Many thankx to Fundació Foto Colectania for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.
Foundation Foto Colectania presents for the first time in Barcelona the famous series Women Are Beautiful by Garry Winogrand.
Garry Winogrand is considered one of the greatest innovators of photography of the twentieth-century in America. He knew like no other how to capture the social transformation of females in the 60’s and 70’s through his portraits of women who stand as an allegory of women’s emancipation and their new role in society. The Foundation Foto Colectania presents his series Women Are Beautiful, including 85 photographs taken between 1960 and 1975 and collected in the book with the same title by the legendary director of photography at the MoMA, John Szarkowski. The exhibition from the collection of Lola Garrido, is part of the programming line of the foundation which is dedicated to authors who changed the course of the history of photography. The exhibition can be seen in Barcelona until June 4, 2011. In the 60’s ended the era of big images as symbols of timeless truths, by the devastating influence first from Walker Evans, and later from Robert Frank and William Klein. The pictures are focused on the reflection of reality, no retouching or other ideas added. Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander represent “the new American style” which broke new ground in the so-called Street Photography.
Winogrand combines spontaneity with an apparent confusion, which is more than aware of the complexity of the photography world: “I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.” The presence of human beings, contrasting with the crowds and the streets in his photographs reveals a new way of looking, in which the anarchy results in a wealth of shapes and structures. The biased and cold style of Winogrand is associated with Abstract Expressionism and its sharp diagonals are similar to paint brush strokes of those years. If the photographer Robert Frank was critical of the 50’s, Garry Winogrand is one of the largest photographers of the 60’s.
Press release from the Fundació Foto Colectania website
Curators: Roxana Marcoci, Curator, and Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art
Many thank to The Museum of Modern Art, New York for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation view of the exhibition Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960 at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing at right, George Maciunas Performing for Self-Exposing Camera, New York 1966
George Maciunas (American born Lithuania, 1931-1978) George Maciunas Performing for Self-Exposing Camera, New York 1966 Gelatin silver print
Focusing on a wide range of images of performances that were expressly made for the artist’s camera, Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960 draws together approximately 50 works from the Museum’s collection, and is on view from January 28 to May 9, 2011. Though performances are often intended to be experienced live, in real time, with photography playing an ancillary function in recording them, these works function as independent, expressive pictures, often staged in the absence of a public audience. At the center of these pictures is a performer (often the artist), posing or enacting an action conceived for the photographic lens. Among the works on view, approximately half are recent acquisitions by MoMA, including pieces by Laurel Nakadate, Rong Rong, Ai Weiwei, Huang Yan, and La Monte Young. Staging Action is organised by Roxana Marcoci, Curator, and Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art.
Beginning with Fluxus artists in the 1960s, Staging Action includes the work of George Maciunas, an artist who engaged the production of the self as positional rather than fixed and often played with transvestism. According to personal reminiscences of the American poet Emmett Williams, a friend, Maciunas’s closets were full of prom dresses that he scavenged from the Salvation Army. In his 1966 cross-dressing striptease, George Maciunas Performing for Self-Exposing Camera, New York, he reinforced the active construction of identity through gender indeterminacy. The participation of the camera as accomplice to the artist’s actions was also a constant theme in Vito Acconci’s work of the early 1970s. In Conversions I: Light, Reflections, Self-Control (1970-1971), Acconci tried to feminize his male body by plucking hair from his chest and navel area, pushing his pectorals together to mimic breasts, and hiding his genitals between his legs. Performances that explored gender play were soon embraced by other artists. A few years later, Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman collaborated on a photo shoot in which they sported identical suits and red-haired wigs, each playing androgynous double to the other.
Staging Action continues with artists who experimented with the camera to test the physical and psychological limits of the body. Reacting against the post-World War II repressive sexual and political atmosphere of Austrian society, the group known as the Vienna Actionists – including Günter Brus, Otto Muehl, Herman Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler – staged highly provocative actions that were mostly ritualistic, incorporating elements such as wine and animal blood from Dionysian rites and Christian ceremonies in an attempt to free human instincts that had been repressed by society. In the early 1990s, numerous artists living in Beijing’s East Village artist community actively engaged in endurance-based performances. On view is East Village, Beijing No. 22 (1994) by Rong Rong, an iconic picture of the now seminal performance known as 12 Square Meters, which takes its title from the size of the public urinal where the action took place. The artist Zhang Huan covered himself in fish guts and honey and sat motionless for an hour in the heat of a summer day as flies gathered on his body, while the photographer Rong Rong captured the gritty performance.
The face as a site for alteration and extreme expression is of particular interest to several artists in the exhibition. In his five-part work, Studies for Holograms (1970), Bruce Nauman poked, pulled, pinched, and kneaded his mouth, neck, and cheeks in extreme and cartoonish ways. For her 1972 work (Untitled) Facial Cosmetic Variations, Ana Mendieta used tape and make-up to mould and manipulate her face to create, at turns, disturbing and humorous results that reference the cosmetic changes women inflict upon themselves in the name of beauty. Lucas Samaras’s transformations in a series of self-portrait Polaroids from 1969-1971 suggest the plasticity or mutability of identity itself. For these works, the artist utilised an array of wigs, pancake make-up, and props to transform himself into grotesque characters for the camera.
Other performances required a sustained, emotional engagement on the part of the artist. Bas Jan Ader’s particular brand of existential-based Conceptualism is crystallised in I’m too sad to tell you (1970), in which the artist cried in front of the camera. In 1971, Adrian Piper performed a time-lapse piece titled Food for Spirit. Inspired by an assignment to write a text on Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Piper began fasting in order to isolate herself into a state of self-transcendence, and took pictures of herself in front of a mirror to insure reconnaissance of her own body. The ability of the camera to both freeze and extend a moment in time was also instrumental to the Japanese artist Mieko Shiomi. In Disappearing Music for Face (1966), Shiomi sequenced a series of film stills focusing on the mouth of Yoko Ono as her smile intermittently faded into a neutral facial expression. In Laurel Nakadate’s pictures from the Lucky Tiger series that she conceived of in 2009 during a road trip through the American West, the artist is seen riding a horse in a cropped T-shirt, doing a backbend in cowboy boots by the Grand Canyon, and striking a Playboy pose in her “lucky tiger” bikinis, rehashing photographic conventions inspired by 1950s-style “cheesecake” and camera-club pictures. Lorna Simpson’s multi-part work, May, June, July, August ’57 / ’09 (2009) also responds to the photographic conventions of posing for the camera. Simpson turned to the photographic archive as source material, combining found photographs of a young African-American woman who posed for hundreds of pin-up pictures in 1957 in Los Angeles with her own performative self-portraits, in which she replicates every outfit, pose, and setting of the original photographs. Through juxtaposition, repetition, and de-contextualization, a historical fiction arises, whereby the two women, despite the many differences that separate them, seem to be joined through a shared identity.
The exhibition includes both off-the-cuff and staged performative gestures of political dissent. Ai Weiwei’s photographic series Study of Perspective (1995-2003) reveals a spirited irreverence toward national monuments. Traveling to various landmarks – from the Eiffel Tower to Tiananmen Square to the White House – the artist photographed his own arm extended in front of the camera’s lens as he gave each marker the middle finger. Robin Rhode’s pictures, presented sequentially in storyboard format, record situations in which the artist interacts with a set of objects that he has drawn, erased and redrawn in black charcoal on dilapidated walls. Untitled, (Dream House) (2005) comprises a sequence of 28 colour photographs in which Rhode mimics the act of struggling to catch a television set, a chair, and a car that appear to have been thrown at him from above. In reality, these items are drawn in cartoonish lines on an exterior wall. Referencing the South African New Year custom of tossing out old objects, the artist identifies society’s two opposing poles: consumerism and dispossession. Rhode’s pictures, like those of the other artists in Staging Action, attest to the myriad ways in which photography constitutes – not just documents – performance as a conceptual exercise.
Press release from the MoMA website
Installation view of the exhibition Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960 at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing at right, Rong Rong’s East Village, Beijing, No. 81 1994
Installation view of the exhibition Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960 at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing at left, Ana Mendieta’s Facial Cosmetic Variations 1972; at centre, the work of Rudolf Schwarzkogler; and at right, VALIE EXPORT with Peter Hassmann’s Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969, below)
This series of screenprints relates to a performance in which EXPORT reportedly walked into an experimental art-film house in Munich wearing crotchless trousers and a tight leather jacket, with her hair teased wildly, and roamed through the rows of seated spectators, her exposed genitalia level with their faces. Challenging the public to engage with a “real woman” instead of with images on a screen, she illustrated her notion of “expanded cinema,” in which the artist’s body activates the live context of watching. EXPORT’s defiant feminist action was memorialised in a picture taken the following year by the photographer Peter Hassmann in Vienna. EXPORT had the image, in which she holds a machine gun, screenprinted in a large edition and fly-posted it in public squares and on the street.
Gallery label from From the Collection: 1960-69, March 26, 2016 – March 12, 2017
Installation view of the exhibition Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960 at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing at left, Bruce Nauman’s Studies for Holograms (1970); and at right, Lorna Simpson’s May, June, July, August ’57/’09 #8 (2009, below)
Lorna Simpson describes 1957-2009 as “a project that happened kind of by accident.” Since she often works with vintage photographs, advertisements, and magazines, she was on eBay in search of material, when she came across a couple of black-and-white photographs of a young black woman posing alluringly. As it turned out, these were part of a much larger album of photographs, featuring this woman, and, occasionally, a young black man, in attractively staged poses. The sellers offered the entire album to Simpson. Struck by the images, though not yet sure what to do with them, she bought it.
When the album arrived, she hung the photographs in her studio, where they remained for months. Taken in 1957, in modest domestic and outdoor settings, most of them appeared to be inspired by the pin-up, mass-produced images of seductively posed actresses and models, widely circulated in the 1940s and 50s. But the identities of the photographer, the woman, and the man were unknown. Ultimately, Simpson decided to restage these images. Using herself as her model, she mimicked the settings, clothing, hairstyles, and poses of both the woman and the man and photographed herself using black-and-white film. She then paired her own photographs with the originals (for a total of 307 individually framed images) and has displayed them together in various arrangements.
As with much of her work, it is up to viewers to draw their own conclusions about the identities of the subjects of 1957-2009. A feminist and an African American woman, Simpson has been concerned with black female identity since the beginning of her career. By providing little or no information about the people who appear in her images, she poses challenging questions about how we perceive and make assumptions about others based upon their appearance – and upon stereotypes associated with aspects of identity like skin colour, hair, gender, and clothing.
In the history of group photography Nixon’s ongoing series of family portraits The Brown Sisters (1975- ) is the best in the world. Beautifully structured and composed the photographs are nuanced and sensitive to the people portrayed and the passage of time. The subjects project and recede within the image frame, exposing vulnerability, intimacy and strength. Simply breathtaking!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Amelia Kantrovitz for her help and 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.
Themes such as the passage of time and the enduring nature of close family relationships are brought into focus in the exhibition Nicholas Nixon: Family Album at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). The show, on view from July 28, 2010, through May 1, 2011, in the MFA’s Herb Ritts Gallery, features more than 70 black and white portrait photographs by Nicholas Nixon, one of the most celebrated American photographers of this generation. Among them are pictures of Nixon’s wife, Beverly (Bebe) Brown Nixon, and their two children, Clementine and Sam. Nicholas Nixon also includes The Brown Sisters, the ongoing annual series of portraits of Bebe and her sisters taken each summer for the past 35 years. Nixon will take another photograph of the sisters this summer, which will be hung in the gallery during the course of the exhibition.
The promised gift to the MFA of The Brown Sisters series is the impetus for Nicholas Nixon. The group of photographs has been lent to the Museum for the exhibition from the collection of James Krebs, a Distinguished Benefactor of the MFA, and his late wife, Margie. Also included are works by Nixon purchased by the Museum, and a number that were given and lent to the MFA by the artist. Nicholas Nixon is presented with support from the Shelly and Michael Kassen Fund.
“Nicholas Nixon rose to prominence in the mid 1970s for his large-format black-and-white views of Boston and New York. Since then, he has turned almost exclusively to portraiture, and has produced many celebrated series of pictures – of the elderly, people with AIDS, and couples – but his portrayals of his family are particularly evocative and beloved. Nick has been a friend of the MFA for a long time and has generously given the Museum many of his photographs,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA.
Nicholas Nixon’s photographs of family are both personal in nature and have a universality with which observers can connect. These pictures, a number of which have never been publicly displayed, celebrate the bonds of close family relationships, especially as they grow over time. Included in the exhibition is the luminous image that Nixon took of his wife in the bathtub, Bebe, Cambridge (MFA, Boston, 1980). The beautiful glowing light on her face suggests her interior state, as well as the depth of their long relationship. There are also many photographs in the show that highlight the richness and warmth of daily life with children. In an image from 1985, a cropped view of Bebe pictures her gazing downward, as Clementine’s fist emerges from the bottom of the frame, evoking the power of a new life. A close-up of Clementine’s face made the following year, with her wide eyes gazing upward, captures the toddler’s impression of wonder. The latest photograph of Clementine in the exhibition dates to 2003 and depicts her as a young woman, embracing her mother. Images of Nixon’s son, Sam, are also included, showing him in different stages over the years and in portraits with his sister.
The most recognised images in the exhibition are those that Nixon has taken of the Brown sisters each summer since 1975. The four women – Heather, Mimi, Bebe, and Laurie – always appear in the same order in the portraits, from left to right. These compelling photographs reveal the evolving nature of the sisters’ relationship over time. The serial portraits begin with The Brown Sisters, 1975 (James and Margie Krebs Collection, 1975), which captures them as young women, ranging in age from 15 to 25. With each passing year, observers can note changes in appearance, stance, and demeanour. In several of the portraits, the presence of the photographer is suggested through the shadow of himself and his camera projected across the figures, which makes reference to his role in the family dynamic. The series unfolds in a grid display on the central wall of the Ritts Gallery.
“In his serial pictures of family, Nicholas Nixon explores a classic conundrum in photography: how to suggest the passage of time by means of an instrument that records the instantaneous image. His effort is related to that of several predecessors – Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Harry Callahan, to name the most important – who, like him, used their wives as subject matter, photographing them over a period of years. What Nixon has added to the discussion – beyond recording facets of appearance, personality, or emphasising formal concerns – is his emphasis on the meaning of family,” said Anne Havinga, the MFA’s Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs, who curated the show with Emily Voelker, the MFA’s Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Assistant Curator of Photographs.
Born in Detroit in 1947, Nixon graduated from the University of Michigan in 1969 with a bachelor’s degree in English, and from the University of New Mexico in 1974 with a Masters of Fine Arts degree. Later that year, he moved to Boston, where he teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Nixon is known for his documentary photography, especially city views and portraits rooted in the snapshot tradition. He works primarily in black and white, creating gelatin silver prints with a 8 x 10-inch view camera as did many of the great photographers who influenced him, including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Walker Evans. Working in large format and making contact prints enables him to create images of crisp detail and subtle tone. In recent years, Nixon has also begun to experiment with colour, although the photographs in the exhibition are all black-and-white, for which he is best known. He is the recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and two Guggenheim Fellowships, and, in addition to the MFA, his work is included in numerous museum collections, among them, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Press release from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website [Online] Cited 26/04/2011 no longer available online
Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947) The Brown Sisters 1976 Gelatin silver print Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947) The Brown Sisters 1978 Gelatin silver print Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947) The Brown Sisters 1980 Gelatin silver print Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947) The Brown Sisters 1996 Gelatin silver print Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947) The Brown Sisters 1999 Gelatin silver print Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Avenue of the Arts 465 Huntington Avenue Avenue of the Arts Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5523 617-267-9300
Opening hours: Thursday and Friday 10am – 10pm Saturday – Monday 10am – 5pm Closed Tuesday and Wednesday
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Couple Seated on Porch, Gunlock, Utah 1953 Silver gelatin photograph Brigham Young University Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
Dorothea Lange
Lange observes the minutiae, the precise details that go to make up the lives of these three towns and puts them together in a wonderful symphony of beautifully calculated, seemingly happenstance associations. Masterful!
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Doorway, Toquerville, Utah 1953 Silver gelatin photograph Brigham Young University Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Mulberry Tree, Neagle Home, Toquerville, Utah 1953 Silver gelatin photograph Brigham Young University Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Riley Savage, Toquerville, Utah 1953 Silver gelatin photograph Brigham Young University Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Hands, Toquerville, Utah 1953 Silver gelatin photograph Brigham Young University Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Eggs, Toquerville, Utah 1953 Silver gelatin photograph Collection of John and Lolita Dixon
In August 1953, renowned American photographer Dorothea Lange travelled to southern Utah where she met up with her long-time friend Ansel Adams. The two photographers spent three weeks photographing the landscape and people of Toquerville, Gunlock and St. George with the intention of publishing the work in LIFE magazine.
Lange’s enthusiasm for her subject yielded hundreds of photographs from which she composed an extended essay of 135 photographs, including images by Ansel Adams. Thirty-five of those photographs with text by Daniel Dixon appeared under the title Three Mormon Towns in the September 6, 1954 issue of LIFE.
“Dorothea Lange’s Three Mormon Towns,” a new exhibition at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art, features 21 of Lange’s photographs from this series acquired by the museum. The exhibition also draws from the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago, and the collection of John and Lolita Dixon.
The 62 vintage prints in the exhibition, accompanied by excerpts from Dixon’s original text, examine Lange’s lasting interest in the people of southern Utah and their relationship with the land, their heritage and the transformation of the West in post-war America.
“Subtle and poetic, the series of photographs that has come to be known as Three Mormon Towns is a bridge between Lange’s famous Depression Era photographs and her detailed photo essays of the 1950s,” Diana Turnbow, Curator of Photography at Brigham Young University Museum of Art, said.
Utah attracted Lange’s interest when she and her first husband, Maynard Dixon, spent the summer of 1933 camping and working in Zion National Park. She originally intended to photograph southern Utah with the support of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in 1941; however, a family crisis, followed by the onset of World War II prevented Lange from traveling to Utah. Yet, the desire to photograph the Mormon towns of southern Utah never faded. In 1953, Lange returned to the place that had captured her attention decades earlier.
“While Lange’s photographs depict communities bound together by hard work and religion in the formidable landscape of the Colorado Plateau, they also explore the changes that were beginning to affect not only Utah, but rural communities throughout the United States,” Turnbow said. “Three Mormon Towns was a study of contrasts – of old and new, of quiet villages and a growing city, of deep roots and transient highways. In this series, Lange memorialised the dignity and simplicity of agrarian life in light of post-war urbanisation.”
Published in the September 6, 1954 issue of LIFE magazine, the series of photographs that has come to be known as Three Mormon Towns bridges Dorothea Lange’s famous Depression era photographs with her detailed photo essays of the 1950s. Featuring sixty-two vintage photographs from the series, this exhibition considers Dorothea Lange’s lasting interest in the people of southern Utah and their relationship with the land, their heritage, and the transformation of the West in post-war America.
Known for her candid and sympathetic depiction of people, Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) is one of the most revered photographers of the twentieth century. For over four decades she explored the human psyche through portraiture and documentary photography. The probing portraits of her early career prepared Lange to photograph the people involved in the tumultuous events of the San Francisco labor strikes of 1934, the Great Depression, and the Japanese internment during World War II. Her 1935 photograph, TheMigrant Mother, is one of the great icons of the American century.
In the 1950s, Lange began to create photographic essays for the popular picture and news magazine LIFE. She eventually completed five major essays for publication, with two of the essays, including Three Mormon Towns, printed in LIFE. In addition, Lange was a founding member of Aperture magazine and played a role in organising the influential Family of Man exhibition that premiered in New York in 1955.
In the later part of her life, Lange photographed and traveled extensively with her husband, Paul Taylor, in conjunction with his work in international development. Her photographs of South America, Africa, and Asia were deft and subtle, exploring a rich visual landscape populated with diverse objects and people.
In 1964, Lange was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Sustained by determination, she worked steadily to complete a number of projects including a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She passed away on October 11, 1965, content with the life that she had been able to live.
Text from the Brigham Young University Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 24/03/2011 no longer available online
Gunlock, Utah
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Sky and Clouds, Gunlock, Utah 1953 Silver gelatin photograph Brigham Young University Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Jake Jones’ Hands, Gunlock, Utah 1953 Silver gelatin photograph Brigham Young University Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Horseplay, Gunlock, Utah 1953 Silver gelatin photograph Brigham Young University Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Four Young Riders in Summer 1953 Silver gelatin photograph Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago
St. George, Utah
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Anne Carter Johnson, St. George, Utah 1953 Silver gelatin photograph Brigham Young University Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Young Woman, St. George, Utah 1953 Silver gelatin photograph Brigham Young University Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Jack and Mary Lois Wheatley
Brigham Young University Museum of Art North Campus Drive, Provo, UT 84602-1400
Exhibition dates: 10th November 2010 – 10th April 2011
Many thankx to the The Metropolitan Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) The Terminal 1893, printed 1920s-30s Gelatin silver print 8.9 x 11.5cm (3 1/2 x 4 1/2 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
As proprietor of the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession and publisher of the photographic journals Camera Notes and later Camera Work, Stieglitz was a major force in the promotion and elevation of photography as a fine art in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His own photographs had an equally revolutionary impact on the advancement of the medium.
Stieglitz took this picture using a small 4 x 5″ camera, an instrument not considered at the time to be worthy of artistic photography. Unlike the unwieldy 8 x 10″ view camera (which required a tripod), this camera gave Stieglitz greater freedom and mobility to roam the city and respond quickly to the everchanging street life around him. The Terminal predicts by over a decade the radical transformation of the medium from painterly prints of rarified subjects to what the critic Sadakichi Hartmann dubbed “straight photography.” This new photography would take as its subject matter the quotidian aspects of modern, urban life, using only techniques that are unique to the medium.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Edward Steichen (American born Luxembourg, 1879-1973) The Little Round Mirror 1901, printed 1905 Gum bichromate over platinum print 48.3 x 33.2cm (19 x 13 1/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) The Hand of Man 1902, printed 1910 Photogravure 24.2 x 31.9cm (9 1/2 x 12 9/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
The Hand of Man was first published in January 1903 in the inaugural issue of Camera Work. With this image of a lone locomotive chugging through the train yards of Long Island City, Stieglitz showed that a gritty urban landscape could have an atmospheric beauty and a symbolic value as potent as those of an unspoiled natural landscape. The title alludes to this modern transformation of the landscape and also perhaps to photography itself as a mechanical process. Stieglitz believed that a mechanical instrument such as the camera could be transformed into a tool for creating art when guided by the hand and sensibility of an artist.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Edward Steichen (American born Luxembourg, 1879-1973) The Flatiron 1904 Gum bichromate over platinum print 47.8 x 38.4cm (18 13/16 x 15 1/8 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933
Edward Steichen (American born Luxembourg, 1879-1973) Alfred Stieglitz 1907 Autochrome 23.9 x 18cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1955
For the first time in more than 25 years, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will display five of its original Autochromes by Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz for one week only – January 25-30, 2011 – as part of the current exhibition Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand. Invented by Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1907, Autochromes are one-of-a-kind color transparencies that are seductively beautiful when backlit.
The invention of the Autochrome was a milestone in the history of photography. It was the first commercially available means of making color photographs. Steichen was enthralled by the process and recommended it to his fellow photographers. Praising the luminosity of the new medium, he wrote, “One must go to stained glass for such color resonance, as the palette and canvas are a dull and lifeless medium in comparison.” Among the five Autochromes exhibited are Steichen’s portrait of Rodin in front of his sculpture The Eve and his widely reproduced portrait of Stieglitz holding an issue of his influential publication, Camera Work.
These fragile photographs – composed of minute grains of potato starch dyed red, blue, and green – cannot withstand the exposure of long-term display without suffering irreversible damage. Because of the high risk of the color fading, the Metropolitan – like most museums – has had a policy of not exhibiting its important collection of Autochromes. The Metropolitan recently completed a three-year study of the stability and light-sensitivity of Autochrome dyes, conducted by Luisa Casella, the Museum’s first Mellon Research Scholar in Photo Conservation, in close collaboration with Masahiko Tsukada of the Museum’s Department of Scientific Research, and supervised by Nora Kennedy, Sherman Fairchild Conservator of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum. The study established that the Autochrome dyes are partially, though not completely, protected from light fading when in an environment where all oxygen has been removed.
Guided by this research, the Museum will display five original Autochromes by Steichen and Stieglitz within individual oxygen-free enclosures and under carefully controlled lighting conditions from January 25 to 30 in the exhibition Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand. During the other weeks of the exhibition, facsimiles of the photographs are displayed in their place.
Edward J. Steichen (American born Luxembourg, 1879-1973) Balzac, The Open Sky – 11 P.M. 1908, printed 1909 Direct carbon print 48.7 x 38.5cm (19 3/16 x 15 3/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933
In late summer 1908 Rodin moved the plaster of his sculpture of the French writer Honoré de Balzac out of his studio and into the open air so that Steichen, who disliked its chalky aspect in the daylight, could photograph it by the moon. Waiting through several exposures as long as an hour each, Steichen made this exposure at 11 p.m., when the moonlight transformed the plaster into a monumental phantom rising above the brooding nocturnal landscape. Steichen recalled that when he presented his finished prints some weeks later, an elated Rodin exclaimed: “You will make the world understand my Balzac through your pictures. They are like Christ walking on the desert.”
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand
Go behind the lens with Sarah Greenough and Joel Smith as they speak about the relationships between three giants of early twentieth-century photography – Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand – whose diverse and groundbreaking works are among the Metropolitan’s greatest photographic treasures. Followed by a discussion among the participants. Malcolm Daniel, Curator in Charge, Department of Photographs, MMA, introduces the program.
“Steichen, Stieglitz, and the Art of Change” Joel Smith, Curator of Photography, Princeton University Art Museum
“Stieglitz and Strand: Mentor and Protégé/Friend and Rival” Sarah Greenough, Senior Curator of Photographs, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Stieglitz and the New York Art Scene (1905-46)
Lisa M. Messinger, associate curator, Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Three giants of 20th-century American photography – Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand – are featured at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, through April 10, 2011, in the exhibition Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand. The diverse and groundbreaking work of these artists will be revealed through a presentation of 115 photographs, drawn entirely from the Museum’s collection. On view will be many of the Metropolitan’s greatest photographic treasures from the 1900s to 1920s, including Stieglitz’s famous portraits of Georgia O’Keeffe, Steichen’s large coloured photographs of the Flatiron building, and Strand’s pioneering abstractions.
Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was a photographer of supreme accomplishment and a forceful and influential advocate for photography and modern art through his gallery “291” and his sumptuous journal Camera Work. Stieglitz also laid the foundation for the Museum’s collection of photographs. In 1928, he donated 22 of his own works to the Metropolitan; these were the first photographs to enter the Museum’s collection as works of art. In later decades he gave the Museum more than 600 photographs by his contemporaries, including Edward Steichen and Paul Strand.
Among Stieglitz’s works to be featured in this exhibition are portraits, views of New York City from the beginning and end of his career, and the 1920s cloud studies he titled Equivalents, through which he sought to arouse in the viewer the emotional equivalent of his own state of mind at the time he made the photograph, and to show that the content of a photograph was different from its subject.
The exhibition will also include numerous photographs from Stieglitz’s extraordinary composite portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), part of a group of works selected for the Museum’s collection by O’Keeffe herself. Stieglitz made more than 330 images of O’Keeffe between 1917 and 1937 – of her face, torso, hands, or feet alone, clothed and nude, intimate and heroic, introspective and assertive. Through these photographs Stieglitz revealed O’Keeffe’s strengths and vulnerabilities, and almost single-handedly defined her public persona for generations to come.
Stieglitz’s protégé and gallery collaborator, Edward Steichen (1879-1973), was the most talented exemplar of the Photo-Secession, the loosely-knit group of artists founded by Stieglitz in 1902, seceding, in his words, “from the accepted idea of what constitutes a photograph,” but also from the camera clubs and other institutions dominated by a more retrograde establishment. In works such as The Pond – Moonrise (1904), made using a painstaking technique of multiple printing, Steichen rivalled the scale, colour, and individuality of painting.
Steichen’s three large variant prints of The Flatiron (1904) are prime examples of the conscious effort of Photo-Secession photographers to assert the artistic potential of their medium. Steichen achieved coloristic effects reminiscent of Whistler’s Nocturne paintings by brushing layers of pigment suspended in light-sensitive gum solution onto a platinum photograph. Although he used only one negative to create all three photographs, the variable colouring enabled him to create three significantly different images that convey the chromatic progression of twilight. The Metropolitan’s three prints, all donated by Stieglitz in 1933, are the only exhibition prints of Steichen’s iconic image.
In 1908 Steichen photographed the plaster of Rodin’s sculpture of Honoré de Balzac in the open air, by the light of the moon, making several exposures as long as an hour each. In Balzac, The Silhouette – 4 A.M., the moonlight has transformed the plaster into a monumental phantom rising above the brooding nocturnal landscape. Steichen recalled that when he presented his finished prints to Rodin, the elated sculptor exclaimed, “You will make the world understand my Balzac through your pictures.”
Among the unique early-20th-century works by Stieglitz and Steichen in the Museum’s collection are Autochromes, an early process of colour photography that became commercially available in 1907. Because of the delicate and light-sensitive nature of these glass transparencies, five original Autochromes by Stieglitz and Steichen will be displayed for one week only, January 25-30, 2011. During the other weeks of the exhibition, facsimiles of these Autochromes will be on view.
Stieglitz’s and Steichen’s younger contemporary, Paul Strand (1890-1976), pioneered a shift from the soft-focus aesthetic and painterly prints of the Photo-Secession to the straight approach and graphic power of an emerging modernism. Strand was introduced to Stieglitz as a high-schooler by his camera club advisor, Lewis Hine, the social reformer and photographer. He quickly became a regular visitor to “291,” where he was exposed to the latest trends in European art through groundbreaking exhibitions of works by Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, and Brancusi.
Strand incorporated the new language of geometric abstraction into his interest in photographing street life and machine culture. His photographs from 1915-1917 treated three principal themes: movement in the city, abstractions, and street portraits. Stieglitz, whose interest in photography had waned as he grew more interested in avant-garde art, saw in Strand’s work a new approach to photography. He showed Strand’s groundbreaking photographs at 291 and devoted the entire final double issue of Camera Work (1917) to this young photographer’s work, marking a pivotal moment in the course of photography.
In From the El (1915), Strand juxtaposed the ironwork and shadows of the elevated train with the tiny form of a lone pedestrian. In 1916, he experimented with radical camera angles and photographing at close range. Among the astonishingly modern photographs he made that summer is Abstraction, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, one of the first photographic abstractions to be made intentionally. When Stieglitz published a variant of this image in Camera Work, he praised Strand’s results as “the direct expression of today.”
In the same year, Strand made a series of candid street portraits with a hand-held camera fitted with a special lens that allowed him to point the camera in one direction while taking the photograph at a 90-degree angle. Blind, his seminal image of a street peddler, was published in Camera Work and immediately became an icon of the new American photography, which integrated the humanistic concerns of social documentation with the boldly simplified forms of Modernism. As is true for most of the large platinum prints by Strand in the exhibition, the Metropolitan’s Blind, a gift of Stieglitz, is the only exhibition print of this image from the period.
Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand is organised by Malcolm Daniel, Curator in Charge of the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Photographs, assisted by Russell Lord, Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow in the Department of Photographs.
Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) The City of Ambitions 1910, printed 1910-1913 Photogravure 33.8 x 26.0cm (13 5/16 x 10 1/4 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
This photograph belongs to a series of dynamic images Stieglitz made of New York of 1910. It appeared in the October 1911 issue of Camera Work along with eight other examples of his lyrical urban modernism – a contemporary vision certainly not lost on Coburn, Struss, and Strand.
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) Old and New New York 1910, printed in or before 1913 Photogravure 33.2 x 25.5cm (13 1/16 x 10 1/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976) From the El 1915 Platinum print 33.6 x 25.9cm (13 1/4 x 10 3/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
Paul Strand was introduced to Alfred Stieglitz by his teacher Lewis Hine, and quickly became part of the coterie of painters and photographers that gathered at Stieglitz’s gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue. There he was exposed to the latest trends in European vanguard art through groundbreaking exhibitions of Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, and Brancusi. Strand incorporated their abstracting compositional techniques into his work, marrying the new language of geometric surface design to his interest in street life and machine culture.
Strand’s vision of the city during these years often focuses on the problematic exchange between the sweep and rigor of the urban grid with the human lives that inhabit and pass through it. From the El is a good example of this dialectical approach, with the graphic power of the ironwork and street shadows punctuated by the tiny, lone pedestrian at the upper right. Strand addresses the effects of the new urban condition obliquely here, embedding a subtle political statement within the formal structure of the image.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) From the Back Window – 291 1915 Platinum print 25.1 x 20.2cm (9 7/8 x 7 15/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
At the turn of the century, Stieglitz’s duties as gallery owner, publisher, editor, and promoter left him little time to photograph. When the mood struck him, however, which began to happen with some frequency about 1915, he did not look far afield but photographed his colleagues at the gallery and the view from his window with a modernist rigor exceeded only by Strand.
Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976) Blind 1916 Platinum print 34 x 25.7cm (13 3/8 x 10 1/8 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) Hodge Kirnon 1917 Palladium print 24.6 x 19.9cm (9 11/16 x 7 13/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
One of the least well known and most beautiful of Stieglitz’s portraits, this photograph depicts Hodge Kirnon, a man Stieglitz saw in passing every day. When preparing to close his historic gallery “291” in 1917 as a result of World War I, Stieglitz assessed his work and life and saw that Kirnon – who operated the elevator that transported the gallery’s visitors, its critics, and its provocative modern art – had been a true fellow passenger on the momentous trip.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) Georgia O’Keeffe – Hands 1917 Platinum print 22.6 x 16.8cm (8 7/8 x 6 5/8 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gift of Georgia O’Keeffe, through the generosity of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation and Jennifer and Joseph Duke, 1997
Georgia O’Keeffe – Hands is one of the images that Stieglitz made during his first portrait session with O’Keeffe, in 1917, when she traveled by train to New York to see her second show of drawings and watercolours at 291. “A few weeks after I returned to Texas, photographs of me came,” she recalled. “In my excitement at such pictures of myself I took them to school and held them up for my class to see. They were surprised and astonished too. Nothing like that had come into our world before.” The notion that an expressive portrait might be made without including the sitter’s face was indeed novel.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Exhibition Overview
This exhibition features three giants of photography – Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946), Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg, 1879-1973), and Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976) – whose works are among the Metropolitan’s greatest photographic treasures. The diverse and groundbreaking work of these artists will be revealed through a presentation of approximately 115 photographs, drawn entirely from the collection.
Alfred Stieglitz, a photographer of supreme accomplishment as well as a forceful and influential advocate for photography and modern art through his gallery “291” and his sumptuous journal Camera Work, laid the foundation of the Met’s collection. He donated twenty-two of his own works in 1928 – the first photographs to be acquired by the Museum as works of art – and more than six hundred by other photographers, including Steichen and Strand, in later decades. Featured in the exhibition will be portraits, city views, and cloud studies by Stieglitz, as well as numerous images from his composite portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887-1986), part of a group selected for the collection by O’Keeffe herself.
Stieglitz’s protégé and gallery collaborator Edward Steichen was the most talented exemplar of Photo-Secessionist ideas, with works such as his three large variant prints of The Flatiron and his moonlit photographs of Rodin’s Balzac purposely rivaling the scale, color, and individuality of painting. By contrast, the final issue of Camera Work (1917) was devoted to the young Paul Strand, whose photographs from 1915-1917 treated three principal themes – movement in the city, abstractions, and street portraits – and pioneered a shift from the soft-focus Pictorialist aesthetic to the straight approach and graphic power of an emerging modernism.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) Georgia O’Keeffe – Neck 1921 Palladium print 23.6 x 19.2cm (9 5/16 x 7 9/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gift of Georgia O’Keeffe, through the generosity of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation and Jennifer and Joseph Duke, 1997
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) The Dancing Trees 1922 Palladium print 24.2 x 19.3cm (9 1/2 x 7 5/8 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gift of David A. Schulte, 1928
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) Spiritual America 1923 Gelatin silver print 11.6 x 9.2cm (4 9/16 x 3 5/8 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
In the decade leading up to the Great Depression, American modernism was a highly contested concept. Stieglitz, perhaps justifiably, considered himself one of the few qualified to dictate its course, having surrounded himself with a group of like-minded and devoted artists, critics, and writers whom he directed in an almost shamanistic fashion. Spirituality loomed large in his vision of American identity, but he was disheartened and offended with what he viewed as a pent-up, materialist, and culturally bankrupt American way. In a rare attempt at ironic commentary, Stieglitz produced this picture of a harnessed, castrated horse – a pure representation of eradicated sexual prowess and restrained muscular energy – and labelled it Spiritual America. In effect, he suggested that America was lacking in spirit by reinterpreting the horse, a traditional American symbol of unstoppable force, as a trussed-up pattern of slick geometry.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Edward J. Steichen (American born Luxembourg, 1879-1973) Gloria Swanson 1924, printed 1960s Gelatin silver print 24.0 x 19.1cm (9 7/16 x 7 1/2 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gift of Grace M. Mayer, 1989
Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976) Wild Iris, Maine 1927-1928 Gelatin silver print 24.8 x 19.8cm (9 3/4 x 7 13/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1955 Courtesy Aperture Foundation, Inc., Paul Strand Archive
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) Looking Northwest from the Shelton, New York 1932 Gelatin silver print 24.2 x 19.2cm (9 1/2 x 7 9/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Ford Motor Company Collection Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
Stieglitz recorded the construction of the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan from the windows of his gallery and of his nearby apartment in the Shelton Towers. His photographs seem not to celebrate the astonishing growth of new buildings but rather almost geological permanence and stability: “Crammed on the narrow island the million-windowed buildings will jut glittering, pyramid on pyramid…,” as John Dos Passos wrote.
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) Georgia O’Keeffe – Hand and Wheel 1933 Gelatin silver print 24.1 x 19.5cm (9 1/2 x 7 11/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gift of Georgia O’Keeffe, through the generosity of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation and Jennifer and Joseph Duke, 1997
Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976) Cristo – Oaxaca 1933, printed 1940 Photogravure 25.4 x 20.2cm (10 x 7 15/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1940
Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976) Coapiaxtla, Church 1933, printed 1940 Photogravure 16.2 x 12.7cm (6 3/8 x 5 in.) David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1940
The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York, New York 10028-0198 Information: 212-535-7710
Opening hours: Sunday – Tuesday and Thursday: 10am – 5pm Friday and Saturday: 10am – 9pm Closed Wednesday
Exhibition dates: 10th November 2010 – 10th April 2011
Aleksey Ivanovich Saveliev (Russian, 1883-1923) At the Prepared Grave 1910 Gelatin silver print 8.9 x 13.3cm (3 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gift of Pierre Apraxine, 2010
These six photo-postcards show various places and moments surrounding the death and burial of Leo Tolstoy. In November 1910 the eighty-two-year-old novelist walked away from his great wealth to devote himself to Christian charity and died in a stationmaster’s house after falling ill on a train. Tolstoy’s death was of tremendous national importance, and how he was to be mourned – whether to kneel or stand at the grave, for instance – signified a contrast between old and new that would be decided during the Russian Revolution seven years later.
Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website
What an eclectic group of photographs in this posting as well as a great title for an exhibition!
Marcus
Many thankx to the The Metropolitan Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.
Aleksey Ivanovich Saveliev (Russian, 1883-1923) Peasant Carts with Funeral Wreaths 1910 Gelatin silver print 8.9 x 13.3cm (3 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gift of Pierre Apraxine, 2010
Aleksey Ivanovich Saveliev (Russian, 1883-1923) Deputation of the Yasno-Polyanskyi Peasants 1910 Gelatin silver print 8.9 x 13.3cm (3 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gift of Pierre Apraxine, 2010
Felix Thiollier (French, 1842-1914) A Village Street in the Auvergne c. 1910 Gelatin silver print The Metropolitan Museum of Art Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2008
An industrialist and serious amateur photographer in Saint-Étienne, Thiollier left to posterity a vast archive of photographs and negatives. Most are landscapes done in the Pictorialist style, but his more unusual images depict factories and daily life outside major cities in early twentieth century France.
Paul Haviland (American, 1880-1950) Passing Steamer 1910 Platinum print The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gilman Collection Purchase, Harriette and Noel Levine Gift, 2005
The son of a well-off china manufacturer in Limoges, Haviland encountered Alfred Stieglitz’s Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession in 1908. He soon contributed articles to and published photographs in Stieglitz’s journal Camera Work (and acted as the gallery’s secretary at one point), even bankrolling the gallery’s three-year lease for Stieglitz when the rent was raised. In 1915 he started – with the Mexican-born caricaturist and gallerist Marius de Zayas and the journalist Agnes Ernest Meyer – a new magazine called 291, named for Stieglitz’s gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue.
This image appeared as a photogravure in a 1912 issue of Camera Work. While the soft focus and platinum printing are traces of the waning Pictorialist style, the unexpected vantage point and stark design made Passing Steamer a harbinger of things to come.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Anton Giulio Bragaglia (Italian, 1890-1960) Change of Position 1911 Gelatin silver print 12.8 x 17.9cm (5 1/16 x 7 1/16 in) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gilman Collection Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005
At age nineteen, Bragaglia became enamored of the Italian Futurist movement, which espoused the beauty of speed and war, the interdependence of time and space, and the total dissolution of time-consecrated institutions. Not following the stop-motion photography of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey from the previous century, Bragaglia left the camera’s shutter open to register the absolute fluidity of motion itself – in this case, the trajectory created by the sweeping, continuous arc of a simple change of body position. The result is a dissolution or dematerialisation of the man’s body in a seamless picture of active life. Although later banished from the Futurists’ ranks, the photographer created perhaps the first truly avant-garde images with the camera – the kind that would become prevalent across the continent only a decade later.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Adolph de Meyer (American born France, 1868-1949) [Dance Study] c. 1912 Platinum print The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
De Meyer – who would become Vogue magazine’s first official fashion photographer, in 1913 – photographed the dancer Nijinsky and other members of Sergei 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. In 1913 Mabel Dodge, a patroness of the avant-garde, wrote: “Nearly every thinking person nowadays is in revolt against something, because the craving of the individual is for further consciousness, and because consciousness is expanding and bursting through the moulds that have held it up to now.”
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Polish, 1885-1939) Tadeus Langier, Zakopane 1912-1913 Gelatin silver print 12.6 x 17.6cm (4 15/16 x 6 15/16 in) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gilman Collection Purchase, Denise and Andrew Saul Gift, 2005
A painter who considered photography a hobby, Lartigue was seven when his father, an accomplished amateur photographer, presented him with his first camera. reserving his images from childhood onward in album after album, Lartigue created a rich chronicle of the sporting life and entertainments of his upper-class milieu but one that, like his diaries, remained essentially private. Until 1963, when a show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, revealed Lartigue as a major photographer, his work was known only to a group of friends.
[This print has] been made by Lartigue prior to his public recognition, in his customary intimate scale. He made the Grand Prix picture by swinging the camera from left to right as the racing car sped by. It captures the same awestruck, slate-erasing feeling that inspired the Futurist Marinetti to rhapsodise four years earlier, “A roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.”
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Unknown Artist, British School The Great British Advance in the West: A Raiding Party Waiting for the Word to Go 1914-1918 Gelatin silver print The Metropolitan Museum of Art Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2010 Wikipedia Commons public domain
Unknown Artist, French School The Great Nave: Wounded Soldiers Performing Arms Drill at the End of Their Medical Treatment, Grand Palais, Paris 1916 Gelatin silver print The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gilman Collection Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005 Wikipedia Commons public domain
During World War I, wounded soldiers who had been sent to Paris to recover were drilled in the cavernous Grand Palais to prepare them for a return to the front.
Unknown artist (American School) (Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks Selling Liberty Loans during the Third Loan Campaign at the Sub Treasury Building on Wall Street, New York City) 1918 Gelatin silver print 19.4 x 24.1cm (7 5/8 x 9 1/2 in) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Purchase The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1996
The twentieth century was truly born during the 1910s. This exhibition, which accompanies Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand, surveys the range of uses to which photography was put as its most advanced practitioners and theorists were redefining the medium as an art. The title “Our Future Is in the Air“ is taken from a military aviation pamphlet that figures prominently (in French) in a 1912 Cubist tabletop still life by Picasso; it suggests the twinned senses of exhilarating optimism and lingering dread that accompanied the dissolution of the old order.
Photography was handmaiden and witness to the upheavals that revolutionised perception and consciousness during this tumultuous era. Space and time were overcome by motorcars and airplanes, radio and wireless, and man seemed liberated from the bounds of gravity and geography. This seemingly limitless expanse was mirrored by a new understanding of the unconscious as infinitely deep, complex, and varied – a continent ripe for discovery. The camera was seen as the conduit between these two states of self and world, and “straight photography” – stripped of the gauzy blur of Pictorialist reverie – was espoused by Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand among others.
This turn was not accidental: since handheld cameras became available in the late 1880s, anyone could be a photographer; similarly, photography had snaked its way into every corner of the culture. Elevated perception would distinguish the new artists from the amateur and the tradesman. The exhibition casts the widest possible net in order to show the foundations upon which the medium staked its claim as an independent art.
The 1910s – a period remembered for “The Great War,” Einstein’s theory of relativity, the Russian Revolution, and the birth of Hollywood – was a dynamic and tumultuous decade that ushered in the modern era. This new age – as it was captured by the quintessentially modern art of photography – will be the subject of the exhibition “Our Future Is In The Air”: Photographs from the 1910s, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from November 10, 2010, through April 10, 2011.
An eclectic centennial exhibition devoted to photography of the 1910s, “Our Future Is In The Air” provides a fascinating look at the birth of modern life through 58 photographs by some 30 artists, including Eugène Atget, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Eugène Druet, Lewis Hine, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Adolph de Meyer, Christian Schad, Morton Schamberg, Charles Sheeler, and Stanislaw Witkiewicz, among others. Drawn exclusively from the Museum’s collection, the exhibition also features anonymous snapshots, séance photographs, and a family album made by Russian nobility on the eve of revolution. “Our Future Is In The Air” complements the Museum’s concurrent presentation of groundbreaking photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand in the exhibition Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand. The exhibition’s title is taken from a pamphlet for military aviation that figures prominently (in French) in a 1912 Cubist tabletop still-life by Picasso, but is used here because of its double meaning: the feelings of excitement and anxiety that accompanied such radical change.
“Our Future Is In The Air” opens in dramatic fashion with a series of photographs showing moments in the funeral procession and burial of Leo Tolstoy on November 9, 1910. The great Russian novelist passed away just after walking away from his great wealth and literary fame to lead a life of Christian charity. Certain details that can be seen in the photo-postcards – such as whether or not to kneel by the grave – represented a long simmering struggle between old and new, spiritual and secular, that would lead to revolution seven years later.
As cameras became smaller, faster, and easier to operate, amateur photographers such as the child prodigy Jacques-Henri Lartigue pushed the medium in directions that trained photographers shied away from. Since Lartigue was only recognised much later as a key figure in photography, prints such as the ones included here – showing speeding motorcars – are exceedingly rare. Lartigue made one of his most memorable photographs, Le Grand Prix A.C.F. (1913), by swinging his camera in the same direction as the car, as it sped by.
The camera also afforded access to the previously invisible, whether capturing a broken leg bone, revealed in an X-ray from 1916 or the trajectory created by a simple change in body position, in a 1911 motion study by the Futurist artist Anton Giulio Bragaglia.
At the same time, photography became an agent of democratic communication, and documentary photographers used its growing influence to expose degrading conditions of workers, the injustice of child labor, and the devastation of war. Beginning in 1908, Lewis Hine made 5,000 photographs of children working in mills, sweatshops, factories, and street trades; six of his photographs will be featured in this exhibition, including Newsboy asleep on stairs with papers, Jersey City, New Jersey, February 1912. Hine’s reports and slide lectures were meant to trigger a profound, empathetic response in the viewer.
During World War I, photography was utilised to document the mass casualties of mechanised warfare; in the exhibition, an affecting image from 1916, by an unknown artist, shows wounded French soldiers performing drills in the nave of the Grand Palais in Paris as part of their rehabilitation.
Also in the exhibition is an evocative 1918 photograph, again by an unknown artist, of Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks entertaining a huge crowd at a war bonds rally on Wall Street.
“Our Future Is In The Air” accompanies the exhibition Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand, which focuses on contemporaneous works by three modernist masters of American photography: Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand. It includes photographs by several friends and compatriots of Alfred Stieglitz, from Adolph de Meyer, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Paul Haviland, and Karl Struss to Morton Schamberg and Charles Sheeler, in whose works one can trace the transition from soft focus Pictorialism to a harder-edged, more detached “straight photography.”
Press release from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Alvin Langdon Coburn (British born America, 1882-1966) The Octopus 1909 Platinum print The Metropolitan Museum of Art Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
During the early 1910s, photographers such as Paul Strand, Karl Struss, and Coburn were using Pictorialist techniques from the previous century to depict startling perspectives on contemporary urban subjects, such as this dizzying, bird’s-eye view of New York’s Madison Square from a new skyscraper.
Unknown artist (American School) (Man Holding Baseball in Catcher’s Mitt) 1910 Gelatin silver print 13.8 x 8.7cm (5 7/16 x 3 7/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Funds from various donors, 1998
Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940) 11:00 A.M. Monday, May 9th, 1910. Newsies at Skeeter’s Branch, Jefferson near Franklin. They were all smoking. Location: St. Louis, Missouri 1910 Gelatin silver print The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection Gift of Phyllis D. Massar, 1970
Trained as a sociologist at Columbia University, Hine gave up his teaching job in 1908 to become a full-time photographer for the National Child Labor Committee. The success of the reform agency, created four years earlier, was largely dependent on its ability to sway public opinion.
Influenced by Jacob Riis’s pictures of slum conditions on New York’s Lower East Side, Hine obsessively documented the working conditions of children in mills, factories, and fields across the country, often going undercover to gain access to his subjects. The results – more than five thousand photographs – were used in field reports, exhibitions, pamphlets, and slide lectures. Hine’s decidedly unromantic, understated pictures served as a potent weapon of persuasion.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940) Addie Card, 12 years. Spinner in North Pownal Cotton Mill. Girls in mill say she is ten years. She admitted to me she was twelve; that she started during school vacation and now would “stay”. Location: Vermont, August 1910 1910 Gelatin silver print 24.4 x 19.3cm (9 5/8 x 7 5/8 in) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gilman Collection Purchase, Anonymous Gifts, by exchange, 2005
Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940) Newsboy asleep on stairs with papers, Jersey City, New Jersey February 1912 Gelatin silver print Image: 11.5 x 16.8cm (4 1/2 x 6 5/8 in) Metropolitan Museum of Art Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005
Exhibition Overview
The twentieth century was truly born during the 1910s. This exhibition, which accompanies Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand, surveys the range of uses to which photography was put as its most advanced practitioners and theorists were redefining the medium as an art. The title “Our Future Is in the Air” is taken from a military aviation pamphlet that figures prominently (in French) in a 1912 Cubist tabletop still life by Picasso; it suggests the twinned senses of exhilarating optimism and lingering dread that accompanied the dissolution of the old order.
Photography was handmaiden and witness to the upheavals that revolutionised perception and consciousness during this tumultuous era. Space and time were overcome by motorcars and airplanes, radio and wireless, and man seemed liberated from the bounds of gravity and geography. This seemingly limitless expanse was mirrored by a new understanding of the unconscious as infinitely deep, complex, and varied – a continent ripe for discovery. The camera was seen as the conduit between these two states of self and world, and “straight photography” – stripped of the gauzy blur of Pictorialist reverie – was espoused by Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand among others.
This turn was not accidental: since handheld cameras became available in the late 1880s, anyone could be a photographer; similarly, photography had snaked its way into every corner of the culture. Elevated perception would distinguish the new artists from the amateur and the tradesman. The exhibition casts the widest possible net in order to show the foundations upon which the medium staked its claim as an independent art.
Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Boulevard de Strasbourg 1912 Albumen silver print from glass negative 22.4 x 17.5cm (8 13/16 x 6 7/8 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gilman Collection Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005
Atget found his vocation in photography in 1897, at the age of forty, after having been a merchant seaman, a minor actor, and a painter. He became obsessed with making what he termed “documents for artists” of Paris and its environs and compiling a visual compendium of the architecture, landscape, and artefacts that distinguish French culture and history. By the end of his life, Atget had amassed an archive of more than eight thousand negatives, which he organized into such categories as Parisian Interiors, Vehicles in Paris, and Petits Métiers (trades and professions). In Atget’s inventory of Paris, shop windows figure prominently and the most arresting feature mannequin displays. In the 1920s the Surrealists recognised in Atget a kindred spirit and reproduced a number of his photographs in their journals and reviews. Antiquated mannequins such as the ones depicted here struck them as haunting, dreamlike analogues to the human form.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Polish, 1885-1939) Jadwiga Janczewska, Zakopane c. 1913 Gelatin silver print The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gilman Collection Museum Purchase, 2005
Witkiewicz was prolific in many mediums, writing plays, novels, and philosophical treatises as well as painting and making darkly brooding photographic portraits and self-portraits. In all his work, he describes a proto-existential sense of the self struggling in vain against the undifferentiated mass of men and the indifference of death; he often turned to drugs to recover this missing plenitude of existence.
Between 1912 and 1913, when he thought he was going mad, Witkiewicz made a series of extraordinary self-portraits and portraits of friends, his dying father, and his fiancée, Jadwiga Janczewska. After this time, his engagement with photography was brief, as he devoted himself instead to literature and painting. He took his life on the day Russian troops entered Poland in 1939 – in part a gesture of national solidarity.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Karl Struss (American, 1886–1981) Claremont Inn, Riverside Drive 1915 Platinum print The Metropolitan Museum of Art Warner Communications Inc. Purchase Fund, 1977
A member of the Photo-Secession, Struss was a student of Clarence White and a friend of Alfred Stieglitz. He made dozens of photographs of New York City at dusk, delighting in the way things merged and were illuminated by strings of fine lights. This photograph, with its gleaming automobiles and electric lights, shows a popular summer restaurant housed in a colonial-era home on the Upper West Side. Four years later, Struss moved to Los Angeles to work as a still photographer in the burgeoning movie business. He wound up being hired as a cameraman by Cecil B. DeMille and in 1927 won the first Oscar for cinematography for his work on F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Morton Schamberg (American, 1881–1918) [View of Rooftops] 1917 Gelatin silver print The Metropolitan Museum of Art Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987 Public domain
Had he not died of influenza in 1918, Schamberg likely would have remained one of the best avant-garde painters and photographers of his generation in America. He absorbed the lessons of Cubism through his contacts with the Stieglitz and Arensberg circles, and in photographs such as this one he demonstrated his deft application of the new artistic idioms.
After reaching a point of almost pure abstraction in his painting in the wake of the Armory show of 1913, Schamberg turned in 1915 toward more objective machine forms in his pastels and paintings, and toward urban images in his photographs.
Like Stieglitz’s photographs of the city made from the windows of his galleries, Schamberg’s New York is seen from an elevated perspective, but unlike the elder photographer’s images, Schamberg’s photograph is cool, altogether lacking in human or natural references, and celebrates an almost wholly geometric order underscored by his calculated framing and point of view. For many years this print, the only one Schamberg made from this negative, belonged to his closest friend, Charles Sheeler.
Morton Schamberg (American, 1881-1918) Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (German, 1874-1927) “God” by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Morton Schamberg 1917 Gelatin silver print 24.1 x 19.2cm (9 1/2 x 7 9/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1973 Wikipedia Commons public domain
This photograph of a drain pipe attached to a miter box documents one of the most famous examples of American Dada. The sculpture God, a Readymade in the spirit of Marcel Duchamp’s upended urinal Fountain, has traditionally been attributed to Schamberg. Recent scholarship suggests, however, that it was primarily the creation of Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, a poet, shoplifter, junk collector, and Duchamp worshiper famous for strolling the streets of Greenwich Village with cancelled postage stuck to her face and a birdcage with a live canary dangling from her neck. The sculpture’s irreverent title recalls the sculptor Beatrice Wood’s unattributed comment, included in a published defence of Duchamp’s Fountain, “The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.”
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Charles Sheeler (American, 1883–1965) Dan Mask c. 1918 Gelatin silver print 24.2 x 18.2cm (9 1/2 x 7 3/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gilman Collection, Purchase, Denise and Andrew Saul Gift, 2005
When Charles Sheeler took up the camera sometime in 1910-11, he was already a modestly accomplished painter. He began to photograph domestic architecture in the Philadelphia area, and within three years he had a successful sideline documenting fine private and public American collections of Chinese bronzes, Meso-American pots, and modern painting and sculpture by Cézanne, Picasso, and Duchamp. Through this work Sheeler met Walter Arensberg, Alfred Stieglitz, and other important collectors and dealers; to a few of them he sold his paintings.
The rigorous demands of detailed record photography soon influenced his painting as the direct, generally frontal assessment of both an object’s form and structure retrained and refined his eye. By 1916, Sheeler had begun to paint from photographs and also to pursue photography as an end in itself. With his first exhibition of photographs, a three-person show with Paul Strand and Morton Schamberg at Marius de Zayas’s Modern Gallery in 1917, Sheeler emerged as one of America’s few prominent artists equally skilled with brush and camera.
This photograph of a Dan mask from Ivory Coast may have been commissioned by John Quinn, a New York lawyer, collector of African art, and patron of the avant-garde. The ceremonial mask emerges from virtual obscurity, filled with mystery, its highly polished wood surface animated by a raking, angular light. The photograph functions as a fetish, speaking with its own voice, commanding our attention, and even, it would seem, judging our response.
This photograph was published in the March 1923 issue of “The Arts,” in an article by de Zayas entitled “Negro Art.”
Charles Sheeler (American, 1883-1965) Doylestown House – Stairs from Below 1917 Gelatin silver print 21 x 15cm (8 1/4 x 5 15/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933
The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York, New York 10028-0198 Information: 212-535-7710
Opening hours: Sunday – Tuesday and Thursday: 10am – 5pm Friday and Saturday: 10am – 9pm Closed Wednesday
Exhibition dates: 27th November 2010 – 6th March 2011
Curators: Götz Adriani and Patricia Kamp
Installation photograph of the exhibition Duane Hanson/Gregory Crewdson: Uncanny realities at Museum Frieder Burda
A great double act!
An inspired curatorial choice brings the work of these two artist’s together – life-like sculptures of everyday Americans mixing with theatrical, deadpan staged images. The mis en scène created in the exhibition space, the tension between sculpture, photograph, frame and space – is delicious.
Crewdson is at his best when he resists the obvious narrative (for example, all the traffic lights stuck on yellow in the photograph Untitled (Brief Encounter) (2006, see below). Personally I prefer his staged photographs with pairs or groups of people within the image, rather than a single figure. The storyline is more ambiguous and the photographs of people walking along railway tracks always remind me of the Stephen King story filmed as Stand by Me (1986) with a young River Phoenix. Either way they are intoxicating, the viewer drawn into these wonderful, dark psychological dramas.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Museum Frieder Burda for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation photograph of the exhibition Duane Hanson/Gregory Crewdson: Uncanny realities at Museum Frieder Burda with Duane Hanson Old Couple on a Bench (1994) in the foreground and Gregory Crewdson Untitled (Worthington Street) (2006) in the background
The works by the two American artists Duane Hanson (1925-1996) and Gregory Crewdson (born in 1962) confuse and touch the observer.
Both artists present people in their everyday lives, with hopes, yearnings and broken dreams. People we usually do not notice, aged and marked by reality, by life itself. While Hanson shapes his life-sized figures with a great deal of sympathy, Crewdson rather spreads a gloomy and depressing atmosphere in his pictures of lonely people in their houses, gardens and in streets.
With his realistic sculptures, the American artist Duane Hanson has become a synonym for contemporary realism in contemporary art. Typical motives are average people like housewives, waitresses, car dealers, janitors. Posture and expression of these figures are very close to reality. The photographer Gregory Crewdson arranges his large format pictures with cineastic arrangements and lets the abyss behind every-day life scenes become visible.
The exhibition at the Frieder Burda Museum presents about 30 figures by Duane Hanson, mainly from the artist’s estate, in dialogue with 20 large format works from the series Beneath the Roses by the photographer Gregory Crewdson. The photographies are mainly owned by the artist himself.
The curators Götz Adriani and Patricia Kamp are not aiming at a direct confrontation. They are rather presenting two artists who work with different materials, but deal with very similar topics. Both artists, Hanson and Crewdson, are grand when it comes to arranging their art. Crewdson always puts very much effort into the arrangements of the scenes in his pictures, and Hanson always keeps an eye on his close surroundings.
The works of both artists impressively reflect the complexity of the human existence. …
Duane Hanson (1925-1996) is one of the most influential American sculptors of the 20th century committed to Realism.
The proximity to reality of his lifelike, detailed human figures make for perfect irritation. Despite all the seriousness hidden behind the socio-critical issue, which prompted Hanson to create his protagonists, the figures have a great deal of entertainment value, above all – and it is precisely this that makes them so appealing – due to their occasional gravitational bearing. Featuring twenty-five works, the exhibition presents a representative cross-section of the American’s extensive oeuvre, which comprises a total of only 114 works. The figures enter a dialogue with the large-format photographs by the American photo artist Gregory Crewdson, who has a flair for relating human abysses in a different and very subtle way.
In the early 1950s, after completing his study of sculpture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Hanson was initially guided by the abstract style of art that prevailed during this period. However, this would not lead to a satisfactory result. In 1953, he turned his back on his homeland and spent nearly ten years of his life earning a living as an art teacher at American schools in Germany. It was during this period that he discovered the materials polyester resin and fibreglass, which would become crucial for his future creative work. After returning to the United States, Hanson spent the ensuing years perfecting his artistic skills in the treatment of these materials in such a way that the boundaries between reality and artificial figure seem to blur – where Hanson was never concerned with the mere illusionistic reproduction of reality, but chose this veristic manner of representation as a medium for communicating his concern in terms of content, i.e., shedding light on the tragedy of human lives that hauntingly consolidates in his characters.
In the human figures produced in the early work phase in the late 1960s, Hanson responded to the sociopolitical tension and protest movements of the day. He created sculptures and ensembles that very directly take issue with social hardship, violence, or racism, and he took a stand for the victims of this system, for the people who never had a chance to successfully face the demands made by life.
Influenced by Pop Art, Hanson turned to thematising everyday American life, frequently switching his observations to a critically satirical attitude that was, however, always guided by compassion. Housewives, construction workers, car salesmen, or janitors – the models for his figures are people in the American middle and working classes in whose biographies the disappointment in the American dream has become entrenched. He often puts his people and all of their small insufficiencies into perspective with ironic kindness, such as, for example, the Tourists, in whom are combined all of the clichés associated with the typical Florida tourist.
Hanson’s participation in documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972 gave rise to his international breakthrough. His figures became more lifelike; they more and more naturally blended into their surroundings. Their gestures, facial expressions, and postures related the emotional and physical burdens of life. The artist concentrated on older people in whose physiognomies one can read the traces of existence, the impact of loneliness, the problems that accompany being old, and their alienation. Hanson was struck by the isolation of this generation by society, a circumstance that has not lost any of its relevance.
Hanson’s interest in rendering the figures as lifelike as possible is surely not rooted in a desire to want to convince the viewer of their “authenticity”; rather, their lifelikeness was meant to move the viewer to experience empathy and concern, thus manifesting Hanson’s humanism. Human values and destinies comprise the focus of his art; he transforms the reality of life into the realism of art and in doing so sharpens our outlook and our view of the world, our fellow human beings, and our own life as well.
Born in 1962 in Brooklyn, New York, Gregory Crewdson is one of the best-known contemporary photographers internationally. In his most important series to date Beneath the Roses, which he created between 2003 and 2008, Crewdson explores the American psyche and the disturbing realities at play within quotidian environments. In his dramatically detailed and realistic photographs situated in America’s morbid, small-town milieu, the artist succeeds to stimulate the viewer’s subconscious on various levels. Twenty outstanding works from the series are being placed in a dialogue with sculptures by Duane Hanson. Gregory Crewdson does not spare either effort or expenses for the production of his visual inventions, which are reminiscent of film productions. The stagings are planned and arranged in advance down to the smallest detail and then elaborately implemented in a major logistical and human effort. The final photograph is the result of what is frequently work lasting several weeks, a circumstance that is substantiated by its depths in terms of content and its technical perfection.
Gregory Crewdson works in two distinct ways to create his photographs. On one hand, he works on location in real neighborhoods and townships. On the other hand, the artist works on the soundstage inventing his world from scratch. Before the photographic location productions start, Crewdson drives around upstate Massachusetts looking for interesting settings, which he then has prepared in an elaborate process. In most cases, local residents of the ramshackle towns also play the characters in his work. Crewdson works closely with the art department of the museum MASSMoCA, when shooting his pictures done on the soundstage. The results are much like stills from a movie and reflect his affinity with cinema. Filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, or Steven Spielberg are the inspiration for Crewdson’s uncanny stories, which he seems to freeze in a single snapshot in time.
The construction of this narrative instant demonstrates the artist’s extraordinary talent. Like sophisticated literature does the reader, his works pose a challenge to viewers, as they have to mount the decisive share of the creative effort themselves. A brief, fleeting glance is not enough. Viewers become immersed in the staged scenes full of details and accessories to experience a moment that is intensely real. Fantasy and the powers of imagination and association fashion the visual event in the mind to become a subjective, alternative reality – an uncanny reality.
In his photographs, Crewdson deliberately works with emotions and fears that extend through his oeuvre in recurring, in part very different scenarios. They mirror alienation, absence, shame, sexuality, and loss – human states of emotion that deeply touch the viewer. That the artist focuses on the mind in his works may be due to the fact that, as the son of a psychoanalyst, he experienced insight into the profundity of the human soul very early on. His works can be regarded as metaphors for fears and desires, for the things that take place below the surface, the palpable, as if Crewdson wanted to make visible a new or different level of reality situated somewhere between the conscious and subconscious.
At the same time, the Beneath the Roses series can be seen as a psychological study of the American province. The settings show social realities and document the economic decline of a society behind the backdrop of the American way of life. Unsentimental and direct, they reflect working-class life – which allows us to strike an arc to the work by Duane Hanson, whose oeuvre also revolves around the concept of humanity, the facets of which he lends expression to in his silent, introverted figures.
The evolution of Beneath the Roses was documented in a series of production stills, original drawings by the artist, and detailed lighting plans. About sixty works from this reservoir are presented in a studio exhibition at the museum in order to illustrate the complex technical process of producing the photographs. Gregory Crewdson completed his study of Street Photography at the Yale School of Art in New Haven in 1988. He returned to Yale in 1993 and has occupied the Chair of Photography since.
Press release from the Museum Frieder Burda website
This is an emotional posting for me. I came out as a gay man in 1975, six short years after the Stonewall Riots in New York City that were the touchstone of the gay liberation movement. I partied hard in my youth in London and didn’t have my first HIV test until 1982/1983. We just didn’t know about the disease at all. Those two weeks waiting for the result of that first test, for that is how long it took to get the test results back in those days, seemed terribly long. Even worse was the time spent sitting outside the doctor’s office waiting to be called in to get the test results – literally life and death as there was no treatment, no drugs to help, no hope.
I lost many friends over the years to this terrible disease that continues to decimate human beings all around the world. It was only by pure luck that I survived. This posting shows the work of one artist who didn’t survive. He as experimenting with his sexuality (and documenting it) in Boston at much the same time that I was in London and so I feel an affinity with this beautiful and gifted man. What great images he made! How much poorer is the world without his presence and indeed the presence of all human beings who have succumbed to the disease.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“You know, I’m going to be really famous, so you’re lucky to be meeting me.”
More than twenty years after Mark Morrisroe’s early death, Fotomuseum Winterthur is presenting the first comprehensive survey exhibition on his work – an extraordinarily diverse body of works that has usually been shown in group shows, mostly in connection with his famous Boston colleagues Nan Goldin and David Armstrong. The exhibition, curated by Beatrix Ruf and Thomas Seelig, is a collaboration between Fotomuseum Winterthur and the Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection).
In the Boston of the early 1980s, Mark Morrisroe was a well-known, charismatic figure, who often appeared in drag together with the artist friends he had met while studying and who performed in bars and clubs with Stephen Tashjian (alias Tabboo!) as the “Clam Twins.” As an artist and photographer he was also at the center of the lively Boston punk scene, whose most important protagonists were known well beyond the city. Like Nan Goldin and David Armstrong before him, Mark Morrisroe moved to New York in the mid-1980s to try his luck there. He died – far too early – in July 1989, at the age of just 30, from the consequences of AIDS.
References to Morrisroe’s origins and past are surrounded by a dense mist that makes it impossible to differentiate between truth and fantasy. By continually inventing and varying scenarios about himself, the settings for which extended from the past to the future, Morrisroe always understood how to collaborate actively in shaping his own myth, feeding it with fanciful layers of lies, or indeed letting it float into the void. His public presence could be engaging, and sometimes loud and disturbing, too, but silence fell after his death – both around the artist and his photography.
In retrospect, Morrisroe’s art studies in Boston and his years in the punk and art world of that city can in fact be seen as his most content and productive period. There he discovered a positive approach to his sexuality, and in the person of Jonathan “Jack” Pierson, who appears in many of his photographs and Polaroids, found his first great love. The first intimate portraits of close friends such as Lynelle White (with whom he published five editions of the collaged, photocopied and coloured-in Dirt fanzine in 1975-1976) were produced there, as were many of his first narcissistic self-scenarios in front of the camera. There Morrisroe shot the low-budget trash film Nymph-O-Maniac in the style of his idol John Waters, with Pia Howard as the main performer.
Mark Morrisroe’s short creative period, of barely ten years, was characterized by an amazing output of photographic experiments, and stands out for its constantly searching, inquisitive, and always individual aesthetic, as a glance at the photographer’s extensive estate reveals. The estate was acquired by the Ringier Collection in 2004 and was placed in the care of the Fotomuseum Winterthur in 2006. The estate comprises around 600 colour prints – a few of them duplicates – approximately as many gelatin silver prints, about 800 of the 2,000 known Polaroid shots by Morrisroe, all the negatives, contact prints, and some of his personal papers, giving some idea of the unbridled enjoyment and energy with which Mark Morrisroe threw himself into his life and work.
The exhibition will feature early colour and black-and-white prints, Polaroids, and Polaroid negatives from which it was possible to make enlargements, as well as the early and late photograms he processed by hand. During his art studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (1978-1982) Morrisroe was already experimenting with various interpretations of reprography, trying to understand the possibilities of the medium and its inherent limitations, and using different ingenious printing processes for his photographic prints. Within his close circle of friends he soon laid claim to the “invention” of what are called “sandwich” prints – enlargements of double negatives of the same subject mounted on top of one another – which yielded an elaborate pictorial quality, producing a very iconic impression in the final result, which over time Morrisroe learned to use in an increasingly controlled way. Early on, the artist recognised the intrinsic value of prints – irrespective of the medium used to produce them – as pictorial objects that he could manipulate, colour, paint, and write on at will.
By all accounts, Mark Morrisroe was a man driven to achieve fame and recognition. Restless and demanding – of himself as well as of others – he always wanted more, and from this inner restlessness he derived enormous resources of artistic energy. Right to the very end, his life and work, down to the photograms feverishly produced in the makeshift darkroom in his hospital, which have hardly ever been publicly shown until today, attest to an unlimited and ecstatic search for a sensual, aesthetic, and always ambivalently charged pictorial world.
The Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Collection Ringier) at the Fotomuseum Winterthur
Following Pat Hearn’s untimely death in 2000, there was a break in exhibition activities focusing on Mark Morrisroe. From 1998 the Ringier Collection had been continuously in contact with Pat Hearn about Mark Morrisroe’s work and they continued the discussion with Pat Hearn’s husband, Colin de Land of American Fine Arts, who had inherited the Mark Morrisroe estate. In 2002 Colin de Land approached Michael Ringier and Beatrix Ruf to discuss options for the future of the Morrisroe estate because he had also fallen ill and was very aware that he was going to die soon himself. In their conversations, the main concern was how responsibility for this important artist could be taken on by keeping the oeuvre together as a comprehensive group of works and making it accessible to a broad audience internationally as well. The Ringier Collection proposed to Colin de Land that they secure the estate by acquiring it and placing it in the Fotomuseum Winterthur. Furthermore, the decision was made to form a foundation for the Morrisroe estate, which would be the home to a comprehensive group of works and would keep the estate together, provide conversational and curatorial continuity, and act as the leading force in communicating and distributing the work through exhibitions and publications.”
The portrait of Baby Steffenelli, captured by the provocative photographer Mark Morrisroe, offers a glimpse into the bold, rebellious spirit of the 1980s underground art scene. Morrisroe, known for his raw and unflinching style, frequently blurred the lines between art and performance, creating images that were both intimate and confrontational. This photograph of Steffenelli, a figure often associated with the New York City art world of the time, reflects the vibrant energy of a subculture that thrived on pushing societal boundaries. Steffenelli, much like Morrisroe, embraced unconventional identities, and their collaboration in this photo serves as a visual statement of individuality and defiance, characteristic of the era’s exploration of gender, sexuality, and self-expression.
The 1980s were a transformative time for the art world, particularly in New York, where artists like Morrisroe, Robert Mapplethorpe, and David Wojnarowicz were redefining the possibilities of photography, painting, and performance. Morrisroe, who was also a member of the artistic collective called “The Factory” and part of the East Village art scene, used his camera as a tool to document the subversive lifestyles of his peers. His work, often marked by a sense of urgency and intimacy, captured the raw emotions and complexities of those living on the fringes of society. This photo of Steffenelli, taken in 1985, is a prime example of how Morrisroe’s photographs served as a historical document, reflecting the ongoing dialogues surrounding identity and the body in the context of the post-punk, pre-AIDS crisis era.
For Steffenelli, this image became an emblem of the intersection between personal expression and the broader cultural shifts taking place in the 1980s. The vibrant, sometimes jarring energy of Morrisroe’s photography mirrored the boldness with which people like Steffenelli navigated their place in an increasingly complex world. The photo not only immortalises Steffenelli’s individuality but also serves as a testament to the powerful and often controversial art scene that defined this period. In this single frame, Morrisroe captures not only a person but the essence of a moment in time – a snapshot of defiance, liberation, and transformation in the face of societal norms.
Exhibition dates: 13th November 2010 – 23rd January 2011
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.
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Jessie #34 2004 Gelatin Silver enlargement print from 8 x 10 in. collodion wet-plate negative, with Soluvar matte varnish mixed with diatomaceous earth
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled (Still Life) 2006 Ambrotype (unique collodion wet-plate positive on black glass), with sandarac varnish (15 x 13 in)
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled 1983 Polaroid (8 x 10 in)
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled 2000-2001 Gelatin silver enlargement prints from 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm) collodion wet-plate negatives, with Soluvar matte varnish mixed with diatomaceous earth
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled #4, Antietam 2001 Gelatin silver enlargement print from 8 x 10 in. collodion wet-plate
One of the first major presentations in the United States of the bold work of contemporary photographer Sally Mann opened at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts website (VMFA) on November 13, 2010. Exclusive to Richmond, the exhibition will continue until January 23, 2011.
Focusing on the theme of the body, the exhibition will revolve around several entirely new series while also incorporating little-known early work. Mann is admired for her passionate use of photography to address issues of love and loss, expressed in images of her children and southern landscapes. Her recent work uses obsolete photographic methods and nearly abstract images to push the limits of her medium and to dig deeper into themes of mortality and vulnerability. The images include several powerful series of self-portraits – an entirely new subject in her work – and figure studies of her husband. Some of the works in the exhibition include nudity and other graphic material. Viewer and parental discretion is advised.
“Sally Mann is among the top tier of photographers today. Although she is widely exhibited, we are fortunate to be one of the first U.S. museums to produce a major exhibition of her work,” says John Ravenal, the exhibition curator and Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. “The fearlessness, power and deeply emotional themes of her art are both captivating and unforgettable. We are pleased to exhibit one of Virginia’s, and the nation’s, finest artists.”
Self-examination, ageing, death, and decay are some of the subjects of the exhibition, and these are balanced by themes of beauty, love, trust, and the hopefulness of youth. Among the works are portraits of Mann’s husband, who suffers from a degenerative muscle disease. These are juxtaposed with colourful images of her children, forming a poignant comparison between youthful evanescence and the expressive capacity of the mature adult body.
Other works offer additional perspectives on the themes of ageing and mortality. Made during a trip to the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, Mann’s “Body Farm” images explore her fascination with the thin line between animate and inanimate, form and matter. Multi-part self-portraits represent Mann’s first extended exploration of her own face as a subject. Two self-portrait pieces consist of multiple unique photographs printed on black glass – a format known as ambrotypes – arranged in monumental grids of Mann’s likeness.
“The focus on the body in the exhibition will offer a profound meditation on human experience,” continues Ravenal. “The sheer beauty, formal sophistication, and expressive power of the work is likely to appeal to art world and general audiences alike.”
For her landscapes, Mann developed the method she continues to use today, involving an antique large-format view camera and the laborious process of collodion wet-plate. This method, invented in the 1850s, uses sticky ether-based collodion poured on glass, which must be exposed and developed in a matter of minutes before it dries. Unlike her nineteenth-century predecessors, who strove for perfection, Mann embraces accident. Her approach produces spots, streaks, and scars, along with piercing focus in some areas and evaporation of the image in others. These distortions – “honest” artefacts of the process – add a profoundly emotional quality to Mann’s images.
Mann’s recent work continues to use this technique, but returns to the body as a principle subject after a decade of landscapes. Though the body has been an essential focus in Mann’s work from the beginning, this is the first time an exhibition and publication have explored it as a coherent theme.
Born in 1951, Sally Mann has played a leading role in contemporary photography for the past 25 years. Her career began in the 1970s and fully matured in the Culture Wars of the early 1990s, when photographs of her children became embroiled in national debates about family values. In the mid-1990s, Mann turned her attention to large-scale landscapes, specifically the evocative terrain of the South, where she was born, raised and continues to live. Her landscape work raised questions about history, memory and nostalgia, and also embraced a romantic beauty that proved as troubling to some critics as the sensual images of her children had to others. By the early 2000s, she had returned to figurative subjects, adding images of her husband and herself to her work.
Text from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts website
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled (Self Portraits) 2006-2007 Ambrotypes (unique collodion wet-plate positives on black glass) with sandarac varnish
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled (Self Portraits) (detail) 2006-2007 Ambrotypes (unique collodion wet-plate positives on black glass) with sandarac varnish
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled (Self Portraits) (detail) 2006-2007 Ambrotypes (unique collodion wet-plate positives on black glass) with sandarac varnish
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled (Self Portraits) (detail) 2006-2007 Ambrotypes (unique collodion wet-plate positives on black glass) with sandarac varnish
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Untitled 2007-2008 Ambrotypes (unique collodion wet-plate positives on black glass), with sandarac varnish
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Ponder Heart 2009 Gelatin silver contact print from 15 x 13 1/2-in. collodion wet-plate negative
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Hephaestus 2008 Gelatin silver contact print from 15 x 13 1/2 –in. collodion wet-plate negative
Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) Was Ever Love 2009 Gelatin silver contact print from 15 x 13 1/2 –in. collodion wet-plate negative
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 200 N. Boulevard Richmond, Virginia USA 23220-4007
Exhibition dates: 22nd October 2010 – 13th March 2011
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Coin de la rue Valette et Pantheon, 5e arrondissement, matinee de mars 1925, printed 1978 Gelatin silver photograph 17.8 x 23.7cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1980
A delightful exhibition of photographs of the built environment at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. The exhibition contains some interesting photographs from the collection including the outstanding Coin de la rue Valette et Pantheon, 5e arrondissement, matinee de mars by Eugene Atget taken two years before his death (1925, printed 1978, see below) that simply takes your breath away.
Atget was my hero when I started to study photography in the late 1980s and he remains my favourite photographer. His use of light coupled with his understanding of how to organise space within the pictorial frame is exemplary (note the darkness of the right-hand wall as it supports the integrity of the rest of the image, as it leads your eye to that wonderful space between the buildings, the shaft of light falling on the ground, the blank wall topped by an arrow leading the eye upwards to the misty dome!). The ability to place his large format camera and tripod in just the right position, the perfect height and angle, to allow the subject to reveal itself it all it’s glory is magical: “Atget’s interest in the variable play between nature and art through minute changes in the camera’s angle, or as functions of the effects of light and time of day, is underscored in his notations of the exact month and sometimes even the hour when the pictures were taken.”1 Two other immense works in the exhibition are New York at Night by Berenice Abbott (1932, printed c. 1975 below) and the incredible multiple exposure The Maypole, Empire State Building, New York by Edward Steichen (1932, below).
The only disappointment to the exhibition is the lack of vintage prints, a fair portion of the exhibition including the three prints mentioned above being later prints made from the original negatives. I wonder what vintage prints of these images would look like?
The purchasing of non-vintage prints was the paradigm for the collection of international photographs early in the history of the Department of Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria and was seen as quite acceptable at the time. The paradigm was set by Athol Shmith in 1973 on his visit to Paris and London.
“Typically for the times, Shmith did not choose to acquire vintage prints, that is, photographs made shortly after the negative was taken. While vintage prints are most favoured by collectors today, in the 1970s vintage prints supervised by the artists were considered perfectly acceptable and are still regarded as a viable, if less impressive option now.”2
Some museums including the NGV preferred to acquire portfolios of modern reprints as a speedy way of establishing a group of key images. As noted in the catalogue essay to 2nd Sight: Australian Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria by Dr Isobel Crombie, Senior Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria, the reason for preferring the vintage over the modern print “is evident when confronted with modern and original prints: differences in paper, scale and printing styles make the original preferable.”3 The text also notes that this sensibility, the consciousness of these differences slowly evolved in the photographic world and, for most, the distinctions were not a matter of concern even though the quality of the original photograph was not always maintained.
This is stating the case too strongly. Appreciation of the qualities of vintage prints was already high in the period of the mid-1970s – early 1980s most notably at institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, a collection visited by photography curators of the NGV. Size and scale of the vintage prints tend to be much smaller than later prints making them closer to the artists original intentions, while the paper the prints are made on, the contrast and colour of the prints also varies remarkably. Other mundane but vitally important questions may include these: who printed the non-vintage photograph, who authorised the printing and how many non-vintage copies of the original negative were made, none of which are answered when the prints are displayed.
I vividly remember seeing a retrospective of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work in Edinburgh at the Dean Gallery, National Gallery of Scotland in 2005, the largest retrospective of Cartier-Bresson’s work ever staged in Britain with over 200 photographs. Three large rooms were later 1970s reprints of some of his photographs, about 20″ x 24″ in size, on cold, blue photographic paper. One room, however, was full of his original prints from the 1920s and 30s. The contrast could not have been different: the vintage prints were very small, intense, subtle, printed on brown toned paper, everything that you would want those jewel-like images to be, the vision of the artist intensified; the larger prints diluted that vision until the images seemed to almost waste away despite their size.
Although never stated openly I believe that one of the reasons for the purchase of non-vintage prints was the matter of cost, the Department of Photography never being given the budget to buy the prints that it wanted to in the 1970s – early 1980s, the collection of photography not being a priority for the NGV at that time. In other words by buying non-vintage prints in the 1970s you got more “bang for your buck” even when the cost of vintage prints was relatively low. Unfortunately the price of vintage prints then skyrocketed in the 1980s putting them well outside the budget of the Department. While Dr Crombie acknowledges the preponderance of American works in the collection over European and Asian works she also notes that major 20th century photographers that you would expect to be in the collection are not and blames this lack “on the massive increases in prices for international photography that began in the 1980s and which largely excluded the NGV from the market at this critical time.”4
The policy of purchasing non-vintage prints has now ceased at the National Gallery of Victoria.
The purchasing of non-vintage prints and the paucity of purchasing vintage prints by master photographers during the formative decade of the collection of international photographs in the Department of Photography (1970-1980) is understandable in hindsight but today seems like a golden opportunity missed. While the collection contains many fine photographs due to the diligence of early photographic curators (notably Jennie Boddington), the minuscule nature of the budget of the department in those early years when vintage prints were relatively cheap and affordable (a Paul Caponigro print could be purchased for $200-300 for example) did not allow them to purchase the photographs that the collection desperately needed. With one vintage print by a master of photography now fetching many thousands of dollars the ability to fill gaps in the collection in the future is negligible (according to Dr Crombie) – so we must celebrate and enjoy the photographs that are in the collection such as those in Luminous Cities: Photographs of the Built Environment.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
2/ Crombie, Isobel. “Creating a Collection: International Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria,” in Re_View: 170 years of Photography. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2009, p. 9
3/ Crombie, Isobel. Second sight: Australian photography in the National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2002, p. 10
4/ Op.cit. p. 10
Many thankx to Jemma Altmeier for her help and to the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Stephen Thompson (active throughout Europe, 1850s-1880s) Grande Canale, Venice c. 1868 Albumen silver photograph 21.2 x 29.2cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased from Admission Funds, 1988
England (active in England 1860s) Houses of Parliament, London 1860s Albumen silver photograph 18.5 x 24.1cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased from Admission funds, 1988
On 22 October the National Gallery of Victoria will open Luminous Cities, a fascinating exhibition that examines the various ways photographers have viewed cities as historical sites, bustling modern hubs and architectural utopias since the nineteenth century.
The great cities of the world are vibrant creative centres in which the built environment is often as inspirational as the activities of its citizens, and, since the nineteenth century photographers have creatively explored the idea of the city.
This exhibition, drawn from the collection of the NGV, considers various ways in which photographers in the 19th and 20th centuries have viewed cities as historical sites, bustling modern metropolises and architectural utopias. These lyrical images describe the physical attributes of cities, offer insights into the creative imaginations of architects and photographers and embody the zeitgeist of their times.
Frances Lindsay, Deputy Director, NGV said: “Through the work of a range of photographers Luminous Cities will take viewers on a fascinating journey around the world, into the streets, buildings and former lives of great international cities.
“Drawn from the NGV collection, Luminous Cities includes works by renowned photographers Eugene Atget, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Berenice Abbott, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Bill Brandt, Lee Freidlander and Grant Mudford amongst many others.
The exhibition will also extend into our contemporary gallery space where an outstanding selection of works by celebrated contemporary artists such as Bill Henson, Andreas Gursky and Jon Cattapan will be on display,” said Ms Lindsay.
Through examples from the mid 19th century, Luminous Cities explores the relationship between photographer, architect and archaeologist with photos of Athens, Rome and Pompeii. This was also a time when great cities such as London and Paris underwent unprecedented renewal and expansion, photography served to document new constructions and also presented heroic, inspirational visions of new cities emerging from old.
Susan van Wyk, Curator, Photography, NGV said: “The works on display in Luminous Cities describe the physical attributes of cities, offer insights into the creative imaginations of architects and photographers, and embody the zeitgeist of their times.”
New York, one of the great 20th century cities, was a captivating subject for generations of photographers. Through the work of architects and the images photographers made of the city, New York became synonymous with its skyline. The images of renowned photographers including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand and Berenice Abbott show the pictorial possibilities of the modern city in photographs that embody the dynamism of the city that never sleeps.
The contemporary art works included in Luminous Cities explore the creative ways in which artists imagine and represent the cityscape. Vast glittering panoramas taken from bustling urban communities, sprawling architectural structures and fictitious landscapes all combine to reveal fascinating insights into both physical and psychological geographies.
Ms van Wyk said: “At the end of the 20th century a much cooler, more abstracted strain of photography emerged. Photographs in the exhibition from this period range from the formalism of the 1970s to more recent cinematic visions of the nocturnal city.”
Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria website
In the decades following the Second World War the idea of ‘the city’, notably in work of American, European and Australian photographers, came to symbolise the modern condition, the best and worst of contemporary life. This ambiguous stance on the city is exemplified in the work of American photographer Lee Friedlander whose photographs of seemingly ordinary urban scenes are at once amusing and slightly disturbing. In his 1973 photograph Stamford, Connecticut, the banal vernacular architecture of suburban shopping street forms the backdrop to a peculiar scene where shoppers are ‘stalked’ by a statue of first world war sniper. Despite its witty elements, this image has a somewhat despairing tone. The women walking along this rather bleak street are isolated and anonymous, ciphers for the worst aspects of contemporary city life.
A more neutral view of the contemporary city can be seen in the work of Australian photographer Grant Mudford. After moving to the US in 1970s, Mudford continued to photograph the built environment. Familiar with the work of Lee Friedlander, and citing Walker Evans as an influence, Mudford’s photographs continue a tradition of photographing the city as an empty backdrop devoid of the bustle of human activity. In his 1975 Untitled photograph of a truck depot in New York, Mudford simplifies what could be a chaotic scene to the verge of abstraction.
Wolfgang Sievers (Australian born Germany, 1913-2007) Old Frankfurt before its total destruction in World War II, Germany 1933, printed 1986 gelatin silver photograph 28.9 x 26.2 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1986
![Adolph de Meyer (American born France, 1868-1949) '[Dance Study]' c. 1912](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/adolf-de-meyer-dance-study-web.jpg "Adolph de Meyer (American born France, 1868-1949) '[Dance Study]' c. 1912")
![Morton Schamberg (American, 1881–1918) '[View of Rooftops]' 1917](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/schamberg-view-of-rooftops.jpg "Morton Schamberg (American, 1881–1918) '[View of Rooftops]' 1917")
![Mark Morrisroe (American, 1959-1989) 'Untitled [Self-Portrait]' 1979 from the exhibition 'Mark Morrisroe' at Fotomuseum Winterthur](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/mark-morrisroe-untitled-self-portrait-19792.jpg "Mark Morrisroe (American, 1959-1989) 'Untitled [Self-Portrait]' 1979 from the exhibition 'Mark Morrisroe' at Fotomuseum Winterthur")
![Mark Morrisroe (American, 1959-1989) '
La Môme Piaf [Pat and Thierry]' 1982 from the exhibition 'Mark Morrisroe' at Fotomuseum Winterthur](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/mark-morrisroe-la-mc3b4me-piaf-pat-and-thierry-1982.jpg "Mark Morrisroe (American, 1959-1989) '
La Môme Piaf [Pat and Thierry]' 1982 from the exhibition 'Mark Morrisroe' at Fotomuseum Winterthur")
![Mark Morrisroe (American, 1959-1989) 'Untitled [Self-Portrait with Jonathan]' c. 1978 from the exhibition 'Mark Morrisroe' at Fotomuseum Winterthur](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/mark-morrisroe-untitled-self-portrait-with-jonathan-ca-1978.jpg "Mark Morrisroe (American, 1959-1989) 'Untitled [Self-Portrait with Jonathan]' c. 1978 from the exhibition 'Mark Morrisroe' at Fotomuseum Winterthur")
![Mark Morrisroe (American, 1959-1989) 'Baby Steffenelli [John S.]' 1985 from the exhibition 'Mark Morrisroe' at Fotomuseum Winterthur](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/morrisroe-baby-steffenelli.jpg "Mark Morrisroe (American, 1959-1989) 'Baby Steffenelli [John S.]' 1985 from the exhibition 'Mark Morrisroe' at Fotomuseum Winterthur")
![Mark Morrisroe (American, 1959-1989) 'Untitled [Self-Portrait]' 1986
from the exhibition 'Mark Morrisroe' at Fotomuseum Winterthur](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/mark-morrisroe-untitled-self-portrait-1986.jpg "Mark Morrisroe (American, 1959-1989) 'Untitled [Self-Portrait]' 1986
from the exhibition 'Mark Morrisroe' at Fotomuseum Winterthur")
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
You must be logged in to post a comment.