Exhibition: ‘Noir & Blanc: une esthétique de la photographie’ at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), François-Mitterrand, Paris

Exhibition dates: 17th October 2023 – 21st January 2024

 

Benjamin Brecknell Turner (English, 1815-1894) 'North Side of Quadrangle, Arundel Castle' 1852-1854

 

Benjamin Brecknell Turner (English, 1815-1894)
North Side of Quadrangle, Arundel Castle
1852-1854
Negative photograph on paper
29.7 x 39.6cm
BnF, department of Prints and Photography, RES PHOTO EI-6-BOITE FOL B (n° 3)
Gift of André and Marie-Thérèse Jammes, 1960

 

 

What a lovely exhibition to start the year 2024 on Art Blart.

My favourite photographs in the posting: three beautiful fashion photographs by Frères Séeberger; a stunning late Atget Parc de Sceaux, Duchess Alley (between 1925 and 1927, below) in which you can feel the crispness in the air of the early winter morning; and the glorious seascapes of Gustave Le Gray, probably the best (and most atmospheric) photographer of the sea in all time.

In this posting we observe how black and white photographs are never just black and white but full of different hues and colours. These colour variations tell us a lot about the perception of the image.

As the exhibition text notes: “The strength of the blacks and whites, the variations of hues influence our perception of the image: the more contrasted it is, the more readable it is for our eye saturated with absolute blacks and whites; the more nuanced it is, the more sensitive the distance of time becomes.”

As we enter a new year, another year further away from the origin of the light captured in these photographs, the sensitivity of early photographers and their ability to displace time continues to entrance the viewer.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Noir & Blanc: Une esthétique de la photographie

Black and white is inseparable from the history of photography: its developments, from the end of the 19th century to today, have revealed its plastic force. While the use of colour intensified from the 1970s, black and white reinvented itself as a means of assertive aesthetic expression emphasising graphics and material. Black and white photography remains less expensive and simpler, but its persistence to this day can be explained above all by the fact that it has come to embody the very essence of photography. It appears to carry a universal, timeless, even memorial dimension, where colour would be the sole translation of the contemporary world.

The National Library of France holds one of the richest photographic collections in the world with some six million prints, these are particularly representative of this abundant history of black and white photography.

 

Benjamin Brecknell Turner (English, 1815-1894) 'Arbre le long d'une clotûre' (Tree along a fence) 1852-1854

 

Benjamin Brecknell Turner (English, 1815-1894)
Arbre le long d’une clotûre (Tree along a fence)
1852-1854
Negative photograph on paper
23.5 x 27.3cm
BnF, department of Prints and Photography, RES PHOTO EI-6-BOITE FOL B (n° 3)
Gift of André and Marie-Thérèse Jammes, 1960

 

Photography on paper, with its speed and precision, revolutionised image production in the mid-19th century. The prerequisite is the production of a negative then of the same size as the print. The first negatives are on paper. Reversing the values of blacks and whites, they offer an unknown vision of the world. These oppositions, inverted or not, are the basis of the aesthetics of photography.

 

One of the earliest British amateur photographers, Benjamin Brecknell Turner (1815-1894) was experimenting with photography barely ten years after the invention of the medium. He exhibited widely during his lifetime and is best known for his beautiful photographs of 19th-century England, picturesque ruins and rural scenes.

A founder member of the Photographic Society of London, Turner contributed to the rapid technical and aesthetic development of photography in the 1850s. Our collection includes a unique album compiled by Turner, ‘Photographic Views from Nature’, containing some of the earliest photographs made in and around the counties of Worcestershire, Surrey, Sussex, Kent and Yorkshire, alongside the radical modern architecture of the Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park.

Text from the V&A website

 

The origins of black and white

Before the invention of colour photography by the Lumière brothers in 1903, one might believe that all photography was black and white. The reality is more complex: the early days were more those of a varied range of values where pure blacks and whites were the exception and so-called sepia tones were the most common. The negative / positive process patented by the Englishman Fox Talbot in 1841 makes it possible to multiply the prints on paper and therefore to vary the shades.

Certain subjects play on oppositions: the mountain views of the Bisson brothers, the Great Wave by Gustave Le Gray, the portraits of the prolific amateur Blancard.

 

Désiré Charnay (French, 1828-1915) 'Chichen Itza: Bas-relief des Tigres, Palais du Cirque' (Chichen Itza: Bas-relief of the Tigers, Circus Palace) 1859-1861

 

Désiré Charnay (French, 1828-1915)
Chichen Itza: Bas-relief des Tigres, Palais du Cirque (Chichen Itza: Bas-relief of the Tigers, Circus Palace)
1859-1861
Print on gold-toned albumen paper from a collodion glass negative
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, RES PHOTO VZ-940-FT4

 

In 1861, Charnay gave Napoleon III a copy of the album American Ruins composed for the Emperor of expensive proofs on albumen paper toned with gold, in an exceptional format, the miraculous result of his Mexican epic. The shift to gold accentuates the vigour of the contrasts and brings a cold tone to the blacks.

 

Désiré Charnay (French, 1828-1915) 'Uxmal: détail de la façade dite de la couleuvre' (Uxmal: detail of the so-called snake facade) 1859-1861

 

Désiré Charnay (French, 1828-1915)
Uxmal: détail de la façade dite de la couleuvre (Uxmal: detail of the so-called snake facade)
1859-1861
From the album American Ruins
Print on gold-toned albumen paper from a collodion glass negative
59 x 78.2cm
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, RES PHOTO VZ-940-FT4

 

The forty-nine views of the ruins of Yucatan, Chiapas, Tabasco and the province of Oaxaca constitute the first set of photographs entered into the collections of the Geographical Society, in 1861. During the general assembly of November 29 , Charnay presents his collection of photographs exhibited in the meeting room. The same day, at the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, Jomard returns to the quality of Charnay’s photographs, which allow us to conclude that American art – the Egyptologist’s supreme tribute – “deserves a place alongside Assyrian art, and even alongside the art of the Egyptians.”

 

Bisson frères. Louis-Auguste (French, 1814-1876) and Auguste-Rosalie (French, 1826-1900) 'La crevasse (départ) sur le chemin du grand plateau, ascension du Mont-Blanc' (The crevasse (departure) on the way to the grand plateau, ascent of Mont-Blanc) 1862

 

Bisson frères. Louis-Auguste (French, 1814-1876) and Auguste-Rosalie (French, 1826-1900)
La crevasse (départ) sur le chemin du grand plateau, ascension du Mont-Blanc (The crevasse (departure) on the way to the grand plateau, ascent of Mont-Blanc)
1862
Print on albumen paper from a wet collodion glass negative
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, EO-14 (3)-FOL

 

In 1861, the Bisson brothers managed to hoist their photographic equipment to the summit of Mont Blanc. Mountaineering feat, photographic feat: in these extreme conditions, the plate must be sensitised just before use and developed as soon as possible. The violence of the contrasts, when the brightness of the snow juxtaposes the black of the rocks, redoubles this technical challenge. This conquest of the limit is crowned by the harmony of the print, carried by a site with spectacular aesthetic qualities.

 

 

This exhibition brings together black and white masterpieces from the photographic collections of the National Library of France. Nadar, Man Ray, Ansel Adams, Willy Ronis, Helmut Newton, Diane Arbus, Mario Giacomelli, Robert Frank, William Klein, Daido Moriyama, Valérie Belin…: the big names in French and international photography are brought together in a journey which presents approximately 300 prints and embraces 150 years of history of black and white photography, from its origins in the 19th century to contemporary creation.

Black and white is inseparable from the history of photography: its developments, from the end of the 19th century to today, have revealed its plastic force. While the use of colour intensified from the 1970s, black and white reinvented itself as a means of assertive aesthetic expression emphasising graphics and material. Black and white photography remains less expensive and simpler, but its persistence to this day can be explained above all by the fact that it has come to embody the very essence of photography. It appears to carry a universal, timeless, even memorial dimension, where colour would be the sole translation of the contemporary world.

 

The exhibition in brief

The exhibition addresses the question of black and white from an aesthetic, formal and sensitive angle, emphasising the modes of image creation: plastic and graphic effects of contrasts, play of shadows and lights, rendering of materials in all the palette of values from black to white. The emphasis was placed on photographers who concentrated and systematised their artistic creation in black and white, experimented with its possibilities and limits or made it the very subject of their photography such as Man Ray, Ansel Adams, Ralph Gibson, Mario Giacomelli or Valérie Belin. Particular attention was paid to the quality of the prints, the variety of techniques and photographic papers, but also to the printing of black and white, books and magazines having long been the main relay to the public for photographic creation .

The exhibition thus shows the richness and extent of the BnF’s photographic collections. Among the richest in the world with some six million prints, these are particularly representative of this abundant history of black and white photography.

Exhibition co-organised with the Réunion des Musées Nationaux – Grand Palais

 

Commissariat

Sylvie Aubenas, director of the Prints and Photography department, BnF
Héloïse Conésa, head of the photography department, responsible for contemporary photography at the Department of Prints and Photography, BnF
Flora Triebel, curator in charge of 19th century photography at the Department of Prints and Photography, BnF
Dominique Versavel, curator in charge of modern photography at the Department of Prints and Photography, BnF

Text from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF)

 

Hippolyte Blancard (French, 1843-1924) 'Mademoiselle L. Vulliemin, à mi-corps, la tête couverte d’un chapeau' (Miss L. Vulliemin, half-length, head covered with a hat) 1889

 

Hippolyte Blancard (French, 1843-1924)
Mademoiselle L. Vulliemin, à mi-corps, la tête couverte d’un chapeau (Miss L. Vulliemin, half-length, head covered with a hat)
1889
Platinum print from a gelatin-silver bromide glass negative
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, EO-508-PET FOL
Gift of print dealer Maurice Rousseau, 1944

 

Amateur photographer, wealthy pharmacist enriched by the sale of digestive pills, Blancard creates a prolific and picturesque work in a superb contrast of black and white thanks to the use of platinum. This expensive process, patented in 1873, ensures stable prints with marked contrasts which do not stifle the rendering of halftones.

 

Émile Zola (French, 1840-1902) 'Denise et Jacques, les enfants d'Émile Zola' (Denise and Jacques, the children of Émile Zola) 1898 or 1899

 

Émile Zola (French, 1840-1902)
Denise et Jacques, les enfants d’Émile Zola (Denise and Jacques, the children of Émile Zola)
1898 or 1899
Gelatin aristotype, gelatin aristotype on matte velvety paper with toning, cyanotype, silver print, gelatin aristotype toned with gold, collodion aristotype with toning
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, NZ-214-8
Purchase at public sale, 2017

 

From 1894, the novelist devoted himself with passion to photography, in an intimate vein. Here he tests the effects of his shooting by varying the papers, the processes, the tones based on the same negative on a glass plate. We see that black and white is a monochromy among others (brown, orange, blue). Very few of these test prints created in the privacy of the photographer’s laboratory have reached us; the collection of these six prints is exceptional.

 

Frères Séeberger. Jules, Louis and Henri Séeberger (French, 1872-1932; 1874-1946; 1876-1956) 'Untitled' 1909-1912

 

Frères Séeberger. Jules, Louis and Henri Séeberger (French, 1872-1932; 1874-1946; 1876-1956)
Untitled
1909-1912
Silver print on baryta paper
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, OA-38 (1)-BOITE FOL
Acquisition-donation from the family, 1976

 

Frères Séeberger. Jules, Louis and Henri Séeberger (French, 1872-1932; 1874-1946; 1876-1956) 'Untitled' 1909-1912

 

Frères Séeberger. Jules, Louis and Henri Séeberger (French, 1872-1932; 1874-1946; 1876-1956)
Untitled
1909-1912
Silver print on baryta paper
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, OA-38 (1)-BOITE FOL
Acquisition-donation from the family, 1976

 

For almost half a century, the Séeberger brothers, specialising in fashion reporting, captured elegant women in their natural settings, racecourses, palaces, upscale beaches. The print on baryta paper, used here, marks a technical breakthrough. A layer of pure white barium sulfate is now interposed between the print support and the binder layer, where the image is formed. Manufactured industrially from the 1890s, chemically developed baryta papers and their characteristic cold tone would dominate silver production until the 1970s.

 

Frères Séeberger. Jules, Louis and Henri Séeberger (French, 1872-1932; 1874-1946; 1876-1956) 'Untitled' 1909-1912

 

Frères Séeberger. Jules, Louis and Henri Séeberger (French, 1872-1932; 1874-1946; 1876-1956)
Untitled
1909-1912
Silver print on baryta paper
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, OA-38 (1)-BOITE FOL
Acquisition-donation from the family, 1976

 

 

In Black and White

Entirely designed from the Library’s rich collections, Black & White: An aesthetic of photography presents more than 300 works from the 19th century to the present day which bear witness to the use black and white from more than 200 photographers from around the world.

Considering black and white photographic creation from the 19th century to the most contemporary works, the exhibition presented at the François-Mitterrand affirms an ambition commensurate with the historical and geographical scope of the BnF’s collections and their immense variety technical and stylistic. The Department of Prints and photography has been a high place of conservation and emulation for monochrome photographic expression, under the impetus in particular of Jean-Claude Lemagny. Recently deceased, this very first curator of photography contemporary, in office from 1968 to 1996, was a fervent defender of black and white aesthetics.

In the 19th century, the powerlessness of photography to reproduce colours do not reduce it only to black and white and the tonal variations (blue, sepia, etc.) are in fact multiple. The exhibition opens with a spectacular monochrome of prints by Émile Zola, alongside luxurious prints by Gustave Le Gray, by Désiré Charnay and the Bisson brothers. It is at the turn of the 20th century that black and white became the tonality of photography par excellence, with the generalisation of the gelatin-silver bromide process.

 

An artistic and aesthetic approach

The rest of the journey deliberately interweaves creations of the 20th and 21st centuries, without chronological consideration. According to a primarily artistic and aesthetic approach to black and white, works of authors, decades, styles, schools and various origins interact, in order to highlight visual constants and graphics observable in use by black and white by photographers from 37 countries. That the photographers either suffered lack of colour or – from the 1950s-1970s – preferred to it, black and white is appreciated by artists for its numerous graphic, material and symbolic, which allow them to obtain certain effects features.

 

Write in black and white

These are these different ways of writing in black and white that the exhibition shows, starting with the contrasts: prints by Imogen Cunningham and André Kertész at the sculptural portraits of black women by Valérie Belin, in passing through the photograms of Man Ray, the books of William Klein or the fashion photographs of Helmut Newton, the contrast is deliberately sought by certain artists. By accentuating blacks and whites, or even making them disappear to any intermediate shade of grey, they bring out the essential lines of their subjects, retrace the design of the world,
gain visual and graphic expressiveness.

The play of shadows and light, at the origins of the photographic act, forms another part of the exhibition highlights. Bringing together the works of photographers as varied as Brassaï, Alexandre Rodtchenko, Henri CartierBresson, Willy Ronis, Flor Garduño, Daido Moriyama, Arthur Tress or Ann Mandelbaum, this part emphasises the dazzling effects or shadows cast, explored by these artists in their portrait practice, of the street snapshot, of the nocturnal shooting or in their laboratory experiments.

The exhibition continues with a chart of tests deployed in ribbon, from the blackest to the whitest. These prints signed Jun Shiraoka, Emmanuel Sougez, Edward Weston, Barbara Crane or Israel Ariño recall the ability of black and white to render effects of matter by its infinite variations of grey or, conversely, suggest the overflow or disappearance of all matter.

 

A sensory experience

The journey ends with a paradox with the works of photographers who, like Patrick Tosani, Marina Gadonneix or Laurent Cammal, disturbing the visitor’s perception by using colour processes to represent a black and white subject – an ultimate game with codes inherited from their art. Designed to show the historical depth and the richness of the BnF collections, this exhibition is intended to be educational and sensitive: emphasising certain technical aspects linked to printing practices, while insisting also on the irreducible material part of this art. By the high quality of prints presented, the exhibition offers to the public a sensory experience that will make them perceive the nuances hidden behind this apparently monolithic notion black and white.

Flora Triebel and Dominique Versavel. “En Noir et Blanc,” in Une saison en photographie, Chroniques No. 98, BnF, September – December 2023

 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) 'Parc de Sceaux, Duchess Alley' Between 1925 and 1927

 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Parc de Sceaux, Duchess Alley
Between 1925 and 1927
Print on matte albumen paper from gelatin-bromide glass negative
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, EO-109 (16)-BOITE FOL B

 

Eugène Atget claimed a humble, artisanal practice of photography. He used the same old camera and printing paper for decades. Only the disappearance of his usual supplies forced him to change. There is therefore no aesthetic research, yet these colour variations tell us a lot about the perception of the image.

The photographer artist can choose the colours of his prints by playing on the chemistry of the fixing baths or on the nature of the papers.

Gold toning, known since the 1850s, produces deep blacks but is very expensive. Baryta or platinum papers appeared at the end of the century and made it possible to further accentuate contrasts.

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) 'Plage de Sainte-Adresse avec les bains Dumont' (Sainte-Adresse beach with Dumont baths) 1856

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Plage de Sainte-Adresse avec les bains Dumont (Sainte-Adresse beach with Dumont baths)
1856
Print on albumen paper from a collodion glass negative
31.3 x 41.3cm
Former Alfred Armand collection
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, RESERVE FOL-EO-13 (3)

 

The strength of the blacks and whites, the variations of hues influence our perception of the image: the more contrasted it is, the more readable it is for our eye saturated with absolute blacks and whites; the more nuanced it is, the more sensitive the distance of time becomes.

Provenance

This article was designed as part of the exhibition “Black & White – An aesthetic of photography” presented at the BnF from October 17, 2023 to January 21, 2024.

 

The marines of Le Gray

Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884) is a central figure in 19th century photography. A contemporary of photographers like Nadar, Charles Nègre and Henri Le Secq, he began his career by training as a painter. With great mastery of photographic technique, he developed two major inventions, the collodion glass negative in 1850 and the dry wax paper negative in 1851.

Le Gray’s seascapes mark not only a milestone in the history of photography, but also its true intrusion into a pictorial genre characteristic of the English school. Fixing the movement of the waves while the snapshot is still stammering, combining two negatives, one for the sky and one for the sea, Le Gray plays like a virtuoso with a complex technique in the service of a lyrical vision, which prefigures marine studies by Courbet in the 1860s-1870s. The success was immense in France and England: these “enchanted paintings” were acquired by crowned heads, aristocrats, artists and art collectors.

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) 'Vapeur' (Steam) 1856-1857

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Vapeur (Steam)
1856-1857
Print on albumen paper from a collodion glass negative
31.3 x 37.2cm
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, ESERVE FOL-EO-13 (3)

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) 'Groupe de navires - Sète - Méditerranée - No. 10' (Group of ships - Sète - Mediterranean - No. 10) 1857

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Groupe de navires – Sète – Méditerranée – No. 10 (Group of ships – Sète – Mediterranean – No. 10)
1857
Print on albumen paper from a collodion glass negative
29.9 x 41.2cm
Former Alfred Armand collection
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, RESERVE FOL-EO-13 (3)

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) 'La Vague brisée. Mer Méditerranée No. 15' (The Broken Wave. Mediterranean Sea No. 15) 1857

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
La Vague brisée. Mer Méditerranée No. 15 (The Broken Wave. Mediterranean Sea No. 15)
1857
Photograph, albumen paper, collodion glass negative
41.7 x 32.5cm
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, RESERVE FOL-EO-13 (3)

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) 'La Grande vague - Sète - N° 17' (The Great Wave) 1857

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
La Grande vague – Sète – N° 17 (The Great Wave)
1857
Photograph, albumen paper, collodion glass negative
35.7 x 41.9 cm
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, RESERVE FOL-EO-13 (3)

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) 'Flotte franco-anglaise en rade de Cherbourg' (Franco-English fleet in Cherbourg harbour) August 4-8, 1858

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Flotte franco-anglaise en rade de Cherbourg (Franco-English fleet in Cherbourg harbour)
August 4-8, 1858
Print on albumen paper from a collodion glass negative
31 x 39.8cm
Former Alfred Armand collection
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, RESERVE FOL-EO-13 (3)

 

Félix Nadar (French, 1820-1910) 'La Princesse Marie Cantacuzène' (The Princesse Marie Cantacuzène) around 1855-1860

 

Félix Nadar (French, 1820-1910)
La Princesse Marie Cantacuzène (The Princesse Marie Cantacuzène)
around 1855-1860
Varnished salted paper print from a collodion glass negative
20.8 × 15.3cm
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, EO-15 (2)-PET FOL

 

Nadar created two portraits of this classically beautiful young woman. It indicates on the back of one of the proofs that it is the Romanian princess, Marie Cantacuzène.

 

The portrait by Félix Nadar

Until the beginning of the 1880s, Félix Nadar’s portraits were distinguished by their neutral backgrounds.

The merit of Mr. Nadar’s portraits does not consist only in the skill of the pose, which is entirely artistic, there is a learned and reasoned arrangement of the light, which attenuates or increases the daylight depending on the character of the head. and the operator’s instinct. We also find in the printing of the proofs a delicate search for harmony and slightly faded tones which soften the edges of the contours with their darkness.

 

Félix Nadar (French, 1820-1910) 'Bakounine' About 1862

 

Félix Nadar (French, 1820-1910)
Bakounine
About 1862
Silver print from the original negative on collodion glass
27.1 × 20.6cm
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, EO-15 (4)-FOL

 

The revolutionary, philosopher and theoretician of socialism Mikhail Bakunin is one of the immense personalities that Nadar photographed during his career and offered to clients in his constantly enriched portrait gallery. We see here a print from 1862, contemporary with the shooting, but there is also a print made twenty years later and finally a print around 1900, brought up to date after heavy retouching. Thus until the end of the activity of the Nadar workshop, the oldest portraits of celebrities were always offered to customers.

 

Félix Nadar (French, 1820-1910) 'Jean Journet (1799-1861)' 1857

 

Félix Nadar (French, 1820-1910)
Jean Journet (1799-1861)
1857
Salted paper print from collodion glass negative
27.4 x 21.8cm
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, EO-15 (9)-PET FOL

 

Jean Journet, nicknamed the Apostle, was a picturesque and eccentric Parisian figure, often ridiculed by his contemporaries. Former carbonaro, pharmacist in Limoux, he discovered the philosophy of Fourier and decided to spread his doctrine by abandoning his family and taking his pilgrim’s staff. His humanitarian evangelism, advocating fraternity and association, led him to write numerous pamphlets which he distributed in an untimely manner: by throwing them from “paradise” into theatres or by laying siege to famous writers and editorial offices. Interned several times in Bicêtre, Journet found upon his death a defender in Nadar who published an article in Le Figaro on October 27, 1861, concluding: “Ah my dear fools! that I love you much better than all these wise men.”

Nadar draws inspiration from Spanish painting from the Golden Age to render “this dazzling head of Saint Peter”.

 

Félix Nadar (French, 1820-1910) 'Charles Asselineau (1820-1874)' Between 1854 and 1870

 

Félix Nadar (French, 1820-1910)
Charles Asselineau (1820-1874)
Between 1854 and 1870
Print on albumen paper from a collodion glass negative
23.8 x 18.1cm
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, EO-15 (1)-PET FOL

 

Charles Asselineau is one of Nadar’s oldest friends. They became friends at the Collège Bourbon and were both close friends of Baudelaire. A fine scholar and supernumerary librarian at Mazarine, Charles Asselineau, author of, among other things, Paradis des gens de lettres and L’Enfer du Bibliophile, was close to the publisher Poulet-Malassis, nicknamed by Baudelaire “Coco-mal-perché”. He collaborated with Nadar on two short stories published in April and August 1846: “The Healed Dead” and “The Found Paradise”, reprinted in When I Was a Student. He belonged to the small circle of editors who documented the Pantheon-Nadar to which biographies of each character were originally to be annexed.

He was Nadar’s best man at his wedding… warned, however, two weeks after the ceremony. The groom explained this in a letter: “It’s quite funny that my first witness learned of my marriage 15 days after the consummation and through an announcement letter. This, my good friend, will be explained to you by me on our first trip. I will limit myself to telling you for the present that I went to your house the day before, a Sunday and that on Monday morning at noon time fixed for the ceremony I did not know at 11 o’clock if I was getting married.” (NAF 25007, fol. 8).

 

Alexandre Rodtchenko (Russian, 1891-1956) 'Jeune fille au Leica' (Young girl with Leica) 1934

 

Alexandre Rodtchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Jeune fille au Leica (Young girl with Leica)
1934
BnF, prints and photography

 

Piergiorgio Branzi (Italian, 1928-2022) 'Bar sur la plage, Adriatique' (Beach bar, Adriatic) 1957

 

Piergiorgio Branzi (Italian, 1928-2022)
Bar sur la plage, Adriatique (Beach bar, Adriatic)
1957
BnF, prints and photography

 

Willy Ronis (French, 1910-2009) 'Venise' (Venice) 1959

 

Willy Ronis (French, 1910-2009)
Venise (Venice)
1959
BnF, prints and photography

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Kayak, Frankfurt' 1961, printed around 1970

 

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Kayak, Frankfurt
1961, printed around 1970
Silver gelatin print
20 x 25.1cm
BnF, Department of Prints and Photography, EP-91 (1)-FOL
Purchase from the author, 1970
Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
© Estate of Ray K. Metzker

 

A student of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at the Institute of Design in Chicago, Metzker sublimates the formal particularities of this school through exceptional mastery black and white: he excels at stylising reality by constructing his images in direct opposition to dark and light flat areas.

 

Mario Giacomelli (Italian, 1925-2000) 'Je n'ai pas de main qui me caresse le visage' (I have no Hands caress my face) 1961-1963

 

Mario Giacomelli (Italian, 1925-2000)
Je n’ai pas de main qui me caresse le visage (I have no Hands caress my face)
1961-1963
BnF, prints and photography

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Portrait d'acteur' (Actor portrait) 1968

 

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Portrait d’acteur (Actor portrait)
1968
From the series Japanese theatre
BnF, prints and photography

 

André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985) '1er janvier 1972 à la Martinique' (January 1, 1972 in Martinique) 1972

 

André Kertész (Hungarian, 1894-1985)
1er janvier 1972 à la Martinique (January 1, 1972 in Martinique)
1972
BnF, prints and photography

 

Bernard Plossu (French, b. 1945) 'Paris' 1973

 

Bernard Plossu (French, b. 1945)
Paris
1973
BnF, prints and photography

 

Mary Ellen Mark (American, 1940-2015) 'Immigrants, Istanbul, Turkey' c. 1977

 

Mary Ellen Mark (American, 1940-2015)
Immigrants, Istanbul, Turkey
c. 1977
BnF, prints and photography

 

Koichi Kurita (Japanese, b. 1962) 'Melting Snow on a Rock, Nagano, Japan' 1988

 

Koichi Kurita (Japanese, b. 1962)
Melting Snow on a Rock, Nagano, Japan
1988
BnF, prints and photography

 

Flor Garduño (Mexican, b. 1957) 'Canasta de Luz' (Corbeille de lumière)(Basket of Light) 1989

 

Flor Garduño (Mexican, b. 1957)
Canasta de Luz (Corbeille de lumière)(Basket of Light)
1989
BnF, prints and photography

 

Laurence Leblanc (French, b. 1967) 'Chéa, Cambodge' (Chéa, Cambodia) 2000

 

Laurence Leblanc (French, b. 1967)
Chéa, Cambodge (Chéa, Cambodia)
2000
From the series Rithy Chéa Kim Sour and the others
BnF, prints and photography

 

 

Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand
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Phone: +33(0)1 53 79 59 59

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Exhibition: ‘Real/Ideal: Photography in France, 1847-1860’ at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 30th August – 27th November 2016

Curator: Karen Hellman, assistant curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) 'Pavillon Mollien Pavilion, the Louvre, Paris' 1859

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Pavillon Mollien Pavilion, the Louvre, Paris
1859
Albumen silver print from a glass negative
36.7 x 47.9cm (14 7/16 x 18 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

The best fun I had was putting together Nadar’s Self-Portrait (c. 1855, below) with Henri Le Secq’s North Transept, Chartres Cathedral (Negative 1852; print 1870s, below). The relationship of the hands between the two prints is just delicious. I also love the waxed paper negative and salted paper prints: such a feeling of ephemerality can be obtained in the final image even though the photographs are rendering solid objects. According to my friend Ellie Young of Gold Street Studios who is an expert in early photographic processes, salted paper prints (and their relative, the Calotype) can be as light as a feather or as strong and solid as an albumen print. “Salt prints from Calotype negatives exhibit an expressive softness of tone much prized by early photographers.” With their use of chiaroscuro (from chiaro ‘clear, bright’ – from Latin clarus + oscuro ‘dark, obscure’ – from Latin obscurus), Gustave Le Gray’s seascapes, for which he is widely known and admired, are masterful.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

Édouard Baldus (French, born Germany, 1813-1889) 'Amphitheater, Nîmes' 1850s

 

Édouard Baldus (French born Germany, 1813-1889)
Amphitheater, Nîmes
1850s
Albumen silver print from a paper negative
33.3 x 43.3cm (13 1/8 x 17 1/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

Calotypes and Waxed Paper Negatives

“The Calotype proper is a negative image (along with its offshoot the waxed paper negative), although its positive counterpart, the salted paper print, is the more common form in which it is encountered. Calotypes are made by brushing the best quality drawing or writing paper with a solution of silver nitrate, drying the paper, and then immersing it in a solution of potassium iodide to form a light-sensitive layer of silver iodide. Immediately before use the surface it treated with ‘gallo-nitrate of silver’ (a mixture of silver nitrate solution and gallic acid) to act as an accelerator. Exposure in a camera, where the paper must be held in a dark slide, produces a latent (invisible) image which is developed by washing in gallo-nitrate of silver, fixed in hypo and thoroughly washed. The translucency of Calotypes can be improved by waxing, and a positive can be made by repeating the original process or by ‘printing out’ the image in much the same way as making a Photogenic Drawing. When toned, in, for instance, gold chloride solution (to give it a purpleish tone), a positive produced in this way is known as a ‘salted paper print’.

With the exception perhaps of the waxed paper process, which was invented in 1851 by Gustave Le Gray (1820-1882) and extended the life of paper negatives into the 1870s, the first generation processes – the Daguerreotype, Photogenic Drawing and Calotype – were all extinct by the end of the 1850s, having given way to their own offspring: the wet collodion glass negative and the albumen print.”

Anonymous. “Calotypes,” on the University of Oxford Museum of the History of Science website [Online] Cited 11/11/2016. No longer available online

Salted Paper Print

Once a paper negative had been secured, any number of positive prints could be created by contact printing. Preparation involved soaking good quality paper in a sodium chloride solution (table salt) and then brushing it with a solution of silver nitrate to produce light-sensitive silver chloride. Exposure of the sensitised paper to sunlight, in contact with a negative held in a frame, resulted in the emergence of a visible image without subsequent development. This ‘printed-out’ image was then fixed and toned. Salt prints, unless subsequently coated, have a characteristically matt appearance, with the image embedded in the paper. Although lacking the sharpness of detail associated with the daguerreotype, salt prints from Calotype negatives exhibit an expressive softness of tone much prized by early photographers. This portrait of the Rev. Julius Wood is one of a large series taken by Hill and Adamson to serve as references for a group portrait of the founders of the Free Church of Scotland that Hill had been commissioned to paint. These portraits, with other scenes and views, were later issued in a small ‘edition’ of 12 known copies, entitled One Hundred Calotype Sketches.

Wet collodion negative

Frederick Scott Archer’s wet collodion process, announced in 1851, became the standard photographic negative process for both amateurs and professionals from the mid-1850s until the early 1880s. The glass negative, with its structureless film, fine grain and clear whites proved immediately popular and within a decade had superseded both the daguerreotype and the calotype processes. To prepare the negative for exposure, a sheet of glass was coated with a solution of iodised collodion (a syrupy liquid composed of soluble gun-cotton, ether and alcohol) and then made light-sensitive by immersion in a bath of silver nitrate. Known as a wet process because the glass negative required sensitising, exposing and processing while the chemicals were still damp, it required considerable manipulative skill, but produced a negative of unsurpassed sharpness and a broad tonal range. This view, on a 10 x 12 inch glass plate, is one of a large collection of photographs of architectural subjects commissioned from Lyon by the Madras and Bombay Governments in the late 1860s.

Albumen Print

The albumen print, announced by the French photographer and publisher Louis-Désiré Blanquard-Évrard in 1850, was the most widespread print medium in use between the mid-1850s and the 1890s. While the printing process was chemically similar to the salt print, the albumen print is generally distinguishable by the glossy sheen imparted by a preliminary sizing of the paper with albumen (egg white) and salt. This sealing of the paper created a surface layer on which the silver image was formed, and made possible much greater density, contrast and sharpness in the final image than had been possible with the plain salted paper print. After the albumen coating had been applied, the paper was made light sensitive by the addition of silver nitrate, and printed in contact with the negative. The fixed print could then be toned to create a wide variety of colours, ranging from purple-black to a rich chocolate brown. Although it continued to be used well into the twentieth century, its popularity declined after the mid-1890s, in favour of a variety of manufactured papers. This print is one of a series of studies of objects in the Royal Armoury at Madrid made around 1866 and is notable for its finely-controlled lighting and rich toning. The blacking-out of the background in this image isolates and increases the dramatic impact of the objects.

Anonymous. “Historic Photographs: Historic Processes,” on the British Library website [Online] Cited 11/11/2016

 

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882) 'Tower of the Kings at Reims Cathedral' Negative, 1851-1853; print, 1853

 

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882)
Tower of the Kings at Reims Cathedral
Negative, 1851-1853; print, 1853
Salted paper print from a paper negative
35.1 x 25.9cm (13 13/16 x 10 3/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Édouard Baldus (French, born Germany, 1813-1889) 'Tour Saint-Jacques, Paris' 1852-1853

 

Édouard Baldus (French born Germany, 1813-1889)
Tour Saint-Jacques, Paris
1852-1853
Salted paper print from a paper negative
42.9 x 34cm (16 7/8 x 13 3/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882) 'Small Dwelling in Mushroom Cave' 1851

 

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882)
Small Dwelling in Mushroom Cave
1851
Salted paper print from a paper negative
35.1 x 22.7cm (13 13/16 x 8 15/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) Auguste Mestral (French, 1812-1884) 'West Facade of the Cathedral of Saint-Gatien, Tours' 1851

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Auguste Mestral (French, 1812-1884)
West Facade of the Cathedral of Saint-Gatien, Tours
1851
Waxed paper negative
34.2 x 25.2cm (13 7/16 x 9 15/16 in.)
Lent by the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (France), Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine
© RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

 

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880) 'Notre-Dame, Paris' c. 1853

 

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880) 'Notre-Dame, Paris' c. 1853

 

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880)
Notre-Dame, Paris
c. 1853
Waxed paper negative
33.6 x 24cm (13 1/4 x 9 7/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880) 'Tarascon' 1852

 

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880)
Tarascon
1852
Waxed paper negative with selectively applied pigment
23.7 x 33.2cm (9 5/16 x 13 1/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880) 'Tarascon' 1852

 

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880)
Tarascon
c. 1852
Albumen silver print from paper negative

 

 

In the shadow of the political revolutions of 1848, an artistic revolution was also brewing in France within the young medium of photography. An unprecedented period of creativity and discovery among photographers emerged between the first French announcement of a paper negative process in 1847 and more mechanical processes for photographs in the 1860s, sparking debates about photography’s prospects in the divergent fields of art and science.

Organised around the Getty Museum’s rich holdings of early French photography and supplemented with important international loans, Real/Ideal: Photography in France, 1847-1860, on view August 30-November 27, 2016 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, highlights the work of four pioneering photographers – Édouard Baldus (1813-1889), Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884), Henri Le Secq (1818-1882), and Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880) – alongside other artists who championed the paper and glass negative and contended with photography’s unprecedented “realism.”

“This exhibition tells a pivotal story about a short period – some 12 years – in the early history of photography; one that the Getty is uniquely positioned to tell given our extensive holdings of nineteenth-century French photographs,” explains Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “It is also an opportunity to showcase – for the first time – an important, recent acquisition of paper negatives from the collection of Jay McDonald. The exhibition sheds light on the freedom that early photographers enjoyed as they explored new means for developing images, and as they balanced the ‘real’ recording of the world as it is with the ‘ideal’, creative possibilities of the medium.”

 

The Paper Negative and Possibilities

The first paper negatives, created by William Henry Fox Talbot in England in the 1830s, first inspired French photographers in the early 1840s. In 1847, a cloth manufacturer named Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard (1802-1872) published a method of improving the paper negative, a process which created a more refined positive image. Due to the political turmoil of 1848, his discovery went unnoticed by the French government, which had long favoured the hyper-real quality of the silver-plated daguerreotype invented by Louis Daguerre (French, 1787-1851) in 1839.

Without a national mandate or commercial viability, French photographers using the paper negative enjoyed a brief period of freedom and experimentation between 1847 and 1860. Gustave Le Gray’s innovation of the “waxed paper negative,” which involved the addition of a layer of wax before the negative was sensitised with photo chemistry, was particularly vital, rendering the negative more translucent and portable. Rare waxed paper negatives by these photographers from the Getty Museum’s collection and from the Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine and the Musée D’Orsay in Paris will be on view. The exhibition will also include a view of Montmartre from “barrière de Clichy,” a photographic school and studio that Le Gray founded in 1849, as well as other early prints from paper negatives by Hippolyte Bayard, Henri-Victor Regnault, and Humbert de Molard.

The Rise of Realism

Originally trained as painters, Baldus, Le Gray, Le Secq, and Nègre saw the creative potential of photography and became its greatest champions. They were founding members of the Société héliographique, the first professional group devoted to photography, which published an important journal, La lumière. Experimentation in photography coincided with an increasing interest in “realism” – a word first used by critics in reference to paintings exhibited by Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877) at the 1849 Salon des Beaux-Arts. Artists and writers were increasingly rejecting academic, idealist subjects for everyday ones, and vanguard photographers similarly turned their attention towards the common individual, the worker, and the everyday scene. Nègre’s staged genre scenes of figures posed on the streets of Paris demonstrate how photography could interweave the “real” and “ideal.” Additionally, in Baldus’s documentation of the southern French seaside town of Bandol the idealised landscape is abandoned for a more realistic view, including the rugged foreground and industrial elements that lead back to a recently-constructed railroad bridge far in the distance.

Commissions, Demolitions, and Renovations

The new photographers of the period increased their profile through commissioned work for the French government. The Mission héliographique, which formed in 1851, hired five photographers (Baldus, Le Gray, Le Secq, Auguste Mestral, and Hippolyte Bayard) to travel across France and record hundreds of significant historical monuments before they were transformed through restoration under the government of Napoléon III. Nègre also pursued a six-month project to document the Midi region of France. The exhibition features examples from these projects, including images of Reims Cathedral, Chateau of Chenonceaux, and St. Gabriel près Arles.

Upon returning from their respective photographic missions, Baldus, Le Secq, Le Gray, and Nègre turned their attention to documenting the transformations – through demolition and restoration – of Parisian monuments, including the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Hotel de Ville, the Louvre Museum, the Place du Carrousel, and the Tour Saint-Jacques, images of which are also on view in the exhibition.

“Baldus and Nègre, who were friends as well as competitors, took a subject like the same cloister of Saint-Trophime in Arles and photographed it in different ways,” says Karen Hellman assistant curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and curator of the exhibition. “Nègre captured a narrow, vertical section of the colonnade, while Baldus carefully joined ten negatives to create a more all-encompassing view of the space.”

The Rise of Commercial Photography

The administration of Napoléon III and its free-market policies led to an explosion of commercial activity in photography, which was becoming increasingly industrialised and commonplace. The use of the paper negative fell out of favour and was gradually replaced by the sharper and more sensitive glass plate negative. The Getty’s exhibition thus presents a rare insight into a brief yet important moment in the history of photography that was shaped by these four pioneering photographers.

Real/Ideal: Photography in France 1847-1860 is on view August 30-November 27, 2016 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center. The exhibition is curated by Karen Hellman, assistant curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. An accompanying publication, Real/Ideal: Photography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France will be available, with essays by Sylvie Aubenas, Anne de Mondenard, Paul-Louis Roubert, Sarah Freeman and Karen Hellman. Also on view in the Center for Photographs will be Richard Learoyd: In the Studio, curated by Arpad Kovacs, assistant curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Press release from the J. Paul Getty Museum

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) 'Seascape with a Ship Leaving Port' 1857

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Seascape with a Ship Leaving Port
1857
Albumen silver print from a glass negative
31.3 x 40.3cm (12 5/16 x 15 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Édouard Baldus (French born Germany, 1813-1889) 'Cloister of Saint-Trophime, Arles' c. 1861

 

Édouard Baldus (French born Germany, 1813-1889)
Cloister of Saint-Trophime, Arles
c. 1861
Albumen silver print from a glass negative
33.7 x 42.9cm (13 1/4 x 16 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882) 'Statue of Christ at Reims Cathedral' Negative 1851; print 1870s

 

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882)
Statue of Christ at Reims Cathedral
Negative 1851; print 1870s
Photolithograph
35 x 24.8cm (13 3/4 x 9 3/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880) 'Organ Grinder at 21, Quai de Bourbon, Paris' c. 1853

 

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880)
Organ Grinder at 21, Quai de Bourbon, Paris
c. 1853
Salted paper print from a paper negative
10 x 8.3cm (3 15/16 x 3 1/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880) 'Aisle of the Cloister of Saint-Trophime, Arles' c. 1852

 

Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880)
Aisle of the Cloister of Saint-Trophime, Arles
c. 1852
Salted paper print from a paper negative
32.4 x 23.2cm (12 3/4 x 9 1/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882) 'South Porch, Central Portal, Chartres Cathedral' 1852

 

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882)
South Porch, Central Portal, Chartres Cathedral
1852
Waxed paper negative
34 x 24cm (13 3/8 x 9 7/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Édouard Baldus (French, born Germany, 1813-1889) 'Viaduct, La Voulte-sur-Rhône' c. 1861

 

Édouard Baldus (French born Germany, 1813-1889)
Viaduct, La Voulte-sur-Rhône
c. 1861
Albumen silver print from a glass negative, from the album Chemins de Fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée
31 x 42.7cm (12 3/16 x 16 13/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Nadar [Gaspard Félix Tournachon] (French, 1820-1910) 'Self-Portrait' c. 1855

 

Nadar (Gaspard Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820-1910)
Self-Portrait
c. 1855
Salted paper print from a glass negative
20.5 x 17cm (8 1/16 x 6 11/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882) 'North Transept, Chartres Cathedral' Negative 1852; print 1870s

 

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882)
North Transept, Chartres Cathedral
Negative 1852; print 1870s
Photolithograph
33.3 x 22.9cm (13 1/8 x 9 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Nadar [Gaspard Félix Tournachon] (French, 1820-1910) 'Jean-François Philibert Berthelier, Actor' 1856-1859

 

Nadar (Gaspard Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820-1910)
Jean-François Philibert Berthelier, Actor
1856-1859
Salted paper print from a glass negative
24.2 x 18.9cm (9 1/2 x 7 7/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Nadar [Gaspard Félix Tournachon] (French, 1820-1910) 'George Sand (Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin), Writer' c. 1865

 

Nadar (Gaspard Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820-1910)
George Sand (Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin), Writer
c. 1865
Albumen silver print from a glass negative
24.1 x 18.3 cm (9 1/2 x 7 1/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Jean-Louis-Marie-Eugène Durieu (French, 1800-1874) Possibly with Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798-1863) 'Draped Model' c. 1854

 

Jean-Louis-Marie-Eugène Durieu (French, 1800-1874)
Possibly with Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798-1863)
Draped Model
c. 1854
Albumen silver print
18.6 x 13cm (7 5/16 x 5 1/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) 'The Sun at Its Zenith, Normandy' 1856

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
The Sun at Its Zenith, Normandy
1856
Albumen silver print from a glass negative
32.5 x 41.6cm (12 13/16 x 16 3/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘In Focus: Architecture’ at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 15th October 2013 – 2nd March 2014

 

William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877) 'Boulevard des Italiens, Paris' 1843

 

William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877)
Boulevard des Italiens, Paris
1843
Salted paper print from a Calotype negative
16.8 x 17.3cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

Another gem of a photography exhibition from the Getty. These In Focus exhibitions are just a treasure: from Making a Scene, Still Life and The Sky to Los Angeles, Picturing the Landscape and now Architecture. All fabulous. To have a photography collection such as the Getty possesses, and to use it. To put on these fantastic exhibitions…

I like observing the transition between epochs (or, in more architectural terms, ‘spans’ of time), photographers and their styles. From the directness and frontality of Fox Talbot’s Boulevard des Italiens, Paris (1843, below) to the atmospheric ethereality of Atget’s angular The Panthéon (1924, below) taken just three years before he died; from the lambent light imbued in Frederick Evans’ architectural study of the attic at Kelmscott Manor (1896, below) to the blocked, colour, geometric facade of William Christenberry’s Red Building in Forest, Hale County, Alabama (1964, below).

I love architecture, I love photography. Put the two together and I am in heaven.

Marcus

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

 

Eugéne Atget (French, 1857 - 1927) 'The Panthéon' 1924

 

Eugéne Atget (French, 1857-1927)
The Panthéon
1924
Gelatin silver chloride print on printing-out paper
Image: 17.8 x 22.6cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

Eugène Atget made this atmospheric study across the place Sainte-Geneviève toward the back of the Panthéon, a church boldly designed to combine the splendour of Greece with the lightness of Gothic churches. The church’s powerful colonnaded dome, Atget’s primary point of interest, hovers in the background, truncated by the building in the left foreground.

In order to make the fog-veiled Panthéon visible when printing this negative, Atget had to expose the paper for a long period of time. As a consequence of the long printing, the two buildings in the foreground are overexposed, appearing largely as black silhouettes. Together they frame the Panthéon, rendered entirely in muted greys. This photograph exceeds documentation to become more a study of mood and atmospheric conditions than of architecture.

 

Frederick H. Evans (British, 1863 - 1943) 'Kelmscott Manor: In the Attics (No. 1)' 1896

 

Frederick H. Evans (British, 1863-1943)
Kelmscott Manor: In the Attics (No. 1)
1896
Platinum print
15.6 x 20.2cm
© Mrs Janet M. Stenner, sole granddaughter of Frederick H, Evans
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

Frederick Evans’s architectural study of the attic at Kelmscott Manor, a medieval house, part of which dates from 1280, is a visual geometry lesson. The composition is all angles and intersections, formed not only by the actual structure but also by the graphic definition of light within the space. Soft illumination bathes the area near the stairs, while the photograph’s foreground plunges into murky darkness. The sharp angles of intersecting planes are mediated by the rough-hewn craftsmanship of the beams and posts, almost sensuous in their sinewy imperfection and plainly wrought by hand. The platinum print medium favoured by Evans provides softened tonalities that further unify the triangles, squares, and diagonal lines of the dynamic composition.

 

William Christenberry (American, born 1936) 'Red Building in Forest, Hale County, Alabama' 1964

 

William Christenberry (American, b. 1936)
Red Building in Forest, Hale County, Alabama
1964
44.5 x 55.9cm
© William Christenberry
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

William Christenberry began photographing this makeshift wooden structure in his native Alabama in 1974. Since that time, he has made nearly annual trips to document the facade of this isolated dwelling, located deep in the Talladega National Forest. Such vernacular structures were uncommon photographic subjects until Walker Evans, Ed Ruscha, William Eggleston, and other twentieth-century photographers elevated their stature. Like the edifices photographed by Eugène Atget, Bernd and HIlla Becher, and others, the buildings Christenberry recorded in the southern United States were often in disrepair and in danger of disappearing altogether.

 

 

Soon after its invention in 1839, photography surpassed drawing as the preferred artistic medium for recording and presenting architecture. Novel photographic techniques have kept pace with innovations in architecture, as both media continue to push artistic boundaries. In Focus: Architecture, on view October 15, 2013 – March 2, 2014 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, traces the long, interdependent relationship between architecture and photography through a selection of more than twenty works from the Museum’s permanent collection, including recently acquired photographs by Andreas Feininger, Ryuji Miyamoto, and Peter Wegner.

“Architectural photography was an integral part of the early days of the medium, with the construction of many of the world’s most important and magnificent structures documented from start to finish with the camera,” explains Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “This exhibition demonstrates how architectural photography has grown from straightforward documentary style photographs in its early days to genre-bending works like those of Peter Wegner from 2009.”

 

Beginnings of Architectural Photography

Recognised for their accuracy and precision, photographs could render architectural details as never before and show the built environment during construction, after completion, or in ruin. Nineteenth-century photographers were eager to utilize the new medium to document historic sites and structures, as well as buildings that rose alongside them, or in their place. In 1859, Gustave Le Gray photographed the Mollien Pavilion, a structure that constituted part of the “New Louvre,” a museum expansion completed during the reign of Napoleon III. Le Gray’s picturesque composition highlighted the Pavilion’s ornamented façade and other intricate details that could inform the work of future architects. Louis-Auguste Bisson, a trained architect, worked with his brother Auguste-Rosalie to photograph grand architectural spaces such as Interior of Saint-Ouen Church in Rouen (1857). The Bisson brothers produced a monumental print, derived from a glass negative of the same size, to feature the nave of the structure in an interior view rarely depicted in 19th century photographs.

A burgeoning commercial market for tourist photographs emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century. Views of architectural landmarks and foreign ruins became popular souvenirs and tokens of the ancient world. Artists such as J.B. Greene, who ventured to exotic destinations, provided visions of historic sites in Egypt, while Louis-Émile Durandelle took a series of photographs that documented the construction of the Eiffel Tower in the years before it became a symbol of the modern era at the World’s Exposition of 1889. Durandelle’s frontal view of the structure underscored its perfect geometric form, and his photographs were the earliest of what became a popular motif for amateur and professional photographers. Other noted photographers of this period included Eugène Atget, who obsessively documented the streets and buildings of Paris before its modernisation, and Frederick H. Evans, who created poetic photographs of Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals.

 

The Rise of Modern Architectural Photography

As the commercial market for photographs expanded and technologies advanced, representations of architectural forms began to evolve as well. In the twentieth century, images of buildings developed in conjunction with the rise of avant-garde, experimental, documentary, and conceptual modes of photographic expression.

Andreas Feininger, who studied architecture in Weimar, followed what Bauhaus instructor László Moholy-Nagy called a “new vision” of photography as an autonomous artistic practice with its own laws of composition and lighting. In Portal in Greifswald (1928), Feininger created a negative print, or a photograph with reversed tonalities, resulting in a high contrast image that enhanced the mystery of the architectural subject and removed it from its ecclesiastical context.

“The experimental spirit that permeated photography in the first half of the twentieth century inspired new ways to look at architectural forms,” says Amanda Maddox, assistant curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and curator of the exhibition. “As photographs could present buildings in abstracted, close-up, or fragmented views, they encouraged viewers to see the built environment around them as never before.”

At the same time the Bauhaus was influencing photographers throughout Europe, Walker Evans was at the forefront of vernacular photography in the United States, which elevated ordinary objects and events to photographic subjects. In keeping with this trend, architectural photography shifted its focus to ordinary domestic and functional buildings. Derelict and isolated dwellings feature prominently in the work of William Christenberry, whose photograph and “building construction” of Red Building in Forest, Hale County, Alabama (1994) will be on display in the exhibition.

Architecture as a photographic subject became more malleable at the end of the twentieth century, as artists continued to explore the symbolism and vitality of the modern cityscape. This transition is exemplified in Peter Wegner’s 32-part Building Made of Sky III (2009), in which the spaces between skyscrapers in New York, San Francisco and Chicago create buildings of their own. Wegner described the series as “the architecture of air, the space defined by the edges of everything else.” When presented as a grid, the works form a new, imaginary city.

Press release from the J. Paul Getty website

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820 - 1884) 'Mollien Pavilion, the Louvre' 1859

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Mollien Pavilion, the Louvre
1859
Albumen silver print
Image: 36.7 x 47.9cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

Standing opposite a newly built pavilion of the Louvre, Gustave Le Gray made this photograph when the sun’s position allowed him to best capture the details of the heavily ornamented facade, from the fluted columns on the ground level to the figurative group on the nearest gable. Paving stones lead the viewer’s eye directly to the corner of the pavilion, where the sunlit facade is further highlighted beside an area blanketed in shadow.

Though the extensive art collections of the Louvre had first been opened to the public in 1793, after the French Revolution, it was not until 1848 that the museum became the property of the state. Le Gray’s image shows the exuberance of the architecture undertaken shortly thereafter, during the reign of Napoléon III, when large sections of the building housed government offices.

 

Ryuji Miyamoto (Japanese, born 1947) 'Kowloon Walled City' 1987

 

Ryuji Miyamoto (Japanese, b. 1947)
Kowloon Walled City
1987
Gelatin silver print
34.4 x 51.1cm
© Ryuji Miyamoto
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Robert Adams (American, born 1937) 'Longmont, Colorado' 1973

 

Robert Adams (American, b. 1937)
Longmont, Colorado
1973
Gelatin silver print
15.2 x 19.4cm
© Robert Adams
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

The long, interdependent relationship between photography and architecture is the subject of this survey drawn from the Getty Museum’s collection. Spanning the history of the medium, the exhibition features twenty-four works by such diverse practitioners as William Henry Fox Talbot, Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and Ryuji Miyamoto. Seen together, the varied photographic representations of secular and sacred structures on display reveal how the medium has impacted our understanding and perception of architecture.

In the nineteenth century, photography surpassed drawing as the preferred artistic medium for recording and presenting architecture. Recognised for their accuracy and precision, photographs could render architectural elements as never before. The intricate ornamented facade, the sprawling sunlit Napoléon Courtyard, and the classical design of the Louvre appear in magnificent detail in Gustave Le Gray’s picturesque image of the Mollien Pavilion, a structure completed in the 1850s during the reign of Napoléon III.

Photographers working in the nineteenth century documented historic structures on the verge of disappearance as well as contemporary buildings erected before their eyes. They also captured the built environment during construction, after completion, and in ruin. This photograph by Louis-Émile Durandelle shows the Eiffel Tower, the centrepiece of the 1889 World Exposition, in November 1888 when only its four columns, piers, and first two platforms were in place.

With the advancement of photographic technologies and the modernisation of the built environment around the turn of the twentieth century came innovative representations of architecture. Compositions and photographic processes began to reflect the avant-garde and modernist sensibilities of the time, and photographs of buildings, churches, homes, and other structures often showcased these developments. Andreas Feininger, who trained as an architect, utilised an experimental printing technique to depict gothic St. Nikolai cathedral in Greifswald in a nontraditional way.

Images of architecture by contemporary photographers Robert Adams, William Christenberry, and others working in the documentary tradition often underscore the temporality of buildings. Vernacular structures found in his native Alabama are among the subjects Christenberry has systematically recorded for the past six decades. By returning year-after-year to photograph the same places, such as the red building shown above, Christenberry chronicles the decay (and sometimes the ultimate disappearance) of stores, tenant houses, churches, juke joints, and other rural buildings.

Experimental and conceptual approaches toward the representation of architecture have been embraced by photographers. Peter Wegner used skyscrapers in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago as his framing devices to feature the spaces between high rises that form buildings of their own. By upending images of these canyons, he created buildings made of sky. When presented as a grid, they form a new, imaginary city.

Text from the J. Paul Getty website

 

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818 - 1882) 'Tour de Rois à Rheims' ('Tower of the Kings at Rheims Cathedral') 1851

 

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882)
Tour de Rois à Rheims (Tower of the Kings at Rheims Cathedral)
1851
Salted paper print
35.1 x 25.9cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Louis-Émille Durandelle (French, 1839 - 1917) 'The Eiffel Rower: State of Construction' 1888

 

Louis-Émille Durandelle (French, 1839-1917)
The Eiffel Rower: State of Construction
1888
Albumen silver print
43.2 x 34.6cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

The Centennial Exposition of 1889 was organised by the French government to commemorate the French Revolution. Bridge engineer Gustave Eiffel’s 984-foot (300-meter) tower of open-lattice wrought iron was selected in a competition to erect a memorial at the exposition. Twice as high as the dome of St. Peter’s in Rome or the Great Pyramid of Giza, nothing like it had ever been built before. This view was made about four months short of the tower’s completion. Louis-Émile Durandelle photographed the tower from a low vantage point to emphasise its monumentality. The massive building barely visible in the far distance is dwarfed under the tower’s arches. Incidentally, the tower’s innovative glass-cage elevators, engineered to ascend on a curve, were designed by the Otis Elevator Company of New York, the same company that designed the Getty Center’s diagonally ascending tram.

 

Andreas Feininger (American, born France, 1906 - 1999) 'Portal in Greifswald' 1928

 

Andreas Feininger (American, born France, 1906-1999)
Portal in Greifswald
1928
Gelatin silver print
23.4 x 17.5cm
© Estate of Gertrud E. Feininger
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

William Eggleston (American, born 1939) '(Untitled)' Negative about 1967 - 1974; print 1974

 

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939)
(Untitled)
Negative about 1967-1974; print 1974
Chromogenic print
Image: 22.2 x 15.2cm
© Eggleston Artistic Trust
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

The J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049

Opening hours:
Tues – Friday 10am – 5.30pm
Saturday 10am – 8pm
Sunday 10am – 5.30pm
Monday closed

The J. Paul Getty Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘French Twist: Masterworks of Photography from Atget to Man Ray’ at the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE

Exhibition dates: 29th June – 15th September 2013

 

C’est magnifique!

Marcus

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

 

 

Ilse Bing (1899-1998) 'Cancan Dancers' Moulin Rouge 1931

 

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Cancan Dancers

Moulin Rouge 1931
Gelatin silver print
6 1/4 × 9 in. (15.9 × 22.9cm)
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
© Estate of Ilse Bing. Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York

 

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) 'Champ-de-Mars from the Eiffel Tower' 1931

 

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Champ-de-Mars from the Eiffel Tower
1931
7 1/2 x 11 inches
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
© Estate of Ilse Bing, Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York

 

Ilse Bing (1899-1998) 'Boarding House for Young Women, Tours' 1935

 

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Boarding House for Young Women, Tours
1935
Gelatin silver print
11 1/8 × 7 1/2 in. (28.3 × 19.1cm)
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
© Estate of Ilse Bing. Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York

 

Brassaï (1899-1984) 'Lovers, Bal Musette des Quatre Saisons, rue de Lappe' c. 1932

 

Brassaï (French, 1899-1984)
Lovers, Bal Musette des Quatre Saisons, rue de Lappe
c. 1932
9 3/8 x 7 inches
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
© The Brassaï Estate-RMN

 

 

In the early 20th century, between the two world wars, Paris saw a fervour of change. From 1910 to 1940, the city became a creative epicentre for artistic exploration, attracting international avant-garde artists – including photographers experimenting with Surrealism, Modernism, and the new reportage. French Twist: Masterworks of Photography from Atget to Man Ray, on view at the Delaware Art Museum from June 29, 2013 through September 15, 2013, features 100 vintage prints from this golden age of French photography and explores the variety and inventiveness of native and immigrant photographers working in France in the early 20th century.

This exhibition presents a number of themes that capture the flavour and nightlife of Paris at this exciting moment. “Life of the Streets,” “Diversions,” and “Paris by Night” are just some of the topics that these masterful photographs explore. Visitors will experience Eugène Atget’s lyrical views of Paris streets and gardens, Man Ray’s surrealist experiments, and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s pioneering photojournalism, as well as works by Ilse Bing, Brassaï, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, André Kertész, and Dora Maar. Many of these artists settled in France for life, while others, fleeing the Nazis, brought their Paris‐trained sensibilities and influences to America.

 

Eugène Atget

The exhibition opens with one of the most significant figures in the history of photography, Eugène Atget, whose work influenced a range of artists from Surrealists to documentary photographers. This selection encompasses pictures of city streets, architectural details, and the gardens at Versailles and includes one of his most famous photographs, Boulevard de Strasbourg, Corsets (1912).

 

La vie de la rue (Life of the Street)

This section includes images of the streets and buildings of Paris – of the bustling Champ-de-Mars and the deserted Avenue du Maine – and features a large selection of photographs by Ilse Bing. In her modernist views of urban architecture, Bing provides a modern take on the old city through unexpected angles and dramatic cropping.

 

Divertissement (Diversions)

Divertissement focuses on the myriad amusements available in the City of Lights. Lartigue provides an insider’s view of upper-class life in the Belle Epoque, while Bing and Brassaï chronicle the attractions of the dance hall, the theatre, and the street.

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson

The master of the “decisive moment” and one of the most significant photojournalists of the 20th century, Henri Cartier-Bresson is featured along with 17 famous photographs from his travels around the world. This section includes his stellar images of the Spanish Second Republic and his iconic view of the coronation of George VI in London.

 

Les basses classes (The Lower Classes)

Between the wars, photographers from Ilse Bing to Andre Kertész to Brassaï chronicled lives of poor Parisians, often bringing a Modernist sensibility, rather than a reformer’s eye, to scenes of urban poverty.

 

Paris de nuit (Paris by Night) 

In 1933 Brassaï released his photo book Paris by Night, which chronicled the city’s streets and amusements after dark. The book became an immediate success and Brassaï became famous as the foremost photographer of the city’s bars and brothels, performers, and prostitutes.

 

L’art pour l’art (Art for Art’s Sake)

This section focuses on the technical experimentation and virtuoso technique of photographers including Pierre Dubreuil, Edward Steichen, and Pal Funk Angelo. It features examples of unusual techniques like cliché-verre, solarisation, and oil printing.

Cliché verre is a combination of art and photography. In brief, it is a method of either etching, painting or drawing on a transparent surface, such as glass, thin paper or film and printing the resulting image on a light sensitive paper in a photographic darkroom. It is a process first practiced by a number of French painters during the early 19th century. The French landscape painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was the best known of these. Some contemporary artists have developed techniques for achieving a variety of line, tone, texture and colour by experimenting with film, frosted Mylar, paint and inks and a wide assortment of tools for painting, etching, scratching, rubbing and daubing.

Cliché verre is French. Cliché is a printing term: a printing plate cast from movable type; while verre means glass. (Text from Wikipedia)

 

Andre Kertész, Dora Maar, Man Ray

These three important photographers – all immigrants to Paris between the Wars and all involved in Surrealist movement – are featured in individual sections that highlight their most famous works. Kertész is represented by his photographs of the painter Piet Mondrian’s studio. Maar’s Surrealist street photographs capture her dark humor, and a full complement of Man Ray’s experimental and psychologically charged images summarize his photographic interests.

 

La figure (Portraits and Nudes)

La Figure showcases experimental approaches to the classic subject of the female nude, including a cameraless photograph and a solarisation by Man Ray and a distortion created with fun-house-type mirrors by Kertész.

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998), nicknamed the “Queen of the Leica” after her camera of choice, moved to Paris in 1930 and immersed herself in its cultural milieu, interacting with painters like Pavel Tchelitchev and fashionistas Elsa Schiaparelli and Carmel Snow. The decade she spent in France is considered the high point of her artistic career.

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997) created startlingly imaginative Surrealist photographs under the tutelage of Man Ray. However, she is best known as Picasso’s lover, muse, and “Weeping Woman” from 1936 to 1943. Her photographs documenting Picasso’s creation of Guernica hang alongside the painting in the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid.

JacquesHenri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986), considered by many to be a child prodigy, received his first camera as a gift when he was six years old and immediately set to work documenting the activities of his energetic family and circle of friends. Lartigue’s light‐hearted snapshots capture the essence of France’s Belle Époque, the halcyon period before World War I when it seemed that modernity would bring nothing but progress and delight.

 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) 'Boulevard de Strasbourg Corsets' 1912

 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Boulevard de Strasbourg Corsets
1912
Printing-out paper
8 3/4 x 7 inches
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg

 

Eugène Atget (1857-1927) 'Rue Egynard' 1901

 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Rue Egynard
1901
Albumen print
8 1/4 × 7 in. (21 × 17.8cm)
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg

 

Man Ray (1890-1976) 'Solarized nude' 1930

 

Man Ray (American, 1890-1976)
Solarized nude
1930
11 5/8 x 8 7/8 inches
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
© 2013 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris

 

Edward Steichen (1879-1973) 'Three Pears and an Apple, Voulangis, France' 1921

 

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Three Pears and an Apple, Voulangis, France
1921
Gelatin silver print
14 x 11 inches
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg

 

Man Ray (1890-1976) 'Kiki de Montparnasse' 1923

 

Man Ray (American, 1890-1976)
Kiki de Montparnasse
1923
11 x 8 3/4 inches
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
© 2013 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris

 

Brassaï (French, 1899-1984) 'Fille de Montmartre playing Russian billiards, Blvd Rochechouart' 1932-33

 

Brassaï (French, 1899-1984)
Fille de Montmartre playing Russian billiards, Blvd Rochechouart
1932-1933
11 1/4 x 8 1/4 inches
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
© The Brassaï Estate-RMN

 

 

Delaware Art Museum
2301 Kentmere Parkway
Wilmington, DE 19806

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Sunday 10am – 4pm
Closed Monday and Tuesday

Delaware Art Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Naked Before the Camera’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Exhibition dates: 27th March – 9th September 2012

 

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

 

 

Franck-François-Genès Chauvassaignes (French, 1831 - after 1900) 'Untitled [Female Nude in Studio]' 1856-59

 

Franck-François-Genès Chauvassaignes (French, 1831 – after 1900)
Untitled [Female Nude in Studio]
1856-1859
Salted paper print from glass negative
19.1 x 15.2cm (7.5 x 6 in.)
Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1998
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Public domain

 

 

This corner of a painter’s atelier somewhere in France in the middle of the nineteenth century is scarcely tethered to time or place; it could as easily be a loft in New York today or, had photography existed four centuries earlier, a studio in the Italian Renaissance. What is surprising here is the absence of even the thinnest disguise – no swags of drapery, elaborate coiffure, or skeins of beads as are commonly found in the work of other purveyors of “studies for artists.” Here, the model is utterly naked. With her intelligent head and dirty feet, this young woman helped found the matter-of-fact modelling sorority joined a decade later by Édouard Manet’s Olympia.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

 

Eugène Durieu (French, 1800-1874) 'Untitled [Seated Female Nude]' 1853-54

 

Eugène Durieu (French, 1800-1874)
Untitled [Seated Female Nude]
1853-54
Albumen silver print from glass negative
6 13/16 × 4 11/16 in. (17.3 × 11.9cm)
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Henry R. Kravis Gift, 2005
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Public domain

 

 

Durieu was a lawyer and early advocate and practitioner of photography in France who, in 1853-1854, made a series of photographic studies of nude and costumed figures as models for artists. The French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix helped him pose the figures and later praised the prints, from which he sketched, as “palpable demonstrations of the free design of nature.” While the painter saw the accurate transcription of reality as a virtue of photography, Durieu knew that a good photograph was not simply the result of the correct use of the medium but, more significantly, an expression of the photographer’s temperament and vision. In an important article he emphasised the interpretative nature of the complex manipulations in photography and explained that the photographer must previsualise his results so as to make a “picture,” not just a “copy.”

This photograph proves Durieu’s point: through the elegant contours of the drapery, the smooth modelling of the flesh, and the grace and restraint of the pose, the picture attains an artistic poise that combines Delacroix’s sensuality with Ingres’s classicism, and rivals both.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

 

Charles Alphonse Marlé (French, 1821 - after 1867) 'Untitled [Standing Male Nude]' c. 1855

 

Charles Alphonse Marlé (French, 1821 – after 1867)
Untitled [Standing Male Nude]
c. 1855
Salted paper print from paper negative
25.7 x 17.6cm (10 1/8 x 6 15/16 in.)
Purchase, Ezra Mack Gift and The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1991
Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

Marlé’s photograph was probably intended as an aid for painters and sculptors. The jury-rigged arrangement of podium, books, and potted tree, as well as the painting held in the background by a studio assistant, may strike the modern viewer as an incongruous contrast to the heroic gesture of the model. Marlé and those who bought his photograph, however, would have been absorbed by the grand academic pose and likely would have thought the awkward accoutrements of little consequence.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

 

Félix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin (French, 1800 - after 1875) 'Untitled [Two Standing Female Nudes]' c. 1850

 

Félix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin (French, 1800 – after 1875)
Untitled [Two Standing Female Nudes]
c. 1850
Daguerreotype
Visible: 14.5 x 11.1cm (5 11/16 x 4 3/8 in.)
The Rubel Collection, Purchase, Anonymous Gift and Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1997
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Public domain

 

 

Although Moulin was sentenced in 1851 to a month in jail for producing images that, according to court papers, were “so obscene that even to pronounce the titles… would be to commit an indecency,” this daguerreotype seems more allied to art than to erotica. Instead of the boudoir props and provocative poses typical of hand-coloured pornographic daguerreotypes, Moulin depicted these two young women utterly at ease, as unselfconscious in their nudity as Botticelli’s Venus.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

 

 

Depicting the human body has been among the greatest challenges, preoccupations, and supreme achievements of artists for centuries. The nude – even in generalised or idealised renderings – has triggered impassioned discussions about sin, sexuality, cultural identity, and canons of beauty, especially when the chosen medium is photography, with its inherent accuracy and specificity. Through September 9, 2012, Naked before the Camera, an exhibition of more than 60 photographs selected from the renowned holdings of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, surveys the history of this subject and explores some of the motivations and meanings that underlie photographers’ fascination with the nude.

“In every culture and across time, artists have been captivated by the human figure,” commented Thomas P. Campbell, Director of the Metropolitan. “In Naked before the Camera, we see how photographers have used their medium to explore this age-old subject and create compelling new images.”

The exhibition begins in the 19th century, when photographs often served artists as substitutes for live models. Such “studies for artists” were known to have been used by the French painter Gustave Courbet, whose Woman with a Parrot (1866), for instance, is strikingly similar to photographer Julien Vallou de Villeneuve’s Female Nude of 1853. Even when their stated purpose was to aid artists, however, the best of these 19th-century photographs of the nude were also intended as works of art in their own right. Two recently acquired photographs, made in the mid-1850s by an unknown French artist, are striking examples. Not only are they larger than all other photographic nudes from the time, they stand out due to an extraordinary surface pattern that interrupts the images and suggests a view through gossamer or a photograph printed on finely pleated silk rather than paper. The elegant Female Nude harkens back to an Eve or Venus and is vignetted by the camera lens as if seen through a peephole, while her male counterpart is shown in strict profile in a pose that recalls precedents from antiquity. Each figure draws from the past while being presented in a strikingly modern way, without any equivalent among other 19th-century studies for artists.

Not all photographers of the nude were motivated by artistic desire. The second section of Naked before the Camera includes photographs made for medical and forensic purposes, as ethnographic studies, as tools to analyse anatomy and movement, and – not surprisingly – as erotica. The lines between such categories were not always clearly drawn; some photographers called their images “studies for artists” merely to evade the censors, while viewers of the G. W. Wilson Studio’s Zulu Girls (1892-93) or Paul Wirz’s ethnographic photographs of scantily clad Indonesians from the 1910s and 1920s were undoubtedly titillated by the blending of exoticism and eroticism.

Beginning in the fertile period of modernist experimentation that followed on the heels of World War I, photographers such as Brassaï, Man Ray, Hans Bellmer, André Kertész, and Bill Brandt found in the human body a perfect vehicle for both visual play and psycho-sexual exploration. In Distortion #6 (1932) by André Kertész, a woman’s body is stretched and pulled in the reflections of a fun-house mirror – a figure from a Surrealist dream that stands in stark contrast to the images of perfect feminine beauty by earlier photographers.

In mid-20th-century America, photographers more often communicated an intimate connection with their subjects. Following the example of Alfred Stieglitz’s famed portraits of Georgia O’Keeffe, photographers such as Edward Weston, Harry Callahan, and Emmet Gowin made many nude studies of their wives. Callahan’s photograph of his wife and daughter, Eleanor and Barbara, Chicago (1954), for instance, gives the viewer access to a private, tender moment of intimacy.

In the wake of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the AIDS crisis that began in the 1980s, artists began to think of the body as a politicised terrain and explored issues of identity, sexuality, and gender. Diane Arbus’s Retired man and his wife at home in a nudist camp one morning, N.J. (1963) and A naked man being a woman, N.Y.C. (1968), Larry Clark’s untitled image (1972-1973) from the series Teenage Lust, and Hannah Wilke’s Snatch Shot with Ray Gun (1978) are among the works featured in the concluding section of the exhibition.

Press release from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

 

Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (French, 1795-1866) '[Reclining Female Nude]' c. 1853

 

Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (French, 1795-1866)
[Reclining Female Nude]
c. 1853
Salted paper print from paper negative
11.8 x 16.0cm (4 5/8 x 6 5/16 in.)
Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1993
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Public domain

 

 

A student of the painter Jean François Millet and a lithographer of scenes of daily life, costume, and erotica in the 1820s and 1830s, Vallou reportedly took up photography in the early 1840s, but his early photographs have not been identified. Perhaps they depicted naked women, a subject for which it was improper to acknowledge authorship.

Between 1851 and 1855, however, Vallou made a series of photographs of female nudes that he marketed (and legally registered) as models for artists. Vallou’s nudes have long been associated with those of Gustave Courbet, who is known to have used photographs in his painting process. Although no absolute one-to-one correspondence can be pointed to, the heavy soporific quality of Vallou’s models is very close to Courbet’s concept of the nude, and the reclining figure displayed here is strikingly similar in pose to the painter’s Woman with a Parrot (1866), on view in the galleries for nineteenth-century painting.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

 

Brassaï (French (born Romania), Brasov 1899 - 1984 Côte d'Azur) 'Nude' 1931-34

 

Brassaï (French born Romania, Brasov 1899 – 1984 Côte d’Azur)
Nude
1931-1934
Gelatin silver print
14.1 x 23.5cm (5 9/16 x 9 1/4 in.)
Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2007
© The Estate of Brassai
Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

One of the most radically abstract of Brassaï’s nudes, this image was published in 1933 in the inaugural issue of the avant-garde magazine Minotaure. With the figure’s head and legs cut off by the picture’s edges, the twisting, truncated torso seems to float in space like an apparition – an ambiguous, organic form with an uncanny resemblance to a phallus. This transformation of the female figure into a fetish object is a hallmark of Surrealism that reflects the important influence of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory on European art of the early twentieth century.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

 

Man Ray (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1890 - 1976 Paris) 'Arm' c. 1935

 

Man Ray (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1890 – 1976 Paris)
Arm
c. 1935
Gelatin silver print
29.7 x 23.0cm (11 11/16 x 9 1/16 in.)
Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
© 2012 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris
Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

Man Ray’s photograph of an arm is cropped so abstractly that it seems to metamorphose into other body parts – a knee, a calf, a thigh – or into some utterly unidentifiable yet heroic form. This image appeared on the cover of Formes Nues (1935), which also included the work of Brassaï, László Moholy-Nagy, Franz Roh, and George Platt Lynes, among others.

In the magazine’s introduction, Man Ray wrote, “were it not for the fact that photography permits me to seize and to possess the human body and face in more than a temporary manner, I should quickly have tired of this medium.”

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

 

André Kertész (American (born Hungary), Budapest 1894 - 1985 New York City) 'Distortion #6' 1932

 

André Kertész (American born Hungary, Budapest 1894 – 1985 New York City)
Distortion #6
1932
Gelatin silver print
23.4 x 17.3cm (9 3/16 x 6 13/16 in.)
Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
© The Estate of André Kertész / Higher Pictures
Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

Although Kertesz had long been interested in mirrors, reflections, and the idea of distorting the human figure, he did not seriously investigate their photographic possibilities until 1933, when the risqué French magazine Le Sourire commissioned him to make a series of figure studies. Using a funhouse mirror from a Parisian amusement park, Kertesz, who had never photographed nudes before, spent four weeks making about two hundred negatives.

Kertész accentuated the narrow ribcage and long waist of the ideal contemporary woman by photographing his model in a carnival mirror. If the top half of this beautiful nude resembles those Modigliani painted, the swell of the haunch recalls Mannerist nudes and their nineteenth-century revivals, especially Ingres’ grande odalisque.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

 

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917 - 2009 New York City) 'Nude No. 57' 1949-50

 

Irving Penn (American, Plainfield, New Jersey 1917 – 2009 New York City)
Nude No. 57
1949-1950
Gelatin silver print
39.4 x 37.5cm (15 1/2 x 14 3/4 in.)
Gift of the artist, 2002
© 1950-2002 Irving Penn

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971) 'Retired man and his wife at home in a nudist camp one morning, N.J.' 1963

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Retired man and his wife at home in a nudist camp one morning, N.J.
1963
Gelatin silver print
39.9 × 37.9cm (15 11/16 × 14 15/16 in.)
Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

Arbus’s interest in the tension between revelation and concealment comes into starkest focus in the portraits she made at Sunshine Park, a family nudist camp in New Jersey. While nudism might be considered the ultimate form of exposure, it often required a different kind of cover-up. As the artist remarked in an unpublished article written for Esquire magazine in 1966: “For many of these people, their presence here is the darkest secret of their lives, unsuspected by relatives, friends, and employers in the outside world, the disclosure of which might bring disgrace.”

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971) 'A naked man being a woman, N.Y.C.' 1968

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A naked man being a woman, N.Y.C.
1968
Gelatin silver print
38.2 x 36.2cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Mark Morrisroe (American, 1959 - 1989) 'Untitled [Two Men in Silhouette]' c. 1987

 

Mark Morrisroe (American, 1959 – 1989)
Untitled [Two Men in Silhouette]
c. 1987
Gelatin silver print
28.4 x 20.8cm (11 3/16 x 8 3/16 in.)
Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2009
© The Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection) at Fotomuseum Winterthur
Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

Sexuality and mortality – which many would say are central preoccupations of humankind – are key to Morrisroe’s biography and art. The son of a drug-addicted mother, a teenage hustler, and a precocious punk queer, Morrisroe carried a bullet (shot by a disgruntled john) in his chest from the age of eighteen and consequently walked with a limp that added one more element to his outsider self-image. Sex and death were persistent themes in his work, with pronounced poignancy after his 1986 AIDS diagnosis. In this work, Morrisroe has taken a page from a gay S&M magazine, cut out the shapes of two naked men, and used the sheet as a negative to print a unique image in which the figures – literally absent – appear as dark silhouettes against a netherworld of sexual activity.

 

 

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