Exhibition: ‘Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron’ at the Milwaukee Art Museum

“Here is one the world’s top ten photographers of all time – a woman, taking photographs within the first twenty five years of the birth of photography” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 3rd May – 28th July, 2024

Organiser: Kristen Gaylord, the Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Annie' 1864 from the exhibition 'Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron' at the Milwaukee Art Museum, May - July, 2024

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Annie
1864
Albumen print
25.5cm x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

Julia Margaret Cameron made this portrait of Annie Philpot, the daughter of a family staying on the Isle of Wight, within a month of receiving her first camera. She inscribed some prints of it ‘My first success’. She later recounted, ‘I was in a transport of delight. I ran all over the house to search for gifts for the child. I felt as if she entirely had made the picture.’

Text from the V&A website

 

 

“Nothing is scared but beauty.”1

 

 

Since the establishment of Art Blart in November 2008, Julia Margaret Cameron appears in a select and esteemed group of photographic artists who each have over 6 postings in the archive: Eugène Atget, William Eggleston, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Dorothea Lange, Robert Mapplethorpe, László Moholy-Nagy and August Sander.

I am always ecstatic when I see Cameron’s work. Nobody has ever taken portraits like JMC before or since.

As I have written on JMC in earlier exhibitions:

“When you think about it, here is one the world’s top ten photographers of all time – a woman, taking photographs within the first twenty five years of the birth of commercial photography, using rudimentary technology and chemicals – whose photographs are still up there with the greatest ever taken. Still recognisable as her own and no one else’s after all these years. That is a staggering achievement – and tells you something about the talent, tenacity and perspicacity of the women… that she possessed and illuminated such a penetrating discernment – a clarity of vision and intellect which provides a deep understanding and insight into the human condition.”2

“As with any genius (a person who possesses exceptional intellectual or creative power) who goes against the grain, full recognition did not come until later. But when it does arrive, it is undeniable. As soon as you see a JMC photograph… you know it is by her, it could be by no one else. Her “signature” – closely framed portraits and illustrative allegories based on religious and literary works; far-away looks, soft focus and lighting, low depth of field; strong men (“great thro’ genius”) and beautiful, sensual, heroic women (“great thro’ love”) – is her genius.

There is something so magical about how JMC can frame a face, emerging from darkness, side profile, filling the frame, top lit. Soft out of focus hair with one point of focus in the image. Beautiful light. Just the most sensitive capturing of a human being, I don’t know what it is… a glimpse into another world, a ghostly world of the spirit, the soul of the living seen before they are dead.

Love and emotion. Beauty, beautiful, beatified.”3

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ “The line runs from Winckelmann’s Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works of Art in Painting and Sculpture, first published in 1755, to the end of the 19th century and beyond; see Walter Pater’s “Winckelmann,” written in 1867 and published in The Renaissance.

Margaret Walters. “The Classical Nude,” in Margaret Walters. The Nude Male: A New Perspective. New York & London: Paddington Press, 1978, p. 34. Footnote 2.

2/ Marcus Bunyan on the exhibition Julia Margaret Cameron: from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney on Art Blart 24th October 2015

3/ Marcus Bunyan on the exhibition Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography at the National Portrait Gallery, London on Art Blart 13th May 2018

Julia Margaret Cameron exhibitions on Art Blart

~ Exhibition: ‘Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In’ at the National Portrait Gallery, London, March – June 2024

~ Exhibition: ‘Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography’ at the National Portrait Gallery, London Part 1, March – May 2018

~ Exhibition: ‘Julia Margaret Cameron’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, November 2015 – February 2016

~ Exhibition: ‘Julia Margaret Cameron: from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney Part 2, August – October 2015

~ Exhibition: ‘Julia Margaret Cameron: from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney Part 1, August – October 2015

~ Exhibition: ‘Julia Margaret Cameron’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, August 2013 – January 2014


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

 

 

“I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied.”


Julia Margaret Cameron

 

 

One of the most influential photographers in the medium’s history, Julia Margaret Cameron made portraits of transcendent beauty in close-up, soft-focus photographs. Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron – a major traveling exhibition the Milwaukee Art Museum partnered with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, to bring to the Midwest – highlights the renowned photographer’s pioneering style.

Cameron (English b. India, 1815-1879) received her first camera at the age of 48, making her career even more impressive for its brevity. Her portraits depict family and friends; contemporary scientists, scholars, and artists; and scenes staging allegorical, biblical, historical, and literary stories. For over a decade, she produced thousands of photographs and built a career, selling and exhibiting her work internationally. Her distinct style set her apart, and her legacy positions her as an artist who broke ground for future photographers.

The Museum’s unique presentation of this celebratory exhibition features more than 90 objects and includes works of art from its collection to provide historical context for the art that influenced, and was influenced by, Cameron.

A V&A Exhibition – Touring the World

Text from the Milwaukee Art Museum website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'A Sibyl after the manner of Michelangelo' 1864 from the exhibition 'Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron' at the Milwaukee Art Museum, May - July, 2024

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
A Sibyl after the manner of Michelangelo
1864
Albumen print
28.5cm x 22.5cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

Just as she modelled her Madonna photographs on Renaissance art, Julia Margaret Cameron looked to painting and sculpture as inspiration for her allegorical and narrative subjects. Some works are photographic interpretations of specific paintings by artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo. Others aspired more generally to create ‘Pictorial Effect’.

This depiction of a sibyl, a prophetess from classical mythology, is based on Michelangelo’s fresco of the Erythraean Sibyl on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome (1508-1510). The model’s braided hair, bare arms and profile pose with a large book are all copied from Michelangelo’s version. Cameron’s good friend and neighbour Tennyson had prints of the Sistine Chapel frescoes decorating his home.

Cameron’s friend and mentor, the painter G.F. Watts, wrote to Cameron, ‘Please do not send me valuable mounted copies … send me any … defective unmounted impressions, I shall be able to judge just as well & shall be just as much charmed with success & shall not feel that I am taking money from you.’ This photograph is one of approximately 67 in the V&A’s collection that was recently discovered to have belonged to him. Many are unique, which suggests that Cameron was not fully satisfied with them. Some may seem ‘defective’ but others are enhanced by their flaws. All of them contribute to our understanding of Cameron’s working process and the photographs that did meet her standards.

Text from the V&A website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'The Whisper of the Muse' 1865

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
The Whisper of the Muse
1865
Albumen print
25.5cm x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

Julia Margaret Cameron looked to painting and sculpture as inspiration for her allegorical and narrative subjects. Some works are photographic interpretations of specific paintings by artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo. Others aspired more generally to create ‘Pictorial Effect’.

Cameron’s harshest critics attacked her for using the supposedly truthful medium of photography to depict imaginary subject matter. Some suggested that at best her photographs could serve as studies for painters. The South Kensington Museum mainly acquired ‘Madonnas’ and ‘Fancy Subjects’, and exhibited them as pictures in their own right.

Cameron considered her close friend, the painter and sculptor G. F. Watts, to be her chief artistic advisor. She wrote of this period, ‘Mr. Watts gave me such encouragement that I felt as if I had wings to fly with.’ Here she transforms him into a musician, perhaps to symbolise the arts in general, rather than showing him specifically as a painter. Kate Keown, the girl on the right, whispers inspiration.

Text from the V&A website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'La Madonna Aspettante' 1865

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
La Madonna Aspettante
1865
Albumen print from wet collodion negative
25.5 x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

Many of the photographs purchased by the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) from Julia Margaret Cameron were ‘Madonna Groups’ depicting the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ. Her housemaid Mary Hillier posed as the Virgin Mary so often she became known locally as ‘Mary Madonna’.

Like many of her contemporaries, Cameron was a devout Christian. As a mother of six, the motif of the Madonna and child held particular significance for her. In aspiring to make ‘High Art’, Cameron aimed to make photographs that could be uplifting and morally instructive.

Text from the V&A website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) 'My grand child aged 2 years & three months' 1865

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879)
My grand child aged 2 years & three months
1865
Albumen print from wet collodion negative
25.5 x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

Julia Margaret Cameron’s earliest photographic subjects were family and friends, many of whom were eminent literary figures. These early portraits reveal how she experimented with dramatic lighting and close-up compositions, features that would become her signature style.

Cameron made numerous studies of her grandson, both as himself and in the guise of the Christ child. He features in eight of the photographs the South Kensington Museum acquired in 1865.

Text from the V&A website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) 'The Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty' June 1866

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
The Mountain Nymph Sweet Liberty
1866
Albumen print
25.5cm x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Christabel' 1866

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Christabel
1866
Albumen print from wet collodion negative
25.5 x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

In the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel is a virtuous maiden who is put under a spell by an evil sorceress. Cameron wrote of photographs such as this, ‘When coming to something which, to my eye, was very beautiful, I stopped there instead of screwing on the lens to the more definite focus which all other photographers insist upon’.

Text from the V&A website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Beatrice' March 1866

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Beatrice
March 1866
Albumen print from wet collodion negative
35.3 x 28.1cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

In late 1865, Julia Margaret Cameron began using a larger camera. It held a 15 x 12 inch glass negative, rather than the 12 x 10 inch negative of her first camera. Early the next year she wrote to Henry Cole with great enthusiasm – but little modesty – about the new turn she had taken in her work.

Cameron initiated a series of large-scale, closeup heads that fulfilled her photographic vision. She saw them as a rejection of ‘mere conventional topographic photography – map-making and skeleton rendering of feature and form’ in favour of a less precise but more emotionally penetrating form of portraiture. Cameron also continued to make narrative and allegorical tableaux, which were larger and bolder than her previous efforts.

Cameron based the model’s pose, drapery and sad expression on a painting attributed to Guido Reni that was famous at the time. The subject is the 16th-century Italian noblewoman Beatrice Cenci, executed for arranging the murder of her abusive father. One review admired Cameron’s soft rendering of ‘the pensive sweetness of the expression of the original picture’ while another mocked her for claiming to have photographed a historical figure ‘from the life’.

Text from the V&A website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Call I Follow, I Follow, Let Me Die' 1867

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Call I Follow, I Follow, Let Me Die
1867
Carbon print
35.1cm x 26.7cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

In late 1865, Julia Margaret Cameron began using a larger camera. It held a 15 x 12 inch glass negative, rather than the 12 x 10 inch negative of her first camera. Early the next year she wrote to Henry Cole with great enthusiasm – but little modesty – about the new turn she had taken in her work.

Cameron initiated a series of large-scale, closeup heads that fulfilled her photographic vision. She saw them as a rejection of ‘mere conventional topographic photography – map-making and skeleton rendering of feature and form’ in favour of a less precise but more emotionally penetrating form of portraiture. Cameron also continued to make narrative and allegorical tableaux, which were larger and bolder than her previous efforts.

In this image, Cameron concentrates upon the head of her maid Mary Hillier by using a darkened background and draping her in simple dark cloth. The lack of surrounding detail or context obscures references to narrative, identity or historical context. The flowing hair, lightly parted lips and exposed neck suggest sensuality. The title, taken from a line in the poem ‘Lancelot and Elaine’ from Alfred Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’, transforms the subject into a tragic heroine.

Text from the V&A website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Sir John Herschel' 1867

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Sir John Herschel
1867
Albumen print
25.5cm x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

When Julia Margaret Cameron photographed her intellectual heroes, such as Tennyson, her aim was to record ‘the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man’. Another motive was to earn money from prints, since her family’s finances were precarious. Within her first year as a photographer she began exhibiting and selling through the London gallery Colnaghi’s. She used autographs to increase the value of some portraits.

In March 1868 Cameron used two rooms at the South Kensington Museum as a portrait studio. Her letter of thanks makes clear her commercial aspirations, mentioning photographs she had sold and asking for help securing more sitters, including, she wrote hopefully, any ‘Royal sitters you may obtain for me’.

Sir John Herschel was an eminent scientist who made important contributions to astronomy and photography. Cameron wrote of this sitting, ‘When I have such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavoured to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer.’

Text from the V&A website

 

 

Milwaukee Art Museum Presents Major Exhibition of Renowned Photographer Julia Margaret Cameron’s Pioneering Portraits

The only Midwestern presentation of the internationally touring exhibition Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron showcases the 19th-century artist’s explorations of transcendent beauty through portraiture.

The Milwaukee Art Museum partners with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, to present Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron, an exhibition illuminating the transcendent beauty of the renowned photographer’s pioneering style. Featuring more than 90 works, including photographs, paintings, and archival objects, the exhibition will be on view May 3 – July 28, 2024, in the Museum’s Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts.

“We are honoured to bring this significant selection of Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs from the V&A’s collection to the Milwaukee Art Museum,” said Marcelle Polednik, PhD, Donna and Donald Baumgartner Director. “As the only Midwest venue for Arresting Beauty, our visitors will have a unique opportunity to view these rare and groundbreaking prints that will likely not be brought back together again in our generation.”

Julia Margaret Cameron (English born India, 1815-1879) is distinguished as one of the most innovative and influential photographers in the medium’s history. In 1863, at 48 years old, she received her first camera as a gift from one of her children. Cameron refined her artistic practice, creating a distinct style that set her apart from other photographers: close-up, soft-focus portraits often with scratches and smudges she thought enhanced the images’ beauty. Though her style was criticised and considered aesthetically radical for her time, Cameron’s legacy positions her as an artist who broke ground for future photographers. For over a decade, she made photographs from her home in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight and her studio at the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) in London. She is best known for sensitive, spiritual portraits of her contemporaries and scenes staging allegorical, biblical, historical, and literary stories. Sitters for Cameron’s photographs include Charles Darwin and Alfred Tennyson, as well as her family members, friends, neighbours, and domestic workers.

“Julia Margaret Cameron found beauty in the everyday – both in the people around her and in the photographic ‘mistakes’ she made,” said Kristen Gaylord, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Milwaukee Art Museum. “Her artistic pursuit of such beauty left an enduring impact on the field, and I’m thrilled we can bring this major internationally touring exhibition to our community.”

Arresting Beauty travels from Jeu de Paume, Paris, to the Milwaukee Art Museum and comprises three sections: Cameron’s early photography experiments, her portraits of her contemporaries, and her allegorical compositions and artistic tableaux.

Exhibition highlights include:

~ Annie, 1864, a portrait of Cameron’s neighbour, deemed by the artist as her “first success”;
~ The Whisper of the Muse, 1865, an early allegorical photograph featuring artist George Watts as a musician with two local girls as muses;
~ John Frederick William Herschel, 1867, a striking portrait of the prominent scientist and photographic inventor who was a friend of Cameron’s;
~ The Rosebud Garden of Girls, 1868, a composition featuring five women surrounded by flowers, its title inspired by a line from one of Alfred Tennyson’s poems.

Accompanying Cameron’s prints are archival treasures, such as rarely exhibited, handwritten pages from her influential memoir Annals of My Glass House; her camera lens; and a photograph of Cameron taken by her son, Henry Herschel Hay Cameron. To provide historical context for the art that influenced, and was influenced by, Cameron, the Milwaukee Art Museum will present pieces from its collection alongside those from the V&A, including its own photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, three paintings from its European collection, and three prints never before exhibited.

Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron was organised by Lisa Springer, Curator of Photography Touring Exhibitions, and Marta Weiss, Senior Curator of Photography, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The Milwaukee Art Museum presentation was organised by Kristen Gaylord, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts.

Press release from the Milwaukee Art Museum

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'The Rosebud Garden of Girls' 1868

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
The Rosebud Garden of Girls
1868
Albumen print
25.5cm x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Charles Darwin' 1868 (photographed), 1875 (printed)

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Charles Darwin
1868 (photographed), 1875 (printed)
Albumen print from wet collodion negative
25.5 x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

When Julia Margaret Cameron photographed her intellectual heroes such as Alfred Tennyson, Sir John Herschel and Henry Taylor, her aim was to record ‘the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man.’ Another motive was to earn money from prints of the photographs, since her family’s finances were precarious. Within her first year as a photographer she began exhibiting and selling through the London gallery Colnaghi’s. She used autographs to increase the value of some portraits.

The naturalist Charles Darwin and his family rented a cottage on the Isle of Wight from the Camerons in the summer of 1868. By 27 July, Colnaghi’s was advertising, ‘We are glad to observe her gallery of great men enriched by a very fine portrait of Charles Darwin’. Due to the sitter’s celebrity, Cameron later had this portrait reprinted as a more stable carbon print.

Text from the V&A website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Charles Hay Cameron' May 1868

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Charles Hay Cameron
May 1868
Albumen print from wet collodion negative
25.5 x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

Her husband, Charles Hay Cameron, a retired reformer of Indian law and education, frequently posed for Cameron. Cameron’s husband, Charles, was two decades older than Julia.

Text from the V&A website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'I Wait' 1872

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
I Wait
1872
Albumen print
25.5cm x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'St. Agnes' 1872

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
St. Agnes
1872
Albumen print
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Mary Hillier' 1873

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Mary Hillier
1873
Albumen print
25.5cm x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

In this image, Cameron concentrates upon the head of her maid Mary Hillier by using a darkened background and draping her in simple dark cloth. The lack of surrounding detail or context obscures references to narrative, identity or historical context. The flowing hair, lightly parted lips and exposed neck suggest sensuality.

Text from the V&A website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'A Group of Kalutara Peasants' 1878

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
A Group of Kalutara Peasants
1878
Albumen print
25.5cm x 21.3cm
© The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund

 

 

Milwaukee Art Museum
700 N Art Museum Dr, Milwaukee,
WI 53202, United States

Opening hours:
Monday – Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday: 10am – 5pm
Thursday: 10am – 8pm
Friday – Sunday: 10am – 5pm

Milwaukee Art Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In’ at the National Portrait Gallery, London

“In both artist’s work the notion of materialisation (the process of coming into being) and transformation is a powerful creative tool.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 21st March – 16th June, 2024

Curator: Magdalene Keaney

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'The Dream (Mary Hillier)' 1869 from the exhibition 'Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In' at the National Portrait Gallery, London, March - June, 2024

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)

The Dream (Mary Hillier)

1869

Albumen silver print

Wilson Centre for Photography

 

Mary Ann Hilliar was born on the Isle of Wight, and as well as being Julia Margaret Cameron’s favourite model was employed by her as a house maid. She often poised in religious themed photos looking noble and melancholy. As well as modelling for Mrs Cameron she was painted by G F Watts.

She married Thomas Gilbert and had 8 children, descendants of whom still live on the Isle of Wight. Mary Ann lived to the age of 88, although in her later years she suffered badly from rheumatism and was almost blind due to cataracts. She is buried just a few feet away from the Tennyson grave.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website

 

 

Otherworldy beings: the materialisations and transformations of Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron

To pair these two artists together is curatorial inspiration from the gods!

In both artist’s work the notion of materialisation (the process of coming into being) and transformation is a powerful creative tool.

Cameron‘s photographs are exterior to the artist, outward facing creations which capture in the sitter an emanation of spirit. These ethereal creatures mainly based on biblical, mythological, or literary figures … these beautiful apparitions who seem to hover before us were, at the time, seen as radical photographs. Their striking presences and emotive sensibility create a psychological connection with the viewer, photographs imaged / imagined as if they were seen in a dream.

“Cameron’s portraits are famously a pictorialist stagecraft: a pantomime of Christian archetypes, Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics, and the influence of contemporary poets such as Shelley, Keats and Tennyson. What would be considered as potential subject matter for this nascent thirty-year-old medium was formative and cautious, and the conventions of beauty and gender, static” opines Stephen Frailey in an article commenting on the exhibition on the Aperture website (see below). Nothing could be further from the truth.

The artist envisions CHIMERICAL CREATURES. At the time of their production, Cameron’s shimmering portraits were seen as anything but cautious, they were seen as radical and ephemeral: a unique vision, different from everyone else: “directed light, soft focus, and long exposures that allowed the sitters’ slight movement to register in her pictures, instilling them with a sense of breath and life.”1 And, despite their soft focus, I believe that they are never “Pictorialist” photographs – they are “modern” photographs of a radical nature which may have later influenced the Pictorialist aesthetic. As I have commented before,

“She has, of course, been seen as a precursor to Pictorialism, but personally I do not get that feeling from her photographs, even though the artists are using many of the same techniques. Her work is based on the reality of seeing beauty, whereas the Pictorialists were trying to make photography into art by emulating the techniques of etching and painting. While the form of her images owes a lot to the history of classical sculpture and painting, to Romanticism and the Pre-Raphaelites, she thought her’s was already art of the highest order. She did not have to mask its content in order to imitate another medium. Others, such as the curator of the exhibition Marta Weiss, see her as a proto-modernist, precursor to the photographs of Stieglitz and Sander and I would agree. There is certainly a fundamental presence to JMC’s photographs, so that when you are looking at them, they tend to touch your soul, the eyes of some of the portraits burning right through you; while others, others have this ambiguity of meaning, of feeling, as if removed from the everyday life.”2

Contemporary commentators condemned Cameron’s photographs for sloppy craftsmanship (they were out of focus, the plates contained fingerprints, dust, debris, streak marks and swirls of collodion on her negatives). Others mocked her for claiming to have photographed a historical figure ‘from the life’. The kinds of images being made at the time did not interest Cameron. The artist would focus her lens until she thought the subject was beautiful “instead of screwing on the lens to the more definite focus which all other photographers insist upon.” (JMC) “Her photographic vision was a rejection of ‘mere conventional topographic photography – map-making and skeleton rendering of feature and form’ in favour of a less precise but more emotionally penetrating form of portraiture.”3


Woodman‘s photographs are interior to the artist, inward facing creations which capture her/self and the female form in space as a flux or metamorphosis of spirit.

“Francesca Woodman’s photographs explore issues of gender and self, looking at the representation of the body in relation to its surroundings. She puts herself in the frame most often, although these are not conventional self-portraits as she is either partially hidden, or concealed by slow exposures that blur her moving figure into a ghostly presence.”4

They promote in the attentive viewer a ghostly insistence that you could be her – in vulnerability, in presence, in fear of suffering, for our death. Who are we that is represented, what is our place in this lonely world, how do we interact with our shadow? They offer glimpses of another, dream-like world, the microcosm of a life focusing a lens on (her) infinite spirit.

“The artist is a CHIMERICAL CREATURE. Imaginary, visionary. Woodman’s transformations, her interior elements, become part of the wall or the house. She vanishes “from the room, out of the picture, at any given second.”5 A preoccupation with the body / her own body, and the dichotomy of subject-object, also adds multiple meanings and complexity to Woodman’s work. Her many angel images (and also images of umbrellas – Mary Poppins was released in 1964 when Woodman was growing up) suggest movement and the ability to fly, a fascination that found its ultimate expression when she jumped off a building in lower Manhattan at the age of 22.”6

Both Cameron, a woman taking photographs for just fifteen years within the first twenty five years of the birth of commercial photography, using rudimentary technology and chemicals – and Woodman, a woman taking photographs for just eight years, whose practice of staging her body and her face in interior spaces so influenced a later generation of female artists – have left an indelible mark on the history of photography and identity formation.

Working “at times when women were marginal in the history of art and photography” both women are now regarded as important artists, in the upper echelons of photographers who have ever lived. The unique quality of their work shines through, each materialising a distinctive handwriting  which could only ever be a Cameron or  a Woodman (the atmospheric radiance of the one and a sense of vulnerability in the other). In their photographs I feel the transformative potential of that vision (it rumbles through my body, it impinges on my consciousness). Their ability to see things not as others see them, away from the too-rough fingers of the world.

Oh how I would like to see this exhibition in the flesh, to observe the synergies and differences between both artist’s works, to listen to the conversations across time and space through centuries of art practice. I will just have to buy the catalogue instead, but that is no substitute  for physically standing in front of their “beautiful, subtle, intricate, and beguiling” prints.

To feel the vibrations of energy from these otherworldy beings…

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Press release from the exhibition Julia Margaret Cameron at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, August 2013 – January 2014

2/ Marcus Bunyan. “The road less travelled,” on the exhibition ‘Julia Margaret Cameron: from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney on the Art Blart website 24th October 2015 [Online] Cited 11/06/2024

3/ Anonymous. “A Study of the Cenci,” on the V&A website Nd [Online] Cited 11/06/2024

4/ Text from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art website [Online] Cited 25/06/2009. No longer available online

5/ Anna Tellgren. Francesca Woodman: On Being an Angel (50kb pdf). 2015, p. 11

6/ Marcus Bunyan. “The artist as chimerical creature,” on the exhibition ‘Francesca Woodman. On Being an Angel’ at Moderna Museet, Stockholm on the Art Blart website 4th December 2015 [Online] Cited 11/06/2024

Other exhibitions on Julia Margaret Cameron and Francesca Woodman on Art Blart

~ Exhibition: ‘Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography’ at the National Portrait Gallery, London Part 1, March – May 2018
~ Exhibition: ‘Julia Margaret Cameron’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, November 2015 – February 2016
~ Exhibition: ‘Julia Margaret Cameron: from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney Part 2, August – October 2015
~ Exhibition: ‘Julia Margaret Cameron: from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney Part 1, August – October 2015
~ Exhibition: ‘Julia Margaret Cameron’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, August 2013 – January 2014
~ Exhibition: ‘Francesca Woodman. On Being an Angel’ at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, September – December 2015
~ Exhibition: ‘Francesca Woodman’ at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, March – June 2012
~ Exhibition: ‘ARTIST ROOMS: Celmins, Gallagher, Hirst, Katz, Warhol, Woodman’ at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, March – November 2009


Many thankx to the 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.

 

 

The Dream Keeper

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world


Langston Hughes

 

 

Major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery to showcase rare vintage prints by two of art history’s most influential photographers – Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron

More than 160 rare vintage prints will be exhibited as part of Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In, as the two photographers – who worked 100 years apart – are presented in parallel for the first time.

The exhibition will present a thematic exploration of the photographic work produced throughout both artists’ entire careers, including their best known and less familiar work. Artist’s books by Francesca Woodman, which have never been exhibited in the UK, will be on display.

 

Julia Margaret Cameron. 'The Dream' 1869

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
The Dream
1869
Albumen print from wet collodion glass negative
Given by Alan S. Cole, 19 April 1913
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

 

John Milton’s poem On his deceased Wife (about 1658) tells of a fleeting vision of his beloved returning to life in a dream.

 

L-R: 'The Dream (Mary Hillier)' by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1869; 'Untitled', 1979 by Francesca Woodman; 'Annie (My very first success in Photography)', by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1864; 'Self Portrait' at Thirteen by Francesca Woodman, 1972

 

L-R: The Dream (Mary Hillier) by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1869. Wilson Centre for Photography; Untitled, 1979 by Francesca Woodman. Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation © Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London; Annie (My very first success in Photography), by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1864. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Self Portrait at Thirteen by Francesca Woodman, 1972. Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation © Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London

 

This spring, the National Portrait Gallery in London has staged an unexpected pairing of Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron, whose bodies of photographic work were made a hundred years apart. The lushly titled Portraits to Dream In, the result of a thoughtful and imaginative curatorial inquiry, provides a compelling guide to their posthumous resemblances and describes a cultural arc of Romanticism from the mid-nineteenth-century to the turn of the twentieth, from luminous and pastoral to haunted and opaque. Both artists were engaged with the past, and the exhibition places them in a shared classicism of figuration and myth – a revelatory insight for Woodman. Both practiced photography for less than fifteen years. Both of their biographies often eclipse their critical reception. At times their congruence feels magnetic; at times their differences are as illuminating as their similarities.

The exhibition is organised by curator Magda Keaney in tidy themes that support affinities between the two women, among them “Angels and Otherworldly Beings,” “Mythology,” “Doubling,” and “Nature and Femininity.” Much of this is informative and, indeed, suggests a universal lexicon beyond this survey of dual sensibilities. Some of the rhymes are less plausible: a section entitled “Men” fails to persuade that Cameron’s depictions of eminent male political and cultural figures mirror Woodman’s male portraits. Unclothed men make rare appearances in Woodman’s photographs, where they do little to diminish the images as self-portraits. Festooned with a seashell, egg, pomegranate, or dead bird, the men serve as playful surrogates for the photographer herself.

Portraits to Dream In is an occasion to revel in the sumptuous texture of the photographic print, born from technologies decades apart. For both photographers, darkroom manipulation and tactility contribute to the pictures’ emotional mood, however diametric. For Cameron, the shallow depth of field and long shutter speed of the glass plate negative and wet collodion process renders a picture that flutters as if provisional, a vision subject to light glinting off an immaterial surface. They are as ethereal and transparent as Woodman’s are submersed in shadow; a moth bounding away from flame. One body of work, despite its soft patina, feels rooted in a sense of presence, the other by absence: fraught and confessional without evident disclosure.

Extract from Stephen Frailey. “An Unexpected Pairing of Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron,” on the Aperture website May 16, 2024 [Online] Cited 03/06/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

L-R: 'The Dream (Mary Hillier)' by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1869; 'Untitled', 1979 by Francesca Woodman

 

L-R: The Dream (Mary Hillier) by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1869. Wilson Centre for Photography; Untitled, 1979 by Francesca Woodman. Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation © Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London

 

L-R: 'Annie (My very first success in Photography)', by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1864; 'Self Portrait at Thirteen' by Francesca Woodman, 1972

 

L-R: Annie (My very first success in Photography), by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1864. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Self Portrait at Thirteen by Francesca Woodman, 1972. Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation © Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981) 'Untitled' 1979

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981)
Untitled
1979
Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation
© Woodman Family Foundation/DACS London

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Annie (My very first success in Photography)' 1864

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Annie (My very first success in Photography)
1864
Albumen silver print
A photographic portrait of Annie Wilhemina Philpot (1857-1936)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

A photographic portrait of Annie Wilhemina Philpot (1857-1936), taken by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) in 1864. This albumen print forms part of the Herschel Album, created by Cameron for her friend Sir John Herschel (1792-1871). Annie was the daughter of Rev. William Benamin Philpot, a poet and friend of Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892).

Julia Margaret Cameron is one of the most significant figures in nineteenth century photography. Born in Calcutta, she moved to Britain where she lived at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. In 1863, aged forty-eight, she was given a camera by her daughter as a gift. From then on she took portraits of her family, friends and servants, as well as many eminent Victorians. Cameron was strongly influenced by classical art and many of her portraits are pictorial allegories based on religious or literary themes. In 1875 Cameron moved to Sri Lanka (Ceylon), where she died.

Text from the V&A website

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981) 'Self Portrait at Thirteen' 1972

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981)
Self Portrait at Thirteen
1972
Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation
© Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London

 

L-R: 'Untitled', from the 'Caryatid' series by Francesca Woodman, 1980; 'House #3' by Francesca Woodman, 1976; 'Untitled' by Francesca Woodman, 1977-1978

 

L-R: Untitled, from the Caryatid series by Francesca Woodman, 1980. Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation © Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London; House #3 by Francesca Woodman, 1976. Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation © Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London; Untitled by Francesca Woodman, 1977-1978 Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation © Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981) 'Untitled' 1980 From the 'Caryatid' series

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981)
Untitled
1980
From the Caryatid series
Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation
© Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981) 'House #3' 1976

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981)
House #3
1976
Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation
© Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981) 'Untitled' 1977-1978

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981)
Untitled
1977-1978
Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation
© Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London

 

 

From 21 March to 16 June 2024, the National Portrait Gallery will display a major retrospective exhibition of work by two of the most significant photographers in the history of the medium – Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) and Francesca Woodman (1958-1981). Bringing their work together for the first time in an exhibition of this scale, it will showcase more than 160 rare vintage prints from galleries, museums and private collections, including 96 works by Woodman and 71 by Cameron, spanning the entire careers of both photographers – who worked 100 years apart.

Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In will offer a new way to consider these two artists, by moving away from the biographical emphasis that has often been the focus of how their work is understood. The exhibition challenges this approach in its insistence on experiencing the physical print, taking the picture making of Woodman and Cameron as a starting point for consideration of their work. While neither artist aimed for technical perfection in their printing, for each it was a dynamic and essential aspect of their creative process used to explore and extend the possibilities of photographic image making.

After an extensive curatorial research period, works by Julia Margaret Cameron have been selected for loan from major museums internationally including the Getty, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum, New York City; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford; the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; and the National Portrait Gallery’s own Collection. Prints made by Francesca Woodman in her lifetime, nearly 20 of which have not been previously published or exhibited, have been loaned primarily from the Woodman Family Foundation in New York, who have collaborated closely on the making of the exhibition and accompanying publication, with further loans from Tate and the Rhode Island School of Design

The exhibition’s title, Portraits to Dream In, suggests that when seen side by side, both artists conjure a dream state within their work as part of their shared exploration of appearance, identity, the muse, gender and archetypes. The title of the exhibition comes from an observation made by Woodman that photographs could be ‘places for the viewer to dream in’. Both Woodman and Cameron produced work that was deeply rooted in mythology and storytelling and each made portraits of those close to them to represent these narratives. Further, both women explored portraiture beyond its ability to record appearance.

Following a thematic approach, visitors will experience the work of Woodman and Cameron moving forward and back in time between the nineteenth and twentieth century; and also within the relatively short span of years that each artist was active – neither worked for more than fifteen years. Themes on display will comprise: Declaring intentions & claiming space; Angels & Otherworldly Beings; Mythology; Doubling; Nature & femininity; Caryatids & the classical form; Men and Models & Muses.

Key works on display will include the first forays both artists made into the medium of photography, as they began to portray their unique perspectives and carve out distinctive styles. These include Cameron’s self-declared ‘first success’, a portrait of Annie Wilhemina Philpot in 1864, accompanied by Woodman’s ‘Self-portrait at thirteen’, taken during a summer holiday in Antella, Italy in 1972. Photographs depicting angelic and otherworldly figures will be presented in a dense constellation with pieces from Woodman’s evocative and often abstracted Angels series contrasted against Cameron’s more direct representations of cherubic beings and winged cupids. Not to be missed images by Francesca Woodman will include Polka Dots #5 and House #3 both made in 1976, seen alongside ethereal portraits of the British actress Ellen Terry made by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1864.

Other defining works by Woodman include Caryatid pieces from a major photographic project developed in the last year of her life in which she experimented with large scale diazotype prints, including depictions of herself and other models as caryatids – carved female figures which take the place of columns in ancient Greek temples. The exhibition will be the first to draw significant attention to Woodman’s portraits of men as well as exploring the importance of her ongoing photographs of friends. Providing additional insight into her practice, contact sheets and examples of Woodman’s artist’s books will be on display, exhibited in the UK for the first time.

The exhibition will include many of Julia Margaret Cameron’s most famous and much loved portraits, including those of her niece and favourite model, Julia Jackson, who would later be the mother to Bloomsbury artists Virginia Wolf and Vanessa Bell; her striking depiction of Alice Liddell as the goddess Pomona; her portraits of prominent Victorian men including John Frederick William Herschel who she captured as he posed dramatically in The Astronomer (1867); and her frequent muses, May Prinsep and Mary Ann Hillier.

“It is a great pleasure to bring together the work of Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron for the first time in this innovative and imaginative exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Though, of course, Cameron could not have known Woodman, and Woodman did not explicitly reference Cameron, they shared thematic and formal interests uncovered through the exhibition. Paired in this way, we see their work – individually and together – in a new light; one that feels contemporary and timeless. We are immensely grateful to our lead curator Magdalene Keaney for conceptualising this exhibition with great expertise and for the team at the Woodman Family Foundation in New York who have been wonderfully collaborative partners.”

Dr. Nicholas Cullinan OBE
Director, National Portrait Gallery

“Both Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron were utterly committed to the practice of photography and to their practice as artists without reservation. They both worked incredibly hard at times when women were marginal in the history of art and photography. I hope that visitors relish the physical experience of seeing such a large collection of prints that each artist made. They are beautiful, subtle, intricate, and beguiling. Then of course to come away knowing more about these two women artists who have defined the history of photography. I hope it poses questions about how we might think in new ways about relationships between 19th and 20th century photographic practice and what a portrait is and can be.”

Magdalene Keaney
Curator, Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In

The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication, Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In by curator Magdalene Keaney, which will include essays and contributions from the collections curator of the Woodman Family Foundation, Katarina Jerinic, and leading photography historian, Helen Ennis.

Press release from the National Portrait Gallery

All images National Portrait Gallery, London and © National Portrait Gallery, London unless otherwise stated

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'I Wait (Rachel Gurney)' 1872

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
I Wait (Rachel Gurney)
1872
Albumen silver print
32.7 x 25.4cm (12 7/8 x 10 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981) 'Untitled' 1977 From the 'Angels' series

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981)
Untitled
1977
From the Angels series
Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation
© Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London

 

Throughout her career, the young American photographer Francesca

Woodman revisited the theme of angels. In On Being an Angel (1976), she is

seen bending backward as light falls on her white body. A black umbrella is

in the distance. The following year she made a new version – an image with

a darker mood in which she shows her face. Woodman developed the angel

motif during a visit to Rome, where she photographed herself in a large,

abandoned building. In these images, she is wearing a white petticoat, but

her chest is bare. White pieces of cloth in the background are like wings. She

called these photographs From Angel series (1977) and From a series on

Angels (1977). There are also a number of pictures simply called Angels

(1977-1978), and among them is one where again she is bending backward, but this time in front of a graffitied wall. These angels are but a few examples of Francesca Woodman’s practice of staging her body and her face.

Anna Tellgren. Francesca Woodman: On Being an Angel (50kb pdf). 2015, p. 9

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Cherub and Seraph' 1866

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Cherub and Seraph
1866
Albumen silver print
A photographic study of William Frederick ‘Freddy’ Gould (born 1861) and Elizabeth ‘Topsy’ Keown (born 1859)
National Science and Media Museum

 

A photographic study of William Frederick ‘Freddy’ Gould (born 1861) and Elizabeth ‘Topsy’ Keown (born 1859), taken by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) in 1866. This albumen print forms part of the Herschel Album, created by Cameron for her friend Sir John Herschel (1792-1871).

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Sadness (Ellen Terry)' 1864

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Sadness (Ellen Terry)
1864
Albumen silver print
22.2 x 17.6cm (8 3/4 x 6 15/16 in.)
Albumen silver print
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Dame Ellen Terry (English, 1847-1928)

Dame Alice Ellen Terry GBE (27 February 1847 – 21 July 1928) was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and toured throughout the British provinces in her teens. At 16, she married the 46-year-old artist George Frederic Watts, but they separated within a year. She soon returned to the stage but began a relationship with the architect Edward William Godwin and retired from the stage for six years. She resumed acting in 1874 and was immediately acclaimed for her portrayal of roles in Shakespeare and other classics.

In 1878 she joined Henry Irving’s company as his leading lady, and for more than the next two decades she was considered the leading Shakespearean and comic actress in Britain. Two of her most famous roles were Portia in The Merchant of Venice and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She and Irving also toured with great success in America and Britain.

In 1903 Terry took over management of London’s Imperial Theatre, focusing on the plays of George Bernard Shaw and Henrik Ibsen. The venture was a financial failure, and Terry turned to touring and lecturing. She continued to find success on stage until 1920, while also appearing in films from 1916 to 1922. Her career lasted nearly seven decades.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981) 'Polka Dots #5' 1976

 

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981)
Polka Dots #5
1976
Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation
© Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson, formerly Mrs Duckworth)' 1867

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson, formerly Mrs Duckworth)
1867
Albumen silver print
National Portrait Gallery, London

 

Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson; formerly Duckworth; 7 February 1846 – 5 May 1895) was an English Pre-Raphaelite model and philanthropist. She was the wife of the biographer Leslie Stephen and mother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, members of the Bloomsbury Group.

Julia Prinsep Jackson was born in Calcutta to an Anglo-Indian family, and when she was two her mother and her two sisters moved back to England. She became the favourite model of her aunt, the celebrated photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, who made more than 50 portraits of her. Through another maternal aunt, she became a frequent visitor at Little Holland House, then home to an important literary and artistic circle, and came to the attention of a number of Pre-Raphaelite painters who portrayed her in their work.

Married to Herbert Duckworth, a barrister, in 1867 she was soon widowed with three infant children. Devastated, she turned to nursing, philanthropy and agnosticism, and found herself attracted to the writing and life of Leslie Stephen, with whom she shared a friend in Anny Thackeray, his sister-in-law.

After Leslie Stephen’s wife died in 1875 he became close friends with Julia and they married in 1878. Julia and Leslie Stephen had four further children, living at 22 Hyde Park Gate, South Kensington, together with his seven-year-old mentally disabled daughter, Laura Makepeace Stephen. Many of her seven children and their descendants became notable. In addition to her family duties and modelling, she wrote a book based on her nursing experiences, Notes from Sick Rooms, in 1883.

She also wrote children’s stories for her family, eventually published posthumously as Stories for Children and became involved in social justice advocacy. Julia Stephen had firm views on the role of women, namely that their work was of equal value to that of men, but in different spheres, and she opposed the suffrage movement for votes for women. The Stephens entertained many visitors at their London home and their summer residence at St Ives, Cornwall. Eventually the demands on her both at home and outside the home started to take their toll. Julia Stephen died at her home following an episode of rheumatic fever in 1895, at the age of 49, when her youngest child was only 11. The writer Virginia Woolf provides a number of insights into the domestic life of the Stephens in both her autobiographical and fictional work.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'The Astronomer (Sir John Frederick William Herschel)' 1867

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
The Astronomer (Sir John Frederick William Herschel)
1867
Albumen silver print
Courtesy of the RISD Museum, Providence, RI

 

Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet KH FRS (7 March 1792 – 11 May 1871) was an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, and experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical work.

Herschel originated the use of the Julian day system in astronomy. He named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus – the seventh planet, discovered by his father Sir William Herschel. He made many contributions to the science of photography, and investigated colour blindness and the chemical power of ultraviolet rays. His Preliminary Discourse (1831), which advocated an inductive approach to scientific experiment and theory-building, was an important contribution to the philosophy of science. …

Photography

Herschel made numerous important contributions to photography. He made improvements in photographic processes, particularly in inventing the cyanotype process, which became known as blueprints, and variations, such as the chrysotype. In 1839, he made a photograph on glass, which still exists, and experimented with some colour reproduction, noting that rays of different parts of the spectrum tended to impart their own colour to a photographic paper. Herschel made experiments using photosensitive emulsions of vegetable juices, called phytotypes, also known as anthotypes, and published his discoveries in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1842. He collaborated in the early 1840s with Henry Collen, portrait painter to Queen Victoria. Herschel originally discovered the platinum process on the basis of the light sensitivity of platinum salts, later developed by William Willis.

Herschel coined the term photography in 1839. Herschel was also the first to apply the terms negative and positive to photography.

Herschel discovered sodium thiosulfate to be a solvent of silver halides in 1819, and informed Talbot and Daguerre of his discovery that this “hyposulphite of soda” (“hypo”) could be used as a photographic fixer, to “fix” pictures and make them permanent, after experimentally applying it thus in early 1839.

Herschel’s ground-breaking research on the subject was read at the Royal Society in London in March 1839 and January 1840.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Pomona (Alice Liddell)' 1872

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Pomona (Alice Liddell)
1872
Albumen silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art., New York
David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1963

 

Pomona was the goddess of fruit trees, gardens, and orchards. Unlike many other Roman goddesses and gods, she does not have a Greek counterpart, though she is commonly associated with Demeter. She watches over and protects fruit trees and cares for their cultivation.

Symbolically, Pomona and her fruit garden represent abundance, nurture and the simple pleasure derived from nature. She is often depicted in a garden full of life, colour and opulence, with her milky soft flesh on display and a cornucopia of fruit and flowers on her lap.

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'The Gardener's Daughter' 1867

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
The Gardener’s Daughter
1867
Albumen silver print
A photographic study of Mary Ryan (1848-1914)
National Science and Media Museum

 

A photographic study of Mary Ryan (1848-1914), taken by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) in 1867. This albumen print forms part of the Herschel Album, created by Cameron for her friend Sir John Herschel (1792-1871).

‘The Gardener’s Daughter’ was the title of a poem by Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892). Cameron’s photograph was inspired by the lines: ‘Gown’d in pure white, that fitted to the shape, Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood.’

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) 'Iago – study from an Italian' 1867

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Iago – study from an Italian
1867
Albumen silver print
A photographic portrait of the artist’s model, Angelo Colarossi (born about 1839)
National Science and Media Museum

 

A photographic portrait of the artist’s model, Angelo Colarossi (born about 1839), taken by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) in 1867. The print forms part of the Herschel Album, created by Cameron for her friend Sir John Herschel (1792-1871).

This is the only existing print known of ‘Iago’. The negative may have been destroyed intentionally by Cameron, and it is believed that the print was taken for George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) to work from for a painting.

Iago was the villain of Shakespeare’s play ‘Othello’.

 

'Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In' book front cover

 

Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In book front cover

 

'Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In' book back cover

 

Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In book back cover

 

'Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In' book

 

Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In book p. 11

 

'Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In' book

 

Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In book back cover pp. 70-71

 

Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In

Magdalene Keaney (Editor), Katarina Jerinic (Contributor), Helen Ennis (Contributor)

Hardcover – 26 June 2024


Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In draws parallels between two of the most significant practitioners in the history of photography, presenting fresh research, rare vintage prints, and previously unseen archival works.

‘I feel that photographs can either document and record reality or they can offer images as an alternative to everyday life: places for the viewer to dream in.’
~ Francesca Woodman, 1980

Living and working over a century apart, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) and Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) experienced very different ways of making and understanding photographs. Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In accompanies the exhibition of the same name opening at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in March 2024. Spanning the careers of both artists, the beautifully illustrated catalogue includes their best-known photographs as well as less familiar images. The exhibition works are arranged into eight thematic sections with feature essays, offering an accessible, engaging opportunity to consider both artists in a new light.

This publication presents the artists’ exploration of portraiture as a ‘dream space’. It makes new connections between their work, which pushed the boundaries of the photographic medium and experimented with ideas of beauty, symbolism, transformation and storytelling to produce some of art history’s most compelling and admired photographs.

National Portrait Gallery Publications
208 pages

Text from the Amazon Australia website

 

 

National Portrait Gallery
St Martin’s Place
London, WC2H 0HE

Opening hours:
Open daily: 10.30 – 18.00
Friday and Saturday: 10.30 – 21.00

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Review: ‘Julie Millowick: Surrounding’ at the Castlemaine Art Museum

“On every wall of the gallery there is an intimate story, told through remarkable photographs of the Australian bush…” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 15th February – 16th June, 2024

Curator: Jenny Long

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

 

Installation view of the exhibition Julie Millowick: Surrounding at the Castlemaine Art Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Down with Earth

This is a magnificent exhibition by Australian photographer Julie Millowick (b. 1948) which documents “the environmental legacy of gold mining around her home near Fryerstown in Central Victoria, capturing the beauty of this landscape in tumult and recovery.” (Wall text)

What I admire about the work in the exhibition (other than photographs that evidence the persistence of an inquiry into one subject, the result of 34 years of visual and intellectual exploration), is the way that the photographs envelop you in the gallery space. It’s as if the accumulation of images over decades creates a nurturing story which comforts you in the gallery space: that the landscape so desecrated will heal itself, will spring forth anew. The sustained investigation into the landscape around Fryerstown captured my soul.

The exhibition is beautifully constructed, rendered, seen, so very quiet yet so powerful. On every wall of the gallery there is an intimate story, told through remarkable photographs of the Australian bush that combine light and dark, near and far, low and high perspective (the raising and lowering of the horizon line) and the feeling of claustrophobia and expansiveness within the same environment: photographs of mullock heaps and mine sites with open sky and residual left-over soil or rock from the shaft excavation process. Shadows of trees obscure abandoned mine shafts which litter the landscape, traps for the unwary who go wandering, or is that wondering, through the bush. And through Millowick’s lens, this landscape is all about the wonder of the landscape and its rejuvenative potential.

In this unsettling place which continually transforms through drought and rain, human mining, erosion and regeneration we can observe in Millowick’s photographs the strength and transformative qualities of nature. It may seem strange (and probably is) but I argue that the Australian bush presented here is a heterotopic space (Foucault), a landscape outside the normality of the everyday (although any landscape with human intervention is not “natural” but always a constructed space), one that is somehow “other”: disturbing, intense, contradictory and transforming, a landscape which mirrors the outside world yet upsets that representation due to its un/settling, its mining and ecological past – creating a space which changes from day to day, month to month – growing, contracting, evidencing human interaction and touch, but then outgrowing human interference.

The spaces that the artist envisions in her beautiful micro / macro, order / chaos photographs picture something unusual: the imaginative wish for of a utopian world that could never exist in the first place and a dystopian, illusionary world in the process of healing itself (possibly), the very definition of a heterotopic space. As the characters in Fallout Season 1 observe, “Time is the apex predator” … and through time, nature will hopefully outlive all human beings to again become something belonging solely to the Earth, to again become something “natural” (existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind).

Millowick’s photographs also picture something else: photography as an exposition of the self. As the artist Ans Westra observes, photography should not be “solely controlled by the brain. Your personality, subconscious, flows through […] you have to allow it to come through […] for the outcome to be relevant.”1 Ultimately, she said, photography was “always an exposition of self.” Such is the energy with the photographs of this artist, also.

Through wonder, respect and the grounding of spirit in Earth, Millowick has sustained a bond and an understanding in her fascination with this subject, a sensitivity to subject nurtured over so many years which “invites viewers to appreciate them [the photographs] as a poetic connection to, and love for, the landscape” side by side with a conceptual thinking or intellectualisation about the land. In their containment of energy, in their penetrating into life and its things, these photographs contribute something to our life and history on this planet.

Robert Frank said, “It is important to see what is invisible to others.”

Minor White, in one of his Three canons said,

“Be still with yourself,

Until the object of your attention,

Affirms your presence”



Millowick has achieved both aims admirably. In some of the most insightful and poignant photographs of the Australian landscape I have ever seen, the artist has revealed not just aspects of the earth (ground) which are undergoing transformation but aspects of herself as she has journeyed through life, remaining true to her path as an artist, remaining true to documenting her journey with the land, remaining true to a legacy towards the planet, down with Earth.

I was very moved by these photographs.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Ans Westra quoted in Paul Moon. “An outsider on the inside: how Ans Westra created New Zealand’s ‘national photo album’,” on the Conversation website May 8, 2024 [Online] Cited 11/05/2024


All installation photographs by Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Marcus Bunyan and Julie Millowick

 

 

“The artist does not turn time into money, the artist turns time into energy, time into intensity, time into vision. The exchange that art offers is an exchange in kind; energy for energy, intensity for intensity, vision for vision… Can we afford to live imaginatively, contemplatively?”


Jeanette Winterson. Art Objects. London: Vintage, 1996, p. 139.

 

 

Wall text from the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

 

Wall text from the exhibition Julie Millowick: Surrounding at the Castlemaine Art Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gallery One

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

 

Installation view of the exhibition Julie Millowick: Surrounding at the Castlemaine Art Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

 

Installation view of the exhibition Julie Millowick: Surrounding at the Castlemaine Art Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

 

Installation view of the exhibition Julie Millowick: Surrounding at the Castlemaine Art Museum showing at left, Perseverance Mine mullock heap, Fryerstown (2020); at top right, Mosquito Mine depleted mullock heap, Fryerstown (2020); and at bottom right, Duke of Cornwall Mine mulch heap, Fryerstown (2020)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Mullock and mine sites

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Perseverance Mine mullock heap, Fryerstown' 2020 from the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum, February - June, 2024

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Perseverance Mine mullock heap, Fryerstown
2020
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Duke of Cornwall Mine mulch heap, Fryerstown' 2020

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Duke of Cornwall Mine mulch heap, Fryerstown
2020
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

 

Installation view of the exhibition Julie Millowick: Surrounding at the Castlemaine Art Museum showing from left to right, top to bottom, Ferrons Mine mullock heap, Fryerstown (2007); Ferrons Mine mullock heap, Fryerstown (2007); Exocarps cupressiformis (cherry ballart) in the foreground, Ferrons mullock heap in the background (2018); Mullock from New Era Mine, Fryerstown (2022); Ferrons Mine mullock heap with one of several surrounding shafts, Fryerstown (2018); Three fragments of goldrush-era glass bottle, Fryerstown (2019); New Era Mine mullock heaps, Fryerstown (2022); Abandoned mine shaft, Fryerstown (2022); Introduced invasive thistles, Fryerstown (2022); New Era Mine mullock heaps, Fryerstown (2022); New Era Mine mullock heaps, introduced get mullein in foreground, Fryerstown (2022); New Era Mine mullock heaps, introduced get mullein in foreground, Fryerstown (2022)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Ferrons Mine mullock heap, Fryerstown' 2007 from the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum, February - June, 2024

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Ferrons Mine mullock heap, Fryerstown
2007
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Ferrons Mine mullock heap, Fryerstown' 2007

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Ferrons Mine mullock heap, Fryerstown
2007
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Exocarps cupressiformis (cherry ballart) in the foreground, Ferrons mullock heap in the background' 2018

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Exocarps cupressiformis (cherry ballart) in the foreground, Ferrons mullock heap in the background
2018
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Because of the conifer-like foliage, European settlers referred to Exocarps cupressiformis (cherry ballart) as a ‘bush Christmas tree’. First Nations people used the wood for spear throwers and Europeans used it for gunstocks.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Ferrons Mine mullock heap with one of several surrounding shafts, Fryerstown' 2018

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Ferrons Mine mullock heap with one of several surrounding shafts, Fryerstown
2018
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'New Era Mine mullock heaps, Fryerstown' 2022

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
New Era Mine mullock heaps, Fryerstown
2022
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Originally much larger, these mullock heaps have been substantially depleted by both private individuals and the former shire, who used the mullock for roadworks. New Era Mine, at a depth of 1100 feet (335.3 metres), was the deepest shaft in the local area.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Abandoned mine shaft, Fryerstown' 2022

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Abandoned mine shaft, Fryerstown
2022
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Abandoned mine shafts occur throughout the Central Victorian area. Discarded mine waste appears in the background of the photograph

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Introduced invasive thistles, Fryerstown' 2022

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Introduced invasive thistles, Fryerstown
2022
Digitised gelatin silver lumen, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'New Era Mine mullock heaps, Fryerstown' 2022

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
New Era Mine mullock heaps, Fryerstown
2022
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

 

Installation views of the exhibition Julie Millowick: Surrounding at the Castlemaine Art Museum showing from left to right, top to bottom, Trees defoliated by the caterpillar (larval) stage of Cup Moth, Doratifera sp. Fryerstown (2013); Studio photograph of leaves damaged by the caterpillar (larval) stage of Cup Moth, Doratifera sp. Fryerstown (2013); Fallen leaves damaged by the caterpillar (larval) stage of Cup Moth, Doratifera sp. Fryerstown (2013); The quite shocking impact of searching for gold using hydraulic sluicing (early 1900s and 1930s), Golden Gully, Fryerstown (2022); The remains of a deeply sluiced gully, Golden Gully, Fryerstown (2022); Cassinia sifton (Coffee Bush) Fryerstown (2023); Forest, evening, Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown (2022); Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballarat), Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown (2021); The secret cubby in the New Era Mine tailings sand, surrounded by introduced invasive blackberry, Golden Gully, Fryerstown (2016); Invasive blackberry grows along the track to the New Era Mind tailings, Fryerstown (2010); Gelatin silver paper exposed while lightly buried under introduced invasive blackberry plant, Fryerstown (2019); Cassinia sifton (Coffee Bush), Fryerstown (2023); Cassinia sifton (Coffee Bush), growing in the cyanide-contaminated tailings sand from the New Era Mine, Golden Gully, Fryerstown (2021); Acacia implexa (hickory wattle) foliage, Fryerstown (2023)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park

Damage by Cup Moth

During 2013m large areas if trees in Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park were defoliated by the caterpillar (larval) stage of Cup Moth, Doratifera sp. Fortunately, most trees eventually recovered. Environmentalist, entomologist and Fryerstown resident, John Landy (former Governor of Victoria 2001-2006 and the second many to break the four-minute mile) also shored Julie Millowick’s concern for the forest. John viewed Julie’s photo documentation and offered valuable information.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Trees defoliated by the caterpillar (larval) stage of Cup Moth, Doratifera sp., Fryerstown' 2013

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Trees defoliated by the caterpillar (larval) stage of Cup Moth, Doratifera sp., Fryerstown
2013
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Large areas of forest in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park were affected. Every day Julie Milowick witnessed the decline of the trees as the Cup Moth infestation became more widespread.

 

Tailings sands

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'The quite shocking impact of searching for gold using hydraulic sluicing (early 1900s and 1930s), Golden Gully, Fryerstown' 2022

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
The quite shocking impact of searching for gold using hydraulic sluicing (early 1900s and 1930s), Golden Gully, Fryerstown
2022
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'The remains of a deeply sluiced gully, Golden Gully, Fryerstown' 2022

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
The remains of a deeply sluiced gully, Golden Gully, Fryerstown
2022
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Growing in the foreground and along the top of the cliff is Cassinia sifton (coffee bush)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Cassinia sifton (Coffee Bush), Fryerstown' 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Cassinia sifton (Coffee Bush), Fryerstown
2023
Digitised gelatin silver lumen, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Cassinia sifton also called the coffee bush, is a plant associated with regeneration and survival. Referred to as a pioneer plant, it is often the first growth to occur in disturbed, damaged and bare earth.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Forest, evening, Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown' 2022

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Forest, evening, Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown
2022
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballarat), Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown' 2021

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballarat), Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown
2021
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

In spring the tree has tiny red berries that provided a valuable food source for Indigenous people.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'The secret cubby in the New Era Mine tailings sand, surrounded by introduced invasive blackberry, Golden Gully, Fryerstown' 2016

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
The secret cubby in the New Era Mine tailings sand, surrounded by introduced invasive blackberry, Golden Gully, Fryerstown
2016
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Gelatin silver paper exposed while lightly buried under introduced invasive blackberry plant, Fryerstown' 2019

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Gelatin silver paper exposed while lightly buried under introduced invasive blackberry plant, Fryerstown
2019
Digitised gelatin silver lumen, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Cassinia sifton (Coffee Bush), Fryerstown' 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Cassinia sifton (Coffee Bush), Fryerstown
2023
Digitised wet cyanotype, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag paper, open edition
2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Because Cassinia sifton (coffee bush) is the fist plant to regrow in damaged land, it symbolises renewal.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Cassinia sifton (Coffee Bush), growing in the cyanide-contaminated tailings sand from the New Era Mine, Golden Gully, Fryerstown' 2021

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Cassinia sifton (Coffee Bush), growing in the cyanide-contaminated tailings sand from the New Era Mine, Golden Gully, Fryerstown
2021
Dgital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Acacia implexa (hickory wattle) foliage, Fryerstown' 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Acacia implexa (hickory wattle) foliage, Fryerstown
2023
Digitised gelatin silver lumen, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

The beauty of Central Victoria’s landscape in tumult and recovery.

Julie Millowick is a localist, an artist who is deeply embedded in the place where she lives. Over many years, Millowick has documented the environmental legacy of gold mining around her home near Fryerstown in Central Victoria. This strangely poignant landscape has been turned upside down through violent extraction – but it remains resilient and in the process of recovery.

Surrounding exhibits a curated selection of Millowick’s work including a new series seen for the first time. Millowick’s photographs show us the devastating effects of mining, drought, flood and invasive plants, but also remind us of the interconnectedness that links all parts of this ecosystem including its human occupants. This is a terrain which the artist loves, and which she sees with acute perception. It is a landscape full of complexity, a region with a terrible past, but in its capacity for renewal is also a place that offers a spark of hope for the future.

Julie Millowick

Julie Millowick began her photographic career working in the darkroom of Athol Shmith, John Cato and Peter Barr. After completing her studies at Prahran College of Advanced Education, she worked as a press and public relations photographer, after which the direction of her commercial folio changed and she worked as a corporate industrial photographer. Julie achieved early recognition for her photojournalism when she exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria and Australian Centre for Photography in 1977 in Australian New Work. She has exhibited and published regularly since then, with work held in major photography collections in Australia and internationally. In 1993 she exhibited work in the exhibition Intimate Lives with Sally Mann, Nan Goldin and Jaques Henri Lartigue at the International Fotofeis in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Text from the Castlemaine Art Museum website

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

 

Installation views of the exhibition Julie Millowick: Surrounding at the Castlemaine Art Museum showing from left to right, top to bottom, Dog shadow on the edge of an abandoned mine shaft, evening light, horse paddock, Fryerstown (2009); Cassini Sifton (coffee bush) with seeds, Fyerstown (2023); Abandoned mine shaft, horse paddock, Fyerstown (2009); Survivor tree, surrounded by uniform post-goldrush regrowth, horse paddock, Fyerstown (2023); Gelatin silver paper exposed while lightly buried under introduced invasive blackberry plant, Fyerstown (2019); Post-goldrush uniform regrowth trees in mist, horse paddock, Fryerstown (2014); Post-goldrush uniform regrowth trees in mist, horse paddock, Fryerstown (2014); Late evening, horse paddock, Fryerstown (2021); Late evening, horse paddock, Fryerstown (2021); Early morning light, horse paddock with washing line and feed bin, Fryerstown (2009); Tree with hay band, horse paddock, Fryerstown (2009); A beautiful little mare, hose paddock, Fryerstown (2009); A much-loved little mare, horse paddock, Fryerstown (2009); Christian McArdle on top of Ferrons mullock heap, horse paddock, Fryerstown (1989); Christian McArdle with Blue Dog on top of Ferrons mullock heap, Fryerstown (2023)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Horse Paddock

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Dog shadow on the edge of an abandoned mine shaft, evening light, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 2009

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Dog shadow on the edge of an abandoned mine shaft, evening light, horse paddock, Fryerstown
2009
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Abandoned mine shaft, horse paddock, Fyerstown' 2009

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Abandoned mine shaft, horse paddock, Fyerstown
2009
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

A small Cassinia soften (coffee bush) valiantly grows on the edge of an abandoned mine shaft.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Survivor tree, surrounded by uniform post-goldrush regrowth, horse paddock, Fyerstown' 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Survivor tree, surrounded by uniform post-goldrush regrowth, horse paddock, Fyerstown
2023
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Gelatin silver paper exposed while lightly buried under introduced invasive blackberry plant, Fyerstown' 2019

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Gelatin silver paper exposed while lightly buried under introduced invasive blackberry plant, Fyerstown
2019
Digitised gelatin silver lumen, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Post-goldrush uniform regrowth trees in mist, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 2014

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Post-goldrush uniform regrowth trees in mist, horse paddock, Fryerstown
2014
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Post-goldrush uniform regrowth trees in mist, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 2014

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Post-goldrush uniform regrowth trees in mist, horse paddock, Fryerstown
2014
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Late evening, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 2021

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Late evening, horse paddock, Fryerstown
2021
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

 

Installation views of the exhibition Julie Millowick: Surrounding at the Castlemaine Art Museum showing from left to right, top to bottom, Ecological Thinning Trial, first week. Christian McArdle driving his 1967 Ford F100 truck into one of the ‘thinned’ areas, Fryerstown (2007); Ecological Thinning Trial, first week, Fryerstown (2007); Ecological Thinning Trial, three months later, Fryerstown (2007); Ecological Thinning Trial, two years later, Fryerstown (2009); Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park seven weeks after a DELWP (Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning) planned burn, Fryerstown (2020); Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park thirteen weeks after a DELWP (Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning) planned burn, Fryerstown (2020); Evening light, Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown (2022); Quietly beautiful landscape in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown (2013); Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballart) with a kangaroo track running across the background and the abandoned Fyers Extension Water Race (channel) on the right-hand side, Fryerstown (2022); Ferrons Mine mullock heap in distant background of what is referred to as ‘worked over land’, Fryerstown (2020); Beautiful, rugged and challenging terrain of the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown (2014); Post-goldrush uniform regrowth of the forest is clearly evident in this image from (2014); Three Wildflowers, Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown (2022); Wattle from the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown (2022); Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballart), Fryerstown (2022); Acacia pycnantha (golden wattle), Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown (2022); Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballart), Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown (2022); Exploring the multi-layered complexity of the forest using the technique of double exposure, Fryerstown (2008)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park

Ecological thinning

In April 2007 an Ecological Thinning Trial commenced in sections of the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park. The trial has a duration of fifty years and aims to transform selected areas of the box ironbark forest from uniform post-goldrush regrowth to an environment supporting widely-spaced trees of different heights, age and canopy.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Ecological Thinning Trial, first week. Christian McArdle driving his 1967 Ford F100 truck into one of the 'thinned' areas, Fryerstown' 2007

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Ecological Thinning Trial, first week. Christian McArdle driving his 1967 Ford F100 truck into one of the ‘thinned’ areas, Fryerstown
2007
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Ecological Thinning Trial, Fryerstown' 2007-2009

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Ecological Thinning Trial, first week, Fryerstown
2007
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

The uniform post-goldrush regrowth trees have been ‘thinned’, leaving a selected few to grow larger and provide a protective canopy and more diverse habitat.

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Ecological Thinning Trial, three months later, Fryerstown
2007
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

‘Thinned’ trees in foreground remain on the ground while in the background (centre of image) others are stacked ready for removal. Uniform regrowth after the gold mining deforestation is evident in trees that remain standing. The 50-year trial hopes to return the forest of the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park to a landscape of various sized trees, canopy and habitat.

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Ecological Thinning Trial, two years later, Fryerstown
2009
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

The flowering local Hakea decrees (hake or ‘bushy needlewood’) is growing through stacked wood. Uniform regrowth trees can be seen in the background.

Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park seven weeks after a DELWP (Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning) planned burn, Fryerstown' 2020

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park seven weeks after a DELWP (Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning) planned burn, Fryerstown
2020
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park thirteen weeks after a DELWP (Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning) planned burn, Fryerstown' 2020

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park thirteen weeks after a DELWP (Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning) planned burn, Fryerstown
2020
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Evening light, Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown' 2022

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Evening light, Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown
2022
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

The conifer-like foliage of Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballart) in the foreground demonstrates why European settlers referred to it as a ‘bush Christmas tree’.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Quietly beautiful landscape in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown' 2013

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Quietly beautiful landscape in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown
2013
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948). 'Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballast) with a kangaroo track running across the background and the abandoned Fyers Extension Water Race (channel) on the right-hand side, Fryerstown' (2022) and 'Ferrons Mine mullock heap in distant background of what is referred to as 'worked over land', Fryerstown' (2023)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballast) with a kangaroo track running across the background and the abandoned Fyers Extension Water Race (channel) on the right-hand side, Fryerstown
2022
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Ferrons Mine mullock heap in distant background of what is referred to as ‘worked over land’, Fryerstown
2020
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Wattle from the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown' 2022

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Wattle from the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown
2022
Digitised gelatin silver lumen, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballart), Fryerstown' 2022

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballart), Fryerstown
2022
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

Julie Millowick specifically photographed Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballart or ‘bush Christmas tree’) for several years. This is one of her favourite images.

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Acacia pycnantha (golden wattle), Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown
2022
Digitised gelatin silver lumen, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Exocarpos cupressiformis (cherry ballart), Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown (2022)
Digitised gelatin silver lumen, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Exploring the multi-layered complexity of the forest using the technique of double exposure, Fryerstown' 2008

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Exploring the multi-layered complexity of the forest using the technique of double exposure, Fryerstown
2008
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

 

Installation view of the exhibition Julie Millowick: Surrounding at the Castlemaine Art Museum showing from left to right, top to bottom, Jetty in mist, Fryerstown (2004); Early morning, reflected pink cloud, Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown (2001); Crocodile Reservoir, ice-covered reeds, Fryerstown (2007); Crocodile Reservoir, ice-covered reeds, Fryerstown (2007); Crocodile Reservoir, ice-covered jetty, Fryerstown (2005); Coffee bush, Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown (2007); Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown (2008); Crocodile Reservoir, Christian McArdle on the Crocodile Reservoir jetty with the dog called Black, Fryerstown (2008); Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown (2009); Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown (2010); Christian McArdle surveys flooded Golden Gully, Fryerstown (2010); Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown (2004); Crocodile Reservoir. Julie Millowick and her son Christian McArdle, Crocodile Reservoir, during the El Nino year of 2007 from the series Drought, Continuing Drought, Fryerstown (2007)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Crocodile Reservoir

Crocodile Reservoir was constructed in 1861 and supplied water to the Fryerstown area for both mining and domestic purposes. In 1877, via a series of water races (channels), it became part of the main Coliban channel system. Later, when Fryerstown was connection to McCay Reservoir, it became catchment only.

‘Croc Res’, as it is called by Fryerstown residents, is 650 metres from were Julie Millowick lives and was an integral part of person’s childhood.

The reservoir, like all other water catchments, was severely affected by the Australia-wide Millennium Drought, between 1999 and the spring of 2010. During that time Millowick photographed the impact of the drought across Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales. She included the 1860’s Crocodile Reservoir, Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, as part of that documentation. The latter photographs, although local, were a microcosm of what was happening across Australia.

As the water level of Crocodile Reservoir fell earth was exposed to daylight for the first time since the 1860s. Immediately Cassinia soften (coffee bush) flourished.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Early morning, reflected pink cloud, Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown' 2001

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Early morning, reflected pink cloud, Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown
2001
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

As the drought progressed and the water level fell, Fryerstown locals were astonished to see a small wooden jetty appear out of the receding water. It was in remarkably good condition and Julie Millowick immediately began to photograph it.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Crocodile Reservoir, ice-covered reeds, Fryerstown' 2007

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Crocodile Reservoir, ice-covered reeds, Fryerstown
2007
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

At the Crocodile Gully inlet to the reservoir, the valuable habitat of the once thriving reeds had been lost. The trees indicate the pre-drought water level. Cassinia sifton (coffee bush) encroaches on the left hand side.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Crocodile Reservoir, ice-covered reeds, Fryerstown' 2007

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Crocodile Reservoir, ice-covered reeds, Fryerstown
2007
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Crocodile Reservoir, ice-covered jetty, Fryerstown' 2005

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Crocodile Reservoir, ice-covered jetty, Fryerstown
2005
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

The newly-exposed dam wall of Crocodile Reservoir, adjacent to the jetty, was almost blocked by the uncontrolled growth of Cassinia sifton (coffee bush)

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Vermont' 1971

 

Minor White (American, 1908–1976)
Vermont (dock in snow)
1971
Gelatin silver print

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Coffee bush, Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown' 2007

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Coffee bush, Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown
2007
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Thriving seed-laden Cassinia sifton (coffee bush) can be seen here encroaching on the northern end of Crocodile Reservoir, where large areas of reeds, no longer partially submerged in water, had died.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown' 2008

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown
2008
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Damaged jetty and exposed infrastructure used for the release of water into the races (channels) is visible. The small amount of water in the reservoir and surrounding wet earth resulted from a violent storm that occurred mid-2007. It did not break the drought, but caused damage across Victoria.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Crocodile Reservoir, Christian McArdle on the Crocodile Reservoir jetty with the dog called Black, Fryerstown' 2008

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Crocodile Reservoir, Christian McArdle on the Crocodile Reservoir jetty with the dog called Black, Fryerstown
2008
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown' 2010

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Crocodile Reservoir, Fryerstown
2010
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

In the spring of 2010 heavy drought-breaking rain fell throughout Victoria. The drought-weakened wall of the reservoir partially collapsed, and water flowed through the cavity into Golden Gully. Standing on the wall above the area of partial collapse looking down.

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'One of the numerous abandoned mine shafts in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown' 2010

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
One of the numerous abandoned mine shafts in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown (installation view)
2010
Inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'One of the numerous abandoned mine shafts in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown' 2010

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
One of the numerous abandoned mine shafts in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Fryerstown
2010
Inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

Mine disturbances and uniform regrowth trees can be seen in the background.

 

Gallery Two

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

Installation view of the exhibition 'Julie Millowick: Surrounding' at the Castlemaine Art Museum

 

Installation views of the exhibition Julie Millowick: Surrounding at the Castlemaine Art Museum
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 1996 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown (installation view)
1996
Digitised pinhole camera paper negative, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 1996 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown (installation view)
1996
Digitised pinhole camera paper negative, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 1996

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown
1996
Digitised pinhole camera paper negative, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 1996

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Washing, Horse Paddock, Fryerstown
1996
Digitised Pinhole Camera paper negative, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 2010 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown (installation view)
2010
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 2010

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown
2010
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Washing, front verandah, Fryerstown' 2022 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Washing, front verandah, Fryerstown (installation view)
2022
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Washing, front verandah, Fryerstown' 2022

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Washing, front verandah, Fryerstown
2022
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown. Corrupt card' 2012 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown. Corrupt card (installation view)
2012
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 2012 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Washing, horse paddock, Fryerstown (installation view)
2012
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Child's 19th century boot metal heel-band, found on property, Fryerstown' 2023 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Child’s 19th century boot metal heel-band, found on property, Fryerstown (installation view)
2023
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Child's 19th century boot metal heel-band, found on property, Fryerstown' 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Child’s 19th century boot metal heel-band, found on property, Fryerstown
2023
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Tree foliage, patio, Fryerstown' 2022 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Tree foliage, patio, Fryerstown (installation view)
2022
Digitised gelatin silver lumen, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Tree foliage, patio, Fryerstown' 2022 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Tree foliage, patio, Fryerstown (installation view)
2022
Digitised gelatin silver lumen, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Tree foliage, patio, Fryerstown' 2022

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Tree foliage, patio, Fryerstown
2022
Digitised gelatin silver lumen, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Introduced invasive cactus, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 2001 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Introduced invasive cactus, horse paddock, Fryerstown (installation view)
2001
Digitised 6-45 film negative, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Introduced invasive cactus, horse paddock, Fryerstown (installation view)
2001
Digitised 6-45 film negative, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Introduced invasive cactus, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 2001

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Introduced invasive cactus, horse paddock, Fryerstown
2001
Digitised 6-45 film negative, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Introduced invasive cactus, horse paddock, Fryerstown' 2001

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Introduced invasive cactus, horse paddock, Fryerstown
2001
Digitised 6-45 film negative, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Original interior wall of 1862 miner’s cottage with introduced invasive blackberry, Fryerstown' 2023 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Original interior wall of 1862 miner’s cottage with introduced invasive blackberry, Fryerstown (installation view)
2023
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Day 39, lockdown, Chinese pistachio tree, Fryerstown' 2020 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Day 39, lockdown, Chinese pistachio tree, Fryerstown (installation view)
2020
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Day 39, lockdown, Chinese pistachio tree, Fryerstown' 2020

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Day 39, lockdown, Chinese pistachio tree, Fryerstown
2020
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Day 155 and Day 264, lockdown, Chinese pistachio tree, Fryerstown' 2021 (installation view)

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Day 155, lockdown, Chinese pistachio tree, Fryerstown (installation view)
2021
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Day 264, lockdown, Chinese pistachio tree, Fryerstown (installation view)
2021
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Day 155, lockdown, Chinese pistachio tree, Fryerstown' 2021

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Day 155, lockdown, Chinese pistachio tree, Fryerstown
2021
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) 'Day 264, lockdown, Chinese pistachio tree, Fryerstown' 2021

 

Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948)
Day 264, lockdown, Chinese pistachio tree, Fryerstown
2021
Digital image, inkjet print on 100% cotton rag
open edition 2023

 

 

Castlemaine Art Museum
14 Lyttleton Street, Castlemaine

Opening hours
Thursday – Saturday 11am – 4pm
Sunday 12pm – 4pm

Castlemaine Art Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Hill & Adamson: The Clarkson Stanfield Album’ at the Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas

“So the spirit of past times echoes down to us through these photographs, ripples in a pond caused by a pebble dropped into water.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 9th March – 2nd June, 2024

Curators: Jessica S. McDonald, the Ransom Center’s Nancy Inman and Marlene Nathan Meyerson Curator of Photography

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) '100 Calotypes by D. O. Hill, R.S.A., and R. Adamson album front cover' 1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
100 Calotypes by D. O. Hill, R.S.A., and R. Adamson album front cover
1845
60.9 x 43.1cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Album of 109 salted paper prints from calotype negatives by Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847). Assembled and sold to marine painter Clarkson Stanfield (English, 1793-1867) in 1845. Six prints tipped in over other prints; these are likely the prints sent by Hill to Stanfield in January 1846.

 

 

The spirit of past times

The Clarkson Stanfield Album: an album of 109 salted paper prints from calotype negatives compiled by Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847), the photographs created by the painter (Hill) and photographer (Adamson) during a four year partnership that only ended with the untimely death of Robert Adamson at the age of 26 years. What a truly beautiful album full of the most meditative portrait photographs that you could ever lay your eyes on.

Reminiscent of the characteristics of Mannerism in the Renaissance, the figures and hands dance in convoluted poses of asymmetrical elegance. Witness the sway of body and sinuousness of hands in James Drummond, Artist, Edinburgh (1843-1845, below) with the oppositional direction of the hands, one pointing up and the other down. Or the directional composition of My Sister (1843-1845, below) where the sitter looks left in profile, the hand clutching a book (probably the bible) points in the other direction, whilst the other hand touches the earth. The use of chiaroscuro is magnificent. Other masterpieces of the photographic art are replete with the sensitivity of both artists: the double profile portrait of Jas & Thomas Duncan; A Study (1843-1844, below), both staring intently out of the pictorial frame, one brother clutching the other’s shoulder and arm along with his spectacles. Wonderfully intense and atmospheric.

“As artistic director, Hill composed each picture, placing his sitters as they might appear in the finished painting. Adamson operated the camera and carried out the chemical manipulations. Hill and Adamson were a perfect team. Hill, twenty years older than Adamson, was trained as a painter and had important connections in artistic and social circles in Edinburgh; he easily attracted a distinguished clientele to the team’s portrait studio at Adamson’s home, Rock House… Both men had a profound understanding of the way the world would translate into monochrome pictures.”1

Hill & Adamson also had a profound understanding of how the spirit of a person could be captured by the camera. The Newhaven portraits of fishermen and fishwives – “part of a social-documentary project, the first in photography, that the team carried out in Newhaven and other small but vital fishing towns near Edinburgh”2 – are still to this day some of the most engaging of the early portrait photographs in the history of photography. They capture the character of these people who after all this time still speak to us of their tough life and work through romantic photographs such as the barefooted boy “King Fisher” with his willow basket on a low table or Jeanie Wilson, Newhaven (1843-1845, below) dressed in traditional striped apron and woollen petticoat.

“Hill and Adamson presented Newhaven as a model community bound by tradition, honest labor, and mutual support – qualities emphasised by the careful posing of figures and by the graphic strength and gritty effect of the medium itself.”2

But as Fraser Linklater observes in his article, “‘They put a creel aroond my back and bid me call my haddies’: The Newhaven Fishwives, Preserving Lost Community History and Cultural Transmission Through Generations,” these were staged photographs: “the fact that the Newhaven fisherwomen were wearing ‘gala-dress’ in these pictures reveals it was not an accurate portrayal of them going about their daily work, but instead a picture of a romanticised and imagined community based on some form of semi-truth… Understanding these small details greatly assists us in, once again, grounding their experiences in reality, avoiding polishing their stories to an image that dissuades further thinking and investigation.”

“Nowadays, the village sits subsumed within it’s larger neighbours, Edinburgh and Leith, both in physicality but also, in the last half century culturally…”3

So all we have left of this culture, much like the romanticised photographs of the “Vanishing Race” of the North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis, or the gritty, realist photographs of Skinningrove by Cris Killip eighty or so years later, are these remembrances of times past.

During their brief but prolific partnership Hill & Adamson captured the spirit of these people living in an Industrial Age, photographs that don’t necessarily represent reality but are a performative view of their life and existence at that time (they were performing for the camera, dressed up in their best, posed for effect). But this romanticisation of the people in Hill & Adamson’s Newhaven portraits doesn’t make them any less valuable as representations of that time and place, for that is now all we have.

Indeed, their photographs “show us today some things that we may no longer have access to and give us a window into eyes of real human beings”4 as they go about their daily lives, however staged the photographs might be. Even as evolution would ultimately destroy that way of life forever, so the spirit of past times echoes down to us through these photographs, ripples in a pond caused by a pebble dropped into water.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Daniel, Malcolm. “David Octavius Hill (1802-1870) and Robert Adamson (1821-1848).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hlad/hd_hlad.htm (October 2004)

2/ Anonymous. “Newhaven Fishwives,” on The Metropolitan Museum of Art website Nd [Online] Cited 31/05/2024

3/ Fraser Linklater. “‘They put a creel aroond my back and bid me call my haddies’: The Newhaven Fishwives, Preserving Lost Community History and Cultural Transmission Through Generations,” on the Scotland Sounds wdebste, 3 September 2020 [Online] Cited 31/05/2024

4/ Shannon Keller O’Loughlin (Choctaw) of the Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA) in an email to the author, 1 June 2018


Many thankx to the Harry Ransom Center for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. The photographs in the posting are in the order they appear in the album. You can view all 109 photographs on the Harry Ransom Center website.

PLEASE NOTE: the photographs in the posting are not necessarily the photographs in the exhibition. I have selected my favourite photographs from the online resources of the complete album which are free to download and are in the public domain.

 

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) '100 Calotypes by D. O. Hill, R.S.A., and R. Adamson album endpaper' 1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
100 Calotypes by D. O. Hill, R.S.A., and R. Adamson album endpaper
1845
60.9 x 43.1cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Robert Adamson' 1843-1844

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Robert Adamson
1843-1844
Salted paper print
9 x 6.4cm (arched top)
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Robert Adamson (1821-1848), photography pioneer. Page inscribed with Clarkson Stanfield’s initials and date

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'D. O. Hill, R.S.A.' 1843 from the exhibition 'Hill & Adamson: The Clarkson Stanfield Album' at the Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas, March - June, 2024

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
D. O. Hill, R.S.A.
1843
Salted paper print
19.8 x 14.1cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

David Octavius Hill (1802-1870), artist and photography pioneer. Mounted on title page with lettering by Hill

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Rev Jas Julius Wood, Late of Greyfriars, Edinb.' 1843 from the exhibition 'Hill & Adamson: The Clarkson Stanfield Album' at the Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas, March - June, 2024

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Rev Jas Julius Wood, Late of Greyfriars, Edinb.
1843
Salted paper print
20 x 14.4cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Rev. Dr James Julius Wood (1800-1877), Free Church minister. Secondary inscription by Helmut Gernsheim

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Rev Jas Julius Wood, Late of Greyfriars, Edinb.' 1843 (detail)

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Rev Jas Julius Wood, Late of Greyfriars, Edinb. (detail)
1843
Salted paper print
20 x 14.4cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Miss Rigby' 1843-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Miss Rigby
1843-1845
20.3 x 14.4cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Jane Rigby (1806-1896), sister of Elizabeth, Lady Eastlake (née Rigby)

 

 

Don’t miss this unprecedented exhibition of the Clarkson Stanfield Album, a superb volume of early photographs by the celebrated Scottish partnership of Hill & Adamson. Launching their collaboration in Edinburgh in 1843, the established painter David Octavius Hill (1802-1870) and the young photographer Robert Adamson (1821-1848) combined their aesthetic sensitivity and technical brilliance to produce an unparalleled body of portraits, architectural and landscapes scenes, and pioneering social documents. Their work endures today as one of the earliest sustained explorations of photography as an artform.

In the fall of 1845 Hill & Adamson prepared an album of their finest work, arranging over 100 salted paper prints from their calotype negatives into a folio bound in rich purple leather with intricate gold tooling, and sold it to the prominent English marine painter Clarkson Frederick Stanfield (1793-1867). Now known as the Clarkson Stanfield Album, it is one of only a few such unique albums assembled in the years before Adamson’s death at age 26.

More than 175 years later the album is undergoing structural repair, providing the first opportunity since 1845 to view several sections at once before conservators return them to the original binding. The exhibition includes 39 salted paper prints from the Clarkson Stanfield Album, as well as examples of Adamson’s earliest photographic trials and two of Hill’s painted landscapes. The exhibition is drawn entirely from the Gernsheim Collection, acquired by the Ransom Center in 1963.

Text from the Harry Ransom Center website

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'James Drummond, Artist, Edinburgh' 1843-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
James Drummond, Artist, Edinburgh
1843-1845
Salted paper print
20 x 14.4cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

James Drummond (1816-1877), history painter, Curator of the National Gallery of Scotland

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'James Drummond, Artist, Edinburgh' 1843-1845 (detail)

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
James Drummond, Artist, Edinburgh (detail)
1843-1845
Salted paper print
20 x 14.4cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'My Sister' 1843-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
My Sister
1843-1845
21.1 x 14.8cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Mary Watson (née Hill), sister of David Octavius Hill. Secondary inscription by Helmut Gernsheim

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'My Sister' 1843-1845 (detail)

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
My Sister (detail)
1843-1845
21.1 x 14.8cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Miss Parker' 1844-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Miss Parker
1844-1845
20 x 14.4cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Possibly Jane Sophia Barker (née Harden) (1807-1876)

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Jas & Thomas Duncan; A Study' 1843-1844

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870
Jas & Thomas Duncan; A Study
1843-1844
11.5 x 14.9cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

James Duncan; Thomas Duncan (1807-1845), artist

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Jas & Thomas Duncan; A Study' 1843-1844 (detail)

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Jas & Thomas Duncan; A Study (detail)
1843-1844
11.5 x 14.9cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

 

“100 Calotypes by D. O. Hill, R.S.A., and R. Adamson,” commonly known as the Clarkson Stanfield Album, is a unique album assembled and sold to English marine painter Clarkson Stanfield (1793-1867) before October 1, 1845. The folio, bound in purple leather with gold tooling, contains a total of 109 salted paper prints from calotype negatives made between 1843 and 1845. As originally assembled, the album begins with portraits of Adamson and Hill, followed by 100 plates and a final photograph, perhaps serving as a visual epilogue or postscript. The major themes of Hill & Adamson’s work are represented: the 100 principal plates comprise, in this order, 44 portraits, including two presbytery groups; 10 scenes in Greyfriars churchyard; 2 scenes at Leith; 31 photographs of fisherfolk, mainly at Newhaven; 1 photograph at St. Andrews; and 11 views of monuments and architecture in and around Edinburgh. Titles of most plates are inscribed in Hill’s hand. Six additional salted paper prints were added later; these are likely the prints sent by Hill to Stanfield in January 1846, added to the album by Stanfield. Of these six prints, five are Newhaven photographs and one is a portrait. This is one of Hill & Adamson’s earliest albums, and one of only a few assembled in Adamson’s lifetime. It provides a view into their partnership at its midpoint, and into which images they understood to be some of their strongest thus far. As an object, the album offers a sense of what the partners may have envisioned for other deluxe volumes they announced but never realised. The album is part of the Gernsheim Collection, purchased in 1963.

While the title suggests there are 100 images contained in the album, there are actually 109 salted paper prints, most of which are accompanied by inscriptions provided by either Hill or Adamson. The images are of prominent men and women of the day, friends and acquaintances of Hill and Adamson, and scenes of Edinburgh, Newhaven and St. Andrews, and Scottish architecture and art. The nine additional images can explained in several ways. First, six images cover/originally covered other images. It appears that Hill and Adamson did not like their original choice of several images and later mounted different images over the originals. In most cases, the covered image is very similar to another image in the album (compare 964:0048:0044, a covered image, with 964:0048:0045). Second, the first two images in the book appear on the half-title and title page, and therefore may not have been counted as part of the “100” referred to on the title page. And, a third explanation may be that the cover for the album was printed before Hill and Adamson’s selection of images to be included.

Text from the Harry Ransom Center website

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Edinburgh Castle from the Greyfriars' 1843-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Edinburgh Castle from the Greyfriars
1843-1845
11.6 x 15.9cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Greyfriars Churchyard; a group of monuments including the Chalmers and Jackson Monuments, with Edinburgh Castle in the background

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Edinburgh Castle from the Greyfriars' 1843-1845 (detail)

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Edinburgh Castle from the Greyfriars (detail)
1843-1845
11.6 x 15.9cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Newhaven Fisherman' 1843-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Newhaven Fisherman
1843-1845
20.1 x 14.7cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

James or “Sandy” Linton

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Newhaven Fisherman' 1843-1845 (detail)

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Newhaven Fisherman (detail)
1843-1845
20.1 x 14.7cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Jeanie Wilson & Annie Linton, Newhaven' 1843-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Jeanie Wilson & Annie Linton, Newhaven
1843-1845
19.2 x 14.7cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Jeanie Wilson & Annie Linton, Newhaven' 1843-1845 (detail)

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Jeanie Wilson & Annie Linton, Newhaven (detail)
1843-1845
19.2 x 14.7cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

 

David Octavius Hill (1802–1870) and Robert Adamson (1821-1848)

Malcolm Daniel

In the mid-1840s, the Scottish painter-photographer team of Hill and Adamson produced the first substantial body of self-consciously artistic work using the newly invented medium of photography. William Henry Fox Talbot’s patent restrictions on his “calotype” or “Talbotype” process did not apply in Scotland, and, in fact, Talbot encouraged its use there. Among the fellow scientists with whom he corresponded and to whom he sent examples of the new art, was the physicist Sir David Brewster, principal of the United Colleges of Saint Salvator and Saint Leonard at Saint Andrews University, just north of Edinburgh. By 1841, Brewster and his colleague John Adamson, curator of the College Museum and professor of chemistry, were experimenting with the calotype process, and the following year they instructed Adamson’s younger brother Robert in the techniques of paper photography. By May 1843, Robert Adamson, then just twenty-one years old, was prepared to move to Edinburgh and set up shop as the city’s first professional calotypist.

As important as Brewster’s introduction of Adamson to the calotype was, another introduction proved even more consequential. Just weeks after Adamson had established himself in Edinburgh, Brewster saw an opportunity to send business his way. On May 18, 1843, the Church of Scotland met in General Assembly amid great dispute over the role of the crown and landowners in appointing ministers. As the Assembly opened, the moderator, Rev. Dr. David Welsh, read an Act of Protest and led 155 ministers – more than one-third of those present – from the Assembly and through the streets of Edinburgh to Tanfield Hall, where in the days that followed they signed a Deed of Demission, resigning their positions and livelihoods, and established the Free Church of Scotland. Their act of conscience, at great personal risk and sacrifice, seemed heroic to many who were present, including Sir David Brewster and David Octavius Hill.

Hill was a locally prominent and well-connected painter of romantic landscapes and secretary of the Royal Scottish Academy of Fine Arts in Edinburgh. With the encouragement of the new Free Church, he resolved to paint a large historical painting of the signing of the Deed of Demission and, as was often the case for works of this nature, proposed to finance his painting through the sale of reproductive engravings of the finished work. In his advertisement for the engravings, issued within a week of the Disruption (as the upheaval was called), Hill wrote, “The Picture, the execution of which, it is expected will occupy the greater portion of two or three years, is intended to supply an authentic commemoration of this great event in the history of the Church … will contain Portraits, from actual sittings, in as far as these can be obtained, of the most venerable fathers, and others of the more eminent and distinguished ministers and elders.”

Brewster, sensing that Hill’s intention to sketch each of the several hundred ministers before they returned to the far corners of Scotland would be close to impossible, suggested that the painter use the services of the newly established Adamson to make photographic sketches instead. “I got hold of the artist,” Brewster wrote to Talbot in early June, “showed him the Calotype, & the eminent advantage he might derive from it in getting likenesses of all the principal characters before they were dispersed to their respective homes. He was at first incredulous, but went to Mr. Adamson, and arranged with him preliminaries for getting all the necessary portraits.” Within weeks Hill was completely won over, and the two were working seamlessly in partnership. As artistic director, Hill composed each picture, placing his sitters as they might appear in the finished painting.

Adamson operated the camera and carried out the chemical manipulations. Hill and Adamson were a perfect team. Hill, twenty years older than Adamson, was trained as a painter and had important connections in artistic and social circles in Edinburgh; he easily attracted a distinguished clientele to the team’s portrait studio at Adamson’s home, Rock House. Most of all, he possessed a geniality, a “suavity of manner and absence of all affectation,” that immediately set people at ease and permitted him to pose his sitters without losing their natural sense of posture and expression. Adamson was young but had learned his lessons well. He was a consummate technician, excelling in – and even improving upon – the various optical and chemical procedures developed by Talbot. Both men had a profound understanding of the way the world would translate into monochrome pictures.

If in May Hill had been incredulous, by June he was convinced; by July he was proud to exhibit the first photographs as “preliminary studies and sketches” for his picture, and by the end of the year he and his partner had photographed nearly all the figures who would have a place in his grand painting. Their hundreds of preparatory “sketches” ranged from single portraits to groups of as many as twenty-five ministers posed as Hill envisioned them in his ambitious composition. Some portraits, such as that of Thomas Chalmers, first moderator of the Free Church, were used as direct models for the finished work. However, at each sitting, Hill and Adamson made numerous photographs in various poses, and many photographs of the ministers have no direct correspondence with the painting. Still other portraits, of people who were not present for the signing of the Deed of Demission – but whom Hill apparently thought should have been – were used as models for the painting.

“The pictures produced are as Rembrandt’s but improved,” wrote the watercolorist John Harden on first seeing Hill and Adamson’s calotypes in November 1843, “so like his style & the oldest & finest masters that doubtless a great progress in Portrait painting & effect must be the consequence.” In actuality, though, it was so easy to make the portrait “sketches” by means of photography that Hill’s painting was ultimately overburdened by a surfeit of recognisable faces: 450 names appear on his key to the painting. The final composition – not completed for two decades and as dull a work as one can imagine – lacks not only the fiery dynamism of Hill’s first sketches of the event but also the immediacy and graphic power of the photographs that were meant to serve it.

By August 1844, Hill and Adamson clearly understood the value of their calotypes as works of art in their own right and decided to expand their collaboration far beyond the original mission, announcing a forthcoming series of volumes illustrated with photographs of subjects other than the ministers of the Free Church: The Fishermen and Women of the Firth of Forth; Highland Character and Costume; Architectural Structures of Edinburgh; Architectural Structures of Glasgow, &c.; Old Castles, Abbeys, &c. in Scotland; and Portraits of Distinguished Scotchmen. Although these titles were never issued as published volumes, photographs intended for each survive, and those made in the small fishing town of Newhaven are a particularly noteworthy group.

In a time as pervaded as ours is by photographic imagery, it is difficult to conceive that within the first few weeks of their collaboration, Hill and Adamson made more photographs than the two together had ever seen. In four-and-a-half years and nearly 3,000 images, they pioneered the aesthetic terrain of photography and created a body of work that still ranks among the highest achievements of photographic portraiture. Their collaboration ended not because of any artistic falling out between the partners but rather because Adamson, sickly from childhood, fell ill in late 1847 and returned to Saint Andrews to be cared for by his family. He died in January 1848.

Daniel, Malcolm. “David Octavius Hill (1802-1870) and Robert Adamson (1821-1848).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hlad/hd_hlad.htm (October 2004)
Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Newhaven' 1843-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Newhaven
1843-1845
15.6 x 11.5cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

David Young (left); unidentified man

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Newhaven' 1843-1845 (detail)

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Newhaven (detail)
1843-1845
15.6 x 11.5cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Jeanie Wilson, Newhaven' 1843-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Jeanie Wilson, Newhaven
1843-1845
20.2 x 14.5cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Newhaven' 1843-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Newhaven
1843-1845
19.9 x 14.5cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Unidentified boy; has also been called “King Fisher” or “His Faither’s Breeks”

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Newhaven Fisherman' 1843-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Newhaven Fisherman
1843-1845
20.6 x 14.4cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Willie Liston

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Newhaven Fisherman' 1843-1845 (detail)

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Newhaven Fisherman (detail)
1843-1845
20.6 x 14.4cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'A Newhaven Pilot' 1843-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
A Newhaven Pilot
1843-1845
20.3 x 14.6cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Newhaven' 1843-1845

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Newhaven
1843-1845
14.7 x 20.1cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

Group of unidentified women

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847) Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848) David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) 'Newhaven' 1843-1845 (detail)

 

Hill & Adamson (Scottish, active 1843-1847)
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870)
Newhaven (detail)
1843-1845
14.7 x 20.1cm
Hill & Adamson Photography Collection
Gernsheim Collection
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Public domain

 

 

Harry Ransom Center
300 West 21st Street
Austin, Texas 78712

Opening hours:
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Saturday – Sunday Noon – 5pm
Closed Mondays

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Exhibition: ‘ “My verses are like dynamite”: Curt Bloch’s ‘Het Onderwater Cabaret” at the Jewish Museum Berlin

“Bloch survived and so did his magazines, now to be appreciated as a unique work of creative resistance published during the Second World War. Respect.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 9th February to 26th May, 2024

Curator: Aubrey Pomerance

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover from 30.08.1943 from the exhibition '"My verses are like dynamite": Curt Bloch's 'Het Onderwater Cabaret'' at the Jewish Museum Berlin, February - May, 2024

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover 1st volume, no. 2 from 30.08.1943
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

 

Unquenchable flame

Between August 1943 and April 1945, German Jew Curt Bloch created his own weekly, satirical poetry magazine, a unique work of creative resistance titled Het Onderwater Cabaret (The Underwater Cabaret) while holed up in an attic with two other adults on the Dutch German border.

Bloch conceived, wrote, designed, and produced 96 individual copies of “OWC” (Het Onderwater Cabaret‘s abbreviation after issue 33) with a total of 492 poems spanning over 1,700 pages. “The title alluded to a modern form of cabaret that had enthralled a large audience during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). Cabaret performances typically consisted of a series of creatively crafted texts, songs, and scenes in which artists criticised societal injustices, mocked celebrities, and confronted the people with their perceived ignorance.”1

“… the Underwater Cabaret, which took its title from a unique term in Dutch for the act of going into hiding: “onderduiken.” Its literal translation is “to dive under,” but a common translation is “to slip out of public view.” A person in hiding was an “onderduiker,” who had gone “under water,” or was submerged.”2

Although he had no formal design training (he trained as a lawyer), Bloch had an innate understanding of modern design at that time: Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism, advertising, typography, collage, contemporary magazines such as the socialist Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ) and the satirical and politically provocative collages of the artist John Heartfield. This knowledge of contemporary art practice undoubtedly shows in the inventive photomontages of the OWC front covers.

“He cut out letters, images, and shapes from various print media and glued them onto the cover paper… [using the] artistic technique of collage, which was also used in contemporary mass media… small artworks with the simplest materials and means, using creativity, improvisational talent, and subtle humour.”3

Each edition of Bloch’s magazine consisted of just a single copy which was passed around to a small number of people external to the attic. The small “OWC” booklets could be discreetly delivered from house to house in a jacket or pants pocket. All copies were returned to him.

“Bloch mocked and ridiculed all of the major fascist leaders, from Hitler, Goebbels and Göring, to Mussolini and Seyß-Inquart, Reich commissioner of the Netherlands, alongside a host of their subordinates and henchmen, while always remaining acutely conscious of the enormity of their atrocities.”4

And here’s the rub. Despite the threat to his life, the possibility of death if their hiding place or a copy of the magazine where discovered, this man – through his spirit, creativity and humour – stared down with unquenchable spirit the unconscionable behaviour of the Nazis.

In the last edition there appears one poem, the only one he wrote in English, which reads:

At Berlin with our Russian friends,
The German Nightingale,
Herr Hitler, doesn’t sing today
He’s feeling, after some delay
A tie around his neck.


The ogre had met his maker.

While Bloch survived his mother and his sisters and most of the rest of his family in Germany died in the war. He survived and so did his magazines, now to be appreciated as a unique work of creative resistance published during the Second World War. Respect.

Human nature will always resist oppression, something that should be remembered in these troubled times.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Anonymous text from the Curt Bloch Het Onderwater Cabaret website Nd [Online] 23/04/2024
2/ Nina Siegal. “He Made a Magazine, 95 Issues, While Hiding From the Nazis in an Attic,” on The New York Times website Dec. 18, 2023 [Online] Cited 20/12/2023
3/ Anonymous text from the Curt Bloch Het Onderwater Cabaret website Nd [Online] 23/04/2024
4/ Text from the Jewish Museum Berlin website


Many thankx to the Jewish Museum Berlin for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. For more information about Curt Bloch and the Het Onderwater Cabaret please see the Curt Bloch Het Onderwater Cabaret website.

Read more about Curt Bloch and his little magazine below.

 

 

Vielleicht kommen euch die Gedichte,
Die ich in eurer Sprache schrieb
In spätren Zeiten zu Gesichte
Und täten sie’s, wär mir’s recht lieb.

Perhaps at some point in the future,
the poems in your tongue I composed,
will be brought to your notice,
and if so, to delight will I then be disposed.


(Transl. by Aubrey Pomerance)

 

“Bloch’s experience was different because, in addition to sustenance and care, his helpers brought him pens, glue, newspapers and other printed materials that he used to produce a startling publication: his own weekly, satirical poetry magazine.”


The New York Times

 

 

Over a period of more than 19 months between August 1943 and April 1945, the hitherto unknown German Jewish author Curt Bloch produced a unique work of creative resistance while in hiding in the Netherlands: Het Onderwater Cabaret.

Week for week, Bloch put together a small format booklet comprising of handwritten poems in both Dutch and German which confronted Nazi propaganda and addressed a wide variety of themes: the course of the war, the lies and crimes of the National Socialists and their collaborators, his situation in hiding and the fate of his family, the approaching downfall and defeat of the Axis forces, and the fate of the German people. Through caustic satire and sardonic wit, Bloch mocked and ridiculed all of the major fascist leaders, from Hitler, Goebbels and Göring, to Mussolini and Seyß-Inquart, Reich commissioner of the Netherlands, alongside a host of their subordinates and henchmen, while always remaining acutely conscious of the enormity of their atrocities.

Some eight decades since the creation of the work and nearly fifty years after his death, Curt Bloch’s hope is now finally being fulfilled: The exhibition presents all 95 original issues of the Het Onderwater Cabaret, accompanied by insight into the production of their covers, which Bloch adorned with photomontages put together using materials from newspapers and magazines at his disposal. Audio readings of selected poems and a video performance staged by the actors Marina Frenk, Richard Gonlag and Mathias Schäfer bring Bloch’s verses to life.

Alongside the display of additional works written by Bloch while “under water”, his helpers and those who were with him in hiding are introduced, accompanied by eyewitness interviews. The entire Het Onderwater Cabaret is accessible in digital form, accompanied by transcriptions.

Bloch’s works, known to only a handful of people at the time of their composition, will now find the recognition and appreciation they so greatly deserve. In today’s world, in which war, disinformation, discrimination, exclusion and persecution are widespread, they remain highly pertinent.

Text from the Jewish Museum Berlin website

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine covers No.’s 1-95

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover from 25.09.1943 from the exhibition '"My verses are like dynamite": Curt Bloch's 'Het Onderwater Cabaret'' at the Jewish Museum Berlin, February - May, 2024

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover 1st volume, no. 6 from 25.09.1943
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

One of the earliest issues of “The Underwater Cabaret,” a weekly magazine made by a Jewish man hiding from the Nazis in Holland during World War II.

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover from 16.10.1943

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover 1st volume, no. 9 from 16.10.1943
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

Bloch’s magazine was satirical. Here he depicts British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, whose policy of appeasing Hitler drew criticism.

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover 1st volume, no. 18 from 18.12.1943

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover 1st volume, no. 18 from 18.12.1943
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

 

During the German occupation of the Netherlands, Curt Bloch lived in hiding, to avoid deportation to a labor or extermination camp. Under extremely challenging circumstances, Bloch developed a very personal form of resistance against the Nazi regime: “During the time I had to hide, I published a booklet of satirical poems in German and Dutch every week and circulated it among a small group.”

In reference to his fugitive situation, Bloch named his publication “Het Onderwater-Cabaret” (The Underwater Cabaret). The title alluded to a modern form of cabaret that had enthralled a large audience during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). Cabaret performances typically consisted of a series of creatively crafted texts, songs, and scenes in which artists criticised societal injustices, mocked celebrities, and confronted the people with their perceived ignorance. Under Nazi rule, political cabarets were censored, closed, or forced to conform. The Dutch radio program “Cabaret op zondagmiddag” (Sunday Afternoon Cabaret) may have inspired Bloch to counter this fascist and anti-Semitic propaganda with his own subversive cabaret.

From 22 August, 1943, to 3 April, 1945, Curt Bloch conceived, wrote, designed, and produced 96 individual copies of “OWC” with a total of 492 poems spanning over 1,700 pages.

In 1943, he published 19 issues of his magazine. The following year: 61, including a special edition in July 1944 with no specific date assigned. The year 1945 included 15 magazines.

The magazines were typically published on Saturdays, but there were particularly productive periods, especially in August and September 1944, when he produced two issues per week.

Curt Bloch’s handmade booklets were slightly smaller than a standard postcard, measuring approximately 10 cm × 13.5 cm, and usually contained 16 or 20 pages.

All editions are fully preserved in numbered order. Only one poem, Farewell to ‘De Gouden Bommen’, had parts of the pages torn out, presumably intentionally, to remove any hints of a hiding place.

Content

In the first year of the OWC, Curt Bloch published 111 poems; in the second year, 302 poems (plus nine in the special edition); and in the third year, 70 poems. Most verses were written in rhymed quatrains, some as couplets or tail-rhymes. …

The Underwater Cabaret primarily dealt with current events of the time. Many contributions satirised well-known representatives of the Nazi regime, and some even dedicated entire poems to them. Besides Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, who appeared most frequently in the verses, other figures such as Heinrich Himmler (Reich Interior Minister), Joachim von Ribbentrop (Reich Foreign Minister), Gerd von Rundstedt (Commander-in-Chief West), as well as foreign dictators Benito Mussolini (Italy) and Francisco Franco (Spain) were also targets for ridicule. Prominent Dutch fascists like Arthur Seyß-Inquart (Reichskommissar of the Netherlands), Anton Mussert (founder and leader of the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging, NSB), and Maarten van Nierop (NSB member and editor of the Nazi-controlled Twentsch Nieuwsblad) were also targets of his ridicule and mockery.

Another major theme of the OWC was the everyday experience of the occupation, including hunger, strikes, and raids. Bloch’s lyrical self also provided deep insights into his emotional world: concern for his family, especially his beloved sister Helene; despair and impatience in hiding; frustration over his isolated situation; gratitude for any form of support; joy at the victories of the Allies; and, repeatedly, hope for a swift return to freedom. Bloch’s rhymes display a wide range of emotions and changing moods depending on the course of the war.

Design

While the first covers of the OWC magazine were in black and white, Curt Bloch designed the covers of his magazine in colour from the 17th issue in 1943. He cut out letters, images, and shapes from various print media and glued them onto the cover paper.

In July 1944, Bloch decided to abbreviate the name of his magazine on the cover. Until issue 32 of the second year, he used the title “Het Onderwater-Cabaret.” From issue 33 onward, he used the abbreviation “OWC.” He retained this acronym on the cover until the final magazine.

Just as with the name of his magazine, Bloch’s cover design also refers to the characteristic popular culture of the Weimar Republic. His designs reference the artistic technique of collage, which was also used in contemporary mass media. Satirical and politically provocative collages by artist John Heartfield for the socialist Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung were particularly well-known.

Cabaret artists, collage artists, and Curt Bloch – who, as a trained lawyer, did not have formal design training – share the fact that they created unique small artworks with the simplest materials and means, using creativity, improvisational talent, and subtle humour.

Readership and Circulation

The weekly reading circle of the “Onderwater-Cabaret” began in Curt Bloch’s immediate environment, with the people who provided him with shelter, fellow fugitives like Karola Wolf and Bruno Löwenberg, and members of the resistance movement in Enschede. Once the window shutters were closed at night, Bloch could leave his hiding place. He often sat with his hosts and their visitors in the living room, where he could personally perform the cabaret pieces. However, his audience also included other fugitives and their supporters in different homes. Based on his research, Gerard Groeneveld, a Dutch historian and author (Het Onderwater Cabaret) estimates that the booklets reached up to thirty people. However, the exact number of readers and their names had to remain unknown due to the clandestine nature of the operation. …

The small “OWC” booklets could be discreetly delivered from house to house in a jacket or pants pocket. Getting caught with a magazine that satirised Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders would have been life-threatening for the couriers. In Germany, in 1943, four people who had disseminated one single satirical poem were sentenced to death for “undermining military morale.” Bloch wondered in A Goal: “What would happen to me, I have almost four hundred?”

Despite the extensive secret handovers required for circulation, Curt Bloch’s resistance operation remained undiscovered. All 96 editions were returned to him in good condition. After the war, he emigrated to the USA, where he had the booklets bound into four collected volumes.

Anonymous text from the Curt Bloch Het Onderwater Cabaret website Nd [Online] 23/04/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover 2nd volume, no. 3 from 15.01.1944

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover 2nd volume, no. 3 from 15.01.1944
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

Doktor Göbbels Mummenschanz
Doctor Goebbels mask

The name “Mummenschanz” is a combination of “Mummen”, meaning to conceal or to mask (similar to the English “mummer”), and “Schanz”, a play on “chance”.

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret' 2nd volume, no. 20 from 13.05.1944

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret 2nd volume, no. 20 from 13.05.1944
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover 2nd volume, no. 21 from 20.05.1944

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover 2nd volume, no. 21 from 20.05.1944
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

Pioneers of Labor

They, who always reduced your wages
And increased your working hours
Plunged you comrades and metal proletarians
Into ever deeper poverty,

Those who only kept you in check
By delivering you to fascism,
Do you still remember the old
Representatives of capitalism?

Indeed, you will still recognise them,
The gentlemen and their crimes,
When you hear the name Röchling mentioned,
Then you think of the mines of the Stumm brothers

In the Saar region and the sufferings
The miner must endure there,
Mr. Röchling called you ungrateful
You were not hungry without complaints.

And Vögler, the head of the steel barons
In the Ruhr region, also let you starve
And ultimately left you to loiter
Without income in the streets.

And with their
Socio-political “merits”
Today the Führer makes these men “Pioneers
Of German labor,” well-regarded.

They are exploiters and oppressors
In Adolf’s beautiful miracle state,
They are even honoured as bringers of people’s happiness
And their praises are sung loudly.

These are the new “socialists”
Who vouch for your future,
The masterminds of the fascists,
Who strangle welfare, freedom, life.

They are the pioneers of misfortune,
Who cause unhappiness, hardship, and death,
How long will Germany endure their
Criminal tyranny?

Curt Bloch

Post-Editing: Sylvia Stawski, Ernst Sittig

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover 2nd volume, no. 46 from 16.09.1944

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover 2nd volume, no. 46 from 16.09.1944
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

This OWC edition was published on September 16 – four days earlier, the south of the Netherlands was liberated by the Allies as part of Operation “Market Garden.” Curt Bloch is pleased with the positive developments – and also with the fact that members of the Dutch Nazi movement are now filled with fear. He observes: The NSB members tremble. Their leader, Anton Mussert, calls for the evacuation of the families of his followers to the northeast of the Netherlands. In his verses, Bloch suspects that it will only be weeks before all of the Netherlands is liberated. However, he will have to wait more than half a year before he can leave his hiding place.

Text from the Curt Bloch Het Onderwater Cabaret website

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover 2nd volume, no. 50 from 07.10.1944

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover 2nd volume, no. 50 from 07.10.1944
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

“Die Man Rief, Die Geister…”
“The Spirits That I’ve Cited …”

Bloch depicted the brutish character of Nazism in some of his covers.

 

 

For more than two years, home for Curt Bloch was a tiny crawl space below the rafters of a modest brick home in Enschede, a Dutch city near the German border. The attic had a single small window. He shared it with two other adults.

During that time, Bloch, a German Jew, survived in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands by relying on a network of people who gave him food and kept his secrets.

In that respect, he was like at least 10,000 Jews who hid in Holland and managed to live by pretending not to exist. At least 104,000 others – many of whom also sought refuge, but were found – ended up being sent to their deaths.

But Bloch’s experience was different because, in addition to sustenance and care, his helpers brought him pens, glue, newspapers and other printed materials that he used to produce a startling publication: his own weekly, satirical poetry magazine.

From August 1943 until he was liberated in April 1945, Bloch produced 95 issues of Het Onderwater Cabaret, or The Underwater Cabaret.

Each issue included original art, poetry and songs that often took aim at the Nazis and their Dutch collaborators. Bloch, writing in both German and Dutch, mocked Nazi propaganda, responded to war news and offered personal perspectives on wartime deprivations.

In one poem, he sardonically suggested how recent events had reordered what it meant to be a beast in the animal kingdom:

Hyenas and jackals
Look on with jealousy
For they now seem as choirboys
Compared to humanity.

Bloch shared his handwritten magazine with the people he lived with, the family who sheltered him and, possibly, outside helpers and other Jews in hiding. After the war, which Bloch survived, he collected his magazines and brought them home and ultimately to New York, where he emigrated. There they sat on some bookshelves, the unknown creations of a man who was trained not as a poet, or an artist, but as a lawyer.

Bloch’s daughter, Simone Bloch, now 64, remembers seeing the magazines in the family home growing up. She didn’t fully grasp their significance, or particularly care to. A rebellious teenager by her own account, Simone said she never connected particularly well with her father, who died suddenly from a liver ailment when she was 15.

“A couple of times he read from them at dinner parties,” she said in an interview, “but I didn’t understand German then.”

Many years later, though, Simone’s daughter, Lucy, took an interest in the magazines, not just as family mementos but as markers of history. She got a research grant to travel to Germany, where she was able to study more about her grandfather’s history. Simone then spent years searching for a way to expand public awareness of the magazines, one of the few previously undiscovered literary efforts that document the Holocaust in Europe.

This led to the production of a book, The Underwater Cabaret: The Satirical Resistance of Curt Bloch, by Gerard Groeneveld, which was published in the Netherlands earlier this year. Soon there will also be a museum exhibition, “‘My Verses Are Like Dynamite.’ Curt Bloch’s Het Onderwater Cabaret,” which is scheduled to open in February at the Jüdisches Museum Berlin.

“Any time that an almost completely unknown work of this caliber comes to the fore, it’s very significant,” said Aubrey Pomerance, a curator of the Berlin museum exhibition. “The overwhelming majority of writings that were created in hiding were destroyed. If they weren’t, they’ve come to the public attention before now. So, it’s tremendously exciting.”

Research by Pomerance and Groeneveld for the exhibition and the book has helped to illuminate many aspects of Bloch’s life, which had not previously drawn much attention. Born in Dortmund, an industrial city in western Germany, Bloch was 22 and working at his first job as a legal secretary when Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany in 1933. Antisemitic violence in Bloch’s hometown escalated even before official anti-Jewish measures were instituted.

After a colleague threatened his life that same year, Bloch fled to Amsterdam, where he took a job with a Persian rug importer and dealer. He hoped to find refuge there before escaping farther west, but his plans were dashed when the Germans invaded in 1940, the borders closed, and the nightmare expanded to Jews there as well.

Bloch’s firm transferred him to The Hague, but when non-Dutch Jews were forced out of the western Dutch provinces by the occupier’s decree, he was sent to work in a subsidiary in Enschede.

There, he got a job with the local Jewish Council, an organisation installed by the German overseers to implement Nazi antisemitic edicts. Jews who worked for the council were assured that they were safe from deportation.

Technically, Bloch was an adviser for “immigrant affairs,” although no opportunities for immigration existed – only transport to a concentration camp. The Enschede council understood the dangers and warned its members to go into hiding.

It was aided by an influential Dutch Reformed Church pastor, Leendert Overduin, who secretly ran a resistance organisation that helped some 1,000 Jews find places to hide. Known as Group Overduin, it consisted of about 50 people, including Overduin’s two sisters. Overduin was arrested three times and was imprisoned for this work; he has been recognised since as Righteous Among Nations by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance center in Jerusalem.

Group Overduin found Bloch a hiding place in the home of Bertus Menneken, an undertaker, and his wife, Aleida Menneken, a housekeeper. Their two-story brick house on Plataanstraat 15 was in a middle-class district of western Enschede.

There, Bloch shared the crawl space with a 44-year-old German-Jewish refugee, Bruno Löwenberg, and Löwenberg’s 22-year-old girlfriend, Karola Wolf, whom they called Ola. During their time in hiding, Bloch fell in love with Ola and wrote many verses just for her.

“He had a lot of courage, but he also had a reckless streak,” Groeneveld said.

Each edition of Bloch’s magazine consisted of just a single copy. But it may have been read by as many as 20 to 30 people, Groeneveld estimated.

There was a “huge organisation behind him, which included couriers, who brought food, but who could also bring the magazine out, to share with other people in the group who could be trusted,” Groeneveld said. “The magazines are very small, you can easily put one in your pocket or hide it in a book. He got them all back. They must have also returned them in some way.”

Bloch named his magazine in response to a German-language radio program that played on Dutch airwaves during the occupation, the Sunday Afternoon Cabaret. But this, Groeneveld explained, was the Underwater Cabaret, which took its title from a unique term in Dutch for the act of going into hiding: “onderduiken.” Its literal translation is “to dive under,” but a common translation is “to slip out of public view.” A person in hiding was an “onderduiker,” who had gone “under water,” or was submerged.

Groeneveld said Bloch’s covers, which were stylised photomontages, drew inspiration from anti-fascist satirical magazines of the prewar era, like the French “Marianne,” known for its anti-Nazi illustrations, and the German workers’ magazine Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung.

“His main target was Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister,” Pomerance said. “He often refers to articles that talk about a ‘final victory for the Nazis,’ and he mocks that notion, calling them murderers and liars. He was always sure that Germany would not win the war.”

In his poem, “The Way to Truth,” for example, he advised an imagined German reader how to approach Goebbels’ falsehoods:

If he writes straight, read it crooked.
If he writes crooked, read it straight.
Yes, just turn his writings around.
In all his useful words, harm is found.

Bloch’s writing wasn’t necessarily intended to live only on the page. During his time in hiding, he may have recited his poetry or performed the songs, Pomerance said.

“Quite a number of his poems were identified as being songs,” he said. “But unfortunately he didn’t provide any melodies that they should be sung to,” except for one, titled “Resistance Song.” The cover of the final issue, dated April 1945, after his liberation, is a photomontage of two people climbing out of a hatch. The title of that issue declares they are finally “above water.”

One poem in the edition, the only one he wrote in English, reads:

At Berlin with our Russian friends,
The German Nightingale,
Herr Hitler, doesn’t sing today
He’s feeling, after some delay
A tie around his neck.

Though Bloch survived, his mother and his sisters and most of the rest of his family in Germany died in the war. After the liberation of the Netherlands, he met Ruth Kan, who had survived a number of concentration camps, including Auschwitz. They married in 1946, had a son, Stephen, and moved to New York in 1948, where they later opened a business that sold European antiques and had Simone in 1959.

Beyond the new book and museum exhibition, Simone is developing a website that will feature her father’s art and poetry in three languages: German, Dutch and English.

That process has had a profound impact on her, she said.

“It provides not just insight, but access to my father in a way that I wish I’d had when I was young,” she said.

Nina Siegal. “He Made a Magazine, 95 Issues, While Hiding From the Nazis in an Attic,” on The New York Times website Dec. 18, 2023 [Online] Cited 20/12/2023. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover 2nd volume, no. 53 from 04.11.1944

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret Magazine cover 2nd volume, no. 53 from 04.11.1944
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

“Ich schieb wache” I keep watch

Bloch was dedicated to publishing his magazine each week and numbered them.

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover 2nd volume, no. 57 from 05.12.1944

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret Magazine cover 2nd volume, no. 57 from 05.12.1944
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

St. Nicholas in Wartime

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover 3rd volume, no. 5 from 03.02.1945

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover 3rd volume, no. 5 from 03.02.1945
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover 3rd volume, no. 12 from 24.03.1945

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover 3rd volume, no. 12 from 24.03.1945
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

Bloch’s title: “The Fuhrer’s Mother”

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975) 'Het Onderwater Cabaret', Magazine cover 3rd volume, no. 15 from 03.04.1945

 

Curt Bloch (German Jewish, 1908-1975)
Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover 3rd volume, no. 15 from 03.04.1945
Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Bloch’s family

 

The final issue: liberated and “above water”

Immediately after the liberation of Enschede by British troops, Curt Bloch publishes his final magazine from underground. The headline on the front page reads “Bovenwater Finale van het O.W.C.” (Above Water Finale of the O.W.C.), accompanied by an image of a hidden person opening a cellar hatch. …

With the poem “Bovenwaterfinale van het O.W.C.” (Above Water Finale of the O.W.C.), Curt Bloch bids farewell as an underground publisher. He announces the end of The Underwater Cabaret and expresses gratitude for the attention. Now, one can return to the daylight, and his dream of freedom has come true. Bloch hopes that those who were taken from him will return (referring to his mother and two sisters, who were already murdered in concentration camps at this time, though Bloch will learn this not until later). Closing the chapter of his extensive publishing work in hiding, Bloch ends with the old-fashioned greeting “Tabé!” – a farewell phrase derived from Asian language usage.

Text from the Curt Bloch Het Onderwater Cabaret website

 

Above-Water Finale of the O.W.C.

We brought to you the final sounds
of the Underwater Cabaret,
And will thank you for your attention,
Since with this it will be ending.

Yes, it finally will close,
We now resurface
And no longer feel like outcasts
And not as pressurised as Hiob

Today, we crawl toward the daylight,
Our hiding time is in the past, thank God
And we are happy and are contented,
Because we finally are free –

This is the O.W.C. Finale
We long expected this,
That sometime we would be brought to daylight
After these years’ fearful night.

We were quiet partisans
And empathised with the fight for justice
And today the banners are waving.
And this fight has – almost – ended.

They did not cut us down to size
Although they wanted to,
You see: Injustice does not bring a blessing,
Our dream of freedom did come true.

Today we breathe in freedom’s air
Delightedly and greedily,
We, recently still sighing,
find the present to our liking.

And hope, that those who were sadly
torn away from us, will return,
Whether this will happen? Time will tell.
Sometimes we’re hopeful, sometimes sad.

After this time of cruel murders
Now comes a new melody,
Peaceful chords are coming,
There come prosperity and harmony

Now we will be building peace
And building a new era
Of charity and trust,
Of freedom and of justice.

Gone is the time of war and bombs,
Gone the wartime woe.
The OWC closes its columns
And says today forever:
Tabé!

Curt Bloch

Post-Editing: Hanny Veenendaal

 

Curt Bloch, undated

 

Curt Bloch, undated; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2023/90/5, gift of Lide Schattenkerk

 

 

Jewish Museum Berlin
Libeskind Building, ground level, Eric F. Ross Gallery
Lindenstraße 9-14, 10969 Berlin

Opening hours: 10am – 6pm

Jewish Museum Berlin website

Curt Bloch Het Onderwater Cabaret website

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Exhibition: ‘Jakob Tuggener – The 4 Seasons’ at the Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich, Switzerland

“These are images to imbibe so that we soak up their essence, so that we absorb their energy into our soul.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 10th February – 20th May, 2024

Curator: curated and prepared in close collaboration with the Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung (Jakob Tuggener Foundation) and Martin Gasser

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Threshing machine in the Töss Valley' (Dreschmaschine im Tösstal) 1950s from the exhibition 'Jakob Tuggener – The 4 Seasons' at the Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich, Switzerland, February - May, 2024

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Threshing machine in the Töss Valley (Dreschmaschine im Tösstal)
1950s
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

 

The Swiss photographer Jakob Tuggener (1904-1988) is well known for his revolutionary book Fabrik (Factory) (1943) – subtitled Ein Bildepos der Technik “A picture of technology” – which tells a subjective story of the relationship between human and machine through pairings of modernist images, through “a modern new style of photography showing not just how things looked, but how it felt to be there.” Tuggener portrays the mundanity of the “operational sequence” (la chaîne opératoire) of the machine, where the human becomes the oil used to grease the cogs of the ever-demanding “mechanical monsters.”

“As Arnold Burgaurer cogently states in his introduction, Tuggener is a jack-of-all-trades: he exhibits, ‘the sharp eye of the hunter, the dreamy eye of the painter; he can be a realist, a formalist, romantic, theatrical, surreal.’ Tuggener’s moves effortlessly between large-format lucidity and grainy, blurred impressionism, in a book that is a decade ahead of its time.” (Martin Parr and Gerry Badger. The Photobook: A History Volume I, Phaidon Press, 2005, p. 144.)

These pastoralist, romantic photographs of the seasons and of country life were unknown to me. While still exhibiting formal, romantic, theatrical and blurred impressionist qualities, these sensitive photographs by an expressionist photographer ask the viewer to stop and contemplate the cycles of land and life.

“After he had already composed four unique book pieces on the themes spring, summer, autumn and winter during the 1940s, he created completely new versions of these “farm books” under the title The 4 Seasons in 1973 and 1974, at the age of almost 70 years. They are devoted to simple life in the countryside, reflecting in sensitively observed, atmospherically charged, yet never picturesque recordings, the recurring cycle of nature and are at the same time a reflection on human life and transience.” (book description)

A gathering of chickens, farmers bread in a wheelbarrow, two bicyclists riding in the spring wind captured in a blurred moment of stasis, or the grizzled gamekeeper, pipe clamped between his lips, cleaning his shotgun while his wife darns socks behind surmounted by a stuffed animal overseeing both… all are beautifully observed.

These are images to imbibe so that we soak up their essence, so that we absorb their energy into our soul. It is the power of poet-photographer Tuggener’s pictures that they expand our experience and consciousness of the earth from which we come, taking us back to childhood, play, land, laughter, people, life through expressions of each season of the year.

As Tuggener observed in December 1950, “Everyone is at a loss when it comes to contemplating a picture without the aid of a text. And yet with a text, an image can only be explained, not experienced. That is because the soul resides at a greater depth, which words cannot reach. This realm is much larger than the periphery of the mind.”

Fo more information on the artist see my text “Rare magician, strange alchemist, tells stories through visuals” on the exhibition Jakob Tuggener – Machine time at Fotostiftung Schweiz in 2018.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

The Expressionist Photographer

The expressionist photographer does not exist in the commercial register. He is the freest of the free. Unbound by any purpose, he photographs only the pleasure of his experience. He is the artist seeking to express himself with his instrument, in this case the camera. Indeed, art is not art at all until an idea has been crystallised, visualised or set to music, and it does not matter which instrument we use to achieve this. However, the key factor is not reproduction, but the desire to make something. Ten years ago, I began to use photography as my language and to speak in self-contained books: about ball nights, about iron, about ships, about everything that particularly moves and excites my soul. The public, or rather the publishers, have no confidence in this approach. They say people would not understand a book without words, merely to be seen with the eyes. Yes, we are made more superficial by illustrated magazines and by reading: Everyone is at a loss when it comes to contemplating a picture without the aid of a text. And yet with a text, an image can only be explained, not experienced. That is because the soul resides at a greater depth, which words cannot reach. This realm is much larger than the periphery of the mind.


Jak. Tuggener
Schweizerische Photorundschau 23, 8th of December 1950

 

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'In the moor, near Brüttelen' 1944 from the exhibition 'Jakob Tuggener – The 4 Seasons' at the Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich, Switzerland, February - May, 2024

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
In the moor, near Brüttelen
1944
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Belfry, Rümlang' 1934

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Belfry, Rümlang
1934
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Rain' 1949

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Rain
1949
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'In the spring wind' (Im Frühlingswind) 1950s

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
In the spring wind (Im Frühlingswind)
1950s
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

 

The work of Jakob Tuggener (1904­-1988) is well positioned within 20th-century photography. His expressive photographs of glittering ball nights are legendary and his 1943 book Fabrik (Factory) is seen as a milestone in the history of the photo book. However, Tuggener was also captivated by a third subject: simple life in the countryside.

His countless sensitively observed, atmospherically charged, but never picturesque depictions of everyday farming life reflect the cycle of nature, while simultaneously contemplating life and its transience. In 1973/74, Tuggener compiled four individual book maquettes under the title Die 4 Jahreszeiten (The 4 Seasons): unique ready-to-print books, which he designed himself.

In addition to those book maquettes, this exhibition displays other photographs by Jakob Tuggener, which demonstrate how intensively this outstanding photographer devoted himself to the theme of country life for more than 30 years.

In parallel to the exhibition, Die 4 Jahreszeiten will also be presented in a book. In close collaboration with the Jakob Tuggener Foundation and Steidl Verlag, Fotostiftung Schweiz is thus providing new insight into the series of around 70 books that Jakob Tuggener himself considered the centrepiece of his oeuvre, even though they remained unpublished during his lifetime.

The exhibition is accompanied by the publication Jakob Tuggener – The 4 Seasons, published by Steidl Verlag, edited by Fotostiftung Schweiz, Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung and Martin Gasser.

Text from the Fotostiftung Schweiz website

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Chicken yard' (Hühnerhof) 1950s

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Chicken yard (Hühnerhof)
1950s
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Bauernbrot, Brüttelen' (Farmers bread, Brüttelen) 1944

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Bauernbrot, Brüttelen (Farmers bread, Brüttelen)
1944
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Yoke of oxen, Küssnacht am Rigi' (Ochsengespann, Küssnacht am Rigi) 1943

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Yoke of oxen, Küssnacht am Rigi (Ochsengespann, Küssnacht am Rigi)
1943
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Manure spread in February, Oeschgen' (Ausgebrachte Jauche im Februar, Oeschgen) 1942

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Manure spread in February, Oeschgen (Ausgebrachte Jauche im Februar, Oeschgen)
1942
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Holiday guests at La Forclaz, Val d'Herens' (Feriengäste des La Forclaz, Val d'Herens) 1957

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Holiday guests at La Forclaz, Val d’Herens (Feriengäste des La Forclaz, Val d’Herens)
1957
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

 

Jakob Tuggener The 4 Seasons

Jakob Tuggener (1904-1988) is one of the exceptional figures in 20th-century Swiss photography. He had the confidence to consider himself an artist from the outset. His expressive photographs of glittering ball nights are legendary and his book Fabrik (Factory) from 1943 is seen as a milestone in the history of the photo book. However, it has so far gone largely unnoticed that Tuggener was also captivated by a third subject: simple life in the countryside.

Already in the early 1930s, after his brief artistic education at the Reimann School in Berlin, Tuggener began to take an interest in rural life and the traditions of his homeland. This focus certainly had to do with the political developments in Europe, which prompted Switzerland to reflect on its own values and to disseminate them via the illustrated press. While Tuggener was earning his living as a freelance industrial photographer, he managed to make a name for himself with photographs of everyday country life, livestock markets and folk festivals, until the Second World War began. During his subsequent active army service, he still had enough time to pursue the subject further and also capture the changes of the seasons with his camera. As early as 1942/43, he compiled four individual book maquettes from the photographs he had taken since the mid-1930s – unique books that he designed himself and were ready to print. However, as was also the case with all his later book maquettes, Tuggener never found a publisher willing to publish them exactly as he had imagined. Only a small selection of images were presented by Arnold Kübler in the magazine Du in 1946. “Tuggener tries to hint at the inner workings of people and things in pictures,” wrote Kübler, also pointing out Tuggener’s special way of using the sequencing and juxtaposition of photographs to achieve a manner of artistic expression that went far beyond the documentary.

In the military

After the outbreak of the Second World War in autumn 1939, Tuggener was called up for active service, like all Swiss men of military age. Naturally, he had his camera with him in his kit, so to speak, as he aimed to provide the illustrated magazines with pictures of daily soldiering life. This was only possible for a short time though, as censorship became increasingly strict and prohibited the publication of images with military content. Tuggener kept taking photographs, just for himself, but was beginning to run out of subjects. Although most of his time was spent on guard duty, Tuggener was certainly able to get something positive out of it: “When I stand guard at night,” he wrote home, “I contemplate the full splendour of nature, because before us, there lies a marvellous land and a mighty, open sky.”

During the winter of 1942, Tuggener was in the valley Fricktal, serving as a guard in the Oeschgen internment camp. It was a camp for Polish soldiers who had found refuge in Switzerland in June 1940 after being surrounded by Hitler’s Wehrmacht on the French-Swiss border. They were subsequently distributed among camps set up at short notice, where they lived in safety until after the war, but were strictly kept apart from the local population. Compared to a number of larger camps in places like Büren an der Aare or Wettingen, Oeschgen was a relatively small and manageable one, so Tuggener was soon able to approach these foreign men he was supposed to be watching over and strove to establish a rapport with them. Despite language difficulties, he succeeded in doing so very well, thanks to his camera – particularly as he came up with the idea of taking portrait photos of all the internees, then offering these to them for sale. As his financial situation was anything but a bed of roses during the war years, he appreciated this source of extra income, but was also pursuing a completely different goal with it: He was planning to publish a book about the internment camp, but it never materialised. Only a book maquette compiled shortly after his service in Oeschgen under the title Polen-Wache (Pole Watch) has survived. It is primarily a portrait book, a lively group portrait that visibly reveals Tuggener’s sympathy for the interned men and shows that he treated them as equals, even in his role as a guard. The portraits are complemented by wintry atmospheric images and by photographs of the monotonous daily camp routine, from morning roll call to working in the forest, or attending to the barbed wire fences in the surrounding area.

Book maquettes

Almost thirty years later, in a societal environment characterised by fears of foreign infiltration, Tuggener once again compiled four book maquettes, under the title Die 4 Jahreszeiten (The 4 Seasons). They were created during the preparations for his first major retrospective at Helmhaus Zurich in 1974, which he conceived as a kind of arc, with sections ranging from ‘Nature of Switzerland’ to ‘Peace and Earth in Farm Life’. With photographs from the years 1932 to 1973, these four book maquettes are among the last and most extensive that Tuggener created during his long career. Together, they convey a traditional image of the four seasons, as is familiar from music and painting. In sensitively observed, atmospherically charged, but never picturesque photographs, they reflect the recurring cycle of nature, while simultaneously contemplating life and transience. Alongside Tuggener’s four unique books, the exhibition at Fotostiftung Schweiz also presents many other photographs that demonstrate how intensively this master of black-and-white photography devoted himself to the theme of ‘country life’ for more than 30 years.

The book maquettes

During the long months of active service that Jakob Tuggener spent in small villages in the canton of Aargau, in Bernese Seeland and in Ticino, he would travel around with his Leica whenever off duty, capturing what increasingly fascinated him: farmers at work, village scenes, and modest still lifes in barns and inns. He also photographed private rooms though, such as kitchens or bedrooms, when granted access. People always took centre stage; he captured them in their familiar surroundings, as rawly and authentically as possible.

Tuggener developed and enlarged his photographs when at home on leave. In 1942/43, almost at the same time as the publication of his book Fabrik (Factory), he compiled four individual book maquettes with the titles Frühling, Sommer, Herbst and Winter (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter). With these ‘farmer books’, he created his own personal counter-world to the world of the factory. Jakob Tuggener also felt in his element in rural surroundings. In a later interview with Magnum employee Inge Bondi, he spoke very fondly about the smell of fresh manure in a snow-covered field, which he could still remember.

None of the book maquettes that Tuggener created during the war years were published, not even the one called Uf em Land (In the Countryside), which he compiled in 1953 using variations on earlier photographs and many new ones. Nevertheless, thirty years later, in connection with his first retrospective at Helmhaus Zurich, he returned to the theme and, between March 1973 and February 1974, put together new individual volumes on spring, summer, autumn and winter, under the title Die 4 Jahreszeiten. Compared to the original versions from 1942/43, these are about four times as extensive. Most of the photographs were new, which shows how intensively Tuggener had addressed the subject. The format of the maquettes, still 30 x 24 cm, had not changed though, and he had also retained the same simple layout for the pictures: single images, arranged either each on one page (very rarely in non-page-filling landscape formats) or as borderless double pages. The major themes relating to the seasons also remained the same: from tilling the fields in spring to haymaking in summer, to harvesting in autumn and through to forest work in winter. This time perhaps not so much a counter-world to factory work, but to the hectic pace of the modern city, Die 4 Jahreszeiten, encompassing more than 300 photographs, reflects how, in nature, things come into being and disappear, and it is simultaneously an allegory of the cycle of human life.

Like all earlier maquettes, Die 4 Jahreszeiten from 1973/74 contain juxtapositions and sequences of images that evoke certain associations or feelings. Tuggener believed in the suggestive power of images and the narrative potential of montage, as used to great effect in German expressionist film during the 1920s. The fact that these unique books remained unpublished during his lifetime is probably due to their author’s uncompromising nature: Tuggener insisted that his photographic compositions needed no explanatory text or captions. He saw them as an independent and viable means of expression – an attitude that put him far ahead of his time.

Zürcher Oberland (Zurich highlands)

In June 1955, Tuggener was commissioned by the printing house Wetzikon und Rüti to photographically document the region Zürcher Oberland for a photo book. This suited Tuggener well, as he was already quite familiar with the area. He worked on the project for a year and, for once, was well paid. The book came out in 1956 under the title Zürcher Oberland with the aim, as the publisher put it, of showing “the beauty of the […] so scenically diverse areas, and of their inhabitants in their homes and workplaces.” It is an idyllic world that appears in Tuggener’s 240 photos, arranged in a somewhat restless-looking layout, with snow-covered Alps in the background, and peaceful lakes and ponds in the foreground. There are also plenty of pictures of the grain harvest and haymaking, as well as photos that thematise the area’s rich cultural heritage. However, at the end of the pictorial section of this ‘ideal-world book’, a portrait of a contemplative man is juxtaposed with a nocturnal landscape in a manner that seems to call much into question. It is not surprising that Tuggener used only a few images from this book in his later book maquettes.

Forum alpinum

In 1964, Jakob Tuggener contributed photographs to the ‘Mountain Farmers Exhibition’ in the ‘Field and Forest’ pavilion at the Swiss National Exhibition (Expo 64) in Lausanne. He was also involved in a follow-up publication, which was meant to comprehensively present the problems of mountain regions. While the exhibition was still running, the book was advertised for sale by subscription, as a “contribution to the clarification of our mountain population’s current existential issues” and was published in 1965 as a 400-page volume of texts and images, entitled Forum alpinum. It covers seven Swiss mountain regions: western Switzerland (Jura and Gruyère), Valais, Bernese Oberland, central Switzerland, Ticino, Graubünden, and eastern Switzerland (Appenzell and St Galler Oberland). For each of the seven regions, there is a picture section with photographs by Jakob Tuggener, almost 130 in total. The interspersed blocks of text are about the people, agriculture, art, customs and music. There are also map extracts, aerial photographs and numerous woodcuts by Bruno Gentinetta. Forum alpinum has an almost square format and was designed by Kurt Büchel. Tuggener was busy for months, researching in his archive, travelling to take pictures in all the regions to be covered and working in his darkroom.

In the new photographs that Tuggener produced, it is evident that he was endeavouring to depict as many regional features as possible, without compromising his artistic standards. Naturally though, such a broad collection of images taken over many years presents itself as very heterogeneous. The photographs are mostly arranged as juxtapositions: of old and new, for instance, or of inner and outer. They are visual contrasts like those that characterise Tuggener’s own book maquettes, but in Forum alpinum, there are always comments inserted in between, which interrupt the images’ dialogue and reduce it to a message that is easy to grasp. In the book, for example, a photograph of a jukebox in Saint-Ursanne is juxtaposed with the evangelists on a cathedral’s medieval capitals. In the comment, it is noted with disappointment that young people are less interested in tradition and more open “to the superficial and international allure of the ‘juke box’.”

The exhibition

Alongside Tuggener’s four unique books, the exhibition at Fotostiftung Schweiz also presents many other photographs that demonstrate how intensively this master of black-and-white photography devoted himself to the theme of ‘country life’ for more than 30 years. In the exhibition The 4 Seasons and the accompanying publication of the same name, Fotostiftung Schweiz is delighted to present a previously unknown work by Jakob Tuggener to the public. This follows on from numerous projects with which it, together with the Jakob Tuggener Foundation, has gradually provided access to Tuggener’s oeuvre: In addition to various exhibitions and publications, the online collection, which now shows a comprehensive representative cross-section of Tuggener’s work, also serves this purpose. None of this would have been possible without the artist’s widow, Maria Euphemia Tuggener, who deposited his photographic estate at Fotostiftung Schweiz in 2004.

Text from the Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Lüscherz' 1944

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Lüscherz
1944
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Fasnacht, Sennhof' (Carnival, Sennhof) 1935

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Fasnacht, Sennhof (Carnival, Sennhof)
1935
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Sleeping chamber, Oeschgen' (Schlafkammer, Oeschgen) 1942

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Sleeping chamber, Oeschgen (Schlafkammer, Oeschgen)
1942
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Gamekeeper of Sternenberg with his wife' 1956

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Gamekeeper of Sternenberg with his wife
1956
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Potato harvest, Müntschemier' (Kartoffelernte, Müntschemier) 1944

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Potato harvest, Müntschemier (Kartoffelernte, Müntschemier)
1944
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Farmer from Heiden' (Bauer aus Heiden) 1934

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Farmer from Heiden (Bauer aus Heiden)
1934
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Forestry worker, Strahlegg' (Waldarbeiter, Strahlegg) Around 1954

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Forestry worker, Strahlegg (Waldarbeiter, Strahlegg)
Around 1954
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988) 'Farmer's wife, Brüttelen' (Bauernfrau, Brüttelen) 1944

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904­-1988)
Farmer’s wife, Brüttelen (Bauernfrau, Brüttelen)
1944
© Jakob Tuggener Stiftung / Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

Jakob Tuggener 'Die 4 Jahreszeiten' catalogue book cover

 

Jakob Tuggener Die 4 Jahreszeiten catalogue book cover

 

Often, artists take a new curve in their final phase of creation, their language and attitude changes, other themes and motifs come to the fore. The Swiss photographer Jakob Tuggener, on the other hand, remained true to himself and his work in an almost irritating way. After he had already composed four unique book pieces on the themes spring, summer, autumn and winter during the 1940s, he created completely new versions of these “farm books” under the title The 4 Seasons in 1973 and 1974, at the age of almost 70 years. They are devoted to simple life in the countryside, reflecting in sensitively observed, atmospherically charged, yet never picturesque recordings, the recurring cycle of nature and are at the same time a reflection on human life and transience. While the world and society changed fundamentally between 1940 and 1970 – life in the countryside no less than life in the city – Tuggener allowed himself to assemble recordings from this entire period into a new, very personal epic. Especially the constancy in Tuggener’s work, this unwavering confidence in the power of the pictures, is one of the special qualities of The 4 Seasons.

Text from the Amazon website

 

Jakob Tuggener 'Die 4 Jahreszeiten' exhibition poster

 

Jakob Tuggener Die 4 Jahreszeiten exhibition poster

 

 

Fotostiftung Schweiz
Grüzenstrasse 45
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zürich)
Phone: +41 52 234 10 30

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday 11am – 6pm
Wednesday 11am – 8pm (with free admission from 5 pm!)
Closed on Mondays

Fotostiftung Schweiz website

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Exhibition: ‘Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle’ at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris

“Weegee’s photographs are an examination of a body (an autopsy) both external and internal.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 30th January – 19th May, 2024

Exhibition curator: Clément Chéroux, director, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Self-Portrait, Weegee with Speed Graphic Camera' 1950 from the exhibition 'Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle' at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, January - May, 2024

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Self-Portrait, Weegee with Speed Graphic Camera
1950
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography. Collection Friedsam

 

 

To see ourselves as others see us

This exhibition attempts to reconcile the two sides of the work of American photographer Weegee (Arthur Felig, 1899-1968) – “First are his stories for the New York press from 1935-1945. Then, photo-caricatures of public personalities developed during his Hollywood period, between 1948-1951, which he continued to produce for the rest of his life” – by showing that, beyond formal differences, the photographer’s approach is a critically coherent investigation into the omnipresence of the spectacle in modern society.

The spectacle is a central notion in the Situationist theory, developed by Guy Debord in his 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle:

“Debord traces the development of a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced with its representation… The spectacle is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people, in which “passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity”. “The spectacle is not a collection of images,” Debord writes, “rather, it is a social relation among people, mediated by images.””1


While both halves of Weegee’s photographic work picture the spectacle, I believe that they are a different but connected order of being. Like yin and yang, Weegee’s scenes of chaos “Murder is my business” and “photo-caricatures” emerge from the same psyche but image equal opposites which both repel, attract and complement each other.

Weegee’s photographs which tell stories for the New York press are external representations or emanations captured from the world around us, whereas his later photo-caricatures of public personalities feel to me to be internalised, dream-like representations of his own feelings towards the celebrity people he observed and photographed as much as they are offer insights into their personality.2 Thus, Weegee’s photographs are an examination of a body (an autopsy) both external and internal.

Personally I don’t think that it is necessary to reconcile both halves of Weegee’s work. The bodies exist for what they are: perceptive insights into the existence and spirit of the world and the human race, spec(tac)ular images that mirror a social relation among people which don’t necessarily have to be conflated one with the other.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Debord, Guy (1994)[1967] The Society of the Spectacle, translation by Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books), p. 4 quoted in “The Society of the Spectacle,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 10/05/2024

2/ “external exaggeration high-lights internal character and distortion offers surprising insights into personality”
“How your TV heroes look to Weegee’s magic camera” in Look magazine


Many thank to the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

“The curious […], they’re always in a hurry […], but they still find the time to stop and look.


Weegee

 

“Crime was my oyster,” Weegee wrote in his 1961 memoir, Weegee by Weegee. “I was friend and confidant to them all. The bookies, madams, gamblers, call girls, pimps, con men, burglars and jewel fencers.” … Weegee’s photos from the 1930s and ’40s defined Manhattan as a film noir nightscape of gangsters, bums, slumming swells and tenement dwellers.”


John Strausbaugh. “Crime Was Weegee’s Oyster,” on The New York Times website June 20, 2008 [Online] Cited 13/04/2024

 

“Weegee is not the first nor the only person to have taken interest in people watching. Not long before him, in 1937, Henri Cartier-Bresson photographed spectators at the Coronation of George VI for Ce Soir. And a quarter century prior, in 1912, Eugène Atget photographed passers-by observing a solar eclipse at Place de la Bastille. But Weegee took the idea even further. He systematised it. He made it a principle he never shied from applying at the first opportunity. It’s a way of placing things at a distance, pushing the viewers to ask themselves about the manner in which they look, making them aware of the fact that they themselves, like the people watching in the photo, are in a voyeuristic position. It’s also a critique of how American society transforms news into spectacle.”


Clément Chéroux

 

The specular image, then, is accompanied by anxiety-anxiety that it will “soon dissolve like a cloud.” It is the nature of visions (apparitions) to dissolve before our very eyes without disclosing their secrets, just as dream-images are quickly forgotten upon awakening.


Craig Owens. “Posing,” in Difference: On Representation and Sexuality. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1985, p. 12

 

 

There’s still a mystery to Weegee. The American photographer’s career seems to be split in two. First are his stories for the New York press from 1935-1945. Then, photo-caricatures of public personalities developed during his Hollywood period, between 1948-1951, which he continued to produce for the rest of his life. How can these diametrically opposed bodies of work coexist? Critics have enjoyed highlighting the opposition between the two periods, praising the former and disparaging the latter. This project seeks to reconcile the two parts of Weegee by showing that, beyond formal differences, the photographer’s approach is critically coherent.

The spectacle is omnipresent in Weegee’s work. In the first part of his career, coinciding with the rise of the tabloid press, he was an active participant in transforming news into spectacle. To show this, he often included spectators or other photographers in the foreground of his images. In the second half of his career, Weegee mocked the Hollywood spectacular, its ephemeral glory, adoring crowds, and social scenes. Some years before the Situationist International, his photography presented an incisive critique of the Society of the Spectacle.

Curator Clément Chéroux

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle' at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris

 

Installation view of the exhibition Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris showing at left, Self-Portrait, Weegee with Speed Graphic Camera (1950, above); at second left, “Chevrolet”. Weegee in front of his typewriter, installed in the trunk of a 1938 Chevrolet, New York (c. 1943, below); at third left bottom, Weegee covering the morning line-up at police headquarters, New York (c.  1939, below); at fourth left, Self-portrait (1950,below); at fifth left, Frank Pape, Arrested for Homicide (1944, below); at sixth left, Charles Sodokoff and Arthur Webber Use Their Top Hats to Hide Their Faces (1942, below); and at eighth left, Man Arrested for Cross-Dressing, New York (Gay Deceiver) (1939, below)

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) '"Chevrolet". Weegee in front of his typewriter, installed in the trunk of a 1938 Chevrolet, New York' c. 1943 from the exhibition 'Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle' at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, January - May, 2024

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
“Chevrolet”. Weegee in front of his typewriter, installed in the trunk of a 1938 Chevrolet, New York
c. 1943
Gelatin silver print
© Weegee Archive / International Center of Photography, New York / Collection Galerie Berinson, Berlin

 

Weegee Himself: “I have always been a doer and not a thinker.” Weegee enjoyed putting himself in front of the camera, re-enacting circumstances he was confronted with in his daily work. In the name of pedagogy, and probably a little out of narcissism and self-advertisement, he took pictures of himself writing captions for his photographs in the back of his car, in police wagons and behind bars, never without his camera.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Unidentified photographer. 'Untitled [Weegee covering the morning line-up at police headquarters, New York]' c. 1939

 

Unidentified photographer
Untitled [Weegee covering the morning line-up at police headquarters, New York]
c.  1939
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Self-portrait' 1950

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Self-portrait
1950
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

 

 

Weegee Tells How

Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee, was a New York city freelance news photographer from the 1930s to the 1950s. Here he talks about his career and gives advice to those wanting to become news photographers.

 

Weegee (American, born Ukraine (Austria), Złoczów (Zolochiv) 1899 - 1968 New York) 'Frank Pape, Arrested for Homicide' 1944

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Frank Pape, Arrested for Homicide
1944
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Charles Sodokoff and Arthur Webber Use Their Top Hats to Hide Their Faces' 1942

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Charles Sodokoff and Arthur Webber Use Their Top Hats to Hide Their Faces
1942
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography. Louis Stettner Archives, Paris

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Man Arrested for Cross-Dressing, New York (Gay Deceiver)' 1939

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Man Arrested for Cross-Dressing, New York (Gay Deceiver)
1939
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography. Louis Stettner Archives, Paris

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle' at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris showing at second left, Weegee's 'Man Arrested for Cross-Dressing, New York (Gay Deceiver)' (1939); and at top right, a magazine print of his photograph 'Untitled [Young man smoking cigarette in crashed car while waiting for ambulance, New York]' (1941)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris showing at second left, Weegee’s Man Arrested for Cross-Dressing, New York (Gay Deceiver) (1939, above); and at top right, a magazine print of his photograph Untitled [Young man smoking cigarette in crashed car while waiting for ambulance, New York] (1941, below)

 

Off Road: “Sudden death for one… sudden shock for the other.” American culture is fascinated by twisted metal. In the 19th century, a railroad company staged public collisions between locomotives destined for the junkyard. Weegee photographed many traffic accidents introducing the “car crash” genre, later adopted by other figures, such as Andy Warhol, J.G. Ballard, David Cronenberg, etc.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Untitled [Young man smoking cigarette in crashed car while waiting for ambulance, New York]' 1941

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Untitled [Young man smoking cigarette in crashed car while waiting for ambulance, New York]
1941
Gelatin silver print
© Photo Weegee/ICP New York

 

Installation view of the exhibition Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris showing at right, Weegee's photograph 'Henry Rosen (left) and Harvey Stemmer (centre) cover their faces with handkerchiefs after their arrest for bribery and conspiracy to fix a US college basketball match' (25 January 1945)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris showing at right, Weegee’s photograph Henry Rosen (left) and Harvey Stemmer (centre) cover their faces with handkerchiefs after their arrest for bribery and conspiracy to fix a US college basketball match (25 January 1945)

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Holiday Accident in the Bronx' 1941

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Holiday Accident in the Bronx
1941
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

 

 

Exhibition

There’s a mystery to Weegee. The American photographer’s career seems to be split in two. One side includes his sensational photography printed in North American tabloids: corpses of gangsters lying in pools of their own blood, bodies trapped in battered vehicles, kingpins looking sinister behind the bars of prison wagons, dilapidated slums consumed by fire, and other harrowing documents on the lives of the underprivileged in New York from 1935 to 1945. Then come the festive photographs – glamorous parties, performances by entertainers, jubilant crowds, openings and premieres – to which we must add a vast array of portraits of public figures that Weegee delighted in distorting using a rich palette of tricks between 1948 and 1951, a practice he pursued until the end of his life.

How can these diametrically opposed bodies of work coexist? Critics have enjoyed highlighting the opposition between the two periods, praising the former and disparaging the latter. The exhibition Autopsy of the Spectacle seeks to reconcile the two parts of Weegee by showing that, beyond formal differences, the photographer’s approach is critically coherent.

The spectacle is omnipresent in Weegee’s work. In the first part of his career, which coincides with the rise of the tabloid press, he was an active participant in transforming news into spectacle. To show this, he often included spectators, or other photographers, in the foreground of his images. In the second half of his career, Weegee mocked the Hollywood spectacular: its ephemeral glory, adoring crowds and social scenes. Some years before the Situationist International, his photography presented an incisive critique of the Society of the Spectacle.

With a new perspective on Weegee’s oeuvre, Autopsy of the Spectacle presents the photographer’s iconic images beside lesser-known works, including images not-yet-exhibited in France.

Biography

Weegee was born Usher Fellig on June 12, 1899, to a Jewish family in Zolochiv, a small town in Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today in western Ukraine. At 11 years old, he joined his father who’d emigrated to the United States. At the immigration station Ellis Island, he became Arthur Fellig. Living in the slums of the Lower East Side, he left school at 14 to earn money to support his family. After working in different professions, he became a traveling photographer, worked for photographers Duckett & Adler, then in the lab of ACME Newspictures agency.

Starting in 1935, he was self-employed as photo-reporter. Towards 1937, he began using the pseudonym Weegee, and around 1941, started marking the backs of his prints with a stamp in the form of a self-fulfilling prophecy: “Weegee the Famous.” For 10 years, connected to Police radio, he took photographs, mainly at night, of crime, arrests, fires, accidents and other news items. Though the photographer most certainly had connections within the Police, without whom his work would not have been possible, he also frequented left-wing circles. He was very close to the Photo League, a group of independent photographers who firmly believed in emancipation through the image and fought for social justice. In 1945, he published his best photographs in a book entitled Naked City, which met with great success both in its reception and sales.

In the spring of 1948, he moved to Hollywood to work in cinema as a technical advisor, sometimes as an actor. He photographed the endless party and developed different photographic techniques used to create his caricatures of celebrities. In December of 1951, after four years on the West Coast, he returned to New York with no intention of resuming his former practice. Up until his death on December 26, 1968, the majority of his work involved taking advantage of his notoriety to publish other books, go on tour, and promote his photo-caricatures in newspapers.

Text from the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson website

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle' at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris showing at centre, 'Afternoon Crowd at Coney Island, Brooklyn' (1940)

Installation view of the exhibition 'Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle' at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris

 

Installation view of the exhibition Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris showing at left, Performer Jimmy Armstrong (c. 1943, below); at second left, Ladies keep their money in their stockings… (1944, below); and at centre, Afternoon Crowd at Coney Island, Brooklyn (1940, below)

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Performer Jimmy Armstrong' c. 1943

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Performer Jimmy Armstrong
c. 1943
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Ladies keep their money in their stockings...' 1944

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Ladies keep their money in their stockings…
1944
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

 

 

“There is no cover charge nor cigarette girl, and a vending machine dispenses cigarettes. Neither is there a hat check girl. Patrons prefer to dance with their hats and coats on. But there is a lively floor show… the only saloon in the Bowery with a cabaret license.”


Weegee

 

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Afternoon Crowd at Coney Island, Brooklyn' 1940

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Afternoon Crowd at Coney Island, Brooklyn
1940
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography. Courtesy Galerie Berinson, Berlin

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Sleeping at the Circus, Madison Square Garden, New York' 1943

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Sleeping at the Circus, Madison Square Garden, New York
1943
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle' at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris

 

Installation view of the exhibition Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris showing at centre left, Opening night at the Metropolitan Opera (1943); In the Lobby at the Metropolitan Opera, Opening Night (1943); and at centre right, The Critic (1943, below)

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'The Critic' November 22, 1942

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
The Critic
November 22, 1942
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography. Collection Friedsam

 

Even his most popular photograph was a set-up, says Wallis: “The Critic, which was taken in 1943, was surely staged and shows the wealthy Mrs George Washington Cavanaugh and Lady Decies arriving at the opera, greeted by a staggering drunk who seems to be mocking them and who Weegee reportedly rounded up at Sammy’s bar on the Bowery.

“This picture is a good example of how Weegee previsualized a scene, developed a punchy satirical narrative, and staged the picture. The Critic was widely reproduced at the time, and even shown at the Museum of Modern Art.”

Boo Paterson. “Big guns to big top: Weegee at circus,” on the Boo York City website [Online] Cited 13/04/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

In Weegee’s day similar culture clashes happened at Sammy’s Bowery Follies (267 Bowery, between East Houston and Stanton Streets), which from 1934 to 1970 attracted what The New York Times once described as a mixed crowd of “drunks and swells, drifters and celebrities, the rich and the forgotten.” …

Among the regulars, he wrote in his 1945 book, “Naked City,” was a woman they called Pruneface and a midget who walked the streets dressed as a penguin to promote cigarettes. When the midget got drunk, Weegee wrote, he “offered to fight any man his size in the house.”

Weegee held two book parties there. At the photography center Mr. George showed me silent-film footage taken in 1946 at the party for Weegee’s second book, “Weegee’s People.” Pretty uptown blondes and dowagers in pearls mingle with toothless crones and panhandlers, as models parade in their foundation garments, and a man with a flea circus puts his tiny performers through their paces.

John Strausbaugh. “Crime Was Weegee’s Oyster,” on The New York Times website June 20, 2008 [Online] Cited 13/04/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle' at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris showing Weegee's photographs in magazine layouts

 

Installation view of the exhibition Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris showing his photographs in magazine layouts

 

"Il Fotografo cattivo", Epoca, Vol. XIII, No. 636, December 1962

 

“Il Fotografo cattivo”, Epoca, Vol. XIII, No. 636, December 1962
© International Center of Photography. Collection privée Paris

 

"Weegee Looks At Dali"

 

Weegee Looks At Dali

 

Weegee spoofs the new spring hats 1957

 

Weegee spoofs
the
new spring hats

Custom milliners often go to extremes. This spring, the have outdone themselves by creating 1957 version of the most exaggerated hats of the last fifty years. Here again are the flapper cloche, the slouch had Garbo wore in the ’30’s, the heavy veiling of the early 1900’s, the turban of the World War I era, the perennial mad profusion of fruit and flowers. Look had Michael A. Vaccaro photograph examples of these hats as they really are. Then camera artist Weegee turned out satirical prints, with these startling results.

Look magazine 1957

 

"How your TV heroes look to Weegee's magic camera" in Look magazine

 

WAIT. Don’t reach for a drink. Don’t reach for your glasses. And don’t – please don’t – write us an indignant letter. What you think you see on these pages is there, all right. It’s the work of a zany photographer named Weegee (few know his first name) who has a wicked sense of caricature and an outrageous sense of humor.

The subjects were not photographed under water. Wedge simply prints his negatives through bubbles glass, wire screens, press, kaleidoscopes or whatever gives him the characterization he is after. It’s a sort of three-way-stretch technique in which Weegee is assisted by photographic color expert Mike Lavelle.

The results of Weegee’s impudent manipulation of reality are both perceptive and astonishing: Faces take on a certain ga-ga verity; external exaggeration high-lights internal character and distortion offers surprising insights into personality. Weegee calls this “Photo-Caricature.” There was a man who might have enjoyed revelations like these. His name was Bobbie Burns and he wrote in one of his poems: “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us to see oursels as others see us.”

“How your TV heroes look to Weegee’s magic camera” in Look magazine

 

Weegee Modern Women Aren't Human!

 

“”Modern Women Aren’t Human!’ … If You Don’t Believe It … This Man Tells Why” in the National Enquirer, 1967

 

 

There’s a mystery to Weegee. The American photographer’s career seems to be split in two. One side includes his sensational photography printed in North American tabloids: corpses of gangsters lying in pools of their own blood, bodies trapped in battered vehicles, kingpins looking sinister behind the bars of prison wagons, dilapidated slums consumed by fire, and other harrowing documents on the lives of the underprivileged in New York from 1935 to 1945. Then come the festive photographs – glamorous parties, performances by entertainers, jubilant crowds, openings and premieres – to which we must add a vast array of portraits of public figures that Weegee delighted in distorting using a rich palette of tricks between 1948 and 1951, a practice he pursued until the end of his life. How can these diametrically opposed bodies of work coexist? Critics have enjoyed highlighting the opposition between the two periods, praising the former and disparaging the latter. The exhibition Autopsy of the Spectacle seeks to reconcile the two parts of Weegee by showing that, beyond formal differences, the photographer’s approach is critically coherent.

The spectacle is omnipresent in Weegee’s work. In the first part of his career, which coincides with the rise of the tabloid press, he was an active participant in transforming news into spectacle. To show this, he often included spectators, or other photographers, in the foreground of his images. In the second half of his career, Weegee mocked the Hollywood spectacular: its ephemeral glory, adoring crowds and social scenes. Some years before the Situationist International, his photography presented an incisive critique of the Society of the Spectacle.

With a new perspective on Weegee’s oeuvre, Autopsy of the Spectacle presents the photographer’s iconic images beside lesser-known works, including images not-yet-exhibited in France.

Curator Clément Chéroux

Press release from the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Their First Murder' c. 1936

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Their First Murder
c. 1936
Gelatin silver print
© Weegee Archive / International Center of Photography

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Drowning victim, Coney Island' c. 1940

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Drowning victim, Coney Island
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
© Weegee Archive / International Center of Photography, New York / Collection Galerie Berinson, Berlin

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Mrs Bernice Lythcott and her son Leonard looking through a window broken by stones thrown by thugs, Harlem, New York' October 18, 1943

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Mrs Bernice Lythcott and her son Leonard looking through a window broken by stones thrown by thugs, Harlem, New York
October 18, 1943
Gelatin silver print
© Photo Weegee/ICP New York

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Untitled [Tenement sleeping during heat spell, Lower East Side, New York]' May 23, 1941

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Untitled [Tenement sleeping during heat spell, Lower East Side, New York]
May 23, 1941
Gelatin silver print
© Photo Weegee/ICP New York

 

Son of a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine, Weegee knew the slums, like those children seeking coolness on the fire escape ladder. He produced “real social documents” on the living conditions of the poor.

 

“In Central Park the lawns were crowded before darkness with family groups,” reported the July 10, 1936 New York Times; the temperature had reached an astounding 106 degrees the day before. “On the Lower East Side traffic was seriously impeded as small armies of persons emerged from tenement houses with chairs, boxes and even beds which they set up in the streets.”

And from the Times on August 4, 1938, when the mercury hit 93 degrees:

“More than 3,000 persons slept on the sand at Coney Island and Brighton Beach to escape the heat last night, the police estimated. Ten additional patrolmen were assigned to the area to prevent molestation of the sleepers, many of whom brought blankets and sheets.”

Anonymous. “How New Yorkers survived hot summer nights,” on the Ephemeral New York website Nd [Online] Cited 14/04/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Untitled [Fire in loft building, New York]' 1947

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Untitled [Fire in loft building, New York]
1947
Gelatin silver print
© Photo Weegee/ICP New York

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Simply adding boiling water' 1943

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Simply adding boiling water
1943
Gelatin silver print
© Photo Weegee/ICP New York

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Lovers at the Palace Theater' c. 1953

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Lovers at the Palace Theater
c. 1953
Gelatin silver print
© Photo Weegee/ICP New York

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Anthony Esposito, Booked on Suspicion of Killing a Policeman' 1941

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Anthony Esposito, Booked on Suspicion of Killing a Policeman
1941
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography. Louis Stettner Archives, Paris

 

At noon Fifth Avenue was crowded. Alfred Klausman, middle-aged office manager of a linen firm, walked across the street from his office to the bank on the corner and drew the weekly pay roll: $649.

As the genial, round-faced Klausman walked back, two men silently threaded through the crowd behind him, two strange, grey-coated creatures washed up from the depths of New York City’s criminal world. One was Anthony Esposito, 35, a long-nosed, horse-faced hoodlum who had been in & out of New York’s prisons and reformatories for 16 years, had once been deported to Italy and sneaked back in. His brother William, 29, had robbed drunks, snatched pocketbooks, done a seven-year stretch in Sing Sing. Their father had served time for forgery. Their brother was in Clinton Prison, Dannemora, N. Y. for parole violation. Their lives had been spent in squalor, petty crime, prison and torpid, hard-eyed loafing.

Klausman entered the elevator to his office. The Esposito brothers stepped in after him. Between the second and third floors they drew revolvers from their overcoat pockets, ordered the operator to stop, face the door. He heard Klausman cry “No! No! No!” – then one of the gunmen put his revolver to Klausman’s head and pulled the trigger.

They ordered the operator to take the elevator down, ducked out into the street, disappeared into B. Altman’s big department store.

Out into the street the operator yelled “Holdup! Murder!” The cry spread. Two patrolmen raced from the corner, into the store, a long way behind.

Down the crowded aisles of the store darted the Espositos, through the block-long building. At the far entrance they climbed into a cab, put a gun at the driver’s head. But Madison Avenue was jammed with traffic; they were trapped. “Get going. Make it fast. Get moving or we’ll kill you.” Back in the store panic was spreading as police with drawn revolvers moved down the aisles shouting, “Get down!” The cab stalled behind a bus. Like men leaping over a cliff, the brothers jumped out into the traffic. At sight of the two running men, waving revolvers, people flattened themselves against the buildings or ducked to the sidewalk. A taxi driver ran to Patrolman Edward Maher, directing traffic on the corner, yelled “Stick-up!” and pointed at the fleeing men. Maher raced after them, only 20 feet behind, afraid to shoot into the crowd. Motorists left their cars and joined the chase. Maher saw a clear space, shot twice, and William Esposito staggered sideways, fell face downward, one arm outstretched, one twisted under him, apparently dead.

A little crowd collected around him. Patrolman Maher held the gunman by the overcoat, started to turn him over, turned to warn the crowd away. “Back up, please,” he said, “someone’s liable to get hurt.” As he rolled William over, the gunman’s .38 came up. William Esposito pulled the trigger and Patrolman Maher slumped over, dead.

The crowd surged back, then forward. A taxi driver named Leonard Weisberg leaped on the prone gunman. He grabbed for the revolver, missed. Esposito jerked it back a few inches, fired again. Weisberg, clutching his throat, gasping for breath, fell to the sidewalk.

Esposito, still lying down, drew another gun from his overcoat pocket. Two men leaped on him. Then the crowd closed in, kicking and beating.

Anthony ran on when his brother fell. Behind him the police fired into the air. He shot a few times, wildly, apparently to clear crowds out of his way on Fifth Avenue. He ducked into Woolworth’s, bowling over the women shoppers. He plunged to the basement, put away his guns, walked up again to hide in the crowd – and met six policemen at the head of the stairs, went down with revolver butts thudding on his skull.

The Espositos went to the hospital, to the lineup, to indictment for murder. Leonard Weisberg, recovering from his throat wound, was promised a new cab of his own, and won a hero’s praise. The Nazi press gleefully played up the crime as evidence of democratic depravity.

Anonymous. “National Affairs: SLAUGHTER ON FIFTH AVENUE,” in TIME Monday, Jan. 27, 1941 on the TIME website [Online] Cited 14/04/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Weegee (American, born Ukraine (Austria), Złoczów (Zolochiv) 1899 - 1968 New York) '[Outline of a Murder Victim]' 1942

 

Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (American born Ukraine (Austria), Złoczów (Zolochiv) 1899 – 1968 New York)
[Outline of a Murder Victim]
1942
Gelatin silver print
33.9 x 27.4cm (13 3/6 x 10 13/16 in.)
Gift of Bruce A. Kirstein, in memory of Marc S. Kirstein, 1978
© Weegee / International Center of Photography

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Harry Maxwell shot in a car' 1941

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Harry Maxwell shot in a car
1941
Gelatin silver print
© Photo Weegee/ICP New York

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) '"Hopper's Topper" Hedda Hopper Hollywood' c. 1948

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
“Hopper’s Topper” Hedda Hopper Hollywood
c. 1948
Gelatin silver print
© Photo Weegee/ICP New York

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Marilyn Monroe, Distortion' c. 1955

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Marilyn Monroe, Distortion
c. 1955
Gelatin silver print
© Weegee Archive / International Center of Photography, New York / Friedsam Collection, Frankfurt am Main

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Charlie Chaplin, Distortion' 1950

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Charlie Chaplin, Distortion
1950
© International Center of Photography

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968) 'Self-Portrait' 1963

 

Weegee (American, 1899-1968)
Self-Portrait
1963
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

 

This book accompanies the exhibition 'Weegee, Autopsie du Spectacle' presented from January 30, 2024 to May 19, 2024 at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation

 

Weegee (author)
Textual, Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation (editor)
January, 2024 (release)
ISBN 9782845979901
208 pages
55 euros

This book accompanies the exhibition Weegee, Autopsie du Spectacle presented from January 30, 2024 to May 19, 2024 at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation.

There is a Weegee conundrum. His photographs fall into two distinct categories. On the one hand, there are his images of news items taken in New York during the 1940s, in a documentary, direct and raw approach. And on the other, photographs of starlets, politicians and other socialites taken in Hollywood in the following decade, for which he willingly resorted with special effects. Declaring himself “bewitched by the mystery of the murders,” Weegee stood out for his ability to arrive promptly at the crime scene or to wait for the salad baskets to arrive on the steps of the police stations to capture the defendants on the spot. Nevertheless, he strives to bring onlookers, often from the working classes, into his framework, or even to be interested only in them. Made up of around a hundred photographs – the best known, but also many images never highlighted – this book shows the coherence of Weegee’s work based on a radical and incisive critique of the Society of the Spectacle, borrowing from an unexpected empathy towards the disadvantaged.

Weegee (1899-1968) was an American photojournalist known for his images of a New York marked by crime. In 1941, New York’s Photo League dedicated an exhibition to him which was followed by that of MoMA in 1943. He published his first book Naked City in 1945 and his autobiography Weegee by Weegee in 1961.

Hardcover
20 x 26cm
Texts by Isabelle Bonnet, David Campany,
Clément Chéroux and Cynthia Young.
Texts in French

Translated from the French by Google Translate from the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson website

 

 

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Closed Mondays

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Exhibition: ‘Consuelo Kanaga. Catch the Spirit’ at the KBr Photography Center KBr Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona

“Kanaga is a story teller. Her photographs are strongly modernist, realist compositions.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 15th February – 12th May, 2024

Curator: Drew Sawyer

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Self-portrait' Nd from the exhibition 'Consuelo Kanaga. Catch the Spirit' at the KBr Photography Center KBr Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona, February - May. 2024

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Self-portrait
Nd
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

 

What have you got to say?

We must acknowledge the importance of Consuelo Kanaga, a strong, compassionate human being, an under recognised photographer. What a trailblazer for future female and male photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham, Berenice Abbott and Milton Rogovin.

Kanaga is a story teller. Her photographs are strongly modernist, realist compositions. The portraits are direct and revealing, no external flourishes necessary in capturing the essence of the person; her landscapes, dark and brooding atmospheric iterations of land and spirit.

Consuelo Kanaga:

~ one of the pioneers of modern American photography

~ one of the first women photojournalists on staff at a newspaper (1918)

~ a great supporter and a confidant for Imogen Cunningham, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Dorothea Lange, Alma Lavenson, Tina Modotti, and Eiko Yamazawa, among many others

~ passionate about social justice … social marginalisation, poverty, racial harassment, inequality… especially in relation to the African-American population in the United States.

~ maintained a close relationship with avant-garde circles, in San Francisco with the f.64 Group and in New York with the Photo League

~ focused on marginal day to day and political motifs, including workers, African Americans, objects, and buildings that were often in a state of disrepair

~ interested in worker’s rights and the worker movement

~ became very active in civil rights and took part in and photographed many demonstrations and marches in the 1960s


Whatever type of photograph Kanaga took (and there are many) her photographs are always perceptive = having or showing sensitive insight.

The sensitivity of Hands (1930, below); the tired eyes and clasped hands of the Widow Watson (1922-1924 below) contrasting with the mannerist hands of the boy staring off camera; the stoicism of the mother in Tree of Life (1950, below) with her children’s faces in deep shadow coupled with the subconscious symbology of the unyielding, white brick wall behind; and the dark mesa of Landscape Near Taos, New Mexico (Nd, below) hello Georgia O’Keeffe … all reflect Kanaga’s superb handling of shadow and light, of energy and spirit.

“Her body of work, though comparatively small, is consistently exceptional.”1

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Barbara Head Millstein. “A Pioneer of Realism,” in The New York Times October 9, 1993 on the New York Times website [Online] Cited 04/05/2024


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

 

 

“One of America’s most transcendent yet, surprisingly, least-known photographers.”


Barbara Head Millstein and Sarah M. Lowe (1992). Consuelo Kanaga, An American Photographer. Seattle: University of Washington Press. pp. 21-40.

 

“I could have done lots more, put in much more work and developed more pictures, but I had also a desire to say what I felt about life. Simple things like a little picture in the window or the corner of the studio or an old stove in the kitchen have always been fascinating to me. They are very much alive, these flowers and grasses with the dew on them. Stieglitz always said, “What have you got to say?” I think in a few small cases I’ve said a few things, expressed how I felt, trying to show the horror of poverty or the beauty of black people. I think that in photography what you’ve done is what you’ve had to say. In everything this has been the message of my life. A simple supper, being with someone you love, seeing a deer come around to eat or drink at the barn – I like things like that. If I could make one true, quiet photograph, I would much prefer it to having a lot of answers.”


Margaretta K. Mitchell (1979). Recollections: Ten Women of Photography. NY: Viking Press. pp. 158–160.

 

 

Consuelo Kanaga: Catch the Spirit is the first exhibition in Europe to present a comprehensive retrospective of the entire career of the American Consuelo Kanaga (Astoria, Oregon, 1894 – Yorktown Heights, New York, 1978). The exhibition covers six decades of her professional dedication to photography.

Passionate about social justice, Kanaga was more interested in people and their problems than in photography: social marginalisation, poverty, racial harassment, inequality…, especially in relation to the African-American population in the United States.

Consuelo Kanaga was one of the few women who became a professional photojournalist, and as early as the 1910s in the United States. She was also one of the few who maintained a close relationship with avant-garde circles, both in San Francisco and in New York, and whose friendship and professional support opened the way for important women photographers such as Imogen Cunningham and Dorothea Lange, among others.

Despite the fame she achieved during her lifetime, her work is still surprisingly little known. This exhibition aims to make a conclusive contribution to the recognition that Kanaga’s work undoubtedly deserves.

Exhibition organised by the Brooklyn Museum in New York in collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE website

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Fire, New York' 1922 from the exhibition 'Consuelo Kanaga. Catch the Spirit' at the KBr Photography Center KBr Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona, February - May. 2024

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Fire, New York
1922
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Untitled (Downtown New York)' 1922-1924

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Untitled (Downtown New York)
1922-1924
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Untitled' 1920s

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Untitled
1920s
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Untitled' c. 1925

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Untitled
c. 1925
Toned gelatin silver print with graphite
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Louise Dahl-Wolfe' c. 1928

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Louise Dahl-Wolfe
c. 1928
Gelatin silver print, printed 2023
4 x 5 in. (10.2 x 12.7cm)
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Louise Dahl-Wolfe (American, 1895-1989)

Louise Emma Augusta Dahl-Wolfe (November 19, 1895 – December 11, 1989) was an American photographer. She is known primarily for her work for Harper’s Bazaar, in association with fashion editor Diana Vreeland. At Harper’s Bazaar she pioneered a new standard in colour photography. …

Among the celebrated fashion photographers of the 20th century, Louise Dahl-Wolfe was an innovator and influencer who significantly contributed to the fashion world. She was most widely known for her work with Harper’s Bazaar. Dahl-Wolfe was considered a pioneer of the ‘female gaze’ in the fashion industry and credited for creating a new image of strong, independent American women during World War II.

From 1943, Dahl-Wolfe introduced the “New American Look” to fashion photography, which Vicki Goldberg describes as “all clean hair, glowing skin and a figure both lithe and strong”. Dahl-Wolfe was known for taking photographs outdoors, with natural light in distant locations from South America to Africa in what became known as “environmental” fashion photography. The outdoor settings helped to evoke “a mood of freedom and optimism” associated with women’s liberation. Her photographs brought a new naturalism to fashion photography which had previously been dominated by a stiff and haughty “European” or “Germanic” studio style. Dahl-Wolfe described it as “that heavy, heavy look, with everybody looking very clumsy”. Her methodology in using natural sunlight and shooting outdoors became the industry standard even now.

Her models appear to pose candidly, almost as if Dahl-Wolfe had just walked in on them. In fact the poses are highly, constructed with an “almost abstract formal perfection” which she credited partly to the influence of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Dahl-Wolfe innovatively used colour in photography and mainly concerned with the qualities of natural lighting, composition, and balance. Compared to other photographers at the time who were using red undertones, Dahl-Wolfe opted for cooler hues and also corrected her own proofs, with one example of her pulling proofs repeatedly to change a sofa’s colour from green to a dark magenta.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'House Plant' 1930

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
House Plant
1930
Bromide print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Kenneth Spencer' 1933

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Kenneth Spencer
1933
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Kenneth Spencer (25 April 1913 – 25 February 1964), was an American operatic singer and actor. Spencer starred in a few Broadway musicals and musical films in the United States during the 1940s. Frustrated with the racial prejudice he experienced in the United States as a black man, Spencer moved to West Germany in 1950 where he had a successful singing career. He also appeared in a number of German films. His career was cut short when he died in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 304.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Clapboard Schoolhouse' 1930s

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Clapboard Schoolhouse
1930s
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

A Pioneer of Realism

Consuelo Kanaga (1894-1978) was one of America’s most important photographers. Yet largely because she disdained wealth, fame and self-promotion, her transcendent images have never received the acclaim they deserve. The photographs on this page appear in the first major retrospective of her work, “Consuelo Kanaga: An American Photographer,” which will open Friday at the Brooklyn Museum.

Born in Astoria, Ore., Kanaga was hired in 1915 as a reporter at The San Francisco Chronicle but quickly became more interested in the work of the paper’s photographers. She took a job in the darkroom and was eventually named a staff photographer.

Inspired by the images in Alfred Stieglitz’s magazine, Camera Work, she left the newspaper and moved to New York in 1922. She soon became closely associated with such photographers as Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange and Louise Dahl. In 1932, Miss Kanaga was represented in the landmark “f.64” exhibition in San Francisco, the first major photography show that stressed realism over romanticism.

Her talent was rooted in an almost mystical belief that photography was a sacred trust – she felt obligated to capture the true essence of her subject. Her drive to fulfill this trust helped Kanaga, who was white, to understand the lives of blacks and to produce some of the most moving works ever done in African-American portraiture. She was equally talented in still-life and landscape photography, and her feeling for urban architecture was stimulated by her involvement with the socially committed New York Photo League during the 1930’s.

She continued to work into her 70’s, despite suffering from emphysema and cancer, which were probably caused by the chemicals used in creating her prints. Her body of work, though comparatively small, is consistently exceptional. Consuelo Kanaga died virtually unknown in 1978, but her talent endures.

Barbara Head Millstein. “A Pioneer of Realism,” in The New York Times October 9, 1993 on the New York Times website [Online] Cited 04/05/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Sargent Johnson' 1934

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Sargent Johnson
1934
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Sargent Claude Johnson (November 7, 1888 – October 10, 1967) was one of the first African-American artists working in California to achieve a national reputation. He was known for Abstract Figurative and Early Modern styles. He was a painter, potter, ceramicist, printmaker, graphic artist, sculptor, and carver. He worked with a variety of media, including ceramics, clay, oil, stone, terra-cotta, watercolour, and wood.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Untitled' 1930s

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Untitled
1930s
Toned gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Horse's Eye' 1930s

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Horse’s Eye
1930s
Gelatin silver print
4 x 3 1/2 in. (10.2 x 8.9cm)
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'The Bowery' 1935

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
The Bowery
1935
Toned gelatin silver print
22 13/16 x 16 13/16 x 1 1/2 in. (57.9 x 42.7 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Angelo Herndon' 1936

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Angelo Herndon
1936
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Angelo Herndon (American, 1913-1997)

Angelo Braxton Herndon (May 6, 1913 – December 9, 1997) was an African-American labor organiser arrested and convicted of insurrection after attempting to organise black and white industrial workers in 1932 in Atlanta, Georgia. The prosecution case rested heavily on Herndon’s possession of “communist literature”, which police found in his hotel room.

Herndon was defended by the International Labor Defense, the legal arm of the Communist Party of America, which hired two young local attorneys, Benjamin J. Davis Jr. and John H. Geer, and provided guidance. Davis later became prominent in leftist circles. Over a five-year period, Herndon’s case twice reached the United States Supreme Court, which ruled that Georgia’s insurrection law was unconstitutional, as it violated First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly. Herndon became nationally prominent because of his case, and Southern justice was under review. By the end of the 1940s he left the Communist Party, moved to the Midwest, and lived there quietly.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Untitled' 1936

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Untitled
1936
Gelatin silver print, printed 2023
4 x 5 in. (10.2 x 12.7cm)
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Two Women, Harlem' c. 1938

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Two Women, Harlem
c. 1938
Toned gelatin silver print
22 13/16 x 16 13/16 x 1 1/2 in. (57.9 x 42.7 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Untitled (New York)' c. 1940

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Untitled (New York)
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

 

For the first time in Spain and Europe, Consuelo Kanaga. Catch the Spirit features the work of this North American photographer spanning her entire career. Kanaga (1894-1978) is considered today a key figure in the history of contemporary photography, both for her contribution toward the recognition of women in this field and for the intensity with which her images confront the spectator with the great social issues of our time, particularly the conditions of African Americans in the United States.

The exhibition

Consuelo Kanaga. Catch the Spirit features six decades of work by this key figure in the history of modern Photography. With this new project, Fundación MAPFRE renews its commitment to promote the work of women photographers. On this occasion, despite having garnered much notoriety in life, the artist’s work is today surprisingly little known. This exhibition aims to contribute conclusively toward the recognition that Kanaga’s oeuvre undoubtedly deserves.

Consuelo Kanaga (Astoria, Oregon, 1894 – Yorktown Heights, New York, 1978) was truly passionate about social justice. She was most interested in people and issues such as marginalisation, poverty, racial harassment, and inequality, particularly in relation to African Americans in the United States. These were some of the fundamental matters she addressed through her work. Likewise, she also defended the formal and poetic possibilities of photography as an art form.

An unconventional figure, Kanaga was able to become a professional photojournalist in the United States as early as the 1910s. She was also one of the few women involved in the avant-garde circles both in San Francisco with the f.64 Group and in New York with the Photo League, whose friendship and professional support paved the way for other important women photographers. However, gender inequalities and social conventions limited her ability to dedicate herself completely to her artistic work. Kanaga worked full time jobs during many years and was only able to practice her art on weekends. She repeatedly put her career on hold for her partners; these are but a few reasons why her work is not more recognised today.

Organised around the Brooklyn Museum’s collection – the institution that has preserved the artist’s archive – the exhibition features nearly 180 photographs and a wide range of documentary material; contextualising Consuelo Kanaga’s work while focusing on some of her most iconic images and her portrayal of African American life in the 1930s through her photography.

Exhibition organised by the Brooklyn Museum in New York in collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Curated by Drew Sawyer, former Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Curator of Photography, Brooklyn Museum.

Keys

New Negro Movement

From the late 19th century, magazines and novels published by black men and women began to emerge as a response to the prevailing racism in cities such as San Francisco, Washington, and New York. This literary explosion was the precedent of what became known as the New Negro Movement, which developed in Harlem, New York, between 1920 and 1930; a movement that also lent its name to the most comprehensive anthology dedicated to said cultural renaissance, written by Alain Locke and considered at the time as “the fundaments of the black canon”. Not only did black artists flourish during this time, white artists were also encouraged to join this movement in defence of the freedom, rights, and equality of African Americans through culture.

Kanaga Photojournalist

In 1915, when she was only 21 years old, Consuelo Kanaga began to write for the San Francisco Chronicle, where she learned photography in order to illustrate her assignments: “For my articles requiring photographs, I went with the photographer to help make the pictures more interesting,” she later recalled. “The editor liked the results and encouraged me to learn photography, ‘from scratch’.” In 1918 she began to work as a photographer for the newspaper and was also hired by the Daily News the following year. Kanaga was undoubtedly one of the first women photojournalists on staff at a newspaper; as her friend Dorothea Lange remarked: “she was the first newspaper photographer I’d ever met. She was a person way ahead of her time.”

Kanaga and Women Photographers

Kanaga’s career was interwoven with a solid and broad circle of women photographers who she cultivated special relationships with over the course of five decades. She was a great supporter and a confidant for Imogen Cunningham, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Dorothea Lange, Alma Lavenson, Tina Modotti, and Eiko Yamazawa, among many others, who she advised and shared her company and connections in the art world with. These women inspired her and likewise she was an inspiration for them. Despite the fact her accomplishments were as relevant as those of her colleagues, her oeuvre received much less attention. Kanaga spent little time self-promoting since she was always more interested in cultivating the affective bonds with the people closest to her.

Biography

Consuelo Delesseps Kanaga was born on May 15th, 1894, in Astoria, Oregon. The daughter of a lawyer who was interested in agriculture and of the writer Mathilda Carolina Hartwing, she helped her parents with tasks related to editing from a very young age, eventually leading her to study journalism. In 1915 she began writing for the San Francisco Chronicle. Three years later, she became staff photographer. Kanaga met Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, and Dorothea Lange at the California Camera Club and became interested in artistic photography thanks to Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Work. Between 1927 and 1928 she travelled through Europe and northern Africa. Throughout her adult life, she lived both in San Francisco and New York, was married three times, and established her first portrait studio in San Francisco in 1932. She also participated in the f.64 Group and her images were exhibited for the first time at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco in 1932. Kanaga participated in West Coast liberal politics. After returning from New York in 1935, she became associated with the Photo League in 1938. Edward Steichen defended her photography and included her work in the renowned exhibition The Family of Man in 1955. In 1974 Kanaga held a solo exhibition at the Lerner-Heller gallery in New York and in 1976 she produced a small yet relevant retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum. In 1977 she exhibited her work at Wave Hill in Riverdale, New York. She passed away at her Yorktown Heights (New York) home in 1978. One year later, Kanaga’s work was included in the exhibition Recollections: Ten Women of Photography at the ICP and was the subject of a retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1992, where most of her work is currently preserved.

Press release from the Fundación MAPFRE

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'After Years of Hard Work (Tennessee)' 1948

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
After Years of Hard Work (Tennessee)
1948
Toned gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Young Girl in Profile' 1948

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Young Girl in Profile
1948
Toned gelatin silver print
22 13/16 x 16 13/16 x 1 1/2 in. (57.9 x 42.7 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Tennessee' 1950

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Tennessee
1950
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Barbara Deming' c. 1964

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Barbara Deming
c. 1964
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Barbara Deming (American, 1917-1984)

Barbara Deming (1917-1984) was one of the most dearly loved civil rights and feminist activists of her time. Born in New York City in 1917 and educated there at the Friends Meeting House Quaker School, she later studied literature and drama at Bennington College and earned a master’s degree in drama from Case Western Reserve University in 1941.

Deming began her career as a poet, professional writer, and film critic, and turned to political writing and human rights activism in the middle of her life. …

In the 1960s Deming joined demonstrations against Polaris submarines, took part in the 1962 San Francisco-to-Moscow walk for peace, and attended the International Peace Brigade in Europe. Protesting nuclear-weapons testing at the Atomic Energy Commission led to her first experience with being jailed for civil disobedience, this time at the Women’s House of Detention in New York City.

Acting on her belief that the struggles for racial equality and for peace were one effort, Deming marched in the bi-racial Nashville-to-DC walk for peace alongside SNCC members. In 1963 she joined black activists protesting segregation in Alabama and Georgia as well as attended the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. In 1964 she participated in the 2800-mile Quebec-Guantanamo walk for peace and freedom, a racially integrated protest over US actions in Cuba. During this march, she was arrested and jailed in Albany, Georgia, an experience she describes in her book Prison Notes.

Deming participated in political actions whenever and wherever individual rights and human dignity were being threatened. In 1965-1967 Deming traveled to North and South Vietnam to protest the war. In the 1970s she demonstrated for gay rights and feminist causes. In 1983 she was arrested on the march through Seneca Falls, organised by the Women’s Peace Encampment to protest the deployment of cruise missiles in Europe. Despite failing health, she was once again jailed.

Anonymous. “Barbara Deming,” on the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund website Nd [Online] Cited 03/04/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Photojournalism and the City

After having opted for journalism, influenced perhaps by her parents, Kanaga began to write for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1915, where she learned to produce photographs for her articles encouraged by the newspaper editor. In 1918 she became staff photographer, and the following year was hired by the Daily News, another San Francisco newspaper.

Between 1920 and 1950 she worked for newspapers and magazines in Denver and New York, capturing scenes of urban life and images of economic and racial inequality; as in The Widow Watson (1922-1924 below), which was taken while she was working for the newspaper New York American and depicts a woman suffering from tuberculosis next to her son.

Photojournalism led Kanaga to become aware of photography’s potential as an art form. Around 1918 she joined the California Camera Club in San Francisco. Not only did she gain access to a dark room and photographic equipment, but also books and magazines on the medium. The publication Camera Work by Alfred Stieglitz and the works of New York and San Francisco photographers, such as Arnold Genthe, who portrayed street scenes and urban architecture in their images, influenced her greatly.

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'The Widow Watson' 1922-1924

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
The Widow Watson
1922-1924
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Portrait Gallery

Kanaga began to produce portraits for additional income as a complement to her journalistic work, initially in San Francisco and later in New York. She opened her first studio in the early 1920s and was able to support herself and her partners financially for the rest of her life by taking photographs of wealthy clients and friends who were part of the avant-garde movements in San Francisco and New York. Thus, the portrait became the main focus of Kanaga’s creative production. It is also important to note that while most of her work as a photojournalist was lost, her portraits remain well represented among the negatives and prints that have been preserved.

Influenced by Stieglitz, in her portraits Kanaga experimented with poses, cropping, lighting, and printing in order to highlight the expressive capabilities of her images. Aside from flash, she used dark room techniques such as over-and underexposure, manipulating exposure times in specific parts of a photographic print to accentuate the contrast between light and shade, which generated a theatrical effect. The artist also frequently toned her prints with metals such as gold, adding pencil or graphite to highlight certain features.

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Portrait of a Woman' c. 1925

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Portrait of a Woman
c. 1925
Gelatin silver print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm)
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

North Americans Abroad

One of the fundamental experiences in Kanaga’s formative development was her time in Europe and northern Africa between 1927 and 1928, made possible through the financial support of the patron Albert M. Bender. Kanaga spent close to a year travelling through France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Tunisia, taking photographs and visiting museums, monuments, and churches. The artist also sought opportunities to learn modern photographic techniques. In Kairouan (Tunisia) she came into contact with a community of ex-pat artists and produced three photo albums portraying the city and its people, consolidating her interest in portraiture.

Consuelo Kanaga began to express her opinions on racism in the United States during these trips. A subject she would explore in more depth through photography during the 1930s. “I am sick of seeing colored men and women abused by stupid white people.”

Photography and the American Scene

Beyond portraiture, Kanaga practiced numerous genres and styles throughout her career. Like other North American artists, she was attracted to what she encountered in the “American Scene”; naturalist and descriptive representations of national and regional heritage and everyday life. Kanaga mostly focused on marginal day to day and political motifs, including workers, African Americans, objects, and buildings that were often in a state of disrepair.

Her first portraits of African Americans were aligned with the New Negro Movement that arose in the 1920s and 30s. Black intellectuals and artists tried to redefine and celebrate African American identities through cultural self-expression, economic independence, and progressive policies. Likewise, they advocated for the creation of inspiring images of their community and of negritude at a time when lynchings and racial terror were some of the most pressing legal and ethical issues. Within this context, Kanaga’s photographs can be considered a true statement of intent: Hands (1930 below) is the first preserved photograph that captures her anti-racist ideals. She also portrayed the singer Kenneth Spencer, the poet Langston Hughes, and the painter and ceramist Sargent Johnson, among others.

Along with her interest in African American communities, Kanaga became interested in worker’s rights and the worker movement that emerged in the Soviet Union and Germany during the 1920s. After moving to New York in 1935, she took photographs for leftist publications and became involved with the Photo League. At a time marked by the will to promote solidarity among workers beyond race and gender, Kanaga focused on the experiences of African Americans and Workers in particular.

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Hands' 1930

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Hands
1930
Gelatin silver print
23 1/16 x 29 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (58.6 x 73.8 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Portraits of Artists

Throughout the 1930s and 40s, Kanaga produced portraits of artists, writers, actors, and musicians. She met many of them thanks to her relationship with several photography clubs and collectives, as well as during her trips through the United States and Europe. Her images include portraits of the photographers Alfred Stieglitz and W. Eugene Smith, the painters Milton Avery and Mark Rothko, and of designers such as Wharton Esherick.

Conversely, Kanaga’s career was especially linked to a solid and broad circle of women photographers whose relationships she cultivated throughout her time as an artist. She was a great supporter and confidant for a series of photographers who often photographed each other, such as Berenice Abbott, Imogen Cunningham, Louse Dahl-Wolfe, Dorothea Lange, Alma Lavenson, Tina Modotti, and Eiko Yamazawa.

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'Wharton Esherick' 1940

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
Wharton Esherick
1940
Bromide print
20 1/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 1/2 in. (51 x 38.3 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Wharton Esherick (July 15, 1887 – May 6, 1970) was an American sculptor who worked primarily in wood, especially applying the principles of sculpture to common utilitarian objects. Consequently, he is best known for his sculptural furniture and furnishings. Esherick was recognised in his lifetime by his peers as the “dean of American craftsmen” for his leadership in developing nontraditional designs and for encouraging and inspiring artists and artisans by example. Esherick’s influence is evident in the work of contemporary artisans, particularly in the Studio Craft Movement. His home and studio in Malvern, Pennsylvania, are part of the Wharton Esherick Museum, which has been listed as a National Historic Landmark since 1993.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Trips to the Southern United States

Between the late 1940s and early 60s, Kanaga went on numerous trips through the southern United States where she continued to photograph black children and workers. While in Florida, she produced a series of photographs dedicated to black families and farmhands working in recovered swamp lands known as mucklands. During those trips, she took one of her most renowned photographs titled She is a Tree of Life (1950 below), which depicts a stoic mother with her son and daughter on either side. In 1950 she also photographed self-taught black artist William Edmondson next to his carved stone sculptures.

In 1964, amidst the struggle for freedom of Black Americans in the United States, the activist and writer Barbara Deming invited Kanaga to photograph the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace in protest of United States actions against Cuba. During the march, Deming and other activists were arrested for demanding that all demonstrators be allowed to walk together on a “white only” sidewalk. The book Prison Notes, published by Deming in 1966, includes photographs by Kanaga.

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) 'She is a Tree of Life' 1950

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
She is a Tree of Life
1950
Gelatin silver print
22 13/16 x 16 13/16 x 1 1/2 in. (57.9 x 42.7 x 3.8cm) framed
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Studies of Nature

In 1940 Kanaga and her husband, the painter Wallace Putnam, purchased a house outside the city, in Yorktown Heights, seventy kilometres north of Manhattan. They moved there permanently in 1950. Meanwhile, Kanaga continued taking photographs for household magazines in order to support herself and her husband financially. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why, after having her work exhibited in important exhibitions during the 1940s, Kanaga’s artistic output decreased during the following two decades. Nevertheless, she photographed the natural environment surrounding her house and in 1948 one of the pictures she took of the pond in their back yard was included in the exhibition In and Out of Focus: A Survey of Today’s Photography, held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Catalogue

The catalogue that accompanies this exhibition has been published in English, Spanish, and Catalan by Fundación MAPFRE and the Brooklyn Museum. It features an essay by the show’s curator Drew Sawyer and texts by Shalon Parker, Ellen Macfarlane, and Shana Lopes. The publication includes a complete overview of the artist’s life and work.

Press release from the Fundación MAPFRE

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) '[Untitled] (Landscape Near Taos, New Mexico)' Nd

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
[Untitled] (Landscape Near Taos, New Mexico)
Nd
Gelatin silver print
4 3/4 x 7 3/4 in. (12.1 x 19.7cm)
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978) '[Untitled] (Landscape with Farmhouse)' Nd

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
[Untitled] (Landscape with Farmhouse)
Nd
Gelatin silver print
3 5/8 x 4 3/4 in. (9.2 x 12.1cm)
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga
© Brooklyn Museum
Photo: Brooklyn Museum

 

 

KBr Photography Center
Avenida Litoral, 30 – 08005 Barcelona
Phone: +34 93 272 31 80

(Attention only during the opening hours of the exhibition hall)

Opening hours:
Mondays (except holidays): Closed
Tuesday to Sundays (and holidays): 11am – 8pm

Fundación MAPFRE website

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Review: ‘Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst’ at the RMIT Gallery, Melbourne

“The photographs tell a powerful story of Germany before and after the fall of communism whilst instilling in the viewer a wondering, an accumulation and visual nourishment for the senses.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 1st March – 20th April, 2024

Curator: Matthias Flügge

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Dodendorfer Straße' 1998 From the series 'Morgenstraße. Magdeburg 1998-2000' from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst' at the RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, March - April, 2024

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Dodendorfer Straße
1998
Aus der Serie: Morgenstraße. Magdeburg 1998-2000
From the series: Morgenstraße. Magdeburg 1998-2000
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

 

 

Wondering through history


Wonder noun. a feeling of amazement and admiration, caused by something beautiful, remarkable, or unfamiliar.


As enunciated by Jake Wilson in The Age newspaper in a review of the film La Chimera, “ultimately, the problem dramatised here is the same one faced by any modern artist: how do you retain a meaningful link to your predecessors while shaping something new?”1

Further, my mentor and friend Ian Lobb would often challenge me to define what I was adding to the artistic dialogue of photography instead of repeating the language of a previous era, and I would spar with him asking him was it really necessary to constantly reinvent the wheel, was it not enough to see and feel with clarity and humour those precious moments that surround us, and insightfully photograph them. These are the questions that enliven life: is it always necessary to shape something new, or is it enough to be attentive to the moment – of your mind, heart and vision – to create spellbinding photographs that carry your own interpretation of a certain reality.

Such is the case with the stimulating, two-room exhibition of the German photographer Ulrich Wüst at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne.

Wüst’s photography shows great affinity with the work of Bernd and Hiller Becher and the Becher and Dusseldorf Schools of photography which would have been known in East Germany by the time Wüst shot the 1980s series Stadtbilder. 1979-1985 (Cityscapes. 1979-1985) that first brought Wüst to international attention (the border was very permeable to artistic ideas from the West reaching East Germany).2 Indeed, most of Wüst’s oeuvre has direct links to the aesthetic of the Bechers (with their attention to detail and “devotion to the 1920s German tradition of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity”) and photographers such as Thomas Ruff (with their surreal enlargement of scale and “fundamentally sceptical attitude towards photography’s claim to truth and documentation”).

I believe that referencing and riffing off that aesthetic as Wüst does is no bad thing … for it forms the basis for the photographer’s further take on reality. But there are plenty of other forces at play in his photographs. I observe traces of August Sander, Berenice Abbott, Robert Frank, Michael Schmidt and Eugène Atget among others, especially with the latter in the positioning of Wüst’s camera.

As he observes, “When shooting I often find that if I move just fraction away from the more customary perspective a subtle heightening of tension with take place within the image. It’s no accident that I and my camera frequently get suspicious looks when the angle of the lens shifts away from the perspective found in souvenirs and postcards.” (Wall text from the exhibition)

And this is exactly what Atget did, he moved his camera from the “normal” point of view ever so slightly so that there immediately becomes this tension within the image plane coupled to the possibility of a magical revelation of space, an ironic comment on construction, or a grotesque play of opposites. As Wüst says, his vision, his observation, contains “plenty that is comic, grotesque, ironic” which many people do not see.

If we think about the supposedly objective work of the Bechers, which they insisted was all about documenting the object and not about any type of emotion, we fail to consider, as Julia Curl opines, “that this “objectivity” is only surface-level – that the work is deeply personal, even if its apparent uniformity claims otherwise.”3 Personally, I have never bought into the cool objectification of the Becher’s work for the photographers made defined choices as to how they depicted their constructed realities, each iteration of a water tower, gravel plant or cooling tower different from the other (fragments of a whole). This was deeply personal vision of how the world is perceived.

The same can be said of the photographs of Ulrich Wüst. His photographs are entirely personal, fragmentary excavations of history. In Wüst’s works by series, his photographs – surreal, sculptural scenes absent of people, full of elemental beauty – are not just the flawed humanity of our creation / the creation of our flawed humanity … but the creation and imagination of the human mind captured by the eye of the camera. Wüst’s photographs challenge us to look closer at the reality around us not accepting the status quo, the postcard view, not walking the city as if unaware of the vistas around us, feeling the “traces, injuries, missing and empty spaces in the image, so that things begin to speak of themselves…”4

As the art historian Matthias Flügge states, Wüst’s photographs are “images of intellectual-spatial situations,” wholly a creation, an accretion, on existing forms of photography. Not something new, which is ultimately unnecessary, but a growth in “wondering” – not wandering – achieved through the gradual accumulation of additional layers of beauty, feeling, knowledge so that we are informed and fully aware of our (un)familiar surroundings.

The photographs tell a powerful story of Germany before and after the fall of communism whilst instilling in the viewer a wondering, an accumulation and visual nourishment for the senses.

Such is the photography of Ulrich Wüst.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. The only down side to this exhibition is that all the black and white photographs are modern archival ink jet prints. Call me old fashioned but these pigment prints have no real “presence”. It’s like the difference between an LP and a CD, or a movie in Technicolor or 5K. One has “atmosphere”, one has mood and aura and the other just sits there in all its perfection like a dog with a bone waiting for you to go “oooh, ahhh”. There are people that say you can’t tell the difference between the two. Rubbish. Give me gelatin silver prints any day of the week.

 

1/ Jake Wilson. “Lost and Found while digging up the cinematic past,” in The Age newspaper, 11 April 2024, p. 24.

2/”Huyssen reveals the complexity of artistic development on both sides of the Wall and notes that “the borders between East and West became porous during the 1970s as a result of treaties between the GDR and the FRG.” His focus in this regard, however, is on those artists who left the East for the West and made an impact there, such as Georg Baselitz and Gerhard Richter; he does not acknowledge the extent to which ideas and influences went in both directions. … While it is true that West German artists showed little interest in exhibiting in the East or in the art that was created there, East German artists tended to be well informed about Western artistic developments…” p. 598

April A. Eisman. “East German Art and the Permeability of the Berlin Wall,” in German Studies Review, Vol. 38, No. 3 (October 2015), pp. 597-616. Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the German Studies Association

3/ Julia Curl. “Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Misunderstood Oeuvre,” on the Hyperallergic website November 2, 2022 [Online] Cited 11/04/2024

4/ Jacek Slaski. “Ulrich Wüst – Stadtbilder 1979–1985: Zwischen Kunst und Dokumentation,” on the tipBerlin website 03/02/2022 [Online] Cited 08/04/2024. Translated from the German by Google Translate



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

An exhibition by ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V., Stuttgart – in partnership with the Goethe-Institut. This project is an official exhibition of PHOTO 2024 International Festival of Photography.

 

 

“Most viewers, unfortunately, are so dreadfully serious when they look at the pictures. I have to “hammer it home” incredibly hard before anyone will allow themselves to laugh. In my works there is simply – perhaps a bit hidden – plenty that is comic, grotesque, ironic.”


Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

 

“I’m sure I do give those power symbols the aesthetic treatment, otherwise it’s unlikely that I would have any desire or energy to photograph them. But it would also be unfair to say that these objects do not hold their own innate aesthetic fascination. All I can do is try to describe how I am torn between spontaneous fascination and rational rejection, aiming to convey that experience and make it understandable. When shooting I often find that if I move just fraction away from the more customary perspective a subtle heightening of tension with take place within the image. It’s no accident that I and my camera frequently get suspicious looks when the angle of the lens shifts away from the perspective found in souvenirs and postcards. People are very attuned to that sort of shift.”


Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Flatland. Schönhof', 2013 (centre), 'The Pomp of Power', 1983-1990 (left) and 'Red October', 2018 (right) from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Flatland. Schönhof, 2013 (centre), The Pomp of Power, 1983-1990 (left) and Red October, 2018 (right) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

 

Ulrich Wüst’s photographic work captures his wanderings through German history, portraying the social and urban transformations from the GDR and its disintegration, through the German reunification to the present day. Wüst revives the German history in a new static way, where the past and present clash in a dynamic and ever-changing environment.

Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst shows a selection of nine suites taken between 1978 and 2019. Ulrich Wüst’s photographic work can be contemplated from different perspectives. While the observations captured here are rooted in Germany’s division and its mending, at the same time they always relate to universal phenomena of social change and its material manifestations. The seemingly terse images, extremely precise in their composition, are the fruits of lengthy visual wanderings through present sites of recent history.

Ulrich Wüst’s photographic œuvre, which explores Eastern Germany in the broader sense, is not confined to the sunken GDR. It might be described as a pictorial archaeology of our present day. These pictures reveal the finds from his “excavations” and are at the same time tools of their conservation. Wüst has an infallible feel for the graphic quality of everyday situations, objects and materials, but also for the deeper layers of significance associated with found images. Examples are the enlarged details from East German press products that demonstrate a manipulative use of photography.

Ulrich Wüst’s photographic work can be contemplated from different perspectives. While the observations captured here are essentially rooted in Germany’s division and its mending, at the same time they always relate to universal phenomena of social change and its material manifestations. The seemingly terse images, extremely precise in their composition, are the fruits of lengthy visual wanderings through present sites of recent history.

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Flatland. Schönhof', 2013, from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Flatland. Schönhof, 2013, from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Flatland. Schönhof' 2013 from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst' at the RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, March - April, 2024

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Flatland. Schönhof
From the series: Flatland. Schönhof
2013
Colour photograph, archival pigment print
57 x 38cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Flatland. Schönhof' 2013 (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Flatland. Schönhof' 2013 (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Flatland. Schönhof
From the series: Flatland. Schönhof (installation views)
2013
Colour photograph, archival pigment print
57 x 38cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

“These photographs of newspapers and magazines were taken in the countryside, things that I found within a very small radius. Previously I had always done that urban stuff but then I would go looking for contrasts, because after a while your eye becomes tired.”


Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Cityscapes, 1979-1985' (left) and 'Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992' (right) from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Cityscapes 1979-1985 (left) and Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege 1991-1992 (right) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Ulrich Wüst’s photos are “images of mental-spatial situations”

In every city there are places that have been photographed thousands of times. From tourists, amateurs and professionals. Always captured on paper or the digital matrix. Big Ben, Eiffel Tower, Alexanderplatz in the heart of Berlin. Thousands, even millions of looks at the striking symbols of a metropolis that want to capture the essence of the city. Ulrich Wüst was far away from such direct concepts. His view of Alexanderplatz is almost shy, more of a cautious approach, and yet he gets a grip on the place. But it’s not primarily about Berlin. Wüst’s city images are less studies of specific cities than “images of intellectual-spatial situations,” as the art historian and rector of the Dresden University of Fine Arts Matthias Flügge states in his insightful text for the photo book Ulrich Wüst – Stadtbilder 1979-1985 (Ulrich Wüst – City Images 1979-1985).

If you read Flügge’s text, it becomes clear once again that a picture is not just a picture and that it requires more than a fleeting observation, especially with a subject like the cityscape. Because you could easily come to the conclusion that you immediately understand the motif at hand, after all, you yourself are a city dweller and are aware of your habitat. But a photograph is also a starting point for deeper reflections. Wüst’s photographs of prefabricated buildings in East Berlin, vacancies in Magdeburg, and the central square in Karl-Marx-Stadt are not unseen motifs. Rather, they are all too well known. Such urban constellations should not be foreign to anyone who lived in the GDR in the 1970s and 1980s, or even those born later or socialised in the West. …

“Determining the status quo of the constructed, shaped, printed or otherwise produced objective world with all its traces, injuries, missing and empty spaces in the image, so that things begin to speak of themselves,” is what Wüst does, writes Flügge.

Jacek Slaski. “Ulrich Wüst – Stadtbilder 1979–1985: Zwischen Kunst und Dokumentation,” on the tipBerlin website 03/02/2022 [Online] Cited 08/04/2024. Translated from the German by Google Translate. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Berlin' 1982 From the series 'Cityscapes. 1979-1985'

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Berlin
1982
Aus der Serie: Stadtbilder. 1979-1985
From the series: Cityscapes. 1979-1985
B/w archival pigment print
16 x 24cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

 

 

“For me it had always been about the built environment. […] And then I started on those rather dry Cityscapes, which always seems so objective, even though they never were and never tried to be. I wanted to take a concentrated, analytical look at the city. Back then I had a strong sense of mission; I really did want to achieve something. And the things I wanted to say about the city as space I also wanted to tell people who weren’t at all interested in photography or urban space. In some respects it was definitely intended to enlighten. Ultimately I wanted to provoke a debate about what we imagine a “city” to be and what this environment does to us.”


Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Axel Hütte (b. 1951) 'James Hammett House' 1982-1984

 

Axel Hütte (German, b. 1951)
James Hammett House
1982-1984
Silver gelatin print on baryte paper
66 x 80cm
Loan of the artist

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Cityscapes. 1979-1985' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Cityscapes. 1979-1985' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Cityscapes. 1979-1985' (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Stadtbilder. 1979-1985
From the series: Cityscapes. 1979-1985 (installation views)
B/w archival pigment print
16 x 24cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

The work of Ulrich Wüst might best be described as a pictorial archaeology of recent German history. With an unsentimental precision these photographic ‘excavations’ pivot around moments of social change; those points in history when the old and the new collide, when the seemingly endless cycle of destruction and construction can so easily relegate the present to the oblivion of the past.

Initially photographing life in the former East Germany, Wüst’s oeuvre grew to include the documentation of everyday situations, objects and materials; expanding further with the addition of found images, cropped and rephotographed by Wüst to reveal alternative readings.

In his sparse black and white Cityscapes, the 1980s series that first brought Wust to international attention, we find images of East German cities and towns still carrying scars from the Second World War – an environment formed through the combination of unchecked decay and Soviet-era reconstruction. With an interest in the absurd – those visual anomalies that arrive through accident or misguided intent – Wüst has forged a unique, non-ideological representation of that time. In a similar manner but on a different scale, Wüst’s Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege (1991-1992) – a photo inventory of objects left behind by the former owner of his house – engages us with the incidental nature of history. Intimate and fragile, these ordinary objects are made monumental through Wüst’s lens, yet these discarded possessions have the same precariousness as the hastily built architecture of cities in perpetual change.

Ulrich Wüst’s photographic work exists as a registry of everyday images. It could be considered akin to the personal archive of a once divided country mending itself, wandering through time, settling upon moments and fragments that also speak to the wider, universal phenomena of social change and its material manifestations.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Cityscapes, 1979-1985' (right), 'Morgenstraße. Magdeburg, 1998-2000' (second right), 'Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992' (third right) and 'Red October', 2018 (left) from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Cityscapes, 1979-1985 (right), Morgenstraße. Magdeburg, 1998-2000 (second right), Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 (third right) and Red October, 2018 (left) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Morgenstraße. Magdeburg, 1998-2000' (right), 'Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992' (centre left) from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Morgenstraße. Magdeburg, 1998-2000 (right), Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 (centre left) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Morgenstraße. Magdeburg' 1998-2000 (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Morgenstraße. Magdeburg' 1998-2000 (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Morgenstraße. Magdeburg 1998-2000
From the series: Morgenstraße. Magdeburg 1998-2000 (installation views)
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

“As soon as we see people in pictures, we focus on those people. We seem to be fixated on that somehow and we stare at the figures depicted, however small they may be. But as I wanted to steer attention to the built environment, to what we have built for ourselves, I quite simply decided to leave the people out. If there a no people in sight in the pictures, then for one thing nobody can look at them and for another the effect is disconcerting. Disconcertion is a good opening gambit.”


Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) 'Fifth Avenue, Nos. 4, 6, 8, Manhattan' March 20, 1936

 

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Fifth Avenue, Nos. 4, 6, 8, Manhattan
March 20, 1936
Gelatin silver print

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Kaffemühle' (Coffee grinder) From the series 'Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege 1991-1992'

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Kaffemühle (Coffee grinder) 
Aus der Serie: Nachlass Wiegmann. Bülowssiege 1991-1992
From the series: Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege 1991-1992
Colour photograph, archival pigment print
105 cm x 70cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

 

 

“I make a point of calling myself a photographer, because then the art question usually no longer arises. But if others still want to see me as an artist, I can (happily) live with that. Personally I don’t want to think about that question. The only thing I do want to stress is that my work is not documentary. I use documentary technique as a form, as a means, and in certain works I am also looking for documentary precision.”


Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992' from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege 1991-1992' (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Nachlass Wiegmann. Bülowssiege 1991-1992
From the series: Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege 1991-1992 (installation view)
Colour photograph, archival pigment print
105 cm x 70cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Cityscapes, 1979-1985' (left) and 'Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992' (right) from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Cityscapes, 1979-1985 (left) and Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 (right) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992' (left) and 'Notations 1984-1986' (right) from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 (left) and Notations 1984-1986 (right) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Berlin, Pappelallee' September 1984 From the series 'Notations. 1984-1986'

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Berlin, Pappelallee
September 1984
Aus der Serie: Notizen. 1984-1986
From the series: Notations. 1984-1986
B/w archival pigment print
14 x 21cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Notations. 1984-1986' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Notations. 1984-1986' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Notations. 1984-1986' (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Notizen. 1984-1986
From the series: Notations. 1984-1986 (installation views)
B/w archival pigment print
14 x 21cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

“While I was still busy fine-tuning my technical skills for Cityscapes, over in West Germany very small automatic rangefinders were coming onto the market. That was in the early 1980s. […] I got hold of one of those and suddenly I could carry a camera with me all the time, take it anywhere, and I started using it like an “extended eye”. The little camera allowed me to take more intimate, more “personal” works. For me that meant talking about my own life. That was the beginning of the series Notations, as I later called it. I focused on my circle of friends and my immediate environment. And so the Notations came about and that was what I wanted to achieve, as a conscious antithesis to other series like the Cityscapes.”


Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Red October' 2018, from the exhibition Wanderings About History – The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Red October 2018, from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Roter Oktober' (Red October) 2018

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Roter Oktober (Red October)
2018
Leporello with 45 b/w and colour photographs mounted on cardboard
14.8 x 21.0 x 2.0cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

 

Michael Schmidt (German, 1945-2014) 'Müller-Ecke Seestrasse, Berlin-Wedding' (Berlin-Wedding) 1976-1978

 

Michael Schmidt (German, 1945-2014)
Müller-Ecke Seestrasse, Berlin-Wedding (Berlin-Wedding)
1976-1978
© Michael Schmidt, Foundation for Photography and Media Art with the Michael Schmidt Archive

 

Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) 'Dusseldorf, Sankt-Franziskusstraße 107' 1977

 

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Dusseldorf, Sankt-Franziskusstraße 107
1977
Silver gelatin print on baryta paper
41.2 x 51.2cm
Courtesy The Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne / Permanent Loan of the Sparkasse KölnBonn

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Roter Oktober' (Red October) 2018 (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Roter Oktober' (Red October) 2018 (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Roter Oktober (Red October) (installation views)
2018
Leporello with 45 b/w and colour photographs mounted on cardboard
14.8 × 21.0 × 2.0cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

“Photographers love to complain about the chaos they work in and how that prevents them from keeping tabs on what they do. At some point I realised that the concertinas were a fantastic tool for tracing and recoding the progress of my work. Above all, they enabled me to locate my negatives, because I used very simple but precise captions with the place and date of the picture. I always liked the versatility of the concertina. Now, whenever I need to find a negative, I take one of these booklets of the shelf and look for the photograph. They have become a means to communicate with myself about my work and I miss them when they are being exhibition and I haven’t got them at home.”


Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'The Pomp of Power. 1983-1990' from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, The Pomp of Power. 1983-1990, from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'The Pomp of Power. 1983-1990'

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Die Pracht der Macht. 1983-1990
The Pomp of Power. 1983-1990
Leporello with 30 b/w photographs mounted on cardboard
14.8 x 21.0 x 1.5cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'The Pomp of Power. 1983-1990' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'The Pomp of Power. 1983-1990' (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Die Pracht der Macht. 1983-1990
The Pomp of Power. 1983-1990 (installation views)
Concertina booklet with 30 b/w photographs mounted on cardboard
14.8 x 21.0 x 1.5cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Clarity and compositional elegance

It may also have been his professional disposition that led him to pay particular attention to the GDR city. After all, he was an expert. Wüst was an expert in the field of urban development; he knew exactly what he was photographing. In the midst of the “leaden times” of the GDR, an era shortly before the collapse in which hardly anything seemed to be moving. Mid-1970s to mid-1980s. Urban and housing construction has long since said goodbye to the promising ideals of a better, because socialist, promise. The reality was pragmatic and merciless. Dilapidated old building and decaying substance on one side and serial prefabricated building on the other.

Wüst’s pictures, which sometimes develop a peculiar irony in their clarity and compositional elegance, can also be understood as political statements. “They searched for clues in a way that was unusual in the GDR as a way of ascertaining the real perceived state of the present,” writes Flügge about the photographer, who knew exactly what he wanted to find and capture. Even the depiction of reality could be considered subversive in the workers’ and farmers’ state. It wasn’t appropriate to show things as they were. Rather, you should show things as they should be. …

By “limiting the image section, he forces reality to formulate its own,” summarizes Flügge.

Jacek Slaski. “Ulrich Wüst – Stadtbilder 1979–1985: Zwischen Kunst und Dokumentation,” on the tipBerlin website 03/02/2022 [Online] Cited 08/04/2024. Translated from the German by Google Translate. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark, 2014-2019' from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark, 2014-2019 from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Book of the Years. 1978-2008' (right) and 'Mitte. Berlin 1994-1997' (left) from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Book of the Years. 1978-2008 (right) and Mitte. Berlin, 1994-1997 (left) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Schützenstraße / Jerusalemer Straße' 1996 From the series: 'Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997'

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Schützenstraße / Jerusalemer Straße
1996
Aus der Serie: Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997
From the series: Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

 

 

The different historical eras come together in his pictures. Relics from the pre-war period, often ruins, alongside the proud examples of Eastern Modernism from the post-war period, and finally the cheap and quickly built architecture of the present day. These photos are still important today, and not just for architectural historians and photography connoisseurs. Wüst’s pictures of the GDR city are visual findings about the condition of its residents, even if the people in them are absent. In his text, Flügge quotes from Alexander Mitscherlich’s book Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte. Anstiftung zum Unfrieden (The inhospitability of our cities. Incitement to Discord), in which the doctor, psychoanalyst and writer examined the West German city as early as 1965: “This city shape is regressively shaping the character of its residents.” In his book, Mitscherlich hoped that the city would one day become a “biotope for free people”. It didn’t quite turn out that way, but in a certain sense Mitscherlich wasn’t entirely wrong either. The GDR would soon disappear and with it the GDR city.

Jacek Slaski. “Ulrich Wüst – Stadtbilder 1979–1985: Zwischen Kunst und Dokumentation,” on the tipBerlin website 03/02/2022 [Online] Cited 08/04/2024. Translated from the German by Google Translate. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997' (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997
From the series: Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997 (installation views)
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

I am well aware of how ambivalent photography is. And just because photographs have a documentary air about them, I find it to some extent dubious to slap a documentary label on them. If, ten centimetres from the edge of my picture, the whole content is counteracted by something completely different, then I can no longer claim to be doing serious documentary work. Documentation as a form, in my view, is just a way to explore a theme – a means. I only want to photograph and not distort things. It’s true that there is a documentary background, but what I do with it is always something of my own and totally subjective.


Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Mitte. Berlin 1994-1997' (right) and 'Prentzlow. Prenzlau', 2018 (left) from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Mitte. Berlin 1994-1997 (right) and Prenzlau, 2018 (left) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Prenzlau', 2018, from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Prenzlau, 2018, from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series ‘Prenzlau’ 2018

 

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Prenzlau
From the series: Prenzlau
2018
Colour photograph, archival pigment print
45 x 30cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Prenzlau' 2018 (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Prenzlau' 2018 (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Prenzlau' 2018 (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Prenzlau
From the series: Prenzlau (installation views)
2018
Colour photograph, archival pigment print
45 x 30cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege 1991-1992' (right) and 'Book of the Years. 1978-2008' (left), from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 (right) and Book of the Years. 1978-2008 (left), from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Kreta' (Crete) 1997 From the series 'Book of the Years. 1978-2008'

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Kreta (Crete)
1997
Aus der Serie: Jahrebuch. 1978-2008
From the series: Book of the Years. 1978-2008
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Book of the Years. 1978-2008' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Book of the Years. 1978-2008' (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Jahrebuch. 1978-2008
From the series: Book of the Years. 1978-2008 (installation views)
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) 'London' 1951

 

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
London
1951
Gelatin silver print

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Book of the Years. 1978-2008' (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Jahrebuch. 1978-2008
From the series: Book of the Years. 1978-2008 (installation view)
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Das Siebengebirge von der unteren Terrasse hin zur Löwenburg' 1922

 

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Das Siebengebirge von der unteren Terrasse hin zur Löwenburg
The Siebengebirge from the lower terrace towards the Löwenburg castle

1922
Gelatin silver print
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Sitftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Köln; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Book of the Years. 1978-2008' (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Jahrebuch. 1978-2008
From the series: Book of the Years. 1978-2008 (installation view)
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

A collection/compilation. A great deal of chance and responding to mood. The urban excursions, by contrast, followed a strict pattern. There it was about the grey cityscapes, grey “Mitte” and grey “Morgenstraße”. And yet all of them were taken in bright sunlight! Without the weather forecast promising a safe sunny day, I would probably never have been brave enough to set out on wanderings that did not augur much solace.

Most of the pictures in the book of the Years, on the other hand, really were taken in grey weather. They were done over a period of thirty years, mostly without any particular intention, straight from the experience. Later I gathered them into a kind of melancholy section through times and places. The pictures say: I was here. And I was in this or that mood. They are mood! And sometimes they flirt with the mood as well. That can happen.

~ Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Mitte. Berlin 1994-1997' (right), 'Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark, 2014-2019' (left) and 'Prentzlow. Prenzlau', 2018 (centre) from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Mitte. Berlin 1994-1997 (right), Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark, 2014-2019 (left) and Prentzlow. Prenzlau, 2018 (centre) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

 

Ulrich Wüst’s photographic work captures his wanderings through German history, portraying the social and urban transformations from the GDR and its disintegration, through the German reunification to the present day. Wüst revives the German history in a new static way, where the past and present clash in a dynamic and ever-changing environment.

Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst shows a selection of nine suites taken between 1978 and 2019. Ulrich Wüst’s photographic work can be contemplated from different perspectives. While the observations captured here are rooted in Germany’s division and its mending, at the same time they always relate to universal phenomena of social change and its material manifestations. The seemingly terse images, extremely precise in their composition, are the fruits of lengthy visual wanderings through present sites of recent history.

An exhibition by ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V., Stuttgart – in partnership with the Goethe-Institut. This project is an official exhibition of PHOTO 2024 International Festival of Photography.

Text from the RMIT Gallery website

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992' (left) and 'Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark, 2014-2019' (right) from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

 

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 (left) and Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark, 2014-2019 (right) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019' (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Randlage. Die Gemeinde Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019
From the series: Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019 (installation view)
B/w archival pigment print
26 x 39cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Parmen' 2016 From the series 'Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019'

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Parmen
2016
Aus der Serie: Randlage. Die Gemeinde Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019
From the series: Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019
B/w archival pigment print
26 x 39cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

 

 

“In the last few years I started taking pictures in the countryside again. The idea was to have photographs of villages and landscapes that were just as “dry” as my cityscape series, like Berlin, or Magdeburg. The resulting work is far removed from any sort of rural idyll, but equally as far removed from the affection I have from these landscapes. I chose not to give too much away.”


Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019' (installation view)

 

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Randlage. Die Gemeinde Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019
From the series: Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019 (installation views)
B/w archival pigment print
26 x 39cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

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Text: Marcus Bunyan. “Nothing emerges from nothing,” Foreword to ‘We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans’ 2019

August 2019

Publisher: Australian Scholarly Publishing
ISBN: 9781925801859
Hardback
Purchase

 

Book cover to 'We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans' 2019

 

Book cover to We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans. Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019.

 

 

The book We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans has now been published by Australian Scholarly Publishing and is available to purchase from their website.

I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who worked on the book, and an especially big thank you to the wonderful Jenner Zimmer who edited the book and without whose help it would not be the book it turned out to be. Her research in tracking down who the people were in the photographs, their correct names, the location of some of the photographs, and her layout of the book, was magnificent to say the least. Through her excellent work, we can now place these photographs not only in a personal context, but in an important historical context in relation to the development of the civil rights movement in Australia directly after the Second World War.

The book is a reflection of the times, an insight into the nascent civil rights movement of the late 1940s-1950s that reached full bloom in the 1960s. As I observe in the foreword below it also becomes a reflection on how photography and friendship go hand in hand… and how this transformative process leads us to reassess our relationship to the world through the act of taking photographs.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

Foreword

Nothing emerges from nothing

 

“… every human being is a poet, a masker, a warrior, a dancer: and in his innocent artistry he projects, against the turmoil of the street, an image of human existence.”

Helen Levitt. ‘In the Street’ 1948.1

 

The gift of friendship between two people is a truly magical thing, a relationship built on the nurturing of respect between them, over time. The alchemical gift of a photograph does not arrive fully formed in a moment, for its magic is grounded in the context of its taking, informed by the wisdom, vision and creativity of the photographer. How Joyce Evans was touched by a connection between photography and friendship is another transformative process, one that leads her to reassess her relationship to the world through the act of taking photographs. Nothing ever emerges from nothing.

My friendship with Joyce Evans began when a joint acquaintance who knew of our love of photography introduced us. Over numerous years since – through trips to Sydney to see Joyce’s favourite photographer Julia Margaret Cameron; through visits to many exhibitions where we have discussed our reactions to the work (often with completely opposing views); through vigorous debate about the merits of different artists; through her promotion of Australian photography; and through her deep knowledge of the world, of life, and of art – I have come to know and love this vibrant and intelligent women. To begin to understand this complex human being and her approach to photography and life. The photographs, text and poetry in this book show evidence of the early maturing of this spirit of life.

Imagine being a nineteen year old who has been studying in America after the end of the Second World War, who has arrived in poverty-stricken England to meet friends who were mutually interested in the peace movement. Imagine travelling across Europe by car with those same friends, as mass migrations of people across Europe were still happening after the war, staying in youth hostels, to camp outside the city of Vienna. Then to cross the “Iron Curtain” and journey with thousands of other people from eight-two countries around the world to the city of Budapest for the Second World Festival of Youth and Students – a festival movement that grew out of the ashes of the war to proclaim, to shout, that youth would never again allow the horrors of fascism to terrorise the world. What a journey of discovery, love, friendship, excitement and danger that must have been!

Using her intelligence and the informed nature of her artistic being to define what interested her most, Joyce documented what she saw of the world around her.2 In so doing, these early photographs set the stage for concerns that have remained consistent in her work to this very day: peace, freedom, place, identity and humanity. While the photographs are a mirror of the times, portraying the improvisational vitality of everyday life, they also represent how the mind of the photographer can be embodied in the physical world, providing a glimpse into that most secret room of all – the core beliefs of a human being, their humanity, their soul.

The Australian photographer Max Dupain stated that the ‘mission of the photograph is to clarify the subject’.3 But perhaps the mission of the photograph is also to help clarify the identity of the artist. As the Austrian-born American photographer Inge Morath eloquently observes:

“Photography is a strange phenomenon. In spite of the use of that technical instrument, the camera, no two photographers, even if they were at the same place at the same time, come back with the same pictures. The personal vision is usually there from the beginning; result of a special chemistry of background and feelings, traditions and their rejection, of sensibility and voyeurism. You trust your eye and you cannot help but bare your soul. One’s vision finds of necessity the form suitable to express it.”4


The form that Joyce found so early in her life was the music and poetry of humanist photographs, images that are subjective, lyrical, and reveal a state-of-mind. Here is passion and belief in the life of human beings, and the exquisiteness, beauty (and death) of the lived moment. You could label them “social documentary photography” if you were so inclined, but labels don’t capture the frisson of the creative process nor the joyous outcome of Joyce’s portraits. It’s as though Joyce, in a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, is making love to the world through her images: neither rational nor cerebral they evoke sensations and feelings, of being here and there, in that past space and time, now, all these years later. These were epic days of change and transformation – of nations, of continents, of cultures and of people. There was death and destruction but there was also such happiness, hope and joy.

Further, what her photographs also depict is the rise of an informed Australian social consciousness after the Second World War. Her important historical and personal photographs shine a light on forgotten people, times, places and actions, such as the broad based youth movements opposition to the atomic bomb, associations and friendships which eventually form the basis for the progressive social and political protest movements of the 1960s. The voices raised later in support of feminism, gay liberation, free love and Vietnam anti-war protests did not appear fully formed, for there was a history of activism… a slow build, a groundswell of public opinion that was the basis for such emerging actions. Nothing ever emerges from nothing.

As much as Joyce’s photographs engage the viewer in memory, they also engage in the moment, both past and present. Not only an engagement with the history and nostalgia of the images, but in their present day hope and joy. It is such a pleasure to see these strong images, of people now old, still young, a moving image of humanity. This is the heart of the matter: a moving image of humanity. The photographs represent an understanding of (a) life, well formed and well lived, of a courageous and visionary woman who told it her way, who still tells it her way to this day.

I have a deep sense of gratitude for both our friendship and for Joyce Evans’ prescient vision in recording these remarkable stories so that they can be shared today. At the time they had such high hopes, for their lives and for the future, energy that eventually morphed into something else (as is its want). This leaves these images, written memory, as both poem and testimonial to the uncertainty of human dreams and to the percipience of the artist who embodied and enabled them… in feeling, in love and in spirit. Nothing ever emerges from nothing. Good on ya Bert!

Dr Marcus Bunyan
Melbourne, February 2019

 

Endnotes

1/ Levitt, Helen (ed.,). In the Street. Directed by Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb and James Agee. Black and white film, 14 mins. 1948 (VHS) New York: Arthouse, Inc., 1996.
2/ Joyce was ever attentive to the power of the historical for she had been studying the Baroque painters in Paris and on her travels through Italy, evidence of which can be seen in the grouping of human figures in her photographs.
3/ Anonymous label. “Max Dupain, (Factory chimney stacks) 1940,” on the National Gallery of Australia website [Online] Cited 15/02/2019.
4/ Morath, Inge; Folie, Sabine and Matt, Gerald. Inge Morath, Life as a Photographer. Munich: Gina Kehayoff Verlag, 1999, p. 13.

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Good on yer Bert' 1949

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Good on yer Bert
1949
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Untitled [Budapest crowd]' 1949

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Budapest crowd
1949
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Stalin banner, Budapest' 1949

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Stalin banner, Budapest
1949
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Farewell to Delegates' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Farewell to Delegates
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Farewell to Delegates Townsend' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Farewell to Delegates
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Joyce with camera' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Joyce with camera
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Joyce onboard ship' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Joyce onboard ship
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Joyce with lifeboat' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Joyce with lifeboat
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Faith Bandler' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Faith Bandler
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Edward 'Woods Lloyd' Drummond' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Edward ‘Woods Lloyd’ Drummond
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

 

“We believed we had an obligation, neither social nor political, to make a difference. We were brought up as children to believe that we had an obligation to make that difference.

If we can find out what we are… that is the artist. This goes to the core element of your being, and the core element of your enquiry remains the same.

If the core part of your life is the search for the truth then that becomes a core part of your identity for the rest of your life. It becomes embedded in your soul.”


Joyce Evans

 

 

Description

Some think it all happened in the 1960s but Joyce Evans, acclaimed photographer of Australia’s land and its people, goes back to her youth and memories of her many adventures as a student activist. In 1949, aged 19, she set sail for Soviet-occupied Budapest to join the post-war demonstrations at ‘The World Festival of Youth and Students for Peace’. It was a time when young Australians dreamed of change and travelled to war-torn Europe in the hope of peace becoming the new reality. Among them were many who would later become important figures in Australia’s government, legal profession, diplomatic corps and academia. People like Frank Hardy, John Bluthal, Faith Bandler, Clyde Holding, Irving Saulwick and Richard Woolcott appear in Joyce Evans’ photographs of these events.

This story, with its cast of endearing and passionate characters, records voyages across battle-scarred Europe, clashes with draconian authorities, daring escapes, betrayals, lost idealism and a wealth of unlikely friendships. It describes the adventures of a youthful cohort who felt empowered and believed it could fulfil its dream of world-wide peace. Joyce says: ‘If such a dream existed then, such high hopes can be reclaimed by the youth of today!’

Text from the Australian Scholarly Publishing website [Online] Cited 08/08/2019

 

World Federation of Democratic Youth

The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) is an international youth organisation, recognised by the United Nations as an international youth non-governmental organisation, and has historically characterised itself as anti-imperialist and left-wing. WFDY was founded in London in 1945 as a broad international youth movement, organised in the context of the end of World War II with the aim of uniting youth from the Allies behind an anti-fascist platform that was broadly pro-peace, anti-nuclear war, expressing friendship between youth of the capitalist and socialist nations. The WFDY Headquarters are in Budapest, Hungary. The main event of WFDY is the World Festival of Youth and Students. The last festival was held in Sochi, Russia, in October 2017. It was one of the first organisations granted general consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

History

On 10 November 1945, the World Youth Conference, organised in London, founded the World Federation of Democratic Youth. This historic conference was convened at the initiative of the World Youth Council which was formed during World War II to encourage the fight against fascism by the youth of the allied nations. The conference brought together, for the first time in the history of the international youth movement, representatives of more than 30,000,000 young people of diverse different political ideologies and religious beliefs from 63 nations. It adopted a pledge for peace.

Shortly after, with the onset of the Cold War and Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech, the organisation was accused by the US State Department of being a “Moscow front”. Many of the founding organisations quit, leaving mostly youth from socialist nations, national liberation movements, and communist youth. Like the International Union of Students (IUS) and other pro-Soviet organisations, the WFDY became a target and victim of CIA espionage as well as part of active measures conducted by the Soviet state security.

The WFYD’s first General Secretary, Alexander Shelepin, was a former leader of the Young Communist International which had been dissolved in 1943. Shelepin had been a guerilla fighter during World War II (after his work with the WFDY, he was appointed head of Soviet State Security). Both the WFDY and IUS vocally criticised the Marshall Plan, supported the Czechoslovak coup d’état of 1948 and the new People’s Democracies in Europe. They opposed the Korean War.

The main event of the WFDY became the World Festival of Youth and Students, a massive political and cultural celebration for peace and friendship between the youth of the world. Most, but not all, of the early festivals were held in socialist nations in Europe.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

World Festival of Youth and Students

The World Festival of Youth and Students is an international event, organised by the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), a United Nations-recognised international youth non-governmental organisation, jointly with the International Union of Students since 1947. Initially pluralist, the event became an outlet for Soviet propaganda for foreign audiences during the Cold War.

The festival has been held regularly since 1947 as an event of global youth solidarity for democracy and against war and imperialism. The largest festival was the 6th, held in 1957 in Moscow, when 34,000 young people from 131 countries attended the event. This festival also marked the international debut of the song “Moscow Nights”, which subsequently went on to become perhaps the most widely recognised Russian song in the world. Until the 19th festival in Sochi, Russia in 2017 (with 185 countries participating), the largest festival by number of countries with participants was the 13th, held in 1989 in Pyongyang when 177 countries attended the event.

The World Federation of Democratic Youth was founded to bring together young people of both the socialist and capitalist countries to promote peaceful cooperation and mutual rejection of war. However, with the onset of the Cold War soon after, the organisation and the festivals became a matter of contention within the rivalry. Because of the enormous expenditure and coordination required to support a youth festival, most of the early festivals were held in cities in the socialist countries of Europe. However, many festivals, both then and more so since, have been held in non-socialist countries, affirming the commitment to peaceful coexistence between the peoples living under the different systems. The most recent festival took place in Sochi, Russia, from 13 to 22 October 2017.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

2nd World Festival of Youth and Students

The Second World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) was held in 1949, in Budapest, a city still recuperating from World War II. The 2nd WFYS was one of three major youth events held in Hungary in 1949, along with the World University Summer Games and the World Youth Congress. It was organised by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and the International Union of Students

On August 14, 1949, 20,000 young people from 82 countries, gathered in the Ujpest Stadium, inaugurating the festival. For two weeks, the participants took part in cultural, sport, and political activities. The festival expressed its solidarity for the “anti-colonialist struggle” of the peoples of Indonesia, Malaysia and French Indochina and also for the “anti-fascist struggle” of the Spanish and Greek peoples. It was the first time that a delegation from what would become East Germany took part.

It featured a sports programme, including an athletics competition.

The motto of the festival was: Youth Unite! Forward for Lasting Peace, Democracy, National Independence and a better future for the people!

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'No Coal for War, May Day March' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
No Coal for War, May Day March
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Reduce Armaments Ban Atomic Bomb, May Day March, Flinders Street, Melbourne' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Reduce Armaments Ban Atomic Bomb, May Day March, Flinders Street, Melbourne
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Pictured image-right, Professor Bernard Rechter.

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'University Labour Club banner, May Day March, Flinders Street, Melbourne' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
University Labour Club banner, May Day March, Flinders Street, Melbourne
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

In far-left, John Clendenin, philosopher and president of University of Melbourne SRC. Banner-bearer Jill Warwick, later a TV Producer, vice-president UniMelb SRC.

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Want Peace and Freedom, May Day March, Flinders Street, Melbourne' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Want Peace and Freedom, May Day March, Flinders Street, Melbourne
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Richard 'Dicky' Woolcott, delegate to conference, at NUAUS encampment' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Richard ‘Dicky’ Woolcott, delegate to conference, at NUAUS encampment
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'John O'Neil' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
John O’Neil
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019) 'Jenny Lloyd and Clyde Holding' 1951

 

Joyce Evans (Australian, 1929-2019)
Jenny Lloyd and Clyde Holding
1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism and the Peace Movement 1949-1952, A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)

 

 

Joyce Evans Photographer website

Australian Scholarly Publishing website

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