Anonymous photographer Flower Seller in front of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy 1907-1930 Autochrome ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt
Travel, as a verb, means to make a journey, proceed along a route, or transmit signals (such as light or sound). Thus photography and travel are inextricably linked, for photography transmits light in the form of the representation of (a) reality, from place to place, from time to time. From past time to present time.
The travel photographs in this posting “document the landscape, people, cultures, customs, and history of a specific area to express the feeling of a time and place.” (Wikipedia)
While acknowledging the institutional and political control over the creation of some of these photographs, their creation for the commercial reasons to feed the tourist market, and their Western perspective picturing foreign and “exotic” countries and people (closely linked to colonialism in those very countries) … having acknowledged all that, these photographs still remain valuable “signals” that transmit the feeling of a time and place to us today, in all their beauty and majesty.
These early photographers knew how to frame subject matter, how to use the transmission of light, to embed aspects of the sublime in a photograph, the viewer standing at the limen – meaning threshold – standing at the threshold of another time and space brought into the present.
Sphinx, Imperial Castle, railway bridge, glacier, city, all transport us to another world, vanished worlds.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Albertina for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
When photography emerged during the nineteenth century, it revolutionised visual culture. Landscapes, monuments and distant civilisations could suddenly be reproduced with remarkable precision, replacing drawings and engravings as seemingly objective representations of reality.
Yet the exhibition also demonstrates that photographs have never been neutral…
Behind every remarkable image stood extraordinary effort. Early photographers transported heavy cameras, glass plates and portable darkrooms across continents while working for governments, scientific institutions or commercial publishers. Their photographs circulated through exhibitions, books and portfolios, fundamentally influencing how distant places became known…
In an age where billions of photographs are created every day, The World in Focus offers a timely reminder that images never simply reflect reality – they construct it.
Thomas Holzleithner. “The World in Focus,” on The Style Mate website, 21 July 2026 [Online] Cited 06/10/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Anonymous photographer Part of the Chintalarayaswami Temple Complex in Tadipatri, Andhra Pradesh, India 1858/59 Albumen print 26 x 21cm ALBERTINA, Vienna
Francis Bedford (English, 1815-1894) The Hypaethral Temple at Philae 1862 Albumen print 21.1 x 28.8cm ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes–Lehr–und Versuchsanstalt
For much of his career Bedford tended towards photography as an art form, painting in clouds, enhancing fine detail with pencil or brushes, and using tissue paper to darken negatives to improve lighting, but by the late 1870s, he was an advocate of simplicity. Between 1851 and 1894 he produced nearly 9,000 wet collodion negatives and albumen prints, making him one of the most prolific landscape photographers of his time
Today, photography and travel are inextricably linked – yet this connection dates back to the establishment of the new medium in the nineteenth century. The exhibition The World in Focus is dedicated to travel and expedition photography from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, when photography was increasingly employed to capture images of the world. Photographs were valued for their precision, wealth of detail, and reproducibility. Compared with the draughtsmen who had previously accompanied expeditions and were gradually replaced by photographers, work on site could also be carried out much more quickly.
The extensive series at the heart of the exhibition depict different regions of the world and tell of shifting claims to power, the expansion of mobility, the exploration of remote landscapes, and the emergence of tourism. The presentation also sheds light on the contexts in which photographers were sent on journeys, the conditions under which the images were created, and the ways in which they were presented in exhibitions, facilitated the transfer of knowledge, and had a lasting impact on perceptions of distant territories.
The World in Focus exclusively presents photographs from the ALBERTINA collection and from the collection of the Höhere Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, which is held at the ALBERTINA on permanent loan. With this exhibition, the ALBERTINA continues its series of thematic presentations drawn from its important photographic collection, revealing yet another facet of one of Austria’s most extensive photographic holdings.
Text from the ALBERTINA website
Gustav Jägermayer (Austrian, 1834-1901) The Crystal Water Glacier from North-West 1863 Albumen print 30 x 42.2cm ALBERTINA, Vienna
Christian Paier (Slovenian, 1839-1895) Panoramic View over the Old City of Jerusalem 1864 Albumen print ALBERTINA, Vienna
Christian Paier (Slovenian, 1839-1895) Panoramic View over the Old City of Jerusalem (detail) 1864 Albumen print ALBERTINA, Vienna
Adolf Schoon von Corbitzthal (Austrian, 1830-1904) Railway Bridge over the Dniester River near Halicz (today: Halych, Ukraine) 1866/67 Albumen print 20 x 25cm ALBERTINA, Vienna
Corbitzthal served as a soldier in the Austrian army and later worked as a railway official for the Lviv-Chernivtsi Railway (Lemberg-Czernowitz-Jassy Railway), where he famously documented the rail line’s infrastructure and surrounding cultural landscapes.
Giorgio Sommer (Italian born Germany, 1834-1914) Atrani, Italien 1868-1870 Albumen print 20.4 x 25.7cm ALBERTINA, Vienna
Giorgio Sommer (2 September 1834 – 7 August 1914) was one of Europe’s most important and prolific photographers of the 19th century. Active from 1857 to 1888, he produced thousands of images of archaeological ruins, landscapes, art objects, and portraits. …
Sommer’s catalog included images from the Vatican Museums, the National Archeological Museum at Naples, the Roman ruins at Pompeii, as well as street and architectural scenes of Naples, Florence, Rome, Capri, and Sicily. Most notably, Sommer published his comprehensive album Dintorni di Napoli, which contained over one hundred images of everyday scenes in Naples. In April 1872, he documented a very large eruption of Mount Vesuvius in a series of stunning photographs.
Wilhelm Burger (Austria, 1844-1920) Count Hans Wilczek (Austria, 1837-1922) Mitternachtssonne in der Meeresenge Matotschkin, Russland (Midnight sun in the Matochkin Strait, Russia) July 30, 1872 Albumen print, mounted on card Overall: 14.6 x 21.4cm (5 3/4 x 8 7/16 in.) Mount: 40 x 50cm ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes-Lehr-und Versuchsanstalt Inscribed: Mounting paper: lower left “Graf Wilczek sche Polar-Expedition 1872”; lower center “Nowaja-Semlja. / Mitternachtssonne in der Matotschkin-Scharr.”; Mount: verso: lower left “Die erste bekannt gewordenen photographische Aufnahme / einer Mitternachtssonne. Auf einer nassen Collodium- / Platte aufgenommen im August 1872.”; Mount: verso: lower left “BURGER, Wilhelm / WILCZEK, Hans”
NB. I’m not sure this photograph is in the exhibition but Burger’s photographs of a Polar expedition are mentioned in the press release
Wilhelm Burger (Austria, 1844-1920) Count Hans Wilczek (Austria, 1837-1922) Tragbare Dunkelkammer, Isbjörnbai, Spitzbergen (Portable darkroom, Isbjörnbai, Spitsbergen) 1872 Albumen print, on mount / stereo format Photographic paper (per image): 7.8 x 7.7cm (3 1/16 x 3 1/16 in.) Mount: 8.7 x 17.7cm ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes-Lehr-und Versuchsanstalt
NB. I’m not sure this photograph is in the exhibition but Burger’s photographs of a Polar expedition are mentioned in the press release
Long before smartphones turned every journey into an endless stream of images, photography was already transforming the way people encountered distant places. Beginning July 22, the ALBERTINA explores that history in The World in Focus, an exhibition tracing the development of travel and expedition photography from the mid-19th century through the early decades of colour photography.
On view in the museum’s Tietze Galleries through October 26, 2026, the exhibition brings together 107 photographs from the ALBERTINA’s photographic collection, along with a projection of several early autochromes. Curated by Anna Hanreich, the presentation looks beyond the scenic appeal of travel images to examine the political, scientific, commercial and cultural forces that shaped their production.
Photography and travel became closely linked almost as soon as the medium emerged. Compared with drawing, photography offered a faster and apparently more precise way to document landscapes, monuments, cities and people. Images could also be reproduced and distributed widely, allowing distant territories to enter the public imagination with unprecedented immediacy.
Yet the exhibition makes clear that these photographs were never neutral records. Many were produced during expeditions financed by governments, scientific institutions or commercial interests. Others were created for a growing tourist market eager for views of places that most Europeans would never visit themselves. In both cases, the images often reflected a distinctly Western perspective, shaping ideas about foreign cultures through assumptions that were tied to colonialism, imperial ambition and the conventions of the period.
The exhibition moves across an expansive geography, from the frozen heights of the Alps and the Arctic to Egypt, the Holy Land, Japan, India, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy and Norway. Together, the works show how photography accompanied the expansion of mobility, the growth of tourism and the increasing accessibility of remote regions.
Egypt occupies a prominent place in the exhibition. European fascination with the country intensified after Napoleon Bonaparte’s military campaign of 1798-1801, which helped trigger a widespread wave of “Egyptomania.” By the middle of the 19th century, photographers were travelling along the Nile and documenting ancient monuments, often before they underwent later restoration or alteration. Their images circulated through albums, books and international exhibitions, establishing visual routes that would eventually become familiar tourist itineraries.
Another section focuses on Wilhelm Burger, one of the Habsburg monarchy’s most sought-after expedition photographers. Working at a time when photography required heavy wooden cameras, glass plates, chemicals and portable darkrooms, Burger took part in the Austro-Hungarian East Asia expedition of 1868-1869 and later joined a support mission connected to the Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition. His photographs rank among the earliest images made in the Arctic region.
The exhibition also highlights Raimund von Stillfried-Rathenitz, who established an influential studio in Yokohama in 1871. Stillfried photographed historically important sites around Tokyo and Yokohama during a period of rapid transformation following the Meiji Restoration. His carefully composed landscapes appealed to the growing number of international travellers arriving in Japan and helped define how the country was represented abroad.
Images of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and surrounding areas reveal the close relationship between pilgrimage, politics and the emerging market for travel photography. Photographers such as Christian Paier produced views of sacred sites for European audiences already familiar with biblical narratives. These photographs did more than document religious landmarks; they connected contemporary travel with long-established ideas about history, faith and cultural identity.
Photography also served as a tool of political representation within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, Josef Löwy was commissioned to document the territory. Rather than concentrating on military action, he photographed roads, infrastructure and landscapes, presenting the occupation through images of modernisation and development. Stillfried returned to the region years later, producing more atmospheric scenes of daily life and local dress.
As railway networks expanded during the 19th century, travel became faster and more accessible. Railway companies quickly recognized photography’s promotional power and hired photographers to document stations, bridges, construction projects and the landscapes opened by new routes. These images functioned as corporate records, tributes to engineering and advertisements for destinations that had previously seemed unreachable.
By the end of the century, lighter cameras brought a more personal form of travel photography. Artists and wealthy amateurs began making spontaneous images based on their own interests rather than official assignments. The painter Johann Victor Krämer, for example, carried a portable Kodak camera during travels through Egypt and Palestine between 1898 and 1900, later using some of his photographs as material for paintings.
The arrival of autochrome plates in 1907 introduced another major shift. These early colour transparencies were especially popular for landscapes and travel scenes, although they had to be viewed through transmitted light or projected onto a screen. Public and private projection evenings became popular forms of entertainment, allowing audiences to experience vivid color views of Italy, the French Riviera, Norway and other destinations.
Among the press images associated with the exhibition are an autochrome of a flower seller standing before Florence’s Ponte Vecchio, an early colour view of Digermulen in Norway, Giorgio Sommer’s photograph of Atrani on the Amalfi Coast, and Stillfried’s image of the imperial palace in Tokyo. Seen together, the works reveal how travel photography gradually moved from heavy expeditionary equipment and official commissions toward the personal, immediate and colorful visual language still familiar today.
The World in Focus is on view at the ALBERTINA in Vienna from July 22 through October 26, 2026. The accompanying bilingual catalogue, edited by Anna Hanreich, is available in German and English.
Press release from ALBERTINA
Raimund Stillfried von Rathenitz (Austrian, 1839-1911) Imperial Castle, Tokyo, Japan c. 1875 Albumen print 37.6 x 44.6cm ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt
Baron Raimund von Stillfried, also known as Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Rathenitz (6 August 1839, in Komotau, Bohemia – 12 August 1911, in Vienna, Austrian-Hungarian Empire), was an Austrian military officer and early professional photographer in Japan. His historical photographs of Japan following the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in the 1870s have been appreciated for their documentary and artistic value and collected in international archives.
Josef Löwy (Austrian, 1834-1902) Busovaca im Kanton Zentralbosnien, ca. 20 km südlich von Zenica, im Hintergrund Baracken der österreichisch-ungarischen Besatzung (Busovača in the Central Bosnia Canton, approx. 20 km south of Zenica; in the background, barracks of the Austro-Hungarian occupation forces) 1878 Albumen print, on backing card Image: 20.6 x 25.5cm (8 1/8 x 10 1/16 in.) Card: 43.4 x 32.8cm (17 1/16 x 12 15/16 in.) ALBERTINA, Wien
NB. I’m not sure this photograph is in the exhibition but Löwy‘s photographs of Bosnia and the Austro-Hungarian occupation are mentioned in the press release
Josef Löwy (Austrian, 1834-1902) Strassencorrection vor Žepce an der Bosna zwischen Doboj und Zenica (heute: Kanton Zenica-Doboj in Bosnien und Herzegowina) (Road realignment near Žepce on the Bosna River, between Doboj and Zenica (present-day Zenica-Doboj Canton in Bosnia and Herzegovina)) 1878 Albumen print, on backing card Image: 20.6 x 25.5cm (8 1/8 x 10 1/16 in.) Card: 43.4 x 32.8cm (17 1/16 x 12 15/16 in.) ALBERTINA, Wien
NB. I’m not sure this photograph is in the exhibition but Löwy‘s photographs of Bosnia and the Austro-Hungarian occupation are mentioned in the press release
Raimund Stillfried von Rathenitz (Austrian, 1839-1911) Jajce with the Pliva Waterfall, Bosnia and Herzegovina 1889 Albumen print 19.5 x 24.5cm ALBERTINA, Wien
Anton Silberhuber (Austrian, 1839-1899) The Sphinx and the Pyramids, Egypt c. 1890 Collodion paper 16.6 x 23.4cm ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt
Anton Silberhuber (1839-1899) was an influential 19th-century Austrian travel and documentary photographer. He is best known for capturing early archaeological and expedition photography across regions such as Egypt, Greece, and the Balkans.
One of his most celebrated pieces is a collodion paper print depicting tourists interacting with the Great Sphinx of Giza. This specific photograph captures a striking cultural moment of early global tourism, showing tourists physically climbing onto the paws and shoulders of the Sphinx for a portrait.
Text from various sources
Johann Victor Krämer (Austria, 1861-1949) Künstlervorlagen (Artist templates) 1898-1900 Albumen print ALBERTINA, Vienna
NB. I’m not sure this photograph is in the exhibition but Krämer‘s photographs of Palestine are mentioned in the press release
Johann Victor Krämer (Austria, 1861-1949) Jerusalem Around 1900 Albumen paper (?), on backing card Photographic paper: 8.3 x 16.4cm (3 1/4 x 6 7/16 in.) Card: 14.1 x 20.5cm ALBERTINA, Vienna
NB. I’m not sure this photograph is in the exhibition but Krämer‘s photographs of Palestine are mentioned in the press release
Johann Victor Krämer (Austria, 1861-1949) Self-Portrait on the Terrace of the Austrian Pilgrims’ Hospice in Jerusalem c. 1900 20.6 x 28cm Gelatin silver print, retouched ALBERTINA, Vienna
Anonymous photographer (Photoglob & Co., Zurich) Porta Felice and the Marina, Palermo, Italy 1889-1905 Photochrome 16.51 x 22.23cm ALBERTINA, Vienna – Schenkung Harald Woschitz, Nachlass Christopher Cardozo, US
Anonymous photographer Digermulen, Norway 1913 Autochrome 9 x 12cm ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt
The Albertina Museum Albertinaplatz 1 1010 Vienna Phone: +43 (0)1 534 83 0
Curators: Julien Faure-Conorton, head of research and scientific promotion of the collections, Albert-Kahn Museum and David-Sean Thomas, exhibition manager, Albert-Kahn Museum
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) L’église au soleil couchant, Ouidah, Dahomey (Bénin), 2 mai 1930 (The church at sunset, Ouidah, Dahomey (Benin), May 2, 1930) 1930 Autochrome 9 x 12cm Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
Honneur et patrie (Honour and fatherland)
Another exhibition on an obscure topic that Art Blart likes to promote…
Of all things, I was watching an episode of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan on streaming the other day and one of the Russian characters turns around and says, “Once a colony, always a colony.” As Dr Ama Biney cogently observes, “the past is not dead … it lives on in the present.” This is how she perceives the impact of history.1
The past leading the present.
Reading the history of Dahomey (now Benin) it’s the usual story of many European countries slicing and dicing the people, treasures and resources of a foreign kingdom.
“… the 1897 invasion of Benin contributed to the greater African holocaust enshrined in our experience of enslavement, colonialism and neo-colonialism. The brutal desecration of Benin lives and culture through the theft of over 4,000 of its artefacts by Western Europeans seems to be a known but yet untold story. It led to the demise of the Great Benin Kingdom, marking a most significant period in the continuing scramble for African resources. During the invasion the Oba (King) was deposed and deported to Calabar [Nigeria] on 13 September 1897 where he died 16 years later.”1
The photographs in this posting were taken in 1930 only 17 years after the exiled Oba died. The wounds would have been raw and open, probably still are.
While the first two photographs below are NOT in the exhibition, they are most pertinent for they inform all that follows, no matter what the Albert Kahn Museum – which promotes the work of Albert Kahn (1860-1940), a French banker and philanthropist who devoted his fortune to promoting knowledge and understanding between peoples – likes to think.
“Proud and resigned, the ministers of Behanzin pose on the deck of the Mésange. As a reminder of the victory, the motto ‘Honneur et patrie’ (the motto of the French army) is displayed above their heads.”
Many thankx to the Musée départemental Albert-Kahn for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“The term ‘post-colonial’ is used generally to describe all cultures affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonisation to the present day. It is also considered as the most appropriate term for the new cross-cultural criticism which has emerged in recent years and for the discourse through which it is constituted.”
W.D Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989. p.2.
“I do not think people are used to seeing cultures that were labelled primitive as contemporary culture. This is primitivism in continued operation, in the inability to recognise these as photographs of people that are connected to contemporary culture. The blind spot is so large; it is devastating and it continues to affect First Nations peoples. The sensitivities and limitations around displaying the photographic evidence of the people who perished is tied up in this primitivist ideology.”
Brook Andrew speaking in interview in Brook Andrew and Jessica Neath. “Encounters with Legacy Images: Decolonising and Re-imagining Photographic Evidence from the Colonial Archive,” in History of Photography, 42:3, 2018, pp. 217-238.
The exile of King Behanzin in photographs
King Behanzin finally surrendered in January 1894 and was deported to Martinique with his family. This exile was immortalised by a few black and white photographs taken by a sailor on the schooner “La Mésange”.
Unknown photographer Behanzin and his family January 1894 SHD Vincennes
THIS PHOTOGRAPH IS NOT IN THE EXHIBITION
Behanzin and his family
The exiled king remains dignified; he is surrounded by his relatives – women and a child. One of the women holds an umbrella to protect his head and another seems to be bringing him a drink. The looks are serious, but not overpowering. In the background are French soldiers wearing colonial helmets; on the left, ropes remind us that we are on a ship.
Unknown photographer Behanzin’s ministers January 1894 SHD Vincennes
THIS PHOTOGRAPH IS NOT IN THE EXHIBITION
Behanzin’s ministers
Proud and resigned, the ministers of Behanzin pose on the deck of the Mésange. As a reminder of the victory, the motto ‘Honneur et patrie’ (the motto of the French army) is displayed above their heads. One of their jailers, a sailor armed with a rifle, poses with them, but curiously blurred by the light, he seems to fade away in front of the dignity of this government in exile.
This conquest was organised in three stages, punctuated by three military-scientific expeditions. The first expedition, which aimed essentially to defend the French trading posts on the coast, was entrusted to Commander Terrillon of the Troupes de Marine and took place from March to April 1890. It ended with the battle of Atchoupa, on 20 April 1890, and a French victory. A first peace treaty was signed on 3 October 1890, but it was not ratified by the Chamber of Deputies. The situation between the kingdom of Dahomey and France remained tense, with King Behanzin, hostile to French interference, opting for a policy of force and confrontation. A second expedition was organised from July to December 1892, preceded by a maritime blockade of the coast. This time it was no longer a question of defending the French establishments with a rapidly built-up force, but of leading an expedition into the heart of the kingdom of Dahomey, with the eventual establishment of a protectorate. The expedition was entrusted to Colonel Dodds. Starting from Cotonou and Porto Novo, the French column went up to Abomey, the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey, occupied on 17 November 1892. It was there that the now General Dodds had the royal objects seized and sent to France. He also proclaimed the deposition of King Behanzin, but did not manage to take him prisoner. This was the aim of the third expedition, from October 1894 to January 1895. It ended on 15 January with the proclamation of a new king of Dahomey, allied with France, then with the surrender of Behanzin, and finally with the proclamation of the French protectorate over Dahomey on 29 January 1895.
With Behanzin defeated, Upper Dahomey opened up to French penetration, with the Niger in its sights. According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Delcassé, the aim was to keep the road to the Sudan and Niger open by establishing a French sphere of influence in Upper Dahomey. From 1894 to 1898, a series of missions made it possible to establish this French trusteeship, recognised by a series of conventions with Germany and the United Kingdom between 1897 and 1898.
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Joueurs de tambours royaux, Sakété, Dahomey (Bénin), 14 janvier 1930 (Royal drummers, Sakété, Dahomey (Benin), January 14, 1930) 1930 Autochrome 9 x 12cm Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Autel du vodún Djéholou, Adjarra, Dahomey (Bénin), 19 janvier 1930 (Vodun altar of Djéholou, Adjarra, Dahomey (Benin), January 19, 1930) 1930 Autochrome 9 x 12cm Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Village dans les collines, Dahomey (Bénin), 26 avril 1930 (Village in the Hills, Dahomey (Benin), April 26, 1930) 1930 Autochrome Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Soeurs et épouses du chef Justin Aho, Abomey, Dahomey (Bénin), 8 mars 1930 (Sisters and wives of Chief Justin Aho, Abomey, Dahomey (Benin), March 8, 1930) 1930 Autochrome 12 x 9 cm Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
The Albert-Kahn Museum’s current exhibition, A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 (Bénin aller-retour. Regards sur le Dahomey de 1930), offers a reinterpretation of the films and photographs produced during a mission to Dahomey (now Benin) led from January to May 1930 by Catholic missionary Francis Aupiais and camera operator Frédéric Gadmer for Albert Kahn’s Archives of the Planet. This immersion, meant as a Franco-Beninese dialogue, questions the views on non-European cultures in a context of colonial rule and the birth of ethnography.
Following on from a series of inaugural exhibitions dedicated to travel and gardens, the Albert-Kahn Museum continues to explore the fundamental themes of its collections, this time focusing on perspectives on non-European cultures and the ethnographic dimension of the Archives of the Planet, recently added to the UNESCO ‘Memory of the World’ Register.
The 1930 mission to Dahomey was unique in several ways: it was the only foray by the Archives of the Planet into sub-Saharan Africa, the last major expedition before the project was halted due to Albert Kahn’s bankruptcy, and the result of an initiative by an atypical clergyman, Father Francis Aupiais (1877-1945). This missionary priest, committed to a long-term endeavour to improve knowledge of African cultures, contacted Albert Kahn in 1927 and convinced him to finance his project to document Dahomey’s cultural and religious practices, in line with the philanthropist’s humanist views.
One of the first film collections of French ethnography
Father Aupiais’s goal was to promote an ‘African recognitio’ by documenting the traditional culture of Dahomey, particularly royal ceremonies and vodun rituals, which he held in high esteem. The mission lasted four and a half months, during which Frédéric Gadmer produced 1,102 autochromes (colour photographs) and shot 140 film reels under Aupiais’s direction. These films, the first of this scale to be shot in Dahomey, constitute the largest collection of films in the Archives of the Planet and one of the first film collections of French ethnography, five years after the founding of the Paris Institute of Ethnology and one year before the Dakar-Djibouti mission.
Recently digitised in high definition (4K), these films constitute the narrative arc of the exhibition, which aims to present the outline, challenges, and legacy of this unusual mission, a century later. Projected in large format throughout an immersive journey, they offer unprecedented image quality and immerse visitors in the intimacy of Dahomey’s ceremonies and cults, forging links between yesterday’s protagonists and today’s visitors, between France and Benin.
Numerous objects, in a large part loaned by the musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, echo the still and moving images: emblems of power, vodun artifacts, and tools dedicated to divination are striking in their sophistication, matching the uses for which they were intended, documented in the films. These rare pieces also feature items exhibited in France by Father Aupiais himself.
Views from contemporary African artists
A Return Trip to Benin also questions the contemporary reception of images from 1930 through the eyes of artists from the African continent. Serving as a perspective and critical counterpoint, artworks by Ishola Akpo, Thulani Chauke, Sènami Donoumassou, Bronwyn Lace, Roméo Mivekannin, Angelo Moustapha, and Marcus Neustetter, several of which were created specifically for the exhibition, combine painting, photography, installation, and performance, reappropriating and reactivating the photographs and films.
The Albert-Kahn Museum
Located in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, the Albert-Kahn Museum preserves and promotes the work of Albert Kahn (1860-1940), a French banker and philanthropist who devoted his fortune to promoting knowledge and understanding between peoples. In addition to the collection of photographs and films in the Archives of the Planet, it features a four-hectare landscaped garden, the vegetal embodiment of its patron’s universalist dream.
An ambitious renovation completed in 2022 significantly increased the space dedicated to exhibitions, notably thanks to a new 2,300-square-meter building designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, creating a dialogue between the image collections and the garden. The museum has welcomed more than 600,000 visitors since its reopening.
Press release from Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Paris
Installation view of the exhibition A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 at Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Paris, October 2025 – June 2026
Installation view of the exhibition A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 at Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Paris, October 2025 – June 2026 showing a selection of black and white photographs by Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) (see below)
Installation view of the exhibition A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 at Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Paris, October 2025 – June 2026 showing a selection of Automchromes by Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954)
Installation views of the exhibition A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 at Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Paris, October 2025 – June 2026 showing at left, Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Soeurs et épouses du chef Justin Aho, Abomey, Dahomey (Bénin), 8 mars 1930 (Sisters and wives of Chief Justin Aho, Abomey, Dahomey (Benin), March 8, 1930) 1930
Bénin aller-retour. Regards sur le Dahomey de 1930 offers a new interpretation of films and photographs produced during a Mission des Archives de la Planète, carried out by Catholic missionary Francis Aupiais and cameraman Frédéric Gadmer in Dahomey (present-day Benin) from January to May 1930. This immersive exhibition, shaped as a Franco-Beninese dialogue, questions how extra-European cultures were viewed in a context of colonial domination and the emergence of ethnography.
The 1930 mission to Dahomey was unique in several aspects: it was the only foray by the Archives de la Planète into sub-Saharan Africa, the last major expedition before the project was halted due to the bankruptcy of Kahn bank, it was the initiative of an atypical man of the church, Father Francis Aupiais (1877-1945), and lasted four and a half months, during which Frédéric Gadmer produced 1,102 autochromes (colour photographs) and shot 140 reels of film under Aupiais’s direction.
These films, the first of this scale to be shot in Dahomey, constitute the most extensive collection of films in the Archives de la Planète and one of the earliest film collections of French ethnography, five years following the establishment of the Institut d’ethnologie de Paris and one year prior to the Dakar-Djibouti mission.
Bénin aller-retour also interrogates the contemporary reception of the 1930 images through the perspective of artists from the African continent. The works of Ishola Akpo, Thulani Chauke, Sènami Donoumassou, Bronwyn Lace, Roméo Mivekannin, Angelo Moustapha, and Marcus Neustetter, several of which were created especially for the exhibition, combine painting, photography, installation, and performance, as reappropriations – and reactivations – of the photographs and films.
The Exhibition
A major exhibition for the 2025-2026 season at the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum, A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 offers a reinterpretation of films and photographs produced during an Archives of the Planet mission led by Catholic missionary Francis Aupiais and cameraman Frédéric Gadmer in Dahomey (present-day Benin) from January to May 1930. This immersive experience, in the form of a Franco-Beninese dialogue, questions the way non-European cultures were perceived within the context of colonial rule and the birth of ethnography. Prior to the exhibition, fieldwork documentation missions were carried out in 2023-2024 by the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum in partnership with Beninese heritage experts, as part of a cooperation program between the Hauts-de-Seine Department and the Zou Community of Municipalities in Benin.
A Unique Mission of the Archives of the Planet
Following a reopening cycle dedicated to travel, and then an exhibition showcasing images of gardens, the Albert-Kahn departmental museum continues its exploration of the fundamental themes of its collections, this time focusing on the perspective of the other and the ethnographic dimension of the Archives of the Planet, recently inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
The 1930 mission to Dahomey is unique in several respects: the only incursion of the Archives of the Planet into sub-Saharan Africa, the last large-scale expedition before the project was halted due to the bankruptcy of the Kahn bank, it resulted from the initiative of an atypical clergyman, Father Francis Aupiais (1877-1945). This missionary priest, committed to a long-term project for a better understanding of African cultures, contacted Albert Kahn in 1927 and convinced him to finance his work documenting Dahomean cultural and religious practices, which naturally aligned with the philanthropist’s humanist project.
One of the first film collections of French ethnography
Father Aupiais’s aim was to contribute to an “African recognition” by documenting the evangelisation but especially the traditional culture of Dahomey, in particular the royal ceremonies and Vodun rites, which he held in high esteem. The mission lasted four and a half months, during which Frédéric Gadmer produced 1,102 autochromes (colour photographs) and shot 140 reels of film, under Aupiais’s direction. These films, the first of this scale shot in Dahomey, constitute the largest collection of films in the Archives of the Planet and one of the first film collections of French ethnography, five years after the founding of the Paris Institute of Ethnology and one year before the Dakar-Djibouti mission.
Recently digitised in high definition (4K), these films form the central thread of the exhibition, which aims to present the unfolding, the stakes, and the legacy, a century later, of this unique mission. Projected in large format throughout an immersive experience, they offer unprecedented image quality and plunge visitors into the heart of Dahomean ceremonies and rituals, forging connections between the protagonists of the past and the public of today, between France and Benin.
Numerous objects, loaned notably by the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, resonate with the still and moving images: emblems of power, Vodun attributes, and divination tools are striking in their sophistication, reflecting the uses for which they were intended and which the films document. Among these rare pieces are some objects exhibited in France by Father Aupiais himself.
Artists’ Perspectives from the African Continent
A Benin Round Trip also explores the contemporary reception of images from 1930 through the perspectives of artists from the African continent. Serving as contextualisation and critical counterpoints, the works of Ishola Akpo, Thulani Chauke, Sènami Donoumassou, Bronwyn Lace, Roméo Mivekannin, Angelo Moustapha, and Marcus Neustetter, several of which were created specifically for the exhibition, blend painting, photography, installation, and performance, representing a reappropriation – and reactivation – of the photographs and films.
Throughout the exhibition, a genuine exchange of perspectives is fostered to construct new narratives that respect Beninese sensibilities and knowledge. This approach was made possible thanks to the numerous collaborations established with heritage experts in Benin, both within the framework of the project’s scientific committee and in that of two documentation missions carried out on site by the Albert-Kahn departmental museum in 2023-2024, thus continuing Albert Kahn’s program: “training to see, training to know.”
Exhibition design and layout
The exhibition offers an immersion in the images of 1930 through a modern and minimalist scenography, the juxtaposition of photographs and films with numerous objects and the spectacular presentation of the films in the form of large format projections.
Father Aupiais’s Dahomey
This introductory section presents the historical context as well as the figure of Francis Aupiais, the initiator of this Archives of the Planet mission, whose figure remains well known in Benin.
The Kingdom of Dahomey was founded in the 17th century by the Fon people, under the cultural influence of neighboring peoples and pre-existing city-states. Links were quickly forged with Europe, and the region saw the arrival of travellers, traders, and missionaries. The slave trade, established by Europeans to meet the demand of the Americas and the West Indies, exacerbated conflicts between kingdoms. The travel accounts published by Westerners at the time, riddled with inaccuracies and prejudices, revelled in describing the warlike and ferocious nature of the rulers of Dahomey. They also demonstrate a fascination with Vodun, a religion and animistic system of thought that they denigrate as “fetishism.”
In 1894, following a war against the King of Dahomey, Béhanzin, the country became a French colony: Dahomey. This conquest, which received considerable media attention in France, was still fresh in everyone’s minds when Francis Aupiais arrived there for the Society of African Missions.
Auguste Léon (French, 1857-1942) Portrait du révérend père Aupiais, Boulogne-sur-Seine, 9 août 1927 (Portrait of Reverend Father Aupiais, Boulogne-sur-Seine, August 9, 1927) 1927 Autochrome Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
~ Francis Aupiais (1877-1945)
Ordained a priest of the Society of African Missions of Lyon in 1902, Francis Aupiais was sent to Dahomey the following year. There, he served as director of schools and later as superior of the mission in the capital, Porto-Novo. Like the Bishop of Dahomey, François Steinmetz (1868-1952), he sought to understand and promote Dahomean culture. To this end, he learned the language and researched its history, art, and customs from local authorities, particularly Vodun religious leaders.
This fraternal dialogue materialised within the journal La Reconnaissance africaine (1925-1927), to which the future writer Paul Hazoumé (1890-1980) contributed, as well as Thomas Mouléro (1888-1975) and Gabriel Kiti (1900-1948), the first two Dahomeans ordained priests.
Returning to France at the end of 1926, Father Aupiais undertook an intense propaganda campaign aimed at “rehabilitating Black people in the eyes of Europeans” and attended the Paris Institute of Ethnology in preparation for his most ambitious undertaking: a film mission to Dahomey.
The Aupiais-Gadmer Mission
This space presents the second protagonist of the adventure, Frédéric Gadmer, and provides visitors with insights into the 1930 mission (duration, route, topics covered, dual film corpus, etc.).
On January 1, 1930, Father Aupiais arrived in Cotonou accompanied by Frédéric Gadmer, an operator for the Archives of the Planet. For four and a half months, the two men traveled nearly 1,600 kilometers by train and car. Their itinerary focused on southern Dahomey: the Porto-Novo region, where Aupiais had lived for nearly twenty-five years, and the Abomey region, capital of the former kingdom of Dahomey. The pair also made a short stay in the north, in Natitingou, whose culture the missionary wished to document from a comparative perspective. Gadmer carried three devices with him: a camera for creating autochromes (colour slides) and two cameras with complementary capabilities, an ICA and a Debrie. In total, Gadmer produced 1,102 autochromes representing 312 different subjects and shot 140 reels of film, representing a little over 10 kilometres of film, equivalent to 8 hours and 30 minutes of footage.
This constitutes the largest film corpus in the Archives of the Planet and one of the most ambitious ethnographic undertakings of the first half of the 20th century.
Aris Lachalarde (French, 1881-1964) Portrait de Frédéric Gadmer, Boulogne-sur-Seine (Portrait of Frédéric Gadmer, Boulogne-sur-Seine) Nd Autochrome Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
~ Frédéric Gadmer (1878-1954)
A professional photographer, Frédéric Gadmer was employed by the army during the First World War and undertook a long mission in Cameroon (1916-1918). In 1919, Albert Kahn (1860-1940) recruited this seasoned photographer for the Archives of the Planet. Gadmer became one of the most prolific photographers for the banker’s philanthropic project, distinguishing himself by his taste for distant horizons, from Syria to Canada, by way of Persia and Afghanistan.
He trained in filmmaking in 1924, thus acquiring a valuable dual skill set which contributed to his being chosen to accompany Father Aupiais to Dahomey in 1930. A reserved and rigorous man, Gadmer combined the humanist ambitions of the missionary with the documentary rigour of Jean Brunhes (1869-1930), scientific director of the Archives of the Planet, while also overcoming the technical difficulties of the field (high temperature, high humidity, etc.).
A Portrait of Dahomey
This third section, the largest in the exhibition, explores the three main themes addressed by the photographs and films of the mission.
~ Colonisation and Evangelisation
Given the circumstances, colonial influence and missionary activities are, of course, central to the corpus. This section notably presents Christian Dahomey, a missionary propaganda film conceived by Aupiais alongside his documentation of traditional Dahomean culture.
During their mission, Aupiais and Gadmer primarily documented three interconnected themes that sketch a rich and nuanced portrait of Dahomey at that time: colonisation and evangelisation, power and royalty, and finally, Vodun.
In 1930, the French presence was palpable everywhere, from newly constructed avenues to the lucrative palm oil trade. The role played by French Catholic missionaries is also described by Aupiais in Le Dahomey chrétien, a propaganda film extolling the benefits of evangelisation through education, healthcare, and agricultural production. This idealised vision however, it obscures a harsher reality: that of a population under colonial rule, often coerced by force. But the voices denouncing this situation and demanding a form of independence – which would be proclaimed in 1960 – remained a minority. An agent of colonisation, Aupiais was also a defender of the Dahomeans and their rights, notably speaking out against forced labour.
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Portrait du chef de canton Justin Aho, Dahomey (Bénin), 8 mars 1930 (Portrait of Chief Justin Aho, Dahomey (Benin), March 8, 1930) 1930 Autochrome Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
~ Power and Royalty
One of Aupiais’s main areas of study concerns the ceremonial surrounding the manifestations of power and royal ceremonies, particularly funeral rites, in Dahomean culture.
Aupiais’s interest in what he calls “ceremonialism” leads him to document everything related to Dahomean traditions and customs in order to reveal their beauty and sophistication. This is how Gadmer filmed numerous royal ceremonies, especially funeral rites.
Beyond protocol, the seats of power are also depicted, from the Honmè Palace in Porto-Novo to the famous royal palaces of Abomey. The prestige objects – royal staffs, parasols, palanquins – attest to a splendour that is also a tool for legitimising power, particularly for the canton chiefs, who owe their position to the colonial authorities.
The portraits painted by Gadmer are a perfect testimony to this. The claim to a historical heritage is further expressed through panegyrics that celebrate the genealogy and exploits of the ancient kings whose power is linked to the divine. Royalty, colonisation, and Vodun are thus intimately linked.
~ Vodun
This section explores how Aupiais documented Vodun ceremonies, not to denigrate them, but rather to demonstrate the respectability of this religion, which is, more broadly, a way of thinking.
A system of thought and an animistic religion, Vodun embodies a worldview in which the elements of nature (earth, thunder, water, etc.) serve as intermediaries between humans and a higher spiritual entity. Initiates, both men and women, are responsible for their worship: these are the vodunsi, the “wives of Vodun.”
Through its complexity and richness, and the refinement of its ceremonies and associated dances, Vodun perfectly aligns with Aupiais’s interest in “ceremonialism.” The missionary saw this as proof of the high spiritual value of the Dahomeans, which, according to him, predisposed them to convert to Catholicism. His privileged relationships with religious leaders gave him access to rare ceremonies, never before filmed.
These scenes offer a unique glimpse into the vitality of Vodun in 1930, a vitality that continues to this day. Among the subjects filmed, prayers to ancestors and the divinatory art of Fa received particular attention.
The Making of Films
This fourth section offers a different perspective, examining the behind-the-scenes aspects of the mission and what it entailed to make a film in 1930 for the Archives of the Planet. The question of staging is also addressed and explained, as well as the context of the birth of ethnographic cinema.
The Dahomey mission is by far the best documented in the Archives of the Planet thanks to the shooting diary kept by Gadmer. This exceptional document not only provides us with very precise information about the content of the 140 reels shot by the cameraman using his two cameras, but it also offers valuable insights into his filming methods, the conditions on location, and the technical difficulties encountered.
The recent digitisation of the original reels in high definition has been a true revelation: it has allowed for a reassessment of the scope and ethnographic value of these films and a rediscovery of the formal beauty of the shots filmed by Gadmer. Previously unseen images have also emerged, in particular shot marks, “ghost” portraits of rare power, which bear witness to both an era in the history of cinema and the dignity of a population under colonial rule.
Comparison with other contemporary ethnographic works – particularly the films of the American anthropologists Melville and Frances Herskovits – while underlining the unique character of the images produced by Aupiais and Gadmer, also reveals some of their limitations.
Finally, the exhibition concludes with a look at the dissemination of these images upon the mission’s return and their legacy to the present day. Topics covered include the 1931 Vincennes Colonial Exhibition, Father Aupiais’ lectures, as well as the work carried out on this collection since 1945 and the contemporary reinterpretations proposed by artists from the Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg.
Upon returning from the mission, Aupiais disseminated its findings. On October 24, 1930, an exhibition of Dahomean art was inaugurated by the Minister of Colonies at the headquarters of the Kahn Foundations’ general secretariat (a few meters from the current museum). Aupiais presented pieces from the collection he had assembled to reveal the cultural richness of Dahomey to the French. At the same time, he provided commentary on the films shot by Gadmer under his direction.
In 1931, the Vincennes Colonial Exhibition provided an opportunity to showcase the images brought back from the mission, but also, for Albert Kahn, to host the members of the Dahomey delegation at his estate. Soon ordered by his superiors to cease his “melanophile propaganda,” Aupiais would not return to these films until years later, dedicating lectures to them until his death in 1945. Since then, this collection has been a constant subject of study.
Today, it is at the heart of a dual collaborative approach: documentary, with two field missions to meet with Beninese experts, and artistic, by inviting prominent figures from the African continent to reclaim and reactivate this shared century-old heritage.
Text from the Musée départemental Albert-Kahn website
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Vodúnon exécutant la danse de Hèviosso, Oumbégamé (près d’Abomey), Dahomey (Bénin), 17 février 1930 (Vodun performing the dance of Heviosso, Oumbégamé (near Abomey), Dahomey (Benin), February 17, 1930) 1930 Frame taken from the reel “Fetishism 1” 35mm nitrate film (negative)
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Vodúnon exécutant la danse de Hèviosso, Oumbégamé (près d’Abomey), Dahomey (Bénin), 17 février 1930 (Vodun performing the dance of Heviosso, Oumbégamé (near Abomey), Dahomey (Benin), February 17, 1930) 1930 Frame taken from the reel “Fetishism 1” 35mm nitrate film (negative)
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Marque du plan No. 380, Djimé (environs d’Abomey), Dahomey (Bénin), 26 mars 1930 (Mark of plan No. 380, Djimé (near Abomey), Dahomey (Benin), March 26, 1930) 1930 Still image from the reel “Various Scenes” 35mm nitrate film
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Cérémonie de purifi cation de deux vodúnsi, Agbankamé (près d’Abomey), Dahomey (Bénin), 18 février 1930 (Purification ceremony of two vodunsi, Agbankamé (near Abomey), Dahomey (Benin), February 18, 1930) 1930 Frame taken from the reel “Fetishism 3” 35mm nitrate film (negative)
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Consécration de quatre vodúnsi dans un couvent, Covè, Dahomey (Bénin), 11 mars 1930 (Consecration of four vodunsi in a convent, Covè, Dahomey (Benin), March 11, 1930) 1930 Frame taken from the reel “Fetishism 1” 35mm nitrate film (negative)
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Consultation du Fa par le bokonon, Banhito (près de Porto-Novo), Dahomey (Bénin), 12 avril 1930 (Consultation of the Fa oracle by the bokonon, Banhito (near Porto-Novo), Dahomey (Benin), April 12, 1930) 1930 Frame extracted from the reel “Dances, Funeral of a King” 35mm nitrate film (negative)
The contemporary journey
The curators chose to give prominence to contemporary art by inviting several African artists, particularly from Benin, to enrich the perspective on this shared heritage that is the Archives of the Planet.
This dialogue between past and present is materialised through paintings, photographs, performances, sound creations, and installations, through which the artists appropriate the exhibition’s theme by offering a counterpoint to the historical narrative.
Among the works on display, five were directly inspired by the autochromes and films of the 1930 mission, three of which were commissioned specifically for the exhibition.
Roméo Mivekannin (Ivory Coast, b. 1986) La Mère Mélanie et deux épouses de Glélé, palais royaux d’Abomey (Mother Melanie and two wives of Glélé, royal palaces of Abomey) 2021 Painting, elixir bath, pigments and binders on canvas 255 x 264cm Courtesy Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Paris
Roméo Mivekannin
The work of Roméo Mivekannin (born in 1986) revisits Western representations of Black bodies. In his paintings and sculptures, the artist appropriates testimonies from the colonial past (paintings, photographs) to subvert their meaning, for example, by inserting his self-portrait into Frédéric Gadmer’s autochromes, which depict the figures involved in the evangelisation of Dahomey.
Commissioned for the exhibition thanks to the support of the Friends of the Albert-Kahn Museum, his work, entitled Adangba, takes the form of an imposing parasol decorated with royal motifs, inspired by the autochromes and films of the 1930 mission. It overlooks the central section of the exhibition dedicated to Beninese cultural heritage.
Angelo Moustapha
Voted best percussionist in Africa in 2017, Angelo Moustapha (born in 1993) weaves together the traditional sounds of his native Benin with innovative artistic currents, such as modern jazz. Ibilè, which means “origin” or “identity” in Yoruba, is a musical creation conceived specifically for the exhibition. Angelo Moustapha composed it, drawing inspiration from the rhythms visible in scenes filmed in 1930. It is not an attempt to recreate the original sound of these silent films, but rather an invitation to take a fresh look at these archival images.
Bronwyn Lace (b. 1980) Bronwyn Lace dans le Pepper’s Ghost, SO Academy, Johannesburg, 12 mai 2023 (Bronwyn Lace at Pepper’s Ghost, SO Academy, Johannesburg, May 12, 2023) 2023 Digital photograph by Zivanai Matangi The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg
Bronwyn Lace
Co-founder with William Kentridge of the Centre for the Less Good Idea, an unconventional artistic creation space based in Johannesburg, Bronwyn Lace (born in 1980) has collaborated with the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum since 2022. Her performance, Amazing Grapes, is inspired by the films of Father Aupiais and Frédéric Gadmer, which she overlays with her own childhood memories in South Africa. It has been specially adapted for the exhibition to be presented in a miniature “Pepper’s Ghost” (a theatrical optical illusion device).
Frédéric Gadmer (French, 1878-1954) Portait du chef de canton Zodéougan, Zado, Dahomey (Bénin), 28 février 1930 (Portrait of Chief Zodéougan, Zado, Dahomey (Benin), February 28, 1930) 1930 Autochrome Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
Thulani Chauke
South African dancer, choreographer, and performer, Thulani Chauke regularly collaborates with William Kentridge and the Centre for the Less Good Idea. Fascinated by one of the autochromes from the 1930 mission – the portrait of canton chief Zodéougan – he has created a work that highlights the performative dimension of colonial archives and raises questions about how we see ourselves and others: Finding the Dahomean Prince (2025).
Installation view of the exhibition A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 at Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Paris, October 2025 – June 2026 showing the work of Ishola Akpo with at left, Trace d’une reine I (2020, below); and at right, Iyami (2021, below)
Ishola Akpo
Ishola Akpo (born in 1983) brings forgotten African narratives to light by creating composite works that engage in a dialogue between personal and collective memory. In the series Traces of a Queen from his AGBARA Women project, the Beninese artist combines contemporary photography, historical iconography, and embroidery to bring back from oblivion major female figures in African history, such as Queen Tassi Hangbé, long erased from the royal genealogies of Dahomey.
Ishola Akpo (Benin, b. 1983) Trace d’une reine I 2020 Traces of a Queen series, AGBARA Women project Collage and sewing on paper, cotton thread, 44 x 37.5cm Zinsou Collection, Ouidah
Ishola Akpo (Benin, b. 1983) Iyami 2021
Noticing the lack of archives on the queens of various African kingdoms, artist Ishola Akpo created several series of works that retrace their history, using different mediums as a metaphor for the complex stories of the figures and their true political weight. Among them, the Agbara Women photographic series creates fictional portraits that shed light on the queens’ histories. Each portrait’s elements trace Akpo’s Yoruba/Nago culture and its traditions, the photos and illustrations of the Zinsou Foundation Archives on Dahomey, and the artist’s travels and books. For example, Iyami is a portrait of a regal-looking older woman, seated and swathed in crisp white cloth, adorned with a red beaded crown and various pieces of gold and silver jewellery. The woman clasps a wooden staff; the solemn authority of this gesture is underscored by her stoic expression. The title of the work means mother in the West African language Yoruba, and the portrait sitter is the artist’s actual mother. Through this fictionalised photograph, Akpo creates a space for a relationship between the “little stories” of contemporary women embodying “great women”. More than just an ode to the power of women, the series questions the amnesic and patriarchal dimensions of African history, embodied by portraits of known and forgotten queens.
Text from the KADIST website Nd [Online] Cited 13/05/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Sènami Donoumassou (Benin, b. 1991) Ahantun dagbanu (series Akɔ mla mla) 2022 Silver gelatin print on baryta paper, accompanied by sound recordings 61 x 50.8 cm Artist’s personal collection
Sènami Donoumassou
A Beninese visual artist, Sènami Donoumassou (born in 1991) uses various modes of expression to explore the notions of identity, heritage, and history: videos, installations, photograms, and drawings. The works in her series Akɔ mla mla (“Panegyrics”), as well as her installation Ðɛgbè (“Prayer”), which examines the notion of religious syncretism, perfectly echo the images collected by Father Aupiais and Frédéric Gadmer in 1930, bearing witness to the richness and perpetuation of traditional culture in Benin.
Georges Chevalier (French, 1882-1967) Art dahoméen: masque Gèlèdè aux serpents géminés, Orléans, 14 décembre 1927 (Dahomean art: Gelede mask with twin serpents, Orléans, December 14, 1927) 1927 Autochrome 12 x 9cm Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine
A heritage in images and objects
The autochromes and films made in Dahomey by Frédéric Gadmer under the direction of Father Aupiais document many aspects of the country’s cultural heritage, particularly royal, religious, and funerary ceremonies. These images constitute a precious testimony of what Aupiais called “ceremonialism.”
In the exhibition, the various concepts involved are explained through educational texts intended for both adults and young audiences (for whom a family tour is dedicated). The curators have also selected emblematic heritage objects, similar to those seen in the films and photographs, in order to allow visitors to better understand their materiality, function, and use.
In total, nearly thirty objects (tapestries, seats, statuettes, royal staffs, gourds, etc.) are on display thanks to the support of the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, as well as the collaboration of the Carrefour des cultures africaines in Lyon, the Muséum de Toulouse, and private collections. Among this collection of objects are pieces gathered by Father Aupiais himself and exhibited in France as early as 1927 to demonstrate to Europeans the richness of Dahomean culture.
Melville (1895-1963) and Frances (Shapiro) Herskovits (1897-1972) were pioneering American anthropologists who revolutionised African and African Diaspora studies. Working as a team from the late 1920s through the 1940s, they conducted field research in West Africa, South America, and the Caribbean, focusing on cultural continuities from Africa in Black communities.
An ethnographic mission?
The exhibition also situates this mission of the Archives of the Planet within the context of the emergence of ethnography as a discipline in France. Upon his return to France at the end of 1926, Father Aupiais attended lectures by Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) and associated with Paul Rivet (1876-1956) and Maurice Lévy-Bruhl, who, along with Mauss, founded the Institute of Ethnology in Paris in 1925.
This new scientific discipline significantly influenced the organization of the mission funded by Albert Kahn and can thus be compared to other similar undertakings carried out in the following years, such as the Dakar-Djibouti mission (1931-1933). A striking parallel also exists abroad with the work of the American anthropologists Melville and Frances Herskovits, who traveled extensively through Dahomey less than a year after Father Aupiais and Frédéric Gadmer. For the first time in France, the exhibition presents their filmed and audio recordings, which allow for a better understanding of the images collected by Aupiais and Gadmer.
Shared perspectives and international cooperation
The preparation of the exhibition involved numerous collaborations with heritage experts in Benin, both within the scientific committee and the project team, as well as during the two fact-finding missions conducted on-site by the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum in 2023 and 2024. These field missions were carried out with the support of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs as part of the cooperation program between the Hauts-de-Seine Department and the Zou Community of Municipalities in Benin.
The Department launched its international cooperation program with Benin in 2017 as part of its international solidarity policy, with the main objectives being the fight against food insecurity among vulnerable populations, securing the incomes of small-scale producers, developing market-connected agricultural entrepreneurship, and promoting sustainable development and positive action through agroecology. This initiative notably led to the deployment of an agricultural development program in the Zou region. To continue the work begun, the program was renewed in 2022 for a period of four years. Its objective: to strengthen family farming and support households and social entrepreneurs in rural and peri-urban areas.
This cooperation also includes a cultural component, integrated into the agreement in 2022, which has grown in scope over recent years, thanks to the involvement of the Zou inter-municipal council in hosting documentary missions in preparation for the exhibition. This cultural component enabled the organization, in November-December 2023 in Abomey, of an exhibition entitled “The Zou, from Yesterday to Today: Intersecting Perspectives,” combining images from 1930 and the present day. Public conferences and screenings were also held, notably in Covè in 2024 where the films of Frédéric Gadmer and Francis Aupiais were screened on the very sites where they had been filmed.
Finally, the “Dahomey” collection from the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum was presented in 2023 at the School of African Heritage (Porto-Novo) and in 2024 at the Zinsou Foundation (Cotonou), anticipating a desired tour of the exhibition in Benin – currently under study – as well as possible partnerships with future Beninese museums, in particular the International Vodun Museum in Porto-Novo and the Museum of the Kings and Amazons of Dahomey in Abomey.
Text from the Musée départemental Albert-Kahn website
A Return Trip to Benin. Shared Perspectives on Dahomey in 1930 exhibition poster
Musée départemental Albert-Kahn Albert-Kahn Museum 2 rue du Port, 92100 Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday (closed Mondays) 11am – 6pm
Exhibition dates: 7th June – 1st September, 2019 Visited September 2019 posted November, 2019
Curators: Martine Ravache and Gabriella Csizek
Installation view of the exhibition Lartigue: Life in Color at the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest Photo: Marcus Bunyan
A posting on this exhibition with some iPhone images I took in Budapest. I was lucky enough to see the exhibition the day before it closed.
What struck me most was Lartigue’s restrained use of colour. Mainly family portraits and landscapes, these photographs integrate a reduced colour palette with the line and form of the image. Subtle yet dynamic, the whimsical and poetic Ektachrome photographs were a revelation. You could say that there is seemingly nothing unusual about any of these photographs but just look – look at the light that radiates across Florette in Venice, the donkey and the washing, the green umbrella and tree laden with snow or the boys looking around to stare at the camera – and there is, indeed, something uncanny in the everyday. Just to see those two birds flying towards you in The Appian Way, Rome, Italy, January 1960 and to raise your camera to capture them mid-flight perfectly framed between the trees – what a moment!
While the original transparencies have faded, digital technology and restoration allows us to see them in all their glory: sometimes low depth of field, but always with a strong visual structure, these photographs form a holistic feeling as a body of images, a portrait of life in colour. Lartigue’s sense of fun is also evident in many images. There is no sense of the ego of the photographer in any of these images… they are, just so. Considered, concise and in colour (which is unusual for this time period) they possess an inimitable joie de vivre. This posting also features Lartigue’s early Autochromes which were interesting but nowhere as important as his later Ektachromes.
With a careful eye for composition, colour, and geometry, Lartigue’s background (in which he saw everything with his painter’s eye) is clearly translated in the pictorial construction of these sublime photographs.
Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) was the best-known “amateur” in the history of photography, famously discovered by the art world and given an exhibition at MoMA in New York when he was in his late sixties. He began by recording the pastimes and customs of his wealthy Parisian milieu, indulging his fascination with sports and aviation, and throughout his long life he was never without his camera. His friendships extended to the superstars of French culture, but he also made thousands of photographs of his family, wives, and lovers. His work was irresistibly warm and engaging.
Although known for his black-and-white work, Lartigue loved colour film, experimenting with the Autochrome process in the teens and twenties and embracing Ektachrome in the late 1940s. His colour work, reproduced here for the first time, is astonishingly fresh: the French countryside, the women in his life, famous friends (Picasso, Fellini), and glimpses from his travels all come alive in this delightful book.
Installation views of the exhibition Lartigue: Life in Color at the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Around Pau (installation view) France, December 1912 Autochrome 6 x 13cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Mrs Folletête, Rico, me, Sim, Manik and Mummy (installation view) Rouzat, France, September 16, 1913 Automchrome, triggered 6 x 13cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) M. Folletête and Henry Lartigue (installation view) La Baule, France, May 1915 Autochrome 6 x 13cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Bibi at the Château de la Garoupe (installation view) Cap d’Antibes, France, 1920 Autochrome 6 x 13cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Bibi (installation view) Cap d’Antibes, France, May 1920 Autochrome 6 x 13cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Bibi (installation view) Rouzat, France, 1920 Autochrome 6 x 13cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Bibi and Germaine Chalom (installation view) Cannes, France, 1927 Autochrome 6 x 13cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Lartigue’s autochromes comprise a colourful reunion with all our favourite characters. We recognise Lartigue’s older brother Zissou with his glider (1914), and his beloved cousin Simone in her (blue!) bobsled wearing a stylish green ensemble (1913). But the plane is no longer airborne. And Simone is keeping still not to ruin the picture, instead of crashing down a gravel road with her tongue out, like she would in sepia. Due to the long exposure time dictated by the autochrome, Lartigue’s relatives are stalled in their playful banter to accommodate the sluggishness of the early color process.
“Is this still Lartigue? Are we disfiguring an artist?” curator Martine Ravache asks in the accompanying exhibition catalogue Lartigue: Life in Color, recently published by Abrams. Apart from the occasional leaping dog or bobsled, the subject matter is often quaint, even sentimental. The colour prints display exactly the pictorial quality for which Lartigue’s black-and-white work had been deemed antithetical. This realisation, which is as fascinating as it is uncomfortable, is downplayed by presenting Lartigue as a painter at heart who proclaimed to “see everything with my painter’s eye.”
Yet the picturesque subject matter is not enough to undermine his status as the lovechild of modernity – on the contrary. From the pink pastel of Bibi’s dainty hands (1921) to the fiery red nails of Florette and her glossy magazine (1961), the prints testify to Lartigue’s eagerness to experiment with any new photographic process he could get his hands on. The colour work constitutes more than the diaristic musings of a man in love. Marcelle “Coco” Paolucci is conspicuous by her absence, a hiatus that speaks more to the stalled development of colour photography than disaffection for his second wife. Discouraged by the sluggishness of the autochrome process, Lartigue stopped photographing in colour in 1927. He did not start again until 1949, after two world wars and the development of Ektachrome film. …
Tracing the incremental disclosure of Lartigue’s albums since Szarkowski reveals the making of an artist through careful curation. And so the exhibition texts about Lartigue’s love for the seasons or his relationship with God sidestep the more uneasy subtext: the jerky trajectory of Lartigue’s colour photographs from the amateur album to the museum wall.
Hinde Haest is a photography curator based in Amsterdam.
Hinde Haest. “Lartigue: Life in Color,” on the Aperture website February 3rd, 2016 [Online] Cited 08/11/2019
Installation view of the exhibition Lartigue: Life in Color at the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest showing original Ektachrome transparencies Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Cycling race between Nice-La Turbie (installation view) France, March 1954 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Florette, Venice, May 1954 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Havanna, Cuba, 1957 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Cádiz, Spain, 1957 (during his trip to Cuba) (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Saint-Dalmas de Tende, France, 1958 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Manfredonia, Italy, February 1958 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Via del Mandrione, Rome, Italy 1958 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Ascoli Piceno, Italy 1958 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Ascoli Piceno, Italy 1958 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Vendeé, France 1958 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) San Sebastian, Spain, 1958 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
One of the surprise-oeuvres of photography is that of the French painter Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986), who was born 125 years ago. He became a world-renowned photographer at the age of 69, following his extremely successful solo exhibition showcased at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, immediately becoming unavoidable in the history of photography.
He was documenting his life from the age of 6, keeping an “optical notebook.” He is interested in everything, his curiosity knows no limits. He is mesmerised by the possibility of capturing the one-time, unreproducible experiences, situations, and the observed visual interrelations in his photographs. He is not only seized by the joy of seeing, or the creation of images, but also by using the technical device itself, the camera, and the vast repository of possibilities it offers.
His main subjects were the achievements of technical innovation, flying, car races, speed, social life, women, beauty, and traveling. He magically turned the small miracles of everyday life, the enchanting conjunctions of objects and lights into a common memory for all of us. He disregarded photographic conventions; he followed his heart when taking photographs, he enjoyed observation, photography, and life itself.
Lartigue is a photographer of the bright side of life, whose visual diary reveals a history of the 20th century filled with beauty and joyful moments.
His full photographic oeuvre consists of 120,000 negatives, glass plates, slides, moving pictures, and 126 photo albums with the accompanying texts.
The Life in Color exhibition showcases a selection of the colour images making up about one-third of the oeuvre, providing an overview of not only the most determining relationships he had, his journeys and his everyday life, but also his experimentation with the various techniques of colour photography.
Gabriella Csizek, curator
Text from the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center website [Online] Cited 09/11/2019
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) The Appian Way, Rome, Italy, January 1960 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Florette (installation view) Piozzo, Italy, 1960 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Park Bagatelle, Paris, France, June 1960 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Étretat, France, June 1960 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Sylvana Empain, Juan-les-Pins France, 1960 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Brittany, 1960 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm
Driven by his curiosity and his perpetual search for innovation, Lartigue adopts colour processes shortly after their commercialisation. The Kodachromes (24 x 36) and the Ektachromes (6 x 6) followed the autochromes of its beginnings (dated 1912), which delighted 20th century photographers, both amateurs and professionals. Colour therefore adds a new dimension to the speed and immediacy that are at the heart of Lartigue’s work. His painter’s eye finds in this practice, which allows him to take visual “notes” to rework afterwards, a formidable transcription of his pictorial research.
His predilection goes to the subjects of his immediate environment: his life within his family, his games at the castle of Rouzat, sports of all kinds. Fascinated by nature as a whole, and particularly by flowers, the artist continually fixes its changing nuances, both on canvas and on film. This obsession is also found in the repetition of the views from his window in Opio (Alpes-Maritimes), and in the many images of Florette, his wife for forty years.
Little by little, Lartigue opens himself to other subjects, applying himself to testify to the daily life of the privileged and the more popular classes. This coincided with a period of openness to the world: from 1955, Lartigue multiplied his travels, discovering new landscapes and confronting the unknown. Leaving the seaside resorts where he used to spend his holidays (Basque Country, French Riviera or Normandy), it is Italy, Venezuela, Mexico and Cuba which are photographed in turn in black and white and in colors by Jacques Henri Lartigue.
Extract from the press release from the Musée de l’Elysée
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Florette’s hands, Brie-le-Néflier France, June 1961 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, February 1962 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) On board the Christoforo Colombo during the New York-Cannes trip (installation view) May 1962 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Opio, France, 1963 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Florette (installation view) 1964 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Parma, Italy 1965 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Bretagne, France, 1965 (installation view) Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Florette and Stéphanie (installation view) Opio, France, Spring 1964 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Florette, Megève, March 1965 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Brittany, 1965 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm
Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) Brittany, 1970 Ektachrome 6 x 6cm
Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest 8 Nagymező Street, 1065 Budapest, Hungary Phone: +36 1 413 1310
Curators: Dr Carol Jacobi, Curator of British Art 1850-1915 at Tate Britain, and Dr Hope Kingsley, Curator, Education and Collections, Wilson Centre for Photography, with Tim Batchelor, Assistant Curator at Tate Britain
Peter Henry Emerson (British, 1856-1936) Haymaker with Rake c. 1888, published 1890 From Pictures of East Anglian Life portfolio Photogravure on paperImage: 277 x 196mm Victoria and Albert Museum Gift from the photographer
An interesting concept for an exhibition. I would have liked to have seen the exhibition to make a more informed comment. Parallels can be drawn, but how much import you put on the connection is up to you vis-à-vis the aesthetic feeling and formal construction of each medium. It is fascinating to note how many of the original art works are photographs with the painting following at a later date, or vice versa. Photographically, Julia Margaret Cameron and John Cimon Warburg are the stars.
Photographs have always been used by artists as aide-mémoire since the birth of photograph. Eugené Atget called his photographs of Paris “Documents pour artistes”, declaring his modest ambition to create images for other artists to use as source material … but I take that statement with a pinch of salt. Perhaps a salt print from a calotype paper negative!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Tate for allowing me to publish the art work and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Tate Britain presents the first major exhibition to celebrate the spirited conversation between early photography and British art. It brings together photographs and paintings including Pre-Raphaelite, Aesthetic and British impressionist works. Spanning 75 years across the Victorian and Edwardian ages, the exhibition opens with the experimental beginnings of photography in dialogue with painters such as J.M.W. Turner and concludes with its flowering as an independent international art form.
Stunning works by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, JAM Whistler, John Singer Sargent and others will for the first time be shown alongside ravishing photographs by pivotal early photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, which they inspired and which inspired them.
John Everett Millais (English, 1829-1896) The Woodman’s Daughter 1850-51 Oil paint on canvas 889 x 648mm Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828-1882) Proserpine 1874 Oil on canvas Support: 1251 x 610mm Frame: 1605 x 930 x 85mm Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1940
Zaida Ben-Yusuf (American born England, 1869-1933) The Odor of Pomegranates 1899, published 1901 Photogravure on paper Tate
Zaida Ben-Yusuf (American born England, 1869-1933)
Zaida Ben-Yusuf (21 November 1869 – 27 September 1933) was a New York-based portrait photographer noted for her artistic portraits of wealthy, fashionable, and famous Americans of the turn of the 19th-20th century. She was born in London to a German mother and an Algerian father, but became a naturalised American citizen later in life. In 1901 the Ladies Home Journal featured her in a group of six photographers that it dubbed, “The Foremost Women Photographers in America.” In 2008, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery mounted an exhibition dedicated solely to Ben-Yusuf’s work, re-establishing her as a key figure in the early development of fine art photography…
In 1896, Ben-Yusuf began to be known as a photographer. In April 1896, two of her pictures were reproduced in The Cosmopolitan Magazine, and another study was exhibited in London as part of an exhibition put on by The Linked Ring. She travelled to Europe later that year, where she met with George Davison, one of the co-founders of The Linked Ring, who encouraged her to continue her photography. She exhibited at their annual exhibitions until 1902.
In the spring of 1897, Ben-Yusuf opened her portrait photography studio at 124 Fifth Avenue, New York. On 7 November 1897, the New York Daily Tribune ran an article on Ben-Yusuf’s studio and her work creating advertising posters, which was followed by another profile in Frank Leslie’s Weekly on 30 December. Through 1898, she became increasingly visible as a photographer, with ten of her works in the National Academy of Design-hosted 67th Annual Fair of the American Institute, where her portrait of actress Virginia Earle won her third place in the Portraits and Groups class. During November 1898, Ben-Yusuf and Frances Benjamin Johnston held a two-woman show of their work at the Camera Club of New York.
In 1899, Ben-Yusuf met with F. Holland Day in Boston, and was photographed by him. She relocated her studio to 578 Fifth Avenue, and exhibited in a number of exhibitions, including the second Philadelphia Photographic Salon. She was also profiled in a number of publications, including an article on female photographers in The American Amateur Photographer, and a long piece in The Photographic Times in which Sadakichi Hartmann described her as an “interesting exponent of portrait photography”.
1900 saw Ben-Yusuf and Johnston assemble an exhibition on American women photographers for the Universal Exposition in Paris. Ben-Yusuf had five portraits in the exhibition, which travelled to Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and Washington, D.C. She was also exhibited in Holland Day’s exhibition, The New School of American Photography, for the Royal Photographic Society in London, and had four photographs selected by Alfred Stieglitz for the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901, Scotland.
In 1901, Ben-Yusuf wrote an article, “Celebrities Under the Camera”, for the Sunday Evening Post, where she described her experiences with her sitters. By this stage she had photographed Grover Cleveland, Franklin Roosevelt, and Leonard Wood, amongst others. For the September issue of Metropolitan Magazine she wrote another article, “The New Photography – What It Has Done and Is Doing for Modern Portraiture”, where she described her work as being more artistic than most commercial photographers, but less radical than some of the better-known art photographers. The Ladies Home Journal that November declared her to be one of the “foremost women photographers in America”, as she began the first of a series of six illustrated articles on “Advanced Photography for Amateurs” in the Saturday Evening Post.
Ben-Yusuf was listed as a member of the first American Photographic Salon when it opened in December 1904, although her participation in exhibitions was beginning to drop off. In 1906, she showed one portrait in the third annual exhibition of photographs at Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, the last known exhibition of her work in her lifetime.
Many photographers trained as painters. They set up studios and employed artists’ models, skilled at holding poses for the time it took to take a picture. Later in the century, improved photographic negatives required shorter exposure times and it became easier to stage and capture difficult positions and spontaneous gestures.
Painters and illustrators used photographs as preparatory studies and as substitutes for props, costumes and models, and art schools created photographic archives for their students. Photographs commissioned and sold by institutions such as the British Museum made classical sculpture and old master paintings more accessible, inspiring both painters and photographers.
Henry Wallis (British, 1830-1916) Chatterton 1856 Oil paint on canvas Support: 622 x 933mm Frame: 905 x 1205 x 132mm Tate Bequeathed by Charles Gent Clement 1899
Chatterton is Wallis’s earliest and most famous work. The picture created a sensation when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856, accompanied by the following quotation from Marlowe:
Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough.
Ruskin described the work in his Academy Notes as ‘faultless and wonderful’.
Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was an 18th Century poet, a Romantic figure whose melancholy temperament and early suicide captured the imagination of numerous artists and writers. He is best known for a collection of poems, written in the name of Thomas Rowley, a 15th Century monk, which he copied onto parchment and passed off as mediaeval manuscripts. Having abandoned his first job working in a scrivener’s office he struggled to earn a living as a poet. In June 1770 he moved to an attic room at 39 Brooke Street, where he lived on the verge of starvation until, in August of that year, at the age of only seventeen, he poisoned himself with arsenic. Condemned in his lifetime as a forger by influential figures such as the writer Horace Walpole (1717-1797), he was later elevated to the status of tragic hero by the French poet Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863).
Wallis may have intended the picture as a criticism of society’s treatment of artists, since his next picture of note, The Stonebreaker (1858, Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery), is one of the most forceful examples of social realism in Pre-Raphaelite art. The painting alludes to the idea of the artist as a martyr of society through the Christ-like pose and the torn sheets of poetry on the floor. The pale light of dawn shines through the casement window, illuminating the poet’s serene features and livid flesh. The harsh lighting, vibrant colours and lifeless hand and arm increase the emotional impact of the scene. A phial of poison on the floor indicates the method of suicide. Following the Pre-Raphaelite credo of truth to nature, Wallis has attempted to recreate the same attic room in Gray’s Inn where Chatterton had killed himself. The model for the figure was the novelist George Meredith (1828-1909), then aged about 28. Two years later Wallis eloped with Meredith’s wife, a daughter of the novelist Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866).
Frances Fowle. “Chatterton,” on the Tate website December 2000 [Online] Cited 16/02/2023
James Robinson The Death of Chatterton 1859 Two photographs, hand-tinted albumen prints on paper mounted on card Collection Dr Brian May
THIS STEREOCARD IS NOT IN THE EXHIBITION
James Robinson The Death of Chatterton (detail) 1859 Two photographs, hand-tinted albumen prints on paper mounted on card Collection Dr Brian May
THIS STEREOCARD IS NOT IN THE EXHIBITION
One of the most famous paintings of Victorian times was Chatterton, 1856 (Tate) by the young Pre-Raphaelite-style artist, Henry Wallis (1830-1916). Again, the tale of the suicide of the poor poet, Thomas Chatterton, exposed as a fraud for faking medieval histories and poems to get by, had broad appeal. Chatterton was also an 18th-century figure, but Wallis set his picture in a bare attic overlooking the City of London which evoked the urban poverty of his own age. The picture toured the British Isles and hundreds of thousands flocked to pay a shilling to view it. One of these was James Robinson, who saw the painting when it was in Dublin. He immediately conceived a stereographic series of Chatterton’s life. Unfortunately Robinson started with Wallis’s scene (The Death of Chatterton, 1859). Within days of its publication, legal procedures began, claiming his picture threatened the income of the printmaker who had the lucrative copyright to publish engravings of the painting. The ensuing court battles were the first notorious copyright cases. Robinson lost, but strangely, in 1861, Birmingham photographer Michael Burr published variations of Death of Chatterton with no problems. No other photographer was ever prosecuted for staging a stereoscopic picture after a painting and the market continued to thrive…
Robinson’s The Death of Chatterton illustrates the way this uncanny quality [the ability to record reality in detail] distinguishes the stereograph from even the immaculate Pre-Raphaelite style of Wallis’s painting of the same subject. The stereograph represented a young man in 18th-century costume on a bed. The backdrop was painted, but the chest, discarded coat and candle were real. Again, the light and colour appear crude in comparison with the painting but the stereoscope records ‘every stick, straw, scratch’ in a manner that the painting cannot. The torn paper pieces, animated by their three-dimensionality, trace the poet’s recent agitation, while the candle smoke, representing his extinguished life, is different in each photograph due to their being taken at separate moments. The haphazard creases of the bed sheet are more suggestive of restless movement, now stilled, than Wallis’s elegant drapery. Even the individuality of the boy adds potency to his death.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828-1882) Beata Beatrix c. 1864-1870 Oil on canvas Support: 864 x 660mm Frame: 1212 x 1015 x 104mm Presented by Georgiana, Baroness Mount-Temple in memory of her husband, Francis, Baron Mount-Temple 1889
Rossetti draws a parallel in this picture between the Italian poet Dante’s despair at the death of his beloved Beatrice and his own grief at the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal, who died on 11 February 1862. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) recounted the story of his unrequited love and subsequent mourning for Beatrice Portinari in the Vita Nuova. This was Rossetti’s first English translation and appeared in 1864 as part of his own publication, The Early Italian Poets.
The picture is a portrait of Elizabeth Siddall in the character of Beatrice. It has a hazy, transcendental quality, giving the sensation of a dream or vision, and is filled with symbolic references. Rossetti intended to represent her, not at the moment of death, but transformed by a ‘sudden spiritual transfiguration’ (Rossetti, in a letter of 1873, quoted in Wilson, p.86). She is posed in an attitude of ecstasy, with her hands before her and her lips parted, as if she is about to receive Communion. According to Rossetti’s friend F.G. Stephens, the grey and green of her dress signify ‘the colours of hope and sorrow as well as of love and life’ (‘Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti’, Portfolio, vol. 22, 1891, p. 46).
In the background of the picture the shadowy figure of Dante looks across at Love, portrayed as an angel and holding in her palm the flickering flame of Beatrice’s life. In the distance the Ponte Vecchio signifies the city of Florence, the setting for Dante’s story. Beatrice’s impending death is evoked by the dove – symbol of the holy spirit – which descends towards her, an opium poppy in its beak. This is also a reference to the death of Elizabeth Siddall, known affectionately by Rossetti as ‘The Dove’, and who took her own life with an overdose of laudanum. Both the dove and the figure of Love are red, the colour of passion, yet Rossetti envisaged the bird as a messenger, not of love, but of death. Beatrice’s death, which occurred at nine o’clock on 9th June 1290, is foreseen in the sundial which casts its shadow over the number nine. The picture frame, which was designed by Rossetti, has further references to death and mourning, including the date of Beatrice’s death and a phrase from Lamentations 1:1, quoted by Dante in the Vita Nuova: ‘Quomodo sedet sola civitas’ (‘how doth the city sit solitary’), referring to the mourning of Beatrice’s death throughout the city of Florence.
Frances Fowle. “Beata Beatrix,” on the Tate website December 2000 [Online] Cited 16/02/2023
In late 1865, Julia Margaret Cameron began using a larger camera. It held a 15 x 12 inch glass negative, rather than the 12 x 10 inch negative of her first camera. Early the next year she wrote to Henry Cole with great enthusiasm – but little modesty – about the new turn she had taken in her work. Cameron initiated a series of large-scale, closeup heads that fulfilled her photographic vision. She saw them as a rejection of ‘mere conventional topographic photography – map-making and skeleton rendering of feature and form’ in favour of a less precise but more emotionally penetrating form of portraiture. Cameron also continued to make narrative and allegorical tableaux, which were larger and bolder than her previous efforts.
In this image, Cameron concentrates upon the head of her maid Mary Hillier by using a darkened background and draping her in simple dark cloth. The lack of surrounding detail or context obscures references to narrative, identity or historical context. The flowing hair, lightly parted lips and exposed neck suggest sensuality. The title, taken from a line in the poem ‘Lancelot and Elaine’ from Alfred Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’, transforms the subject into a tragic heroine.
Mid-nineteenth century innovations in science and the arts became part of intense debates about ‘truth’ – variously defined as objective observation and as individual artistic vision. Inspired by artist and critic John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelite circle took a new approach to nature, discovering meaning in details previously overlooked, ‘rejecting nothing, selecting nothing’.
As the quality of paints and lenses improved, painters and photographers tested the bounds of perception and representation. They moved out of the studio, to explore light and other atmospheric effects as well as geological subjects, landscape and architecture. New photographic materials like glass plate negatives and coated printed papers offered greater accuracy and photography became a valuable aid for painters.
John Brett (British, 1831-1902) Glacier of Rosenlaui 1856 Oil on canvas Height: 445 mm (17.52 in) Width: 419 mm (16.5 in) Tate Britain Purchased 1946 Photo: Tate, London, 2011
Thomas Ogle (British, 1813 – about 1882) The Bowder Stone in Our English Lakes, Mountains and Waterfalls as seen by William Wordsworth by A.W. Bennett Published 1864 Tate
View taken by Thomas Ogle of the Bowder Stone in Borrowdale, Cumbria, illustrating Our English Lakes, Mountains, And Waterfalls, as seen by William Wordsworth (1864). The book juxtaposes photographs of the Lake District with poems by the English Romantic poet. The Bowder Stone, an enormous boulder, was probably deposited by glaciation during the last Ice Age. It rests in Borrowdale, a valley of woods and crags in the Lake District whose scenic beauty inspired artists, writers and poets of the Romantic Movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Wordsworth (1770-1850) was among them, and the photograph of the Bowder Stone accompanies his poem, Yew-Trees (1803), from which the following passage is taken:
“…But worthier still of note Are those fraternal four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; Huge trunks! – and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwined fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved, – Nor uninformed with phantasy, and looks That threaten the profane; – a pillared shade, Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue, By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged Perenially – beneath whole sable roof Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked With unrejoicing berries, ghostly shapes May meet at noontide – Fear and trembling Hope, Silence and Foresight – Death the skeleton And Time the shadow…”
Text from the British Library website [Online] Cited 18/09/2016
Atkinson Grimshaw (English, 1836-1893) Bowder Stone, Borrowdale c. 1863-1868 Oil on canvas Support: 400 x 536mm Frame: 662 x 709 x 100mm Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1983
Tate Britain uncovers the dynamic dialogue between British painters and photographers; from the birth of the modern medium to the blossoming of art photography. Spanning over 70 years, the exhibition brings together nearly 200 works – many for the first time – to reveal their mutual influences. From the first explorations of movement and illumination by David Octavius Hill (1802-1870) and Robert Adamson (1821-1848) to artful compositions at the turn-of-the-century, the show discovers how painters and photographers redefined notions of beauty and art itself.
The dawn of photography coincided with a tide of revolutionary ideas in the arts, which questioned how pictures should be created and seen. Photography adapted the Old Master traditions within which many photographers had been trained, and engaged with the radical naturalism of JMW Turner (1775-1851), the Pre-Raphaelites, and their Realist and Impressionist successors. Turner inspired the first photographic panoramic views, and, in the years that followed his death, photographers and painters followed in his footsteps and composed novel landscapes evoking meaning and emotion. The exhibition includes examples such as John Everett Millais’s (1829-1896) nostalgic The Woodman’s Daughter and John Brett’s (1831-1902) awe inspiring Glacier Rosenlaui. Later in the century, PH Emerson (1856-1936) and TF Goodall’s (c. 1856-1944) images of rural river life allied photography to Impressionist painting, while JAM Whistler (1834-1903) and Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966) created smoky Thames nocturnes in both media.
The exhibition celebrates the role of women photographers, such as Zaida Ben-Yusuf (1869-1933) and the renowned Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879). Cameron’s artistic friendships with George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1830-94) are recognised in a room devoted to their beautiful, enigmatic portraits of each other and shared models, where works including Cameron’s Call, I Follow, I Follow, Let Me Die and Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix are on display.
Highlights of the show include examples of three-dimensional photography, which incorporated the use of models and props to stage dramatic tableaux from popular works of the time, re-envisioning well-known pictures such as Henry Wallis’s (1830-1916) Chatterton. Such stereographs were widely disseminated and made art more accessible to the public, often being used as a form of after-dinner entertainment for middle class Victorian families. A previously unseen private album in which the Royal family painstakingly re-enacted famous paintings is also exhibited, as well as rare examples of early colour photography.
Carol Jacobi, Curator British Art 1850-1915, Tate Britain says: “Painting with Light offers new insights into Britain’s most popular artists and reveals just how vital painting and photography were to one another. Their conversations were at the heart of the artistic achievements of the Victorian and Edwardian era.”
Painting with Light: Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Modern Age is curated by Dr Carol Jacobi, Curator of British Art 1850-1915 at Tate Britain, and Dr Hope Kingsley, Curator, Education and Collections, Wilson Centre for Photography, with Tim Batchelor, Assistant Curator at Tate Britain. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue from Tate Publishing and a programme of talks and events in the gallery.”
Press release from Tate Britain
‘Whisper of the Muse’
As the nineteenth century progressed, some artists moved away from the clarity and detail that had been the aim of earlier Pre-Raphaelite art, turning instead to a search for pure beauty. The aesthetic movement, as this tendency came to be known, emphasised the sensual qualities of art and design and explored imaginative themes and effects.
In London and on the Isle of Wight, a community of artists forged closer links between the visual arts, music and literature. This circle included the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, painters George Frederic Watts and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the poet Alfred Tennyson. Rossetti and Cameron worked with similar subjects, many inspired by Tennyson’s poetry. Together with Watts they developed a newly-intimate form of portraiture, exploring emotional and psychological states. They also shared models, whose striking looks introduced new types of modern beauty.
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) Whisper of the Muse 1865 Photograph, albumen print on paper 325 x 238mm Wilson Centre for Photography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828-1882) Mariana 1870 Oil on canvas Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum Collection
Into Light and Colour
In the second half of the nineteenth century Japanese culture became an important influence in Britain. Japanese goods were sold in London in new department stores such as Liberty, while the Japanese Village, established in Knightsbridge in 1885, attracted more than a million visitors.
Japanese props and motifs appeared in art and design and the vogue for Japanese prints inspired painters and photographers. Painters experimented with new colour palettes, flattened picture planes and condensed, cropped formats, innovations also important to later British impressionist works. Such experiments in light and colour were paralleled in photography with the 1907 introduction of the autochrome, the first practical colour photographic process.
John Cimon Warburg (British, 1867-1931) Peggy in the Garden 1909, printed 2016 Photograph, transparency on lightbox from autochrome Royal Photographic Society / National Media Museum / Science and Society Picture Library
John Cimon Warburg (1867-1931) British photographer born to a wealthy family dedicated his whole life to photography. In 1897, he joined the Royal Photographic Society. During his photographic career, John Cimon Warburg used a wide range of photographic processes, but excelled especially in autochromes. Best known for his atmospheric landscapes and its fascinating studies of his children, Warburg lectured and written about the process and explained his autochromes the annual exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society.
Text from the Autochrome website [Online] Cited 18/09/2016. No longer available online
Patented by the Lumière brothers in 1903, Autochrome produced a colour transparency using a layer of potato starch grains dyed red, green and blue, along with a complex development process. Autochromes required longer exposure times than traditional black-and-white photos, resulting in images with a hazy, blurred atmosphere filled with pointillist dots of colour.
John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925) Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose 1885-1886 Oil paint on canvas 1740 x 1537 mm Tate. Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1887
The inspiration for Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose came during a boating expedition Sargent took on the Thames at Pangbourne in September 1885, with the American artist Edwin Austin Abbey, during which he saw Chinese lanterns hanging among trees and lilies. He began the picture while staying at the home of the painter F.D. Millet at Broadway, Worcestershire, shortly after his move to Britain from Paris. At first he used the Millets’s five-year-old daughter Katharine as his model, but she was soon replaced by Polly and Dorothy (Dolly) Barnard, the daughters of the illustrator Frederick Barnard, because they had the exact hair-colour Sargent was seeking.
He worked on the picture, one of the few figure compositions he ever made out of doors in the impressionist manner, from September to early November 1885, and again at the Millets’s new home, Russell House, Broadway, during the summer of 1886, completing it some time in October. Sargent was able to work for only a few minutes each evening when the light was exactly right. He would place his easel and paints beforehand, and pose his models in anticipation of the few moments when he could paint the mauvish light of dusk.
As autumn came and the flowers died, he was forced to replace the blossoms with artificial flowers. The picture was both acclaimed and decried at the 1887 Royal Academy exhibition. The title comes from the song The Wreath, by the eighteenth-century composer of operas Joseph Mazzinghi, which was popular in the 1880s. Sargent and his circle frequently sang around the piano at Broadway. The refrain of the song asks the question ‘Have you seen my Flora pass this way?’ to which the answer is ‘Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose’.
Unknown photographer H.R.H. Princess Alexandra, H.R.H. Princess Victoria & Mr. Savile, “Two’s company and three’s none” in Tableaux Vivants Devonport c. 1892-1893 Bound volume. Displayed open at Marcus C. Stone’s ‘Two’s Company, Three’s None” Photograph, albumen print on paper 360 x 480 x 58mm – book closed Wilson Centre for Photography
Unknown photographer H.R.H. Princess Alexandra, H.R.H. Princess Victoria & Mr. Savile, “Two’s company and three’s none” in Tableaux Vivants Devonport (detail) c. 1892-1893 Bound volume. Displayed open at Marcus C. Stone’s ‘Two’s Company, Three’s None” Photograph, albumen print on paper 360 x 480 x 58mm – book closed Wilson Centre for Photography
The relationship between landscape painting and photography continued to develop into the twentieth century. The etchings and nocturnes of James Abbott McNeill Whistler inspired photographers, who adopted his atmospheric subjects and aesthetics. While photography had achieved a technical sophistication that allowed photographers to produce highly resolved, realistic images, many chose to pursue soft-focus effects rather than detail and precision. Such photographs paralleled the unpeopled landscapes of painters like John Everett Millais and the gas-lit cityscapes of John Atkinson Grimshaw.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903) Three Figures Pink and Grey 1868-1878 Oil paint on canvas Support: 1391 x 1854mm Frame: 1701 x 2158 x 75mm Tate Purchased with the aid of contributions from the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers as a Memorial to Whistler, and from Francis Howard 1950
This picture derives from one of six oil sketches that Whistler produced in 1868 as part of a plan for a frieze, commissioned by the businessman F.R. Leyland (1831-1892), founder of the Leyland shipping line. Known as the ‘Six Projects’, the sketches (now in the Freer Art Gallery, Washington) were all scenes with women and flowers, and all six were strongly influenced by his admiration for Japanese art. Another precedent for these works was The Story of St George, a frieze that Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) executed for the artist and illustrator Myles Birket Foster (1825-1899) in 1865-1867. The series of large pictures was destined for Leyland’s house at Prince’s Gate, but never produced, and only one – The White Symphony: Three Girls (1867) was finished, but was later lost. Whistler embarked on a new version, Three Figures: Pink and Grey, but was never satisfied with this later painting, and described it as, ‘a picture in no way representative, and in its actual condition absolutely worthless’ (quoted in Wilton and Upstone, p. 117). He followed the original sketch closely, but made a number of pentimenti which suggest that the picture is not simply a copy of the lost work. In spite of Whistler’s dissatisfaction, it has some brilliant touches and a startlingly original composition.
Although the three figures are clearly engaged in tending a flowering cherry tree, Whistler’s aim in this picture is to create a mood or atmosphere, rather than to suggest any kind of theme. Parallels have been drawn with the work of Albert Moore, whose work of this period is equally devoid of narrative meaning. The design is economical and the picture space is partitioned like a Japanese interior. The shallow, frieze-like arrangement, the blossoming plant and the right-hand figure’s parasol are also signs of deliberate Japonisme. Whistler has suppressed some of the details in the oil sketch, effectively disrobing the young girls by depicting them in diaphanous robes. The painting is characterised by pastel shades, a ‘harmony’ of pink and grey, punctuated by the brighter reds of the flower pot and the girls’ bandannas, and the turquoise wall behind. It has been suggested that Whistler derived his colour schemes, and even the figures themselves, in their rhythmically flowing drapery, from polychrome Tanagra figures in the British Museum, which was opposite his studio in Great Russell Street.
The 1880s brought a renewed interest in landscape. Rural scenes provided common ground for British painters and photographers. Their distinctive style derived from French realism and impressionism, which had been introduced by independent galleries, and by artists such as George Clausen and Henry La Thangue who studied in Paris. This new approach was shared by their friend and fellow painter Thomas Goodall, and influenced his collaboration with the photographer Peter Henry Emerson. Emerson and Goodall’s first project, a photographic series on the Norfolk Broads, focused on the life of working people, as described in their album Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads, published in 1887.
In the 1880s Clausen devoted himself to painting realistic scenes of rural work after seeing such pictures by the French artist Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884). In this picture he shows a family of field workers topping and tailing swedes for sheep fodder. It was painted at Chilwick Green near St Albans, where the artist had moved in 1881. He uses subdued colouring to capture the dull light and cold of winter, and manages to convey the hard reality of country work. Such unromanticised scenes of country life were often rejected by the selectors of the Royal Academy annual exhibitions.
Thomas Frederick Goodall (British, 1856-1944) and Peter Henry Emerson (British, 1856-1936) Setting the Bow-Net, in Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads 1885, published 1887 Book – open at The Bow Net Photograph, platinum print on paper 300 x 420mm (book closed) Private collection
Thomas Frederick Goodall (British, 1856-1944) The Bow Net 1886 Oil paint on canvas 838 x 1270mm National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) The Water Carrier 1858 Albumen Print, Wilson Center for Photography
In the late nineteenth century, painters and photographers pursued the representation of an idealised beauty, inspired by Italian Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Themes of allegory and myth were widely explored in the arts at this time, particularly in Britain in the writings of Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.
At the turn of the century painting and photography were part of a wider artistic search for harmony between subject matter and expression. Artists found inspiration in each other’s practice and continued to share ideas through illustrated books and journals. This spirit of collaboration and interchange led photographer Fred Holland Day to claim that ‘the photographer no longer speaks the language of chemistry, but that of poetry’.
Alvin Langdon Coburn (American, 1882-1966) Regent’s Canal c. 1904-1905, published 1909 Photogravure on paper Image: 206 x 161 mm Frame: 508 x 406 mm
Wilson Centre for Photography
Arthur Hacker (English, 1858-1919) A Wet Night at Piccadilly Circus 1910 Oil on canvas 710 x 915mm Royal Academy of Arts, London
Alvin Langdon Coburn (American, 1882-1966) Leicester Square (The Old Empire Theatre) 1908, published 1909 Photogravure on paper Image: 206 x 172mm Frame: 508 x 406mm Wilson Centre for Photography
Edward Linley Sambourne (English, 1844-1910) Ethel Warwick, Camera Club, 2 August 1900 Photograph, cyanotype on paper Dimensions Image: 165 x 120mm Frame: 507 x 855mm 18 Stafford Terrace, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Tate Britain Millbank, London SW1P 4RG United Kingdom Phone: +44 20 7887 8888
Varvara Stepanova (Russian, 1894-1958) Red Army Men 1930 Photomontage for Abroad magazine
A bumper posting on a fascinating subject. The portrait of Tolstoy is incredible; more poignant are the photographs pre-World War I (the last days of the Tsarist dynasty), and pre-World War 2 (Portrait of Yury Rypalov, below). People stare into the camera with no idea of the maelstrom about to descend…
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Foam for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Boris Mikhailov (Ukranian, b. 1938) Untitled 1971-1985 From the series Luriki
The exhibition Primrose – Russian Colour Photography takes place as part of Netherlands-Russia 2013. The title refers to the primrose flower, used metaphorically here to represent the many colours in which it appears during early spring. Primrose – Russian Colour Photography presents a retrospective of the various attempts in Russia to produce coloured photographic images. This process began in the early 1850s, almost simultaneously with the discovery of the new medium itself. The colouring technique, based on the traditional methods of craftsmen who added colour into a certain contour design, has determined a whole independent trend in the history of photography in Russia, from ‘postcard’ landscapes and portraits to Soviet propaganda and reportage photography.
The use of colour in Russia stems from the early 1850s and practically coincides with the invention of the medium itself. The term colour photography is slightly disingenuous, since at first it referred to a toning technique in which black and white photographs were painted by hand. Traditionally this technique was used by specialised tradesmen who added colour to the photographs according to certain methods and within the contours of the image. This technique became so popular that it started a trend in and of itself and to a large extent determined the appearance and aesthetics of colour photography in Russia. Initially used especially for portraits, Pictorialist landscapes and nudes, it later also found favour with avant-garde artists. Interestingly enough these aesthetics also formed the starting point for Soviet propaganda and for portraits, political leaders and reportage.
Primrose – Russian Colour Photography can be viewed as a journey through various techniques and genres, meanings and messages, mass practices and individual experiments. The exhibition contains works by renowned photographers and artists such as Sergey Produkin-Gorsky, Ivan Shagin, Dmitry Baltermants and Robert Diament. But is also shows unique photos of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stephanova, and recent works from the famous Luriki series by Boris Mikhailov, in which he mocked the visual culture of the Soviet propaganda.
Press release from the Foam website [Online] Cited 24/03/2020. No longer available online
Installation photographs of the exhibition Primrose – Russian Colour Photography at Foam, Amsterdam showing in the bottom image at second left, Dmitry Baltermants’s Men’s talk (1950, above); and at second right, Dmitry Baltermants’s Rain (1960s, above)
Installation photographs of the exhibition Primrose – Russian Colour Photography at Foam, Amsterdam showing at left, Elena Mrozovskaya’s Portrait of girl in Little Russia costume. Saint Petersburg (1900s, below)
Primrose
This exhibition with the metaphorical title Primrose demonstrates the appearance and development of colour in Russian photography from the 1860s to 1970s, and at the same time reveals the history of Russia in photography. With examples of works from classics of Russian photography such as P. Pavlov, K. Bergamasko, A. Eikhenvald, A. Rodchenko, V. Mikoshi, G. Petrusov, D. Baltermants and B. Mikhailov, as well as unknown photographers, we can see how life in Russia changed in the course of a century as it endured historical and socio-political catastrophes, also the diverse roles that photography played during this period.
Colour became widespread in Russian photography at approximately the same time as in Europe – in the 1860s. This was dependent on the manual tinting of photographic prints with watercolour and oil paints, either by the photographers themselves or by artists working with them. Above all this applies to solo or family portraits commissioned as a keepsake. The photographic studios of Nechayev, Ushakov & Eriks and Eikhenvald produced thousands of tinted portraits that became an important part of the domestic interior.
People were eager to see their own image in colour, and moreover in a picturesque form. The colouring of early photographic shots could also hide imperfections in the prints, including those introduced on albumenised paper. With time this paper turned yellow. To conceal this, the paper was tinted green, pink and other colours and coloured with watercolours, gouache, oils, or later aniline dyes. Sometimes the photograph was partially redrawn during the process of tinting, and foliate embellishments or different items of interior decoration appeared in the background.
By the end of the 19th century, by the 1880s and 1890s, colour photography was extended to architectural, landscape and industrial subject matter. For instance, the photographic studio of the Trinity and St. Sergius Monastery (photographic studios attached to Russian monasteries became a very common phenomenon) produced numerous coloured architectural images of Orthodox churches.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Russia was on the one hand undergoing active europeanisation, as reflected in the style of architectural structures, interiors, costume and way of life, but meanwhile there was also a search for national identity, and new interest in the national particularities of inhabitants in the Russian Empire. Entire series of tinted photographs appeared, depicting people in national costumes – Russian, Tatar, Caucasian, Ukrainian, and so on.
With the industrial boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries people began to decorate their walls not only with tinted landscapes, but also photographs of industrial structures (eg Dmitri Yezuchevsky’s photograph Building the Bridge). In the early 20th century, in the 1910s, coloured photographs of Russian military officers, an important social class before the outbreak of the First World War, were particularly popular.
The photographic documentation of life in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century acquired the status of a State objective, largely because Tsar Nicholas II and his family were enthusiastic amateur photographers. In May 1909 Emperor Nicholas II gave an audience to the photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky. In 1902 Prokudin-Gorsky had first announced a technique for creating colour photographs, and in 1903 he published a brochure entitled ‘Isochromatic Photography with Manual Cameras’. Prokudin-Gorsky used black-and-white plates sensitised according to his own formulae, and a camera of his own construction. Three rapid shots were taken successively through light filters coloured blue, green and red (the photographer managed to reduce the exposure time to an absolute minimum). From this triple negative a triple positive was prepared. A projector with three lenses in front of three frames on the photographic plate was used to view the shots. Each frame was projected through a colour filter of the same colour as that through which it had been photographed. A full-colour image appeared on the screen as the three images combined. Prokudin-Gorsky succeeded in making polygraphic reproductions of his shots, printed in the form of photo cards, and also as inserts for illustrated magazines.
Delighted with this invention, Emperor Nicholas II asked the photographer to take colour photographs of every aspect of life in the various regions that then constituted the Russian Empire. For this the photographer was issued with a specially equipped railway car. The government provided him with a small manned steamship able to traverse the shallows for his work on waterways, and a motorboat for the River Chusova. A Ford automobile was dispatched to Yekaterinburg for his shots of the Urals and the Ural mountain range. Prokudin-Gorsky was presented with official imperial documents that gave him access to all parts of the Empire, and government officials were ordered to assist Prokudin-Gorsky on his travels.
Meanwhile autochrome pictures by the Lumière brothers, with whom Prokudin-Gorsky worked after emigrating from Soviet Russia, became very popular in early 20th-century Russia. Autochromes, colour transparencies on a glass backing, were first produced on an industrial scale in 1907. Granules of potato starch tinted red, yellow and blue were applied to a glass plate. The granules worked as colour filters. Addition of a second layer of granules provided orange, violet and green hues. After that a light-sensitive emulsion was applied. The plate was exposed and developed. Autochromes could be viewed against the light, or projected with the aid of special apparatus, which at that time was manufactured by the Lumière brothers’ own company (diascopes, chromodiascopes, mirrored stereoscopes, etc.). The Lumière brothers’ autochromes were used, for example, by Pyotr Vedenisov, a prosperous nobleman and graduate of the Moscow Conservatoire, who settled in Yalta, in the Crimea, in the late 1880s. As was the case with the Lumière brothers’ autochromes, Vedenisov’s favoured subject matter was the photographer’s own family life. However, what was at first sight very private and personal photography later provided an excellent description of the typical lifestyle enjoyed by educated Russian noblemen in the early 20th century.
The onset of the First World War in 1914 and October Revolution in 1917 annihilated the Russia whose memory is preserved in the tinted photographs and autochromes of the second half of the 19th to early 20th centuries.
Vladimir Lenin and the new Soviet government actively supported photography in the early post-revolutionary years, seeing it as an important propaganda weapon for a country where 70% of the population were unable to read or write. At first there was emphasis on photo reportage, but very soon it became clear real change in a country where hunger and devastation ruled after the Revolution and Civil War was as insubstantial as the utopian dreams of ardent revolutionaries. From the mid-1920s photomontage was widespread in the Soviet Union, enthusiastically encouraged by the Bolsheviks. Photomontage allowed for a combination of documentary veracity and the new Soviet myths. In the 1920s it was practised by such highly talented modernists as A. Rodchenko, G. Klutsis, El Lissitzky, V. Stepanova and others. Photomontage embraced colour and became an ideological ‘visual weapon’.
From the mid-1920s A. Rodchenko regenerated the forgotten technique of hand colouring his own photographs. His use of tinting profited from his experience with photomontage (Mosselprom House Advertising Wall, Dynamo Running Stadium, etc.), and he also applied it to develop experiments with positive-negative printing (scenes from the film Albidum) and for very personal and even intimate portraits of his muse Regina Lemberg – Girl with Watering Can. In 1937, at the height of Stalin’s repression, A. Rodchenko began photographing classical ballet and opera, using the arsenal of his aesthetic opponents, the Russian Pictorialists, who by that time were subject to even harsher repression in the Soviet Union than modernist photographers. For Alexander Rodchenko soft focus, classical subject matter and toning typical of pictorial photography were a mediated way of expressing his internal escapism and tragic disillusionment with the Soviet utopia.
In 1932 general rules for socialist realism were published in the USSR, as the only creative method for all forms of art, including photographic. Soviet art had to reflect Soviet myths about the happiest people in the happiest country, not real life and real people. On this Procrustean bed it was hard not only for modernism with its constructivist aesthetics, but even Pictorialism, to fit into the aesthetics of Socialist realism.
Pictorialism was one of the most important tendencies of early 20th-century Russian photography, and Russian Pictorialist photographers were awarded gold and silver medals at international exhibitions. Pictorial photography differed not only by the method of shooting and complex printing techniques intended to bring photography closer to painting, but also by the selection of traditional themes. Romantic landscapes and architectural ruins or nude studies were from the point of view of socialist realism dangerous remnants from the past. Some of the Pictorialist photographers ended up in Stalin’s prison camps, and were forbidden from practising their profession or settling in the capital or other large cities. Those who remained at liberty – for example, Vasily Ulitin, a participant in major international photo exhibitions and recipient of medals and diplomas in Paris, London, Berlin, Los Angeles, Toronto, Tokyo and Rome – tried with difficulty to adapt to the new reality and attempted to depict revolutionary subjects (Flames of Paris, Red Army Soldier), thereby gaining indulgence and the right to work from the Bolsheviks.
Almost simultaneously, in 1936 the German company Agfa and American company Kodak introduced colour film. Broad distribution and introduction to the amateur photography market were delayed by the outbreak of the Second World War. In the USSR colour photography only appeared at the end of the war. Production of Soviet-made colour film in the USSR was facilitated by German trophy equipment in 1946. From that year onwards Ivan Shagin and several other photographers began to relay their colour news chronicle to the country.
Before 1946 colour photographs of Soviet Russia were made only in isolated cases, on German or American film. Until the mid-1970s, in the USSR negative film for printing colour photographs was a luxury only available to a few official photographers who worked for major Soviet publications. It was used by such classics of Soviet photography as V. Mikosha, G. Petrusov, D. Baltermants, V. Tarasevich, and others. All of them were in one way or another obliged to follow the canons of socialist realism and practise staged reportage. In those days even still life studies of fruit bore an ideological message, being photographed for cookery books in which the Soviet people could see produce that remained absent in a hungry postwar country, where the ration-card system of food distribution was still functioning (Ivan Shagin, Lemons and Fruit, 1949).
From the late 1950s, in the Khrushchev Thaw after the debunking of Stalin’s cult of personality, the canons of socialist realism softened and permitted a certain freedom in aesthetics, allowing photography to move closer to reality (Dmitri Baltermants’ series Arbat Square). In the postwar period, during the 1950s to 1960s life gradually improved and coloured souvenir photo portraits again appeared on the mass market. They were usually produced by unknown and ‘unofficial’ photographers, since private photo studios that had carried out such commissions since the mid-19th century were now forbidden, and the State exercised a total monopoly on photography by the 1930s. Boris Mikhailov copied and enlarged such kitsch colour photographs as souvenirs to supplement his income at his photo laboratory in Kharkov in the early 1970s. He began collecting them. They form the basis for a new aesthetics he developed in the Lyrics series from the early 1980s. By tinting these naïve photographs he revealed and deconstructed the nature of Soviet myths.
Colour transparency film appeared on the Soviet mass market in the 1960s and 1970s. As opposed to colour negative film that requires a complicated and expensive development process for subsequent printing, colour slide film could be developed even in domestic surroundings. Above all it was widely used by amateurs, who created transparencies that could be viewed at home with a slide projector. An unofficial art form emerging in the USSR at this time developed the aesthetics and means for a new artistic conceptualisation of reality, quite different from the socialist realism that still prevailed, although somewhat modified. Photography took a significant role in this unofficial art. It was in the late 1960s and early 1970s that Boris Mikhailov began photographing his series Suzi Et Cetera on colour slide film.
More than half a century of Soviet power after the 1917 Revolution radically altered Russia. The surrounding reality has fallen into decline, and people brought up on Soviet slogans never thought to pay attention. But this was the only reality offered by our perception, and Boris Mikhailov tries to develop its colour, humanise it with his attention and give it the right of existence. Photography textbooks of that period were made up of one-third technical formulae and two-thirds description of what to photograph, and how. The photographer was certainly not required or even allowed to take nude studies. Corporeality and sexuality are inherent signs of an independent individual, of selfhood. The Soviet system specifically tried to level out any sense of selfhood, smothering it and challenging such ideas with the collective community and the impersonal ‘we’ of the Soviet nation. In photographing Suzi Et CeteraBoris Mikhailov disrupts the norms and reveals characters, his own and that of his subjects. It was impossible to show these shots in public, but slides could be projected at home, in the workshops of his artist friends or the small, often semi-underground clubs of the scientific and technical intelligentsia, who began to revive during Khrushchev’s Thaw after the Stalinist repression. Boris Mikhailov’s slide projections are now analogous to the apartment exhibitions of unofficial art. By means of colour he displayed the dismal standardisation and squalor of surrounding life, and his slide performances helped to unite people whose consciousness and life in those years began to escape from the dogmatic network of Soviet ideology, which permitted only one colour – red.
Curator Olga Sviblova Director, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
Boris Mikhailov (Ukranian, b. 1938) Untitled 1971-1985 From the series Luriki
Vladislav Mikosha (Russian, 1909-2004) Portrait of Yury Rypalov 1938-1939
The scenes in Vedenisov’s autochromes take place in Yalta or in the Simbirsk Government, where the Kozakov family, the photographer’s relations, resided. Piotr Vedenisov chooses his models among the members of this single large family. Vedenisov’s photos are mostly staged portraits. Other subjects include everyday life and travelling, feasts, pets, interiors and landscapes. Vedenisov’s autochromes are shot over a relatively short period of time, roughly from 1909 to 1914.
About the photographer
Piotr Ivanovich Vedenisov (1866-1937) was a Russian nobleman living in Yalta, who graduated at the Moscow Conservatorium in 1888. Beside his ultimate passion for music, he was enthusiastic about the history of Crimea and photography. In the early 20th century, Vedenisov masters a technical innovation: he could make colour autochromes on glass. It was a technique of creating works in colour, based on three stages of consecutive shooting through colour filters. It was further developed by the Lumière brothers who succeeded in placing all the filters on a single plate.
Text from the Foam website Nd [Online] Cited 19/09/2022
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
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