Large format camera Front on, realist, sharply defined objective documentary photographs of architectural structures of the urban landscape In series
In reality:
Structures cut from the fabric of existence Isolated by the subjective eye of the photographer and the lens of the camera What to include or exclude
(In the contemporary photographs of the spaces in the posting, the shops are surrounded by trees and vegetation, they have transformed from kiosk to shuttered shop, from boutique to florist: the architecture remains but traces of previous incarnations are visible only in these photographs. Nothing is permanent except change).
In the photographs of kiosks, corner shops and industrial gates, it is the minutiae of existence (not as mere decoration) that gives these supposedly objective photographs their subjective power. For example, “the photo Trinkhalle, Köln-Nippes – with its ice cream and newspaper advertisements and vending machines for chewing gum and cigarettes” is more than amusing and engaging – it depicts vital, archaeological evidence of the transitory nature of human existence in the pyschogeography of the urbanscape.1
In Ronkholz’ photographs of the terrain (from the Latin terra, earth/land) of the city, her exploration of urban environments emphasises interpersonal connections to places – and testify “to social, cultural, and economic change and shows how people shape the world around them.” (Press release)
This is the fluid boundary that these photographs so beautifully and incisively depict: the interface between architecture and human, between order (form/surface) and chaos (placement of insolent signs), between utopian perfection and dystopian unruliness – the one coexistent with the other.
This confluence of pattern and randomness, objective and subjective, is what gives these photographs of the everyday a lasting significance.
Many thankx to Huis Marseille, Amsterdam for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Sankt-Franziskus-Straße 104-107 Düsseldorf
Installation views of the exhibition Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February – June, 2026
Installation views of the exhibition Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February – June, 2026
Installation view of the exhibition Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February – June, 2026 showing at left, Tata Ronkholz’s Düsseldorf Harbor (1980)
Tata Ronkholz was one of the first students in Bernd and Hilla Becher’s famous photography class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Her fellow students included Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth, all of whom became artists of world renown. Oddly enough Tata Ronkholz’ work is only now receiving the same international acclaim. The retrospective Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997), on show at Huis Marseille from 14 February until 21 June 2026, is the first large-scale tribute to this many-sided artist.
Objective-documentary photography
Tata Ronkholz was a photographer, product designer, and interior architect. Her photographic series lie within the tradition of objective, documentary photography, a tradition which was decisively shaped by the artist couple Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like theirs, Ronkholz’ work is characterised by clear compositions, a serial approach, and a documentary focus on architectural structures and everyday architectures. Using a large-format camera she produced sharply defined and realistic photographs in which the subject matter, rather than the individual style of the artist, takes centre stage. Her work is predominantly in black and white, although colour images also appear, demonstrating her ambition to engage with the artistic colour photography that emerged in Germany during the 1970s and ’80s, following the example set by the New Color Photography introduced by the American photographers Stephen Shore and William Eggleston.
Kiosks and corner shops
Tata Ronkholz became known for her appealing series of kiosks (Trinkhallen) and small shops that capture typical moments of urban everyday culture. These were photographed between 1977 and 1985, particularly in neighbourhoods of Cologne and Düsseldorf, in the Ruhr area, as well as in Leverkusen and Krefeld. For example, the photo Trinkhalle, Köln-Nippes – with its ice cream and newspaper advertisements and vending machines for chewing gum and cigarettes – is as amusing and engaging as Boutique, Köln-Mülheim in which, according to the store sign, alongside clothing records were also for sale. The photographs illustrate the extent to which product offerings, decoration, and advertising in public spaces has been transformed. Tata Ronkholz’ choice of subject means that her work indirectly testifies to social, cultural, and economic change and shows how people shape the world around them.
Industrial gates
Another significant series is dedicated to industrial gates, photographed between 1977 and 1985. The sober black-and-white images of these gates, with their grids and frameworks, offer glimpses into the interiors of industrial areas. In the photographs the gates function as interfaces between private and public space, between interior and exterior, and between activity and calm. Their aesthetic, reminiscent of abstract artworks, imbues the everyday with a new significance.
Collaboration with Thomas Struth
In 1979 Ronkholz, together with her fellow student Thomas Struth, began work on an impressive documentary series on Düsseldorf’s Rheinhafen. The project originated from the planned redevelopment of this historic harbour area – a site that, in its original form, was considered an industrial area of significant urban historical and architectural importance. Together they set out to document the harbour in its entirety, capturing its historic buildings, technical installations, and operational structures. In carefully composed images they recorded façades, interiors, silos, warehouses, crane structures, and harbour basins, before these elements partially disappeared or were fundamentally altered during the restructuring.
Tata Ronkholz as product designer
Between 1961 and 1965 Ronkholz studied at the Werkkunstschule Krefeld (an academy of applied art) with a focus on furniture design, and subsequently worked as a freelance designer until 1977. The exhibition also explores this aspect of Ronkholz’ oeuvre, including depictions of geometrically shaped furniture and lighting fixtures as well as designs for office and cafeteria furniture. Ronkholz’ designs are characterised by clear forms and functional elegance. Finally, the retrospective also presents early photographs of architectural forms created in 1975/76 in Italy and France, revealing her strong affinity for aspects of the ‘designed world’ across different areas of life.
Ronkholz’ estate, acquired in 2011 by VAN HAM Art Estate in Cologne, forms the basis of the exhibition alongside the holdings of Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf. Significant contributions have also been made from the in-house collections of Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – who also curated the exhibition – and through loans from private collections.
Book
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, Tata Ronkholz: Gestaltete Welt. Eine Retropektive (2025, Schirmer/Mosel Verlag GmbH), with texts in German and English. It is available from the Huis Marseille museum shop (€49.90).
Curators: Ron Magliozzi, Curator, with Katie Trainor, Film Collections Manager and Cara Shatzman, Collection Specialist, Department of Film.
Bob Beerman (American) Rock Hudson c. 1953 Sheet: 9 15/16 x 8″ (25.2 x 20.3cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Silhouetting the celebrity
MoMA always puts on interesting photography exhibitions and this one is no exception. Of course, they have a huge collection to draw from, but it still takes intelligence and curatorial inspiration to bring it all together.
It took me a long time to compile the posting. There were not many media images available but with a bit of digging around on the MoMA collection web pages, and searching online, I managed to find enough photographs to illustrate the exhibition / plus the installation photographs / and the addition of movie posters and magazines to illuminate the films the still photographs were taken from (please note: not in the exhibition). While many of the publicity shots were taken by unknown stills photographers, I have also added bibliographic information for the known photographers where possible.
This would be my only criticism of the exhibition: the inability of the viewer to visualise how these “covered with masking tape, marked up with crayon, or reconfigured with ghostly halos of white-out” photographs were actually used (in the press in everyday life) to create the fantasy ideals of Hollywood glamour stars. Perhaps this was a deliberate curatorial strategy, to concentrate on the pre-production rather than the post-production, to concentrate just on the still photos, without the distraction of further stimuli. And I can understand that decision.
In this posting I can show you three examples of how these still photographs were used: the untouched photograph Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in “This Earth is Mine”] by an unknown photographer (1959, below) has then been colourised and used on the front cover of the DVD release of this film; the Limehouse Blues movie poster (1934, below) features a white-out around George Raft’s head, similar to the white-out around Joan Crawford or Rock Hudson (above); and the hair of Elsa Manchester in Elsa Lanchester [in “The Bride of Frankenstein”] by an unknown photographer (1935, below) is graphically stylised and coloured in the The Bride of Frankenstein movie poster (1935, below).
Silhouetting, in-painting, masking, sectioning, and collage were all hands-on practices that readied the photographs for the press whilst in press they promoted the desirous ideal of the glamorous movie starlet, heroic action man, the fantasy ready and available for consumption by the reading public: the beautiful heroine available to the male gaze, aspirational for so many young women.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to MoMA for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Though Iris Barry, who in 1935 became the founding curator of The Museum of Modern Art’s Film Library, aimed to preserve the history of moving images as an art form, she didn’t stop at moving images. “She was trying to save the record of film history,” explains Ron Magliozzi, a curator in what is today known as the Department of Film. “When the department was founded, the silent period had just ended. And its whole history was considered irrelevant and of no interest. That’s why she was so aggressive in collecting it. Films were the most important thing, and images from film history were second.”
Today, the Museum’s Film Stills Collection includes well over a million publicity photos, production stills, and more – and it’s not all pristine, glossy prints. In the current exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, many of the images are covered with masking tape, marked up with crayon, or reconfigured with ghostly halos of white-out. It’s an occasionally startling reminder that the manipulation of photographs – and of celebrity itself – long predates Photoshop and Instagram.”
Jason Persse, Assistant Director, Content Team, MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art announces Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be drawn from the Museum’s film stills archive since 1993. On view in the Titus and Morita Galleries, the exhibition will offer a revisionist look at the Department of Film’s photographic archive, examining the evolution of editorial practice before the digital age, AI technology, and social media reshaped the experience of celebrity.
Face Value will feature over 200 works from 1921 to 1996, including studio photography of Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Katharine Hepburn, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Oprah Winfrey, and many others.
Text from the MoMA website
Installation views of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing in the left hand block of 9 photographs of the bottom image, from left to right top row to bottom row: Ray Jones’ Margaret Sullavan c. 1939 (below); Clarence Sinclair Bull’s Hedy Lamarr c. 1940; Adolph L. “Whitey” Schafer’s Rosalind Russell c. 1940; Ray Jones’ Mischa Auer c. 1940; Unknown photographer Harry Belafonte [in “The Angel Levine”] 1970; Irving Lippman’s George Raft c. 1933; Hal Phyfe’s Miriam Hopkins c. 1930; Unknown photographer Dorothy Gish c. 1929; and Imandt’s Joan Bennett c. 1939 Photos: Jonathan Dorado
Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947) Margaret Sullavan c. 1939 Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 7/8″ (35.2 x 27.6cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Installation view of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing at right in the bottom image at third left in top row, Unknown photographer Jackie Robinson c. 1950 Photos: Jonathan Dorado
Unknown photographer Jackie Robinson c. 1950 Sheet: 10 x 8″ (25.4 x 20.3cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
The Museum of Modern Art announces Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be drawn from the Museum’s film stills archive since 1993. On view in the Titus and Morita Galleries from June 28, 2025, through June 21, 2026, the exhibition will offer a revisionist look at the Department of Film’s photographic archive, examining the evolution of editorial practice before the digital age, AI technology, and social media reshaped the experience of celebrity.
Face Value will feature over 200 works from 1921to 1996, including studio photography of Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Katharine Hepburn, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Oprah Winfrey, and many others.
Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography is organised by Ron Magliozzi, Curator, with Katie Trainor, Film Collections Manager, and Cara Shatzman, Collection Specialist, Department of Film.
“Face Value will encourage viewers to see through the facade of glamour at how celebrity is fabricated and exploited,” says Ron Magliozzi. Showcasing work by over 58 photographers, the exhibition will juxtapose “untouched” images like Otto Dyar’s Carole Lombard (c. 1933) with those altered through traditional press practices such as silhouetting, in-painting, masking, sectioning, and collage, like James Manatt’s Joan Crawford portrait for the film Letty Lynton (1932). Face Value examines how these methods shaped representations of not only film stars but also sports figures, socialites, and politicians, from Jackie Robinson to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Eleanor Roosevelt. Presented in thematic suites, the installation highlights radical editing techniques, stylised visual motifs, and the gendered aesthetics embedded in the system, offering a revealing perspective on the fabrication of glamour and fame.
Since the Museum’s founding, photography has played a vital role in how it has documented the history of motion pictures. Face Value traces the origin of this early initiative to MoMA’s first film curator, Iris Barry, whose archival efforts led to the acquisition of editorial collections from Photoplay (1911-1980) and Dell (1921-1976), two leading publications that helped define Hollywood’s star system. The exhibition includes images of comic stars Buster Keaton, W. C. Fields, Lupe Velez, and Mae West; pioneering actress Hattie McDaniel with Ruby Berkley, the first Black accredited Hollywood correspondent; famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart on a Hollywood film set; and the last photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe.
Featuring promotional portraits crafted to cultivate celebrity personas, such as Ray Jones’s Anna May Wong portrait for the film Limehouse Blues, Soul of a Dragon (1934), the exhibition explores how these images were manipulated for public consumption through hands-on editing techniques long before digital tools became standard.
Press release from MoMA
Installation views of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing in the bottom two photographs, video stills from Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Benedetta Barzini, Ingrid Superstar, Nat Finkelstein: Danny Williams footage of unknown documentary film shoot c. 1965, processed 2024 (below) Photos: Jonathan Dorado
Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Benedetta Barzini, Ingrid Superstar, Nat Finkelstein: Danny Williams footage of unknown documentary film shoot c. 1965, processed 2024 The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Edie Sedgwick dances in Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory during a photoshoot
Installation view of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing at top centre, Jacqueline Kennedy with Caroline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr. 1960s; and a bottom centre, Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher with Michael Wilding Jr. andChristopher Wilding 1960s Photo: Jonathan Dorado
Unknown photographer Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine [in “Island in the Sun”] 1957 Sheet: 6 15/16 × 9 1/16″ (17.6 × 23 cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Unknown photographer Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in “This Earth is Mine”] 1959 Sheet: 8 x 9 15/16″ (20.3 x 25.2cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
This Earth is Mine (1959) DVD cover
Otto Dyar (American, 1892-1988) Carole Lombard c. 1933 Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 1/2″ (35.2 x 26.7cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Hollywood stills photographers like Dyar “were not mirroring life, but illusion; their subjects were not humans but gods – of love, of allure, of luxury, perfection incarnate from the golden age of Hollywood glamor”
John Kobal (ed), Hollywood glamor portraits, Courier Corporation, 1976, p.V on the Wikipedia website
Otto Dyar was a prominent stills photographer who began his career at the Paramount studios in the 1920s. Initially working as an assistant on major film productions such as the 1927 ‘Wings’, Dyar quickly rose through the ranks to become one of Hollywood’s most notable image-makers.
During the 1930s and 40s, Dyar developed his own, highly dramatic style of lighting and photography that deviated from the neoclassical glamor of the 1920s. Edgy and expressionistic, Dyar’s photographs pushed the iconic features of movie stars like Carole Lombard, Cary Grant, Kay Francis and Joan Crawford to a grittier place that was more in accord with the aesthetics of films made in those decades. Of particular note are Dyar’s star portraits taken outside of the studio, an unusual and daring step at the time.
Despite all the high-contrast lighting, skewed angles and often tiny ‘surrealist’ interventions that point to the influence of photographers like Man Ray, Dyar faithfully accomplished the task of elevating the studio stars to the realm of deities. Like his peers George Hurrell, Ted Allen and Clarence Sinclair Bull, Dyar was not concerned with the psychologies of his sitters. What interested him was amplifying and consolidating the image the stars exuded in their roles, which was usually so powerful that it eclipsed the ‘real’ person that was in front of the camera.
Vigen Galstyan. “Dyar, Otto,” on the Lusadaran: Armenian Photography Foundation website 2015 [Online] Cited 02/04/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Otto Dyar (American, 1892-1988) Louise Brooks c. 1927 Sheet: 13 15/16 x 10 15/16″ (35.4 x 27.8cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Otto Dyar (American, 1892-1988) Anna May Wong 1930s Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 7/8″ (35.2 x 27.6cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947) Anna May Wong [in “Limehouse Blues”] 1934 Sheet: 12 7/8 x 10″ (32.7 x 25.4cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Limehouse Blues (1934) movie poster
Unknown photographer Anna May Wong c. 1934 MoMA Film Stills Archive Sheet: 8 x 6″ (20.3 x 15.2cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Unknown photographer Myrna Loy [in “Across the Pacific”] 1926 Sheet: 11 x 14″ (27.9 x 35.6cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Advertisement for the American romantic adventure film Across the Pacific (1926) with Monte Blue and Myrna Loy, on pages 6 and 7 of the October 26, 1926 Film Daily
John Miehle (American, 1902-1952) Dolores del Rio and Edmund Lowe [in “The Bad One”] 1930 Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 15/16″ (35.2 x 27.8cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
John Miehle was born on August 7, 1902 in Los Angeles, California. Being born so close to Hollywood Miehle went to work as an assistant camera man on the 1931 movie “Delicious” starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell.
He then worked exclusively in the Camera and Electrical Department doing uncredited still photography on some of the best known films, such as “What Price Hollywood?,” “Rain,” “Little Women,” “Top Hat,” “Kitty Foyle,” “Rope” and “Portrait of Jennie.”
He photographed many of the greats as well including Constance Bennett, Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne, Ginger Rogers, Ann Harding, William Powell, Joel McCrea, Katherine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Delores Del Rio, Randolph Scott, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Ruth Hussey, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Ethel Barrymoore, Laraine Day, Franchot Tone, Ann Blyth, Farley Granger, and Dana Andrews…
In addition, he did many publicity shots of such stars as Carole Lombard, Marilyn Monroe, and Lucille Ball.
Don’t Forget The Illustrator! “The Classics and “Ginger Rogers” photographer John Miehle,” on the Vintage Movie Star Photos blog Thursday, March 28, 2013 [Online] Cited 12/05/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
The Bad One (1930) movie poster
William Walling Jr (American, 1904-1983) Carole Lombard c. 1933 Sheet: 13 7/8 x 11 15/16″ (35.2 x 30.3cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
William Richard Walling, Jr. (October 6, 1904 – December 11, 1983) was an American actor, inventor, and portrait photographer for film studios.
Robert Coburn (American, 1900-1990) Vera Zorina [in “The Goldywyn Follies”] c. 1937 Sheet: 13 13/16 x 10 15/16″ (35.1 x 27.8cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Robert Coburn was one of the most influential portrait photographers working in the major Hollywood movie studios from the 1930’s to 1960’s. His star subjects included Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford, Kim Novak, Carole Lombard, William Holden, Glenn Ford, and Orson Welles. Coburn’s most infamous portraits immortalised Hollywood’s greatest icons and helped to define this era as the Golden Age of Cinema. In 1940, Robert Coburn began a twenty-year career with Columbia Pictures as the head of the still production department and the studio’s chief portrait photographer for many landmark films including “Picnic”, “Gilda”, and “The Big Heat”.
Text from the Fahey/Klein Gallery website
Goldwyn Follies (1937) movie poster
Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography Introductory text
For MoMA’s founding film curator, Iris Barry, building an archive of images that documented the history of motion pictures was second only to collecting films. Photographs from the study collection that she created were among the first works exhibited in MoMA’s theater gallery. Barry’s initiative eventually led to the acquisition of editorial archives from Photoplay (1911-1980) and Dell (1921-1976), leading fan magazine publishers supporting the Hollywood star system. The portrait photography featured in these publications was produced by film studios to promote the glamorous celebrities under contract to them. Face Value looks at these images and surveys how they were manipulated for public consumption in the decades before digital tools, AI technology, and social media revolutionized the process.
Over sixty photographers are represented in this installation, which intermingles images that survive untouched with those that show evidence of the hands-on practices that readied them for the press. The standard techniques used – silhouetting, in-painting, masking, sectioning, and collage – were applied not only to photographs of entertainers but to sports figures, socialites, and politicians as well. Organised in suites that highlight radical editing practices, stylised visual motifs, and the gender stereotypes inherent in the studio system, the exhibition offers a demystifying perspective on the glamour of celebrity.
Wall text from the exhibition
George P. Hommel (American, 1901-1953) Clara Bow c. 1929 Sheet: 14 x 11″ (35.6 x 27.9 cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Overshadowed by the work of 1920s Paramount colleagues Donald Biddle Keyes and Eugene Robert Richee, stillsman George P. Hommel crafted thoughtful portraits highlighting both the beauty and sorrow of those he photographed. Like Keyes, the peripatetic Hommel always looked for new challenges, new opportunities, keeping him on the move. Unobstrusive and elegant, Hommel’s work reveals hidden depths in those he shot. …
Hommel’s straightforward portraiture captured the vulnerability of his sitters, revealing a wistful and often melancholic look in their expressive eyes. His pensive work focused on serious matters, not straining to create fleeting moods but revealing the heart of those he photographed. Employing simple, dark-textured background, Hommel focused on the eyes and lips, creating a sharp image with an often soft-focus background. His portraits often feature shadows and strong angular lines, creating dramatic composition. Hommel could also capture the sometimes insouciant or even overly exuberant emotions of sitters, often covering their vulnerability and pain, such as in his Pierrot portraits of Clara Bow as clown.
James Manatt (American, 1896-1989) Joan Crawford [in “Letty Lynton”] 1932 Sheet: 13 x 10″ (33 x 25.4cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Letty Lynton (1932) movie posters
Elmer Fryer (American, 1898-1944) Lili Damita [in “The Match King”] c. 1932 Sheet: 14 1/16 x 11″ (35.7 x 27.9cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
The Match King (1932) movie poster
Bert Longworth (American, 1893-1964) Amelia Earhart with Helen Hayes [on set of “A Farewell to Arms”] 1932 Sheet: 13 15/16 x 10 7/8″ (35.4 x 27.6cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
As the studio system came into place with the advent of talkies, studios hired many stillsmen to take scene stills, off-camera images, and candids of both above and below the line talent. Photographers took massive amounts of stills around the lot, at public events, premieres, at homes, in posed shots, to be widely distributed to magazines and newspapers for free publicity promoting upcoming films, new talent, and established stars. The journals, fan magazines, and newspapers splashed these images throughout their pages, building awareness and star popularity.
Bert “Buddy” Longworth was one of the stills photographers taking these images. Longworth began his career shooting scene stills at MGM for Greta Garbo’s first three films, including “Flesh and the Devil,” with Longworth capturing the passion of Garbo and John Gilbert as they fell in love. He was employed for a short time at Paramount, but from 1929 on, he worked at Warner Bros. as an action specialist, working on Busby Berkeley’s spectacular musicals, crime pictures, off-set candids, as well as portraits. Scholar David Shields calls him “Hollywood’s foremost expressionist, often using unusual perspective, occasional use of multiple exposures.”
Unknown photographer Elsa Lanchester [in “The Bride of Frankenstein”] 1935 Sheet: 13 1/2 x 9 3/16″ (34.3 x 23.3cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) movie poster
I want to talk more about the edited photographs. In many of the photos white-out has been used to separate the subject’s head or face – and in one notable case, their bare legs – from the rest of the image. What are some ways in which these disembodied segments were used by the studios and by the magazines?
RM: We know they were from Photoplay magazine, so if we have a still that’s been edited for Photoplay, Cara went and looked for the issue that published the photograph to see how it was used. It might have been a feature on women’s legs, so that’s why they only focused on the legs.
There’s one grouping of photographs, I call it the “eat face grouping,” where the stars are very close up. There’s a photograph of someone eating someone’s chin. Those were all taken for a particular issue of Photoplay – that’s why they’re all edited in the same way.
With research and detective work you can determine how they were actually used in print. The floating heads, they would attach to biographies. They call that silhouetting, with the white-out.
CS: A lot of the uses I found were very gossipy, which was interesting, a lot of rumor columns. And then of course, like Ron said, highlighting certain aspects of celebrities’ bodies or features.
Back in 1980 MoMA’s exhibition Hollywood Portrait Photographers, 1921 to 1941 actually used a couple of the same images that appear in this show. But that nnnexhibition celebrated the artistry and glamor of these images. Why did you choose to focus more on the ways that these images have been manipulated and edited?
RM: The audience for photographs like this has changed. In 1980 there was a whole generation of people who knew who these performers were, who appreciated them as performers and appreciated their celebrity. Nowadays, younger audiences, in many cases, have no idea who these folks are. Even we sometimes have trouble identifying everyone. Displaying them in that way seemed dated. We wanted to mount them in a way that reflected how visitors today would need to look at them.
The photographs in 1980 were all matted in a very formal way that encouraged appreciation for the beauty of the photograph. I wasn’t interested in how beautiful the images were. I wasn’t interested in the celebrities. We’re mostly interested in the photographs. I wanted them to look like working photographs, and that’s reflected in the way they’re displayed. We did ours on plexi traps, which turned out to be very elegant, but the notion was that it would be a less precious way of mounting them so we would look at them in a less precious way.
The other thing we did differently was to have large numbers of photographs grouped in very dense clusters. To me that reflects social media today. The way we encounter images daily is so dense, and we’re forced to sort through a lot of images that come our way in any one moment. So I wanted visitors to have a contemporary view. It was meant to reflect a digital-age perspective, because analog-versus-digital was a subtext of the show in our heads.
There were two shows that were touchstones for this one: the Hollywood Portrait show of 1980, and the Fame After Photography show, a wonderful show in 1999 that MoMA’s Photography department mounted. They borrowed a lot of film stills for that show, which was also investigating celebrity and fame.
Unknown photographer Louis Armstrong [in “Cabin in the Sky”] 1943 Sheet: 8 x 10″ (20.3 x 25.4 cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Cabin in the sky (1943) movie poster
Unknown photographer Hattie McDaniel and Ruby Berkley Goodwin c. 1948 Sheet: 9 1/16 x 7″ (23 x 17.8cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
“[Ruby Berkley Goodwin] was also Hattie McDaniel’s publicist. And she was Ethel Waters’s publicist. She was the first Black American to have a syndicated newspaper column. She wrote this very famous autobiography called It’s Good to Be Black that was very, very popular. She was a poet. She was a fascinating person, and I was not familiar with her. That was a great aspect of learning about all of these people in these photographs.”
Unknown photographer Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis c. 1950 (detail) Sheet: 8 1/16 x 10″ (20.5 x 25.4cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Elvis Presley [Fans’ Star Library magazine, No. 13] 1959 Sheet: 7 x 5 1/8″ (17.8 x 13cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian born Mardin, Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), 1908-2002) Anna Magnani 1959 Sheet: 20 x 15 15/16″ (50.8 x 40.5cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Anna Maria Magnani (Italian, 1908-1973)
Anna Maria Magnani (Italian; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Italian actress. She was the first Italian woman to win an Academy Award.
Born and raised in Rome, Italy or Alexandria, she worked her way through Rome’s Academy of Dramatic Art by singing at night clubs. During her career, her only child was stricken by polio when he was 18 months old and remained disabled. She was referred to as “La Lupa”, the “perennial toast of Rome” and a “living she-wolf symbol” of the cinema. Time described her personality as “fiery”, and drama critic Harold Clurman said her acting was “volcanic”. In the realm of Italian cinema, she was “passionate, fearless, and exciting”, an actress whom film historian Barry Monush calls “the volcanic earth mother of all Italian cinema.” Director Roberto Rossellini called her “the greatest acting genius since Eleonora Duse”. Playwright Tennessee Williams became an admirer of her acting and wrote The Rose Tattoo (1955) specifically for her to star in, a role for which she received an Academy Award for Best Actress.
After meeting director Goffredo Alessandrini, she received her first screen role in The Blind Woman of Sorrento (La cieca di Sorrento, 1934) and later achieved international attention in Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945), which is seen as launching the Italian neorealism movement in cinema. As an actress, she became recognised for her dynamic and forceful portrayals of “earthy lower-class women” in such films as L’Amore (1948), Bellissima (1951), The Rose Tattoo (1955), The Fugitive Kind (1960) and Mamma Roma (1962). As early as 1950, Life had already stated that Magnani was “one of the most impressive actresses since Garbo”.
“Through his surreal, dream sequences captured in pop colour, punctum laden reality, Parr observed the absurdities of life on this planet…” Dr Marcus Bunyan
“We are living in a time when, to borrow a phrase and book title of Sigmund Freud’s, civilization and its discontents are becoming painfully evident to us all. Our machine age technology with its private greed, ecologically disastrous policies, crass materialism, human alienation, incessant strife and conflict, and the portent of man’s destroying himself by his own recklessness, is taking its toll in terms of our confidence and optimism about life. …
John Anson Warner. “Introduction” to The Life & Art of the North American Indian. London: Hamlyn, 1975, p. 6.
A bewitching eye / the unfolding moment
A bewitching eye refers to eyes that are so powerfully, seductively attractive or charming that they appear to cast a spell, mesmerising or enchanting an onlooker. They possess an irresistible, magnetic allure that captivates the viewer, having an almost magical ability to draw someone in. This description could metaphorically be applied to the photographs of the legendary (and I don’t use that word lightly) contemporary British photographer Martin Parr (1952-2025).
Parr was an observer of life with a socially critical eye. Through his surreal, dream sequences captured in pop colour, punctum laden reality, Parr observed the absurdities of life on this planet – human, animal, inanimate – with curiosity and a sense of wonder even while questioning our path to destruction. While this exhibition is split into various sections – Leisure & waste lands; Last Chance To Buy; Small World; The Animal Kingdom; and Technological Addictions – in reality most of his images from each of the sections could fit into any other, for the whole world is interconnected in the excesses and grotesqueness of modern life, of civilization and its discontents.
Parr’s exploration of the pyschogeography of the urbanscape, the exploration of urban environments that emphasises interpersonal connections to places, is damming in its technicolor coat of glory. Mass tourism takes us to leisure spaces like the beach where technology is used to take selfies and mountains of waste pile up near the water’s edge. Mass human, mass cultivation (of palm oil or eucalyptus trees for example) is causing mass extinction of species across the planet. Mass consumption means that we are using the Earth’s resources indiscriminately to fuel (ha!) our desire for the latest, larger four-wheel drive we can get our hands on, the latest fashions that end up in landfill every 6 month cycle when they are not bought, or the brightest, pinkest, must luscious cup cakes you have ever seen in your life.
Parr’s colour saturated photos draw us into this consumptive world where the body is racked by disease, where the patient will soon be on life support. Through his mesmerising, enchanting, multilicious photographs he pokes a great big subversive stick at our follies, excesses, self-destructive desires. Unfortunately, while Parr’s photos seep into our subconscious, most images have little power to change public and personal opinion – all they can do is proffer alternate visions and interpretations of the world and hope that some glimmer of recognition of the environmental damage we are doing will permeate the mind of the viewer.
Of course, Parr’s famous photographs did not appear out of thin air. He was a dedicated photographer whose art practice required years of hard work, talent and skill to obtain his images. He emphasises that, “you have to look at the history of photography and learn what they have done and achieved and apply that, think about it and have it in the back of your head and then you can apply that to your own work.” By doing that, “you may have the rare opportunity actually to develop your own voice, and you can become a photographer with a particular voice.”
“What you are going to do, of course, is to find a good connection to the world out there. It is the quality of that connection that is really important. So, you find a subject you feel strongly about. Then work out how to articulate that and that hopefully will give you momentum for you to get good work.”
Nothing comes without hard work and perseverance.
In the video below where he is giving advice to young photographers he states that he might get only ten great photographs a year, sometimes only one, but he shoots heap of photographs and then discards the dross. What he also says that is really important is that he is attentive to the unfolding moment, he is aware and ready for what the energy of the world puts in front of his eye and his camera. If only the human race was so aware.
Parr was a human being that I would have really liked to have met. To have a conversation about the energy of the world, the passion and commitment of human beings to do good things, to see things differently, to make a difference.
We have his images for as long as the human race exists. But I miss him already.
Many thankx to Jeu de Paume for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“l’m creating entertainment, which has a serious message if you want to read into it, but I’m not trying to convince anyone – l’m just showing them what they think they may know already.”
Martin Parr, 2021
“We are heading towards catastrophe but we are all going there together. Who would dare ban cars or air travel?”
“When I take a photograph, I try to say something. Beyond the garish colours, there is a political message…”
Martin Parr
I now realise that almost all the images I have taken and produced are indirectly linked to climate change.”
Martin Parr 2009
“Global Warning gives us Parr in all his gluttonous, giddy glory, an attentive, unabashed and unpretentious observer of everyday absurdities. But through clever curatorial nudges, this show also gives us other unexpected sides to Parr, a creeping sense of a doom we are hurtling towards at breakneck speed.”
Martin Parr’s Advice to Young Photographers | Louisiana Channel
“You are probably going to fail, so unless you are obsessed, almost like a disease, you are not going to make it.” Legendary Martin Parr, regarded as the most crucial figure in contemporary British photography, offers advice to young photographers.
“What you are going to do, of course, is to find a good connection to the world out there. It is the quality of that connection that is really important. So, you find a subject you feel strongly about. Then work out how to articulate that and that hopefully will give you momentum for you to get good work.”
Another thing which is very important for Martin Parr to emphasise is that “you have to look at the history of photography and learn what they have done and achieved and apply that, think about it and have it in the back of your head and then you can apply that to your own work.” By doing that, “you may have the rare opportunity actually to develop your own voice, and you can become a photographer with a particular voice.”
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2022
This exhibition revisits the work of the late British photographer Martin Parr, bringing together a selection of series produced since the 1970s that find new resonance in light of the growing disarray of the contemporary world. For over fifty years, Parr travelled the globe not as an activist but as a relentless and amused observer, offering a lucid and unsparing portrait of global imbalances and the excesses of contemporary life: the grotesque face and damaging effects of mass tourism, the rise of car culture, our dependence on technology, unbridled consumerism, and our ambivalent relationship with other living beings.
Through his characteristically offbeat vision, Parr also indirectly engaged with the human behaviours driving contemporary climate change: the unrestrained use of transport, reliance on fossil fuels, global overconsumption, and environ mental degradation. Over time, and as social attitudes have shifted, what once appeared merely entertaining has revealed itself to be increasingly serious. ln retrospect, Parr’s corrosive irony places him within a long tradition of British satire: his sharp wit and deadpan humour deliver a critical, and at times merciless, view of the world we inhabit.
Text from the Jeu de Paume website
The Martin Parr: Global Warning exhibition at the Jeu de Paume (on display through May 2026) is organised into five thematic sections. These sections explore the excesses of modern life through about 180 photographs.
Leisure & waste lands: Focuses on recreational spaces like crowded beaches where pleasure often leads to environmental degradation.
Last Chance To Buy: Examines unbridled consumerism in supermarkets, malls, and luxury shops using Parr’s signature saturated colours.
Small World: Documents the rituals and “ravages” of mass tourism across five continents.
The Animal Kingdom: Explores our ambivalent relationship with animals – as pets, entertainment, or consumer products.
Technological Addictions: Highlights our growing dependence on machines, from slot machines to compulsive selfie-taking
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing Martin Parr’s black and white photographs of Ireland 1980-83 Photos: Salim Santa Lucia
Ireland 1980-1983
While living in Ireland, Martin Parr became interested in the abandoned morris Minors – the emblematic car of the post-war British middle classes – found throughout the Irish countryside. Through his lens, the vehicles become a new motif of contemporary ruin: modern vanities symbolising the inevitable decline of progress, a subtle criticism of pollution linked to the automotive industry, an homage to the beauty of Irish landscapes, an almost optimistic meditation on the resilience of nature, and a celebration of human ingenuity. In this sense, the series offers an implicit history of both pollution and adaptation.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left the wall text “Leisure & Waste Lands” and at centre, Martin Parr’s Mar del Plata, Argentina (2014, below)
Leisure & Waste Lands
Beginning in the 1980s, Martin Parr relentlessly documented how contemporary landscapes are periodically or permanently reshaped by the expansion of mass leisure. Many of these works capture the coexistence and constant intermingling of natural and man-made elements.
Parr’s photography explores the interests of ordinary people, with whom he identified. Although he never learned to swim – unlike his wife Susie, who is an excellent swimmer – he spent a great deal of time on beaches, which feature prominently in his work. His first major colour series, ‘The Last Resort’, focuses on the popular seaside resort, New Brighton, near Liverpool. Parr would go on to pursue this theme across all five continents, producing some of his most incisive social critiques, from ‘Benidorm’ – capturing life at a sprawling resort on Spain’s Costa Blanca – to ‘Playas’ – a survey of Latin America’s most frequented beaches.
‘You can read a lot about a country by looking at its beaches: across cultures, the beach is that rare public space in which all absurdities and quirky national behaviour can be found,’ he wrote in 2013. For Parr, the beach setting became a field of experimentation, rarely appearing in his work as exotic or pristine, but instead as spaces rife with the contradictions of the leisure industry. At once convivial and chaotic, beaches are places of relaxation, paradoxically crowded with bodies, colours and – on might even say – noise. They are sites where we reproduce our ordinary urban habits, and where consumerism is inextricably bound up with trash and waste in every imaginable form: a highly photogenic subject that Parr faithfully captured from the very beginning of his career.
‘I first came to Mar del Plata, the largest Argentine seaside resort, way back in 2007 when I was shooting images for my ‘Playas’ project, a survey of Latin American beaches. I was amazed then at the scale of the resort. It has two thousand hotels, sixteen kilometres of beaches, and welcomes over seven million visitors a year. In terms of scale, Mar del Plata dwarfs other well-known resorts across the globe, including Copacabana, Blackpool and benidorm, yet it is virtually unknown beyond Argentina.’
From Martin parr’s blog, Mar del Pata, 2004 Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s New Brighton, United Kingdom (1983-85, below); and at second left, Benidorm, Spain (1997)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Tokyo, Japan (2000, below); at second left, Melbourne, Australia (2008); and at right, New Brighton, United Kingdom (1983-85, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s photograph New Brighton, United Kingdom (1983-85, below); at at right, Mar del Plata, Argentina (2014)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at right, Martin Parr’s photograph Untitled (Hot Dog Stand), United Kingdom (1983-85, below) from Last Resort
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing from left to right, Benidorm, Spain (1997); Magaluf, Majorca, Spain (2003); Benidorm, Spain (1997); and at right, Tenby, United Kingdom (2018)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Benidorm, Spain (1997, below) and at right, Tenby, United Kingdom (2018)
This exhibition invites the public to revisit the work of Martin Parr. Through different bodies of work created from the late 1970s to the present day, Parr’s photographs capture the absurdities and malfunctions of our contemporary world. Over 50 years, in locations all round the globe, the photographer has built up a corpus of work that portrays the inequalities and excesses of our modern lifestyle. A number of themes recur throughout. These include: the ravages of tourism, the prevalence of car culture, our dependence on technology, consumer excess, and even our ambivalent relationship with the living world. Martin Parr brings his unique, off-beat perspective to several major causes of climate change and environmental damage: unchecked global travel, reliance on fossil fuels, and world-wide overconsumption. Seemingly light-hearted and humorous, Parr’s work is in fact deeply serious. The ironical nature of his work places Parr firmly within the traditions of British satire and offers an indirect yet profound critique of contemporary life.
Through some 180 images spanning fifty years of work – from his early black and white images to more recent output – this exhibition addresses the chaos of modern society. Five main sections, organised according to recurring themes, motifs and obsessions, convey the range and depth of Parr’s work. These sections explore the way in which our leisure pursuits impact the environment. Despite being a non-swimmer, Parr is repeatedly drawn to the beach as a site where the natural and artificial worlds coexist and pleasure leads to waste. In the section ‘Everything Must Go!’ our obsessive consumerism is explored. Parr draws up a crude inventory of sought-after objects and modes of consumption. Supermarkets, shopping malls, fairs and exhibitions provide the setting for a frantic materialistic race that is common to all classes of society. Sometimes even human beings become a form of merchandise.
In the ‘Small World’ section, named after one of his most celebrated series, Parr explores the joys, contradictions and dead ends of the tourism industry. In some of the world’s most iconic destinations, he focuses on the habits, behaviours, expectations and disappointments of the global tourist, against the backdrop of North/South, West/East imbalances. In ‘The Animal Kingdom’ he looks at the ambiguous relationship between humans and animals, from fascination and indulgence to neglect and exploitation. The final section – ‘Technological Addictions’ addresses our relationship with machines of all kinds: phones, cars, planes and computers as through them we navigate space, time and reality on a daily basis.
I create entertainment that contains a serious message if you are willing to look for it, but I’m not trying to convince anyone, I’m simply showing people what they think they know’ declared Martin Parr in 2021. Tireless photographer, frequent flyer, beach-lover, Martin Parr never tries to be a moral authority. He has often acknowledged that he himself is fully part of the world he documents and is clear-sighted about the environmental impact of his own lifestyle, particularly his significant carbon footprint: ‘We are heading towards catastrophe but we are all going there together. Who would dare ban cars or air travel?’
Aware that images alone are not enough to change the world, he advocates a form of discreet activism, a subtle visual guerilla warfare. If Parr uses humour it is always in the service of a commentary, often critical and satirical, that seeks to de-stabilise the idealised visions conveyed in the media by the cultural and tourism industries. Many of his images play with cliches, highlighting their inherent absurdity in order to subvert and deconstruct them. Tourist postcards, wildlife photography, foodie habits, selfies, all these and more provide the material that enables him to question, critique and occasionally mock the lifestyles and imagination of large sections of the world population. This exhibition is indeed a global warning.
Press release from Jeu de Paume
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Moscow (1992) ; and at right, the wall text to “Last chance to buy”
Last chance to buy
Beginning in the 1980s, Martin Parr began documenting a subject that relatively few photographers were exploring at the time: the myriad dimensions of consumer culture in Britain under Margaret Thatcher, and in particular the tastes, aspirations and attitudes of the middle class. Parr would sustain this interest throughout his career, later extending his investigation across Europe and the United Sates as well as to countries in Asia and the Middle East shaped by Westernised or Americanised lifestyles.
Today, Parr’s work offers a blunt and often humorous inventory of our consumer goods and ways of life – from food and art to luxury items and useless trinkets – framing consumption as a kind of new religion. In several series, parr deliberately subverted the visual vocabulary of advertising photography. In ‘Common Sense’, one of his most incisive critiques of consumer culture, close-ups and saturated colours produce a grotesque caricature of a world dominated by kitsch. Through his lens, supermarkets, hypermarkets, shopping malls, fairs, and trade shows become stages on which all social classes take part in a frenzied and absurd rush to accumulate goods of every kind. In this world, which seems ultimately to offer little pleasure, human beings themselves are at times turned into commodities.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at centre, photographs from Martin Parr’s series Common Sense (1999)
Installation views of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing photographs from Martin Parr’s series Common Sense (1999, below)
In his playfully titled Common sense series, British photographer Martin Parr confronts and amuses us in a similar way. Each image in the series is an isolated detail revealing one ghastly aspect of excessive consumerism and consumption after another. The images jostle for our attention like billboards on the side of a freeway, employing many of the tactics of advertising, using large-scale, saturated colour and shock value to attract our gaze.
In his photographs of food, Martin Parr pointedly examines the gross indulgence that is encouraged by manufacturers and their advertisers. Shown here as just another commodity, generic and mass-produced food becomes obscene in its abundance…. When seen in such lurid detail, the overblown details on the person’s hands, such as the ring with blue stone, a Band-Aid, and the imperfect application of the gaudy nail polish, become repulsive images of the ordinary. …
The Common sense series is a major body of work within Parr’s ongoing exploration of globalisation, mass tourism, class culture and consumerism. In common with much of his work, this series presents images critical of the contemporary culture with a distinctive sense of irony and British humour. There is something uncomfortable in all these photographs. We laugh at them while being slightly embarrassed by their familiarity and are acutely aware of the gulf between a dream of glamour and the sad synthetic reality.
Susan van Wyk, Curator, Photography, National Gallery of Victoria
Susan van Wyk. “Martin Parr’s Common Sense,” in Art Journal 46, 29 Jan 14 on the National Gallery of Victoria website [Online] Cited 16/04/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Cozumel, Mexico (2002, below); and at right, the wall text for “Small World”
Small World
Martin Parr maintained that he belonged fully to the world he documented and critiqued. He readily acknowledged the environmental impact of his own lifestyle – not least his substantial carbon footprint – and near positioned himself above his subjects. Although fully aware that images alone could never change the world, he nevertheless engaged in a form of subtle, visual guerrilla warfare that questioned dominant representations, particularly those promoted by the tourism industry.
Beginning in the 1990s, tourism emerged as one of his favourite subjects. He would explore it the world over, in all its pleasures, contradictions, and even dead ends, documenting the rituals and behaviours of the global tourist in the world’s most visited destinations. The sameness of gestures, attitudes and clothing encountered in every corner of the planet provides a humorous, slightly wistful counterpoint to the diversity of the sites and monuments photographed. Parr takes particular pleasure in overturning the codes of postcard perfect aesthetics, especially in his images of iconic landmarks, which he presents in degraded forms caught between over crowding, scenes of anxiety, and crude replicas. Through his lens, the quest for authenticity is a thing of the past.
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing Parr’s photograph Cannes, France (2018, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s photograph Sorrento, Italy (2014, below); and at right, The Matterhorn, Alps, Switzerland (1990)
‘Between the hours of 10am and 2pm the site is at its busiest with up to 4,000 visitors arriving each day. Knowing how inaccessible the place is, it is staggering where and how they emerge. It is also not a cheap visit as each foreign tourist has to pay 122 soies (roughly $40) to enter the site. I am convinced that this entrance payment, together with the cost of the journey and the trekking are probably keeping the Peruvian economy afloat, as 70% of all visitors are foreigners.’
From Martin Parr’s blog, Machu Picchu, 2008 Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at bottom left, Martin Parr’s photograph Notre Dame, Paris, France (2012, below); and at right, Kleine Scheidegg, Switzerland (1994, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s West Midlands Safari Park, United Kingdom (1990); and at right, Longleat Safari Park, United Kingdom (1994)
Unlike zoos, safari parks are designed to let animals roam freely, almost as if they were “in the wild”, while human visitors are meant to experience a sense of closeness to the animals natural state. In his images of safari parks, Martin Parr mocks this idea by deliberately including exactly what such photographs usually try to exclude: cars. The resulting images resemble absurd collages of two disjointed realities, in which – in typical Par-like fashion – he plays with the incongruous encounter between the natural world and a human-made, artificial dimension
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at second left, Martin Parr’s photograph Snow Polo World Cup, St Moritz, Switzerland (2011, below) from the series Luxury; and at second right, Venice Beach, California, USA (1998, below)
“I am not saying that tourism is bad – far from it as it brings a livelihood for many people. Organisations like Tourism Concern in the UK make a very important contribution to a better understanding of the yin and yang of tourism. This charity highlights the problems caused by tourism – from water shortages in newly developed sites to the pure rape of our ever decreasing natural habitats – and tries to ensure that local people benefit from the fruits of tourism. We need to adopt a better understanding of the issues surrounding this huge business. These photographs, I hope, will offer a good starting point. For remember we, in the wealthy West, are the ones that seek out the pleasures of tourism, so we’re all in this together.”
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing the wall text “Technological Addictions” with at bottom left, Martin Parr’s Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai, India (2018, below); at second right, Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England (2022, below) and at right, New York, USA (1999, below)
Technological Addictions
Even in his exploration of technology, Parr remains a humanist in both his practice and overarching project: what interests him is our relationship to the technology rather than the object or machine itself. As a keen observer of behaviour and constantly on the lookout for unexplored for unexplored topics, Parr examined how the human body interacts differently with each new technological object. He also probes technology’s growing role in daily lives and imagination, and the dependency it engenders. At the same time, he implicitly explores the way technology profoundly alters our perception of reality and our relationship to space and time.
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England (2022, below); and at top right, England, United Kingdom (1994) and at bottom right, England, United Kingdom (1994)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing Martin Parr’s Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England (2022, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s New York, USA (1999, below); and at right top, Salford, United Kingdom (1986) and right bottom, Dublin, Ireland (1986)
‘I was hanging around a petrol station like a pervert. Photographers at the time would have said that this was the craziest place to take a picture. Because it’s a very unglamorous subject matter. Boring. There’s no drama here. But there’s something really interesting about boring. Something that seems very ordinary at the time becomes interesting when you look back at it later, almost 40 years later: the pump has changed, the clothes have changed, the car has changed. It tells us something about consumerism, and how we depend on fuel, oil and petrol.
From Martin Parr’s interview, ‘”There’s something very interesting about boring” Martin Parr on his life in pictures.’ The Guardian, 24 August 2025 Wall text from the exhibition
‘Although many museums have now banned the selfie stick, outside in the street, especially in front of that iconic monument or landmark the stick comes into its own. Getting the photo of you and your loved one(s) with the landmark in the background is de rigueur. The tourism industry, which is the biggest in the world, now dictates that the first requirement of any trip is to prove you were there with the necessary photo. It connects you to the world that we know and understand, and it is a vital part of any successful holiday experience. We used to have to ask a passing tourist to take the photo, but thanks to the selfie stick those days are over and we are now self sufficient.’
From Martin Parr’s blog, The Selfie Stick, 2015 Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s photographs Advertisement for Sony PlayStation, England, United Kingdom (2003); and at right, Ooty, India (2018, above)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at right, Martin Parr’s photograph from The Republican National Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, USA (2016, below)
Curator: Â Hans Rooseboom, Curator of Photography at the Rijksmuseum
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W.H. Martin (American, 1865-1940)(photographer) The North American Post Card Co. (publisher) The largest ear of corn grown 1908 Postcard Rijksmuseum Purchase 2018
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William H. “Dad” Martin of Ottawa, Kan., is considered to be the father of the exaggerated postcard. Some of his better work featured huge ears of corn, giant apples and peaches, stalks of wheat taller than any man and massive pumpkins uprooting a farmstead. Such cards were hugely successful throughout the Great Plains states where agriculture was the life’s blood of rural America.
W.H. Martin moved to Ottawa in 1899 to serve as an apprentice under photographer E.H. Corwin. Eight years later, Martin purchased Corwin’s studio and began crafting the tall tale postcards that would eventually make him a millionaire.
There are many photographs pre digital manipulation that can be seen as “fake”1 but to me this is a disingenuous word, a sensationalist word, to describe photographs that basically undermine the photograph and its link to truth, the link of the photograph to the indexicality of its referent. But what is “truth” in a photograph?
Photographs have always deceived,2 depending on where you place the camera, which point of view you decide to capture and which to exclude, and when you decide to press the shutter … or what collage of photographs you put together and in what order. Thus, from one point of view, there is no such thing as a fake photograph, just different versions of (de)constructed realities.
Conversely you could argue that ALL photographs are “fake” as the photograph is only, can only ever be, a symbolic representation of a reality that never existed in the first place (“Ceci n’est pas une pipe”).
Photographs are tricky little things.
In the case of this exhibition, early photo collages and photomontages are seen as “fake” only in terms of their relation to a certain version of a photographic reality. They are not fake in terms of the reality of their construction, produced in the IMAGINATION of the artist, expressed in the final image. In those terms they are as real as the surrealist interpretation of dreams, or cubist dissection of the image plane. And we don’t call those photographs or paintings “fake”.
Today, photography is delimited in terms of what a photograph can be. And it has been so since the very beginning of the medium if only we look hard enough. Dreams or nightmares, impossible, absurd or humorous scenes, believable and unbelievable: there is no such thing as genuine or fake – only the space between – expressed in pictorial compositions governed by the creativity and breadth of your imagination.
2/ “Fake” describes something not genuine, real, or authentic, intended to look like something else to deceive, cheat, or pretend.
. Many thankx to the Rijksmuseum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
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“… photomontage is the fabrication of a composite but single image made up of a number of distinct photographic parts. It “results from the association of photographic elements, which have diverse origins, natures and proportions, combined in such a way as to express with force a particular idea.””
Installation views of the exhibition FAKE! At the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, February – May, 2026 Photos: Albertine Dijkema/Rijksmuseum
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Leonard de Koningh (Dutch, 1810-1887) Man startled by his own reflection c. 1870-1880 Cartes de visite
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In this comical memento mori, where a man comes face to face with his ghost, the painter and photographer Leonard de Koningh exposed just half of the photographic plate, then had the subject adopt a different pose before exposing the other half. Photography might have been a relatively new art, but the transition between the two images is imperceptible. “It’s like a magician,” marvels Rooseboom. “You know you are being tricked, but you don’t know how the photographer does it.” Quoting Oscar Gustave Rejlander, a trailblazer for this type of composite printing, the photographer Robert Sobieszek (1943-2005) stated: “This manner of working led not to falsehood but to truth. An image made by a single negative [claimed Rejlander] ‘is not true, nor will it ever be so – the focus cannot be everywhere’.”
Anonymous photographer Daydream c. 1870-1890 Cartes de visite
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In this one we see the present: a woman and her partner both with the tools of their trades; and an imagined future: her daydream of becoming a mother. The image, explains Rooseboom, was “a darkroom trick”, achieved by shielding part of the photographic paper from the light and then adding a second negative to it later. Such images took photography into a new dimension, suggesting the innermost thoughts of their subjects, and paving the way for the comic strips of the future with their speech bubbles and thought clouds.
“We still expect photography to bring the truth, but this idea only really emerged from the illustrated magazines of the 1930s in order to inform readers how things worked elsewhere in the world,” says Rooseboom. Until then, the creative freedom to alter the image was unchallenged. “Anything possible would be tried out and produced,” he says. “There was no ethical restraint on producing non-realistic images. No-one would forbid you from doing this.” Removing and moving someone’s head, for example, presented the photographer with a pleasing puzzle. In the case of this cabinet card – a style of print mounted on card had taken over from the smaller carte de visite by the 1880s – with its black humour, the creative mission was highly successful. Only the positioning of the curtain, that would have concealed the original head, and some light retouching visible under a microscope, offer clues to how the photographer created the deception.
Anonymous photographer Photomontage of a man pushing a wheelbarrow containing a head c. 1900 – c. 1910 Gelatin silver print
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This photomontage, created from two negatives, was found in a French photo album, and featured in the science magazine La Nature. Here, the displaced head illusion goes a step further as the photographer plays with scale, prefiguring the Surrealist movement which gathered pace as the century unrolled, disrupting conventional shapes and sizes to create confusing, dreamlike scenes. The open doorway provides a conveniently plain, dark background in which to smuggle in the cut-and-pasted portion before re-photographing the image as a whole. Some of these images were most likely purchased as portraits to show others, to see their look of surprise. “It’s hard to see where the trick starts and ends,” says Rooseboom. “This is showing off. Something is unbelievable, impossible, it’s improbable, but still it’s there in a photographic image which suggests we see a real scene that really unfolded in front of the camera.”
Almost immediately after the invention of the medium people began manipulating photographs – some with scissors and glue, others through ingenious photographic techniques. Drawing on more than 50 historical images from the museum’s own collection, the exhibition FAKE! Early Photo Collages and Photomontages, shows how image manipulation developed – from the birth of photography to the Second World War – and explores the motives behind it. The exhibition runs from 6 February to 25 May 2026 in the Photo Gallery of the Rijksmuseum.
“Many photo collages and composites depict impossible, absurd or humorous scenes that no one would have mistaken for reality. Yet even then, the boundary between genuine and fake, believable and unbelievable, was often hard to see.” ~ Hans Rooseboom, Curator of Photography
Cut and paste
The exhibition covers 1860-1940, a period when the possibilities of cutting and pasting photographs were widely explored. People also started experimenting with other methods of image manipulation. One trick that became popular shortly after the invention of photography was to show the same person twice in a single image: first, one half of the plate was exposed; then the subject would move, strike a different pose, and the other half of the plate was exposed. This technique was mostly used for harmless visual jokes, purely for entertainment, but the exhibition also shows how it was sometimes employed with very serious intent.
Political protest
Exaggeration, humour and incongruous visual combinations also played a major role in political protest. The best-known creator of political photo composites is John Heartfield (pseudonym of Helmut Herzfeld, 1891-1968), who opposed Hitler’s Nazi movement. Several examples of his work appear in the exhibition.
Press release from the Rijksmuseum
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P. Michaelis (Berlin, publisher) Man and woman with briefcase and three babies above Hamburg c. 1900-1910 Postcard
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Martin Post Card Company (American) Taking our Geese to market 1908 Postcard Rijksmuseum Purchase 2019
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The trend for playing with images of impossible proportions spawned a genre known as “Exaggerations” or “Tall Tales”. This US photograph was printed during the “Golden Age” of picture postcards, shortly after the US decreed that messages could be written on the address side of the card. We see again the pioneering role photo manipulation plays in artistic developments such as Surrealism, but the use of scale here is also a marketing ploy to create myths about the agricultural superiority of a region. In this case, it’s the celebrated stuffed geese of Watertown, Wisconsin. Elsewhere in the show, Nebraska boasts about its bountiful produce with an ear of corn the length of a horse-drawn carriage. As US author and folklorist Roger Welsch noted in Tall Tale Postcards (1976): “Photography brought into being visual effects that tall-tale tellers through the centuries had seen only in their fertile imaginations.”
William H. Martin, (1865 – c. 1940) also known by the nickname “Dad“, was an American photographer and postcard designer known for using photomontage to depict exaggerated scenes with out-of-scale plants and animals. His works featured fanciful depictions of the American frontier inspired by tall tales. His depictions of abundant crops and large livestock served to humorously parody the struggles of farmers in the Midwestern United States who faced drought. They also mocked the exaggerated promises of fertile land and abundant livestock that companies used to lure settlers to the West. Martin was a pioneer of the art form of collage in the United States, and is considered to be the “father” of the exaggeration postcard genre.
Martin was originally from Maple City, Kansas. and was born in 1865. When he was 21 years old, he moved to Ottawa, Kansas to study under the photographer E.H. Corwin. He had no prior experience in photography. He proved successful, and bought Corwin’s photography studio in 1894.
He used photomontage and trick photography and, in 1908, began producing wildly exaggerated postcards for commercial sale. His cards typically featured out-of-scale scenes with people alongside giant plants and animals, created by cutting and pasting together different photographs. His postcards were popular with Western settlers, who sent them back to their families in the Eastern United States. His business was successful, and by 1909 he had built a two-story business building behind his home and employed around 20 people, who produced around 10,000 postcards every day. His photographs proved so popular that they were often plagiarised by other postcard companies and sold under different names.
Theodor Eismann (publisher) (Leipzig, Germany) Car flying over Mulberry Bend Park, New York before 1908 Postcard Rijksmuseum Purchase 2025
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Eismann established the company in Leipzig around 1884 and was instrumental in the pre-World War I postcard boom in Germany for the U.S. market. Theochrom was name given to the printing process used.
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Fake photographs activated the imagination, presenting imagined possibilities yet to come. This example of a toekomstbeeld (vision of the future) envisages a world where cars could fly. Elsewhere in the exhibition we see futuristic cityscapes: town centres transformed by sky rails and zeppelins thanks to some deft copy and pasting, and skyborne visitors floating over Boston, Hamburg and The Hague in scenes reminiscent of Mary Poppins. Eismann’s New York photomontage [above] now features colour but is no more truthful, its limited range of inks added during the printing process at the whim of the designer.
Alfred Stanley Johnson Jr. (American, 1863-1932) Collision between a car and a steamroller 1915 Tall-tales postcard (exaggerated postcard) Waupun catalog no. P126
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We’ve come to think of photo trickery as something sinister, but in his research on its use in early photography, Rooseboom says he was surprised to find that “three-quarters of all the images were made for fun”. In this photomontage by Alfred Stanley Johnson Jr, the clever placement of a series of individual − sometimes overlapping − images provides a humorous snapshot in time. The unusually dynamic, action-filled scene features flying coattails and frilly bloomers as the passengers of a car are catapulted through the air, inviting a before-and-after narrative in the mind of the viewer. “Many photomontages obviously depict impossible situations,” states a text at the exhibition. “The intention was not to mislead, but rather to entertain the viewer.”
Alfred and Elizabeth were living at 315 South Madison Street (in Dodge County) and their son Stanley – who was now going by his middle name – and wife Myrtie were living at 315 North Madison Street (in Fond du Lac County), with their son Alfred S. (the III), who was less than a year old. The Johnson photo studio/gallery was then located at 11-17 North Madison, just off Main Street. This was only a few years after Stanley began producing his tall-tale postcards, probably assisted by his wife, Myrtie, who was listed in the 1905 State Census as being a “photographer” and the 1910 Census as a “photo retoucher.” Although he apparently was known locally by the name of Stanley, he used the name “Alfred Stanley Johnson, Jr.” on most of his postcards.
Stanley Johnson, Sr. died December 3, 1914, and his wife Elizabeth died December 9, 1919; both are buried in the family plot in Forest Mound Cemetery in Waupun. Stanley continued in the photo business at 11 North Madison Street – while living at 17 N. Madison – until a few years before his death on March 1, 1932. His obituary in the Waupun Leader News stated that he had “been in poor health for about 30 years,” which would have been since about the time he started creating his exaggerated postcards. Perhaps the cards provided the extra income needed to pay ongoing medical bills.
Anonymous. “Johnson, Alfred Stanley,” on the Wisconsin Historical Society website Nd [Online] 18/02/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
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Elsie Wright (British, 1901-1988) and Frances Griffiths (British, 1907-1986) Fairy Offering Flowers to Iris 1920 From the Cottingley Fairies series Gelatin silver print
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The Cottingley Fairies are the subject of a hoax which purports to provide evidence of the existence of fairies. They appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 9. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of The Strand Magazine. Doyle was enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of supernatural phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the images as genuine, others believed that they had been faked.
Interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both girls married and lived abroad for a time after they grew up, and yet the photographs continued to hold the public imagination. In 1966 a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper traced Elsie, who had by then returned to the United Kingdom. Elsie left open the possibility that she believed she had photographed her thoughts, and the media once again became interested in the story.
Albert Huyot (French, 1872-1968) Photo collage 1929
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The cutting up of images and rearranging them on paper with glue was once a popular pastime. People made celebrity photo quizzes, sometimes featuring just a nose or a pair of eyes; and the photographed faces of friends and family were superimposed onto drawings for comic effect. Photo collages were also undertaken by established artists. In this piece, which is influenced by Dadaism and Cubism, French artist Albert Huyot manipulates fragments of photographic images into surprising new artistic forms. More intricate photographic artworks can be seen in the show on the pages of the Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy’s seminal book Painting, Photography, Film (1925). In it he argues that photography is not just about recording reality. Instead, it should explore the visual language unique to its medium.
John Heartfield, pseudonym of Helmut Herzfeld (German, 1891-1968) Mimikry, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (A-I-Z), 19 April 1934 1934
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Sometimes, in a surprising twist, photographic trickery was a tool for conveying a perceived truth. Anti-Nazi campaigner Helmut Herzfeld, who changed his name to the anglicised John Heartfield in protest against Hitler’s regime, created over 200 handcrafted political photomontages for the leftist AIZ publication, many seeking to expose the hidden dangers of the Nazi dictatorship and the lies it disseminated. Mimicry depicts Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, disguising Hitler as the 19th-Century revolutionary communist Karl Marx. The artist is warning the working classes not to be fooled by Hitler’s promises that he genuinely supports workers’ rights. Such work is comparable with political memes today that aim to speak truth to power. Image manipulation can both mislead us and help us find our way.
The Brooklyn Museum continues to orchestrate (now that’s an appropriate word) wonderful exhibitions that select, organise, and interpret items in “interpretive exhibitions”- curating and contextualising these items in order to establish their meaning, history, and cultural significance. In this regard the magnificent exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens is no exception.
In the exhibition Keïta’s direct, honest, and incisive black and white photographs – often taken outdoors on bare earth in natural light with mud walls, hanging textiles and blankets as backdrops – are contextualised with regard to West African history, placed in context “in a period defined by a rapidly expanding modern world and a new sense of Bamakois identity.” (Press release)
In the Brooklyn show Keïta’s photographs from the African environment are surrounded by cultural artefacts that reflect a new sense of nationhood as Mali moved toward independence post-French colonialism – “clothing, hand-fashioned dresses … pagnes (wrappers), wall hangings, and commemorative cloths that span the rich history of Malian textile design and trade”, gold, jewellery, lace, marabaka (a Czech-style hat that became a widespread symbol of Pan-African solidarity), traditional and modern textiles, blankets, family heirlooms, family photographs and a trove of film negatives – all combining to create a rich mosaic of references, an intertextuality (where things refer to, influence, or interrelate with one another) of identity, place and space.
What is particularly interesting about the presentation at the Brooklyn Museum is the mixture of vintage and modern prints, where the viewer can compare the scale and tonalities of old and new, where small jewel-like gold toned and hand-coloured prints of great presence and intensity can be compared to larger, contrast laden modern prints (for which the artist has become famous) which reveal hidden details in the negative.
Also of interest is the exhibition design itself in which the different colour of the walls, the spaces between them, the symmetrical layout, together with the clothing, textiles and wall hangings … all add a terrific spatial dimension to the whole. Witness the entrance to the exhibition where Keïta’s vintage photograph Untitled (1954, above) is placed in communion with a larger modern print, allowing the viewer to compare and contrast both old and new, one of the major pictorial themes of the exhibition. Then – and this is to me the essence of good exhibition design – you look at the line of sight of that entrance and in the space between the walls hanging in the distance, hovering above the photographs, is a colourful textile banner with face and garment which the viewer can visually correlate to the garments of the three women standing in front of the car in the modern print below. Just a small thing but inspiring exhibition design nonetheless, which reflects the holism of the exhibition.
What is undeniable is that there is nothing like a photograph to remind you of difference, to challenge your perceptions on how you view and interact with the world around you, to open up new ways of seeing (Professor Stuart Hall). Thus the photographs in this exhibition may allow us a deeper insight into not only the conditions of our own becoming (while human beings have agency, the circumstances under which they act and develop their humanity are largely shaped by existing material, social, and historical conditions that they did not choose) but the conditions of other people’s becoming.
Hopefully these insights in turn promote a greater understanding and acceptance of difference in others in opposition to learnt bigotry and racism.
Just the joy of picturing, and being, and living, human.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Brooklyn Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation views of the exhibition ‘Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens’ at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing Keïta’s self-portrait Untitled, 1956
Dressed in a crisp white shirt, holding a flower gently to his chin, Keïta turns the camera on himself with the same control and precision he granted his subjects. As French Soudan faced political uncertainty and turmoil in the lead-up to independence, Keïta’s studio, whether indoors or on the street, offered sitters a place to create a self of one’s own.
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom two images, Keïta’s photograph Untitled 1954 (above)
The smaller, vintage print and the larger, modern one of Keïta’s 1954 photograph highlight the material and historical distinctions between the types of prints on view in the exhibition. Often made by Keïta himself, the vintage prints were produced around the time the photograph was taken. Such works feature a particular range of tonalities – the result of earlier technologies, less environmental control in the darkroom, and the paper’s age. The modern prints were made later in Keïta’s life, some of them posthumously. These works are larger, in part, to accentuate the details of the image, such as Keïta’s own reflection on the car’s surface. Following his landmark New York and Paris exhibitions in the 1990s, Keïta came to be known for the distinctive black-and-white tonalities of these modern prints.
Reflecting on his work in 1997, Keïta revealed he had always hoped to make large-format prints (30 x 40 in., 40 x 50 in., and 50 x 60 in.) but seldom had the chance. Sitters rarely requested them due to cost. Together, both vintage and modern prints demonstrate the range and impact of Keïta’s artistry. They also inspire questions about photography’s nature as both artwork and heirloom objects imbued with social and ritual meaning as they pass from hand to hand.
Encounter an artist who changed the face of portrait photography. Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens is the most expansive North American exhibition of the legendary Malian photographer’s work to date. More than 280 works include iconic prints, never-before-seen portraits, textiles, and Keïta’s personal artifacts, all brought to life with unique insights from his family.
Organised by the Brooklyn Museum, the exhibition brings us to Bamako from the late 1940s to early 1960s, an era of profound political and social transformation. Collaborating closely with his sitters, Keïta recorded Mali’s evolution through their choices of backdrops, accessories, and apparel, from traditional finery to European suits. These bold yet sensitive photographs began to circulate in West Africa nearly 80 years ago. In the early 1990s, they reached Western viewers, rocking the art world and cementing Keïta as the premier studio photographer of 20th-century Africa – a peer of August Sander, Irving Penn, and Richard Avedon.
Witness the power of photography through these richly layered images, which reveal not only Malians’ emotional landscapes but also the textures of life in a rapidly changing country.
A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, offering new insights into the photographer, his work, and Malian material culture. The publication features a biography by Catherine E. McKinley based on extensive interviews with Keïta’s heirs, as well as essays by prominent scholars and curators including Drew Sawyer, Howard W. French, Duncan Clarke, Awa Konate, Sana Ginwalla, and Jennifer Bajorek.
Text from the Brooklyn Museum website
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing at left in the bottom image, Keïta’s photograph Untitled 1949-1951 (below)
The exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens honors the artistry and legacy of Seydou Keïta (Malian, c. 1921-2001), who documented a critical chapter in West African history – one of immense hope, politically and socially – in a period defined by a rapidly expanding modern world and a new sense of Bamakois identity. The show features over 280 works, including renowned portraits, rare images, and never-before- seen negatives as well as textiles, jewellery, dresses, and personal items that fully immerse visitors in Keïta’s rich photographic landscape. Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens is organised by guest curator Catherine E. McKinley with Imani Williford, Curatorial Assistant, Photography, Fashion, and Material Culture, Brooklyn Museum.
Keïta was born around 1921 to a Malinke family in Bamako-Coura, or New Bamako, a growing colonial commercial center within the historic Malian city. His childhood saw emerging liberation struggles across the continent and growing expressions of modernism as Bamako served as the capital of French Soudan and subsequently the newly independent Mali in 1960.
Keïta documented Malian society in the late 1940s to early 1960s, an era of transformation and aspirations for independent statehood. A master at lighting and composition, Keïta has a unique ability to capture the tactile qualities of his sitters – from their fashion and choice of accessories to the personality and self-presentation they put forward. In collaboration with his subjects, he sculpted their poses, clothing, and style, forming monuments to their selfhood. When they first reached Western viewers in the early 1990s, his images drew unprecedented attention in the worlds of art, music, fashion, design, and popular media, forever changing the global cultural landscape. Today, these bold and engaging portraits continue to invite viewers into direct dialogue with Keita’s sitters.
This period lasted until 1963, when Keïta was enlisted to work for the newly independent Socialist Republic of Mali. Forced to relinquish his studio, he documented state affairs and performed forensics for increasingly punitive governments until 1968 when he retired to work in camera and automotive repairs. In May 1991, the exhibition Africa Explores: Twentieth Century African Arts opened at the Center for African Arts in New York, where Keïta first debuted to Western audiences. In 1994, the Fondation Cartier in Paris presented Keïta’s first solo exhibition, which rocked the art and photography world, cementing him as the premiere African studio photographer of the twentieth century. The exhibition positioned Keïta as a peer of noted photographers such as Irving Penn, August Sander, and Richard Avedon, his contemporaries in portrait photography, and created enormous interest in Keïta’s work.
“Thirty-four years since Keïta was first introduced to American audiences we have an opportunity to view new discoveries in his work and understand just how singular he was, practicing at one of the most pivotal moments in African and world history. He had an extraordinary artist’s ability to render the tactile. We can visually ‘finger the grain’ of the sitter’s lives and better understand them beyond just their relationship to studio photography or documentary,” says Catherine E. McKinley, guest curator, author of The African Lookbook, and director of The McKinley Collection.
“It is very exciting and deeply moving to rediscover Keïta’s work and to feel the presence of his sitters – some of whom we meet here for the very first time – thanks to Catherine E. McKinley’s thoughtful research,” says Pauline Vermare, Phillip and Edith Leonian Curator of Photography. “We hope visitors feel the wonder and possibility that Keïta’s studio represented for so many people.”
A Tactile Lens brings together a remarkable range of Keïta’s photographs, which demonstrate the breadth of his oeuvre and the splendour of his artistry. Thanks to a generous loan from the Keïta family, an extraordinary group of never-before-published works has been preserved and imaged by the Museum on the occasion of the exhibition. A selection of the portraits will be displayed – on lightboxes and as a projection – for the first time. In addition, an array of vintage prints, many made by Keïta himself, and some of which are hand-painted, offer renewed emphasis on the photographic object itself. Rounding out the selection are larger prints made later in Keïta’s life, or posthumously, which feature the distinctive black-and-white tonalities that Keïta came to be known for. Joining the photographs is an immersive installation of personal belongings, textiles, garments, and jewellery that can be seen in Keïta’s portraits.
Together, these objects highlight the self-invention, search for identity, and syncretism of Mali that Keïta’s sitters sought in the mid-twentieth century.
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing at third left in the bottom image, Keïta’s photograph Untitled 1952-1955 (below); and at right, Untitled 1956-1957 (below)
Looking over her shoulder, her back to the camera, this woman flaunts the French coins – called Louis d’or – hanging at her temples. Gold held decorative and talismanic properties: the shine of the metal was believed to ward off the evil eye and protect the head and soul of the wearer.
When Seydou Keïta opened his photography studio in 1948 in Bamako, Mali (then part of French Soudan), the region was on the cusp of dramatic transformation. After more than seventy years of French colonial rule, the country would soon gain independence as the Republic of Mali in 1960. With extraordinary sensitivity, Keïta documented a profoundly pluralistic society at a crossroads. Mali at this time faced intense ideological clashes over its future, emerging concepts of statehood, and how to reconcile Malian and European visions of modernity with indigenous systems.
As a photographer, Keïta possessed a singular ability to convey a tactile presence, finding the exquisite in details that communicate the inner lives of his subjects. They gaze into the camera with self-assurance and poise, presenting themselves in an array of fashions and posing with studio props or treasured personal possessions. With nuance and care, Keïta chronicled the elegance and sophistication of his sitters’ self-expression during a pivotal moment of nation-building.
Organised thematically, this exhibition highlights the breadth of Keïta’s vibrant oeuvre, spanning iconic portraits and rarely seen photographs to never-before-shown film negatives. A selection of textiles, garments, and jewellery, in turn, illuminates the layered social and cultural exchanges reflected in his portraits. This presentation is also informed and enriched by contributions from the Keïta family. Their oral histories and loan of personal heirlooms and negatives, uncovered in the family archive, helpshed new light on his studio practice and enduring legacy. Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens invites visitors to connect with Keïta and his subjects’ intimate pursuit of identity, selfhood, and community.
Self-portraiture
Seydou Keïta’s photography business expanded and deepened the relationships between the artist, his family, and his art. His younger siblings and children were active participants in his studio. They arranged and held up backdrops as he shot, assisted with equipment, and performed the tea rituals that were at the centre of social exchanges. Family members often waited late into the evening for the final sitters to leave before coming to sleep in the studio – one of the few places in Bamako with electricity – while Keïta worked well into the night in his darkroom.
Keïta often used the final frames on a roll of film to photograph himself and his family – intimate and striking images that became part of his oeuvre. These portraits reflect his deeply felt responsibility as a Malinke patriarch, able to provide for his large extended family a life of modern comfort due to an unusual and enviable talent that would reach a world stage. His brothers describe Keïta’s “immaculate” presentation of a social self – a man who valued social reserve and Malinke tenets of modesty and stern leadership. In these portraits, we also see him as a self-styled bon vivant, carefree in his European sportswear and playfully connected to those around him.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing at left text for the section “Self-portraiture” and then Keïta’s Untitled, 1956, printed 2018
Dressed in a crisp white shirt, holding a flower gently to his chin, Keïta turns the camera on himself with the same control and precision he granted his subjects. As French Soudan faced political uncertainty and turmoil in the lead-up to independence, Keïta’s studio, whether indoors or on the street, offered sitters a place to create a self of one’s own .
Being Bamakois
In 1960 Mali achieved independence, becoming one of seventeen African countries to end colonial rule. “The Year of Africa,” as 1960 became known, intensified vital questions about self-determination, national identity, and the shape of a post-independence future. Even as many Malians embraced the prospect of a free and modern nation-state, debates grew over the roles that religion, the military, and traditional societal structures would play in governance and civil life.
Bamako’s population doubled in the mid-twentieth century, driven by increased colonial settlement since the 1930s and labor migration from rural areas. Long a cosmopolitan city, post-independence Bamako became a site of new social tensions. The rigid strictures of the systems of French class and indigenous caste, which had coexisted uneasily in the colonial era, were increasingly at odds as Mali became entrenched as a socialist Islamic state.
In Seydou Keïta’s portraits, Bamako’s citizens sought to express a vision of self and society that mirrored the promises of the growing city. Questions around status, decolonisation, and the ever-evolving definition of what it means to be both Bamakois and modern play out in the symbolic choices behind the making of each photograph.
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom image at bottom second left, Keïta’s photograph Untitled 1957 (below)
Posing with aplomb on a Vespa – likely Keïta’s – these women have become the subjects of one of his most iconic photographs, seen here as a vintage print. They present themselves as aspirational members of the Bamako Vespa Club, whose membership was reserved for men. Expensive and rare, Vespas were costly symbols of affluence that were inaccessible to most Bamakois in the French colonial economy. Keïta, one of the club’s founders, purchased his own using earnings from his photography.
The Pretenders
In the 1950s, Bamakois began favouring Western novelties – wristwatches, handbags, bicycles, and other imported goods, many of which appear in Seydou Keïta’s portraits – as expressions of their modern dreams and discontents. Expensive and inaccessible to many, imported goods became markers of status, replacing traditional adornment, heirlooms, and protective talismans. This generation would later be dubbed “The Pretenders” by their children, who viewed with scorn their parents’ embrace of French aesthetics and colonial-era fashion. Yet their critique often overlooked the ways their parents had simply transferred the social and spiritual meanings once imbued in gold and other materials to new subjects.
Ironically, the next generation, who came of age in a newly independent Mali, expressed their own dreams and discontents in the 1960s and 1970s using Western cultural symbols. By embracing American, particularly African American, and British popular culture – dancing to the music of James Brown and The Beatles, wearing afros, dressing in bell bottoms and miniskirts – they pushed back against an increasingly restrictive Islamic socialist regime that promoted particular ideals of Africanity, tradition, and modesty. Their confidence and spirit of rebellion would be captured by the next generation of Malian photographers who followed in Keïta’s footsteps.
Coming of Age
Young men and women often arrived at Seydou Keïta’s studio dressed in their best clothing and adorned with jewellery that hinted at the worth of future dowries or the scale of family ambitions. They posed for portraits that became cherished mementos. Such small-format photographs were exchanged as offerings of friendship, used in matchmaking and marriage proposals, and commemorated births and weddings. They also served as keepsakes of religious holidays such as Eid and Tabaski (Eid al-Adha). Together, the works on view celebrate the beauty of youth and the significance of coming of age – moments of transformation, growth, and entry into adulthood.
The Elegants
Seydou Keïta’s subjects radiate elegance in every photograph, resplendent in tailor-made ensembles that reflect the wearer’s ingenuity and creativity. Many of the outfits seen in Keïta’s portraits blend handwoven West African textiles with Islamic fabrics and imported European cloth, often in inventive ways. Whether made from velvet, Dutch wax print, or eyelet lace, a gown could always be paired with a traditional pagne (wrapper) showing at the hem, adding the requisite touch of beauty. The men, women, and youths on view present themselves as mirrors to the cultural syncretism and self-invention of mid-twentieth-century Bamako.
As the Islamic socialist regime rose to power in the 1960s and 1970s, it began imposing increased restrictions on dress, enacting punishments and “re-education” for the wearing of Western or secular clothing. Keïta’s portraits capture a brief window just before these strictures took hold – a moment when his sitters fashioned an expression entirely their own. He helped document, in the words of Nigerian art critic Okwui Enwezor, fashion’s power to offer people a means of “resistance to confining oneself.”
Delicately presenting a plastic flower, this man exudes elegance and poise in his double-breasted suit, silk handkerchief and fountain pen tucked neatly in his breast pocket. He meets the camera’s gaze with inviting eyes that exude a quiet openness. His confident, relaxed presence speaks to Keïta’s gift for making his subjects feel at ease – enabling them to fully express themselves in front of the camera.
The Loungers
The figure of the languid, reclining odalisque, or female attendant, is seen by many American and European viewers as an exoticizing colonial trope. However, in Seydou Keïta’s portraits, the lounger appears as a modern Bamakois – worldly, confident, adorned with the enduring garments, jewellery, and symbols of her heritage. In these portraits, each woman asserts her power, status, wealth, and values. The self-fashioned, richly layered settings re-create the intimate interiors of domestic life. The beds, textiles, and Islamic tea ceremonies shown here reflect the subject’s mastery of hospitality – an essential trait for the model Soudanaise woman – as well as her standing in family and society.
With slender, henna-stained hands and feet, modest dress, and composed bearing, these women affirm traditional social values even as they shape a modern visual identity. These photographs are an ode – to the women, their world, and the form of the lounger herself.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing at second right bottom, Keïta’s photograph Untitled 1953-1957 (below)
“Keïta La” offers a glimpse into the world of Seydou Keïta’s studio – and into his family’s efforts to steward and preserve his legacy. Together, the objects on view pose important questions about conservation and personal and artistic archives.
In the mid-twentieth century, near the elegant colonial centre of Bamako-Coura, Keïta La, the family compound, sat on a wide avenue that buzzed with traffic and was lined with a canopy of trees, casting dappled shadows that lent a lazy air. Just outside the compound’s walls was the artist’s studio. As a photographer, Keïta moved seamlessly between the compound yard, the avenue, the nearby walls of sites, and the studio and darkroom where he made prints late into the night. Keïta ran the studio until 1963, when he was forced to dedicate himself exclusively to government service. He turned the business over to his brother and sons, who had become familiar with cameras as children. Upon his retirement, he returned to Keïta La – but not to his studio. Instead, he embraced his second love: the repair of cameras and cars.
Today, the Keïta family have been vital collaborators in the conceptualisation of this exhibition, their oral histories enriching our understanding of the man behind the camera. In addition, their loan of the photographer’s few remaining family heirlooms and a trove of film negatives imbues this section with Keïta’s personal presence. These negatives, which have been preserved and imaged by the Brooklyn Museum on the occasion of this exhibition, expand our knowledge of Keïta’s oeuvre. A selection of these portraits is presented here – on lightboxes and as a projection – for the first time.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing text for the section “Keïta La” on the left hand wall, as well as the photograph Undated family portrait taken in Seydou Keïta’s studio (below)
Undated family portrait taken in Seydou Keïta’s studio Seated left of centre is Keïta’s uncle Tièmòkò Keïta (wearing eyeglasses), with Hamed Lamine “Papa” Keïta behind him at left and Cheickine Keïta at far right (holding child). Today, Papa and Cheickine serve as the principal stewards of the Keïta estate Courtesy the Seydou Keïta Family
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Keïta’s photograph Untitled late 1940s to mid-1970s (below); and at right, text for the section “Keïta La” together with the photograph Undated family portrait taken in Seydou Keïta’s studio (above)
Fashioning A New Nation
Photography studios are spaces of performance, an invitation to try on new styles, personas, and identities. Costly and newly available beginning in the 1930s, studio photography offered Seydou Keïta’s subjects a rare chance to see themselves not in a mirror or a small I.D. photo, but as others might. As French Soudan approached independence, fashion increasingly became a site of negotiation – blending ethnic and religious aesthetics, Pan-African identity, and even Hollywood glamour.
This gallery brings together prestige clothing, hand-fashioned dresses – some with the exquisite detailing of couture – pagnes (wrappers), wall hangings, and commemorative cloths that span the rich history of Malian textile design and trade. It also pays homage to the boubou, the marker of West African elegance, that became a quiet symbol of anti-colonial resistance in the postwar years. While European imported cloth had been highly coveted in West Africa since the seventeenth century, colonial trade restrictions and the economic impact of World War II made such materials harder to access, sparking new forms of creativity. Bright synthetic dyes, hybrid silhouettes, and inventive combinations of tradition and modernity emerged in response.
The works on view reflect both this history of innovation and the distinctly Malian patterning that serves as a through line for textile designs from as early as the eleventh century. Trending styles of 1940s-60s Bamako are juxtaposed with the early 1980s sartorial legacy of post-independence Mali. Some are nearly identical to the garments and backdrops featured in Keïta’s photographs; others represent the diverse cultural, ethnic, and regional affiliations of his sitters. Grouped by theme, this section invites a closer look at pattern, colour, weave, and technique to give further dimension – and colour – to the fashions worn by Keïta’s subjects.
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing text from the section “Fashioning A New Nation”
Handheld
“Fly dirt,” pen marks, dog-eared corners, red Sahelian dust, humidity, and traces of touch infuse Keïta’s vintage prints with a particular life and beauty. Each print is indelibly marked by the photographer, the printer, and the many hands through which it has passed – as tokens, gifts, souvenirs, expressions of love, ritual displays, or precious heirlooms.
Since Keïta first became known in Europe and the United States in the 1990s, vintage prints of his photographs have made their way into private collections and institutional archives. Despite consisting of the same images, they were often considered secondary to the modern prints that were produced, exhibited, and stored as fine art pieces. Only recently has this value system been upended, reflecting shifts in the art market and in the field of art history. As African studio photography continues to gain recognition, artists and arts professionals of the African diaspora have called for such images to be valued not by colonial or market standards but by their material history and significance as loved, cherished objects.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing a vitrine with text from the section “Handheld”
The Self That Travels
Over time, African studio photography by Keïta and other artists became part of a global circulation of images. A photographic print could be sent from Bamako to a relative stationed during the war years in France, or Indonesia, or Russia. Portraits were exchanged locally, regionally, and farther afield through a web of relations in matchmaking attempts between families. A private image may have been usurped by a colonial publisher for use on a postcard. Perhaps a collector on eBay, fifty years later, was delighted by the image or recognised Keïta’s stamp and had it shipped to the United States from Belarus. All told, vintage prints are part of an economy that reveals complex histories of commerce and human desire.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing a vitrine with text from the section “The Self That Travels”
Mali’s vast gold reserves are some of the world’s oldest and a source of national pride. Its lustrous qualities carried talismanic powers, yet the metal also inspired fear. Believed to be a living organism, gold was said to have its own soul and powers. Goldsmiths would thus meld the element with other metals to help shield the wearer from its full force.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing gold and carnelian jewellery
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing text from the section “A Golden Touch” with at bottom centre, Keïta’s photograph Untitled c. 1948-1963 (below)
The Keïta family’s generous loan of film negatives from the estate’s remaining archive presents a rare opportunity to reflect on the practical, ethical, and technical questions involved in the preservation of African photography. Conservation of African photographic archives from the continent faces distinct challenges, ranging from climate-related degradation and limited access to preservation materials and technologies to an overall lack of institutional infrastructure and support for artists and their legacies.
Too fragile to survive extensive handling or prolonged light exposure, Keïta’s negatives could not be cleaned or scanned without risking damage. Instead, each was photographed under controlled conditions at a conservation lab and reproduced for the exhibition.
Lace
Lace features prominently in Keïta’s photographs – appearing as trim on dress sleeves, integrated into garments made from wax print and other fabrics, worn as full lace dresses or as sheer boubous layered over other clothing. European lace was highly coveted, expensive, and difficult to obtain. In response, Soudanaise women created their own lace by hand, layering two pieces of white cotton percale and cutting intricate patterns using stencils. These garments, now rare heirlooms, were once considered second to colonial imports. Today, they are recognized for their exceptional beauty and craftsmanship, emblems of pride in Soudanaise women’s creativity and cultural identity.
Carnelian Beads
Carnelian beads have been traded for centuries, from the Cambay region of India through Mecca to the Middle East and Africa. By the mid-nineteenth century, the German town of Idar-Oberstein began sourcing carnelian from Brazil and producing beads in local factories for export to these same markets.
Valued for both their beauty and protection, carnelian necklaces were worn as amulets – believed to hold protective powers through their colour and surface – and were often included as part of a woman’s dowry. Multi-strand necklaces of small carnelian beads appear on many of Keïta’s sitters and were especially fashionable among the Lebu, Tuareg, and Fulani.
Marabaka
During the independence era, anticolonial leader AmÃlcar Lopes Cabral popularised the marabaka, a Czech-style hat that became a widespread symbol of Pan-African solidarity. First imported from Czechia, the hat, known as zmijovka in Czech, derives its zigzag pattern from that observed on the skin of a viper (zmije in Czech).
In West Africa, the hat’s black-and-white design is reminiscent of Islamic aesthetics seen on indigenous textiles such as Dogon and Bamana resist cloths and weaving. The snake motif also speaks to the region’s affinity for the culturally significant serpent and water snake.
Commemorative Cloths
In the post-independence era, political leaders often commissioned commemorative cloths bearing their own images to bolster support and cultivate loyalty – and even foster cults of personality. Citizens wore such cloths regardless of political affiliation, at times out of fear of reprisal. Advances in textile printing and the development of more affordable “fancy print” cloths in the 1940s made many commemorative cloths inexpensive to produce. The examples on view span a range of iconography, from wax-print cloths honouring African soldiers who served in World War II and Mali’s first post-independence president, Modibo Keïta, to a fancy print featuring French President Charles de Gaulle .
Pagne
A woman’s pagne is the foundation of her wardrobe. Typically woven or cut to a length of about two yards, the pagne functions as a wrap that conceals the waist, thighs, and buttocks. Beyond their function, pagnes also symbolize lineage, protection, and a woman’s evolving identity.
Finely woven and dyed pagnes are presented at birth and during key life rituals such as dowry exchanges, marriage celebrations, and pregnancies. Women rarely part with their pagnes. Above all, they are talismans – protective layers passed down from generation to generation. A woman selects which ones to give to her children and which, ultimately, will accompany her to the grave.
Dutch Legacies
Known in the postwar era as “the Chanel of Africa,” the Dutch textile company Vlisco has been the foremost purveyor of African wax-print textiles since the late nineteenth century. The company industrialised the Indonesian batik process, in which patterns are drawn in wax on cotton fabric that is then dyed. When the wax is removed, the design is revealed, protected from the dye by the wax resist.
Though Vlisco did not actively market its products in the Sahel region in the 1940s to 1970s, wax prints spread through African trade networks and became widely popular, including among many of Keïta’s sitters. While the patterns were created by Dutch designers, they were named by Ghanaian and Togolese female fabric traders and their female clients, who interpreted the patterns’ meanings through a local, social, or spiritual lens .
The colour, design, and pattern names of wax prints thus carry personal and communal meanings – much like Keïta’s photographs.
Widely associated with coming-of-age rituals, wax prints have long marked key life events such as birth, puberty, and marriage. As independence movements gained momentum across the continent, wax-print textiles came to symbolise cosmopolitanism and a growing sense of Pan-African identity.
The Studio Backdrop
In Keïta’s photographs, traditional and modern textiles appear as studio backdrops or layered on European-style beds, their bold patterns often echoed in the sitters’ garments. Featuring examples of such textiles, this installation highlights the evolution of Malian weaving traditions during the independence era. The 1950s and early post-independence years saw rapid innovations in textile design, particularly in the use of colour. In contrast with traditional indigo and earth tones produced using natural dyes, these modern fabrics feature vivid hues made from synthetic dyes and incorporate more elaborate, figurative motifs that reflect the period’s shifting social concerns and aspirations.
These blankets served multiple functions. In everyday use, they provided protection from mosquitoes, cold temperatures, and sandstorms in the Sahel. When folded and draped over the shoulder of a well-dressed man, they signaled status. They were also important in systems of exchange – traded, gifted, and ceremonially displayed, most notably during dowry presentations and marriage celebrations.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing vitrines with facsimile cellulose acetate negatives and positive reproductions from digitised negatives c. 1950-1959
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing Keïta’s medium format cameras and his photograph, Untitled late 1940s to mid-1970s (below)
Seydou Keïta (Malian, c. 1921-2001) Untitled late 1940s to mid-1970s Positive reproduction from digitised negative Courtesy of the Seydou Keïta Family
Seydou Keïta (Malian, c. 1921-2001) Untitled late 1940s to mid-1970s Positive reproduction from digitised negative Courtesy of the Seydou Keïta Family
With one hand on the handlebars of a bicycle and the other tucked in his pocket, this child meets the camera with a stern expression. Here, the boy’s French beret, shoes, and bicycle – imported goods reserved for the elite – speak to the deep-rooted impact of French colonialism across generations, even as the country moved toward independence.
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026
Brooklyn Museum 200 Eastern Parkway Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052 Phone: (718) 638-5000
Opening hours: Wednesday – Sunday 11am – 6pm Closed Mondays and Tuesdays Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day
In the nearly eighteen year history of constructing this archive there has never been a posting on the American photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard (American, 1925-1972) which tells you a/ how rare exhibitions of his work are today and b/ how under appreciated his art is in recent times when compared to his white, male contemporaries such as Harry Callahan, Minor White and Aaron Siskind. Thus it is a great pleasure to promote this exhibition on Art Blart. I just wish I had more photographs to show you!
His work is polarising. People either hate it or love it. I’m in the latter camp. I admire Meatyard’s disturbing? challenging photographs where youth and innocence meld into a dystopian old age of special beauty, where other worlds of which we know very little are brought close to our imagination.
I admire them for their unconventionality, for their spectral aspect … that fluid dichotomy between reality and fantasy, dreams and nightmares, where the mask comes to stand for another state of being of its subject1 – shadowy, other-worldy phantoms brought into our presence through romantic-surrealist, abstract realisms – un/earthly in/corporealities, bodies and people who are both grounded in the present and transmogrifying in a tumult of magic realism (a literary and artistic genre that seamlessly blends fantastical or mythical elements into otherwise realistic, mundane settings, treating the supernatural as normal).
This unexplained magic, fluid time contains a social critique of childhood, family and adulthood and (most importantly) mortality, merging real-world settings with unbelievable elements.
Meatyards’s staged scenes – often using exposure, shadow (in Jung referencing the unconscious, hidden part of the personality), depth of field, or motion blur – suggest “an absurd fantasy set in the dilapidated houses and banal suburban environs near his home in Lexington, Kentucky … [which] reveal Meatyard’s search for inner truths amid the ordinary.” (Text from the High Museum of Art)
His photographs contain elements of his imagination in segments of the actuality around him, an interface of emotion and feeling about the world which is reflected back to us through his experimental, fantastical images. His subjects simply exist in youth and old age and resonate (that musical influence) “within the infinite possibilities of this fictional world.” Thus, in this fictional world, the masks serve “… to equalise his subjects and shift focus elsewhere – to the poignant juxtaposition of otherworldly faces on human bodies, to the ambiguous and unknowable in human nature.”2
The unknowable in human nature. The phenomenal (appearances) and the noumenal (the harsh reality of things-in-themselves).3 Interstitial. Interspatial. The space between…
Dreams and realities, masks and identities, emotions and fluidities. Gestures on what it is to be human.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ “The word “persona” originally refers to a theatrical mask worn by actors to depict the roles played by them…
The ego refers to our centre of consciousness which is responsible for our continuing sense of identity throughout our life and the persona is the social mask that we put on. We all embody different masks in different settings, as it is our way to adapt to the demands of society, playing an important part in shaping our social role and in how we deal with other people.”
3/ The phenomenal world is the reality we experience through senses and mental structures (space/time), while the noumenal is the unknowable, objective reality existing independently of perception, such as God or the true nature of objects.
Many thankx to the High Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“I seek to create a picture that has implications which may be explored for a new concept of thinking – a picture seen largely from the subjective viewpoint. The man of ideas and ideals will search for and find elements of his imagination in segments of the actuality around him. My pictures are an extension of myself and invite the viewers to participate in my thinking about the object pictured.”
Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Lexington Camera Club, Creative Photography – 1956 catalogue statement
“I adhere to the techniques of the earliest and most sincere workers of the camera – straight, unmanipulated pictures. That which I present is that which I see. However, I work a great deal in romantic-surrealist as well as abstract for I feel that ‘more real than real’ is the special province of the serious photographer.”
Ralph Eugene Meatyard, quoted in Beaumont Newhall, “New Talent in Photography USA,” Art in America 49, No. 1, 1961
Installation view of the exhibition The Family Album of Ralph Eugene Meatyard at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
As an optician by profession, Meatyard’s photography training was largely self-taught. He grew up in Normal, Illinois, and eventually moved to Lexington to take a job at the Tinder-Knaus-Tinder optical shop. Through his occupation, he became fascinated by visual perception, but he did not pick up a camera until the early 1950s when his first son, Michael, was born. He began experimenting with photography and joined the Lexington Camera Club, a group of serious amateur photographers that met regularly to share their work. Meatyard made this self-portrait outside a warehouse in downtown Lexington. The composition, with the artist standing next to the word yard, is a playful visual take on his unusual surname.
A largely self-taught photographer, Ralph Eugene Meatyard (American, 1925–1972) was a pioneering and inventive artist who created some of the most original images of the mid-twentieth century. His work defies easy categorization as he experimented across various genres and subjects, and throughout his career, he maintained the ethos of an amateur, approaching photography with a sense of affection, discovery, and surprise. He is best known for his staged scenes that suggest an absurd fantasy set in the dilapidated houses and banal suburban environs near his home in Lexington, Kentucky. These scenes, often featuring his family as actors and using props such as masks and dolls, reveal Meatyard’s search for inner truths amid the ordinary.
This exhibition, coinciding with the artist’s centenary, features the thirty-six prints that comprise the artist’s first monograph (Gnomon Press, 1970) – one of only two books he published in his lifetime – which Meatyard intended to stand as his definitive artistic statement. All thirty-six prints were recently acquired by the High for the Museum’s permanent collection. Through his idiosyncratic selection of images, this exhibition explores how Meatyard’s singular approach and voracious curiosity expanded photography’s expressive and conceptual potential.
Since his untimely death in 1972, American photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard has come to be regarded among the most pioneering and inventive artists of the medium, and his expressive, surreal photographs are widely celebrated today. This winter, the High Museum of Art presents “The Family Album of Ralph Eugene Meatyard” (Dec. 12, 2025 – May 10, 2026), an exhibition featuring 36 photographs that Meatyard considered his best work, created for one of only two monographs published by the artist in his lifetime. The High recently acquired the prints from his estate, making the museum one of the leading repositories of his photographs in the world.
“Ralph Eugene Meatyard created some of the most original photographs of the mid-20th century, and the prints in this exhibition are exquisite examples of his innovation and creativity,” said the High’s Director Rand Suffolk. “We are grateful to his estate for the opportunity to acquire and present these works and to celebrate his unorthodox yet remarkably generative practice with this exhibition.”
Born in Illinois in 1925, Meatyard eventually settled in Lexington, Kentucky. Because of his professional training as an optician, he was fascinated by visual perception, but he did not pick up a camera until the early 1950s. He began experimenting with photography and joined the Lexington Camera Club, immersing himself in the city’s creative community, which included artists and writers Van Deren Coke, Jonathan Williams, Wendell Berry and Thomas Merton.
Over the next 15 years, Meatyard maintained the ethos of an amateur, approaching the medium with a sense of affection, discovery and surprise. He experimented across various genres and subjects, including portraiture, abstraction, landscape and gothic narrative, constantly seeking to distort proper vision through photographic processes and the unconventional narrative structures that would make him an innovator of the medium.
He is best known for his staged scenes that suggest absurd fantasies, played out in the dilapidated houses and banal suburban environs of Lexington. Often featuring his family as actors and including props such as masks and dolls, the scenes reveal his search for inner truths among the ordinary. Though he wasn’t unknown in his lifetime – he exhibited, lectured and showed his work regularly throughout the 1960s – he worked both geographically and conceptually outside of the mainstream of photographic modernism, and it wasn’t until after his death that his reputation began to grow steadily.
More than a dozen books of Meatyard’s photographs have been released to date, but he only published two monographs in his lifetime. “Ralph Eugene Meatyard” (Gnomon Press, 1970), edited while he was dying of cancer, is a survey of what he considered his best work. He hoped the book would stand as his definitive artistic statement, offering his own perspective on his distinctive photographs.
This exhibition features rare prints the artist made of the 36 photographs in the book. These include signature photographs from Meatyard’s “Romance” series, which depict his family in fantastical scenarios, staged in abandoned buildings and bucolic landscapes. The series subverts the traditional family snapshot with a sense of the uncanny, combining youthful innocence with a sense of mortality. Meatyard often referred to these pictures as “romantic-surrealist,” and their fictional aspects were motivated by his desire to make photographs that weren’t bound by reality but were still grounded in the world as we see it. The exhibition also includes a selection of Meatyard’s portraits of writers, poets and artists from his circle, including Merton, Williams, Berry and Guy Davenport, among others. Collectively, the photographs create an unconventional family album by one of the most distinctive artists of the post-war period. The exhibition delves into Meatyard’s personal perceptions of his photographs and his process as a maker and will underscore the important influence of his artistic and intellectual contemporaries in Lexington, all of whom greatly affected his work. It also explores how Meatyard’s singular approach and voracious curiosity expanded photography’s expressive and conceptual potential.
“A family album is a relatable practice of memory, storytelling, aspiration and fabrication familiar to almost everyone,” said Gregory Harris, the High’s Donald and Marilyn Keough Family curator of photography. “While these works echo that nostalgic format, they also offer plenty of surprises and an extraordinary window into Meatyard’s life and creative process. We’re thrilled to share them with our audience.”
“The Family Album of Ralph Eugene Meatyard” is presented in the Lucinda Weil Bunnen Gallery for Photography on the lower level of the High’s Wieland Pavilion.
Meatyard suffered a heart attack in 1961. After this brush with mortality, he gave himself ten years to master photography. A sense of anxiety runs through many of his photographs. This image of a vacant masked face with hands pressed against its cheeks and a shard of broken mirror floating above embodies the persistent sense of pressure and tenuousness motivated by the finiteness of time.
Meatyard began editing the Gnomon Press book soon after he was diagnosed with cancer in 1970, and the looming reality of his fragility no doubt informed his selection of images. Arnold Gassan echoed the need to confront death in the longer, unpublished version of his essay for the book.
The 36 photographs include a number of signature portraits from Meatyard’s series Romance, and portray his family members, sometimes masked, inhabiting abandoned southern landscapes. Meatyard challenges the idea of traditional family portraits. In some images, children play in deserted rooms, maintaining their innocence in disconcerting environments. They are not afraid or amused – they simply exist within the infinite possibilities of this fictional world. In one image, an unrecognisable figure jumps out of a window into a yard where a little boy awaits. The movement of the jumping figure makes it resemble a spirit appearing to the boy in a dream. In creating this series, Meatyard was inspired by Ambrose Bierce’s definition of “romance” in “The Devil’s Dictionary” – defined as “fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They are.”
Victoria Gonzalez. “The Family Album of Ralph Eugene Meatyard,” on the Musee website December 15, 2025 [Online] Cited 15/02/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
As an adult, Meatyard lived in the South but grew up in Normal, Illinois – an apt birthplace for this man who led a very normal life. (“Meatyard” is an arcane 17th century English surname, but its surrealistic sound is an apt byline for the photographer. Meatyard himself collected strange names that he noted in a loose-leaf binder.) He did not consider himself a Southerner, although he has often been associated with Southern photography.
Although Meatyard counted himself as an amateur and hobbyist, he exhibited his work nationally with fine art photographers such as Minor White (who introduced him to Zen Buddhism), Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind and Emmet Gowin. His national reputation had grown enough that his 1972 passing garnered a New York Times obituary that described Meatyard as living (somewhat disparagingly) in a backwater. Yet, it was living outside major centers of art and photography that allowed him the freedom to pursue his idiosyncratic creative strategies.
The photographs of his friends are more straightforward but equally poetic and surrealistic. An example is his portrait of close friend and fellow Lexington Camera Club member Cranston Ritchie (1923-1961). Like Meatyard, Ritchie received an untimely terminal cancer diagnosis, resulting in multiple amputations of his arm. Facing forward, Cranston stands with an armless mannequin and mirror, a humorous but tragic take on fate and mortality.
Cranston Ritchie was a photographer in the Lexington Camera Club and friend of fellow club member, Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Ritchie died young at the age of 38 from cancer. James Rhem in his essay, Gene’s Friend – Cranston Ritchie, writes, “A little knot the size of a grape and sore to the touch appeared on his right hand. It turned out to be a malignancy. Doctors then thought if the arm were removed above the elbow, the cancer might be stopped from continuing to his lungs. It wasn’t. After five surgeries, each an effort to stop the cancer’s spread, Ritchie died the day after Christmas in 1961.” Rhem quotes Meatyard’s 1971 recollection of Ritchie, “He will certainly be recognised in years to come as an outstanding individual photographer as many of the 19th century men are being recognised today.”
While Meatyard regularly photographed his family, his pictures are rarely conventional portraits and are not necessarily indicative of his relationships. Even when he wasn’t including masks, he often obscured his sitters’ identities by skilfully deploying exposure, shadow, depth of field, or motion blur. In this silhouetted image, his wife, Madelyn, and their daughter, Melissa, become the archetypal mother and daughter, their fused forms expressing intimacy and connection. The title of the piece, Madonna, and Meatyard’s use of the arched window as a framing device indicate his desire to place his work within an art historical lineage.
The High Museum of Art 1280 Peachtree St NE Atlanta, GA 30309
This is an example of one of his shots of an impressive cloud formation. It features the R-100 airship, noted for its more oval, aerodynamic shape in comparison to the traditional Zeppelin. The R-100 embarked on its maiden flight in 1929 but in 1930 it was deflated and removed from service following the crash of her sister ship, the R-101, with the loss of forty-eight lives. Buckham painted the airship into the scene by hand.
Flights of fancy
What a man, what a daredevil, what an artist!
Member of the Royal Photographic Society and lecturer in photography before the First World War.
Joined the Royal Naval Air Service (precursor to the Royal Air Force) in 1916 and taught young recruits the basics of photography before requesting a transfer to active service. He became a pioneer in aerial reconnaissance over France when the pilots and observers/camera operators of biplanes over the trenches had no parachutes.
Invalided out of the service in 1918 after multiple crashes. After his ninth crash he had to undergo a tracheotomy and spent the rest of his life breathing through a tube.
Determined to continue his love affair with flying and photography, he rented planes and, strapping himself in and leaning over the side with his heavy plate camera, he captured romantic, rugged, aerial landscape photographs which combined dramatic, atmospheric shots of the landscape with photographic manipulation inside and outside the darkroom.
Rather than scratching in the original negative and/or making a composite negative (a la the Australian photographer Frank Hurley, 1885-1962) or using photomontage (the cutting and pasting physical photographs together), Buckham used combination printing – the use of multiple negatives to create seamless, “perfect” images, such as adding detailed skies to landscapes and biplanes to the skies, planes that were photographed on the ground – in the final, unique print. He often scratched the final print to emphasise highlights, and then used watercolour paints to blend in the areas where the different negatives overlapped in the print or to paint in details of aircraft wheels or bridge supports.
Buckham’s photographs of the landscape are truly beautiful. I love them.
The final prints are a heady mixture of romantic landscape (with their underlying nod to Pictorialism, emotional, romantic, and atmospheric scenes over realistic documentation) and modernist elements, of cutting edge machines, bridges, aeroplanes, airships and flying boats added through photographic manipulation in the darkroom, further enhanced by hand, through scratching and painting on the actual print.
To finally reveal what Buckham felt of the physical thrill of flying and the deeply felt emotional reaction to the landscape beneath him – can you imagine being him! – creating these photographs with deep, inward feelings impinging on his mind, his imagination, his memory. To perfectly present “so nearly, the effect that I saw” when in the air. Clouds in a sea of air.
These. These were his flights of fancy.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“I always stand up to make an exposure and, taking the precaution to tie my right leg to the seat, I am free to move about rapidly, and easily, in any desired direction; and loop the loop, and indulge in other such delights, with perfect safety… If you stand erect you will not have to resist the fatal tendency to rest your arms on the side of the aeroplane whilst making the exposure, for if you do so your photograph will surely be spoiled by the vibration of the engine.”
“Unfortunately, Nature does not always surmount her landscapes with clouds such as will compose well, as a whole, in the picture space, consequently I have provided a store of over 2,000 cloud negatives for such contingencies and from this suitable clouds for combination purposes are selected. And here is just where the hasty or unobservant worker may go badly astray, producing incredible or even appalling results. For the lighting of the landscape must be in correct relation to the light coming down from the sky, and heavy cloud masses insist that they shall have corresponding shapes upon the earth. Selection for the right negative for the purpose may entail the inspection of fifty or more, and on the print some handwork with a chemical reducer and stumping chalk, or other medium, is usually required to bring the whole into harmony. So before venturing upon combination work it is surely wise to serve some years of apprenticeship sketching and painting in the open air, which happens to have been my own way of approach to photography.”
“The open cockpit of a not-too-speedy airplane affords better facilities for working than a cabined plane. When the best weather conditions prevail for pictorial photography, the skyroad is disposed to be bumpy, descending and ascending currents of air moving beneath the big banks of cumulus cloud. A sudden drop of 300 or 400ft may be a little alarming if one is not prepared for it.”
Alfred Buckham
Installation views of the exhibition Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh Photos: Aly Wight
Installation view of the exhibition Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh showing Buckham’s photograph Edinburgh (about 1920, below) Photo: Aly Wight
Buckham had crashed nine times before he was discharged from the Royal Naval Air Service as a hundred per cent disabled. Continuing to indulge his passion for aerial photography, he wrote that ‘If one’s right leg is tied to the seat with a scarf or a piece of rope, it is possible to work in perfect security’. Presumably these were the perilous conditions in which the photographer took this dazzling picture of Edinburgh, one of the city’s most popular aerial views.
Installation view of the exhibition Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh showing Alfred Buckham wearing googles by an unknown photographer (1918, below) Photo: Aly Wight
Take to the skies and discover the world from above the clouds through the remarkable work of Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer.
A trailblazer in his field, Alfred Buckham soared above the realms of what was thought to be possible in 20th century photography and aviation. Meet the man behind some of the most iconic aerial photographs, marvel at the death-defying lengths he took to capture the perfect image and explore how his innovative techniques paved the way for modern technologies such as Photoshop and AI.
Text from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery website
Alfred Buckham’s first ambition was to be a painter, but after seeing JMW Turner’s pictures in the National Gallery in London, he returned home and made a bonfire of his own work. He was the first head of aerial reconnaissance for the Royal Navy in the First World War and later a captain in the Royal Naval Air Service. After crashing nine times he was obliged to undergo a tracheotomy and was discharged as a hundred per cent disabled. While recovering from surgery Buckham started making photo-montages, combining two or three photographs he had taken to compose a single image. He would look for a sky which complemented the city or landscape below, and even add tiny planes to create the look of a one-shot photograph. He continued to take aerial photographs with a heavy plate camera, leaning perilously out of the aeroplane, where his delight in picture making greatly increased the risk of accident.
[This film consists of animations illustrating the photographic techniques described in the narration]
Narrator
How would you have combined multiple photographs into one image in the days before Photoshop? From wartime aerial reconnaissance photographer to intrepid explorer, Alfred Buckham was a true daredevil.
But when he entered the darkroom, he was a meticulous and innovative artist. Let’s take a look at one of his most iconic composite photographs: Edinburgh, which was made using three separate negatives.
The first stage would have been to select one of the negatives he captured while literally dangling from his cockpit at death-defying heights.
He would then select a second negative from his impressive library of over 2,000 negatives of clouds. Selecting the right clouds sometimes required inspecting 50 or more options, and occasionally, he created new cloud formations by taping two negatives together.
He also built up a library of plane negatives, masking each plane from the background. All these planes were photographed from the ground, because it would have been impossible to capture a clear image of a plane, mid-flight, from another moving vehicle.
To make a photographic print, the negative would be placed into a device called an enlarger. Think of it like a top-down projector, shining light through the negative to project its image onto a sheet of light-sensitive photographic paper.
This paper would become a canvas for combining multiple negatives into one image. Buckham would first expose the image of Edinburgh onto the lower half of the paper for just the right amount of time. Next, he would expose the image of the sky onto the upper half. The longer the light projected the negative onto the paper, the darker the final image would be.
Throughout the exposure process, he used dodging and burning techniques to soften the horizon where the two negatives met. Dodging involves using your hand, or a piece of card, to block light on specific areas of the paper during exposure, making them appear lighter in the final print. Burning works in the opposite way, where you block light on the areas you’re happy with, and expose for longer the areas you want to darken.
Buckham used a pin mark to identify his chosen spot for the aeroplane. He would have to adjust the height of the enlarger to change the apparent size of the aeroplane. In this case, he also inserted the negative into the enlarger back to front to reverse the plane’s direction. Did you spot the backwards tail number?
After all three exposures, he would then place the paper into a shallow chemical bath called a developer for a set time. Slowly, as if by magic, the composite image would begin to appear on the paper. Subsequent chemical baths stopped the development process before fixing the image in place.
After washing and drying the paper, the print was ready for final adjustments. Buckham rarely edited negatives directly, as was common for photographers using glass plates. Instead, he made all his final adjustments in the print.
Here, he has used black watercolour to enhance the contrast between the brooding castle and the rest of the city. He would sometimes scratch away dark areas of the print to reveal the lighter colour of the paper beneath. Using this method, he could create the impression of spinning propeller blades or light glinting on key landmarks.
These artistic interventions resulted in each print being truly unique. Buckham’s photographs not only capture breathtaking moments at daring, dizzying heights, but are also the meticulous creations of a pioneering visionary artist.
A negative of The Forth Bridge, looking north towards Fife, was used as the basis for several prints. It was also used to produce this Christmas card for RAF Turnhouse in 1918. Showing an aeroplane flying towards the Forth Bridge, this is probably one of the first composite photographs Buckham created as it was made while he was still serving in the air force.
Alfred Buckham (British, 1879-1956) Cloud Turrets about 1920 Gelatin silver print 38.00 x 45.70cm National Galleries of Scotland Purchased with Art Fund support, 2008
This dramatic, and almost surreal photograph, shows the diversity of cloud formations during a fierce thunderstorm. Over the years Buckham amassed a vast collection of photographs of skies which he could integrate with a separate landscape photograph to enhance the drama and create a more impressive composition. He also often manipulated his images further by adding a hand painted aircraft, such as in this image, which heightens the viewer’s awareness of the dominating power and scale of the natural world.
Alfred Buckham (British, 1879-1956) Clouds Massing Before a Thunderstorm about 1920 Gelatin silver print 37.80 x 30.00cm Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Purchased with Art Fund support, 2008
Buckham was renowned for his atmospheric shots of the landscape. He felt that the most spectacular cloud formations and theatrical light could be captured on ‘stormy days, with bursts of sunshine and occasional showers of rain’. Over the years Buckham built up a vast collection of photographs of skies which he could integrate with a separate landscape photograph to enhance the drama and create a more impressive composition. This is an example of one of his shots of an impressive cloud formation before a thunderstorm.
Buckham was the leading aerial photographer of his day and was renowned for his atmospheric shots of the landscape. He felt that the most spectacular cloud formations and dramatic light could be captured on “stormy days, with bursts of sunshine and occasional showers of rain”. Over the years Buckham amassed a vast collection of photographs of skies which he could integrate with a separate landscape photograph to enhance the drama and create a more impressive composition. This photograph of the landscape over the Pentlands Hills near Edinburgh demonstrates this technique. It also illustrates another feature of Buckham’s photographs in the perfectly positioned silhouette of a biplane against the broken clouds, which Buckham would have painted on later.
Crafting an image | The photographic techniques of Alfred Buckham
Louise Pearson
Alfred Buckham created some spectacular photographs of the earth from the air. In 2018 curator Louise Pearson looked at how these images were created through a unique combination of daring escapades in the air and clever photographic manipulation on the ground.
Alfred Buckham was a passionate enthusiast of both photography and flight. By 1914 he was already an established photographer and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. During the First World War he was involved in the relatively new discipline of aerial reconnaissance, both as a teacher and a practitioner. It was a dangerous occupation and his military career ended as a result of the injuries sustained to his throat during his ninth crash. Despite this, his wartime activities had sparked a love of flying and on leaving the Royal Naval Air Service it seemed natural that he would continue to take photographs from the sky. Buckham subsequently created an astonishing series of photographs, ranging in subject from the Forth Bridge to the skyscrapers of New York and the volcanoes of South America.
The National Galleries of Scotland holds a group of Buckham’s photographs including Edinburgh, which has become one of the most popular works of art in the collection. When we decided to have a photography exhibition on the theme of transport it was clear that Buckham’s aerial photographs would take centre stage. I selected several of Buckham’s photographs for inclusion, including Edinburgh and The Forth Bridge, and started to look at the photographs in more detail with conservator James Berry. We also started planning a blog to explain how Buckham was able to create such dramatic images.
From previous research, and the work James was doing on conserving the photographs ahead of the exhibition, we knew that Buckham was using a technique called combination printing. This is when a photographer uses a number of different negatives to create a single photographic print. In order to fully understand his working methods, we needed to see the negatives he was using. Fortunately, Alfred Buckham’s entire archive of around 1400 negatives, nearly 300 prints, camera and associated archive material has remained with his family and is currently in the care of his grandsons Richard and John Buckham. Richard kindly allowed me to spend a day at his home in London, looking through this fascinating collection. Being able to compare the negatives to the prints in our collection, and read Buckham’s accounts of his photographic work, helped us to piece together how he would have made the atmospheric photograph Edinburgh.
The first stage in taking an aerial photograph is to select the right plane. Buckham took photographs around the world and would have used a number of different planes flown by various pilots to take his photographs. However he recorded that he always preferred to use older planes with open cockpits that travelled at the fairly sedate speed of 60 to 80 miles per hour. Through trial and error he discovered that flying between 1,000 and 2,000 ft gave the best results, as at that height the landscape could be captured with just the right level of detail. …
The other essential piece of equipment was the camera. Happily, as Buckham’s camera survives, we know exactly what he was using to make his exposures. In an article written for the benefit of prospective aerial photographers, he advised using the kind of cameras used by newspaper reporters, which operated at eye-level, rather than the cumbersome cameras which had originally been developed for aerial photography. ‘The camera best suited to the purpose and the one I usually employ has a F4.5 lens and a large direct vision view-finder the same size as the plate, fitted on the top of the lens panel’. He cautioned however that the leather bellows needed to be reinforced with cardboard or aluminium, as the otherwise delicate bellows could not withstand the force of the winds encountered at altitude.
The kind of camera favoured by Buckham used glass plate negatives, which was a conscious decision by Buckham at a time when photographic film was becoming readily available. He favoured double-coated panchromatic plates made in the USA, with dimensions of 10.0cm x 12.5cm. Throughout his career he reiterated that despite their bulk and delicacy, plates gave a far superior result to film.
Buckham built up a library of negatives depicting only aeroplanes, where the original background was masked out. This meant that when the negative was exposed on top of an existing print the plane would appear to be part of the chosen landscape. Buckham would have also been able use an enlarger to match the scale of the plane to the landscape, making the scene appear realistic. While in most cases this technique produces a believable, if slightly incredible, final image there are examples where the planes appear too close together, or at impossible angles.
For Buckham, the final stage of creating a finished image was to use watercolour paints and sometimes ink to add detail to the final print and soften the areas where the two negatives meet. In some of his photographs these hand-drawn elements are easily visible, though in the case of Edinburgh they are more subtle. The clouds on the horizon have been softened to make the join where the two negatives meet less noticeable in the finished print, highlights have been added to the clouds to make them more dramatic and the light below Arthur’s Seat has been adjusted to better match the clouds above. In addition, some areas have been highlighted and others darkened to sharpen the details of key landmarks and make them more recognisable. The use of black watercolour or ink to strengthen and define specific areas of the photographs shows Buckham’s ingenuity. Whilst other photographers would alter the negatives and perhaps scratch out an area that they wished to appear darker, Buckham added the darker tone to the photographic print itself. He also used a scratching out technique, similar to Turner, where a dark area of the photograph is scratched revealing the lighter colour of the paper beneath. This artistic intervention results in each photograph being a unique piece of work. No two can be exactly the same.
It is clear then that Buckham’s photographs are not the result of a single, breath-taking moment in time but instead are a carefully crafted piece of art. He was using known photographic techniques, but created a style which was very much his own. As a result it is easy to see why Edinburgh has become one of the most popular artworks in the collection.
In this image the undulations of the snow covered hills are mirrored in the cloudy sky. Buckham introduces a sense of scale through the lone plane silhouetted against a cloud.
Buckham felt that the most spectacular cloud formations and theatrical light could be captured on ‘stormy days, with bursts of sunshine and occasional showers of rain’. This creativity led to him being regarded as the leading aerial photographer of his day and he was renowned for his atmospheric shots of the landscape. Over the years he amassed a vast collection of photographs of skies which he integrated with a separate landscape photograph to enhance the drama and create an imposing composition. This image over the Firth of Forth, Scotland, encapsulates the romantic fusion of man’s engineering achievements against the dramatic beauty of nature. The three steel arches of the Forth Rail Bridge are mirrored in the three biplanes, which Buckham added later by hand, silhouetted against the spectacular sky.
This image shows Captain Jordan flying his Black Camel biplane at very close proximity to Buckham’s aircraft. Taken over the landscape around Rosyth, Fife, Scotland this was near to where Buckham crashed for the ninth time in 1918 and sustained serious injuries.
This autumn at the Portrait gallery in Edinburgh, take to the skies and see the world from above the clouds through the remarkable work of Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer. From 18 October 2025 – 19 April 2026, meet the man behind some of the most iconic aerial photographs ever taken, marvel at the death-defying lengths he took to capture the perfect image and explore how his innovative techniques in the darkroom paved the way for modern technologies such as Photoshop and AI. Free to visit at the National Galleries Scotland: Portrait, this will be the first major exhibition dedicated to Alfred Buckham and can only be seen in Scotland.
This exhibition will bring together over 100 photographs and objects including popular works from the Scottish national collection, alongside extensive archival material generously loaned by Alfred Buckham’s grandsons, Richard and John Buckham. Thanks to the support of the Buckham family, personal objects including letters, photographs and even the passport Alfred Buckham used will be put on public display for the first time.
A maverick of early aviation, Alfred Buckham (1879-1956) created his own unique style of photography by combining daring exploits in the air with innovation in the darkroom. Born in London, Buckham learned his craft by teaching photography before joining the Royal Naval Air Service in 1916, a predecessor to the Royal Air Force. Hailed as an exceptionally skilled flyer, he combined his talent for aviation with his passion for photography, resulting in remarkable endeavours and trailblazing images. Based for most of his military career at RAF Turnhouse, now Edinburgh Airport, central Scotland became a natural playground for Buckham to refine his photographic techniques and let his imagination soar. Daredevil Photographer will chart his phenomenal story from his early photographic experiments in Scotland to exciting adventures in South America and look closer at the skilled and inventive ways he created his work.
Explore Scotland from the air and get a new perspective of well-known sights, just as Buckham himself would have. Daredevil Photographer celebrates the impact Scotland had on Buckham’s work through his images of recognisable landmarks including St Andrews Golf Links, Linlithgow Palace and the Wallace Monument in Stirling. The exhibition will also feature several images of the Forth Rail Bridge, Buckham’s most photographed landmark. The iconic bridge was the subject of one of his first composite photographs and appeared on the 1918 RAF Turnhouse Christmas card, which will go on display alongside the original photography.
Daredevil Photographer will delve into the darkroom and uncover more about the creative processes used to bring Buckham’s unique images to life. After the First World War, Buckham began experimenting with composite photography; a technique where several negatives are used to create one photographic print. While this wasn’t a new concept, composite photography added a layer of creative freedom to Buckham’s work, much like a very early form of Photoshop. From his vast collection of glass negatives – he had over 2000 cloud images alone in his ‘cloud library’ – Buckham had the means to create images which became immersive, giving a unique sense of flying alongside these incredible aircraft while viewing the world below.
It was through the technique of composite photography that some of Buckham’s most famous works were born, including the iconic aerial view of Edinburgh (about 1920). This striking photograph shows a bi-plane hovering amongst wispy clouds above Edinburgh Castle, with Arthur’s Seat visible through the mist in the background, and the bustling city below. For the first time, Edinburgh will be displayed alongside the camera and original glass negatives Buckham used to capture and create this much-loved image. Visitors will also be encouraged to get inspired and try their hand at creating their own composite creations through interactive exhibits.
Telling Buckham’s story through his own words and memories, Daredevil Photographer allows visitors to meet the courageous and humorous man behind the camera. Firsthand accounts of his incredible exploits in the air and ingenious creative methods on the ground will enhance his story and highlight his adventurous spirit: Ah! One was a rare daredevil in those days! (Alfred Buckham, The New York Times, 1930). A free and unique immersive audio experience will bring Buckham’s world of flight and imagination to life through his own words. Hear Buckham’s grandson Richard give a voice to his grandfather’s memories and reflections on his daredevil persona.
Daredevil in every sense of the word, Buckham went to incredible feats to capture the perfect shot, which the exhibition will explore. His preferred methods included standing in an open cockpit while mid-air, with his leg tied to the seat as a nod to safety. As a result, he experienced no less than nine crashes in his lifetime, one ending in a serious throat injury that cut his military career short. However, he would not be deterred, describing his eccentric photography methods in a surprisingly relaxed way:
“It is not easy to tumble out of an aeroplane, unless you really want to, and on considerably more than a thousand flights I have used a safety belt only once, and then it was thrust upon me. I always stand up to make an exposure and, taking the precaution to tie my right leg to the seat, I am free to move rapidly, and easily, in any desired direction; and loop the loop; and indulge in other such delights, with perfect safety” – Alfred Buckham, The Camera, January 1927.
Daredevil Photographer will celebrate Buckham’s skill in the air through a range of his mesmerising photographs. Encounter stunning images of the leading aircraft of the day, such as the Bristol Fighter, a two seated bi-plane designed for aerial reconnaissance, and the bizarre airships of the 1920s. See them soaring through the skies in all weathers, amongst an array of remarkable landscapes. The exhibition will include one of his most well-known works, The Heart of the Empire (1923), on loan from the V&A Museum in London and displayed in Edinburgh for the first time. The photograph follows a bi-plane as it glides across the London skyline, with landmarks such as Tower Bridge and the River Thames in view. Exhibited by the Royal Photographic Society in 1925, The Heart of the Empire secured Buckham’s position as one of Britain’s leading aerial photographers.
Experience the golden age of travel through Buckham’s portfolio of images spanning across the globe. In 1931, a commission from Fortune Magazine took Buckham on an epic fifteen-week trip across the Americas, covering 19,000 miles and setting a world record. Starting in New York City and taking the opportunity to capture the newly built Empire State Building, Buckham photographed his intrepid journey from the United States to the tip of South America to share with the world. Daredevil Photographer will chart Buckham’s incredible journey, from expansive views of Christ the Redeemer in Rio De Janeiro and the snowy caps of the Andes Mountains to perilous scenes of smoking volcanic creators in Guatemala and Mexico. Through his death-defying adventures and stunning photographs, Buckham expanded public understanding of the world, creating an exciting legacy which continues to capture imaginations today.
Louise Pearson, curator of photography at the National Galleries of Scotland says: “Alfred Buckham’s eye-catching photograph of Edinburgh is one of the most popular artworks in the National Galleries of Scotland collection. This enthralling image becomes even more intriguing when you learn that it is a darkroom jigsaw – a composite photograph made through a combination of technical skill and creative vision. Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer tells the remarkable story of this maverick of early aviation whose adventures took him from aerial reconnaissance photographer to intrepid explorer via numerous loop the loops.”
This photograph of Castle Island, where Mary, Queen of Scots was imprisoned in 1567, shows the vast expanse of the rolling countryside around Loch Leven, Scotland. The cloudy sky enhances the depth of the image and the small biplanes, which Buckham added later by hand, reinforce the dramatic scale.
Alfred Buckham (British, 1879-1956) Flying Boat Over Sea 1930 Gelatin silver print 45.5 x 37.6cm National Galleries of Scotland Purchased with Art Fund support, 2008
This photograph captures the stormy ocean with its swelling crests of the waves illuminated white. Silhouetted against the threatening sky is a flying boat. This specialised form of aircraft was purposely designed to take off from, and land on, water. This feature was exploited during the World Wars but its use rapidly declined thereafter. Buckham was aware of the flying boat from his time in the Royal Naval Air Service and, specifically, his involvement in photographing the alterations required that allowed planes to take off from, and land on, a ship.
In 1930 Buckham was commissioned by Fortune magazine to produce a portfolio of aerial photographs of his chosen area of the Americas. Buckman opted for central and South America and this dramatic photograph captures the centre of Mexican volcano, Popocatepetl. The snow covered edge of the crater contrasts against the ominous dark sky, creating a shot which captures the awe-inspiring power of an active volcano. Buckham described the journey of the flight as his aeroplane turned down into the crater: ‘Almost at once the aeroplane dropped about two hundred feet… Beneath us the circular lake of boiling lava emitted numerous spouts of smoke and steam, whilst round its edge played occasional fires which, suddenly springing up and flickering awhile, as suddenly disappeared.’
Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer
Paperback – 12 Nov. 2025 by Louise Pearson (Author), James Crawford (Other Contributor)
I went for a new passport photograph yesterday and the nice person took the first photographs, looked at them, and then said “too much smile”, close your mouth more, and took them again with no teeth exposed and my mouth in a thin, rictus line.
How do our “photographic faces” differ from our everyday faces?
Does not smiling in a photograph prevent us from displaying our individual personality?
What different types of smile are there and what do they signify?
“Smiles are complex, with researchers identifying up to 19 types ranging from genuine joy to social masking, with only six occurring during positive emotions. Key types include the genuine Duchenne smile (involving eyes), polite social smiles, and non-enjoyment smiles like contempt or discomfort, signalling various emotional, social, or, in some cases, aggressive messages.”1
Smiling does not just depend on social norms but researchers have found it may actually be programmed into our DNA, creating in built reactions to certain situations.2 From the miserable smile, to the dampened smile, qualifier smile, contempt smile and fear smile, there are many ways we can interact with others and with the camera lens.
From this distance in Australia and having not see the exhibition in person I can’t tell you whether this exhibition addresses the issues of different smiles pictured in photography but it seems unlikely given the text and media images.
For more information on facial expressions please see my text Facile, Facies, Facticity (January 2014) which examines the facticity of the face, in which only through the “thrownness” of the individual rendered in the lines of the human face can we engage with the intractable conditions of human existence.
Many thankx to Museum Ludwig for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation view of the exhibition Smile! How the smile came into photography at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, November 15, 2025 – March 22, 2026 showing at left, Hugo Erfurth’s Hildegard Seemann-Wechler (painter), (1929, below) Photo: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv/ Mark Weber
Hugo Erfurth (German, 1874-1948) Hildegard Seemann-Wechler (painter) 1929 Oil pigment print on cardboard 38.3 x 26.6cm Museum Ludwig, Cologne Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv
When Hildegard Seemann-Wechler had her portrait taken in Hugo Erfurth’s studio in Dresden, she was studying painting with Otto Dix. The strict frontality of this picture, the neutral background, and the direct gaze into the camera are softened by the slight hint of a smile at the corners of the artist’s mouth. Hildegard Seemann-Wechler’s bob hairstyle identifies her as a New Woman who rejects conservative role models. Her portrait breaks with the tradition of serious facial expressions in the 19th century and marks the threshold between not smiling and smiling. Collection presentations like this help us to explore our own works. On the back of this picture, the name “Hilde Wächler” is written in pencil. It was only during the preparations for Smile! that we noticed the mistake and were able to assign the person portrayed to her real name. In 1940, Hilde Seemann-Wechler was murdered by the Nazis.
Hildegard Seemann-Wechler (German, 1903-1940)
Hildegard Wechler came from a bourgeois background. She began her studies at the Staatliche Akademie für Kunstgewerbe in Dresden and moved to the Dresdener Kunstakademie in 1921, where she studied with Richard Müller, Robert Sterl, Ludwig von Hofmann and from 1927 with Otto Dix, three semesters of which as an individual student. In particular, she was supported by Sterl and Dix. Since that time she was friends with Eva Schulze-Knabe and Fritz Schulze. Since Hans and Lea Grundig also studied at the academy, it can be assumed that she also had contact with them.
After her studies, Hildegard Wechler worked in Dresden as a freelance artist. In 1929 she married the painter Herbert Seemann (1900-1945). In 1931, she had the first symptoms of mental illness. The doctors diagnosed an incurable schizophrenia and referred her to the Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Arnsdorf. She spent eight and a half years there. She was forcibly sterilized at the State Women’s Hospital Dresden.
In 1940 she was transferred to the Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Leipzig-Dösen, on 18. June 1940 to the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Großschweidnitz. On the 3rd In September 1940, a transport commando brought her to the Pirna-Sonnenstein killing center. She was murdered there shortly afterwards as part of the euthanasia “Aktion T4” as one of at least 14,751 victims of this institution, including the Dresden painters Gertrud Fleck and Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, in the gas chamber disguised as a bathroom.
Installation view of the exhibition Smile! How the smile came into photography at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, November 15, 2025 – March 22, 2026 showing at right, Man Ray’s Lips, (Lee Miller), (1930, below) Photo: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv/ Mark Weber
Man Ray (American, 1890-1976) Lips, (Lee Miller) 1930 Print 21 x 25.5cm Museum Ludwig, Cologne Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem B
Lee Miller’s closed lips reveal hardly any emotion. And yet every facial expression communicates something about the time and circumstances in which a portrait was taken. Even today, we find fashions in lip positioning when a person is photographed – such as pursed lips in the “duckface” or the slight opening of the mouth in the “fish gape.” The development of dental care is certainly only one of the reasons why we statistically show more teeth when being photographed today than we did a hundred years ago, and why saying “cheese” is supposed to make our faces look their most photogenic.
Smizing, squinching, duck face, fish gape, cheese, or prunes: Beauty ideals and social media have given rise to increasingly mercurial trends in portrait photography. Until the late nineteenth century, having one’s photo taken required the sitter to remain absolutely motionless in order to produce a sharp image, which more often than not resulted in a fixed and lifeless expression.
Smile! How the Smile Came Into Photography, presented in the Museum Ludwig Photography Rooms, investigates how our “photographic faces” have evolved over time. The show assembles a range of anonymous and artistic portrait photographs from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century to recount a history of the smile.
Whether or not we smile when being photographed, or whether we show our teeth, depends on social norms and the photographic technology available. In 1878, the photographer Josef Janssen observed that “the awkward situation in which a person finds themselves at the moment of having their photo taken is in itself enough to prevent them from displaying their individual personality. Motionless and with a fixed gaze, their head leaning on that dreaded, detestable head rest, they are required for a set period of time to stare at a certain point in space that generally offers the eye nothing of interest. What else could this result in but stiffness and lifelessness?”
The fact that people in the nineteenth century rarely smiled when having their picture taken in a photographic studio also reflected contemporary norms regarding how one should appear in a portrait, norms based on conventional ideas of class, gender, and context. Emotions were considered a private matter that had no place in a portrait.
The emergence of silent film played a key role in the appearance of the smile in twentieth-century portraits. Facial expressions were used to convey emotions, filling the frame in tight close-up shots. Parallel to this, headshots increasingly replaced full-body portraits. Then came advertising, where the beaming smiles of actors served to embody the allure of products. The corners of the mouth began to rise ever upward. A 2015 study of student portraits in American yearbooks revealed that smiling in photographs has consistently increased since the start of the twentieth century, with results confirming that women smile more than men. A trend toward increased facial expressiveness can be observed the world over. A look at fashion photography, however, shows that status and coolness are conveyed with barely a smile. As early as 1927, the sociologist Siegfried Kracauer noted that the world – and thus the people in it – had taken on a “photographic face.” The presentation at the Museum Ludwig aims to show that this observation still holds true today and that the smile has a history.
The show is accompanied by a publication with a text by Katharina Sykora. #PhotographyFaces #MLxPhotography
Press release from Museum Ludwig
Installation view of the exhibition Smile! How the smile came into photography at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, November 15, 2025 – March 22, 2026 showing Afga Advertising tests (around 1965, below) Photo: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv/ Mark Weber
These two photographs can be found in the archives of Agfa’s advertising department, which are now kept at the Museum Ludwig. While the color chart in one picture reveals that it is an informal test shot for the photographer, the other picture shows the official version of the advertisement. Only in the official version is everyone smiling – even the man holding the camera in front of his face to take a snapshot of his family. Since advertising has to communicate people’s happiness with a particular product, it contributed enormously to the spread and normalisation of smiling, laughing people in pictures. This is particularly the case with the advertisement of the photo industry. As Christina Kotchemidova writes in her article “Why we say ‘Chesse’: Producing the Smile in Snapshot Photography”: “Obviously, amateurs learned from advertisements (…). The visuals ensured that the advertising ideal was accurately replicated, thus making popular photography an extension of advertising culture.”
Unknown Photographer Agfa advertising test around 1965 Color photography Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Photo studio on the roof 1845 Illustration from Erich Stenger: Siegeszug der Photographie in Kultur, Wissenschaft, Technik, 1950 Archiv Museum Ludwig, Köln
The more light there is, the shorter the exposure time when taking photographs. That is why photo studios in the 19th century were often set up in attics with large windows. In good weather, photographs were sometimes taken directly on the roof. Nevertheless, we can still see the head support that kept the person being photographed motionless for the duration of the shot and helped to ensure that the image was sharp. Such head supports were part of the necessary equipment of a photo studio and certainly did not help the subject to relax. In 1878, photographer Josef Janssen observed: “[…] the predicament in which the person finds themselves at the moment of the shot is enough to prevent them from freely expressing their individuality. Leaning against the much-hated and feared, yet indispensable head support, they are supposed to remain motionless and stare intently for a while at a certain point that usually offers nothing for the eye to look at. What else can be the result of this but rigidity and lifelessness?”
Adolf Hengeler (German, 1863-1927) “At the photographer’s: ‘Now, young lady, please smile nicely and look friendly!…One, two, three!… That’s it, thank you! Now you can go back to your natural expression!'” Published in Fliegende Blätter, 1893 Print 47 x 36.4cm Museum Ludwig, Cologne Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv
“Now, young lady, please make a nice and friendly!… One, two, three!… That’s it, thank you! Now you can go back to your natural expression!” This was the caption accompanying the caricature when it was published in the magazine Fliegende Blätter in 1893. The fact that the subject is depicted wearing a clown mask shows, on the one hand, that people were already familiar with smiling “photography faces” at the end of the 19th century and, on the other hand, that the women portrayed were supposed to appear ‘nice’ and ‘friendly’ through their smiles. The fact that there are other types of smiles was already mentioned in Grimm’s dictionary from 1885, such as happy, cheerful, mischievous, furtive, shy, malicious, bitter, scornful, mocking, and forced. In 2020, Carolita Johnson described in her article “‘I don’t have to smile if I don’t feel like it!’: Covid freed me from politeness and unwanted touching” in The Guardian how wearing face masks during the coronavirus pandemic freed her from the pressure of having to wear the mask of the friendly smiling woman.
Julia Margaret Cameron (English born India, 1815-1879) Summer-days 1866 Albumen print on cardboard 34.0 x 27.6cm Museum Ludwig, Cologne Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv
Smiling: A Photographic Balancing Act between Seriousness and Laughter
Katharina Sykora
Between spontaneity and strategy: smiling as an indicator of emotion
In everyday life, a smile immediately inspires feelings of happiness. While today we experience smiling as a spontaneous expression of affection, our understanding of smiling as a legible, socially acceptable facial gesture is the result of centuries of debate. It was oten viewed as an expression that sat midway between seriousness and laughter. Discussions around the nature of the smile gained in intensity in the nineteenth century with the invention of photography, which saw many in the aristocracy and the upwardly-mobile bourgeoisie discovering themselves anew in portrait studios. Meyers Encyclopaedia (1865) describes smiling as a weaker version of laughing because “it lacks the intermittent exhalation,”1 while in his remarks on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), Charles Darwin describes laughter as “the full development of a smile or … a gentle smile as the last trace of a habit, firmly fixed during many generations, of laughing.”2 In both cases, smiling is cast not as an emotion in its own right but as a relative form derived from a strong, joyful feeling. This contrasts with the expressive range of smiles allowed for by the Brothers Grimm: “Smiling,” they write in their German Dictionary (1885) “may be friendly, happy, cheerful, affectionate, gentle, mischievous, furtive, shy, even malevolent, biter, mocking, scornful, or forced.”3
This highlights the long-standing controversy that has historically accompanied discussions around smiling and that continues today. On the one hand, a smile is evaluated based on where it is perceived to sit on a spectrum between seriousness and laughter and – depending on its proximity to either extreme – subjected to positive or negative moral, societal, or aesthetic judgements. On the other hand, because the spectrum between seriousness and laughter contains many nuances, smiling is perceived as a versatile expression that can attest to a variety of different feelings and communicate a broad range of meanings in social interactions depending on the socio-historical context. The first perspective tends to view smiling within normative parameters, while the second situates it within a kaleidoscope of micro-sociological observations.
An important question running through historical and historiographical discussions of seriousness, smiling, and laughter asks whether these are expressions of inner emotion or learned facial gestures and behaviour patterns. In other words, whether laughing and smiling are anthropological constants common to all humans as immediate expressions of emotion, or whether they are a strategic means of communication used to one’s own advantage in specific situations.
In the mid-nineteenth century, photography played a prominent role in this debate. In his book The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression, published in 1862 and containing a hundred photographs,4 the doctor and physiologist Guillaume-Benjamin-Armand Duchenne de Boulogne presented an experiment in which he used targeted electric shocks to trigger a wide range of expressions on a test person whose facial nerves lacked sensation. One of these included a homogenous smile involving all of his features that resembled the kind of facial expression observed in everyday settngs. But Duchenne was also able to trigger paradoxical facial expressions that could only be induced by electric shocks, such as a smiling mouth combined with eyes and forehead contorted by pain. Through such experiments, Duchenne sought a systematic “orthography of a supposedly universal language”5 of human physiognomy in order to render it more legible. Paradoxically, he disconnected inner affects from their outer manifestations while connectng them all the more strongly in terms of their meaning, as when, by analogy with the laughing muscle, he describes the nasalis (nose) muscle as a “muscle of aggression” or the frontalis muscle (that moves the eyebrows) as a “muscle of suffering.”6
One far-reaching side effect of Duchenne’s test setup was the realization that manifestations of human emotion can be manufactured without necessarily corresponding to a felt equivalent. By twinning electro-physical and photographic procedures, Duchenne proved in the field of science what had long been commonplace in the world of the theater – where professional actors routinely simulate emotions – and everyday life – where individuals control their expressions when interacting with others. In this way, Duchenne contributed his “theater of science”7 to the list of “production sites” for the decoupling of facial expression from emotion, where it joined the theatrical stage and milieus of social interaction.
At the same time, Duchenne’s use of electric shocks to produce expressions revealed their dual social function: Anyone could use them as a systematic means of portraying emotion detached from any corresponding internal feeling, and they could be decoded just as systematically by others as “artificial” rather than “natural” displays of sentiment. This benefited another site invested in the social coding of emotions: the increasingly numerous photographic studios where the middle classes were now able to have portraits made of themselves, creating a specific repertoire of facial expressions as part of a class-specific pose. What these theatrical, scientific, and photographic settings all demonstrate is that seriousness, smiling, and laughter can be performed in a way that is legible. They are part of a social act that always involves two or more people.8 With Duchenne’s contribution to the visual ordering and classification of seriousness, smiling, and laughter, photography advanced over the course of the nineteenth century to become the primary medium for the representation, communication, and standardisation of emotions. It became a platform for self-portrayal, for the negotiation of social hierarchies and values, and for the establishment and reinforcement of universal forms of emotional expression.
Looking back: a brief discursive and visual history of smiling
The history of smiling, as traced through past discourses and visual representations, reflects the shifts in society’s acceptance of the portrayal of specific emotions and the influence this has had on photographic (self-) presentations of people since the nineteenth century. What immediately becomes clear is that smiling has not always been understood as the midpoint between seriousness and laughter but situated somewhere closer to the later. Even more surprisingly from today’s perspective, laughter and especially smiling historically occupied no place at all in social behaviours and visual representations, and when they did appear, their initial connotations were largely negative.
“Before the twelfth century,” writes the art historian Monika E. Müller, “one can expect to find almost no illustrations of emotion in the form of facial expressions.”9 The reason for this was the dominance of Christian morals, which opposed the portrayal of strong emotions in general. The Greek and Roman Church Fathers shared a negative view of laughter, considering it antithetical to the ideal of a God-fearing person leading a life of humility and atonement. As a result, books of monastic precepts banned laughter as sinful behaviour.10
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, grinning devils increasingly appeared in portrayals of the Apocalypse, there were chortling henchmen along Christ’s route to Calvary, and there were grotesque heads guffawing on the capitals of cathedrals or in the margins of illuminated manuscripts. These polarising counter-figures were depicted as bystanders, relegated to the edges of the sacred realm. Here, laughter was not an expression of cheerfulness but a sign of vice and evil.
In the thirteenth century, smiling made its first appearance as a positive trait in Christian iconography but was reserved for Mary, the Christ Child, angels, and those souls resurrected into a state of heavenly bliss. Here, too, exceptions gradually emerged: In the portal of the Last Judgement at Strasbourg Cathedral, for example, we find the Prince of this World (c. 1280) flashing a mischievous grin in the direction of a Foolish Virgin with a flirtatiously simpering smile. This erotically charged tête-à -tête takes on a negative tone, however, once one notices that the Prince’s back is being devoured by snakes and vermin. Moreover, the coquette is shown to be doubly foolish – distracted by her “sinful” fleshly desire for a figure whose true nature is hidden from her, unlike the lamenting Wise Virgins, she has unwittingly dropped the oil lamp that was meant to remain lit in anticipation of Christ’s arrival. In this way, depictions of smiling joined those of laughter in Christian iconography, where their differentiation into the beatific and the seductive supported theological morals.
Once smiling began to feature in secular imagery – as in the statue of Margravine Regelinda in the west choir at Naumburg Cathedral (c. 1250) – the binary Christian model underwent a fundamental reevaluation. In the thirteenth century, a tradition of courtly politeness emerged in which smiling carried positive connotations, signalling friendly attentiveness guided by self-restraint. Books on courtly etiquete established gestural moderation as the norm. Smiling was courtly in a double sense: It bound the nobility together through a shared code of conduct while also distinguishing them from the “uncouth” populous.
As the modern age progressed, further differentiation took place. Courtiers amused each other by engaging in witty repartee. Eliciting a subtle smile that acknowledged one’s skill while remaining shielded from ridicule behind a noncommittal smile of one’s own was the basis of an amicable but increasingly competitive court culture. Smiling became an instrument with which to perpetually renegotiate one’s position within the court hierarchy. As a result, the rules governing seriousness, laughter, and smiling became ever more rigid and complex, so that only a select few courtiers ever mastered the art of it. This in turn created gender and aesthetic norms: Young girls and high-ranking ladies were expected to wholly avoid displays of loud laughter, as they pointed to a lack of self-control in the “weaker sex,” and its distortion of the facial features was considered inappropriate for the “fairer sex.”
In the Renaissance, these norms were applied to portraits of the wealthy burghers of the urban centers. Here, the hint of a smile was considered acceptable, while open laughter was viewed as the hallmark of courtesans, marginal figures at court who, together with the fool or jester, broke with the rules of politeness through displays of untamed conduct while simultaneously affirming them.
A similarly paradoxical relationship emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the rise in popularity of genre paintings, which often depicted members of the lower classes boisterously laughing during exuberant scenes of eating and drinking and were often filled with erotic allusions. These paintings, mostly by Dutch artists, both challenged and affirmed the cultural conventions around laughter, often involving the viewer by establishing direct eye contact, creating a sense of complicity and shared amusement.
By contrast, in the eighteenth century, the aspiring bourgeoisie increasingly set itself apart, imposing stricter limits on exuberant laughter. With reference to the aristocratic norm of disciplined facial expressions, it adopted smiling as its hallmark. At the same time, it distanced itself from the courtly performance of smiling. Since those at court were all trying to functionalise their facial expressions and tame their emotions, it was no longer possible to trust their smiles.11 From the viewpoint of the bourgeoisie, courtly smiling was now considered unnatural. This reflected changes in affect theory, as Johann Caspar Lavater’s physiognomy and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s pathognomy now postulated congruency between facial expressions and inner emotions.12 The “forced” smiles of the aristocrats at court were contrasted with the “genuine,” “heartfelt” bourgeois laughter that did not hurt anyone or assume superiority. However, such amiable laughter among equals was not part of public displays of bourgeois identity. In public and in official portraits, the bourgeoisie presented themselves with a seriousness that matched their social aspirations. The network building, convivial laughter of bourgeois men and the smiles of bourgeois women were reserved for smaller, more intimate formats such as drawings or miniatures. In other words, such displays of emotion were privatised, confined to salons and the home.
Photography and the smile: a tense relationship
At the end of the 1830s, during this transitional phase when bourgeois culture was still navigating between seriousness and smiling, photography emerged as a new medium for recording and representation. Its specific qualities allowed facial expressions to be captured with great precision while also imposing limits on the expression of emotions such as smiling and laughter.
The indexicality of photography – namely, the fact that the subject must have been present while their likeness was being transferred onto the image – meant that photographs were like a second skin. Just as it was assumed that one’s facial expression was a direct translation of one’s emotion, it was also believed that this emotion was directly imprinted onto the photograph. The indexical promise of photography thus suggested that one was looking directly – through a kind of double, transparent membrane – into the soul of the sitter. For the bourgeoisie, with its imperative of natural, uncontrived expression of emotions, photography thus served as proof of the authenticity of the emotions on display. It is all the more surprising, then, that it was well into the twentieth century before smiles began to appear on the faces of the bourgeoisie in studio photographs. For bourgeois men in particular, the expression of seriousness that prevailed in this context was a strategy that allowed them to present themselves as level-headed, stabilising members of society. The resulting contradiction remained a blind spot in their self-image: Photography as an apparatus for capturing an indexical authentication of “genuine feelings” turned into its opposite as demonstrative seriousness became part of a bourgeois pose that was legitimated as “real” by the medium’s promise of truth.
Just as important as indexicality is another specific quality of the photographic medium: the way it cuts through space and time. Since laughing and smiling are “fleeting signs of an emotion as expressive movement,”13 the moment in which a photograph is taken, fixing a single instant in the flow of living time, is especially precarious. While it is easy to maintain a serious expression for a long exposure time, laughter is comparatively brief and consists of a sequence of different expressions. Capturing a laugh at the peak of its crescendo requires a short exposure time, as well as technical skill and psychological foresight on the part of the photographer; they must be able to quickly intuit when to press the shutter in order to capture the laugh on the sitter’s face, in turn underscoring the photographer’s ultimate control over the image compared to that of the subject. In temporal terms, photographs of laughter thus tend to be “stolen” images, a quality that can be compensated for by the consenting gaze of the sitter. The belated arrival of laughter as a viable photographic motif in the 1920s was, on the one hand, due to technical developments that allowed for shorter exposure times and, on the other, the result of a renegotiation of the power dynamics between the photographer and their subject.
Photographing a smile is different to capturing laughter. A smile can be maintained for considerably longer than a laugh, though not as long as a serious expression. Since smiling is a fluid movement of the mouth and the corners of the eyes, the way a photograph severs the sequence of a smile is both all the more obvious and all the more arbitrary. In the twentieth century, the request to “smile please” performed a function similar to that of “don’t move” in the studio photography of the previous century. It directed the subject to “freeze” their smile, thus detaching it from any emotion that might have prompted it and seeing it into a pose. As a stabilised facial expression, smiling complied with the technical parameters of photography at the time. On a cultural level, however, it was precisely this compatibility that led to the smiling photo face becoming the norm – as witnessed in the monotony of smiles from family photographs after World War II to the selfies of the 2000s.
This shift altered the relationship between photographers and their subjects. The intimacy of the family or circle of friends made it possible to capture forms of coexistence that were not bound to the strict rules of public image. In such familiar settings, private “snapshots” of laughing or smiling people no longer risked being viewed as “stolen images” that would be exposed to an unpredictable public response. Instead, the pictures remained private, with viewing sessions and the exchange of prints strengthening ties among friends and family members. As an agent of social cohesion, smiling demonstrated the sitter’s consent to being photographed and was just as important as the shared private enjoyment the resulting pictures generated. From this time, family albums began to contain more and more images of people smiling and laughing. Even in these private photographs, smiles often varied depending on the gender of the subject; bourgeois women and children of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were still confined primarily to the private sphere, with smiling the “natural,” morally acceptable, and aesthetically appropriate mode of expression in this domain. A broad smile while looking directly into the camera continued to be associated more with the lower classes and those on the fringes of society, such as demimondaines, sex workers, and stage performers.
For a long time, studio photography clung to the tradition of a public image based on serious expressions and rigid poses, but it was unable to entirely prevent the new tendency toward smiling from creeping in. The studios countered this with biting satires that ridiculed smiling as improper and “false.” Spontaneous, private expressions of emotion did not make the transition to the studios, where smiling remained a mask assumed only for the time it took to take a picture.
This changed over the course of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1932, the photographer Gilbert de Chambertrand declared the old form of studio photography obsolete. It treated people like statues, he argued, whereas modern portrait photography focused on people influenced by outdoor pursuits, sports, and the cinema whose faces expressed lively emotions.15 Shifts in society, such as the rise of the urban middle classes (the “salaried masses”) and the emancipation of women (the “New Woman”), led to a greater variety of facial expressions in photographic portraits, and an aesthetic shaped by the motion pictures contributed to a greater expressivity.16 With its extreme close-ups, bold cropping, and shifts in perspective, the New Vision movement was characterised by a formal dynamism that amplified the dynamism of the facial expressions it captured. And the role models multiplied, too: In studio portraits of the 1920s and 1930s, elegant women gaze out at us bearing smiles copied from photographs of famous actresses and sporty young girls laugh warmly at the person behind the camera. In extreme cases, a smile may even appear without a face, in a close-up shot of a mouth with lipstick. As its range expanded, smiling became the norm, fostered by its dissemination via the mass media of magazines and movies through which it eventually conquered the public sphere and official portrait photography.
After World War II, this development intensified, especially in the West, beginning in the United States where the commercialisation of amateur photography had opened up a huge market. An analysis of high school yearbook photographs over several decades shows the gradual trend toward smiling.17 By the 1950s at the latest, “social smiles” that marked those photographed as friendly members of the community had become mandatory.
Spontaneous smiles, which engaged the eye muscles, increasingly gave way to a mere upward curve of the mouth. In public, this more restrained smile became a compulsory sign of polite distance when encountering strangers, as an overly serious expression risked being misconstrued as aggression.18 Pervasive advertising, movies, and later television increasingly blended private and public spheres, ultimately elevating the once-private smile to the status of an omnipresent social norm.
In the United States in particular, this was accompanied by an upgrading of the kind of smile required by photographers, as “please smile” was replaced by calls to “say cheese,” prompting the sitter to smile broadly, showing their teeth. Different reasons have been given for this “cheesy grin”: the need for non-confrontational interactions in times of increasing social insecurity or the desire to display one’s wealth and radiant state of good health. (In the past, possessing a perfect set of teeth could not be taken for granted and often involved considerable costs.) This time, the media role models were Hollywood stars,19 pin-up models, and the happy families depicted in advertisements.20 In this way, a flourishing post-war America spread its broad smile not only across its own country but across the whole of the Western world.
Since the 1990s, if not before, we have witnessed a strong counter-movement to the dominance of the smile. The concept of “coolness” categorically refuses the call to smile, demonstratively playing with the latent aggression associated with a serious expression, from which it derives the power of its image and gaze. The subject of a “cool” portrait is most often young, versed in street culture and involved in the worlds of music and fashion and their advertising campaigns. The straight face of cool has become the new photo face. Or has it turned back into the old one? What distinguishes the serious expression of the “cool guy” from that of the bourgeois man in nineteenth-century studio photography? The underlying model of masculinity is comparable, a display of self-confidence, self-control, and defensiveness. The difference lies in the casual pose, the informal clothing, and the overt display of a fit physique, all set against an urban setting or edgy studio backdrop. But it is above all its contrast to the typical cheesy grin that makes not smiling such a surefire fashion statement. A scene in the movie Triangle of Sadness (2022) offers a striking illustration of this: At a casting session, a number of young male models are asked to pose for the camera. To test their range of facial expressions, instead of asking for “cool” or “cheese,” the photographer alternately calls out “Balenciaga!” and “H&M!” Here, seriousness and smiling have undergone another shift in function and meaning: No longer manifestations of emotion or masks, they have become brands.
Test images from the photo booth, Kaufhof, Cologne 1920s Gelatin silver paper Archiv Museum Ludwig, Köln
The introduction of photo booths in the 1920s meant that portraits could be taken cheaply and without being observed by photographers, which encouraged people to experiment, as we can see in this test strip taken in a Cologne department store.
Unknown photographer Class photo 1923 Archive Museum Ludwig
A comparative study of school photographs in the USA showed that the corners of the mouth have been rising steadily in portraits since 1900. A comparison of two class photos from the Museum Ludwig archive, taken forty years apart, confirms this: whereas in 1923 the expressions were still serious, in 1963 there are smiling faces. However, the US study also showed that girls and women smile significantly more than boys and men. “Photography faces,” whether they smile or not, are culturally formed faces.
Unknown photographer Class photo 1963 Archive Museum Ludwig
Andy Warhol experimented early on with the Polaroid instant camera. He photographed himself as well as visitors to his studio, The Factory, in New York in the 1970s. He collected the snapshots in several photo albums. Their spontaneity is evident in the fact that they often appear flawed, whether because only the forehead is visible in the picture or because the face of the person portrayed is not yet a standard “photography face.”
Since the 1980s, Thomas Struth has been photographing families from his circle in their familiar surroundings. While the people in his pictures choose their own clothing, gestures, and looks, he asks them not to smile for the camera. In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the photographer explained this as follows: “It is often said that when everyone smiles, they all look the same. But they can’t all look different either. In my opinion, there are enough photos of people laughing.” Ann Katrin Harfensteller-Rufenach adds in her book Dazwischen-Sein. Familienporträts von Thomas Struth und jüngere Positionen in der Fotokunst in Deutschland (Being in Between: Family Portraits by Thomas Struth and Recent Positions in Photographic Art in Germany): “But the unusual size of the camera may also have been fascinating and encouraged an appealing facial expression.” In fact, Thomas Struth photographed this image with a large-format camera on a tripod, similar to the photographers of the 19th century.
Museum Ludwig Heinrich-Böll-Platz, 50667 Köln, Germany
Opening hours: TuesÂÂday through SunÂÂday: 10am – 6pm
Curators: Laurie Hurwitz and Shoair Mavlian in collaboration with Boris and Vita Mikhailov
Installation view of the exhibition Boris Mikhailov: Ukrainian Diary at The Photographers’ Gallery, London showing at left, photographs from his series Luriki (1971-1985, below) and Sots Art (c. 1975-1986, below); and at right, a photograph from the series National Hero (1991, below)
“The world is made up of many worlds. Some are connected and some are not.”
From the film Perfect Days, 2023 directed by Wim Wenders
I love this man’s work. I feel very connected to his worlds. His constructed discontinuities. His ruptures, compressions, ambiguities. His social codifications of rich, poor, haves and have nots, and, as someone said, his portrayal of “the overlooked, the uncomfortable, and the unabashedly human.”
“Mikhailov’s visual pairings deliver unambiguous messages, almost violent in their straightforwardness. Multiple juxtapositions of unconsciously drunk men prostrating under passers-by feet to that of stray dogs, dead or alive, explicitly comment on human’s life disintegration to the state of an animal, its reduction to bare bones – and yes, an animal carcass, a metaphoric sign of abject poverty, is also present in this visual narrative in a scene with two men dragging a piece of spinal vertebrae of a large creature, a cow or, perhaps, a horse. Rotten banana peels sit across the page from infected flaccid limbs and genitalia. A posture of a naked woman reclining on a sullied mattress echoes that of a rubber sex doll staring from the next page. A close-up of a bruised woman’s breast with a crude stitches over a wound parallels gaping cracks of a damaged mail box. Thus the physical body of a homeless person starts speaking about the city as an organism, equally abused and dismembered. Wounds inflected upon flesh are surface manifestations of wounds inflected upon the city and the society at large.”1
“By subverting idealised Soviet imagery, he proposed a raw, ironic, and unremarkable version of reality, always seeking to capture the spirit of his times through the everyday. Or, better yet, to condense that spirit for others, not through words but through a visual semantics of his own making.”2
Experimental, conceptual, staged, performative, his photographs appeal to my subversive nature, prodding as they do at the status quo. His “rebellious visual language” takes us on a journey – his journey, Ukraine’s journey – “a journey through time, loss, and transformation.”
“Mikhailov’s photographs are emotionally powerful, politically astute and uncannily effective conversations with the world… about subjects that should matter to all of us: war, destitution, poverty, oppression, and the power of an authoritarian state to control the thoughts and actions of human beings under its control. They are about the freedom of individual people to live their lives as they choose; and they are about the freedom of a group of people which form a country to not be subjugated under the rule of another country to which they are historically linked.
His photographs are about choice and difference, they are about life.
They perform a task, that is, they bring into consciousness … the ground on which we stand together, against oppression, for freedom. Of course, no country is without its problems, its historical traumas, prejudices and corruption but the alternative is being ruled over without a choice, which is totally unacceptable.
Against the “failed promises of both communism and capitalism” and the “economic history that is written on the flesh” of the poor, Boris Mikhaïlov’s Ukrainian diary documents day after day the dis-ease and fragility, but also resilience, of his subjects and the world in which they live. He uses his art as a visual tool for cultural resistance. And the thing about his images is: you remember them. They are unlike so much bland, conceptual contemporary photography because these are powerful, emotional images. In their being, in their presence, they resonate within you.”
In this earlier posting you will find a longer text that I wrote, descriptions of the each of the artist’s series and more images. I hope you can view the posting.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Extract from Olena Chervonik, “Urban Opera of Boris Mikhailov,” on the MOKSOP website, 9th April 2020 [Online] Cited 27/01/2026
2/ Kateryna Filyuk. “Recalcitrant Diarist of the Everyday,” on The Photographers’ Gallery website Nd [Online] Cited 05/02/2026
Many thankx to The Photographers’ Gallery, London for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“I chose to focus on ordinary, everyday scenes and the search for formal solutions to translate this mundaneness into photography.”
Boris Mikhailov, “Everyone has became more circumspect…,” in Tea Coffee Cappuccino. Köln: König, 2011, p. 230
“Central themes – heroism, failure, power, the body, identity, absurdity, ideology – recur throughout, not as definitive conclusions but as open-ended provocations that invite sustained contemplation. In this way, the exhibition operates as both a temporal sequence and a constellation of moments – fragmented yet interconnected – that collectively evoke the complexity, contradictions, and richness of Mikhailov’s visionary practice.”
Laurie Hurwitz curator
“The explicit, dramatic and total power of the absolute monarch had given place to what Michel Foucault has called a diffuse and pervasive ‘microphysics of power’, operating unremarked in the smallest duties and gestures of everyday life. The seat of this capillary power was a new ‘technology’: that constellation of institutions – including the hospital, the asylum, the school, the prison, the police force – whose disciplinary methods and techniques of regulated examination produced, trained and positioned a hierarchy of docile social subjects in the form required by the capitalist division of labour for the orderly conduct of social and economic life.”
John Tagg. The Burden of Representation. Essays on Photographies and Histories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993
From the beginning, we conceived two video works as conceptual bookends. At the entrance, Yesterday’s Sandwich – a seminal project from the late 1960s – presents a hallucinatory sequence of double exposures set to music by Pink Floyd. These psychedelic, surreal images, rejecting Soviet visual orthodoxy, open up a new, rebellious visual language. At the exit, Temptation of Death (2019) offers a quieter, meditative counterpoint. Combining images from a crematorium in Ukraine with intimate portraits and cityscapes, it evokes the myth of Charon, ferryman of the dead, and a journey through time, loss, and transformation. Together, these two works, created nearly fifty years apart, frame the exhibition with a meditation on mortality, reinvention, and the fragile persistence of life.
Installation view of the exhibition Boris Mikhailov: Ukrainian Diary at The Photographers’ Gallery, London showing at left, photographs from his series Salt Lake (1986, below); at at right in the background, photographs from his series I am not I (1992, below)
A major retrospective of work by influential Ukrainian artist Boris Mikhailov (b. 1938, Kharkiv, Ukraine).
Ukrainian Diary is the first major UK retrospective of work by Boris Mikhailov, one of the most influential contemporary artists from Eastern Europe. Mikhailov has explored social and political subjects for more than fifty years through his experimental photographic work.
Described as an outsider, a trickster and ‘a kind of proto-punk’, Mikhailov combines humour, mischief and tragedy in his pioneering practice, ranging from documentary photography and conceptual work, to painting and performance. Since the 1960s, he has been creating a powerful record of the tumultuous changes in Ukraine that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ukrainian Diary brings together work from over twenty of his most important series, up to his more recent projects. Viewed today, against the backdrop of current events and ongoing war in Ukraine, Mikhailov’s work is all the more poignant and enlightening.
“The word ‘red’ in Russian contains the root of the word for beauty. It also means the Revolution and evokes blood and the red flag. Everyone associates red with Communism. Maybe that’s enough. But few people know that red suffused all our lives, at all levels.”
Ukrainian Diary is the first major UK retrospective of work by Boris Mikhailov (b. 1938, Kharkiv). One of the most influential contemporary artists from Eastern Europe, Mikhailov has explored social and political subjects for more than fifty years through his experimental photographic work.
Described as an outsider, a trickster and ‘a kind of proto-punk’, Mikhailov combines humour, mischief and tragedy in his pioneering work, ranging from documentary photography and conceptual work, to painting and performance. Since the 1960s, he has been creating a powerful record of life in the Ukraine and the tumultuous changes that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union.
From early underground works and images of everyday life in Kharkiv, to his self-depreciating self-portraits which mock traditional Soviet masculine stereotypes, Mikhailov creates an ambiguous, fragmented view of a world in constant flux. His photographs contradict the onesideness of Soviet ideology, especially during the time when photography was heavily controlled and censored in the Soviet Union.
Ukrainian Diary brings together work from over twenty of Mikhailov’s most important series, including Yesterday’s Sandwich, I am not I, Salt Lake, Red, Sots Art, Luriki, Case History and Theatre of War.
Self-taught and ‘somewhat careless’ (in his words), Yesterday’s Sandwich (1960s-1970s), one of his most important series, began as an accident when a handful of slides stuck together. He was fascinated by the result and continued to randomly layer slides, creating new combinations which ‘reflected the dualism and contradictions of Soviet Society’.
Mikhailov created ‘bad photography’ as a way to undermine official Soviet aesthetics, as introduced in the series Black Archive (1968-1979). Badly printed, damaged or poor-quality productions were an artistic device that Mikhailov described as ‘lousy photography for a lousy reality’.
The series Red (1965-1978) bridges documentary photography and conceptual art – over 70 images taken in the late 1960s and 1970s highlighting the colour red in everyday objects and scenes. His documenting of red reveals the extent to which communist ideology saturated daily life.
Together his uncompromising, subversive work is a powerful photographic narrative on Ukraine’s contemporary history.
Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 1938, Boris Mikhailov is a self-taught photographer. Having trained as an engineer, he was first introduced to photography when he was given a camera to document the state-owned factory where he worked. With access to a camera, he took advantage of this opportunity to take nude photographs of his first wife – an act forbidden under Soviet norms – which he developed and printed in the factory’s laboratory. He was fired when the photographs were found by KGB agents. From then he pursued photography full time, using it as a subversive tool and operating as part of the underground art scene. His work first gained international exposure in the 1990s with the series Case History, a shockingly direct portrayal of the realities of post-Soviet life in the Ukraine.
Curator and researcher, Kateryna Filyuk, explores the intimate diaristic qualities of Boris Mikhailov’s subversive body of work.
Even before seeing Ukrainian Diary at The Photographers’ Gallery, I found myself thinking about its title. The idea of a diary fits naturally with Mikhailov’s work: instead of creating a grand, official narrative inherent to Soviet photography, he developed an intimate and fragmented way of seeing. The term Ukrainian, however, is less straightforward. Some of his more recent bodies of work that directly address Ukrainian events: Parliament  (2015-17); and Temptation of Death  (2014-19), which adopts the Kyiv Crematorium as its binding motif, are not included in the exhibition.
Mikhailov began challenging Soviet photographic norms as early as the mid-1960s, working with a circle of like-minded friends. At the time, photographing “for no reason” could be equated with spying; showing Soviet life as anything less than ideal was seen as an attack on communist values; and photographing the naked body could result in prison. Mikhailov did all of this and more. He turned his camera toward mundane subjects, mixed genres freely and questioned photography’s claim to present an ultimate truth. By subverting idealised Soviet imagery, he proposed a raw, ironic, and unremarkable version of reality, always seeking to capture the spirit of his times through the everyday. Or, better yet, to condense that spirit for others, not through words but through a visual semantics of his own making.
Art historian Nadiia Bernard-Kovalchuk reflects on whether Ukrainian is an appropriate label for the Kharkiv School of Photography, of which Mikhailov is a founding figure. She writes that ”the school’s activities stretch between two heterogeneous historical realities: on the one hand, Brezhnev’s ‘stagnation’ and the perestroika fatal to the USSR, and on the other, the economically brutal birth of the Ukrainian state.” [2] This dramatic time span, during which Ukrainians experienced long-awaited yet destabilising transformation, offers a more fitting temporality for understanding Mikhailov’s work in Ukrainian Diary. Geographically, most of his projects take place in what was first Soviet Ukraine and later became independent Ukraine. Temporally, however, they exist within a landscape marked by ruptures, discontinuities, and perpetual new beginnings.
In the preface to one of his most audacious works, Case History  (1997-98), Mikhailov reflects on the lack of a photographic record documenting complex historical shifts in Ukraine: ”I was aware that I was not allowed to let it happen once again that some periods of life would be erased.” [3] After returning to Kharkiv from a year in Berlin, he was struck by the stark divide between the newly rich and the newly poor, a process already in full swing. Yet his aim in photographing the homeless did not follow the classic documentary model, such as the USA Farm Security Administration’s work, which sought to highlight a social problem and prompt state intervention. Instead, by showing the everyday lives of those most affected by the collapse, Mikhailov “directly assaults the onlookers’ sensitivity” [4] and “transgresses the acceptable limits of representation,” [5] His goal was not to provoke pity or shock though.
Rather, Mikhailov asserts something more fundamental: the individual’s right to exist and express themselves beyond convention. Through his unwavering attention to ordinary lives, he bears witness to massive transformations unfolding beyond any single person’s control. Ukrainian Diary, then, is not simply a national label or a chronological record. It is a testament to how one artist has persistently documented a world defined by instability, reinvention, and the fragile, but enduring presence, of everyday life.
Kateryna Filyuk
Kateryna Filyuk is a curator and researcher, who holds PhD from the University of Palermo. In 2017-2021 she served as a chief curator at Izolyatsia., a Platform for cultural initiatives in Kyiv. Before joining Izolyatsia, she was co-curator of the Festival of Young Ukrainian Artists at Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv (2017). The co-founder of the publishing house 89books in Palermo, she has participated in curatorial programmes at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin, 2017), De Appel (Amsterdam, 2015-16), the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, 2014) and the Gwangju Biennale (2012). In 2023 Filyuk was a visiting PhD student at the Central European University (Vienna) and in 2024 a visiting researcher at FOTOHOF Archiv (Salzburg) and the Predoctoral Fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Rome). Currently she develops a two-year scholarly initiative – the Methodology Seminars for Art History in Ukraine in collaboration with the Bibliotheca Hertziana and the Max Weber Foundation’s Research Centre Ukraine.
Footnotes
1/ Boris Mikhailov, “Everyone has became more circumspect…,” in Tea Coffee Cappuccino (Köln: König, 2011), 230. 2/ Nadiia Bernard-Kovalchuk, The Kharkiv School of Photography: Game Against Apparatus. Kharkiv: Museum of Kharkiv School of Photography, 2020, 17. 3/ Boris Mikhailov, Case History (Zurich: Scalo, 1999), 7. 4/ “Symbolic Bodies, Real Pain: Post-Soviet History, Boris Mikhailov and the Impasse of Documentary Photography,” in The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture (London: Wallflower Press, 2007), 58. 5/ Olena Chervonik, “Urban Opera of Boris Mikhailov,” MOKSOP, accessed November 25, 2025
Text from The Photographers’ Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition Boris Mikhailov: Ukrainian Diary at The Photographers’ Gallery, London showing photographs from his series Case History (1997-1998, below)
In the [Case History] book preface, Mikhailov explains that already in 1997 he vividly apprehended the rupture of Ukrainian society into new, burgeoning social strata, when the new rich and the new poor began to acquire features of class identities with their own psychology and behavioural modalities. The new rich were already hard to approach, protecting themselves with bodyguards and other social fences. The new poor, however, specifically the bomzhes (homeless people with no social support) could still allow an outsider in their midst – this was “a chance”, according to Mikhailov, that could only last for a short period of time. Most of the book’s protagonists had only recently lost their homes. Their rapidly deteriorating social position was still uncertain, malleable, and flickering with hope. Yet, the transformation was inevitable, which propelled the artist to act: “For me it was very important that I took their photos when they were still like “normal” people. I made a book about the people who got into trouble but didn’t manage to harden so far.” [2] …
Mikhailov’s visual pairings deliver unambiguous messages, almost violent in their straightforwardness. Multiple juxtapositions of unconsciously drunk men prostrating under passers-by feet to that of stray dogs, dead or alive, explicitly comment on human’s life disintegration to the state of an animal, its reduction to bare bones – and yes, an animal carcass, a metaphoric sign of abject poverty, is also present in this visual narrative in a scene with two men dragging a piece of spinal vertebrae of a large creature, a cow or, perhaps, a horse. Rotten banana peels sit across the page from infected flaccid limbs and genitalia. A posture of a naked woman reclining on a sullied mattress echoes that of a rubber sex doll staring from the next page. A close-up of a bruised woman’s breast with a crude stitches over a wound parallels gaping cracks of a damaged mail box. Thus the physical body of a homeless person starts speaking about the city as an organism, equally abused and dismembered. Wounds inflected upon flesh are surface manifestations of wounds inflected upon the city and the society at large. …
The majority of Mikhailov’s photographs provide no emotional crutches to lean on, no mechanism of ennobling or aestheticising infected abused flesh of the homeless. It is presented “as is”: frontal, looming large with all its detailed naturalistic vividness. If there is a visual code that Mikhailov activates in these images, it comes from a clinical rather than an art discourse, from surveilling patents for medical records. It is a discourse that John Tagg described as a nineteenth century record-keeping practice associated with certain disciplinary institutions such as an asylum or a prison that with the help of photography created a new social body of dependent subjects upon whom power could be exercised due to their newly-minted subaltern position.
Art, following Barthes’ dictum, domesticates and tames photography [21]. It generates the level of “studium”, accepted cultural knowledge that veils the trauma, renders it familiar, therefore trivial, therefore easily dismissed. Mikhailov makes his viewers constantly oscillate between images that give themselves for contemplation and images that confront with their clinical nature that can be scrutinised and observed but certainly not contemplated. Not one or the other type of image, but the switch between the two unsettles the viewing process. Mikhailov orchestrates poses and gestures of his subjects to create this visual roller-coster of plunging in and out of the aesthetic.
2/ Boris Mikhailov, Case History (Zurich: Scalo, 1985) 21/ Matthias Christen, “Symbolic Bodies, Real Pain: Post-Soviet History, Boris Mikhailov and the Impasse of Documentary Photography,” in The Image and the Witness. Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture (London: Wallflower Press, 2007), 52-66
Extract from Olena Chervonik, “Urban Opera of Boris Mikhailov,” on the MOKSOP website, 9th April 2020 [Online] Cited 27/01/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Curator: Taous Dahmani, art historian and writer. The exhibition was developed in collaboration with Autofoto (Rafael Hortala Vallve and Corinne Quin) and features archival material from Raynal Pellicer
Untitled [Women Photobooth Portraits] c. 1940s-1950s
This “small archival display celebrating 100 years of the much-loved photobooth” (which occurred in 2025) – no installation photographs available – seems not a patch on one of the best photography exhibitions on Art Blart in 2025: Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June – August 2025 which introduced us to “Alan Adler (2932-2024), who while little known, was the oldest and longest serving photobooth technician in the world… For over 50 years, Adler maintained a fleet of photobooths across Melbourne / Narrm, most notably the site at Flinders Street Station.”
There are still some delightful, happy, joyful snapshots in this posting however.
Pay the money, cross the threshold of the booth, draw the curtain, adjust the seat, comport yourself into whatever “pose” you choose, then perform for each flash of the Time Machine.
Captured in a space of privacy and experimentation these portraits of the self (your essential being at that moment in time), eventually, minutes later, reveal you to yourself.
Some conforming, some rebelling, some crossing the taboo of self-revealing.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to The Photographers’ Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Practical at first – cheap, quick and accessible identity photos – the booth quickly became something else: a private stage. Behind the curtain, anyone could perform beyond the gaze of a photographer. Sitters experimented alone or packed in with friends, kissing, laughing, trying on disguises or staring back with deadpan seriousness. The Photomaton promised autonomy: pull the curtain, face the lens, decide how to appear. Some likened the ritual to a slot machine: drop a coin, wait for the surprise. Josepho’s invention, in hindsight, feels like the ancestor of the selfie: it put image-making directly into the hands of its subjects, a century before smartphones did the same. …
In our digital world, we’re used to photographs that are instant, endless and easily stored or deleted. By contrast, the analogue photobooth resists perfection. Control is never total: the flashes are blinding, the stool wobbles, the timing is merciless. Each strip bears the marks of chance – a blink, a smirk, a blur, a half-formed gesture. That unpredictability is its charm, giving the images a peculiar energy that no app filter can replicate.
Their resurgence taps into the wider appetite or the tactile and the ‘vintage’: objects that feel authentic precisely because they escape the seamlessness of the digital. The photobooth doesn’t have a photographer mediating or directing the sitter. It’s a space of agency and play, where friends cram together or someone experiments alone, producing an image that can be private or shared, that can be spontaneous or completely staged.
In contemporary culture, where self-presentation is curated and optimised online, the photobooth is a refreshing counterpoint. The strips are imperfect, uneditable and physical – small paper relics that capture a moment in time with all its messiness intact. That’s why they resonate now: they remind us that identity is not just polished images, but also the accidents, surprises and fleeting gestures that make us human.”
Installation view of the AUTOFOTO photobooth at the exhibition Strike a Pose! 100 Years of the Photobooth at The Photographers’ Gallery, London
Anonymous photographer Portrait of Anatol Josepho in his Photomaton United States of America, 1927 Courtesy Raynal Pellicer
French Photomaton Advertising “6 photos in 8 minutes. Identity” 1927 Courtesy Raynal Pellicer
8 Poses Strip USA, 1927 Courtesy Raynal Pellicer
8 Poses Strip (details) USA, 1927 Courtesy Raynal Pellicer
“Always thinking of you” United States of America, 1930s Courtesy Raynal Pellicer
A special, small archival display celebrating 100 years of the much-loved photobooth.
2025 marks 100 years since the invention of the photobooth in New York. A game-changer for the world of photography, photobooths became an everyday sight in cities around the world.
In the 1950s and 1960s, photobooths were a common feature at fairs, shopping centres and train stations. With no technical knowledge needed and no operator, anyone could step behind the curtain, alone or crammed in with friends, put their money in the slot and strike a pose. The booths were loved by everyone, from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, to John and Jacqueline Kennedy, and used by artist Andy Warhol for his famous series of self-portraits.
These popular coin-operated booths began to disappear with the rise of digital photography in the 1990s. Now, restored by dedicated experts, analogue booths are reappearing in cities across the world and enjoying a resurgence of interest and delight with modern-day fans.
This autumn we’re celebrating the centenary by telling the story of the much-loved photobooth. Through a small archival display, Strike a Pose! 100 Years of the Photobooth will explore the history, imperfections and quirks of the booth. There’s also a 1960s analogue booth at the Gallery for everyone to create their own selfie souvenir and a live feed to see the unique mechanics of the booth in action.
Strike a Pose! 100 Years of the Photobooth features work from the collection of Raynal Pellicer and is part of a year-long programme of centenary celebrations, in partnership with AUTOFOTO.
Photomaton Pochette France, c. 1930s-1950s Courtesy Raynal Pellicer
Couple c. 1930s-1950s Courtesy Raynal Pellicer
Couples c. 1930s-1950s Courtesy Raynal Pellicer
Couples (details) c. 1930s-1950s Courtesy Raynal Pellicer
This autumn The Photographers’ Gallery celebrates 100 years of the much-loved photobooth.
Through a special archival display, Strike a Pose! 100 Years of the Photobooth looks back on the history of the photobooth and explores its intimate charms, imperfections and quirks.
2025 marks the year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of the invention of the analogue photobooth by Anatol Josepho. His first Photomaton appeared on Broadway in New York in 1925. The photobooth was a game-changer for the world of photography and quickly became an everyday sight in cities around the world.
A combined studio and photography lab in one place, booths offered the first affordable access to photography. With no technical knowledge needed and no operator, anyone could step behind the curtain, put their money in the slot and strike a pose.
After the success of the first booth, when over 7,500 New Yorkers used the booth in its first 5 days, global success quickly followed. The first photobooth launched in the UK in Selfridges, London, in 1928 and was an immediate hit.
In the 1950s and 1960s, photobooths were a common feature at fairs, shopping centres and train stations. These intimate inexpensive spaces gave everyone the freedom to control their own images. Behind the curtain, whether alone or crammed in with friends, the photobooth was a playground, beyond the gaze of a photographer. The booths were loved by everyone, from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, to John and Jacqueline Kennedy, and used by artist Andy Warhol for his famous series of self-portraits.
The coin-operated booths, once ever-present on high streets and stations, disappeared with the rise of digital photography in the 1990s. Now, restored by dedicated experts, analogue booths are reappearing in cities across the world and enjoying a resurgence of interest and delight with modern-day fans. Alongside the display of archive prints, vintage strips and materials, there’ll also be a booth at the Gallery for everyone to create their own selfie souvenir and a live feed to see the unique mechanics of the booth in action.
Strike a Pose! 100 Years of the Photobooth features work from the collection of Raynal Pellicer and is part of a year-long programme of centenary celebrations, in partnership with AUTOFOTO.
AUTOFOTO are analogue photobooth experts who have been rescuing and restoring original auto-photography machines for over a decade. Their restored machines can be found in locations across London and Barcelona. Through careful restoration and servicing, AUTOFOTO’s mission is to ensure the survival of these beautiful machines and photobooth photography for future generations.
Press release from The Photographers’ Gallery, London
Untitled [Color Photobooth Portraits] c. 1940s-1950s Courtesy Raynal Pellicer
Untitled [Color Photobooth Portraits] (details) c. 1940s-1950s Courtesy Raynal Pellicer
Strip United States of America, 1950s Courtesy Raynal Pellicer
![Installation view of the exhibition 'Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography' at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 - June 2026 showing from top left to right, top to bottom, Unknown photographer Harry 'Belafonte and Joan Fontaine' 1957; Gene Lester (American, 1910-1994) 'Dean and Jeannne Martin' 1958; Bob Beerman (American) 'Rock Hudson' c. 1953; Unknown photographer 'Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in "This Earth is Mine"]' 1959; Unknown photographer 'Jean Simmons [in "The Big Country"]' 1958; Unknown photographer 'Elizabeth Threatt and Dewey Martin [in "The Big Sky"]' 1952; Unknown photographer 'Dorothy Malone and Anthony Quinn' 1957; Unknown photographer 'André De Toth and Veronica Lake' 1944; Unknown photographer 'Edmund O'Brien and Tom D'Andrea [in "Fighter Squadron"]' 1948; Unknown photographer 'Ward Bond and Ida Lupino [in "On Dangerous Ground"]' 1951; Unknown photographer 'Aldo Ray and Katharine Hepburn [in "Pat and Mike"]' 1952](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/face-value-installation-q.jpg "Installation view of the exhibition 'Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography' at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 - June 2026 showing from top left to right, top to bottom, Unknown photographer Harry 'Belafonte and Joan Fontaine' 1957; Gene Lester (American, 1910-1994) 'Dean and Jeannne Martin' 1958; Bob Beerman (American) 'Rock Hudson' c. 1953; Unknown photographer 'Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in \"This Earth is Mine\"]' 1959; Unknown photographer 'Jean Simmons [in \"The Big Country\"]' 1958; Unknown photographer 'Elizabeth Threatt and Dewey Martin [in \"The Big Sky\"]' 1952; Unknown photographer 'Dorothy Malone and Anthony Quinn' 1957; Unknown photographer 'André De Toth and Veronica Lake' 1944; Unknown photographer 'Edmund O'Brien and Tom D'Andrea [in \"Fighter Squadron\"]' 1948; Unknown photographer 'Ward Bond and Ida Lupino [in \"On Dangerous Ground\"]' 1951; Unknown photographer 'Aldo Ray and Katharine Hepburn [in \"Pat and Mike\"]' 1952")
![Unknown photographer. 'Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine [in "Island in the Sun"]' 1957](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/unknown-photographer-harry-belafonte-and-joan-fontaine.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine [in \"Island in the Sun\"]' 1957")
![Unknown photographer. 'Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in "This Earth is Mine"]' 1959](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/jean-simmons-and-rock-hudson.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in \"This Earth is Mine\"]' 1959")
![Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947) 'Anna May Wong [in "Limehouse Blues"]' 1934](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ray-jones-anna-may-wong.jpg "Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947) 'Anna May Wong [in \"Limehouse Blues\"]' 1934")
![Unknown photographer. 'Myrna Loy [in "Across the Pacific"]' 1926](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/unknown-photographer-myrna-loy.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Myrna Loy [in \"Across the Pacific\"]' 1926")
![John Miehle (American, 1902-1952) 'Dolores del Rio and Edmund Lowe [in "The Bad One"]' 1930](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/john-miehle-dolores-del-rio-and-edmund-lowe-1.jpg "John Miehle (American, 1902-1952) 'Dolores del Rio and Edmund Lowe [in \"The Bad One\"]' 1930")
![Robert Coburn (American, 1900-1990) 'Vera Zorina [in "The Goldywyn Follies"]' c. 1937](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/robert-coburn-vera-zorina.jpg "Robert Coburn (American, 1900-1990) 'Vera Zorina [in \"The Goldywyn Follies\"]' c. 1937")
![James Manatt (American, 1896-1989) 'Joan Crawford [in "Letty Lynton"]' 1932](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/james-manatt-joan-crawford.jpg "James Manatt (American, 1896-1989) 'Joan Crawford [in \"Letty Lynton\"]' 1932")
![Elmer Fryer (American, 1898-1944) 'Lili Damita [in "The Match King"]' c. 1932](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/elmer-fryer-lili-damita.jpg "Elmer Fryer (American, 1898-1944) 'Lili Damita [in \"The Match King\"]' c. 1932")
![Bert Longworth (American, 1893-1964) 'Amelia Earhart with Helen Hayes [on set of "A Farewell to Arms"]' 1932](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/bert-longworth-amelia-earhart-and-helen-hayes.jpg "Bert Longworth (American, 1893-1964) 'Amelia Earhart with Helen Hayes [on set of \"A Farewell to Arms\"]' 1932")
![Unknown photographer. 'Elsa Lanchester [in "The Bride of Frankenstein"]' 1935](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/elsa-lanchester.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Elsa Lanchester [in \"The Bride of Frankenstein\"]' 1935")
![Unknown photographer. 'Louis Armstrong [in "Cabin in the Sky"]' 1943](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/louis-armstrong.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Louis Armstrong [in \"Cabin in the Sky\"]' 1943")
!['Elvis Presley [Fans' Star Library magazine, No. 13]' 1959](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/elvis-presley.jpg "'Elvis Presley [Fans' Star Library magazine, No. 13]' 1959")
![Ray Wilson. 'Mia Farrow [in "Rosemary's Baby"]' c. 1967](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ray-wilson-mia-farrow.jpg "Ray Wilson. 'Mia Farrow [in \"Rosemary's Baby\"]' c. 1967")
!['Untitled [Women Photobooth Portraits]' c. 1940s-1950s from the exhibition 'Strike a Pose! 100 Years of the Photobooth' at The Photographers' Gallery, London, October 2025 - February 2026](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/women-photobooth-portraits.jpg "'Untitled [Women Photobooth Portraits]' c. 1940s-1950s from the exhibition 'Strike a Pose! 100 Years of the Photobooth' at The Photographers' Gallery, London, October 2025 - February 2026")
!['Untitled [Color Photobooth Portraits]' c. 1940s-1950s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/untitled-color-photobooth-portraits.jpg "'Untitled [Color Photobooth Portraits]' c. 1940s-1950s")
!['Untitled [Color Photobooth Portraits]' c. 1940s-1950s (detail)](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/untitled-color-photobooth-portraits-a.jpg "'Untitled [Color Photobooth Portraits]' c. 1940s-1950s (detail)")
!['Untitled [Color Photobooth Portraits]' c. 1940s-1950s (detail)](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/untitled-color-photobooth-portraits-b.jpg "'Untitled [Color Photobooth Portraits]' c. 1940s-1950s (detail)")
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