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Mar

Exhibition: ‘Quicksilver Brilliance: Adolf de Meyer Photographs’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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Tags: A Mexican, Adolf de Meyer, Adolf de Meyer Amida Buddah, Adolf de Meyer Dance Study, Adolf de Meyer Dolores, Adolf de Meyer Etienne de Beaumont, Adolf de Meyer Josephine Baker, Adolf de Meyer Lady Ottoline Morrell, Adolf de Meyer Le Prelude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune, Adolf de Meyer Nijinsky, Adolf de Meyer Nude Models Posing for a Painting Class, Adolf de Meyer Olga de Meyer, Adolf de Meyer Photographing Olga in a Garden, Adolf de Meyer Photographs, Adolf de Meyer Portrait of Josephine Baker, Adolf de Meyer Portrait of the Marchesa Casati, Adolf de Meyer Rita de Acosta Lydig, Adolf de Meyer Self-Portrait in India, Adolf de Meyer Study for Vogue, Adolf de Meyer Tamara Karsavina, Adolf de Meyer The Cup, Adolf de Meyer The Shadows on the Wall, Adolf de Meyer The Silver Cap, Adolf de Meyer Ueno Tōshō-gū, Adolf de Meyer View Through the Window of a Garden, Adolf de Meyer Water Lilies, Aesthetic movement, Alfred Stieglitz, Alfred Stieglitz Camera Work, alvin langdon coburn, American fashion photography, American Jazz, american photographer, American photography, American pictorialism, Amida Buddah, Autochrome, autochrome process, Ballets Russes, Baron Adolf De Meyer, Baron Adolph de Meyer (Leaning Against Tree), Charles H. Caffin, choreography, choreography of dance, Collotypes, Count Étienne de Beaumont, dance, dance photography, Dance Study, danse sauvage, Debussy of the Camera, Donna Olga Caraciollo, Dragon Volant, Etienne de Beaumont, F. Holland Day, fashion photographs, fin-de-siècle Europe, Gertrude Käsebier, Gertrude Käsebier Baron Adolf de Meyer, Gertrude Käsebier Baron Adolph de Meyer (Leaning Against Tree), Giovanni Boldini, gum bichromate print, Harper's Bazaar, James McNeill Whistler, Japanese aesthetics, John Singer Sargent, Josephine Baker, L'Après-midi d'un faune, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Le Prelude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune, Linked Ring Brotherhood, Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, Maurice Maeterlinck, Maurice Maeterlinck The Intelligence of Flowers, movement and choreography of dance, New School of American Photography, Nijinsky, Nijinsky L'Après-midi d'un faune, Nude Models Posing for a Painting Class, Olga de Meyer, Orientalist fictions, Photo-Secession, pictorialism, Pictorialist photographer, Portrait of Josephine Baker, Portrait of the Marchesa Casati, Pre-Raphaelite design, Quicksilver Brilliance, Quicksilver Brilliance: Adolf de Meyer Photographs, Revue Nègre, Rita de Acosta Lydig, Sarah Choate Sears, Sarah Choate Sears A Mexican, Self-Portrait in India, Study for Vogue, Tamara Karsavina, The Cup, The Intelligence of Flowers, The Shadows on the Wall, The Silver Cap, Ueno Tōshō-gū Tokyo, View Through the Window of a Garden, vitality of plant life, Water Lilies

Exhibition dates: 4th December 2017 – 18th March 2018

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Water Lilies
c. 1906, printed 1912
Platinum print
26.1 x 35.2cm (10 1/4 x 13 7/8 in.)
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933

The critic Charles H. Caffin described this photograph by de Meyer as “a veritable dream of loveliness.” It is one of several floral still life de Meyer made in London around 1906-9, when he was in close contact with Alvin Langdon Coburn, a fellow photographer and member of the Linked Ring. Both men were inspired by the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1906 book The Intelligence of Flowers, a mystical musing on the vitality of plant life. De Meyer exhibited several of his flower studies, including this platinum print, at Stieglitz’s influential Photo-Secession galleries in New York in 1909. The image also appeared as a photogravure in an issue of Stieglitz’s art and photography journal Camera Work.

While the “facts of Baron Adolf de Meyer’s early life have been obscured by contradictory accounts from various sources (including himself); he was born in Paris or Germany, spent his childhood in both France and Germany, and entered the international photographic community in 1894-1895,” by circa 1897-1900 he had assumed the title of “Baron.”

“In editions dating from 1898 until 1913, Whitaker’s Peerage stated that de Meyer’s title had been granted in 1897 by Frederick Augustus III of Saxony, though another source states “the photographer inherited it from his grandfather in the 1890s”. Some sources state that no evidence of this nobiliary creation, however, has been found.” (Wikipedia) He then married Donna Olga Caracciolo in 1899, “reputedly the illegitimate daughter of the British king Edward VII, who enjoyed a privileged position within the fashionable international set surrounding the monarch.” The marriage was one of convenience, since he was homosexual and she was bisexual or lesbian, but it was based on a perfect understanding and companionship between two people. As de Meyer observed in an unpublished biography, “Marriage based too much on love and unrestrained passion has rarely a chance to be lasting, whilst perfect understanding and companionship, on the contrary, generally make the most durable union.”

Meyer “gained recognition as a leading figure of Pictorialism and a member of the photographic society known as the Linked Ring Brotherhood in London. Alfred Stieglitz exhibited de Meyer’s work in his Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession and published his images as photogravures in his influential journal Camera Work.” In the early 20th century, he was famed for his photographic portraits and was the preeminent fashion photographer of the day; he was also the first official fashion photographer for the American magazine Vogue, appointed to that position in 1913-1914 until 1921. In 1922 de Meyer accepted an offer to become the Harper’s Bazaar chief photographer in Paris, spending the next 16 years there until he was forced out, his romantic style out of fashion with the modernist taste of the day.

I state these facts only to illustrate the idea that here was a “gay” of dubious lineage (reportedly born in Paris and educated in Dresden, Adolphus Meyer was the son of a German Jewish father and Scottish mother) who rose to associate with and photograph the upper echelons of society. He made it, and he made it good. His photographs of the well to do, film stars and fashion models are undoubtedly beautiful and his control of light magnificent, but they seem to me to be, well… constructed confections. His photographs of the elite and the fashion that they wore possess an ethereal beauty, de Meyer’s shimmering control of light adding to the photographs sense of enacted fantasy played out in the form of timeless classical elegance.

But there is that lingering doubt that these photographs were both his job and his entré (along with the connections and money of his wife) into high society. Look, for example, at the self-portrait of de Meyer in this posting. In the 1900 self-portrait in India when he was 32 and on his honeymoon, we see a coiffed, almost androgynous man who in his pose is as stiff as a board – his body contorted in the strangest way, the right hand gripping the arm of the cane chair, the left splayed and braced, ramrod straight against the seat and the feet crossed in the most unnatural manner. No matter the beautiful light and attractive setting, this is the image that this man wants to portray to the world, this is a man who thinks he has arrived. It is an affectation. And in the portrait of the aristocrat and patron of the avant-garde, Count Etienne de Beaumont (c. 1923, below), this is how he sees himself, as part of that elite. Because in the end, he was. But there is little feeling to any of his portrait work: style, surface, light, form and “the look” reign supreme. Only when he is so overwhelmed by stardust, such as in the brilliant photographs of Josephine Baker and her scintillating personality, does the mask of affection drop away.

Of more interest to me are his early photographs of Japan where you feel he has some personal investment in the work. The “tactile elegance of his early work” was influenced by “Japanese aesthetics, as well as the influence of the painter James McNeill Whistler, a key figure of the Aesthetic movement.” The photograph View Through the Window of a Garden, Japan (1900, below) is an absolute cracker, as are the Japanese influenced Water Lilies (c. 1906, below) and The Shadows on the Wall (Chrysanthemums) (1906, below). In her January 17, 2018 review of the exhibition “Quicksilver Brilliance: Adolf de Meyer Photographs @Met” on the Collector Daily website, Loring Knoblauch states, “While De Meyer’s scenes from Japan, his travel photos of his wife Olga at the Acropolis and in St. Moritz, and his experiments with autochromes in the early 1900s are also included in this eclectic sampler, these rarities aren’t particularly compelling or noteworthy, aside from their supporting role in filling out a broader picture of the artist and his life.” Aren’t particularly compelling! I beg to differ.

I don’t know how people look at photographs and interpret them so differently to how I see them. Perhaps I just feel the music, I see these photographs as if I were taking them, as a personal investment in their previsualisation. While I get very little from de Meyer’s fashion photographs I get a whole lot of pleasure and delight from his transcendent earlier work. I most certainly feel their energy. You only have to look at the reflection of the water lilies. Need I say more.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

A member of the “international set” in fin-de-siècle Europe, Baron Adolf de Meyer (1868-1946) was also a pioneering photographer, known for creating works that transformed reality into a beautiful fantasy. Quicksilver Brilliance will be the first museum exhibition devoted to the artist in more than 20 years and the first ever at The Met. Some 40 works, drawn entirely from The Met collection, will demonstrate the impressive breadth of his career.

The exhibition will include dazzling portraits of well-known figures of his time: the American socialite Rita de Acosta Lydig; art patron and designer Count Étienne de Beaumont; aristocrat and society hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell; and celebrated entertainer Josephine Baker, among others. A highlight of the presentation will be an exceptional book – one of only seven known copies – documenting Nijinsky’s scandalous 1912 ballet L’Après-midi d’un faune. This rare album represents de Meyer’s great success in capturing the movement and choreography of dance, a breakthrough in the history of photography. Also on view will be the artist’s early snapshots made in Japan, experiments with colour processes, and inventive fashion photographs.

13 platinum prints, 1900, 1906, 1907, 1912, 1917
2 photogravures, 1908, 1912
2 carbon prints, 1900, 1925-1926
1 autochrome in lightbox (facsimile), 1908
4 gelatin silver prints, 1912, 1923, 1925, 1928
1 set of 9 gelatin silver prints (framed together), 1890s-1910
1 trichrome carbro print, 1929
6 collotypes, 1914 (with full collotype book showing 1 image in nearby vitrine, 1914)
4 magazine spreads (in bound volumes of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, 1913, 1919, 1927, in vitrine)

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
(Nude Models Posing for a Painting Class)
1890s
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Lunn Gallery, 1980

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
(Adolf de Meyer Photographing Olga in a Garden)
1890s
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Lunn Gallery, 1980

Like many Pictorialist photographers, de Meyer became interested in the camera through collecting and making snapshots of family and close friends. Olga de Meyer (née Caracciolo) was his companion and muse until her death in 1931. Rumoured to be the illegitimate daughter of the British king Edward VII, she enjoyed a privileged position within the fashionable international set surrounding the monarch. De Meyer made numerous portraits of Olga throughout their famously chic and eccentric life together (in 1916 the couple changed their names to Gayne and Mharah on the advice of an astrologer).

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
(Self-Portrait in India)
1900
Platinum print
14.8 x 19.8cm (5 13/16 x 7 13/16 in.)
Gift of Isaac Lagnado, 1995

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
(Self-Portrait in India) (detail)
1900
Platinum print
14.8 x 19.8cm (5 13/16 x 7 13/16 in.)
Gift of Isaac Lagnado, 1995

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
(Amida Buddah, Japan)
1900
Platinum print
19.2 x 14.3cm (7 9/16 x 5 5/8 in.)
Purchase, Mrs. Jackson Burke Gift, 1981

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Ueno Tōshō-gū, Tokyo, Japan
1900
Platinum print
14.5 x 19.8cm (5 11/16 x 7 13/16 in.)
Purchase, Mrs. Jackson Burke Gift, 1981

Adolf de Meyer (American (born France), Paris 1868-1946 Los Angeles, California)
Olga de Meyer, Japan
1900
Platinum print
19.3 x 15.1cm (7 5/8 x 5 15/16 in.)
Purchase, Mrs. Jackson Burke Gift, 1981

Framed by the gridded panels of a sliding screen door, Olga de Meyer pauses from her reading to look languidly at the camera. De Meyer made this affectionate photograph of his new wife while on their honeymoon to Japan. The composition suggests his interest in Japanese aesthetics, as well as the influence of the painter James McNeill Whistler, a key figure of the Aesthetic movement. In its rebellion against Victorian morals, the movement sought inspiration from outside the European tradition. De Meyer’s travels in Japan – as well as China, Ceylon, India, North Africa, Turkey, and Spain – nourished Orientalist fictions, and gave rise to the subjects and compositions of many of his photographs.

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
(View Through the Window of a Garden, Japan)
1900
Platinum print
13.8 x 20.3cm (5 7/16 x 8 in.)
Purchase, Mrs. Jackson Burke Gift, 1981

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
The Shadows on the Wall (Chrysanthemums)
1906
Platinum print
34.7 x 26.7cm (13 11/16 x 10 1/2 in.)
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933

Focusing his camera not on a still life per se, but on its evanescent trace, de Meyer creates a composition that approaches abstraction. He later applied a similar handling of light and shadow to enhance the drama of his fashion photographs. Here, the shadow of a vase of flowers cast onto the wall has the effect of a Japanese lacquered screen.

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
The Silver Cap
c. 1909, printed 1912
Gelatin silver print
45.7 x 27.6cm (18 x 10 7/8 in.)
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933

Born in Paris, Baron Adolf de Meyer settled in London in 1896. With his wife, Donna Olga Caraciollo, he joined the elegant set surrounding the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, Olga’s godfather. They entertained lavishly, including concerts and small fancy-dress balls, which gave de Meyer a chance to devise marvellous costumes for Olga. Likely inspired by the de Meyers’ involvement with the Ballets Russes and time spent at their villa on the Bosporus, this dress features Ottoman elements such as the full skirt and decorative trimmings yet conforms to the Western fitted waistline – a fine example of the 1910s fashion trend of exoticism.

A member of the “international set” in fin-de-siècle Europe, Baron Adolf de Meyer (1868-1946) was also a pioneering art, portrait, and fashion photographer, known for creating images that transformed reality into a beautiful fantasy. The “quicksilver brilliance” that characterised de Meyer’s art led fellow photographer Cecil Beaton to dub him the “Debussy of the Camera.” Opening December 4 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Quicksilver Brilliance: Adolf de Meyer Photographs will be the first museum exhibition devoted to the artist in more than 20 years and the first ever at The Met. Some 40 works, drawn entirely from The Met collection, will reveal the impressive breadth of his career.

The exhibition will include dazzling portraits of well-known figures of his time: the American socialite Rita de Acosta Lydig; art patron and designer Count Étienne de Beaumont; aristocrat and society hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell; and celebrated entertainer Josephine Baker, among others. A highlight of the presentation will be an exceptional book – one of only seven known copies – documenting Nijinsky’s scandalous 1912 ballet L’Après-Midi d’un Faune. This rare album represents de Meyer’s great success in capturing the choreography of dance, a breakthrough in the history of photography. Also on view will be the artist’s early snapshots made in Japan, experiments with colour processes, and inventive fashion photographs.

Born in Paris and educated in Germany, de Meyer was of obscure aristocratic German-Jewish and Scottish ancestry. He and his wife, Olga Caracciolo, goddaughter of Edward VII, were at the centre of London’s café society.

After starting in photography as an amateur, de Meyer gained recognition as a leading figure of Pictorialism and a member of the photographic society known as the Linked Ring Brotherhood in London. Alfred Stieglitz exhibited de Meyer’s work in his Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession and published his images as photogravures in his influential journal Camera Work. At the outbreak of World War I, de Meyer settled in the United States and applied his distinctive pictorial style to fashion imagery, helping to define the genre during the interwar period.

The exhibition was organised by Beth Saunders, Assistant Curator in The Met’s Department of Photographs.

Press release from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Tamara Karsavina
c. 1908
Autochrome
9 x 11.9cm (3.5 x 4.6 in.)
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Harriette and Noel Levine Gift, 2005

De Meyer enthusiastically embraced the autochrome process at its inception in 1907, writing to Stieglitz the following year that his work in black and white no longer satisfied him. An ardent admirer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, de Meyer created this image of Tamara Karasavina (1885-1978), a leading dancer and partner to Nijinksy, during one of the company’s visits to England. The photographer chose a background of bellflowers and arranged a brocaded shawl to enhance the exotic elegance of the dancer.

The autochrome, which retains in its minuscule prisms the particular luminosity of a misty English day in summer, was thought to represent the Marchioness of Ripon in her garden at Coombe, Surrey. An early patron of de Meyer, Lady Ripon was also a staunch supporter of Diaghilev, bringing the Ballets Russes to London in 1911. She frequently entertained Karasavina and Nijinsky at Coombe, where they danced for Alexandra, the queen consort, and de Meyer dedicated to her his album documenting Nijinsky’s production of L’Après-midi d’un faune. A companion image to this autochrome is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
(Lady Ottoline Morrell)
c. 1912
Platinum print
23.5 x 17.4cm (9 1/4 x 6 7/8 in.)
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Harriette and Noel Levine Gift, 2005

Adolph de Meyer’s portrait of Lady Ottoline Morrell, eccentric hostess to Bloomsbury, is a stunning summation of the character of this aristocratic lady who aspired to live “on the same plane as poetry and as music.” Rebelling against the narrow values of her class, Lady Ottoline Cavendish Bentinck (1873-1938) married Philip Morrell, a lawyer and liberal Member of Parliament, and surrounded herself in London and on their estate at Garsington with a large circle of friends, including Bertrand Russell, W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, and E. M. Forster. Tall, wearing fantastic, scented, vaguely Elizabethan clothes, Lady Ottoline made an unforgettable impression. With her dyed red hair, patrician nose, and jutting jaw, she could look, according to Lord David Cecil, at one and the same moment beautiful and grotesque. Henry James saw her as “some gorgeous heraldic creature – a Gryphon perhaps or a Dragon Volant.”

De Meyer made several portraits of Lady Ottoline. None went as far as this one in conjuring up the sitter’s flamboyant persona, capturing, through dramatic lighting and Pre-Raphaelite design, her untamed, baroque quality. “Her long, pale face, that she carried lifted up, somewhat in the Rossetti fashion, seemed almost drugged, as if a strange mass of thoughts coiled in the darkness within her.” D. H. Lawrence’s inspired description of the character based on Lady Ottoline in “Women in Love” finds a vivid counterpart in the photographer’s art.

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
The Cup
c. 1910
Gum bichromate print

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Olga de Meyer
c. 1912
Platinum print
22.4 x 16.4cm (8 13/16 x 6 7/16 in.)
Gift of Paul F. Walter, 2009

Renowned for her beauty and style, de Meyer’s spouse was, in a sense, his first fashion model. Here, dramatic backlighting emphasises her sinuous form, enshrouded in shimmering fabric and fur. Her gaze conveys a haughty bemusement that elevates the tableau from costume play to regal sophistication.

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
(Dance Study)
c. 1912
Platinum print
32.7 x 43.5cm (12 7/8 x 17 1/8 in.)
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933

De Meyer photographed the dancer Nijinsky and other members of Diaghilev’s troupe when “L’Après-midi d’un Faun” was presented in Paris in 1912. It has been suggested that this photograph, the only nude by de Meyer, has some connection to the Russian ballet, but if so, it remains mysterious. It has been suggested that this photograph, the only nude by de Meyer, has some connection to the Ballets Russes, but the nature of that link remains mysterious. The image vibrates with an uneasy erotic tension, a product of the figure’s exposed torso, startled body language, and disguised identity.

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Le Prelude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune
1914
Collotypes
Album: 15 1/4 x 11 5/8 inches
Gilman Collection, Museum Purchase, 2005

In 1912 de Meyer made a remarkable series of photographs related to the Ballets Russes production L’après-midi d’un faune (Afternoon of a Faun). The avant-garde dance was choreographed by famed Russian performer Vaslav Nijinsky, set to a score by Claude Debussy, and inspired by a poem by Symbolist writer Stéphane Mallarmé. It follows a young faun distracted from his flute-playing by bathing nymphs who seduce and taunt him, leaving behind a scarf with which he allays his desire. When the ballet premiered in Paris on May 29, 1912, the overtly sexual climactic scene and unconventional choreography scandalised audiences. Nijinsky based the angular movements and frieze-like staging on Greek vase paintings, but Ballets Russes founder Sergei Diaghilev also likened them to Cubism.

Thirty of de Meyer’s photographs of the ballet were published as collotypes (photomechanical ink prints) in a 1914 edition of one thousand luxurious handcrafted books. Only seven copies are known today. Using alternately complex and fragmentary compositions, de Meyer’s images generate a rhythm of gesture and form. The thin Japanese papers offer a tactile echo of the diaphanous costumes (designed by artist Léon Bakst), and the heavily manipulated negatives enshroud the angular figures in a dreamlike haze. An object of desire, the book itself embodies the spirit of Nijinsky’s ballet.

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Nijinsky [Plate from Le Prelude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune]
1912

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Nijinsky (Plate from Le Prelude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune)
1914

Adolf de Meyer (American (born France), Paris 1868-1946 Los Angeles, California)
(Image from Prelude à l’Après-Midi d’un faune)
1914
Platinum print
4 3/16 × 7 1/16 in. (10.6 × 17.9cm)
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Mrs. Walter Annenberg and The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 2005

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Rita de Acosta Lydig
1917
Platinum print
41.5 x 30.9cm (16 5/16 x 12 3/16 in.)
Gift of Mercedes de Acosta, 1952

De Meyer’s portrait of the socialite, art patron, “shoe queen,” and suffragette Rita de Acosta Lydig is striking in its simplicity of tone and contour. The image, which appeared in Vogue in 1917, resonates with the classical elegance epitomised in the paintings of society portraitists John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini, who also depicted this so-called alabaster lady.

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Portrait of the Marchesa Casati
1912
Plate from Camera Work No. XL August 1912

Luisa, Marchesa Casati Stampa di Soncino (23 January 1881 – 1 June 1957), also known as Luisa Casati, was an Italian heiress, muse, and patroness of the arts in early 20th-century Europe. …

A celebrity, the Marchesa was famed for eccentricities that dominated and delighted European society for nearly three decades. The beautiful and extravagant hostess to the Ballets Russes was something of a legend among her contemporaries. She astonished society by parading with a pair of leashed cheetahs and wearing live snakes as jewellery.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Study for Vogue (Jan 1 – 1918, Betty Lee, Vogue, page 41)
1918-1921
Gelatin silver print

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Dolores
1921
Gelatin silver print

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Etienne de Beaumont (Count Etienne de Beaumont (French, 1883-1956))
c. 1923
Gelatin silver print
23.7 x 18.6cm (9 5/16 x 7 5/16 in.)
Gift of Paul F. Walter, 2009

An aristocrat and patron of the avant-garde, Count Etienne de Beaumont (French, 1883-1956) cuts a dashing figure here, posed in one of the grand salons of his hôtel (grand townhouse) in Paris’s rue Masseran. The count hosted a series of legendary masquerade balls at his residence during the interwar period, attended by avant-garde artists such as Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, and Man Ray. De Meyer described these parties, which he and Olga often attended, as “fêtes of unsurpassed magnificence” in a 1923 article for Harper’s Bazaar.

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Portrait of Josephine Baker
1925

Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California)
Josephine Baker
1925-26
Direct carbon print
45.2 x 29.5cm (17 13/16 x 11 5/8 in.)
Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987

The Saint Louis, Missouri-born Josephine Baker arrived in Paris in 1925 and quickly made a sensation as part of the all-black Revue Nègre, a musical entertainment that capitalised on the French craze for American Jazz. Famously donning a banana skirt for her danse sauvage, Baker crafted performances that astutely deployed the stereotypes white Europeans associated with blackness, recouping them as instruments of her own empowerment and success. Baker shines amid the glittering backdrop and soft focus of de Meyer’s photograph, creating an iconic image of stardom.

Gertrude Käsebier (American, 1852-1934)
Baron Adolf de Meyer
1903
Platinum print
13 3/8 x 10″ (34 x 25.5cm)
Museum of Modern Art, Gift of Miss Mina Turner

Taken in the same photo session as the photograph below.

Gertrude Käsebier (American, 1852-1934)
Baron Adolph de Meyer (Leaning Against Tree)
1903
Platinum photograph
8.5 x 6.5 in.

Sarah Choate Sears (American, 1858-1935)
A Mexican (Adolf de Meyer (American born France, Paris 1868 – 1946 Los Angeles, California))
1905
Platinum print
24.2 x 18.7cm (9 1/2 x 7 3/8 in.)
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933

With his brow arched beneath a tilted hat and hand elegantly grasping a stark white scarf, de Meyer dons a mysterious alter ego. Like de Meyer, Sears was involved with the two major groups devoted to art photography: the Photo-Secession and the Linked Ring Brotherhood. The two artists may have met through a mutual friend, the photographer F. Holland Day, who included their work in his exhibition “New School of American Photography,” on view in London in 1900 and Paris the following year. The title for this portrait follows a Photo-Secession tradition of withholding the sitter’s name when exhibiting publicly.

Sarah Choate Sears (1858-1935) was an American art collector, art patron, cultural entrepreneur, artist and photographer. …

About 1890 she began exploring photography, and soon she was participating in local salons. She joined the Boston Camera Club in 1892, and her beautiful portraits and still lifes attracted the attention of fellow Boston photographer F. Holland Day. Soon her work was gaining international attention. …

In 1899 she was given a one-woman show at the Boston Camera Club, and in 1900 she had several prints in Frances Benjamin Johnson’s famous exhibition in Paris. … In 1907, two of her photographs were published in Camera Work, but by that time she had lost much of her interest in photography.

Text from the Wikipedia website

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Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, designer, digital photography, exhibition, existence, fashion photography, gallery website, light, London, memory, New York, Paris, photographic series, photography, portrait, reality and works on paper
Tags: African-American supermodel, American fashion photography, american photographer, American photography, American portrait photography, American studio photography, Asaro Mud Men, Balenciaga, Balenciaga Mantle Coat, Balenciaga Sleeve (Régine Debrise), Black is Beautiful movement, Cigarette No. 52, Cigarette No. 85, Cigarette No. 98, Cucumber Seller, Cuzco, Cuzco Children, Cuzco Father and Son with Eggs, Dahomey Girls, Deli Package, Dior, family portraits, fashion photography, Fishmonger London, flower photography, indigenous people in Cuzco, Ingmar Bergman, Ingmar Bergman Stockholm, Irving Penn, Irving Penn Balenciaga Mantle Coat, Irving Penn Balenciaga Sleeve, Irving Penn Cigarette No. 52, Irving Penn Cigarette No. 85, Irving Penn Cigarette No. 98, Irving Penn Cucumber Seller, Irving Penn Cuzco Children, Irving Penn Cuzco Father and Son with Eggs, Irving Penn Deli Package, Irving Penn Fishmonger London, Irving Penn Ingmar Bergman, Irving Penn Kerchief Glove (Dior), Irving Penn Large Sleeve, Irving Penn Marchand de Concombres, Irving Penn Marchande de Ballons, Irving Penn Naomi Sims in Scarf, Irving Penn Nude No. 130, Irving Penn Nude No. 18, Irving Penn Nude No. 42, Irving Penn Nude No. 57, Irving Penn Nude No. 72, Irving Penn Pablo Picasso at La Californie, Irving Penn Rochas Mermaid Dress, Irving Penn Single Oriental Poppy, Irving Penn Three Asaro Mud Men, Irving Penn Three Dahomey Girls One Reclining, Irving Penn Tribesman with Nose Disc, Irving Penn Two Men in White Masks, Irving Penn Two Miyake Warriors, Irving Penn Ungaro Bride Body Sculpture, Irving Penn Window Washer, Irving Penn Woman with Roses, Irving Penn Young Quechuan Man, Irving Penn: Centennial, Kerchief Glove (Dior), Lafaurie, Large Sleeve, Large Sleeve (Sunny Harnett), Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in Lafaurie Dress, Marchand de Concombres, Marchande de Ballons, Marisa Berenson, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Naomi Sims, Naomi Sims in Scarf, New Guinea, New York, Nude No. 130, Nude No. 18, Nude No. 42, Nude No. 57, Nude No. 72, Pablo Picasso, Pablo Picasso at La Californie, Paris, Picasso, Platinum-palladium print, portrait photography, Quechuan Man, Rochas, Rochas Mermaid Dress, Single Oriental Poppy, still life, still life photography, studio photography, Sunny Harnett, supermodel, supermodels, The Model as Muse, The Queen of the Scene, Three Asaro Mud Men, Three Dahomey Girls One Reclining, Tribesman with Nose Disc, tribesmen in New Guinea, Two Men in White Masks, Two Miyake Warriors, Ungaro, Ungaro Bride Body Sculpture, Ungaro Bride Body Sculpture (Marisa Berenson), Window Washer, Woman with Roses, Young Quechuan Man

Exhibition dates: 24th April – 30th July 2017

Irving Penn. The high priest of high modernist photography.

I know a lot of people adore his photography but I am not an acolyte, quietly accepting his elevation to sainthood in the high temple of art museums.

I find Penn’s aesthetic aesthetic, his performing photography if you like, unappealing. To me his work is more about the photographer than it is about the subject. His photographs, in whatever style – portraiture, nude, still life – seem cold and lifeless. Like a dead fish. There is little pleasure to be gained from looking at his photographs or the people in them. I find little celebration of photography in his work, as in, this is what the camera does at its best, a dialogue between photographer and subject.

Penn was a commercial photographer who had aspirations of being an artist. As Mark L. Power observes, “One of the characteristics of the Penn style was the expressive silhouette or outline around the figure, a sculptural delineation of form, at once beautiful and austere, whether his subject was a still life, a fashion model or a portrait.” My god did he love silhouette and shadow, usually played off against a plain backdrop.

There is that key word, play. There is no sense of spontaneity in his photographs, no sense of fun, no sense of an understanding of the aura of the subject.

I think of the portraits of August Sander or Richard Avedon’s series In the American West (the latter using a plain backdrop), both with their depth of vision and feeling for the people they were photographing … and then I look at the Cuzco portraits of Penn. I get nothing back about the lives of these people in Penn’s photographs. I think of the distorted nudes of Bill Brandt with their sensuality and sublime angles … and then I look at the nudes of Penn. They just don’t stack up, they feel clumsy, trite. I look at his colour still life, and I imagine the colour work of Paul Outerbridge, the absolute intensity of feeling that I can recall from Outerbridge’s still life in my mind’s eye. No such feeling exists in Penn’s still life.

If you watch the video of Penn at work in Morocco in 1971 (below), everything is controlled to within an inch of its life. A tilt of the head here, a raise of the chin there. This is a commercial studio photographer at work. As I said earlier, the work is not a celebration of photography but about the control of the photographer through the pose of the subject. Jammed into a wedge of scenery the sitters perform for his camera – Schiaparelli, Capote, Charles James et al – flaccid characters, almost caricatures in their positioning. Other than variants such as the intense eye of Pablo Picasso, or the blindness of Ingmar Bergman, I don’t believe that Penn was ever, will ever be, a great portraitist. He has no feeling for his sitters.

Of course, there is “the relationship of content to form – a relationship that underpins all art” at which Penn excels, but he is no Atget, Evans or Eggleston, where we are constantly surprised at where the photographer places the camera, how they place the frame, how they “form the starting point of the image’s visual structure,” how we wonder at the results, how we day dream the narrative. As Victor Burgin observes, “… what the world ‘is’ depends extensively upon how it is described: in a culture where the expression ‘old bag’ is in circulation to describe an ageing woman that is precisely what she is in perpetual danger of ‘being’.”

In Penn’s work the photograph and its representation is never in any danger of “becoming”, it already is. Penn’s “old bag” never changes. By repeating the same trope over and over – the formalist aesthetic, the silhouette, the plain back drop, the controlled pose – his work never evolves, never moves with an illusive quality to a place that the viewer does not feel they already know. The world of murky imperfection, uncertainty and ephemeral juxtapositions to which our mortal senses have access is replaced by a world of perfection and light in which everything has its predestined place.

Perhaps I just long for the fundamental contradictions of life in art, antinomies, options for now and the future.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Irving Penn on Location in Morocco, 1971

This 8mm film footage, shot by Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in 1971, shows Irving Penn at work in his portable studio on location in Morocco. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition “Irving Penn: Centennial,” on view at The Met Fifth Avenue from April 24 through July 30, 2017.

Irving Penn Centennial

A preview of the exhibition Irving Penn Centennial April 24 – July 30, 2017 at The Met, featuring Jeff Rosenheim, Curator in Charge, Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Maria Morris Hambourg, Independent Curator and Former Curator in Charge, Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“As a way of beginning, one might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing. All of us, even the best-mannered of us, occasionally point, and it must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others. It is not difficult to imagine a person – a mute Virgil of the corporeal world – who might elevate the act of pointing to a creative plane, a person who would lead us through the fields and streets and indicate a sequence of phenomena and aspects that would be beautiful, humorous, morally instructive, cleverly ordered, mysterious, or astonishing, once brought to our attention, but that had been unseen before, or seen dumbly, without comprehension. This talented practitioner of the new discipline (the discipline a cross between theater and criticism) would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we would be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much of our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from a pattern created by the pointer.”

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John Szarkowski. “Atget, Pointing”

“The word classic is often used about Penn’s work; it entails a certain gravitas characterised by rigour almost to the point of aloofness, an awareness of beauty throughout many genres, a graphic elegance of line and contour that is uniquely his, and a relationship of his work to artists of the past, usually painters rather than photographers. Although it could be said his photography was an advertisement for a haut monde world, his work was sometimes a subtle and somewhat sly subversion of the values of that lifestyle.”

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Mark L. Power. “Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty,” at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC.

The most comprehensive retrospective to date of the work of the great American photographer Irving Penn (1917-2009), this exhibition will mark the centennial of the artist’s birth. Over the course of his nearly 70-year career, Penn mastered a pared-down aesthetic of studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to composition, nuance, and detail.

The exhibition follows the 2015 announcement of the landmark promised gift from The Irving Penn Foundation to The Met of more than 150 photographs by Penn, representing every period of the artist’s dynamic career with the camera. The gift will form the core of the exhibition, which will feature more than 200 photographs by Penn, including iconic fashion studies of Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, the artist’s wife; exquisite still lifes; Quechua children in Cuzco, Peru; portraits of urban labourers; female nudes; tribesmen in New Guinea; and colour flower studies. The artist’s beloved portraits of cultural figures from Truman Capote, Picasso, and Colette to Ingmar Bergman and Issey Miyake will also be featured. Rounding out the exhibition will be photographs by Penn that entered The Met collection prior to the promised gift.

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Young Quechuan Man, Cuzco
December 1948, printed 1949
Gelatin silver print
7 15/16 x 7 3/16 in. (20.1 x 18.2cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

In Cuzco, Penn photographed both residents and visitors who came to the city from nearby villages with goods to sell or barter at the Christmastime fiestas. Many arrived at the studio to sit for their annual family portraits. Penn later recalled that they “found me instead of him [the local photographer] waiting for them, and instead of paying me for the pictures it was I who paid them for posing.”

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Cuzco Children
December 1948, printed 1968
Platinum-palladium print
19 1/2 x 19 7/8 in. (49.5 x 50.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Two Men in White Masks, Cuzco
December 1948, printed 1984
Gelatin silver print
10 9/16 x 10 7/16 in. (26.8 x 26.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Cuzco Father and Son with Eggs
December 1948, printed January 1982
Platinum-palladium print
11 3/4 x 11 5/16 in. (29.8 x 28.7cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Nude No. 18
1949-1950, printed 1949-1950
Gelatin silver print
41 x 38.4cm (16 1/8 x 15 1/8 in.)
Gift of the artist, 2002
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Nude No. 42
1949-1950, printed 1949-1950
Gelatin silver print
39.1 x 37.5cm (15 3/8 x 14 3/4 in.)
Gift of the artist, 2002
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Nude No. 57
1949-1950, printed 1949-1950
Gelatin silver print
39.4 x 37.5cm (15 1/2 x 14 3/4 in.)
Gift of the artist, 2002
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Nude No. 72, New York
1949-1950, printed 1949-1950
Gelatin silver print
39.7 x 37.5cm (15 5/8 x 14 3/4 in.)
Gift of the artist, 2002
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Nude No. 130
1949-1950, printed 1949-1950
Gelatin silver print
40 x 38.1cm (15 3/4 x 15 in.)
Gift of the artist, 2002
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Kerchief Glove (Dior), Paris
1950, printed 1984
Gelatin silver print
15 3/8 x 15 5/16 in. (39.1 x 38.9cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Balenciaga Sleeve (Régine Debrise), Paris
1950
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 10 7/16 in. (25.9 x 26.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

In general, daughters from nice families were not encouraged to be in-house models. “Being a studio model was viewed as preferable,” said Régine Debrise, who posed for the photographers Irving Penn and Henry Clarke before becoming an editor at French Vogue, “because the hours were contained and the conditions were better. Being in-house meant sharing the cabine, often a cramped room, with 10 other girls, and it lacked any kind of privacy.”

Anonymous. “Cabine fever: inside Dior’s fitting room,” on The Telegraph website [Online] Cited 14/07/2017. No longer available online

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Balenciaga Mantle Coat (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), Paris
1950, printed 1988
Platinum-palladium print
21 15/16 x 17 5/8 in. (55.7 x 44.7cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Lisa Fonssagrives (May 17, 1911 – February 4, 1992), born Lisa Birgitta Bernstone was a Swedish fashion model widely credited as the first supermodel.

Before Fonssagrives came to the United States in 1939, she was already a top model. Her image appeared on the cover of many magazines during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, including Town & Country, Life, Time, Vogue, and the original Vanity Fair. She was reported as “the highest paid, highest praised, high fashion model in the business”. Fonssagrives once described herself as a “good clothes hanger”.

She worked with fashion photographers including George Hoyningen-Huene, Man Ray, Horst, Erwin Blumenfeld, George Platt Lynes, Richard Avedon, and Edgar de Evia. She married Parisian photographer Fernand Fonssagrives in 1935; they divorced and she later married another photographer, Irving Penn, in 1950. She went on to become a sculptor in the 1960s and was represented by the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Woman with Roses (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in Lafaurie Dress), Paris
1950, printed 1968
Platinum-palladium print
22 x 15 11/16 in. (55.9 x 39.9cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast (Fr.)

Jeanne LaFaurie was a Paris couturiere working from 1925 until 1958. The house was known for dependable, if not spectacular, clothing and fine draping. Courreges worked there as a draftsman in 1947. Michel Goma became the house designer 1950-1958, when he bought the house and renamed it. It closed in 1963.

pastperfectvintage.com. “La Faurie, Jeanne,” on the Vintage Fashion Guild website Jul 17, 2010 [Online] Cited 21/12/2021

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Rochas Mermaid Dress (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), Paris
1950
Platinum-palladium print Image
19 7/8 x 19 11/16 in. (50.5 x 50cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Rochas is a fashion, beauty, and perfume house founded in 1925 by French designer Marcel Rochas (born 1902, died 1955) the first designer of 2/3-length coats and skirts with pockets. “His designs could be seen as the polar opposite of Chanel’s simplicity. Dresses were proper gowns and came with the optimum amount of frills, with lace, wide shoulders and nipped-in waists.”

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Large Sleeve (Sunny Harnett), New York
1951, printed 1984
Gelatin silver print
14 3/4 x 14 3/4 in. (37.5 x 37.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Annemarie Margot “Sunny” Harnett (1924 – May 1987) was an American model in the 1950s and actress. She can be found in fashion magazines throughout that era – including frequently on the cover of Vogue – and was often a model of choice by photographer Edgar de Evia. Harper’s Bazaar ranks her as one of the 26 greatest models of all time.

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Marchand de Concombres [Cucumber Seller]
1950, printed 1976
Platinum-palladium print
Purchase, The Lauder Foundation and The Irving Penn Foundation Gifts, 2014
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Marchande de Ballons, Paris
1950, printed 1976
Platinum-palladium print
15 3/4 × 12 9/16 in. (40 × 31.9cm)
Purchase, The Lauder Foundation and The Irving Penn Foundation Gifts, 2014
© Les Editions Condé Nast S. A.

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Window Washer
1950, printed 1967
Platinum-palladium print
19 7/8 × 14 13/16 in. (50.5 × 37.6cm)
Purchase, The Lauder Foundation and The Irving Penn Foundation Gifts, 2014
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Fishmonger, London
1950, printed 1976
Platinum-palladium print
19 11/16 × 14 13/16 in. (50 × 37.6cm)
Purchase, The Lauder Foundation and The Irving Penn Foundation Gifts, 2014
© Condé Nast Publications Ltd.

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Pablo Picasso at La Californie, Cannes
1957, printed February 1985
Platinum-palladium print
18 5/8 x 18 5/8 in. (47.3 x 47.3cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

When Penn arrived at Picasso’s house in the south of France, the artist pretended not to be home. But after Penn’s assistant climbed over the locked gate, Picasso granted the photographer ten minutes. Covering his sweat-shirt with a Spanish cape, Picasso tried to playfully deflect him. Variants of this image show how Penn patiently worked the pose, allowing the artist his costume play while progressively boring in to isolate the riveting gaze of his left eye.

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Ingmar Bergman, Stockholm, 1964
1964, printed 1992
Gelatin silver print
15 1/16 x 14 15/16 in. (38.3 x 37.9cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Single Oriental Poppy, New York
1968, printed 1989
Dye transfer print
21 7/8 x 17 1/8 in. (55.5 x 43.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Naomi Sims in Scarf, New York, c. 1969
c. 1969, printed 1985
Gelatin silver print
10 1/2 x 10 3/8 in. (26.6 x 26.3cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Naomi Ruth Sims (March 30, 1948 – August 1, 2009) was an American model, businesswoman and author. She was the first African-American model to appear on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal, and is widely credited as being the first African-American supermodel. …

She became one of the first successful black models while still in her teens, and achieved worldwide recognition from the late 1960s into the early 1970s, appearing on the covers of prestigious fashion and popular magazines. The New York Times wrote that (her) “appearance as the first black model on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal in November 1968 was a consummate moment of the Black is Beautiful movement”. She also appeared on the cover of the October 17, 1969 issue of Life magazine. This made her the first African-American model on the cover of the magazine. The images from the 1967 New York Times fashion magazine cover and the 1969 Life magazine cover were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in an exhibition entitled The Model as Muse.

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Ungaro Bride Body Sculpture (Marisa Berenson), Paris, 1969
1969, printed 1985
Gelatin silver print
11 15/16 x 9 5/16 in. (30.3 x 23.7cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Emanuel (Maffeolit) Ungaro (born 13 February 1933) is a retired French fashion designer, who founded the fashion house that bears his name in 1965. At the age of 22, he moved to Paris. Three years later he began designing for the House of Cristobal Balenciaga for three years before quitting to work for Courrèges. Four years later, in 1965 with the assistance of Swiss artist Sonja Knapp and Elena Bruna Fassio, Emanuel Ungaro opened his own fashion house in Paris.

Vittoria Marisa Schiaparelli Berenson (born February 15, 1947) is an American actress and model. A fashion model who came to prominence in the 1960s – “I once was one of the highest paid models in the world”, she told The New York Times – Berenson appeared on the cover of the July 1970 issue of Vogue as well as the cover of Time on December 15, 1975. She appeared in numerous fashion layouts in Vogue in the early 1970s and her sister Berry was a photographer for the magazine as well. She was known as “The Queen of the Scene” for her frequent appearances at nightclubs and other social venues in her youth, and Yves Saint Laurent dubbed her “the girl of the Seventies”.

Eventually, she was cast in several prominent film roles, including Gustav von Aschenbach’s wife in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice, the Jewish department store heiress Natalia Landauer in the 1972 film Cabaret, for which she received acclaim (including two Golden Globe nominations, a BAFTA nomination and an award from the National Board of Review), and the tragic beauty Lady Lyndon in the Stanley Kubrick film Barry Lyndon (1975).

Texts from the Wikipedia website

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Three Asaro Mud Men, New Guinea, 1970
1970, printed 1976
Platinum-palladium print
20 1/8 x 19 1/2 in. (51.1 x 49.6cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Three Dahomey Girls, One Reclining, 1967
1967, printed 1980
Platinum-palladium print
19 11/16 x 19 11/16 in. (50 x 50cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Tribesman with Nose Disc, New Guinea, 1970
1970, printed 2002
Gelatin silver print
Image: 15 1/2 x 15 3/8 in. (39.4 x 39.1 cm.)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Cigarette No. 52, New York
1972, printed April 1974
Platinum-palladium print
23 1/2 x 18 1/2 in. (59.7 x 47cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Cigarette No. 85, New York
1972, printed Fall 1975
Platinum-palladium print
18 1/8 x 23 1/16 in. (46.0 x 58.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Cigarette No. 98, New York
1972, printed June 1974
Platinum-palladium print
23 3/16 x 17 1/16 in. (58.9 x 43.3cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Deli Package, New York
1975, printed March 1976
Platinum-palladium print
15 7/8 x 20 11/16 in. (40.3 x 52.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Two Miyake Warriors, New York, 1998
June 3, 1998, printed January-February, 1999
Platinum-palladium print
21 x 19 5/8 in. (53.4 x 49.8cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Issey Miyake (born 22 April 1938) is a Japanese fashion designer. He is known for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances…

In the late 1980s, he began to experiment with new methods of pleating that would allow both flexibility of movement for the wearer as well as ease of care and production. In which the garments are cut and sewn first, then sandwiched between layers of paper and fed into a heat press, where they are pleated. The fabric’s ‘memory’ holds the pleats and when the garments are liberated from their paper cocoon, they are ready-to wear. He did the costume for Ballett Frankfurt with pleats in a piece named “the Loss of Small Detail” choreographed by William Forsythe and also work on ballet “Garden in the setting”.

Text from the Wikipedia website

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Jul

Exhibition: ‘Irving Penn: Centennial’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Part 1

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, exhibition, existence, fashion photography, gallery website, intimacy, light, memory, New York, photographic series, photography, portrait, reality, space, time, video and works on paper
Tags: "Morandi" still lifes, After-Dinner Games, After-Dinner Games New York, American fashion photographer, American fashion photography, american photographer, American photography, American photography. American artist, American portrait photography, American studio photography, Ballet Society, Ballet Society New York, Bridget Tichenor, Bridget Tichenor and Jean Patchett, Charles James, Charles James New York, cigarette still lifes, colour flower studies, colour studies of flowers, Corrado Cagli, Elsa Schiaparelli, Elsa Schiaparelli New York, fashion and style, fashion photographer, fashion photography, female nudes, flower photography, George Balanchine, Girl Drinking, Girl Drinking (Mary Jane Russell), Glove and Shoe, Glove and Shoe New York, indigenous people, indigenous people in Cuzco, Irving Penn, Irving Penn After-Dinner Games, Irving Penn American photographer, Irving Penn Ballet Society, Irving Penn Charles James, Irving Penn Elsa Schiaparelli, Irving Penn Girl Drinking, Irving Penn Girl Drinking (Mary Jane Russell), Irving Penn Glove and Shoe, Irving Penn Le Corbusier, Irving Penn Marlene Dietrich, Irving Penn O'Sullivan's Heels, Irving Penn Pulquería Decoration, Irving Penn Salad Ingredients, Irving Penn Still Life with Watermelon, Irving Penn The Tarot Reader, Irving Penn The Twelve Most Photographed Models, Irving Penn Theatre Accident, Irving Penn Truman Capote, Irving Penn Union Bar Window American South, Irving Penn: Centennial, Jean Patchett, Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier New York, Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, Marlene Dietrich, Marlene Dietrich New York, Mary Jane Russell, modern compositions, mortality, New York, nude studies, O'Sullivan's Heels, photographic portrait, photographic portraitist, photographic still life, photography as a fine art, picture press, Platinum-palladium print, portrait photography, portraitist, Pulquería Decoration, Salad Ingredients, Salad Ingredients New York, Small Trades portraits, still life, still life photographs, still life photography, Still Life with Watermelon, studio photography, supermodel, Tanaquil Le Clercq, the American South, the growth of photography as a fine art, the human face, The Irving Penn Foundation, The Tarot Reader, The Twelve Most Photographed Models, Theatre Accident, Theatre Accident New York, tribesmen in New Guinea, Truman Capote, Truman Capote New York, Union Bar Window, Union Bar Window American South, urban labourers, Vietnam War era, Vittorio Rieti, Vogue magazine

Exhibition dates: 24th April – 30th July 2017

Part 1 of this bumper posting, with some biographical information on the lesser known sitters.

More to follow ~ Marcus

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

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Union Bar Window, American South
1941, printed c. 1941-42
Gelatin silver print
7 3/16 x 8 3/4 in. (18.2 x 22.3cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
O’Sullivan’s Heels, New York
c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
9 x 9 3/8 in. (22.9 x 23.8cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Pulquería Decoration, Mexico
1942
Gelatin silver print
11 7/8 x 10 9/16 in. (30.2 x 26.8cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Le Corbusier, New York
1947
Gelatin silver print
9 15/16 x 7 15/16 in. (25.3 x 20.2cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Elsa Schiaparelli, New York
March 29, 1948, printed c. 1948
Gelatin silver print
9 7/8 x 7 7/8 in. (25.1 x 20cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Charles James, New York
February 28, 1948, printed June 2002
Gelatin silver print
9 15/16 x 7 15/16 in. (25.3 x 20.1cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Charles Wilson Brega James (18 July 1906 – 23 September 1978) was a British-born fashion designer known as “America’s First Couturier”. He is widely considered to have been a master of cutting and is known for his highly structured aesthetic. …

James looked upon his dresses as works of art, as did many of his customers. Year after year, he reworked original designs, ignoring the sacrosanct schedule of seasons. The components of the precisely constructed designs were interchangeable, so that James had a never-ending fund of ideas on which to draw. He is most famous for his sculpted ball gowns made of lavish fabrics and to exacting tailoring standards, but is also remembered for his capes and coats, often trimmed with fur and embroidery, and his spiral zipped dresses. He is also famed for a unique, one of a kind white satin quilted jacket made in 1938 and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, described as the starting point for “anoraks, space man and even fur jackets”.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Ballet Society, New York [Tanaquil Le Clercq with Corrado Cagli, Vittorio Rieti, and George Balanchine]
March 5, 1948, printed November 1976
Platinum-palladium print
22 3/4 x 18 3/8 in. (57.8 x 46.7cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Tanaquil Le Clercq (October 2, 1929 – December 31, 2000) was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet. Her dancing career ended abruptly when she was stricken with polio in Copenhagen during the company’s European tour in 1956. Eventually regaining most of the use of her arms and torso, she remained paralysed from the waist down for the rest of her life. …

When she was fifteen years old, George Balanchine asked her to perform with him in a dance he choreographed for a polio charity benefit. In an eerie portent of things to come, he played a character named Polio, and Le Clercq was his victim who became paralysed and fell to the floor. Then, children tossed dimes at her character, prompting her to get up and dance again.

Corrado Cagli (Ancona, 1910 – Rome, 1976) was an Italian painter of Jewish heritage, who lived in the United States during World War II. …

He enlisted in the U.S. Army and was involved in the 1944 Normandy landings, and fought in Belgium and Germany. He was with the forces that liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp, and made a series of dramatic drawings on that subject. In 1948, Cagli returned to Rome to take up permanent residence there. From that time forward, he experimented in various abstract and non-figurative techniques (neo-metaphysical, neo-cubist, informal). He was awarded the Guggenheim prize (1946) and the Marzotto prize (1954).

Vittorio Rieti (January 28, 1898 – February 19, 1994) was a Jewish-Italian composer. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Rieti moved to Milan to study economics. He subsequently studied in Rome under Respighi and Casella, and lived there until 1940. … He emigrated to the United States in 1940, becoming a naturalised American citizen on the 1st of June 1944. He taught at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore (1948-49), Chicago Musical College (1950-54), Queens College, New York (1958-60), and New York College of Music (1960-64).

George Balanchine (January 22 [O.S. January 9] 1904 – April 30, 1983) was a choreographer. Styled as the father of American ballet, he co-founded the New York City Ballet and remained its Artistic Director for more than 35 years.

Balanchine took the standards and technique from his time at the Imperial Ballet School and fused it with other schools of movement that he had adopted during his tenure on Broadway and in Hollywood, creating his signature “neoclassical style”. He was a choreographer known for his musicality; he expressed music with dance and worked extensively with leading composers of his time like Igor Stravinsky. Balanchine was invited to America in 1933 by a young arts patron named Lincoln Kirstein, and together they founded the School of American Ballet. Along with Kirstein, Balanchine also co-founded the New York City Ballet (NYCB).

All texts from the Wikipedia website

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Truman Capote, New York
March 5, 1948
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 8 3/16 in. (25.5 x 20.8cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a major retrospective of the photographs of Irving Penn to mark the centennial of the artist’s birth. Over the course of his nearly 70-year career, Irving Penn (1917-2009) mastered a pared-down aesthetic of studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to composition, nuance, detail, and printmaking. Irving Penn: Centennial, opening April 24, 2017, will be the most comprehensive exhibition of the great American photographer’s work to date and will include both masterpieces and hitherto unknown prints from all his major series.

Long celebrated for more than six decades of influential work at Vogue magazine, Penn was first and foremost a fashion photographer. His early photographs of couture are masterpieces that established a new standard for photographic renderings of style at mid-century, and he continued to record the cycles of fashions year after year in exquisite images characterised by striking shapes and formal brilliance. His rigorous modern compositions, minimal backgrounds, and diffused lighting were innovative and immensely influential. Yet Penn’s photographs of fashion are merely the most salient of his specialties. He was a peerless portraitist, whose perceptions extended beyond the human face and figure to take in more complete codes of demeanour, adornment, and artefact. He was also blessed with an acute graphic intelligence and a sculptor’s sensitivity to volumes in light, talents that served his superb nude studies and life-long explorations of still life.

Penn dealt with so many subjects throughout his long career that he is conventionally seen either with a single lens – as the portraitist, fashion photographer, or still life virtuoso – or as the master of all trades, the jeweller of journalists who could fine-tool anything. The exhibition at The Met will chart a different course, mapping the overall geography of the work and the relative importance of the subjects and campaigns the artist explored most creatively. Its organisation largely follows the pattern of his development so that the structure of the work, its internal coherence, and the tenor of the times of the artist’s experience all become evident.

The exhibition will most thoroughly explore the following series: street signs, including examples of early work in New York, the American South, and Mexico; fashion and style, with many classic photographs of Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, the former dancer who became the first supermodel as well as the artist’s wife; portraits of indigenous people in Cuzco, Peru; the Small Trades portraits of urban labourers; portraits of beloved cultural figures from Truman Capote, Joe Louis, Picasso, and Colette to Alvin Ailey, Ingmar Bergman, and Joan Didion; the infamous cigarette still lifes; portraits of the fabulously dressed citizens of Dahomey (Benin), New Guinea, and Morocco; the late “Morandi” still lifes; voluptuous nudes; and glorious colour studies of flowers. These subjects chart the artist’s path through the demands of the cultural journal, the changes in fashion itself and in editorial approach, the fortunes of the picture press in the age of television, the requirements of an artistic inner voice in a commercial world, the moral condition of the American conscience during the Vietnam War era, the growth of photography as a fine art in the 1970s and 1980s, and personal intimations of mortality. All these strands of meaning are embedded in the images – a web of deep and complex ideas belied by the seeming forthrightness of what is represented.

Penn generally worked in a studio or in a traveling tent that served the same purpose, and favoured a simple background of white or light grey tones. His preferred backdrop was made from an old theatre curtain found in Paris that had been softly painted with diffused grey clouds. This backdrop followed Penn from studio to studio; a companion of over 60 years, it will be displayed in one of the Museum’s galleries among celebrated portraits it helped create. Other highlights of the exhibition include newly unearthed footage of the photographer at work in his tent in Morocco; issues of Vogue magazine illustrating the original use of the photographs and, in some cases, to demonstrate the difference between those brilliantly coloured, journalistic presentations and Penn’s later reconsidered reuse of the imagery; and several of Penn’s drawings shown near similar still life photographs.

Exhibition credits

Irving Penn: Centennial is co-curated by Maria Morris Hambourg, independent curator and the founding curator of The Met’s Department of Photographs, and Jeff L. Rosenheim, Joyce Frank Menschel Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs at The Met.

Press release from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Glove and Shoe, New York
July 7, 1947
Gelatin silver print
9 9/16 x 7 3/4 in. (24.3 x 19.7cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
The Tarot Reader (Bridget Tichenor and Jean Patchett), New York
1949, printed 1984
Gelatin silver print
19 5/16 x 18 1/2 in. (49 x 47cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Bridget Bate Tichenor (born Bridget Pamela Arkwright Bate on November 22, 1917 – died on October 20, 1990), also known as Bridget Tichenor or B.B.T., was a Mexican surrealist painter of fantastic art in the school of magic realism and a fashion editor. Born in Paris and of British descent, she later embraced Mexico as her home. …

Bate Tichenor’s painting technique was based upon 16th-century Italian tempera formulas that artist Paul Cadmus taught her in New York in 1945, where she would prepare an eggshell-finished gesso ground on masonite board and apply (instead of tempera) multiple transparent oil glazes defined through chiaroscuro with sometimes one hair of a #00 sable brush. Bate Tichenor considered her work to be of a spiritual nature, reflecting ancient occult religions, magic, alchemy, and Mesoamerican mythology in her Italian Renaissance style of painting.

The cultures of Mesoamerica and her international background would influence the style and themes of Bate Tichenor’s work as a magic realist painter in Mexico. She was among a group of surrealist and magic realist female artists who came to live in Mexico in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Jean Patchett (February 16, 1926 – January 22, 2002) was a leading fashion model of the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. She was among the best known models of that era, which included Dovima, Dorian Leigh, Suzy Parker, Evelyn Tripp and Lisa Fonssagrives. Patchett was the subject of two of Vogue Magazine’s most famous covers, both shot in 1950 by Erwin Blumenfeld and Irving Penn. She was famous for being one of the first high-fashion models to appear remote; previously, models had appeared warm and friendly. Irving Penn described her as “a young American goddess in Paris couture”.

Texts from the Wikipedia website

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
The Twelve Most Photographed Models, New York
1947
Gelatin silver print
13 3/8 x 16 15/16 in. (34 x 43cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Girl Drinking (Mary Jane Russell), New York
1949, printed December 1977
Platinum-palladium print
20 1/2 x 19 1/4 in. (52.1 x 48.9cm)
Loan from The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Mary Jane Russell (10 July 1926 – 2003) was a successful New York-based American photographic fashion model between 1948 and 1961. She often worked with Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Irving Penn, and appeared on many covers for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar during the course of her modelling career. …

Russell was … a favourite model of Irving Penn, who remembered her qualities of concentration and tenderness. Two of Penn’s better known images of her were Girl Drinking, published in Vogue in 1949, and the 1951 photograph Girl with Tobacco on Tongue. As Russell did not smoke, the process of taking the latter photograph made her physically sick.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Marlene Dietrich, New York
November 3, 1948, printed April 2000
Gelatin silver print
10 x 8 1/16 in. (25.4 x 20.4cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Theatre Accident, New York
1947, printed 1984
Dye transfer print
19 1/2 x 15 1/4 in. (49.6 x 38.8cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Still Life with Watermelon, New York
1947, printed 1985
Dye transfer print
22 x 17 1/2 in. (55.9 x 44.5cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
Salad Ingredients, New York
1947, printed 1984
Dye transfer print
19 7/16 x 15 3/16 in. (49.3 x 38.6cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917-2009 New York)
After-Dinner Games, New York
1947, printed 1985
Dye transfer print
22 3/16 x 18 1/16 in. (56.4 x 45.8cm)
Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation
© Condé Nast

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York, New York 10028-0198
Phone: 212-535-7710

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

The Metropolitan Museum of Art website

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Mar

Exhibition: ‘Edward Steichen: Twentieth-Century Photographer’ at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, landscape, light, memory, New York, painting, photographic series, photography, pictorialism, portrait, psychological, reality, sculpture, space, time and works on paper
Tags: aesthetic images, aesthetic photographs, aesthetics, Alfred Stieglitz, American art, american artist, American celebrity photography, American fashion photography, american photographer, American photography, American theatrical photography, Auguste Rodin, Auguste Rodin and the Monument to Victor Hugo, beauty, Brancusi, Brancusi Voulangis, Carl Sandburg, Carl Sandburg Umpawaug, composing photographs, conde nast, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, E. Gordon Craig, Edward Henry Gordon Craig, Edward Steichen, Edward Steichen Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen Auguste Rodin, Edward Steichen Auguste Rodin and the Monument to Victor Hugo, Edward Steichen Brancusi, Edward Steichen Carl Sandburg Umpawaug, Edward Steichen E. Gordon Craig, Edward Steichen Greta Garbo, Edward Steichen J. Pierpont Morgan, Edward Steichen Lotus Mount Kisco, Edward Steichen Self-Portrait with photographers paraphenalia, Edward Steichen Self-Portrait with Studio Camera, Edward Steichen The Blue Sky Long Island, Edward Steichen The Flatiron, Edward Steichen: Twentieth-Century Photographer, English modernist theatre, George Tice, Gordon Craig, Greta Garbo, gum bichromate, J. Pierpont Morgan, lighting photographs, Lotus Mount Kisco, Monument to Victor Hugo, Museum of Modern Art, Naval Aviation Photographic Unit, pictorialism, printing photographs, Self-Portrait with photographers paraphenalia, Self-Portrait with Studio Camera, The Blue Sky Long Island, The Flatiron, theatrical form, Twentieth-Century Photographer, World War II

Exhibition dates: 7th October 2016 – 26th March 2017

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Self-Portrait with Studio Camera
1917; printed 1982
Silver gelatin print
13 1/8 x 10 5/8 inches (image and paper)
Gift of Stephen L. Singer and Linda G. Singer

Just for enjoyment.

Marcus

.
Many thankx to the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Self-Portrait with Studio Camera
c. 1917
Gelatin silver print

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Self-Portrait with photographers paraphernalia
1929
Gelatin silver print

Installation view of Edward Steichen: Twentieth-Century Photographer at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum
Courtesy Photo/Clements Photography and Design, Boston
Creative Commons

DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is pleased to present the upcoming exhibition Edward Steichen: Twentieth-Century Photographer. Edward Steichen (1879-1973) is known for his role in expanding the breadth of twentieth-century photography through his memorable images and his work as a gallery director and museum curator. Steichen was a painter, horticulturalist, museum curator, graphic designer, publisher, and film director. He also served as a military photographer in both World Wars, and lived a life that embraced a century transformed by modernisation. On view in the James and Audrey Foster Galleries, the exhibition is drawn from deCordova’s permanent collection, and features important loans from private collectors and select institutions. The majority of photographs included in this show were made from Steichen’s original negatives and printed after his death in the 1980s by photographer George Tice. The exhibition also features a select number of vintage prints printed by Steichen in the 1910s and 1920s that reveal the lush interpretations he made with experimental printing techniques.

From his early Pictorialist images with their painterly quality, to his decades-long work as a commercial photographer for Condé Nast, Steichen explored the full range of the photographic medium. In his role as the Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, he often reproduced and integrated other photographers’ work into groundbreaking exhibitions that reflected his curatorial practice. The combined aspects of his career as a photographer and curator positioned Steichen to become a controversial yet prescient advocate for photography’s ability to record and amplify human observation, endeavour, and creativity.

The exhibition includes portraits of glamorous celebrities and socialites, still-life photographs of plants and flowers, dynamic cityscapes, and commercial advertisements. Also on view are Steichen’s portraits of fellow artists and writers that reveal his place among avant-garde cultural communities in New York and Europe. Edward Steichen also explores his work as the head of the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit in World War II, and traces his role at the Museum of Modern Art, NY where he curated over forty exhibitions. The aesthetic range of the images shows Steichen’s experimentation throughout his career with new techniques for lighting, composing, and printing photographs.

Edward Steichen continues deCordova’s longstanding commitment to the exhibition and collection of important photographic works. The exhibition opens to the public on October 7, 2016 and will be on view until March 26, 2017.

Press release from the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Auguste Rodin and the Monument to Victor Hugo
1902
Gum bichromate print

When Edward Steichen arrived in Paris in 1900, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was regarded not only as the finest living sculptor but also perhaps as the greatest artist of his time. Steichen visited him in his studio in Meudon in 1901 and Rodin, upon seeing the young photographer’s work, agreed to sit for his portrait. Steichen spent a year studying the sculptor among his works, finally choosing to show Rodin in front of the newly carved white marble of the “Monument to Victor Hugo,” facing the bronze of “The Thinker.” In his autobiography, Steichen describes the studio as being so crowded with marble blocks and works in clay, plaster, and bronze that he could not fit them together with the sculptor into a single negative. He therefore made two exposures, one of Rodin and the “Monument to Victor Hugo,” and another of “The Thinker.” Steichen first printed each image separately and, having mastered the difficulties of combining the two negatives, joined them later into a single picture, printing the negative showing Rodin in reverse.

Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.
1903
Gum bichromate over platinum print

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
The Flatiron
1904
Gum bichromate over platinum print

While Steichen’s palette recalls Whistler’s Nocturne paintings and the foreground branch echoes those often found in the Japanese prints that were much in vogue in turn-of-the-century Paris, his subject is distinctly modern and American. The newly completed, twenty-two-story skyscraper soars so high above Madison Square in New York that it could not be contained within the photographer’s frame… Steichen’s three variant printings of The Flatiron, each in a different tonality, evoke successive moments of twilight and forcefully assert that photography can rival painting in scale, colour, individuality, and expressiveness.

Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Lotus, Mount Kisco, New York
1915; printed 1982
Silver gelatin print
13 1/4 x 10 1/2 inches (image and paper)
Gift of Diane Singer in honour of the marriage of Diane Singer to Eric Pearlman

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Alfred Stieglitz
1915; printed 1982
Silver gelatin print
9 5/8 x 7 3/4 inches (image and paper)
Gift of Stephen L. Singer and Linda G. Singer

The most recognisable of these images involve celebrity. Artists – Constantin Brancusi, Eugene O’Neill – and actors Charlie Chaplin, Lillian Gish, Marlene Dietrich, the unforgettable Greta Garbo – all sat for Steichen, who strove for a discovery of the individual.

In black-and-white photography, composition, cast and shadow take prominence. Looming stage equipment behind a smiling Chaplin quietly recalls his movie roles. Garbo, clutching her “terrible hair,” wordlessly speaks volumes about her self- and public images. Carl Sandburg (Steichen’s brother-in-law) gazes poetically away from the camera. German author Gerhart Hauptmann stares directly into the camera under the starry firmament. The British dramaturge E. Gordon Craig poses foppishly in front of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris.

Keith Powers. “DeCordova focuses on the varied career photographer Edward Steichen,” on The Metro West Daily News website [Online] Cited 21/03/2017. No longer available online

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Brancusi, Voulangis, France
c. 1922; printed 1987
Silver gelatin print
13 x 10 1/2 inches (image and paper)
Gift of Stephen L. Singer and Linda G. Singer

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Carl Sandburg, Umpawaug, Connecticut
1930
Gelatin silver print

Carl Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, writer, and editor who won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as “a major figure in contemporary literature”, especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed “unrivalled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life”, and at his death in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that “Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.”

Text from the Wikipedia website

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Greta Garbo
1929
Silver gelatin print

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
E. Gordon Craig, Paris
1920, printed in 1987
Gelatin silver print

Edward Henry Gordon Craig CH OBE (16 January 1872 – 29 July 1966), sometimes known as Gordon Craig, was an English modernist theatre practitioner; he worked as an actor, director and scenic designer, as well as developing an influential body of theoretical writings…

Craig’s idea of using neutral, mobile, non-representational screens as a staging device is probably his most famous scenographic concept. In 1910 Craig filed a patent which described in considerable technical detail a system of hinged and fixed flats that could be quickly arranged to cater for both internal and external scenes. He presented a set to William Butler Yeats for use at the Abbey Theatre in Ireland, who shared his symbolist aesthetic.

Craig’s second innovation was in stage lighting. Doing away with traditional footlights, Craig lit the stage from above, placing lights in the ceiling of the theatre. Colour and light also became central to Craig’s stage conceptualisations…

The third remarkable aspect of Craig’s experiments in theatrical form were his attempts to integrate design elements with his work with actors. His mise en scène sought to articulate the relationships in space between movement, sound, line, and colour. Craig promoted a theatre focused on the craft of the director – a theatre where action, words, colour and rhythm combine in dynamic dramatic form.

All of his life, Craig sought to capture “pure emotion” or “arrested development” in the plays on which he worked. Even during the years when he was not producing plays, Craig continued to make models, to conceive stage designs and to work on directorial plans that were never to reach performance. He believed that a director should approach a play with no preconceptions and he embraced this in his fading up from the minimum or blank canvas approach.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
The Blue Sky, Long Island, New York
1923; printed 1987
Silver gelatin print
9 1/2 x 7 1/4 inches (image and paper)
Gift of Stephen L. Singer and Linda G. Singer

DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum
51 Sandy Pond Road in Lincoln, Massachusetts

Opening hours (Winter hours):
Wednesday – Friday, 10am – 4pm
Saturday – Sunday, 10am – 5pm

deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum website

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Nov

Exhibition: ‘Herb Ritts’ at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, exhibition, existence, fashion photography, gallery website, intimacy, light, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, reality, sculpture, space, time and works on paper
Tags: American art, American celebrity photographer, American celebrity photography, American fashion photographer, American fashion photography, American photography, American portrait photographer, American portrait photography, Backflip Paradise Cove, Brigitte Nielsen, Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen (Detail II), celebrity photography, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, classical photography of the body, Claudia Schiffer, Dizzy Gillespie, fashion photography, Herb Ritts, Herb Ritts Backflip Paradise Cove, Herb Ritts Bruce Springsteen (Detail II), Herb Ritts Christy Turlington, Herb Ritts Claudia Schiffer, Herb Ritts Dizzy Gillespie, Herb Ritts Madonna Tokyo, Herb Ritts Michael Jordan, Herb Ritts Mick Jagger, Herb Ritts Naomi Campbell Face in Hand, Herb Ritts Nelson Mandela, Herb Ritts Pants (Back View), Herb Ritts Richard Gere San Bernardino, Herb Ritts Stephanie Cindy Christy Tatjana Naomi, Herb Ritts Sylvester Stallone and Brigitte Nielsen, Herb Ritts Tatjana Veiled Head, Herb Ritts Tony with Black Face, Herb Ritts Versace Dress Back View El Mirage, Herb Ritts Versace Veiled Dress, Herb Ritts Wrapped Torso, Herb Ritts: WORK, Madonna Tokyo, Michael Jordan, Mick Jagger, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Naomi Campbell, Naomi Campbell Face in Hand, Nelson Mandela, Pants (Back View), photographs of celebrities, photographs of celebrity, photographs of celebrity personalities, photography of the male body, Richard Gere, Richard Gere San Bernardino, Stephanie Cindy Christy Tatjana Naomi, Sylvester Stallone, Tatjana Veiled Head, Tatjana Veiled Head Tight View Joshua Tree, the human body, Tony with Black Face, Versace Dress Back View El Mirage

Exhibition dates: 14th March – 8th November, 2015

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Stephanie, Cindy, Christy, Tatjana, Naomi, Hollywood, 1989
1989
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts Foundation
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Another artist lost too soon to HIV/AIDS. At least we have these fine classics to remember him by. The portrait of Nelson Mandela is especially powerful – tightly cropped, the photographer portrays a man of immense strength and intensity through the hand and the finger, but above all the single eye which contains ageless wisdom.

Marcus

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

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Sylvester Stallone and Brigitte Nielsen, Long Island
1987
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts Foundation in honor of Malcolm Rogers
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Madonna, Tokyo
1987
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Versace Veiled Dress, El Mirage
1990
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Versace Dress, Back View, El Mirage
1990
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Tatjana Veiled Head, Tight View, Joshua Tree
1988
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Backflip, Paradise Cove
1987
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts Foundation
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Pants (Back View), Los Angeles
1988
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts Foundation
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Richard Gere, San Bernardino
1978
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts Foundation in honor of Malcolm Rogers
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), flashes back to the ’90s this spring with an evocative exhibition dedicated to the photography of Herb Ritts (1952-2002). Known for his beautifully printed, formally bold and sensual black-and-white images of celebrities and supermodels such as Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell, his works often blurred the line between art and commerce. Throughout the ’90s, his photography was inescapable in popular culture – appearing everywhere from magazine covers to music videos and commercials. This exhibition revisits the artist, whose groundbreaking 1996 retrospective at the MFA, Herb Ritts: WORK, remains one of the most highly attended exhibitions in Museum history. Nearly 20 years later, the MFA is taking a second look at his career, which was cut short in 2002 with his death from complications related to AIDS. Along with a selection of music videos and commercials, the exhibition features 52 black-and-white photographs that celebrate the sculpted body and the variable beauty of the human face. Ritts’ expert use of natural light results in dramatic images full of high-contrast lights and darks, as well as softer effects, such as light reflecting off water. Of the works on view, 15 are from a recent gift from the Herb Ritts Foundation – acquired by the MFA in December in honor of Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director at the MFA. This, and previous gifts from Ritts and the Foundation dating back to 2000, allow the Museum to tell the full story of Ritts’ career, and comprise the largest museum holdings of Ritts photographs in the world (248 in total). The exhibition is on view in the MFA gallery named in honour of a gift from the Ritts Foundation – the Museum’s first dedicated solely to photography – and the adjacent Clementine Brown Gallery…

The exhibition explores every aspect of the photographer’s career, and is divided into two sections: one dedicated to the human body and one dedicated to his photographs of celebrity personalities. His approach to the nude pushed the confines of convention. Ritts captured not only beautiful bodies, but also the environment and elements surrounding his set: the Pacific Ocean, desert landscapes, and mountains. Whether photographing a Versace dress, a basketball star, or interpreting classical sculpture through dried, cracked clay on skin – as in Tony with Black Face, Profile, Los Angeles (1986) – Ritts and his photography embody the era. The predominant aesthetic in Ritts’s images is one of strong lines, bold contours and striking shadows. Today, his work appears in museum exhibitions around the globe.

Preferring to shoot during the golden hours of the day – when the sun is at a low angle – Ritts created works that demonstrate not only an expert use of natural light, but the ability to immortalise the subjects in front of his camera. In addition to photography, he also directed 13 music videos and more than 50 commercials throughout his career. Exploration of the human figure in its idealised form is a recurring theme in his video work, a selection of which is also included in the exhibition on three video screens. Lent by the Herb Ritts Foundation are videos of Madonna’s Cherish (1989), Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game (1991) and commercials dating from 1990-2002. A special MFA playlist on Spotify allows visitors to listen to music as they explore the gallery, and a case of archival materials includes a marked-up contact sheet and magazine spread that shed light on Ritts’ process.

During his career, Ritts forged strong connections with his subjects, many of whom became close friends. Throughout the exhibition visitors can find quotes from some of his sitters, including Cindy Crawford, who said of the artist: “There was something magical about when you stepped in front of his camera and what happened then. This give-and-take, and that’s what makes it fun. I’ve had the opportunity to work with Helmut Newton to Avedon to Penn but probably the images that are the most timeless of me, most of them, were shot by Herb and are some of my favourite images of myself.”

Crawford appears in one of Ritts’ most famous images, Stephanie, Cindy, Christy, Tatjana, Naomi, Hollywood (1989). Taken at the end of a long day photographing a fashion editorial assignment for Rolling Stone, the image also includes Stephanie Seymour, Tatjana Patitz, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington. Ritts also worked with Turlington on a Gianni Versace advertising campaign, which took them to the dry Mojave Desert lakebed known as El Mirage, where the vast open space gave him a sense of creative freedom. He used the gusts of a rising storm to coax a swath of fabric into an arch over the model’s head in Versace Dress, Back View, El Mirage (1990). Ritts’ photographs of celebrities and models appeared on magazine covers including Vanity Fair, Vogue, Interview, Playboy, TIME, Rolling Stone, and Allure.

Ritts had a particular affinity for photographing actors, musicians and cultural icons. The artist that he collaborated with most frequently was Madonna, whose whimsical Madonna, Tokyo (1987) was taken in her hotel when the Who’s That Girl World Tour opened in Japan. Generally, Ritts preferred to capture his subjects in spontaneous, playful moments such as these. “I think that with her, and with other people as well, the big word is trust,” Ritts said. “A person feels they can trust you because they know your reputation and what you’re about. Or they can feel it because over the years a tight relationship develops, as it did with Madonna. You work together and it clicks; you evolve.

Press release from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston website

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Michael Jordan, Chicago
1993
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Tony with Black Face, Profile, Los Angeles
1986
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Claudia Schiffer, Palmdale
1992
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts Foundation
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Christy Turlington, Hollywood
1988
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts Foundation
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Mick Jagger, London
1987
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts Foundation
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Wrapped Torso, Los Angeles
1989
Platinum print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Naomi Campbell, Face in Hand, Hollywood
1990
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts Foundation in honor of Malcolm Rogers
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Dizzy Gillespie, Paris
1989
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Nelson Mandela, Johannesburg
1994
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts Foundation
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts (American, 1952-2002)
Bruce Springsteen (Detail II), New York
1992
Gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gift of Herb Ritts Foundation
© Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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Boston, Massachusetts

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Jul

Exhibition: ‘Lee Miller’ at the Albertina, Vienna

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, documentary photography, existence, fashion photography, gallery website, intimacy, light, Man Ray, memory, Paris, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space, street photography, surrealism, time and works on paper
Tags: Albertina, American fashion photography, american photographer, American photography, American photojournalism, American photojournalist, Dachau, Dachau concentration camp, David E. Scherman, Exploding Hand, fashion photography, Fire Masks London, Floating Head, Floating Head (Mary Taylor), Irmgard Seefried, Irmgard Seefried Opera Singer, Lee Miller, Lee Miller Exploding Hand, Lee Miller Fire Masks London, Lee Miller Floating Head, Lee Miller Floating Head (Mary Taylor), Lee Miller in Hitler's Bathtub, Lee Miller Irmgard Seefried Opera Singer, Lee Miller Luxembourg, Lee Miller Nude bent forward, Lee Miller Paris, Lee Miller Picnic Ile Sainte Marguerite, Lee Miller Scharnhorst Boy Vienna, Lee Miller Self Portrait New York Studio, Lee Miller solarisation, Lee Miller Solarized Portrait of an unknown model, Lee Miller SS Guard in Canal, Lee Miller Surrealist Photography, Lee Miller The latest hat model, Lee Miller Untitled (Exploding Hand), Lee Miller War Photography, Lee Miller with David E. Scherman, Lee Miller with David E. Scherman Lee Miller in Hitler's Bathtub, Man Ray, Man Ray and Lee Miller, Man Ray and Lee Miller Neck, Man Ray and Lee Miller Neck (Portrait of Lee Miller), Man Ray Portrait of Lee Miller, Man Ray Solarisation, Man Ray Solarised Portrait of Lee Miller, Mary Taylor, Nude bent forward, Picnic Ile Sainte Marguerite, Portrait of Lee Miller, Scharnhorst Boy Vienna, Self Portrait New York Studio, solarisation in photography, Solarised Portrait of Lee Miller, Solarized Portrait of an unknown mode, SS Guard in Canal, surrealist photography, the Blitz, The latest hat model, travel photography, Vogue Studios, war photography

Exhibition dates: 8th May – 16th August 2015

Curator: Walter Moser

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Floating Head (Mary Taylor), New York Studio, New York, USA
1933
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Leave artist’s alone

It takes some time to form an opinion as to the merit of Lee Miller’s work, given the amount of photographs available online, including the ones available on the Lee Miller Archives website. It is also difficult to separate the muse / socialite from the artist, the icon from the person.

Certainly there are unforgettable photographs, such as the haunting SS Guard in Canal, Dachau, Germany (1945, below). Once seen, never forgotten. But then there are the usual fashion photographs for Vogue that are no different from anyone else, a lot of pretty average social documentary photographs, some excellent and not so excellent portraits of friends and artists, and some surreal offerings that sometimes hit the mark.

Only so often do her photographs raise themselves above the mundane. This is not the fault of Lee Miller, but the fault of people claiming that someone is more than they are. The fault of people in control of her image. And that all comes down to money and power.

Instead of limiting access to her photographs, if her work was just left to breathe – just letting Lee Miller be nothing, in a Zen sense – just let the work be what it is, then she and the work might attain more credibility than it has at the moment. If Lee Miller was not set up as this icon, if she just is, then the work would be all the better for it. Icon and artist need to be separated. Let’s see more of the work freely available, for only then can we truly understand, believe.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Lee Miller (1907-1977) is considered one of the most fascinating artists of the 20th century. In only 16 years, she produced a body of photographic work of a range that remains unparalleled, and that unites the most divergent genres. Miller’s oeuvre extends from surrealistic images to photography in the fields of fashion, travelling, portraiture and even war correspondence; the Albertina presents a survey of the work in its breadth and depth, with the aid of 100 selected pieces.

Lee Miller began her artistic career as a surrealist photographer in the Paris of 1929. She alienated motifs by using narrow image frames and applying experimental techniques like solarisation, so that it would be possible to see paradox reality. Travel photography, in which she translated the landscape into modernistic and ambiguous shapes, originated in Egypt in 1934.

As one of just a handful of female photojournalists, she began to photograph the disastrous consequences of the Second World War back in 1940. Lee Miller photographed the attack on London by the German Luftwaffe (“the Blitz”), as well as the eventual liberation of Paris. Her reporting led her to Vienna via Salzburg in 1945 where she photographed a cityscape destroyed by war, as well as the hardships in the children’s hospitals. In this exhibit, the focus is specifically placed on the vast bulk of this unpublished group of works.

Lee Miller | Surrealist Photography from Albertina Vienna.

Lee Miller | War Photography from Albertina Vienna.

Man Ray (American, 1890-1976)
Portrait of Lee Miller, Paris, France
1929
© MAN RAY TRUST / ADAGP, Paris / Bildrecht Wien 2015
Courtesy Lee Miller Archives, England 2015. All rights reserved

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Untitled (Exploding Hand), Paris, France
c. 1930
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Self Portrait, New York Studio, New York, USA
1932
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Paris
1944
Silver gelatin print
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Picnic, Ile Sainte Marguerite, France [Man Ray second from right]
1937
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Nude bent forward
1930
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Lee Miller exhibition texts

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Fire Masks, London, England
1941
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Irmgard Seefried, Opera Singer, Singing an Aria from Madame Butterfly, Vienna Opera House, Vienna, Austria
1945
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Irmgard Seefried (German, 1919-1988)

Irmgard Seefried (9 October 1919 – 24 November 1988) was a distinguished German soprano who sang opera, sacred music, and lieder.

One of the outstanding singers to emerge immediately after the Second World War, she was noted for her Mozart and Richard Strauss roles. But she also sang in other composers’ operas; the title role in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Marie in Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, Eva in Meistersinger, Blanche in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, and the title role in Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová. She was also a noted lieder singer, and a number of her Salzburg Festival recitals were recorded. She left many recordings of oratorio and sacred music by Bach, Mozart, Haydn (including at least four different renditions of the Archangel Gabriel in Die Schöpfung), Brahms, Fauré, Beethoven, Dvořák, Verdi and Stravinsky.

Although she was a high soprano, she performed, and recorded, both the trouser roles of the Composer and Octavian in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Der Rosenkavalier, respectively. These roles are usually associated with weightier voices, and today are usually sung by mezzo-sopranos.

She often sang with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, who said in interview that Seefried was naturally able to achieve results effortlessly which other singers, including Schwarzkopf herself, had to work hard to produce.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977) with David E. Scherman (American, 1916-1997)
Lee Miller in Hitler’s Bathtub, Munich, Germany
1945
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Luxembourg
1944
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
SS Guard in Canal, Dachau, Germany
1945
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Scharnhorst Boy, Vienna, Austria
1945
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
The latest hat model, Vogue Studios, London, April 1942
1942
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Man Ray (American, 1890-1976)
Solarised Portrait of Lee Miller
c. 1929
© MAN RAY TRUST / ADAGP, Paris / Bildrecht Wien 2015

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Solarized Portrait of an unknown model
1930
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved

Man Ray (American, 1890-1976) and Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Neck (Portrait of Lee Miller), Paris, France
c. 1930
© Lee Miller Archives England 2015. All Rights Reserved
© MAN RAY TRUST / ADAGP, Paris / Bildrecht Wien 2015

Albertina
Albertinaplatz 1
1010 Vienna, Austria
Phone: +43 (0)1 534 83-0

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 6pm

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Mar

Review: ‘Richard Avedon People’ at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, fashion photography, gallery website, intimacy, light, Melbourne, memory, New York, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space, street photography, time and works on paper
Tags: american artist, American documentary photographer, American documentary photography, American fashion photography, American identity, american photographer, American photography, American West, andy warhol, Andy Warhol Candy Darling, Bob Dylan, Boyd Fortin, Candy Darling, Civil rights demonstration, Dovima with elephants, Elizabeth Taylor, fashion photographer, fashion photography, Harper's Bazaar, In the American West, Jay Johnson, Kierkegaard, Mae West, Mae West with Mr America, Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, New York Life, Richard Avedon, Richard Avedon Andy Warhol, Richard Avedon Andy Warhol Candy Darling, Richard Avedon Bob Dylan, Richard Avedon Boyd Fortin, Richard Avedon Civil rights demonstration, Richard Avedon Dovima with elephants, Richard Avedon Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Avedon Foundation, Richard Avedon In the American West, Richard Avedon Mae West with Mr America, Richard Avedon Marilyn Monroe, Richard Avedon Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, Richard Avedon New York Life, Richard Avedon New York Life #5, Richard Avedon People, Richard Avedon People at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Richard Avedon Sandra Bennett, Richard Avedon Self portrait, Richard Avedon Twiggy, Roberto Rojas, Sandra Bennett, shadowgraph, the ian potter museum of art, The New Yorker, Twiggy, Vogue

Exhibition dates: 6th December 2014 – 15th March 2015

Curator: Dr Christopher Chapman

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Andy Warhol, artist, Candy Darling and Jay Johnson, actors, New York, August 20, 1969
1969
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

You can tell a lot about a person from their self-portrait. In the case of Richard Avedon’s self-portrait (1969, below), we see a man in high key, white shirt positioned off centre against a slightly off-white background, the face possessing an almost innocuous, vapid affectation as though the person being captured by the lens has no presence, no being at all. The same could be said of much of Avedon’s photography. You can also tell a lot about an artist by looking at their early work. In the exhibition there is a photograph of James Baldwin, writer, Harlem, New York 1945, celebrated writer and close friend of the artist, which evidences Avedon’s mature portrait style: the frontal positioning of Afro-American Baldwin against a white background will be repeated by Avedon from the start to the end of his career. This trope, this hook has become the artist’s defining signature.

Spread across two floors of the exhibition spaces at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, the exhibition hangs well. The tonal black and white photographs in their white frames, hung above and below the line against the white gallery walls, promote a sense of serenity and minimalism to the work when viewed from afar. Up close, the photographs are clinical, clean, pin sharp and decidedly cold in attitude. Overall the selection of work in the exhibition is weak and the show does not promote the artist to best advantage. There are the usual fashion and portrait photographs, supplemented by street photographs, photographs at the beach and of mental asylums, and distorted photographs. While it is good to see a more diverse range of work from the artist to fill in his back story none of these alternate visions really work. Avedon was definitely not a street photographer (see Helen Levitt for comparison); he couldn’t photograph the mentally ill (see Diane Arbus’ last body of work in the book Diane Arbus: Untitled, 1995) and his distorted faces fail miserably in comparison to Weegee’s (Athur Fellig) fabulous distortions. These are poor images by any stretch of the imagination.

That being said there are some arresting individual images. There is a magical photograph of Truman Capote, writer, 1955 which works because of the attitude of the sitter; an outdoors image of Bob Dylan, musician, Central Park, New York, February 20, 1965 (below) in which the musician has this glorious presence when you stand in front of the image – emanating an almost metaphysical aura – due to the light, low depth of field and stance of the proponent. Also top notch is a portrait of the dancer Rudolf Nureyev, Paris, France, July 25, 1961, in which (for once), the slightly off-white background and the pallid colour of the dancer’s lithe body play off of each other, his placement allowing him to float in the contextless space of the image, his striking pose and the enormousness of his member drawing the eyes of the viewer. All combine to make a memorable, iconic image. Another stunning image is a portrait of the artist Pablo Picasso, artist, Beaulieu, France, April 16, 1958, where the artist’s large, round face fills the picture plane, his craggy features lit by strong side lighting, illuminating the whites of his eyes and just a couple of his eyebrow hairs. Magnificent. And then there are just two images (see below) from the artist’s seminal book In the American West. More on those later.

Other portraits and fashion photographs are less successful. A photograph of Twiggy, dress by Roberto Rojas, New York, April 1967 (below), high contrast, cropped close top and bottom, is a vapid portrait of the fashion/model. The image of Elizabeth Taylor, cock feathers by Anello of Emme, New York, July 1964 (below) is, as a good friend of mine said, a cruel photograph of the actress. I tend to agree, although another word, ‘bizarre’, also springs to mind. In some ways, his best known fashion photograph, Dovima with elephants, evening dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955 (below) is a ripper of an image… until you observe the punctum, to which my eyes were drawn like a moth to a flame, the horrible shackles around the legs of the elephants.

Generally, the portraiture and fashion photographs are a disappointment. If, as Robert Nelson in The Age newspaper states, “Avedon’s portraiture is a search for authenticity in the age of the fake,”1 then Avedon fails on many levels. His deadpan portraits do not revive or refresh the life of the sitter. In my eyes their inflection, the subtle expression of the sitter, is not enough to sustain the line of inquiry. I asked the curator and a representative from the Avedon Foundation what they thought Avedon’s photographs were about and both immediately said, together, it was all about surfaces. “Bullshit” rejoined I, thinking of the portrait of Marilyn Monroe, actress, New York, May 6, 1957 (below), in which the photographer pressed the shutter again and again and again as the actress gallivanted around his studio being the vivacious Marilyn, only hours later, when the mask had dropped, to get the photograph that he and everyone else wanted, the vulnerable women. This, and only this image, was then selected to be printed for public consumption, the rest “archived, protected by the Avedon Foundation, never allowed off the negative or the contact sheet.”2 You don’t do that kind of thing, and take that much time, if you are only interested in surfaces.

On reflection perhaps both of us were right, because there is a paradox that lies at the heart of Avedon’s work. There is the surface vacuousness and plasticity of the celebrity / fashion portrait; then the desire of Avedon to be taken seriously as an artist, to transcend the fakeness of the world in which he lived and operated; and also his desire to always be in control of the process – evidenced by how people had to offer themselves up to the great man in order to have their portrait taken, with no control over the results. While Avedon sought to be in touch with the fragility of humanity – the man, woman and child inside – it was also something he was afraid of. Photography gave him control of the situation. In his constructed images, Avedon is both the creator and the observer and as an artist he is always in control. This control continues today, extending to the dictions of The Richard Avedon Foundation, which was set up by Avedon during his lifetime and under his tenants to solely promote his art after he passed away.

When you look into the eyes of the sitters in Avedon’s portraits, there always seems to be a dead, cold look in the eyes. Very rarely does he attempt to reveal the ambiguity of a face that resists artistic production (see Blake Stimson’s text below). And when he does it is only when he has pushed himself to do it (MM, BD). Was he afraid, was he scared that he might have been revealing too much of himself, that he would have “lost control”? If, as he said, there is finally nothing but the face – an autograph, the signature of the face – then getting their autograph was a way to escape his mundane family life through PERFORMANCE. Unfortunately, the performance that he usually evinces from the rich and famous, this “figuring” out of himself through others through control of that performance – is sometimes bland to the point of indifference. Hence my comment on his self-portrait that I mentioned at the start of this review. It would seem to me that Avedon could not face the complex truth, that he could bring himself, through his portraits, to be both inside and outside of a character at one and the same time… to be vulnerable, to be frightened, to loose control!

If he shines himself as a self-portrait onto others, in a quest or search for the human predicament, then his search is for his own frightened face. Only in the Western Project which formed the basis for his seminal book In the American West – only two of which are in the exhibition – does Avedon achieve a degree of insight, humanity and serenity that his other photographs lack and, perhaps, a degree of quietude within himself. Created after serious heart inflammations hindered Avedon’s health in 1974, he was commissioned in 1979 “by Mitchell A. Wilder (1913-1979), the director of the Amon Carter Museum to complete the “Western Project.” Wilder envisioned the project to portray Avedon’s take on the American West. It became a turning point in Avedon’s career when he focused on everyday working class subjects such as miners soiled in their work clothes, housewives, farmers and drifters on larger-than-life prints instead of a more traditional options with famous public figures… The project itself lasted five years concluding with an exhibition and a catalogue. It allowed Avedon and his crew to photograph 762 people and expose approximately 17,000 sheets of 8 x 10 Tri-X Pan film.”3

In his photographs of drifters, miners, beekeepers, oil rig workers, truckers, slaughterhouse workers, carneys and alike the figure is more frontally placed within the image space, pulled more towards the viewer. The images are about the body and the picture plane, about the minutiae of dress and existence and the presence and dignity of his subjects, more than any of his other work. In this work the control of the sitter works to the artist’s advantage (none of these people had ever had their portrait taken before and therefore had to be coached) and, for once, Avedon is not relying on the ego of celebrity of the transience of fashion but on the everyday attitudes of human beings. Through his portrayal of their ordinariness and individuality, he finally reveals his open, exposed self. The project was embedded with Avedon’s goal to discover new dimensions within himself… “from a Jewish photographer from out East who celebrated the lives of famous public figures to an ageing man at one of the last chapters of his life to discovering the inner-worlds, and untold stories of his Western rural subjects… The collection identified a story within his subjects of their innermost self, a connection Avedon admits would not have happened if his new sense of mortality through severe heart conditions and ageing hadn’t occurred.”4 Definitively, this is his best body of work. Finally he got there.

Printed on Agfa’s luscious Portriga Rapid, a double-weight, fibre-based gelatin silver paper which has a warm (brown) colouration for the shadow areas and lovely soft cream highlights, the prints in the exhibition are over six-feet high. The presence of Sandra Bennett, twelve year old, Rocky Ford, Colorado, August 23, 1980 – freckles highlighted by the light, folds of skin under the armpit – and Boyd Fortin, thirteen-year-old, Sweetwater, Texas, March 10, 1979 – visceral innards of the rattlesnake and the look in his eyes – are simply stunning. Both are beautiful prints. In the American West has often been criticised for its voyeuristic themes, for exploiting its subjects and for evoking condescending emotions from the audience such as pity while studying the portraits, but these magnificent photographs are not about that: they are about the exchange of trust between the photographer and a human being, about the dignity of that portrayal, and about the revelation of a “true-self” as much as possible through a photograph – the face of the sitter mirroring the face of the photographer.

While it is fantastic to see these images in Victoria, the first time any Avedon photographs have been seen in this state (well done The Ian Potter Museum of Art!), the exhibition could have been so much more if it had only been more focused on a particular outcome, instead of a patchy, broad brush approach in which everything has been included. I would have been SO happy to see the whole exhibition devoted to Avendon’s most notable and influential work (think Thomas Ruff portraits) – In the American West. The exhibition climaxes (if you like) with three huge, mural-scale portraits of Merce Cunningham (1993, printed 2002), Doon Arbus, writer, New York, 2002 and Harold Bloom, literary critic, New York City, October 28, 2001 (printed 202), big-statement art that enlarges Avedon’s work to sit alongside other sizeable contemporary art works. Spanning floor to ceiling in the gallery space these overblown edifices, Avedon’s reaction to the ever expanding size of postmodern ‘gigantic’ photography, fall as flat as a tack. At this scale the images simply do not work. As Robert Nelson insightfully observes, “To turn Avedon’s portraiture into contemporary art is technically and commercially understandable, but from an artistic point of view, the conflation of familiarity to bombast seems to be faking it one time to many.”5

Finally we have to ask what do artists Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe and Richard Avedon have in common? Well, they were all based in New York; they are all white, middle class, and reasonably affluent; they were either gay, Jewish or Catholic or a mixture of each; they all liked mixing with celebrities and fashion gurus; and they all have foundations set up in their honour. Only in New York. It seems a strange state of affairs to set up a foundation as an artist, purely to promote, sustain, expand, and protect the legacy and control of your art after you are gone. This is the ultimate in control, about controlling the image of the artist from the afterlife.

Foundations such as the Keith Haring Foundation do good work, undertaking outreach and philanthropic programs, making “grants to not-for-profit groups that engage in charitable and educational activities. In accordance with Keith’s wishes, the Foundation concentrates its giving in two areas: The support of organisations which provide educational opportunities to underprivileged children and the support of organisations which engage in education, prevention and care with respect to AIDS and HIV infection.”6 I asked the representative of The Richard Avedon Foundation what charitable or philanthropic work they did. They offer an internship program. That’s it. For an artist so obsessed with image and surfaces, for an artist that eventually found his way to a deeper level of understanding, it’s about time The Richard Avedon Foundation offered more back to the community than just an internship. Promotion and narcissism are one thing, engagement and openness entirely another.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Word count: 2,335

Footnotes

1/ Robert Nelson. “Pin sharp portraits show us real life,” in The Age newspaper, Friday January 2, 2014, p. 22.

2/ Andrew Stephens. “Fame and falsehoods,” in Spectrum, The Age newspaper, Saturday November 29, 2014, p. 12.

3/ Anon. “Richard Avedon,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 01/03/2015

4/ Whitney, Helen. “Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light.” American Masters, Season 10, Episode 3, 1996 quoted in Anon. “Richard Avedon,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 01/03/2015.

5/ Robert Nelson op cit.,

6/ Anon. “About” on The Keith Haring Foundation website [Online] Cited 01/03/2015

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Many thankx to The Ian Potter Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. All installation photographs © Marcus Bunyan and The Ian Potter Museum of Art. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

American photographer Richard Avedon (1923-2004) produced portrait photographs that defined the twentieth century. Richard Avedon People explores his iconic portrait making practice, which was distinctive for its honesty, candour and frankness.

One of the world’s great photographers, Avedon is best known for transforming fashion photography from the late 1940s onwards. The full breadth of Avedon’s renowned work is revealed in this stunning exhibition of 80 black and white photographs dating from 1949 to 2002. Avedon’s instantly recognisable iconic portraits of artists, celebrities, and countercultural leaders feature alongside his less familiar portraiture works that capture ordinary New Yorkers going about their daily lives, and the people of America’s West. With uncompromising rawness and tenderness, Avedon’s photographs capture the character of individuals extraordinary in their uniqueness and united in their shared experience of humanity.

Richard Avedon People pays close attention to the dynamic relationship between the photographer and his sitters and focuses on Avedon’s portraits across social strata, particularly his interest in counter-culture. At the core of his artistic work was a profound concern with the emotional and social freedom of the individual in society. The exhibition reveals Avedon’s sensitivity of observation, empathy of identification and clear vision that characterise these portraits.

Text from The Ian Potter Museum of Art website

“There is no truth in photography. There is no truth about anyone’s person.”

“There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is truth.”

“Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is… the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own.”

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Richard Avedon

Installation photographs of the exhibition Richard Avedon People at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, February 2015
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

“Photography has had its place in the pas de deux between humanism and anti-humanism, of course, and with two complementary qualities of its own. In the main, we have thought for a long time now, it is photography’s capacity for technological reproduction that defines its greater meaning, both by indexing the world and through its expanded and accelerated means of semiosis. This emphasis on the proliferation of signs and indices has been part of our posthumanism, and it has turned us away consistently from readings that emphasise photography’s second, humanist quality, its capacity to produce recognition through the power of judgment and thus realise the experience of solidarity or common cause.

In keeping with the framing for this collection of writings, we might call the first of these two qualities photography’s ‘either / and’ impulse and the second its ‘either / or’. Where the first impulse draws its structuring ideal from deferring the moment of judgment as it moves laterally from one iteration to the next, one photograph to the next, the second develops its philosophical ground by seeing more than meets the eye in any given photograph or image as the basis of judgment. For example, this is how Kierkegaard described the experience of a ‘shadowgraph’ (or ‘an inward picture which does not become perceptible until I see it through the external’) in his Either/Or:

Sometimes when you have scrutinised a face long and persistently, you seem to discover a second face hidden behind the one you see. This is generally an unmistakable sign that this soul harbours an emigrant who has withdrawn from the world in order to watch over secret treasure, and the path for the investigator is indicated by the fact that one face lies beneath the other, as it were, from which he understands that he must attempt to penetrate within if he wishes to discover anything. The face, which ordinarily is the mirror of the soul, here takes on, though it be but for an instant, an ambiguity that resists artistic production. An exceptional eye is needed to see it, and trained powers of observation to follow this infallible index of a secret grief. … The present is forgotten, the external is broken through, the past is resurrected, grief breathes easily. The sorrowing soul finds relief, and sorrow’s sympathetic knight errant rejoices that he has found the object of his search; for we seek not the present, but sorrow whose nature is to pass by. In the present it manifests itself only for a fleeting instant, like the glimpse one may have of a man turning a corner and vanishing from sight. (Either/Or, Volume 1, 171, 173)

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Roland Barthes was trying to describe a similar experience with his account of the punctum just as Walter Benjamin did with his figure of the angel of history: ‘His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events [in the same way we experience photography’s ‘either / and’ iteration of images], he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet’. As Kierkegaard, Barthes, and Benjamin suggest, the old humanist experience of struggle with the singular experience of on-going failure to realise its hallowed ideals only ever arose in photography or anywhere else fleetingly, but it is all but invisible to us now.”

Søren Kierkegaard. Either/Or, volume I, 1843, 171, 173 quoted in Blake Stimson. “What was Humanism?” on the Either/And website [Online] Cited 01/03/2015

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, New York, May 8, 1957
1957
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Mae West, actor, with Mr. America, New York
1954
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
New York Life #5, Lower West Side, New York City, September 9, 1949
1949
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon People celebrates the work of American photographer Richard Avedon (1923 to 2004), renowned for his achievements in the art of black and white portraiture. Avedon’s masterful work in this medium will be revealed in an in-depth overview of 80 photographs from 1949 to 2002, to be displayed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne from 6 December 2014 to 15 March 2015.

Known for his exquisitely simple compositions, Avedon’s images express the essence of his subjects in charming and disarming ways. His work is also a catalogue of the who’s who of twentieth-century American culture. In the show, instantly recognisable and influential artists, celebrities, and countercultural leaders including Bob Dylan, Truman Capote, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Malcolm X, are presented alongside portraits of the unknown. Always accessible, they convey his profound concern with the emotional and social freedom of the individual.

Ian Potter Museum of Art Director, Kelly Gellatly said, “Richard Avedon was one of the world’s great photographers. He is known for transforming fashion photography from the late 1940s onwards, and his revealing portraits of celebrities, artists and political identities.

“People may be less familiar, however, with his portraiture works that capture ordinary New Yorkers going about their daily lives, and the people of America’s West,” Gellatly continued. “Richard Avedon People brings these lesser-known yet compelling portraits together with his always captivating iconic images. In doing so, the exhibition provides a rounded and truly inspiring insight into Avedon’s extraordinary practice.”

Avedon changed the face of fashion photography through his exploration of motion and emotion. From the outset, he was fascinated by photography’s capacity for suggesting the personality and evoking the life of his subjects. This is evidenced across the works in the exhibition, which span Avedon’s career from his influential fashion photography and minimalist portraiture of well-known identities, to his depictions of America’s working class.

Avedon’s practice entered the public imagination through his long association with seminal American publications. He commenced his career photographing for Harper’s Bazaar, followed by a 20-year partnership with Vogue. Later, he established strong collaborations with Egoiste and The New Yorker, becoming staff photographer for The New Yorker in 1992.

Richard Avedon People is the first solo exhibition of Avedon’s work to be displayed in Victoria following showings in Perth and Canberra. The exhibition was curated by the National Portrait Gallery’s Senior Curator, Dr Christopher Chapman, in partnership with the Richard Avedon Foundation over the course of two years. The Foundation was established by Avedon in his lifetime and encourages the study and appreciation of the artist’s photography through exhibitions, publications and outreach programs.

Dr Christopher Chapman

Dr Christopher Chapman is Senior Curator at the National Portrait Gallery where he has produced major exhibitions exploring diverse experiences of selfhood and identity. He joined the Gallery in 2008 and was promoted to Senior Curator in 2011. He works closely with the Gallery’s management team to drive collection and exhibition strategy. Working in the visual arts field since the late 1980s, Christopher has held curatorial roles at the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of South Australia. He has lectured in visual arts and culture for the Australian National University and his PhD thesis examined youth masculinity and themes of self-sacrifice in photography and film.

A National Portrait Gallery of Australia exhibition presented in partnership with the Richard Avedon Foundation, New York.

Press release from The Ian Potter Museum of Art

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Bob Dylan, musician, Central Park, New York, February 20, 1965
1965
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Dovima with elephants, evening dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955
1955
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Marilyn Monroe, actress, New York, May 6, 1957
1957
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Civil rights demonstration, Atlanta, Georgia
c. 1963
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Self portrait, New York City, July 23, 1969
1969
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Michelangelo Antonioni, film director, with his wife Enrica, Rome, 1993
1993
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

“Insights into the crossover of genres and the convergence of modern media gave Avedon’s work its extra combustive push. He got fame as someone who projected accents of notoriety and even scandal within a decorous field. By not going too far in exceeding known limits, he attained the highest rank at Vogue. In American popular culture, this was where Avedon mattered, and mattered a lot. But it was not enough.

In fact, Avedon’s increasingly parodistic magazine work often left – or maybe fed – an impression that its author was living beneath his creative means. In the more permanent form of his books, of which there have been five so far, he has visualised another career that would rise above fashion. Here Avedon demonstrates a link between what he hopes is social insight and artistic depth, choosing as a vehicle the straight portrait. Supremacy as a fashion photographer did not grant him status in his enterprise – quite the contrary – but it did provide him access to notable sitters. Their presence before his camera confirmed the mutual attraction of the well-connected.”

Max Kozloff. “Richard Avedon’s “In the American West”,” on the ASX website, January 24, 2011 [Online] Cited 01/03/2015

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Elizabeth Taylor, cock feathers by Anello of Emme, New York, July 1964
1964
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Twiggy, dress by Roberto Rojas, New York, April 1967
1967
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Boyd Fortin, thirteen-year-old, Sweetwater, Texas, March 10, 1979
1979, printed 1984-1985
From the project the Western Project and the book In the American West
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Sandra Bennett, twelve year old, Rocky Ford, Colorado, August 23, 1980
1980, printed 1984-1985
From the project the Western Project and the book In the American West
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

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Dec

Exhibition: ‘Horst: Photographer of Style’ at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, exhibition, existence, fashion photography, gallery website, intimacy, jewellery, light, New York, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, quotation, reality, sculpture, space, surrealism, time, video and works on paper
Tags: Alexander Liberman, american artist, American fashion photography, american photographer, American photography, andy warhol, art, Behind the scenes at American Vogue, Bergdorf Goodman, Bette Davis, Bombay Bathing Fashion, Bunny Hartley, Can the Leopard…?, Carmen Dell'Orefice, Chanel, Charles James, Christopher Isherwood, Coco Chanel, colour fashion photography, colour photography, colour transparencies, conde nast, Corset by Detolle for Mainbocher, Cy Twombly, design, Diana Vreeland, Dinner suit and headdress by Schiaparelli, Dorian Leigh, Dress by Hattie Carnegie, Elsa Schiaparelli, Estrella Boissevain, fashion, fashion photography, George Hoyningen-Huene, Gertrude Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein at Balmain Fashion Show, Ginger Rogers, Gloria Vanderbilt, Gloria Vanderbilt age 17 wearing a dress by Howard Greer, Greta Garbo, Hat and coat-dress by Bergdorf Goodman, Hattie Carnegie, haute couture, Helen Bennett, high society, Horst directing fashion shoot with Lisa Fonssagrives, Horst in Colour, Horst P. Horst, Horst P. Horst and Valentine Lawford, Horst P. Horst Birthday Gloves, Horst P. Horst Chanel, Horst P. Horst Corset by Detolle for Mainbocher, Horst P. Horst Dinner suit and headdress by Schiaparelli, Horst P. Horst Dress by Hattie Carnegie, Horst P. Horst Gertrude Stein at Balmain Fashion Show, Horst P. Horst Gloria Vanderbilt age 17 wearing a dress by Howard Greer, Horst P. Horst Hat and coat-dress by Bergdorf Goodman, Horst P. Horst Lillian Marcuson, Horst P. Horst Lillian Marcuson in Dior's belted two-piece suit in black rustic wool, Horst P. Horst Lisa Fonssagrives "I Love You", Horst P. Horst Lisa Fonssagrives hands, Horst P. Horst Male Nude, Horst P. Horst Marlene Dietrich, Horst P. Horst Millicent Rogers in a Charles James gown, Horst P. Horst Muriel Maxwell, Horst P. Horst Nina de Voe, Horst P. Horst Odalisque I, Horst P. Horst Outfit by Tina Leser, Horst P. Horst Patterns from Nature Photographic Collage, Horst P. Horst Round the Clock, Horst P. Horst Salvador Dali's costumes, Horst P. Horst Salvador Dali's costumes for Leonid Massine's ballet Bacchanale, Horst P. Horst Still Life, Horst P. Horst Summer Fashions, Horst P. Horst View of ruins at the palace of Persepolis, Horst P. Horst Yves Saint Laurent poses in the apartment's grand salon, Horst P.Horst Bombay Bathing Fashion, Horst P.Horst Bunny Hartley, Horst P.Horst Lisa with Turban, Horst Vogue covers, Horst: Photographer of Style, Installation images of Horst - Photographer of Style, Joan Crawford, Karl Blossfeldt, Karl Lagerfeld, Lanvin, large format camera, Lillian Marcuson, Lillian Marcuson in Dior's belted two-piece suit, Lillian Marcuson in Dior's belted two-piece suit in black rustic wool, Lisa Fonssagrives, Lisa Fonssagrives "I Love You", Lisa Fonssagrives hands, Lisa with Turban, Lyla Zelensky, Mainbocher, Mainbocher Corset, male nude photography, male nudes, Malik Mansur Khan Qashqa'i, Marlene Dietrich, Milieu du Siècle, Millicent Rogers, Millicent Rogers in a Charles James gown, Molyneux, Muriel Maxwell, New Objectivity, Nina de Voe, Noel Coward, nude studies, Odalisque I, Outfit by Tina Leser, Parisian haute couture, Patterns From Nature, Patterns from Nature Photographic Collage, Pavel Tchelitchew, Persepolis Bull, photographic seeing, photography, post-war New York, Rita Hayworth, Ronald Jeans, Ronald Jeans Can the Leopard…?, Roy Stevens Horst directing fashion shoot with Lisa Fonssagrives, Salute to the Thirties, Salvador Dalí, Salvador Dali's costumes for Leonid Massine's ballet Bacchanale, society photography, surrealism, the male nude, theatre, Tina Leser, travel photographs, travel photography, V&A, Valentine Lawford, Vanity Fair, Victoria and Albert Museum, View of ruins at the palace of Persepolis, Vionnet, Vivien Leigh, Vogue covers, Yves Saint Laurent, Yves Saint Laurent poses in the apartment's grand salon

Exhibition dates: 6th September 2014 – 4th January 2015

Curator: Susanna Brown, Curator of Photographs at the V&A

Installation image of Horst – Photographer of Style at the V&A
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Steichen, Penn, Avedon, Newman – and then there is Horst, master of them all. Style, elegance, lighting, framing, colour but above all panache – the guts and talent to push it just that little bit further.

Marcus

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

“Fashion is an expression of the times. Elegance is something else again.”

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Horst, 1984

This autumn, the V&A will present the definitive retrospective exhibition of the work of master photographer Horst P. Horst (1906-1999) – one of the leading photographers of the 20th century. In his illustrious 60-year career, German-born Horst worked predominantly in Paris and New York and creatively traversed the worlds of photography, art, fashion, design, theatre and high society.

Horst: Photographer of Style will display 250 photographs, alongside haute couture garments, magazines, film footage and ephemera. The exhibition explores Horst’s collaborations and friendships with leading couturiers such as Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli in Paris; stars including Marlene Dietrich and Noël Coward; and artists and designers such as Salvador Dalí and Jean-Michel Frank. Highlights of the exhibition include photographs recently donated to the V&A by Gert Elfering, art collector and owner of the Horst Estate, previously unpublished vintage prints, and more than 90 Vogue covers by Horst.

The exhibition will also reveal lesser-known aspects of Horst’s work: nude studies, travel photographs from the Middle East and patterns created from natural forms. The creative process behind some of his most famous photographs, such as the Mainbocher Corset, will be revealed through the inclusion of original contact sheets, sketches and cameras. The many sources that influenced Horst – from ancient Classical art to Bauhaus ideals of modern design and Surrealism in 1930s Paris – will be explored.

Martin Roth, Director of the V&A said: “Horst was one of the greatest photographers of fashion and society and produced some of the most famous and evocative images of the 20th century. This exhibition will shine a light on all aspects of his long and distinguished career. Horst’s legacy and influence, which has been seen in work by artists, designers and performers including Herb Ritts, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Weber and Madonna, continues today.”

Horst’s career straddled the opulence of pre-war Parisian haute couture and the rise of ready-to-wear in post-war New York and his style developed from lavish studio set-ups to a more austere approach in the latter half of the 20th century. The exhibition will begin in the 1930s with Horst’s move to Paris and his early experiments in the Vogue studio. Among his first models and muses were Lisa Fonssagrives, Helen Bennett and Lyla Zelensky. Vintage black and white photographs from the archive of Paris Vogue will be displayed alongside garments in shades of black, white, silver and gold by Parisian couturiers such as Chanel, Lanvin, Molyneux and Vionnet.

The exhibition will then focus on Horst’s Surreal-inspired studies and collaborations with Salvador Dalí and Elsa Schiaparelli. Fashion photographs will be shown with trompe l’oeil portraits and haunting still life. Horst excelled at portraiture and in the 1930s he captured some of Hollywood’s brightest stars: Rita Hayworth, Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, Noël Coward, Ginger Rogers, Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford, to name a few.

Horst travelled widely throughout the 1940s and 1950s to Israel, Iran, Syria, Italy and Morocco. An escape from the world of fashion and city environs, his little-known travel photographs reveal a fascination for ancient cultures, landscapes and architecture. On display will be works taken in Iran such as the Persepolis Bull, Horst’s powerful image of a vast sculpture head amidst the ruins of a once magnificent palace, and images documenting the annual migration of the nomadic Qashqai clan.

Detailed studies of natural forms such as flowers, minerals, shells and butterfly wings from the project Patterns From Nature, will be shown alongside a series of kaleidoscopic collages made by arranging photographs in simple repeat; his intention was that these dynamic patterns could be used as designs for textiles, wallpaper, carpets, plastics and glass.

Horst was admired for his dramatic lighting and became one of the first photographers to perfect the new colour techniques of the 1930s. A short film of him at work in the Vogue studios during the 1940s will be shown with an introduction to his peers including Lee Miller, Cecil Beaton and Irving Penn. The advent of colour enabled a fresh approach and Horst went on to create more than 90 Vogue covers and countless pages in vivid colour. A selection of 25 large colour photographs, newly printed from the original transparencies from the Condé Nast Archive, will demonstrate Horst’s exceptional skill as a colourist. These prints feature Horst’s favourite models from the 1940s and 50s, such as Carmen Dell’Orefice, Muriel Maxwell and Dorian Leigh, and will be shown together with preparatory sketches, which have never previously been exhibited.

In the early 1950s, Horst created a series of male nudes for an exhibition in Paris for which the models were carefully posed and dramatically lit to accentuate their musculature. The series evokes the classical sculpture that Horst so admired throughout his career. During the 1960s and 1970s, Horst photographed some of the world’s most beautiful and luxurious homes for House and Garden and Vogue under the editorship of his friend Diana Vreeland. A three-sided projection and interactive screens will present these colourful studies. Among the most memorable are the Art Deco apartment of Karl Lagerfeld, the three lavish dwellings of Yves Saint Laurent and the Roman palazzo of artist Cy Twombly.

In the latter years of Horst’s life, his early aesthetic experienced a renaissance. The period also witnessed a flurry of new books, exhibitions, and television documentaries celebrating his work. Horst produced new, lavish prints in platinum-palladium for museums and the collector’s market, selecting emblematic works from every decade of his career, which will be showcased as the finale to the exhibition.

Press release from the V&A

A fore-runner of the timeless look of Chanel, here in brown and white check rayon with collar, cuffs and lapels in white piquè that matches the buttoned top.

Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999)
Hat and coat-dress by Bergdorf Goodman, modelled by Estrella Boissevain
1938
© Conde Nast / Horst Estate

Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999)
Gertrude Stein at Balmain Fashion Show
1946
© Conde Nast / Horst Estate

Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999)
Lillian Marcuson in Dior’s belted two-piece suit in black rustic wool, called ‘Milieu du Siècle’
1949
© Condé Nast/Horst Estate

Model (unidentified) and Dorian Leigh (r) in bathing suit and sleeveless shirt cover-up by Carolyn Schnurer 1951 Vogue

Haute Couture

When Horst joined Vogue in 1931, Paris was still the world’s undisputed centre of high fashion. Photography had begun to eclipse graphic illustration in fashion magazines and the publisher Condé Montrose Nast devoted large sums to improving the quality of image reproduction. He insisted that Vogue photographers work with a large format camera, which produced richly detailed negatives measuring ten by eight inches.

The creation of a Horst photograph was a collaborative process, involving the talents of the photographer and model, the art director, fashion editor, studio assistants and set technicians. The modelling profession was still in its infancy in the 1930s and many of those who posed under the hot studio lights were stylish friends of the magazine’s staff, often actresses or aristocrats.

By the mid 1930s, Horst had superseded his mentor George Hoyningen-Huene as Paris Vogue‘s primary photographer. His images frequently appeared in the French, British and American editions of the magazine. Many of the photographs on display in the exhibition are vintage prints from the company’s archive.

Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999)
Dinner suit and headdress by Schiaparelli
1947
© Conde Nast / Horst Estate

Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999)
Millicent Rogers in a Charles James gown and a gold necklace of her own design
Vogue, February 1, 1949
© Conde Nast / Horst Estate

Horst in Colour from Victoria and Albert Museum

This film reveals the process of creating new colour prints for the exhibition Horst: Photographer of Style. Horst was quick to master new colour processes, introduced in the late 1930s, and he created hundreds of vibrant fashion photographs for Vogue.

The V&A team worked closely with specialists at the Condé Nast Archive and expert printer Ken Allen to select and print from Horst’s early transparencies, which date from the 1930s to the 1950s. The film includes insights into Horst’s dynamic approach from model Carmen Dell’Orefice and Vogue‘s International Editor at Large, Hamish Bowles.

Fashion in Colour

The 1930s ushered in huge technical advancements in colour photography. Horst adapted quickly to a new visual vocabulary, creating some of Vogue‘s most dazzling colour images. In 1935 he photographed the Russian Princess Nadejda Sherbatow in a red velveteen jacket for the first of his many Vogue cover pictures.

The occupation of Paris transformed the world of fashion. The majority of French ateliers closed and many couturiers and buyers left the country. Remaining businesses struggled with extreme shortages of cloth and other supplies. The scarcity of French fashions in America, however, enabled American designers to come into their own.

Horst’s colour photographs are rarely exhibited because few vintage prints exist. Colour capture took place on a transparency which could be reproduced on the magazine page without the need to create a photographic print. The size of the new prints displayed in this room of the exhibition echoes the large scale of a group of Horst images printed in 1938 at the Condé Nast press.

Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999)
Gloria Vanderbilt age 17 wearing a dress by Howard Greer, New York
1941
© Conde Nast / Horst Estate

At 17, in Beverly Hills wearing a tabletop dress by Howard Greer. Tabletop dresses looked good from the waist up when stars were photographed sitting in restaurants and nightclub

Stage and Screen

Horst’s portraits spanned a wide cross-section of subjects, from artists and writers to presidents and royalty. In the 1930s, he became aware of a new focus for his work. As he later noted in his book Salute to the Thirties (1971), glamorous Hollywood movie stars were imperceptibly assuming the place left vacant by Europe’s vanishing royal families. With the approach of the Second World War, the escapism offered by theatre and cinema gained in popularity. Horst began to photograph these new, classless celebrities, both in costume and as themselves.

The first well-known star Horst photographed was the English performer Gertrude Lawrence, then appearing in Ronald Jeans’ play Can the Leopard…? at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. Horst’s first portrait of a Hollywood actress, Bette Davis, appeared in Vogue‘s sister magazine Vanity Fair in 1932.

Platinum

The 1980s witnessed a flurry of new books, exhibitions and television documentaries about Horst. He produced new prints for museums and the collector’s market, selecting emblematic works from every decade of his career to be reprinted in platinum-palladium, sometimes with new titles. This was a complex and expensive technique, employing metals more expensive than gold. Failing eyesight finally forced him to stop working in 1992.

Horst’s platinum-palladium prints are treasured for their nuanced tones, surface quality and permanence. His style had experienced a renaissance in 1978 when Francine Crescent, French Vogue‘s editor in chief, had invited him to photograph the Paris collections. Horst’s work for her echoed his atmospheric, spot-lit studies of the 1930s. His use of the platinum process for creating new and reproducing early works ensured his mastery of light, mood and composition would be enjoyed by a new audience.

Male Nudes

In the early 1950s Horst produced a set of distinctive photographs unlike much of his previous output. These male figure studies were exhibited for the first time in Paris in 1953 and reprinted using the platinum-palladium process in the 1980s. The studies exemplify Horst’s sense of form. All emphasis is on the idealised human body, expressive light and shadow. Monumental and anonymous nudes resemble classical sculptures. As Mehemed Agha (1929-78), art director of American Vogue, commented:

“Horst takes the inert clay of human flesh and models it into the decorative shapes of his own devising. Every gesture of his models is planned, every line controlled and coordinated to the whole of the picture. Some gestures look natural and careless, because carefully rehearsed; the others, like Voltaire’s god, were invented by the artist because they did not exist.”

Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999)
Salvador Dali’s costumes for Leonid Massine’s ballet Bacchanale
1939
© Conde Nast / Horst Estate

Surrealism

The Surrealist art movement explored unique ways of interpreting the world, turning to dreams and the unconscious for inspiration. During the 1930s Surrealism escaped its radical avant-garde roots and transformed design, fashion, advertising, theatre and film. Horst’s photographs of this period feature mysterious, whimsical and surreal elements combined with his classical aesthetic. He created trompe l’oeil still life, photographed the surreal-infused dress designs of his friend Elsa Schiaparelli and collaborated with the artist Salvador Dalí. He shared with the Surrealists a fascination with the representation of the female body, often fragmenting and eroticising the human form in his images.

His most celebrated photograph of the era is Mainbocher Corset (1939). Decades after the photograph was made, Main Bocher himself expressed his admiration for Horst’s virtuosity, writing,

“Your photographs are sheer genius and delight my soul … each one is perfect by itself.”

Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999)
Patterns from Nature Photographic Collage
1945
© Conde Nast / Horst Estate

Patterns from Nature

Horst’s second book, Patterns from Nature (1946), and the photographs from which it originated, are a surprising diversion from the high glamour of his fashion and celebrity photographs. These close-up, black and white images of plants, shells and minerals were taken in New York’s Botanical Gardens, in the forests of New England, in Mexico, and along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

This personal project was partly inspired by photographs of plants by Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932). Horst was struck by “their revelation of the similarity of vegetable forms to art forms like wrought iron and Gothic architecture.” Horst’s interest was also linked to the technical purity of ‘photographic seeing’, a philosophy associated with the New Objectivity movement of the 1920s and ’30s. Practitioners took natural forms out of their contexts and examined them with such close attention that they became unfamiliar and revelatory.

Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999)
View of ruins at the palace of Persepolis, Persia
1949
© Conde Nast / Horst Estate

Travel

In the summer of 1949, Horst journeyed to the Middle East with his partner Valentine Lawford, then political counsellor at the British Embassy in Tehran. They travelled by road from Beirut to Persepolis, where Horst was able to photograph parts of the ancient Persian city that had only recently been uncovered. Afterwards, Horst visited the newly established State of Israel on a photographic assignment for Vogue.

The trip left a strong impression on Horst and he returned in the spring of 1950. He spent a week with Lawford at the relatively remote south-eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, before documenting the annual migration of the Qashqa’i clan. Horst and Lawford were invited by Malik Mansur Khan Qashqa’i to spend ten days with his tribe as they travelled by camel and horse, in search of vegetation for their flocks.

Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999)
Yves Saint Laurent poses in the apartment’s grand salon for a November 1971 ‘Vogue’ photo spread
1971
© Conde Nast / Horst Estate

Living in Style

In 1947 Horst acquired five acres of land in Oyster Bay Cove, Long Island, part of the estate once owned by the designer Louis Comfort Tiffany. On the land he described as ‘everything I had ever dreamed of’, Horst built a unique house and landscaped garden. British diplomat Valentine Lawford visited for the first time in 1947, with Noël Coward, Christopher Isherwood, and Greta Garbo. It was the beginning of a relationship with Horst that would last until Lawford’s death in 1991.

They welcomed many friends and visitors to Long Island, including the dynamic editor Diana Vreeland. She left Harper’s Bazaar for Vogue in 1962 and soon put the couple to work on Vogue‘s ‘Fashions in Living’ pages. The homes and tastes of everyone from Jackie Onassis to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Andy Warhol and Karl Lagerfeld featured in their articles. Horst’s creative chemistry with Vreeland brought him a new lease of life.

Roy Stevens (American, b. 1916)
Horst directing fashion shoot with Lisa Fonssagrives
15 May 1941
© Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images

In the Studio

During the 1940s Horst worked primarily in the Condé Nast studio on the 19th floor of the Graybar Building, an Art Deco skyscraper on Manhattan’s Lexington Avenue. The busy studio was well equipped with a variety of lights and props and Horst worked closely with talented art director Alexander Liberman. Like Horst, he had found refuge in the artistic circles of Paris and New York, and enjoyed a long career with Condé Nast.

By 1946 dressing the American woman had become one of the country’s largest industries, grossing over six billion dollars a year. The staff of Vogue expanded accordingly. In 1951 Horst found a studio of his own, the former penthouse apartment of artist Pavel Tchelitchew, with high ceilings and a spectacular view over the river. Horst developed a new approach to photography in response to the abundance of daylight and for a time his famous atmospheric shadows disappeared.

Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL

Opening hours:
The V&A is open daily from 10.00 to 17.45 and until 22.00 on Fridays

Victoria and Albert Museum website

Horst web page

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Oct

Exhibition: ‘Sharp, Clear Pictures: Edward Steichen’s World War 1 and Condé Nast Years’ at The Art Institute of Chicago

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, Art Institute of Chicago, black and white photography, documentary photography, exhibition, fashion photography, gallery website, intimacy, landscape, light, maps, memory, painting, photographic series, photography, pictorialism, portrait, psychological, quotation, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: 291, aerial photography, aerial photography of World War 1, aerial war photography, Alfred Stieglitz, american artist, American celebrity photographer, American Expeditionary Forces, American fashion photography, american photographer, American photography, Bomb Dropped From Airplane, Camera work, Charles Chaplin, Concrete landing platform for airplanes at Puxieux, Condé Nast publications, conde nast, Edward Steichen, Edward Steichen Charles Chaplin, Edward Steichen Fred Astaire in Funny Face, Edward Steichen Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, Edward Steichen Lily Pons, Edward Steichen Mary Duncan in "Lilly", Edward Steichen Mary Pickford, Edward Steichen Noel Coward, Edward Steichen Self-Portrait with Brush and Palette, Edward Steichen Untitled (Vaux), Edward Steichen Winston Churchill, Edward Steichen's World War I and Condé Nast Years, Fred Astaire, Fred Astaire in Funny Face, Funny Face, Greta Garbo, Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, In Chateau Thierry Sector, John Gilbert, Lily Pons, Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, Major Edward J. Steichen, Mary Duncan, Mary Duncan in "Lilly", Mary Pickford, military aerial photography, modern warfare, Modernist Photography, Noel Coward, Photo Secession movement, Photo Secessionists, Photographic Section of the American Expeditionary Forces, Pictorialist aesthetic, realist photographs, realist photography, Self-Portrait with Brush and Palette, Sharp Clear Pictures, Steichen Bomb Dropped From Airplane, Steichen Camera Work, Steichen Concrete landing platform for airplanes at Puxieux, Steichen In Chateau Thierry Sector, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Voulangis, war photography, war photography of World War 1, Winston Churchill, World War I aerial photographs

Exhibition dates: 24th June – 13th October 2014

Photographic Section, U.S. Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) and Major Edward J. Steichen, A.S.A.
Bomb Dropped From Airplane
1918
Gelatin silver print, from loose-leaf album of aerial photographs from the Photographic Section, Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces, World War I
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of William Kistler
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Brave man, hanging over the side of a rickety biplane at 15,000 feet taking aerial photographs during World War One but just look at the images he brought back, especially the hellish Untitled (Vaux) (1918-1919, below). I’m still not that convinced by his portraiture. The technical proficiency is magnificent (lighting, set, costume) but they are just too styled for me – the cat in the top left corner of Noel Coward (1932, below), the bowler hat of Charles Chaplin (1931, below) and the double shadow of Fred Astaire in Funny Face (1927, below) coupled with bands of light/dark and tons of “atmosphere” (certainly not sharp and clear!) which echo the mannerisms of Pictorialism. I see little modernist aesthetics and advertising tactics in these photographs. They are beautiful but they leave me unengaged. I much prefer the advertising photography in the next posting, much more angular and modern. You will have to wait and see what it is!

Marcus

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

Photographic Section, U.S. Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) and Major Edward J. Steichen, A.S.A.
In Chateau Thierry Sector showing service bridges destroyed by retreating enemy forces
September 7, 1918
Gelatin silver print, from loose-leaf album of aerial photographs from the Photographic Section, Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces, World War I
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of William Kistler
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photographic Section, U.S. Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) and Major Edward J. Steichen, A.S.A.
In Chateau Thierry Sector showing service bridges destroyed by retreating enemy forces (detail)
September 7, 1918
Gelatin silver print, from loose-leaf album of aerial photographs from the Photographic Section, Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces, World War I
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of William Kistler
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photographic Section, U.S. Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) and Major Edward J. Steichen, A.S.A.
Concrete landing platform for airplanes at Puxieux (each strip about 50 ft. wide by 250 ft long), crescent shape mass was formed by the pile of broken concrete when the platform was removed, altitude 15,000 ft.,
August 23, 1918
Gelatin silver print, from loose-leaf album of aerial photographs from the Photographic Section, Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces, World War I
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of William Kistler
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photographic Section, U.S. Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) and Major Edward J. Steichen, A.S.A.
Concrete landing platform for airplanes at Puxieux (each strip about 50 ft. wide by 250 ft long), crescent shape mass was formed by the pile of broken concrete when the platform was removed, altitude 15,000 ft., (detail)
August 23, 1918
Gelatin silver print, from loose-leaf album of aerial photographs from the Photographic Section, Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces, World War I
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of William Kistler
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photographic Section, U.S. Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) and Major Edward J. Steichen, A.S.A.
Untitled (Vaux)
1918-1919
Gelatin silver print, from loose-leaf album of aerial photographs from the Photographic Section, Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces, World War I
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of William Kistler
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

At the start of World War I in 1914, Edward Steichen was a pioneering champion of art photography – catapulting to fame as a leading member of the Photo Secessionists and as cofounder of the trailblazing magazine Camera Work. Yet by the early 1920s, Steichen had rejected the soft focus, dreamy landscapes and portraits of his early years in favour of realist photographs made for informational purposes or popular consumption. This turning point was first marked by his role in World War I as chief of the Photographic Section of the American Expeditionary Forces from 1917 to 1919; and was fully realised in his subsequent work as lead photographer at Condé Nast publications from 1923 to 1937.

While on military duty, Steichen helped adapt aerial photography for intelligence purposes, implementing surveillance programs that had a lasting impact on modern warfare. He later reflected: “The wartime problem of making sharp, clear pictures from a vibrating, speeding airplane ten to twenty thousand feet in the air had brought me a new kind of technical interest in photography… Now I wanted to know all that could be expected from photography.” Steichen began to value photography’s capacity to transmit and encode information, and he soon proved his savvy as a collaborator and producer rather than a solitary auteur – new skills that enabled his subsequent groundbreaking career in magazines. Upon his return to New York in 1923, Steichen joined Condé Nast publications, creating iconic fashion photographs and celebrity portraits for Vogue and Vanity Fair. Over a period of nearly 15 years he created images that redefined the field through their clever use of modernist aesthetics and advertising tactics, becoming an influential impresario who promoted photography as a mass-media tool.

Focusing on rarely seen Steichen photographs drawn from the Art Institute’s collection, this exhibition includes a unique album of over 80 World War I aerial photographs assembled and annotated by Steichen himself as well as a group of iconic glamour portraits and fashion photographs done for Condé Nast, featuring notable figures such as Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, and Gloria Swanson.

Text from The Art Institute of Chicago website

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Mary Duncan in “Lilly”
1931
The Art Institute of Chicago, bequest of Edward Steichen by direction of Joanna T. Steichen and George Eastman House
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Throughout his extensive career, famed photographer Edward Steichen (1879-1973) championed photography’s multiple roles – from his earliest efforts to promote American photography as an equal among the modern fine arts, to his groundbreaking work for the magazine industry. A new exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, Sharp, Clear Pictures: Edward Steichen’s World War I and Condé Nast Years, on view from June 28 – September 28, 2014, in Galleries 1-4, examines a crucial period in Steichen’s career, when he rejected the painterly Pictorialist aesthetic of his early years in favor of a straight, information-based approach. This turning point was first signalled by Steichen’s role in World War I, as chief of the Photographic Section of the American Expeditionary Forces from 1917 to 1919, and was fully realised in his work as lead photographer at Condé Nast Publications from 1923 to 1937.

Focusing on rarely seen Steichen photographs drawn from the Art Institute’s collection, this exhibition includes a unique album of over 80 World War I aerial photographs assembled and annotated by Steichen himself as well as a group of iconic glamour portraits and fashion photographs done for Condé Nast, featuring such early Hollywood royalty as Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson, as well as key historical figures like Winston Churchill.

Prior to WWI, Edward Steichen was a pioneering champion of art photography – he had a leading reputation in the Photo Secession movement in New York, and, along with his mentor Alfred Stieglitz, had cofounded its trail-blazing fine-art journal Camera Work. Together, they opened the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, later 291, which first presented Picasso, Bråncusi, and a range of progressive photographers to the American public. In 1906, seeking a change, Steichen moved to Voulangis, France, with his family, where he immersed himself in European modern art. They remained there until the outbreak of the war in 1914, when, under the threat of advancing German troops, they fled home to the United States.

In July 1917, Steichen entered active duty with the goal of becoming “a photographic reporter, as Mathew Brady had been in the Civil War,” but he quickly abandoned this romantic notion to help implement the newest weapon of war – aerial photography. While on military duty, Steichen helped adapt aerial photography for intelligence purposes, implementing surveillance programs that had a lasting impact on modern warfare. He later reflected: “The wartime problem of making sharp, clear pictures from a vibrating, speeding airplane ten to twenty thousand feet in the air had brought me a new kind of technical interest in photography… Now I wanted to know all that could be expected from photography.” Steichen began to value photography’s capacity to transmit and encode information, and he soon proved his savvy as a collaborator and producer rather than a solitary auteur – new skills that enabled his subsequent groundbreaking career in magazines.

Following his military discharge in 1919, Steichen returned to Voulangis, where for a period of three years he created work that embraced clear focus, close cropping, and other techniques of modernist photography. Upon his return to New York in 1923, Steichen joined Condé Nast Publications, creating iconic fashion photographs and celebrity portraits for Vogue and Vanity Fair. In undertaking this challenging endeavour, the organisational and technical skills Steichen gained during his time in the military and in Voulangis proved invaluable.

Steichen championed the cultural and economic potential of celebrity, fashion, and advertising photography, creating images that became the foundation for contemporary magazine photography. Over a period of nearly 15 years he created images that redefined the field through their clever use of modernist aesthetics and advertising tactics, becoming an influential impresario who promoted photography as a mass-media tool.

Press release from The Art Institute of Chicago website

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Self-Portrait with Brush and Palette
1902
The Art Institute of Chicago, Alfred Stieglitz Collection
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Mary Pickford
1924
The Art Institute of Chicago, Bequest of Edward Steichen by direction of Joanna T. Steichen and George Eastman House
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Fred Astaire in Funny Face
1927
The Art Institute of Chicago, Bequest of Edward Steichen by direction of Joanna T. Steichen and George Eastman House
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Noel Coward
1932
The Art Institute of Chicago, bequest of Edward Steichen by direction of Joanna T. Steichen and George Eastman House
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Charles Chaplin
1931
The Art Institute of Chicago, Bequest of Edward Steichen by direction of Joanna T. Steichen and George Eastman House
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Lily Pons
1932
The Art Institute of Chicago, bequest of Edward Steichen by direction of Joanna T. Steichen and George Eastman House
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Winston Churchill
1932
The Art Institute of Chicago, Bequest of Edward Steichen by direction of Joanna T. Steichen and George Eastman House
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Greta Garbo and John Gilbert
1928
The Art Institute of Chicago, bequest of Edward Steichen by direction of Joanna T. Steichen and George Eastman House
© 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60603-6404
Phone: (312) 443-3600

Opening hours:
Thursday – Monday 11am – 5pm
Closed Tuesday and Wednesday

The Art Institute of Chicago website

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Jul

Exhibition: ‘Posing Beauty in African American Culture’ at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, light, memory, New York, photographic series, photography, portrait, quotation, reality, space, street photography and time
Tags: "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler, A Desert Queen, African American Culture, African American photographer, African American photography, African-American women, American Family, American fashion photography, American fine art photography, American photographers, American photojournalism, Anthony Barboza, Anthony Barboza "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler, Anthony Barboza Pat Evans, Atlantic City Four Women, Beauty Contests, Black American photography, Black Americans in photographs, Black Americans in popular culture, Black beauty, black bodies, Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale, Body and Image, body builder, Body Builder on Venice Beach, Bruce Davidson, Bruce Davidson Body Builder on Venice Beach, Carrie Mae Weems, Central Louisianas, Charles "Teenie" Harris, Charles "Teenie" Harris Mary Louise Harris on Mulford Street, Constructing a Pose, Dave Heath, Dave Heath Washington Square, Denzel Washington, Dixie Belles Central Louisiana, Edward Curtis, Edward Curtis A Desert Queen, Harlem, Harlem Fashion Show, Huey P Newton holds a Bob Dylan album, Huey P Newton holds a Bob Dylan album at home after he was released from jail, Huey Percy Newton, Jeffrey Henson Scales, Jeffrey Henson Scales Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Henson Scales Young Man in Plaid, John W. Mosley, John W. Mosley Atlantic City, Ken Ramsay, Ken Ramsay Susan Taylor, Lauren Kelley, Lauren Kelley Pickin', Leonard Freed, Leonard Freed Harlem Fashion Show, Malick Sidibé, Malick Sidibé Regardez-moi, Marvin Hagler, Marvin Hagler boxer, Mary Louise Harris on Mulford Street, Modeling Beauty, Modeling Beauty and Beauty Contests, New York City, Pat Evans, photography of Black Americans, Posing Beauty, Posing Beauty in African American Culture, Regardez-moi, Renee Cox, Renee Cox American Family, Renee Cox Baby Back, self-representation and imposed representation, Stephen Shames, Stephen Shames Huey P Newton holds a Bob Dylan album, Susan Taylor, Susan Taylor as Model, the black body, Theodore Fonville Winan Dixie Belles, Theodore Fonville Winans, Venice Beach, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, VMFA, Young Man in Plaid

Exhibition dates: 26th April – 27th July 2014

Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933)
Body Builder on Venice Beach, California
1964
Gelatin silver print
8 1/4 x 12 1/4 in.
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

An exhibition that questions the ways in which our contemporary understanding of beauty has been constructed and framed through the body and invites a deeper reading of beauty, its impact on mass culture and individuals and how the display of beauty affects the ways in which we see and interpret the world and ourselves. According to author and historian Barbara Summers: “Beauty is power. And the struggle to have the entire range of Black beauty recognised and respected is a serious one.”

If beauty is only skin deep, and colour deep, why the need to differentiate? Surely it doesn’t matter what colour your skin, beauty just is. You know it when you see it, regardless of colour. Not everything is about power; not everything is a site of contestation… to me, recognising true beauty is an acknowledgement of the light that shines from within, not something that is imposed from without. When you see true beauty, you know it instinctively. Intuitively. Enough of this posing – are you image or essence?

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

“That there are so few images of African-American women circulating in popular culture or in fine art is disturbing; the pathology behind it is dangerous … We got a sistah in the White House, and yet mediated culture excludes us, denies us, erases us. But in the face of refusal, I insist on making work that includes us as part of the greater whole,” said Carrie Mae Weems in a 2009 interview conducted by Dawoud Bey for ‘BOMB Magazine’.

Leonard Freed (American, 1929-2006)
Harlem Fashion Show, Harlem
1963
Gelatin silver print
17 x 21 1/4 inches
Magnum Photos

Theodore Fonville Winans (American, 1911-1992)
Dixie Belles, Central Louisiana
1938
Courtesy of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and Bob Winans

Dave Heath (American, 1931-2016)
Washington Square, New York City
1960
Silver gelatin print

Malick Sidibé (Malian, 1935-2016)
Regardez-moi!
1962
Gelatin silver print
50 x 60cm – 19.5 x 23.5 inches
© Malick Sidibé

Anthony Barboza (African-American, b. 1944)
Pat Evans
c. 1970s
Digital print
24 1/2 x 24 inches
Courtesy of the photographer

Exploring contemporary understandings of beauty, Posing Beauty in African American Culture frames the notion of aesthetics, race, class, and gender within art, popular culture, and political contexts. The exhibition – and its companion, Identity Shifts – will be on view April 26 – July 27, 2014.

Posing Beauty in African American Culture examines the contested ways in which African and African American beauty has been represented in historical and contemporary contexts through a diverse range of media including photography, film, video, fashion, advertising, and other forms of popular culture such as music and the Internet. The exhibition explores contemporary understandings of beauty by framing the notion of aesthetics, race, class, and gender within art, popular culture, and political contexts. The exhibition is organised by the Department of Photography & Imaging at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, traveled by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions, and curated by Dr. Deborah Willis. The touring exhibition is made possible in part by the JP Morgan Chase Foundation. Additional support has been provided by grants from the Tisch School of the Arts Office of the Dean’s Faculty Development Fund, Visual Arts Initiative Award from the NYU Coordinating Council for Visual Arts, and NYU’s Advanced Media Studio. Drawn from public and private collections, Posing Beauty features approximately 85 works by artists such as Carrie Mae Weems, Charles “Teenie” Harris, Eve Arnold, Gary Winogrand, Sheila Pree Bright, Leonard Freed, Renee Cox, Anthony Barboza, Bruce Davidson, Mickalene Thomas, and Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe.

Posing Beauty is divided into three thematic sections. The first theme, Constructing a Pose, considers the interplay between the historical and the contemporary, between self-representation and imposed representation, and the relationship between subject and photographer. The second theme, Body and Image, questions the ways in which our contemporary understanding of beauty has been constructed and framed through the body. The last section, Modeling Beauty and Beauty Contests, invites a deeper reading of beauty, its impact on mass culture and individuals and how the display of beauty affects the ways in which we see and interpret the world and ourselves.

According to author and historian Barbara Summers: “Beauty is power. And the struggle to have the entire range of Black beauty recognized and respected is a serious one.”

Press release from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts website

Renee Cox (American, b. 1960)
Baby Back, from the series American Family
2001
Archival digital print
30 x 40 in.
Courtesy of the artist

Lauren Kelley (American, b. 1975)
Pickin’
2007
Colour-coupler print
23 x 23 1/8 inches
Courtesy of the photographer

Anthony Barboza (African-American, b. 1944)
‘Marvelous’ Marvin Hagler, boxer
1981
Gelatin silver print

Jeffrey Henson Scales (American, b. 1954)
Denzel Washington, Los Angeles
1990s

Ken Ramsay (Jamaican, 1935-2008)
Susan Taylor, as Model
c. 1970s
Gelatin silver print
26.5 x 20 inches
Courtesy of the photographer

John W. Mosley (American, 1907-1969)
Atlantic City, Four Women
c. 1960s
Gelatin silver print
20 x 16 inches
Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University

Edward Curtis (American, 1868-1952)
A Desert Queen
1898 (printed 2009)
Modern digital print
20 x 16 inches
Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries

Stephen Shames (American, b. 1947)
Huey P Newton holds a Bob Dylan album at home after he was released from jail
c. 1967
Photograph
© Stephen Shames

Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American political and urban activist who, along with Bobby Seale, co-founded the Black Panther Party in 1966. Newton had a long series of confrontations with law enforcement, including several convictions, while he participated in political activism. He continued to pursue an education, eventually earning a Ph.D. in Social Science. Newton spent time in prison for manslaughter and was involved in a shooting that killed a police officer, for which he was later acquitted. In 1989 he was shot and killed in Oakland, California by Tyrone “Double R” Robinson, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family.

Text from Wikipedia website

Charles “Teenie” Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Mary Louise Harris on Mulford Street, Homewood, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
c. 1930-1939
Gelatin silver print
20 x 16cm
© 2004 Carnegie Museum of Art, Charles “Teenie” Harris Archive

Jeffrey Henson Scales (American, b. 1954)
Young Man in Plaid, New York City
1992
Digital print
44.5 x 44 inches
Courtesy of the photographer

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
200 N. Boulevard
Richmond, Virginia USA

Opening hours:
Saturday – Tuesday: 10am – 5pm
Wednesday – Friday: 10am – 9pm

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts website

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Dr Marcus Bunyan

Dr Marcus Bunyan is an Australian artist and writer. His art work explores the boundaries of identity and place. He writes Art Blart, an art and cultural memory archive, which posts mainly photography exhibitions from around the world. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy from RMIT University, Melbourne, a Master of Arts (Fine Art Photography) from RMIT University, and a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne.

Contact

bunyanth@netspace.net.au

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Posts Tagged ‘American fashion photography

Exhibition dates: 4th December 2017 – 18th March 2018

Exhibition dates: 24th April – 30th July 2017

Irving Penn on Location in Morocco, 1971

Irving Penn Centennial

Exhibition dates: 24th April – 30th July 2017

Exhibition credits

Exhibition dates: 7th October 2016 – 26th March 2017

Exhibition dates: 14th March – 8th November, 2015

Exhibition dates: 8th May – 16th August 2015

Leave artist’s alone

Irmgard Seefried (German, 1919-1988)

Exhibition dates: 6th December 2014 – 15th March 2015

Footnotes

Dr Christopher Chapman

Exhibition dates: 6th September 2014 – 4th January 2015

Haute Couture

Fashion in Colour

Stage and Screen

Platinum

Male Nudes

Surrealism

Patterns from Nature

Travel

Living in Style

In the Studio

Exhibition dates: 24th June – 13th October 2014

Exhibition dates: 26th April – 27th July 2014

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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