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Exhibition: ‘The Stillness of Things: Photographs from the Lane Collection’ at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Exhibition dates: 27th August, 2022 – 27th February, 2023

William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877)
Articles of China
Before 1844
Salt print from a paper negative
The Lane Collection

The world is a reality,
not because of the way it is,
but because
of the possibilities it presents.

Frederick Sommer

A small but vibrant posting. Beautiful still life photographs my favourite being those by Mather, Sommer, Weston, Cunningham, Sudek and Morrell.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

This exhibition presents nearly 60 innovative photographs – all departures from the traditional still life – drawn from the MFA’s Lane Collection. Grouped thematically, the works on view span the entire history of photography, from its first introduction in England during the 1840s by William Henry Fox Talbot to the work of contemporary artists such as Adam Fuss, David Hilliard, Kenro Izu, Abelardo Morell, and Olivia Parker. Works by American modernists are prominently featured, with unexpected takes on the still life by Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Charles Sheeler, and Edward Weston – photographers better known for capturing vast landscapes and portraits of people.

One of the largest gifts in the MFA’s history, the Lane Collection was promised to the Museum in 2012. This exhibition is the latest in a series that has celebrated the single most important donation to the Museum’s photography holdings.

Text from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website

Margrethe Mather (American, 1886-1952)
Water Lily
1922
Palladium print
The Lane Collection

Charles Sheeler (American, 1883-1965)
Still Life
Early 1920s
Gelatin silver print
The Lane Collection

Loosely organised by subject from messy desktops, kitchen utensils, and flora to empty chairs or found objects, the exhibit revels the mid-twentieth century strengths of the collection with works by modernists such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and especially Charles Sheeler. Sheeler pays homage to the painter Morandi with two still lifes featuring a simple ewer and ceramic vase and to Cezanne in a composition of apples. Often overlooked among the modernist masters are women such as Margaret Mather and Imogen Cunningham. Mather’s wispy pine needles and delicate water lily classically weave light, form and abstraction while Cunningham brings a geometric edge to the aloe plant she photographed on her window sill.

Suzanne Révy. “The Stillness of Things,” on the What Will You Remember website September 14, 2022 [Online] Cited 31/01/2023

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Aloe Variagata
Early 1930’s
Gelatin silver print
The Lane Collection

Charles Sheeler (American, 1883-1965)
Cactus and Photographer’s Lamp
1931
Gelatin silver print
The Lane Collection

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Still Life, San Francisco
about 1932
Gelatin silver print
The Lane Collection
© The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Frederick Sommer (American, 1905-1999)
Chicken Entrails
1939
Gelatin silver print
The Lane Collection

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Junk
1939
Gelatin silver print
The Lane Collection

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
The Unmade Bed
1957
Gelatin silver print
The Lane Collection
© 2022 Imogen Cunningham Trust

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
From the Window of my Atelier
1965
Gelatin silver print
The Lane Collection
© I & G Fárová Heirs

Robert Heinecken (American, 1931-2006)
TV Dinner
1971
Gelatin silver print on canvas with pastel, chalk, and resin
The Lane Collection
© The Robert Heinecken Trust

Irving Penn (American, 1917-2009)
Gingko Leaves
1990
Dye-transfer print
The Lane Collection

Abelardo Morell (Cuban, b. 1948)
Wavy Book
2001
Gelatin silver print
The Lane Collection
© Abelardo Morell/Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC

Adam Fuss (British, b. 1961)
Butterfly
2002
From the series My Ghost
Daguerrotype
The Lane Collection
© Adam Fuss

David Hilliard (American, b. 1964)
Perennial
2006
Archival pigment print
The Lane Collection
Museum purchase with funds donated by Saundra B. Lane
© David Hilliard

Olivia Parker’s green and purple artichoke dangling from a string is a nod to the Spanish painter Juan Sánchez Cotán whose vegetable paintings depict foodstuffs hung high to keep rodents at bay. Her work is installed near two surrealist pictures by Frederick Sommer. His jarring but beautiful compositions of chicken heads and innards brim with the tension between the life sustaining nourishment the chicken may have provided and the stark reminder of our mortality. And in an ironic twist, David Hilliard’s ebullient polyptych, Perennial, features an aisle of plastic Walmart flowers that were his mother’s favorites, in striking contrast to the ephemeral flowers featured in countless still life paintings in the galleries of the museum.

Suzanne Révy. “The Stillness of Things,” on the What Will You Remember website September 14, 2022 [Online] Cited 31/01/2023

Olivia Parker (American, b. 1941)
Artichoke
2010
Digital inkjet print
The Lane Collection
© Olivia Parker 2010

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Avenue of the Arts
465 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts

Opening hours:
Saturday – Monday, Wednesday 10am – 5pm
Thursday and Friday 10am – 10pm
Tuesday closed

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website

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Exhibition: ‘Imogen Cunningham’ at Fundación Mapfre, Madrid

Exhibition dates: 18th September 18 2012 – 20th January 2013

Imogen Cunningham exhibition poster

This is the first posting on one of my favourite photographers of all time: Imogen Cunningham. The sensuality of this artist, from the early Pictorialist studies (including her ground breaking depiction of the male nude, her husband artist Roi Partridge) to the later Modernist nudes, portraits, industrial landscapes and botanical photographs is of the highest order. Cunningham reminds me of a photographic version of Georgia O’Keeffe without the undoubted darkness that inhabits some of O’Keeffe’s work.

The portrait of Frida Kahlo Rivera (1931, below) is a magnificent study of a proud woman with delicate use of natural light framing the face and gently clasped hands. Note the textures within the photograph – the dress, the shawl, the wicker chair and the wall – and also notice the reflective light falling behind the sitter upper left to balance the frontal light coming from bottom right. Masterful. Cunningham’s famous Two Callas (1929, below) is an glorious study of form, light and texture, a sensual symphony for the eyes, the background a kind of mutable black that allows the viewer’s gaze to be immersed in the subject. The viewer’s voyeuristic gaze is further engaged by the voluptuous suggestiveness of the copious hair and out of focus breast of Phoenix Recumbent (1968, below) where, “the object of the gaze is not aware of the current viewer (though they may originally have been aware of being filmed, photographed, painted etc. and may sometimes have been aware that strangers could subsequently gaze at their image).” (Daniel Chandler “Notes on ‘The Gaze'” on the Aberystwyth University website [Online] Cited 12/01/2013 no longer available online)

Finally, the photograph of Imogen Cunningham and Twinka Thiebaud by Judy Dater (1974, below) seems to me to capture the spirit of the human being Imogen Cunningham with indelible grace. Youth, beauty, age, wisdom. A constantly inquisitive mind, wanting to know, wanting to see things more clearly, taking photographs right up until her final years. There she is with her twin-lens Rollei dressed as if from another century, the quizzical nature of her left hand and the look that passes between Imogen and Twinka, the space between them seeming to shimmer with possibility. That space seems to wash away the years of Imogen’s life to when she was young, lying naked near some trees (Self-Portrait (1906, below). It is a truly memorable image. In the sensitivity of this image, Dater embodies everything that I admire in Cunningham’s work: light, texture, sensitivity to subject, an understanding of beauty and an irrepressible, joyous sensuality. A fitting tribute to one of the world’s great photographers.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Self-Portrait
1906
Platinum print
©The Imogen Cunningham Trust, 2012

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Magnolia Blossom
1925
Gelatin silver print
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust, 2012

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Roi on the Dipsea trail 3
1918
Gelatin sliver print
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust, 2012

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Three Dancers, Mills College
1929
Gelatin silver print
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust, 2012

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
The Wood Beyond the World
c. 1912
Gelatin silver print
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Frida Kahlo Rivera, Painter and Wife of Diego Rivera
1931
Gelatin silver print
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust, 2012

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Cary Grant, Actor
1932
Gelatin silver print
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust, 2012

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Edward Weston and Margrethe Mather, Photographers I-II
1922
Gelatin silver print
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust, 2011