we hide and what we reveal, how we build and invent our own history, how we want to be remembered and what we leave to those who come after us.”
The appreciation and enjoyment of difference pictured through photography and art, telling a story otherwise long forgotten.
I have added appropriate bibliographic text where possible.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Anonymous photographer Portrait c. 1935 Photographic positive Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid
The Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas (MNAD) in Madrid, a state museum of the Ministry of Culture of Spain, joins the PHotoESPAÑA 2024 festival with the opening of Álbum de salón y alcoba. Una instalación de David Trullo, which can be visited free of charge until September 22.
From a forgotten collection that contained public -or living room- photographs and private -or bedroom- scenes of a couple in the 20s and 30s of the last century, the visual artist David Trullo has made this exhibition. The installation is “the result of opening an unnoticed time capsule and putting it in context with pieces from the museum and other collections to explore the limits of intimacy, leading the viewer to surpass them.”
In addition to putting a “rediscovered treasure” into context, the installation offers a review of how photographic documentation is exhibited and interpreted. It also proposes to reflect “on our own archives: what we keep and what we discard, what we hide and what we reveal, how we construct and invent our own history, how we want to be remembered and what we leave to those who come after us.”
The installation is, in itself, an album that captures the intimacy and public life of the 1920s and 1930s, combining the most varied photographs and documentation with elements of the everyday life of her time. It includes pieces and archives from several private collections, the Museo Sorolla, the Muséu del Pueblo d’Asturies, the Museo Nacional del Teatro de Almagro, the Asociación para la Enseñanza de la Mujer-Fundación Fernando de Castro and the Museo de Historia de Madrid, among others.
Between “the living room” and “the bedroom” a route is traced that goes from the preservation of intimate albums – among which a positive by Kaulak stands out, – through the first advances in amateur photography, to the ‘galant photography’, more or less erotic, and other genres of popular culture that include among its protagonists Tórtola Valencia, Sara Montiel, Conchita Piquer or the queer copla singer Miguel de Molina.
Text from the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas website
Advertising design for ‘Florido y Cía’ (Florido and Co.) c. 1930 Watercolour on paper Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid
Anonymous photographer Miguel de Molina 1937 Photographic positive Colección Pedro Víllora
Miguel Frías de Molina (Málaga, April 10, 1908 – Buenos Aires, March 4, 1993), known artistically as Miguel de Molina, was a Spanish singer of copla. Tortured, expelled from Spain and later persecuted by the Franco dictatorship for being a “faggot and a red”, he settled in Argentina in 1946, invited by Eva Perón.
He had an unmistakable personal style combining cabaret, flamenco dancing, deep vocal emotionalism, spectacular costumes and a narcissistic stage persona that made him extremely popular with audiences. His gay identity was openly acknowledged with a sense of humour that was very close to what today would be recognised as ‘low camp.’ Between 1936 and 1942 Molina spent most of the Spanish Civil War on Republican ground. This together with his homosexuality and sympathies for the Left had disastrous consequences for his career. He left Spain for Argentina, where he was hugely successful. But life in exile was not easy and the Argentinean government soon threatened him with expulsion. Molina credited the direct intervention of Eva Perón with helping him stay in the country and continue his career. Unfortunately his overt support for the Perón government made him a despised figure once the Peróns were driven from power. The rampant homophobia of the changed political climate and the cultural shift that accompanied it proved detrimental to his mental and emotional health, prompting him to withdraw from artistic life in 1960. While many personalities who were faced with persecution under Francoism were being rediscovered in the 1980s, Molina, by then bitter and withdrawn, languished in obscurity. It was not until two films that celebrated his life were released a decade later that his uniquely stylised performances and colourful life would finally be celebrated.
Anonymous. “Miguel de Molina – Nominee,” on The Legacy Project website Nd [Online] Cited 21/08/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Anonymous maker Fan c. 1925 Lacquered wood and painted and corrugated paper Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid Photo: Masú del Amo
Bruno Zach (Austrian born Ukraine, 1891-1935) (designer) Figure of a woman with a fur coat c. 1920 Cast bronze Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid Photo: Fabián Álvarez
Bruno Zach (6 May 1891 – 20 February 1935) was an Austrian art deco sculptor of Ukrainian birth who worked in the early-to-mid 20th century. His output included a wide repertoire of genre subjects, however he is best known for his erotic sculptures of young women.
Muchas Gracias (Thank You) Magazine, Year VII – No. 344 September 13, 1930 Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid
Translated text at the bottom of the magazine:
Thank you very much For this rascal We want to tell this little bitch that it fits her well. But we stumbled upon the fit.
Oswald Haerdtl (Austrian, 1899-1959) Cocktail set 1924 Mouth-blown glass Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid Photo: Lucía Morate
Oswald Haerdtl was an important Austrian architect, designer, and architecture teacher.
He studied under Kolo Moser and Oskar Strnad at the Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule, and entered Josef Hoffmann’s master class in 1922, soon becoming his assistant. From 1935 to 1959, he was head of the architecture department. His teaching, architectural projects, and international connections, to Italy and France in particular, made him a lasting influence on post-war Modernism in Vienna, bringing a sense of lightness and elegance into the design vocabulary.
Ramón Peinador Checa (Spanish, 1897-1964) Advertising design for ‘Perfumes Oriente’ 1925 Wash on paper Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid Photo: Javier Rodríguez Barrera
Ramón Peinador Checa (Madrid, December 25, 1897 – Mexico City, May 26, 1964) was a Spanish painter, draftsman, engraver, illustrator, designer and decorator who, exiled in Mexico, became a naturalised citizen of that country.
Photography lies and deceives us. What the camera shows us is staged, either by us or by the eye of the person who creates the images. What we commonly call a “photographic archive” is nothing more than a fragmented collection transformed over the years, with which a memory, a narrative, is built.
From a forgotten collection containing public photographs -or from the living room- and private scenes -or from the bedroom- of a couple in the twenties and thirties of the last century, the visual artist David Trullo proposes this installation.
It is the result of opening an unnoticed time capsule and putting it in context with the pieces of the twentieth century that put an end to the monopoly of the professional photographer. Cameras and processes are simplified and photography is becoming an essential accessory for any occasion, and not only for amateurs, including the female sector: the Kodak Petite from 1926 is promoted as a camera ‘for smart and modern girls’.
In addition to putting a rediscovered treasure into context, the installation proposes a review of the way photographic documentation is displayed and interpreted, but above all it makes us reflect on our own archives: what we keep and what we discard, what we hide and what we reveal, how we build and invent our own history, how we want to be remembered and what we leave to those who come after us.
During this period, Madrid reinvented itself and became as cosmopolitan as other European cities, although it was the bourgeois and aristocratic elites who truly enjoyed it. A surprising and varied sexual atmosphere also emerged, along with new ways of understanding bodies, identities and relationships that were reflected in publications, advertising and photography, with the so-called ‘galant photography’ flourishing within it.
The National Museum of Decorative Arts joins PHotoESPAÑA 2024 with David Trullo’s installation ‘Album of living room and bedroom’
~ With a selection of images from the public and the private, the visual artist discovers a photographic capsule that time has preserved to be reread from the present day
~ The tour includes everything from photographic positives by Kaulak to portraits of Sara Montiel, Conchita Piquer or the queer copla singer Miguel de Molina
The National Museum of Decorative Arts (MNAD), a state museum of the Ministry of Culture, is joining the PHotoESPAÑA 2024 festival with the inauguration of ‘Album of living room and bedroom. Installation by David Trullo’, which can be visited free of charge until September 22.
From a forgotten collection containing public photographs – or from the living room – and private scenes – or from the bedroom – of a couple in the 1920s and 1930s, the visual artist David Trullo has created this proposal. The installation is “the result of opening an unnoticed time capsule and putting it in context with the pieces from the museum and from other collections to explore the limits of intimacy, leading the viewer to surpass them.”
In addition to putting a “rediscovered treasure” into context, the installation offers a review of the way of exhibiting and interpreting photographic documentation. It also suggests reflecting “on our own archives: what we keep and what we discard, what we hide and what we reveal, how we build and invent our own history, how we want to be remembered and what we leave to those who come after us.”
From living room to bedroom
The installation is, in itself, an album that captures the intimacy and public life of the 1920s and 1930s, combining photographs and documentation of the most varied kinds, with elements of the daily life of its time. It features pieces and archives from various private collections, from the Sorolla Museum, the Muséu del Pueblo d’Asturies, the Museo Nacional del Teatro de Almagro, the Asociación para la Enseñanza de la Mujer-Fundación Fernando de Castro or the Museo de Historia de Madrid, among others. Between “the living room” and “the bedroom” there is a journey that goes from the conservation of intimate albums – among which a positive by Kaulak stands out – through the first advances in photography for amateurs, to reaching ‘galant photography’, more or less erotic, and other genres of popular culture that include among their protagonists Tórtola Valencia, Sara Montiel, Conchita Piquer or the queer copla singer Miguel de Molina.
Text from the National Museum of Decorative Arts exhibition press dossier
Antonio Peyró (Spanish, 1882-1954) The Baticola (Elena Plá Toda) 1934 Glazed ceramic Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid Photo: Masú del Amo
Antonio Peyró Mezquita was a Spanish ceramist.
‘Reciprocal pleasure’, cover by Josep Renau Berenguer
1933
Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid
Photo: Masú del Amo
Josep Renau Berenguer (Spanish, 1907-1982) was an artist and communist revolutionary, notable for his propaganda work during the Spanish Civil War. Among his production, he is remarkable for his art deco period, his political propaganda during the Spanish Civil War, the photo murals of the Spanish Pavilion in the International Exhibition of 1937 in Paris, a series of photomontages titled Fata Morgana or The American Way of Life, and murals and paintings made in Mexico, such as Tropic, dated in 1945.
Louis-Jean-Sylvestre Majorelle, usually known simply as Louis Majorelle, (26 September 1859 – 15 January 1926) was a French decorator and furniture designer who manufactured his own designs, in the French tradition of the ébéniste. He was one of the outstanding designers of furniture in the Art Nouveau style, and after 1901 formally served as one of the vice-presidents of the École de Nancy.
Louis Majorelle is one of those who contributed the most to the transformation of furniture. Thanks to posterity, we recognise today a piece of furniture from him as we recognise a piece of furniture from André Charles Boulle and Charles Cressent, the french Prince regent’s favourite artists. During the early 18th century, Cressent replaced the magnificence of ebony and tortoiseshell associated with tin and copper by the softer harmonies of foreign woods. Like him, Louis Majorelle dressed the elegant structure of Art Nouveau furniture with exotic wood inlays.
Álvaro Retana (Spanish born Philippines, 1890-1970) Figure for Celia Gámez c. 1920 Ink and graphite on paper Colección Pedro Víllora
Álvaro Retana Ramírez de Arellano (Batangas, Philippines, August 26, 1890 – Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid, February 10, 1970) was a writer, journalist, cartoonist, fashion designer, musician, libertine and Spanish couplet lyricist.
Celia Gámez Carrasco (August 25, 1905 – December 10, 1992) was an Argentinian film actress, and one of the icons of the Golden Age of Spanish theatre. She was more commonly known in Franco’s Spain, particularly in her later years, as La Protegida.
Vitín Cortezo (Spanish, 1908-1978) Figure for Celia Gámez 1939 Mixed technique on paper Colección Pedro Víllora
Víctor María Cortezo Martínez-Junquera, also known as Vitín Cortezo (Madrid, June 10, 1908 – March 2, 1978) was a Spanish painter, illustrator, costume designer and set designer.
Anonymous maker Bloomers and cotton slip with silk knit stockings c. 1930 Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid Photo: Fabián Álvarez
Karl Klaus and Franz Staudigl Figure (Serapis Wahliss series) 1913-1914 Painted and glazed ceramic Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid Photo: Fabián Álvarez
Karl Klaus (Austrian, 1889-1925) was a student of Josef Hoffmann. The figure was designed for Serapis-Wahliss, a noted Viennese retailer and manufacturer of porcelain. Franz Staudigl was an Austrian painter born 1885 – died 1944.
Anonymous photographer Concha Piquer 1927 Photographic positive Museo Nacional del Teatro, Almagro
María de la Concepción Piquer López (13 December 1906 – 12 December 1990), better known as Concha Piquer (and sometimes billed as Conchita Piquer), was a Spanish singer and actress. She was known for her work in the copla form, and she performed her own interpretations of some of the key pieces in the Spanish song tradition, mostly works of the mid-20th century trio of composers Antonio Quintero, Rafael de León y Manuel Quiroga.
Anonymous maker Perfume bottles 1850-1900 Engraved and gilded silver and blown glass Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas. Madrid Photo: Fabián Álvarez
Anonymous maker Paul Koruna, Paris (no dates) (photographer) Promotional poster for ‘Rosalío’ Nd Montage of photographic positives Colección Ramón Gato
Anonymous maker Paul Koruna, Paris (no dates) (photographer) Promotional poster for ‘Rosalío’ (details) Nd Montage of photographic positives Colección Ramón Gato
Anonymous maker Manila shawl 1876-1925 Embroidered silk Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid Photos: Javier Rodríguez Barrera
National Museum of Decorative Arts c/ Montalbán, 12. Madrid
“The artist derives pleasure from her measured dérive and investigation of the evanescent, posing important questions about seemingly mundane things before they pass out of sight, memory, and existence.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Exhibition dates: 26th April – 15th September, 2024
In recent weeks Art Blart has posted on social documentary photographers of the urbanscape: David Goldblatt documenting social conditions in South Africa under apartheid and Roger Mayne with his “mixture of reality and unreality” photographs of the communities of Southam Road and surrounds, London.
One could argue that both could be seen as a focused urban male flâneur (or flâneuse in the case of a female), who saunters around the city observing society – the serendipitous Mayne more so than the working in series focused Goldblatt. And here we have another photographer of the urbanscape until recently unknown to me, that of the magnificent Austrian photographer Elfriede Mejchar (1924-2020) who – according to the exhibition text – is another flâneur, “her flaneur-like practice underlying her earlier bodies of work.”
But Mejchar’s was a very concentrated photographic practice, one in which the photographer again and again “explored Vienna’s peripheral zones on the southeast edge of the city” to create photographic series often created over several years. Therefore, rather than being a wandering dilettante photographer, I believe that Mejchar was a focused conceptual artist who used Guy Debord’s “Theory of the Dérive” (1956)1 (or “drift”) to ground her photographic practice.
With its focused flow of acts, its gestures, its strolls, its encounters, one of the goals of the dérive includes studying the terrain of the city (psychogeography), the exploration of urban environments that emphasises interpersonal connections to places. The pyschogeography of the urbanscape.2
A quotation by Grant W. Ray is instructive in this regard:
“Debord’s Dérive is not simple a walk through the streets of the city, of chance encounters. Instead one must move rapidly and decisively through the urban space, with intention… They should be aware of their surroundings, of the “… ecological analysis of the absolute or relative character of fissures in the urban network, of the role of microclimates, of distinct neighborhoods with no relation to administrative boundaries, and above all of the dominating action of centers of attraction…” Thus the most talented photographers who’s oeuvre includes the investigation of the urbanscape. The walk itself, the interaction of operator, camera, and site breaks down the normal relationship we have with public urban spaces. Their activity alone is the Dérive.”3
Working decisively and with intention, at the edge of the city, in spaces with no boundaries, where there were few people, or using different typologies of the city such as hotel rooms in which she stayed during her everyday job, Mejchar focused on the pyschogeography of the urbanscape through her reflective, non-decisive moment photographs, capturing “the complexity of this desolate and yet, in her eyes, beautiful landscape” and the changes that were happening to the urbanscape.
“Elfriede Mejchar consciously broke away from the photographic mainstream and the reportage style that was popular at the time. Rather than searching for the so-called “decisive moment,” she approached her subjects in a strongly conceptual and serial manner. She focused not on the extraordinary but on the unspectacular and the commonplace, the everyday and the banal, repeatedly addressing these in new ways in her photographic series.” (Text from the Wien Museum website)
Working with the periphery, the borders between urban and rural spaces, the non-decisive moment, landscapes subjected to human interventions and photographs in series, Mejchar’s photographs are more than mere representation of these sites: they challenge the viewer to “instigate more than just chance encounters for the viewer looking at the photographs,” through an understanding of the “subtle variations of the daily social realities created and maintained through public works and layout.”4 “The photographers activity of finding these sites is the dérive, the photograph itself is the pyschogeography, the questioning.”4
With her training as a classical photographer in the manner of Sudek, Brassaï or Tudor-Hart (see the first two photographs in the posting On Her Own. The photographer Elfriede Mejchar) grounding her later objective conceptual photographs, Mejchar’s point of departure is the pleasure she derives from the focused dérive and the results of her activity (through the objective and precise eye of a topographer a la Bernd and Hiller Becher) – the questioning photographs – brought to the attention of the viewer.
Mejchar investigates “traces of civilisation that humans leave in nature or along the edges of the urban fabric” and in so doing brings peripheral things (and her ideas about them) to the centre of our attention, making them psychologically valuable for all of us. The artist derives pleasure from her measured dérive and investigation of the evanescent, posing important questions about seemingly mundane things before they pass out of sight, memory, and existence.
1/ “Psychogeography describes the effect of a geographical location on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.
How do different places make us feel and behave? The term psychogeography was invented by the Marxist theorist Guy Debord in 1955 in order to explore this. Inspired by the French nineteenth century poet and writer Charles Baudelaire’s concept of the flâneur – an urban wanderer – Debord suggested playful and inventive ways of navigating the urban environment in order to examine its architecture and spaces.”
Anonymous. “Psychogeography,” on the Tate website Nd [Online] Cited 13/09/2024
2/ Guy Debord (November 1956). “Theory of the Dérive”. Les Lèvres Nues (9). Translated by Ken Knabb.
3/ Guy Debord, “Theory of the Dérive,” 1958 on the Bureau of Public Secrets website Nd quoted in Grant W. Ray. “Dérive,” on the Silverpoetics website 13 July 2009 [Online] Cited 20/08/2024
4/ Ibid.,
Many thankx to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Poesie des Alltäglichen. Fotografien von Elfriede Mejchar / The poetry of the everyday
To mark the centenary of her birth, in 2024 three museums in Austria host exhibitions of works by the photographer Elfriede Mejchar (1924-2020, Vienna, AT). The Museum der Moderne Salzburg presents the artist as a portraitist. Curator Katharina Ehrl guides you through the exhibition in this short film.
In 2024, three museums host exhibitions of works by the Austrian photographer Elfriede Mejchar (1924-2020, Vienna, AT). The Museum der Moderne Salzburg is collaborating with the Landesgalerie Niederösterreich and the Wien Museum to honor the artist’s work at three different locations on the occasion of her 100th birthday, with each location offering a different focus.
Salzburg’s contribution to this collaborative project will present the artist’s portraits. With her series of works entitled “Artists at work” (1954-1961), for example, Mejchar demonstrates impressively how she engages with the artistic personalities of Christa Hauer, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Josef Mikl and Arnulf Rainer by mapping their working situation in their studios. But she also demonstrated the same precision of perception when encountering the inanimate objects in her surroundings, thereby giving landscapes, flowers and discarded furniture the appearance of animated portraits.
The photo collections at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg hold a total of 665 photographs by Mejchar. Otto Breicha, the first director of the Museum’s predecessor institution, was a long-time colleague of Mejchar who recognised the artistic value of her photographic work and helped to promote it. As early as 1982, one year before the official opening of the Rupertinum, a comprehensive collection of her work was added to the photographic collection that later grew through further purchases and donations and today constitutes a focal point of the Museum’s photographic holdings.
Elfriede Mejchar (Austrian, 1924-2020) Arnulf Rainer 1954-1961 From the series Künstler bei der Arbeit, 1954-1961 (Artists at work, 1954-1961) Silver gelatin print on baryta paper Federal Photography Collection at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Arnulf Rainer (Austrian, b. 1929)
Arnulf Rainer (born 8 December 1929) is an Austrian painter noted for his abstract informal art.
Rainer was born in Baden, Austria. During his early years, Rainer was influenced by Surrealism. In 1950, he founded the Hundsgruppe (dog group) together with Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer, and Josef Mikl. After 1954, Rainer’s style evolved towards Destruction of Forms, with blackenings, overpaintings, and maskings of illustrations and photographs dominating his later work. He was close to the Vienna Actionism, featuring body art and painting under the influence of drugs. He painted extensively on the subject of Hiroshima such as it relates to the nuclear bombing of the Japanese city and the inherent political and physical fallout.
Elfriede Mejchar (Austrian, 1924-2020) Christa Hauer 1954-1961 From the series Künstler bei der Arbeit, 1954-1961 (Artists at work, 1954–1961) Silver gelatin print on baryta paper Federal Photography Collection at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Christa Hauer-Fruhmann (Austrian, 1925-2013)
Christa Hauer-Fruhmann (b. March 13, 1925 in Vienna; d. March 21, 2013 in St. Pölten) was an Austrian painter. …
She was initially under the artistic influence of her father and created representational works such as landscapes, portraits and nude drawings. At the end of her stay in the USA, around 1960, she turned to abstract painting, particularly action painting, color field painting and informal art. Later, cosmic forms and a turn to nature determined her works.
Elfriede Mejchar (Austrian, 1924-2020) Friedensreich Hundertwasser 1954-1961 From the series Künstler bei der Arbeit, 1954-1961 (Artists at work, 1954-1961) Silver gelatin print on baryta paper Federal Photography Collection at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Friedensreich Hundertwasser (Austrian, 1928-2000)
Friedensreich Hundertwasser Regentag Dunkelbunt (born Friedrich Stowasser, born December 15, 1928 in Vienna; died February 19, 2000 on board the Queen Elizabeth 2 off Brisbane) was an Austrian artist, who worked primarily as a painter, but also in the fields of architecture and environmental protection. …
Artistically, he was an opponent of the “straight line” and any kind of standardisation throughout his life. This is particularly evident in his work in the field of building design, which is characterised by imaginative liveliness and individuality, but above all by the inclusion of nature in architecture.
Elfriede Mejchar (Austrian, 1924-2020) Aglaia Konrad 1988 From the series Porträts von Künstler-Photographen und Kunstvermittlern (Portraits of Artist Photographers and Art Educators) Silver gelatin print on baryta paper Federal Photography Collection at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Aglaia Konrad (Austrian, b. 1960)
Aglaia Konrad (born 1960) is an Austrian photographer and educator living in Brussels. …
Konrad’s photographs explore urban space in large cities. Konrad’s work has been to known to be distinctly international in that it highlights urban elements independent of cultural markers. Her work highlights the ubiquitous elements of urban life through methods like filming a city from the perspective of a moving car or compiling a series of aerial views of skyscrapers.
Elfriede Mejchar (Austrian, 1924-2020) Prof. Dr. Otto Breicha 1988 From the series Porträts von Künstler-Photographen und Kunstvermittlern (Portraits of Artist Photographers and Art Educators) Silver gelatin print on baryta paper Federal Photography Collection at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Otto Breicha (Austrian, 1932-2003)
Otto Breicha (b. 26 July 1932 in Vienna; d, 28 December 2003 in Vienna) was an Austrian art historian, publicist and museum director. …
Breicha is considered an important integration figure in the Austrian art and literature scene of the 1960s. As director of the Rupertinum he collected works by Kurt Moldovan, Günter Brus, Fritz Wotruba and Gotthard Muhr, among others. He edited portfolios by Karl Anton Fleck, Gotthard Muhr, Peter Pongratz, Alois Riedl, Karl Rössing, Johannes Wanke, Max Weiler and many others.
Breicha built up an important photo collection in the Rupertinum. He also took photos of authors himself, especially during his time at the Austrian Society for Literature from 1962 to 1972.
Created between 1967 and 1976, the photographic series “Simmeringer Heide und Erdberger Mais” (Simmeringer Heide and Erdberger Mais) is Mejchar’s first long-term cycle, for which she takes hundreds of pictures over the years. The series uses the photographic medium to explore the Viennese periphery. Simmeringer Heide and Erdberger Mais are areas on the southeastern outskirts of Vienna that were altered by humans and gradually taken over by commercial operations which transformed them into an industrial landscape. Mekchav first discovers them at a time when unused parcels of land (locally known as “Gstatten”), derelict market gardens, and scattered industrial structures are still defining features of the scenery. What sets the series apart is the choice of subject and the matter-of-fact manner in which the photographer treats it, compiling a kind of anecdotal inventory. The shots demonstrate that Mejchar’s objective in their art – as in the documentary photography that is her day-to-day work – is to render exactly what the objective and precise eye of a topographer sees. In framing an area in the urban periphery as a landscape, she trains this eye and her lens on a subject that has been largely absent from Austrian photography.
Elfriede Mejchar (Austrian, 1924-2020) From the series Hotel (Fremdenzimmer), 1970-1986 (Hotel (Guest Room), 1970-1986) Silver gelatin print on baryta paper, brown tones Federal Photography Collection at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Elfriede Mejchar (Austrian, 1924-2020) From the series Die Monatssesseln, 1986-1988 (The Armchairs of the Month, 1986-1988) Federal Photography Collection at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Elfriede Mejchar (Austrian, 1924-2020) From the series Die Monatssesseln, 1986-1988 (The Armchairs of the Month, 1986-1988) Federal Photography Collection at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Elfriede Mejchar (Austrian, 1924-2020) From the series Oscillation (Salzburger Landesatelier) (Oscillation (Salzburg State Studio)) 1988 Silver gelatin print on baryta paper Federal Photography Collection at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Elfriede Mejchar (1924-2020 Vienna, AT), the grande dame of Austrian photography, was in the employ of the Federal Monuments Office for almost forty years. Meanwhile, she also began her groundbreaking work on the outskirts of Vienna. Harnessing the photographic series as a documentary and investigative medium, she limned an imposing portrait of the urban landscape. Her work, which had a lasting influence on the evolution of photography in Austria, now also stands as an important documentary record of the country in the postwar period.
As a professional photographer, Mejchar traveled to various regions throughout Austria, including in Lower and Upper Austria and Styria, to capture buildings and cultural assets of art-historical significance in photographs. Yet she also used her official trips and her scant free time to pursue her own photographic interests, which focused on the small and seemingly trivial and the traces of civilisation that humans leave in nature or along the edges of the urban fabric and that receive little if any attention. It may seem that the documentary dimension is less important in the resulting works, that it is eclipsed by the narrative element. In fact, Mejchar fuses both, scrutinising her motifs with an attentive eye that picks up on the singular or peculiar and registers it without manipulation.
Elfriede Mejchar was not interested in the so-called “pivotal moment” and did not care for the conventional photojournalistic style of her time. Her work began when people had left, and she approached her themes from a very conceptual angle. Both the documentary series she created under the open sky and the object photographs, still lifes, and collages she made in her studio reflect this approach. She photographed the “evanescent before it evanesces”, in urban and rural landscapes and everyday scenes, capturing the changes that affected the particular scenery and its distinctive atmosphere.
The Creative Element in Documentation
Produced between 1967 and 1976, the photographic series “Simmeringer Heide and Erdberger Mais” is Mejchar’s first long-term cycle, for which she takes hundreds of pictures over the years. The series uses the photographic medium to explore the Viennese periphery. Simmeringer Heide and Erdberger Mais are areas on the southeastern outskirts of Vienna that were altered by humans and gradually taken over by commercial operations which transformed them into an industrial landscape. Mejchar first discovers them at a time when unused parcels of land (locally known as “Gstätten”), derelict market gardens, and scattered industrial structures are still defining features of the scenery. What sets the series apart is the choice of subject and the matter-of-factly manner in which the photographer treats it, compiling a kind of anecdotal inventory – empty lots, paths and roads, utility poles and a select few close-ups. The shots demonstrate that Mejchar’s objective in her art – as in the documentary photography that is her day-to-day work – is to render exactly what the objective and precise eye of a topographer sees. In framing an area in the urban periphery as a landscape, she trains this eye and her lens on a subject that has been largely absent from Austrian photography.
The use of a sulfur-based solution to tone the photographs – which is the cause of the brownish tinge – reflects a recurring concern in Mejchar’s photographs: existence in time and impermanence. In this instance, the technique’s purpose is not to alter the colour, but rather to make it more durable.
Portraiture plays a role early on in Elfriede Mejchar’s work; she receives her professional training in a portrait studio. She subsequently makes a conscious choice to avoid the genre, but then, in the 1950s, returns to it.
“Künstler bei der Arbeit”, 1954-1961 (Artists at Work)
The series “Künstler bei der Arbeit” (Artists at Work) is her first major cycle of portraits, comprising over 340 gelatin silver prints. Mejchar is often brought in to capture exhibitions in installation shots, especially at the Vienna Secession, where she is introduced to many young artists waiting to make a name for themselves as well as some of their older colleagues who have been active since before 1945. The incomprehension with which the visitors gaze at abstract art that does not represent anything with any accuracy prompts the young photographer to record the intensity and seriousness with which the artists dedicate themselves to their craft, often braving considerable hardship. The series accordingly focuses on visualising the real studio and workplace settings of thirty-six artists, including Christa Hauer, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Josef Mikl, and Arnulf Rainer.
“Porträts von Künstler-Photographen und Kunstvermittlern”, 1988-1994 (Portraits of Artist Photographers and Art Educators)
In the body of work “Porträts von Künstler-Photographen und Kunstvermittlern” (Portraits of Artist Photographers and Art Educators), by contrast, Mejchar undertakes to depict everyone involved in fine art photography in Austria in the late twentieth century. Over the years, the series grows to comprise eighty double portraits, each composed, in accordance with a rigorous conception, of an en face portrait side by with a three-quarter view. The works have a distinctly staged quality, underscored by the unvarying austere setting and the emphasis on the hands, among other aspects. In this respect they recall Mejchar’s final examination, in which she had to realise a portrait both in profile and en face to demonstrate her command of photographic lighting designing and the handling of human sitters.
With these two projects, Mejchar becomes an important chronicler of the Austrian arts scene.
As part of her work for the Federal Monuments Office, Elfriede Mejchar has to travel a great deal, mainly to more rural areas. The photographic series “Hotel (Fremdenzimmer)” (Hotel (Guest Room)) is a kind of lasting documentary record of these trips and perhaps the most significant one. Bed, table, chair, mirror, wardrobe, patterned wallpaper, and sometimes a washbasin: for over fifteen years, the photographer captures her rooms with their often spartan furnishings in the numerous modest hotels and inns that – though it may not look like it at first glance – provide her with accommodation. Here and there one does espy a toothbrush, a pair of shoes, a ruffled bedcover, all traces that reveal the ostensibly absent photographer’s presence. A certain melancholy suffuses these shots of hotel rooms as witnesses to a world that has all but disappeared
“Die Monatssesseln”, 1986-1988 (The Armchairs of the Month)
The same melancholy is also unmistakable in the photographs of objects that have outlived their usefulness and been discarded and, it seems, forgotten. In the series “Die Monatssesseln” (The Armchairs of the Month) Mejchar portrays found motifs such as discarded seating furniture. The series shows a wide variety of such items, from kitchen chairs to living-room armchairs and even car seats, that have become part of the natural or other scene where they were dumped. No less diverse than the pieces of furniture and their environments are the feelings they elicit; as Mejchar puts it, “a mess can be beautiful in its own way.”
“Oszillation (Salzburger Landesatelier)”, 1988
The dreariness of the hotel rooms contrasts with the sober-mindedness and lucidity of the photographs in “Oszillation (Salzburger Landesatelier)” (Oscillation (Salzburger Landesatelier)). Yet although the two series are very different on the surface, both are sustained by a minimalism that is operative on the level of the motifs, in the austere interiors, as well as in Mejchar’s precisely chosen camera angles. These photographs capture the rooms of the State of Salzburg’s studio residence for visiting artists, located, like the Salzburger Kunstverein, in the historic Künstlerhaus. Mejchar herself lives there for a while in 1988, a change of working environment that is reflected in her output from the period.
Nobody Is Perfect
In the late 1980s, Elfriede Mejchar branches out in a fresh creative direction. She has been retired for some years and feels free to take on new challenges. Setting aside the flaneur-like practice underlying her earlier bodies of work, she starts photographing in the studio.
Tapetenbild. Triptychon, 1988 (Wallcover Picture. Tryptic) “Eine Kostümierung der geliehenen Identität”, 1989 (A Costume for the borrowed Identity) “Tagebuch Jänner 1988”, 1988 (Diary January 1988) “Nobody Is Perfect”, 1996
Faces change shapes, snakes coil around heads, open and closed eyes alternate. For the collages in “Tagebücher Jänner 1988,” Mejchar reuses her own photographs; in other series, by contrast, she works with found images such as shots of female models from print advertisements or fuses figural representations with fabric and wallpaper patterns. The works are rapidly composed out of visual fragments that she often only loosely places side by side or in overlapping arrangements, dispelling their aura of perfection. “I build pictures for myself on the wall, from materials that are at hand in the public sphere, that are on public display, but I strip away the ideal of flawless beauty that is constantly rubbed in our faces by dismembering it or covering it up.” It is the temporary and easily mutable that fascinates Mejchar, qualities that had had no place in her professional work.
“Amaryllis”, 1994-1997
Pictures of flowers in fine art, whether painted or photographed, inevitably have a clichéd dimension. Mejchar photographs only a special selection of flowers such as amaryllises, lilies, and tulips that she grows in her own garden. In the studio, rather than recording the flowers with a romantic gesture, she captures their gradual transformations – full blossoms, some full of delicate life, some already wilting and recognisably perishable. Showing them between florescence and decay, in a kind of liminal instant, she revisits a theme that surfaces throughout her oeuvre: the capturing of a state of affairs at a defined point in time.
Elfriede Mejchar: biographical note 1924-2020 Vienna, AT
Elfriede Mejchar is raised in Lower Austria. In 1939, she moves to Germany, where, from 1941 until 1944, she trains as a photographer with Ernst Ley in his small photography studio in Nordenham, completing her education with the official apprenticeship examination.
In light of the political developments, the young photographer and her mother to return to Vienna in 1944. She gets her first job when the Federal Monuments Office (BDA) hires her to document historic architecture with a view to potential bomb damage. She witnesses the turbulent final weeks of the war in Austria, then returns to northern Germany, before settling in Vienna in 1947. From then until her retirement in 1984, Mejchar works as a photographer for the Federal Monuments Office on a steady contract. She buys her first own camera in 1953, and in 1960 she earns a master’s certificate in photography as an external student at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt Wien. Busy with her daytime work for the BDA, she also starts pursuing her own photographic interests in the 1960s, although she does not publicly exhibit her output until 1976, when the Museum of the Twentieth Century in Vienna mounts the fifty-two-year-old photographer’s first solo exhibition. After retiring in 1984, she dedicates herself entirely to freelance and fine art photography.
Elfriede Mejchar does not win the public recognition she merits until old age; in 2002, she is awarded the Honorary Prize for Photography of the Federal Chancellor’s Office, followed in 2004 by the Honorary Prize for Fine Art Photography of the State of Lower Austria and the Prize of the City of Vienna for Fine Art.
Installation view of the exhibition The Poetry of the Everyday. Photographs by Elfriede Mejchar, Museum der Moderne Salzburg 2024 showing photographs of Mejchar’s flower series
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