Posts Tagged ‘New York

02
Jan
23

Exhibition: ‘Ilse Bing’ at Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid

Exhibition dates: 23rd September 2022 – 8th January 2023

Curator: Juan Vicente Aliaga

 

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Scandale' 1947

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Scandale
1947
Gelatin silver print
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
© Estate of Ilse Bing / Victoria and Albert Museum, London

 

 

The first exhibition for Art Blart in 2023!

The Art Blart archive has been going since November 2008. This is the first time I have posted on the avant-garde artist Isle Bing and her documentary humanism. Elements of Modernism, movement, New Vision, Bahuas, Surrealism, abstraction, form, geometry are all spontaneously and intuitively, precisely and poetically expressed in the artist’s work. Manipulation, solarisation, enlargement of fragments and cropping in the darkroom enhance the original negative.

“In addition to numerous portraits, Ilse Bing was primarily interested in urban motifs. They were fascinated by architectural elements and structures as well as urban hustle and bustle. Her way of working repeatedly explores the tracing of symmetry and rhythm in the experience of everyday situations.”1

“In Paris, Ilse Bing forged her style [using a Leica], combining poetry and realism, dreamlike enchantment and the clarity of modernity. She sought contrasts and original juxtapositions that transformed the banal reality of daily life into a new idea.”2

“Ilse Bing was once amongst the very first few women photographers to influentially master the avant-garde handheld Leica 35mm camera in the 1930s. She was also amongst the first to use solarisation, electronic flash and night photography, and established her own distinctive photographic style adoring romanticism, symbolism and dream imagery of surrealism.”3

“It was a time of exploration and discovery. … We wanted to show what the camera could do that no brush could do, and we broke every rule. We photographed into the light – even photographed the light, used distorted perspective, and showed movement as a blur. What we photographed was new, too – torn paper, dead leaves, puddles in the street—people thought it was garbage! But going against the rules opened the doors to new possibilities.” ~ Ilse Bing

Magnificent. Enjoy!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. Many more works can be viewed on the MoMA website.

 

  1. Anonymous. “Ilse Bing,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 02/01/2023
  2. Anonymous. “Ilse Bing. Photographs 1928-1935,” on the Galerie Karsten Greve website [Online] Cited 02/01/2023
  3. Anonymous. “Ilse Bing: Paris and Beyond,” on the Exibart street website [Online] Cited 02/01/2023

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

 

Ilse Bing (Frankfurt, 1899 – New York, 1998) was born into a well-off Jewish family. Having discovered her true vocation while preparing the illustrations for her academic thesis, in 1929 she abandoned her university studies in order to focus entirely on photography. The medium would be her chosen form of expression for the following thirty years of her fascinating life and career.

In 1930 Bing moved to Paris where she combined photojournalism with her own more personal work, soon becoming one of the principal representatives of the modernising trends in photography which emerged in the cultural melting pot of Paris during those years. With the advance of the Nazi forces, in 1941 she and her husband, the pianist Konrad Wolff, went into exile in New York. Two decades later the sixty-year-old Bing gave up her photographic activities in order to channel her creativity into the visual arts and poetry until her death in 1998.

Bing’s work cannot be ascribed to any of the movements or tendencies that influenced her. She worked in almost all the artistic genres, from architectural photography to portraiture, self-portraits, images of everyday objects and landscapes. The diversity of styles which she employed reflect her significant and notably individual interpretation of the different cultural trends that she assimilated, from the German Bauhaus and New Objectivity to Parisian Surrealism and the ceaseless dynamism of New York.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE website

 

 

“I felt the camera grow as an extension of my eyes and move with me.”

.
Ilse Bing

 

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Dead Leaf and Tramway Ticket On Sidewalk, Frankfurt' 1929

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Dead Leaf and Tramway Ticket On Sidewalk, Frankfurt
1929
Gelatin silver print
17.1 x 22.9cm
Galerie Karsten Greve, Saint Moritz / París / Colonia
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Budgeheim' 1930

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Budgeheim
1930
Gelatin silver print
27.9 x 21.9cm
Galerie Karsten Greve, Saint Moritz / París / Colonia
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Laban Dance School, Frankfurt' 1929

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Laban Dance School, Frankfurt
1929
Gelatin silver print
9.7 x 16.6cm
Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
© Estate of Ilse Bing, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
Photograph: Jeffrey Sturges

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Orchestra Pit, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris' 1933

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Orchestra Pit, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris
1933
27.9 × 35.6cm
Gelatin silver print
International Center of Photography, New York
Donation of Ilse Bing, 1991
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Pommery Champagne Bottles' 1933

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Pommery Champagne Bottles
1933
Gelatin silver print
27.9 × 19.7cm
Galerie Karsten Greve, Saint Moritz / París / Colonia
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'French Can-Can Dancer' 1931, printed 1941

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
French Can-Can Dancer
1931, printed 1941
Gelatin silver print
35.6 x 27.9cm
Galerie Karsten Greve, Saint Moritz / París / Colonia
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Dancer Gerard Willem van Loon' 1932

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Dancer Gerard Willem van Loon
1932
Gelatin silver print
49.2 x 34.6cm
Galerie Karsten Greve, Saint Moritz / París / Colonia
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) '"It was so Windy on the Eiffel Tower", Paris' 1931

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
“It was so Windy on the Eiffel Tower”, Paris
1931
Gelatin silver print
22.2 x 28.2cm
The Art Institute of Chicago, Julien Levy Collection
Donation of Jean and Julien Levy 1977
© Estate of Ilse Bing
© 2022 The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY/ Scala, Florence

 

 

Ilse Bing’s photographic oeuvre, created between 1929 and the late 1950s, was influenced by the different cities where she lived and worked: Frankfurt prior to the 1930s, Paris in that decade and post-war New York where above all she experienced the situation of an enforced emigré. Her work cannot, however, be easily located within the photographic and cultural trends that she encountered, although it was certainly enriched by all of them. Bing’s output was influenced by Moholy-Nagy’s Das Neue Sehen (The New Vision) and the Weimar Bauhaus, by André Kertész and by the Surrealism of Man Ray, which she encountered when she moved to Paris in 1930. At the time of her arrival the French capital was a melting pot of artistic and intellectual trends and the setting for the emergence of a number of movements that would be crucial for the evolution of the avant-gardes. Surrealist echoes are evident in Bing’s photographs of objects and in her approach to the framing of her shots of chairs, streets and public spaces, images that transmit a sense of strangeness and almost of alienation.

The Bauhaus was an extremely important influence on Bing’s work via both El Lissitzky’s theories and those of Moholy-Nagy’s New Vision, which promoted the fusion of architecture and photography and the autonomy of photography as a medium in relation to painting. New Vision offered infinite possibilities and Bing took full advantage of them, employing some of them in her work, such as abstraction, close-ups, plunging viewpoints, di sotto in sù, photomontages and overprinting, all to be seen in the images on display in the exhibition.

Ilse Bing belonged to a generation of women photographers who achieved unprecedented visibility. It was not the norm that women should be artists in a field habitually occupied by men, who regarded their presence as active agents in the social and cultural realm with disdain and even hostility. Like many of her contemporaries – Germaine Krull, Florence Henri, Laure Albin-Guillot, Madame d’Ora, Berenice Abbott, Nora Dumas and Gisèle Freund – Bing’s camera became an essential tool of self determination and a means to confirm her own identity.

Ilse Bing was born in Frankfurt on 23 March 1899 to a middle-class Jewish family. She took her first photographs at the age of fourteen. Self-taught in this field, she realised that this would become her principal activity when she began photographing in order to illustrate her doctoral thesis. She studied mathematics and physics before opting for art history. In 1929 she gave up her university studies and, armed with her inseparable Leica, devoted herself to photography for the next thirty years. In 1930 she moved to Paris, where she continued active as a photojournalist while also producing her own more creative work, gradually becoming one of the leading representatives of modern French photography. In 1941 and with the advance of National Socialism, Bing moved to New York with her husband, the pianist Konrad Wolff. Two decades later, at the age of 60, she ceased taking photographs and focused her attention on making collages, abstract works, drawings and also poetry writing. Ilse Bing died in New York in 1998.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE exhibition brochure

 

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

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Champ de Mars from the Eiffel Tower
1931
Gelatin silver print
19.3 x 28.2cm
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg, New York
© Estate of Ilse Bing
Photograph: Jeffrey Sturges

 

Ilse Bing. 'Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1931' 1931

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Eiffel Tower, Paris
1931
Gelatin silver print
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Poverty in Paris' 1931

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Poverty in Paris
1931
Gelatin silver print
27.8 x 35.3cm
Galerie Berinson, Berlín
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Three Men Sitting on the Steps by the Seine' 1931

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Three Men Sitting on the Steps by the Seine
1931
Gelatin silver print
27.9 × 35.6 cm
International Center of Photography, Nueva York
Donation of Ilse Bing, 1991
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) 'French Can Can Dancers, Moulin Rouge' 1931

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
French Can Can Dancers, Moulin Rouge
1931
Gelatin silver print
6 1/4 × 9 in. (15.9 × 22.9cm)
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Greta Garbo Poster, Paris' 1932

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Greta Garbo Poster, Paris
1932
Gelatin silver print
22.3 × 30.5 cm
The Art Institute of Chicago
Donation of David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg 1991
© Estate of Ilse Bing
© 2022 The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY/ Scala, Florence

 

 

Overview

Ilse Bing (Frankfurt, 1899 – New York, 1998) was born into a well-off Jewish family. Having discovered her true vocation while preparing the illustrations for her academic thesis, in 1929 she abandoned her university studies in order to focus entirely on photography. The medium would be her chosen form of expression for the following thirty years of her fascinating life and career.

In 1930 Bing moved to Paris where she combined photojournalism with her own more personal work, soon becoming one of the principal representatives of the modernising trends in photography which emerged in the cultural melting pot of Paris during those years. With the advance of the Nazi forces, in 1941 she and her husband, the pianist Konrad Wolff, went into exile in New York. Two decades later the sixty-year-old Bing gave up her photographic activities in order to channel her creativity into the visual arts and poetry until her death in 1998.

Bing’s work cannot be ascribed to any of the movements or tendencies that influenced her. She worked in almost all the artistic genres, from architectural photography to portraiture, self-portraits, images of everyday objects and landscapes. The diversity of styles which she employed reflect her significant and notably individual interpretation of the different cultural trends that she assimilated, from the German Bauhaus and New Objectivity to Parisian Surrealism and the ceaseless dynamism of New York.

 

The exhibition

Featuring around 200 photographs and a range of documentary material, the exhibition presents a chronological and thematic survey of Ilse Bing’s career, divided into ten sections: “Discovering the world through a camera: the beginnings”, “The life of still lifes”, “The dancing body and its circumstances”, “Lights and shadows of modern architecture”, “The hustle and bustle of the street: the French years”, “The seduction of fashion”, “The United States in two phases”, “Self-image revelations”, “Portrait of time”, and “Live nature”.

 

Four keys

The Bauhaus. From 1910 onwards Frankfurt became the prototype of modern urban design thanks to the architect Ernst May, and the city’s medieval layout was gradually modified in a transformation based on its different societal requirements. This new architecture soon began to echo the ideas of El Lissitzky’s Constructivism, partly via the Dutch architect Mart Stam, a friend of Ilse Bing. Stam and the theories of the Bauhaus had a major influence on her works. László Moholy-Nagy, who taught at the Bauhaus, had promoted the union of architecture and photography as well as the independence of the latter in relation to painting. The possibilities of Das Neue Sehen (The New Vision) seemed endless and Bing applied some of its concepts and devices to her work: abstraction, immediate close-ups, plunging and di sotto in sù viewpoints, photo-montage and overprinting.

Surrealism, the spirit of an era. When Ilse Bing moved to Paris in 1930 the city was a melting pot of artistic and intellectual trends and the setting for the emergence of some of the key movements in the evolution of the avant-gardes. One of them – Surrealism – had a particular influence on her and its echoes are clearly discernible in her photographs of accessories taken for fashion magazines which reflect Surrealist theories on fetishism. It is also evident in the framing she chose for her images of chairs, streets and public spaces, which transmit a sense of strangeness and almost of alienation. Finally, this influence also arose from Bing’s relationship with prominent figures associated with the movement, such as Elsa Schiaparelli.

Movement. Despite her fascination with abstraction and pure compositions, evident in many of her photographs of architecture and her still lifes, Ilse Bing was also captivated by the dynamism and movement of life and changing reality. She expressed this in her photographs of the Moulin Rouge and its surrounding area and in her investigation of dance. Bing captured the dynamism of the dancers twirling their skirts but also the expressivity of their bodies as they moved, jumping into the air or doing the splits.

Woman photographer. Ilse Bing belonged to a generation of women photographers who achieved unprecedented visibility. It was not the norm that women should be artists in a field habitually occupied by men, who regarded their presence as active agents in the social and cultural realm with disdain and even hostility. Like many of her contemporaries – Germaine Krull, Florence Henri, Laure Albin-Guillot, Madame d’Ora, Berenice Abbott, Nora Dumas and Gisèle Freund – Bing’s camera became an essential tool of self-determination and a means to confirm her own identity.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE website

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Prostitutes, Amsterdam' 1931

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Prostitutes, Amsterdam
1931
Gelatin silver print
25.5 x 34cm
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg, New York
© Estate of Ilse Bing
Photograph: Jeffrey Sturges

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Self-portrait with Leica' 1931

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Self-portrait with Leica
1931
Gelatin silver print
26.5 × 30.7cm
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg, New York
© Estate of Ilse Bing
Photograph: Jeffrey Sturges

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Pantaloons for Sale, Amsterdam' 1931

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Pantaloons for Sale, Amsterdam
1931
Gelatin silver print
28 x 22cm
The Art Institute of Chicago, Julien Levy Collection
Donation of Jean and Julien Levy 1977
© Estate of Ilse Bing
© 2022 The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY/ Scala, Florence

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Street Fair, Paris' 1933

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Street Fair, Paris
1933
Gelatin silver print
28.2 × 22.3cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.
Donation of Ilse Bing Wolff
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Equine butcher shop' 1933

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Equine butcher shop
1933
Gelatin silver print
19.2 × 28.2cm
Galerie Berinson, Berlín
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'The Honorable Daisy Fellowes, Gloves by Dent in London for Harper's Bazaar' 1933

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
The Honorable Daisy Fellowes, Gloves by Dent in London for Harper’s Bazaar
1933
Gelatin silver print
27.9 × 35.6cm
International Center of Photography, New York
Donation of Ilse Bing 1991
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Self-portrait' 1934

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Self-portrait
1934
Gelatin silver print
27.9 × 21.6cm
Galerie Karsten Greve, Saint Moritz / París / Colonia
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) 'Study for "Salut de Schiaparelli" (Lily Perfume), Paris' 1934

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Study for “Salut de Schiaparelli” (Lily Perfume), Paris
1934
Gelatin silver print
Overall: 28.2 x 22.3cm (11 1/8 x 8 3/4 in.)
Frame: 50.8 x 40.64cm (20 x 16 in.)
Frame (outer): 53.34 x 43.18cm (21 x 17 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Ilse Bing Wolff
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Gold Lamé Evening Shoes' 1935

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Gold Lamé Evening Shoes
1935
Gelatin silver print
22.2 × 27.9cm
Galerie Karsten Greve, Saint Moritz / París / Colonia
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Between France and the USA (Seascapes)' 1936

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Between France and the USA (Seascapes)
1936
Gelatin silver print
21 × 28.3 cm
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Legacy of Ilse Bing Wolff 2001
© Estate of Ilse Bing
© 2022 Digital image Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'New York, the Elevated, and Me' 1936

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
New York, the Elevated, and Me
1936
Gelatin silver print
Galerie Le Minotaure, Paris
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'New York' 1936

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
New York
1936
Gelatin silver print
19.8 x 22.2cm
Galerie Berinson, Berlín
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

 

The artistic career of Ilse Bing (Frankfurt, 1899-New York, 1998) can be located within a particularly complex temporal and socio-cultural context. This German photographer principally lived and worked in three places: in Frankfurt prior to the 1930s, in Paris in that decade and in post-war New York where she above all experienced the status of enforced emigré. Bing also visited other places, including Switzerland, Italy and Holland, but they never became decisive spaces that significantly influenced her way of working with regard to photography.

Analysed with the distance and perspective offered by the passing of time, Ilse Bing’s artistic corpus cannot easily be located within the various photographic trends she encountered during her lifetime, particularly in her initial German phase and the decade in Paris. While her work is charged with elements associated with both Das Neue Sehen (The New Vision) and the Bauhaus, which emerged during the Weimar Republic, as well as with the Surrealism she assimilated during her years in France, Bing’s position evades any strict norm or visual orthodoxy. In this sense it could be said that hers is a notably unique photographic gaze and approach in which modernity and formal innovation are indissolubly linked to a humanist approach involving a social conscience.

It is also important to emphasise that Ilse Bing’s career within the context of relatively difficult times was marked by a resolute determination to make her way in a world which viewed the presence of women as active agents in the social and thus the cultural realm with disdain or even hostility. Bing belonged to a generation of female photographers that achieved a previously unattainable visibility. The camera became for an essential tool of self-determination for numerous women artists, including figures such as Germaine Krull, Florence Henri, Laure Albin-Guillot, Madame d’Ora, Berenice Abbott, Nora Dumas and Gisèle Freund.

Juan Vicente Aliaga
Curator

 

Discovering the World Through A Camera: The Beginnings

With the exception of a few photographs of an amateur type, nothing indicated that Ilse Bing, who was born into a prosperous Jewish family in Frankfurt, would dedicate much of her life to the practice of photography. After an initial focus on scientific subjects and a period studying art history, Bing decided to illustrate her doctoral thesis with images taken in different museums. From that moment onwards and following a study trip to Switzerland when she discovered the work of Vincent van Gogh, she took the decision to focus her attention on photography. While she initially made use of a Voigtländer plate camera, she soon acquired a Leica which she would continue to use for much of her career. This was the camera she employed for the commissions she received from newspapers such as the Frankfurter Zeitung, work that gave her a degree of financial independence during the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic.

At the outset Bing covered a range of subjects, doing so with ease and formal audacity. Everything seemed to attract her attention: men at work, the spatial simplicity of a gallery, the organic lines of a roof, the leg and arm movements of the ballerinas of the Rudolf von Laban company, the modern architecture which she had discovered through her friend the Dutch architect Mart Stam, and more. Bing’s gaze sought out unusual angles, it looked upwards and downwards, at times encountering normally overlooked elements of no monetary value and ones brought together by chance, as in Dead Leaf and Tramway Ticket on Sidewalk, Frankfurt (1929).

 

The Life of Still Lifes

Objects from daily life are frequently present in modern art: a bottle, a newspaper, a letter, a collage-like fragment of a label, a jug, etc. Surrealism marked a revolution with regard to the representation of the object, which is never literal but rather filled with hidden aspects. The insertion of external objects into the visual space combined with other ones favours the emergence of the imaginary. By the time Ilse Bing arrived in Paris in 1930 she was already captivated by the chance encounter of often humble elements. Her French period served to accentuate her interest in a wide range of cast-off possessions and objects that seemed to allude to a universe in flux. Bing’s gaze always came to rest on real elements. The chairs she photographed existed but the framing she employed, the closeness or distance of the shot, the fact that the chairs are unoccupied and that the floor on which they stand has the silvery darkness of rain are all the result of her choices, adding an air of melancholy to the image.

Over the course of her career Bing used a range of different techniques in parallel while remaining constantly fascinated by inanimate objects. During her Paris years and despite financial difficulties her work is generally characterised by a poetic gaze in which the imagination moves towards undefined, almost dream-like realms. In contrast, in the period of exile in the United States a degree of coolness emerges, with the appearance of formal and symbolic traits such as a closing-in or enclosing of the depicted scene.

 

The Dancing Body and Its Circumstances

During her initial phase, in 1929 Ilse Bing established contacts with the dance and gymnastics school founded by Rudolf von Laban. She was struck by the way in which he aimed to draw a parallel between geometry and human movements and gestures.

Soon after arriving in Paris, Bing was commissioned to photograph the Moulin Rouge waxworks museum. The old Parisian dance hall where La Goulue and Toulouse-Lautrec had been leading attractions had lost much of its splendour. Bing spent time there and was attracted by numerous aspects of the place: its daily life on and off stage, including the couples who enjoyed a drink there, the boxing matches taking place, a dancer cheering up a weary boxer, the interesting nature of the clients, and the boredom of the doorman at the entrance to the cabaret. Aside from these aspects, what really caught the attention of the Paris photography world were Bing’s images of dancers in movement. Her restless eye was able to represent the vibration of the circular twists and turns, the complex, effortful open leg movements of a dancer captured in action, the troupe of dancers energetically waving their skirts, and more.

Another group of images of the troupe centres around the dancer Gerard Willem van Loon.

The third and last series of images focusing on dance was commissioned in relation to the ballet L’Errante, choreographed by the American George Balanchine and with set designs and libretto by the Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew. Bing demonstrated her skill at capturing movement without making it seem frozen or trapped in time. Her eye translated the weightlessness of dreamlike fantasies to her images through the dynamic way in which she captured shadows.

 

Lights and Shadows of Modern Architecture

The architecture of Paris is generally reflected in Bing’s photography through images of middle- or working-class houses or walls and façades of dilapidated buildings. There was one notable exception, namely the Eiffel Tower. This emblematic work, constructed for the Universal Exhibition of 1889, was nothing less than a revelation for Bing. The Tower’s imposing metal structure had been captured by various photographers, including László Moholy-Nagy in 1925, followed by Erwin Blumenfeld, André Kertész, François Kollar and Germaine Krull.

Bing chose to locate herself inside the structure and take shots at different heights, the majority looking downwards. Using this method, the reality of the space occupied by passers-by becomes perfectly visible. In other words, the intention is not to emphasise the abstract core, pure geometry and beauty of the forms, girders, mainstays, braces and other constructional elements but rather to show that this architectural marvel was also located in a specific place, in this case the gardens of the Champ de Mars.

At a later date, New York’s modern architecture astonished Bing for its display of power expressed as imposing constructions. She translated her amazement into a group of images primarily characterised by a distanced and simultaneously critical gaze on the architectural spectacle before her eyes. Her position was not simply an uncritical and admiring one, as evident in various photographs of skyscrapers abutting on poor areas of the city. The thrust of the symbolic power of vertical architecture is called into question by being juxtaposed with humble spaces and buildings, as we see with Chrysler Building (1936).

 

The Hustle and Bustle of the Street: The French Years

When Ilse Bing arrived in Paris in late November 1930 the city’s cultural context was particularly favourable in terms of the number of illustrated publications that made use of images taken by a large group of male and female photographers. These publications included Vu, Voilà, Marianne, Regards, L’Art Vivant, Arts et Métiers Graphiques and Urbanisme.

One of the commissions that Bing received allowed her to delve into an evident reality: the existence of poverty in certain parts of a major capital such as Paris. She focused her work on portraying the soup kitchens where large numbers of destitute people gathered.

The artist revealed her abilities in Paris, rue de Valois (1932), an image that allows for a questioning of the supposedly objective truth habitually associated with photography. On an inner city street Bing’s gaze focuses on a puddle in which the roofs of an adjacent building are reflected. She shows us the paradox of something that is located above and high up appearing below, on the ground.

While Bing’s Parisian photography has a melancholy, even sombre tone to it, it also looked at areas of human activity characterised by lively bustle and social interaction, such as her images of a gingerbread fair.

These years in France provided the setting for a veritable laboratory of ideas in which the influence of Bing’s Frankfurt years is still evident. It was also a time when the emergence of Surrealism was occupying the Parisian cultural scene, with its exploration of the unconscious and of hidden desires. It can be detected in the ghostly feel of the solarised photographs that Bing took on the Place de la Concorde.

In this context, and thanks to an invitation from the Dutch-born Hendrick Willem van Loon, Bing discovered the Netherlands, visiting places such as Veere and Amsterdam and capturing different moments of daily life. The country’s nature as a terrain regained from the sea also led the artist to reflect this geographical reality in a number of snapshots.

 

The Seduction of Fashion

During her Paris years Bing experienced financial difficulties, a recurrent problem for her over the years, for which reason in November 1933 she began to contribute to the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, an American publication noted for its modern style. She secured this work with a recommendation from the editor of the French edition, Daisy Fellowes, a fashion-world figure brought up in aristocratic circles. Some of Bing’s photographs are in fact of accessories that belonged to Fellowes, including the grey felt hat and an elegant pair of gloves. In these and other images Bing applied a highly innovative approach in which she brought out the texture of the objects and the sheen of the surfaces by cropping the frame in such a way that the various garments acquired a sensual touch as well as suggesting the attractiveness of a coveted object.

During these years Bing also met Elsa Schiaparelli, the celebrated Italian fashion designer with links to Surrealism. Bing took photographs as advertisements for perfumes such as Salut and Soucis, both of 1934. The aim of these images was to encourage the viewer to desire the product with all its sensual resonances without renouncing a modern aesthetic.

 

The United States in Two Stages

Bing’s experiences in New York can be divided into two quite distinct phases. The first was a visit in 1936 while the second came in 1941 with her forced departure from France following the Nazi occupation. She continued to live there until her death in 1998, although she brought her photographic activity to an end forty years earlier.

The first American trip lasted from April to June 1936. Bing was impressed by the colossal dimensions of the city’s architecture while her restless gaze also focused on other aspects of the metropolis: the harsh life of down-and-outs (Variation on Dead End), the dirtiness of the streets, a circus show with acrobats and animals, and more.

In these difficult circumstances and experiencing isolation, Bing transferred her sense of solitude to the reality that surrounded her, observing it attentively. The result is a number of desolate images in which her own feelings are transmuted into melancholy landscapes and objects: scrawny, leafless tree branches, picket fences enclosing plots, and a fire hydrant in a snowy landscape next to a fallen tree.

From 1941 onwards, still suffering from the effects of exile and in need of earning a living in a hostile environment, Bing turned her activities to various different jobs, taking passport photographs for immigrants, portrait photographs on commission and even working as a dog groomer, among other things. The illustrated magazine world clearly turned its back on her at this period.

 

Self-Image Revelations

In 1913 the teenage Bing took what she considered to be her first self-portrait. She poses in her bedroom in the family home in Frankfurt, sitting sideways at a desk and resting her feet on a chair. What we see in reality is her reflection in a cupboard mirror, which shows the young Ilse with her long hair. In front of a background of paintings, she looks out attentively and places her hand on the camera – a Kodak box model. She was unaware at the time that this device (albeit not this make) would become her principal working tool.

Throughout her life as an artist Bing repeated the exercise of portraying herself (usually indoors) with the aim of leaving a record of a specific moment of her existence. Through these self-portraits she forged her own identity as an emancipated and independent woman in times of enormous patriarchal pressure.

During her first visit to New York Bing conceived an image that is a clear indication of the sense of estrangement and alienation she felt at seeing herself so small before the immensity of the mecca of skyscrapers, as in New York, the Elevated, and Me (1936).

Bing would later make the representation of shadow a stark extension of her life and personality, frequently using it throughout her American years.

During the course of her lifetime Ilse Bing explored the transitory states of her own identity, sometimes presenting herself as firm and decided, at times as vulnerable and anxious and on other occasions as a fleeting shadow cast on a wall.

 

Portrait of Time

In addition to seeking out the intricacies of her subjectivity in her own image, from almost the outset Bing engaged in an intensive photographic activity in which she combined commissions for portraits, especially of children, with the desire to explore the human psyche.

With regard to childhood, Bing saw children as complete beings on the same level as adults, with their own internal struggles and issues. During her own childhood the prevailing view was that they were not fully formed but Bing was uncomfortable with this perception and over time she learned to see adulthood and childhood as two phases of life that had much more in common than was generally thought.

Similarly, she did not share the view that women should be conceived on the male model as if they were a mere accompaniment to their tune. She considered that “the human being can be represented and symbolised by women”, albeit without aiming to idealise them. These concepts, which clearly reflect an underlying feminist attitude, seem to allude to a holistic vision of existence devoid of hierarchies or fixed categories.

Bing went beyond merely capturing the moment, the temporal space in which her models pose. Rather, with both her child sitters and adults she aimed to show them engaged in an activity, extracting aspects of their character and personality from them.

 

Live Nature

Any assessment of Ilse Bing’s work must necessarily emphasise the impact on her career of her urban experiences in Frankfurt, Paris and New York. While this assertion seems indisputable, an analysis of her corpus would be diminished without a consideration of the close relationship she maintained with nature, both the untamed natural world and nature designed and organised by human hand, as in the case of the gardens of Versailles.

The natural world was also the locus in which Bing’s emotions and feelings took hold. The photographs taken on the banks of the Loire, for example, generally exude an air of calm and balance comparable to that which she felt in her own life at the time, contrasting strongly with the landscapes of wild and rugged places such as those she captured in the mountains of Colorado at a period of greater personal tension.

In 1959 Ilse Bing gave up photography for good. After three decades as a photographer and long before her work started to be recognised in museums in the United States, France and Germany, with exhibitions and publications of her work in Paris, New Orleans, Aachen and New York, the artist, who had proved herself able to represent the vibration of life, considered that she no longer had anything new to say or contribute in this medium.

Fundación MAPFRE exhibition texts

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Street Cleaner, Paris' 1947

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Street Cleaner, Paris
1947
Gelatin silver print
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Antigone with Teacher' 1950

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Antigone with Teacher
1950
Gelatin silver print
33.7 × 26.7cm
International Center of Photography
Donation of Ilse Bing, 1991
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Nancy Harris' 1951

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Nancy Harris
1951
Gelatin silver print
50.3 × 40.3cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.
The Marvin Breckinridge Patterson Fund for Photography 2000
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'All of Paris in a Box' 1952

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
All of Paris in a Box
1952
Gelatin silver print
40.1 x 48.4cm
James Hyman Gallery, London
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Picket Fence' 1953

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Picket Fence
1953
Gelatin silver print
50.5 × 40.6cm
International Center of Photography, New York
Donation of Steven Schwartz 2013
© Estate of Ilse Bing

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998) 'Without Illusion, Flea Market, Paris' 1957

 

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Without Illusion, Flea Market, Paris
1957
Gelatin silver print
49.5 x 40cm
Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg, New York
© Estate of Ilse Bing
Photograph: Jeffrey Sturges

 

 

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10
Sep
22

Exhibition: ‘Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop’ at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 19th July – 9th October 2022

Curators: Mazie Harris, assistant curator, J. Paul Getty Museum, in consultation with Sarah L. Eckhardt, associate curator, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

 

 

Anthony Barboza (American, b. 1944) 'Pensacola, Florida' 1966

 

Anthony Barboza (American, b. 1944)
Pensacola, Florida
1966
Gelatin silver print
22.5 × 34cm (8 7/8 × 13 3/8 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund
© Anthony Barboza

 

 

LIBERTY!

Even though I know the history of photography reasonably well(!) I had never heard of the Kamoinge Workshop (a collective of Black photographers formed in New York in 1963) before I started to assemble this posting. This “group of people acting together… produced powerful images, sensitively registering Black life in the mid-20th century.” Their work “reminds us of the power of both individual creativity and collective action.”

What is notable about the work of Kamoinge artists as evidenced by the vibrant, graphic photographs of high contrast and chiaroscuro presented here is the mainly abstract nature of their representation of Black life.

Through images such as Anthony Barboza’s broken liberty in Pensacola, Florida (1966) and fragmented Street Self-portrait (1970s), Adger Cowans’ distorted Three Shadows (1966), C. Daniel Dawson’s Backscape #1 (1967), Louis Draper’s Untitled (Swing and Shadow) (1967) and Boy and H, Harlem (1961), James Mannas’ desperate No Way Out, Harlem, NYC (1964) and Peeping Sea Wall Beach Boy, Georgetown, Guyana (1972), Herbert Randall’s melancholy Untitled (Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Freedom Summer) (1964), Herb Robinson’s Brother and Sister (1973) and Central Park, Kids (1961), Beuford Smith’s, hanging, Boy on Swing, Lower East Side (1970), Ming Smith’s decaying Untitled (Harlem, NY) (c. 1973) and Shawn Walker’s barricaded Harlem, 117th Street (c. 1960) … the viewer can begin to picture, begin to feel and empathise with – the life of displacement and deprivation, poverty and protest, strength and joy – that was at the centre of Black experiences. The work of the Kamoinge artists offered “an alternative to the mainstream media of the time, which often overlooked Black culture or portrayed it negatively.”

“Through careful cropping, framing, and printing techniques, Kamoinge artists defamiliarised everyday sights such as puddles and clouds, asphalt, and weathered walls. Their images encourage greater attention to commonplace subjects – the reflective glass of shop windows, worn advertisements on city streets, a dirtied pile of salt – that might otherwise be overlooked. Much of their work with shadows and reflections centers Black bodies seeking a place for themselves amid the ebb and flow of daily life.” (Exhibition text)

For me what is so important about this group of artists (or any individual or group of people that represent through art: difference, diversity and the fight for equality and liberty) is that they represent themselves and historically archive their continuing struggle against oppression – so that, as the definition of the word “liberty” states – we can all attain “the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behaviour, or political views.”

Usually the fight comes not from the top down, but from the grass roots up… from community, from culture and how these begin to influence wider social attitudes and prejudices. Fighting against any injustice, whether it be racism, sexism, ism ism ism, is a fight against ignorance and bigotry. It is a fight against people being unaware of what is going on, what affect their actions have on others, it is a fight against misinformation and misrepresentation, and it is a fight against power residing in the hands of the few. As such, the photographs of the Kamoinge Workshop artists are a vital reflection on the process of change and acceptance, of progress (or the lack of it) and the constant need to be vigilant, to keep fighting against any force that seeks to subjugate us. Their photographs heighten our aesthetic awareness, one of the defining qualities of being human, connecting us to our ability to reflect on and appreciate the world around us in all its mysterious spirit and joyful difference.

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.

 

This is the first major exhibition about the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of Black photographers formed in New York in 1963. Members of the group produced powerful images, sensitively registering Black life in the mid-20th century. The exhibition explores Kamoinge’s photographic artistry in the 1960s and 1970s, celebrating the group’s collaborative ethos, commitment to community, and centering of Black experiences.

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop' at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Installation view of the exhibition Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles showing at centre, the work of Louis Draper.

 

Anthony Barboza (American, b. 1944) 'Kamoinge Members' 1973, printed 2019

 

Anthony Barboza (American, b. 1944)
Kamoinge Members
1973, printed 2019
Inkjet print
45.7 × 50.8cm (18 × 20 in)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Eric and Jeanette Lipman Fund
© Anthony Barboza

 

Anthony Barboza (American, b. 1944) 'Editors Working on the First Volume of The Black Photographers Annual' 1973

 

Anthony Barboza (American, b. 1944)
Editors Working on the First Volume of The Black Photographers Annual
1973
Pictured: Beuford Smith, Joe Crawford, Ray Francis
Gelatin silver print
12.1 × 17.9cm (4 3/4 × 7 1/16 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund
© Anthony Barboza

 

Anthony Barboza (American, b. 1944) '1st Annual International Black Photographers Dinner Honoring Roy DeCarava and James Van Der Zee, NYC' 1979

 

Anthony Barboza (American, b. 1944)
1st Annual International Black Photographers Dinner Honoring Roy DeCarava and James Van Der Zee, NYC
1979
Gelatin silver print
18.9 × 24.9cm (7 7/16 × 9 13/16 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© Anthony Barboza

 

Anthony Barboza (American, b. 1944) 'Easter Sunday in Harlem' 1974

 

Anthony Barboza (American, b. 1944)
Easter Sunday in Harlem
1974
Gelatin silver print
15.4 x 22.6cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

Anthony Barboza (American, b. 1944) 'Street Self-portrait' 1970s

 

Anthony Barboza (American, b. 1944)
Street Self-portrait
1970s
Gelatin silver print
19.9 x 15.1cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

In 1963 a group of Black photographers based in New York formed the Kamoinge Workshop.

Committed to photography’s power as an art form, Kamoinge members depicted Black life as they saw and experienced it. They hoped to offer an alternative to the mainstream media of the time, which often overlooked Black culture or portrayed it negatively.

Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop, on view at the Getty Museum at the Getty Center July 19 – October 9, is the first major retrospective presenting photographs from the collective during the 1960s and 1970s. Highlighting each photographer’s individual artistry as well as the Workshop’s shared concerns, this exhibition celebrates the group’s self-organising, commitment to community, and centering of Black experiences.

“The work in this exhibition highlights Black Americans behind and in front of the camera. The Museum regularly features individual artists in monographic exhibitions, but it is important also to document and celebrate the importance of collaborative groups such as the Kamoinge Workshop,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “Working Together reflects Getty’s continuing efforts to diversify our collection, and thereby represent a more expansive history of photography. To that end, several of the works shown in the exhibition were recently acquired for the Museum’s collection.”

Within their first year as a group, the members of the Kamoinge Workshop (pronounced “kuh-moyn-gay” by the members of the group) made a commitment to portray the communities around them. They chose the name – which means “a group of people acting together” in the Kikuyu language of Kenya – to reflect the collective model they wished to follow as well as their interest in Black communities not just at home but also outside the United States.

The exhibition will focus on the first two decades of the collective, from the founding of the group in 1963 through the various activities of the International Black Photographers association in the early 1980s, and includes photographs by 15 of the organisation’s early members. The artists included in the exhibition are Anthony Barboza, Adger Cowans, Daniel Dawson, Louis Draper, Al Fennar, Ray Francis, Herman Howard, Jimmie Mannas, Herb Randall, Herb Robinson, Beuford Smith, Ming Smith, Shawn Walker, and Calvin Wilson. Also included are several photographs by Roy DeCarava, the first director of the Workshop.

Images in the exhibition capture the experience of urban life at mid-century, the civil rights movement, intimate portraiture, experimental abstraction, jazz musicians, and the Black experience abroad. Though the photographers included in the exhibition produced diverse bodies of work, many of their photographs are printed with dark tones that compellingly evoke the unsettling era in which they were made.

“The Kamoinge vision remains resonant today,” notes Mazie Harris, curator of the installation of Working Together in the Getty Museum’s Center for Photographs. “The photographs in this exhibition offer a glimpse into the artistry and ambition of the workshop members, reminding us of the power of both individual creativity and collective action.”

Working Together: The Photographs of the Kamoinge Workshop is organised by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and curated by Mazie Harris, assistant curator, J. Paul Getty Museum, in consultation with Sarah L. Eckhardt, associate curator, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Press release from the J. Paul Getty Museum

 

Adger Cowans (American, b. 1936) 'Three Shadows' 1966, printed 1968

 

Adger Cowans (American, b. 1936)
Three Shadows
1966, printed 1968
Gelatin silver print
26.6 × 15.7cm (10 1/2 × 6 3/16 in.)
Getty Museum
© Adger Cowans, courtesy Bruce Silverstein Gallery

 

Adger Cowans (American, b. 1936) 'Footsteps' 1960

 

Adger Cowans (American, b. 1936)
Footsteps
1960
Gelatin silver print
21 × 33.8cm (8 1/4 × 13 5/16 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.
Aldine S. Hartman Endowment Fund
© Adger Cowans

 

C. Daniel Dawson (American, b. 1943) 'Backscape #1' 1967

 

C. Daniel Dawson (American, b. 1943)
Backscape #1
1967
Gelatin silver print
15.2 × 22.9cm (6 × 9 in.)
Collection of C. Daniel Dawson
© C. Daniel Dawson

 

C. Daniel Dawson (American, b. 1943) 'Olaifa and Egypt' 1978

 

C. Daniel Dawson (American, b. 1943)
Olaifa and Egypt
1978
Gelatin silver print
16.5 × 24.1cm (6 1/2 × 9 1/2 in.)
Collection of C. Daniel Dawson
© C. Daniel Dawson

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002) 'Fannie Lou Hamer' 1971

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002)
Fannie Lou Hamer
1971
Gelatin silver print
18.1 × 13.3cm (7 1/8 × 5 1/4 in.)
Getty Museum
© Louis H. Draper Preservation Trust, courtesy Bruce Silverstein Gallery

 

 

Fannie Lou Hamer (née Townsend; October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977) was an American voting and women’s rights activist, community organiser, and a leader in the civil rights movement. She was the co-founder and vice-chair of the Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Hamer also organised Mississippi’s Freedom Summer along with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She was also a co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus, an organisation created to recruit, train, and support women of all races who wish to seek election to government office.

Hamer began civil rights activism in 1962, continuing until her health declined nine years later. She was known for her use of spiritual hymnals and quotes and her resilience in leading the civil rights movement for black women in Mississippi. She was extorted, threatened, harassed, shot at, and assaulted by racists, including members of the police, while trying to register for and exercise her right to vote. She later helped and encouraged thousands of African-Americans in Mississippi to become registered voters and helped hundreds of disenfranchised people in her area through her work in programs like the Freedom Farm Cooperative. She unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1964 and the Mississippi State Senate in 1971. In 1970, she led legal action against the government of Sunflower County, Mississippi for continued illegal segregation.

Hamer died on March 14, 1977, aged 59, in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Her memorial service was widely attended and her eulogy was delivered by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young. She was posthumously inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002) 'Congressional Gathering' 1959, printed later

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002)
Congressional Gathering
1959, printed later
Gelatin silver print
23.4 × 16.9 cm (9 3/16 × 6 5/8 in.)
Getty Museum
© Louis H. Draper Preservation Trust, courtesy Bruce Silverstein Gallery

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002) 'Untitled (Swing and Shadow)' 1967

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002)
Untitled (Swing and Shadow)
1967
Gelatin silver print
22.9 × 15.2cm (9 × 6 in.)
Getty Museum
© Louis H. Draper Preservation Trust, courtesy Bruce Silverstein Gallery

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002) 'Untitled (Billy)' About 1966-1972

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002)
Untitled (Billy)
About 1966-1972
Gelatin silver print
24.1 × 33.3cm (9 1/2 × 13 1/8 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© Courtesy of the Louis H. Draper Preservation Trust, Nell D. Winston, Trustee

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002) 'Boy and H, Harlem' 1961

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002)
Boy and H, Harlem
1961
Gelatin silver print
21.3 × 32.2 cm (8 3/8 × 12 11/16 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© Courtesy of the Louis H. Draper Preservation Trust, Nell D. Winston, Trustee

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002) 'Untitled' 1960s

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002)
Untitled
1960s
Gelatin silver print
23.3 × 17.3cm (9 3/16 × 6 13/16 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© Courtesy of the Louis H. Draper Preservation Trust, Nell D. Winston, Trustee

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002) 'Reward MLK Poster, New York' 1971

 

Louis Draper (American, 1935-2002)
Reward MLK Poster, New York
1971
Gelatin silver print
18.1 x 13.3cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

Community

The Kamoinge Workshop began as a community of photographers who supported and encouraged one another. Within their first year, they also made a commitment to portray the communities around them. They introduced one of their early projects by explaining, “The Kamoinge Workshop represents black photographers whose creative objectives reflect a concern for truth about the world, about the Society, and about themselves.” Years later, member Louis Draper expanded: “Cognizant of the forces for change revolving around Kamoinge, we dedicated ourselves to speak of our lives as only we can. This was our story to tell and we set out to create the kind of images of our communities that spoke of the truth we’d witnessed, and that countered the untruths we’d all seen in mainline publications.”

 

Mentorship

Kamoinge members taught photography in programs across New York City, from Brooklyn and Harlem to the Bronx, equipping a younger generation with the technical and philosophical knowledge they needed to portray their communities. Louis Draper noted that they were eager for “a sense of purpose other than individual acclaim; we wanted to serve.” In the late 1960s, Draper and Daniel Dawson taught a photography course for teens every summer, and Draper led a youth mentorship program in the Bronx. The photographs in this section of the exhibition document some of their students.

 

Civil Rights

Although most Kamoinge members resisted being labeled civil rights photographers – a term they felt conjured images of firehoses and attack dogs – oral and written histories of the group emphasise that the collective formed in the midst of the civil rights movement. As Louis Draper described: “Many of the group had been a part of the March on Washington with Reverend King. Others had witnessed southern law brutality brought on by voting rights activity and sit-in demonstrations. Within a year’s time, these same volatile forces would propel many of us into engaged and enraged resistance.” Part of their resistance was to make images of Black Americans that were absent from the national conversation. Some members photographed leading figures and pivotal events of the civil rights movement but not necessarily to provide a journalistic record. Many created images reflected the theme of civil rights on a symbolic level instead.

 

“Like Jazz”

Music played an enormous role in the art of the Kamoinge Workshop. Jazz was a near-constant soundtrack for the group’s meetings, and musicians and live performances were the subjects of many of their photographs. Jazz also served as a metaphor for photography itself. Rhythm, timing, and improvisation are key elements in street photography as well as experimental abstraction. Innovative musicians such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane inspired Kamoinge artists, as did attending rehearsals and performances by figures as diverse as Mahalia Jackson and Sun Ra. These musicians moved the photographers to experiment and above all to hone their craft. Ming Smith characterised photography as “making something out of nothing,” adding, “I think that’s like jazz.”

 

A Global Perspective

A significant factor leading to the formation of the Kamoinge Workshop was, as Louis Draper put it, “the emerging African consciousness exploding within us.” Even before most of the members began traveling internationally, their choice of a name from the Kikuyu people of Kenya emphasised their interest in Black experiences outside the United States. Kenya, which gained independence from colonial rule in 1963, the same year Kamoinge was founded, was frequently in the press during the group’s earliest meetings. The decolonisation movement swept across the African continent from the mid-1950s through the 1960s, the same years that the US civil rights movement intensified. Many Kamoinge members traveled to African countries that had recently gained independence, and also to regions with significant diasporic communities. Some worked outside the United States on film projects or on assignments for magazines and in their off-hours made time for their own art. These travels expanded their sense of belonging to a global Black fellowship, however widely dispersed.

 

Shadows, Reflections, and Abstractions

Kamoinge has often been associated with street photography, but abstraction was also a crucial part of their work. By the time they joined the group, Louis Draper, Al Fennar, and Adger Cowans were already making abstract images in addition to more recognisably documentary pictures. In the late 1960s and into the early 1970s, many of the other members began to follow suit. Workshop photographers pushed themselves and the medium by experimenting with new forms and ideas. Through careful cropping, framing, and printing techniques, Kamoinge artists defamiliarised everyday sights such as puddles and clouds, asphalt, and weathered walls. Their images encourage greater attention to commonplace subjects – the reflective glass of shop windows, worn advertisements on city streets, a dirtied pile of salt – that might otherwise be overlooked. Much of their work with shadows and reflections centers Black bodies seeking a place for themselves amid the ebb and flow of daily life.

 

Kamoinge’s Legacy

Kamoinge Workshop members supported not just one another but also the broader community of Black photographers. In 1973 Beuford Smith founded the Black Photographers Annual, a publication that helped bring attention to artists outside the Kamoinge circle. In 1978, other members started a group called International Black Photographers, which honoured the work of photography elders and encouraged younger generations. Neither endeavour was part of the workshop’s official activities, but each grew out of the members’ ambition to serve and promote Black artists. Following their exhibitions in the mid-1970s, the Kamoinge Workshop neither organised exhibitions nor produced publications again until the mid-1990s. The group never disbanded, however, and the members remained close. They resumed formal meetings in 1992, applied for nonprofit status, and renamed themselves Kamoinge, Inc. A subsequent influx of new members energised the group as they continued the work that began in 1963.

Exhibition texts adapted from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts publication Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop published as “Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop” on the J. Paul Getty Museum website [Online] Cited 31/08/2022

 

Albert Fennar (American, 1938-2018) 'Salt Pile' 1971

 

Albert Fennar (American, 1938-2018)
Salt Pile
1971
Gelatin silver print
Framed [outer dim]: 52.1 × 41.9cm (20 1/2 × 16 1/2 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Gift of Mrs. Alfred duPont, by exchange
© Miya Fennar and the Albert R. Fennar Archive

 

Albert Fennar (American, 1938-2018) 'Sphere' 1974

 

Albert Fennar (American, 1938-2018)
Sphere
1974
Gelatin silver print
Framed [outer dim]: 52.1 × 41.9cm (20 1/2 × 16 1/2 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Gift of Mrs. Alfred duPont, by exchange
© Miya Fennar and The Albert R. Fennar Archive

 

Herman Howard (American, 1942-1980) 'March on Washington' 1963

 

Herman Howard (American, 1942-1980)
March on Washington
1963
Gelatin silver print
14.8 × 23.8cm (5 13/16 × 9 3/8 in.)
Collection of Herb Robinson
Digital image courtesy Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

 

Herman Howard (American, 1942-1980) 'New York' 1960s

 

Herman Howard (American, 1942-1980)
New York
1960s
Gelatin silver print 16 × 23.3cm (6 5/16 × 9 3/16 in.)
Collection of Herb Robinson
Digital image courtesy Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

 

James Mannas (American, b. 1941) 'No Way Out, Harlem, NYC' 1964

 

James Mannas (American, b. 1941)
No Way Out, Harlem, NYC
1964
Gelatin silver print
22.7 × 16.2cm (8 15/16 × 6 3/8 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© James Mannas

 

James Mannas (American, b. 1941) 'Peeping Sea Wall Beach Boy, Georgetown, Guyana' 1972

 

James Mannas (American, b. 1941)
Peeping Sea Wall Beach Boy, Georgetown, Guyana
1972
Gelatin silver print
23.8 × 15.9cm (9 3/8 × 6 1/4 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© James Mannas

 

Herbert Randall (American, born 1936) 'Untitled (Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Freedom Summer)' 1964

 

Herbert Randall (American, born 1936)
Untitled (Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Freedom Summer)
1964
Gelatin silver print
34.3 × 22.9cm (13 1/2 × 9 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© Herbert Randall

 

Herbert Randall (American, born 1936) 'Untitled (Bed-Stuy, New York)' 1960s

 

Herbert Randall (American, born 1936)
Untitled (Bed-Stuy, New York)
1960s
Gelatin silver print
33.7 × 23.3cm (13 1/4 × 9 3/16 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© Herbert Randall

 

Herb Robinson (American, active since 1960s) 'Miles Davis at the Vanguard' 1961, printed later

 

Herb Robinson (American, active since 1960s)
Miles Davis at the Vanguard
1961, printed later
Gelatin silver print
35.3 × 25cm (13 7/8 × 9 13/16 in.)
Getty Museum
© Herb Robinson, courtesy Bruce Silverstein Gallery

 

Herb Robinson (American, active since 1960s) 'Brother and Sister' 1973

 

Herb Robinson (American, active since 1960s)
Brother and Sister
1973
Gelatin silver print
16.5 × 22.9cm (6 1/2 × 9 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© Herb Robinson

 

Herb Robinson (American, active since 1960s) 'Central Park, Kids' 1961

 

Herb Robinson (American, active since 1960s)
Central Park, Kids
1961
Gelatin silver print
33.8 × 23.5cm (13 5/16 × 9 1/4 in.)
Collection of Herb Robinson
© Herb Robinson

 

Herb Robinson (American, active since 1960s) 'The Girls' 1969

 

Herb Robinson (American, active since 1960s)
The Girls
1969
Gelatin silver print
8.6 × 21.3cm (3 3/8 × 8 3/8 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© Herb Robinson

 

Beuford Smith (American, b. 1941) 'Two Bass Hit, Lower East Side' 1972

 

Beuford Smith (American, b. 1941)
Two Bass Hit, Lower East Side
1972
Gelatin silver print
23.8 × 34.3cm (9 3/8 × 13 1/2 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© Beuford Smith/Césaire

 

Beuford Smith (American, b. 1941) 'Boy on Swing, Lower East Side' 1970

 

Beuford Smith (American, b. 1941)
Boy on Swing, Lower East Side
1970
Gelatin silver print
17.3 × 25.1cm (6 13/16 × 9 7/8 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© Beuford Smith

 

 

Interviews with Kamoinge Artists

Interviewed by video during the pandemic, Kamoinge artists reflect on their experience with the group and the ongoing significance of their work together.

Video includes subtitles/closed captions in English and Spanish. Footage courtesy of the artists and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Adapted by the J. Paul Getty Museum

 

Ming Smith (American, active since 1970s) 'America Seen through Stars and Stripes, New York City, New York' About 1976

 

Ming Smith (American, active since 1970s)
America Seen through Stars and Stripes, New York City, New York
About 1976
Gelatin silver print
31.8 × 47cm (12 1/2 × 18 1/2 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund
© Ming Smith

 

Ming Smith (American, active since 1970s) 'Untitled (Harlem, NY)' About 1973

 

Ming Smith (American, active since 1970s)
Untitled (Harlem, NY)
About 1973
Gelatin silver print
31.8 × 22.2cm (12 1/2 × 8 3/4 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund
© Ming Smith

 

Ming Smith (American, active since 1970s) 'Love Barber Shop Jazz, Pittsburgh, PA' 1992

 

Ming Smith (American, active since 1970s)
Love Barber Shop Jazz, Pittsburgh, PA
1992
Gelatin silver print
46.2 x 31.8cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Ming Smith

 

Shawn Walker (American, b. 1940) 'Harlem, 117th Street' About 1960

 

Shawn Walker (American, b. 1940)
Harlem, 117th Street
About 1960
Gelatin silver print
18.4 × 12.7cm (7 1/4 × 5 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Aldine S. Hartman Endowment Fund
© Shawn Walker PhotoArts Studio

 

Shawn Walker (American, b. 1940) 'Family on Easter, Harlem, NY' 1975

 

Shawn Walker (American, b. 1940)
Family on Easter, Harlem, NY
1975
Gelatin silver print
11 × 15.9cm (4 5/16 × 6 1/4 in.)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Kathleen Boone Samuels Memorial Fund
© Shawn Walker

 

Shawn Walker (American, b. 1940) 'Women in the Field, Cuba' 1968

 

Shawn Walker (American, b. 1940)
Women in the Field, Cuba
1968
Gelatin silver print
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment
© Shawn Walker

 

 

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

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

The J. Paul Getty Museum website

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16
May
20

European photographic research tour: V&A Photography Centre, London

Visited October 2019 posted May 2020

 

Unknown photographer. 'Photograph of Allied War exhibition, Serbian Section, V&A' 1917

 

Unknown photographer
Photograph of Allied War exhibition, Serbian Section, V&A (installation view)
1917
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

The older I grow, the more exponentially I appreciate and love these early photographs. Imagine having a collection like this!

Wonderful to see Edward Steichen’s Portrait – Lady H (1908, below) as I have a copy of Camera Work 22 in my collection.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

.
All iPhone images by Dr Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

 

 

The V&A has been collecting photographs since 1856, the year the Museum was founded, and it was one of the first museums to present photography exhibitions. Since then the collection has grown to be one of the largest and most important in the world, comprising around 500,000 images. The V&A is now honoured to have added the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection to its holdings, which contains around 270,000 photographs, an extensive library, and 6,000 cameras and pieces of equipment associated with leading artists and photographic pioneers.

Take a behind-the-scenes look at our world class photography collection following the transfer of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Collection, which has enabled a dramatic reimagining of the way photography is presented at the V&A. The photographs curators introduce a series of five highlights that are on display in the new Photography Centre, which opened on 12th October 2018. The first phase of the centre will more than double the space dedicated to photography at the Museum.

Text from the V&A and YouTube websites

 

Unknown photographer. 'Photograph of Allied War exhibition, Serbian Section, V&A' 1917

 

Unknown photographer
Photograph of Allied War exhibition, Serbian Section, V&A (installation view)
1917
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

The V&A has been collecting and exhibiting photographs since the 1850s. This image shows part o a photographic exhibition held over 100 years ago in the same galleries you are standing in today. The exhibition presented a densely packed display of images depicting the Allied Powers during the First World War.

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation views of the V&A Photography Centre, London
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French, 1765-1833) 'Christ Carrying his Cross' 1827

 

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French, 1765-1833) 'Christ Carrying his Cross' 1827

 

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French, 1765-1833)
Christ Carrying his Cross (installation views)
1827
Heliograph on pewter plate
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

The French inventor Niépce made the earliest surviving photographic images, which he called ‘heliographs’ or ‘sun-writing’. Only 16 are thought to still exist. Although Niépce experimented with light-sensitive plates inside a camera, he made most of his images, including this one, by placing engravings of works by other artists directly onto a metal plate. He would probably have had the resulting heliographs coated in ink and printed.

 

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French, 1765-1833) 'Christ Carrying his Cross' 1827

 

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French, 1765-1833)
Christ Carrying his Cross (installation view)
1827
Heliograph on pewter plate
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-70) and Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-48) 'The Adamson Family' 1843-45

 

David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802-1870) and Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821-1848)
The Adamson Family (installation view)
1843-1845
Salted paper print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

The partnership between Scottish painter Hill and chemist Adamson merged the art and science of photography. The pair initially intended to create preliminary studies for Hill’s paintings, but soon recognised photography’s artistic potential. With Hill’s knowledge of composition and lighting, and Adamson’s considerable sensitivity and dexterity in handling the camera, together they produced some of the most accomplished photographic portraits of their time.

 

William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800-77) 'The Haystack' 1844

 

William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800-1877)
The Haystack
1844
From The Pencil of Nature
Salted paper print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum

 

Benjamin Brecknell Turner (British, 1815-94) 'Hedgerow Trees, Clerkenleap' 1852-54

 

Benjamin Brecknell Turner (British, 1815-94) 'Hedgerow Trees, Clerkenleap' 1852-54

 

Benjamin Brecknell Turner (British, 1815-1894)
Hedgerow Trees, Clerkenleap (installation views)
1852-1854
Albumen print; Calotype negative
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Turner took out a licence to practice ‘calotype’ photography from Talbot in 1848. He contact-printed positive images from paper negatives. The negative (below) and its corresponding positive (above) are reunited here to illustrate this process, but the pairing as you see them would not have been the photographer’s original intention for display. Although unique negatives were sometimes exhibited in their own right, only showing positive prints was the norm.

 

Benjamin Brecknell Turner (British, 1815-94) 'Hedgerow Trees, Clerkenleap' 1852-54

 

Benjamin Brecknell Turner (British, 1815-1894)
Hedgerow Trees, Clerkenleap (installation view)
1852-1854
Albumen print; Calotype negative
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-84) 'The Road to Chailly, Forest of Fontainebleau' 1852

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
The Road to Chailly, Forest of Fontainebleau (installation view)
1852
Albumen print from a collodion glass negative
Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation views of the V&A Photography Centre, London
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-84) 'The Marseillaise (The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792), by Francois Rude, 1833-35, Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, Paris' 1852

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
The Marseillaise (The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792), by Francois Rude, 1833-35, Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, Paris (installation view)
1852
Albumen print
Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-84) 'The Marseillaise (The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792), by Francois Rude, 1833-35, Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, Paris' 1852

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
The Marseillaise (The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792), by Francois Rude, 1833-35, Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, Paris (installation view)
1852
Albumen print
Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-69) 'Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup' 1860

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup (installation view)
1860
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Fenton was one of the most versatile and technically brilliant photographers of the 19th century. He excelled at many subjects, including war photography, portraiture, architecture and landscape. He also made a series of lush still lives. Here, grapes, plums and peaches are rendered in exquisite detail, and the silver cup on the right reflects a camera tripod.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-69) 'Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup' 1860

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup (installation view)
1860
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-69) 'Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup' 1860

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup (installation view)
1860
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-69) 'Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup' 1860 (detail)

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Parian Vase, Grapes and Silver Cup (installation view detail)
1860
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-69) 'Still Life with Fruit and Decanter' 1860

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Still Life with Fruit and Decanter
1860
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum

 

Oscar Gustaf Rejlander (British, born Sweden 1813-75) 'Head of St John the Baptist on a Charger' c. 1856

 

Oscar Gustaf Rejlander (British, born Sweden 1813-1875)
Head of St John the Baptist on a Charger (installation view)
c. 1856
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Rejlander probably intended this photograph to be part of a larger composition telling the biblical story of Salome, in which the severed head of John the Baptist was presented to her on a plate. Rejlander never made the full picture, however, and instead produced multiple prints of the head alone.

 

Oscar Gustaf Rejlander (British, born Sweden 1813-75) 'Head of St John the Baptist on a Charger' c. 1856

 

Oscar Gustaf Rejlander (British, born Sweden 1813-1875)
Head of St John the Baptist on a Charger (installation view)
c. 1856
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum

 

Francis Frith (British, 1822-98) 'Th', from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith 1858 (published 1860 or 1862)

 

Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898)
The Pyramids of Dahshoor [Dahshur], from the East, from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith (installation view)
1858 (published 1860 or 1862)
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Frith’s photographs were popular and circulated widely, both because of their architectural interest and because they often featured sites mentioned in the Bible. Photographs of places described in biblical stories brought a new level of realism to a Christian Victorian audience, previously only available through the interpretations of a painter or illustrator.

 

Francis Frith (British, 1822-98) 'Th', from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith 1858 (published 1860 or 1862)

 

Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898)
The Pyramids of Dahshoor [Dahshur], from the East, from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith (installation view)
1858 (published 1860 or 1862)
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Francis Frith (British, 1822-98) 'The Pyramids of Dahshoor [Dahshur], from the East, from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith' 1858 (published 1860 or 1862)

 

Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898)
The Pyramids of Dahshoor [Dahshur], from the East, from Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views by Francis Frith
1858 (published 1860 or 1862)
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-84) 'Solar Effect in the Clouds – Ocean' 1856-59

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Solar Effect in the Clouds – Ocean (installation view)
1856-1859
Albumen Print
Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-84) 'Solar Effect in the Clouds – Ocean' 1856-59

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Solar Effect in the Clouds – Ocean
1856-1859
Albumen Print
Art Institute of Chicago
Creative Commons Zero (CC0)

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-84) 'The Imperial Yacht, La Reine Hortense, Le Havre' 1856-57

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
The Imperial Yacht, La Reine Hortense, Le Havre (installation view)
1856-1857
Albumen print
Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-84) 'The Imperial Yacht, La Reine Hortense, Le Havre' 1856-57

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
The Imperial Yacht, La Reine Hortense, Le Havre (installation view)
1856-1857
Albumen print
Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-84) 'The Imperial Yacht, La Reine Hortense, Le Havre' 1856-57

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
The Imperial Yacht, La Reine Hortense, Le Havre
1856-1857
Albumen print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Public domain

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-84) 'Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris' 1857-59

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris (installation view)
1857-1859
Albumen print
Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-84) 'Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris' 1857-59

 

Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris (installation view)
1857-1859
Albumen print
Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-69) 'Balaclava from Guard’s Hill, the Crimea' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Balaclava from Guard’s Hill, the Crimea (installation view)
1855
Albumen print
Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-69) 'Balaclava from Guard’s Hill, the Crimea' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-69)
Balaclava from Guard’s Hill, the Crimea (installation view)
1855
Albumen print
Bequeathed to the V&A by Chauncey Hare Townshend
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815-1879) 'Lucia' 1864-65

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815-1879)
Lucia (installation view)
1864-1865
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Charles Lutwide Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll)(British, 1832-98) 'Tea Merchant (On Duty)' and 'Tea Merchant (Off Duty)' 1873

 

Charles Lutwide Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll)(British, 1832-1898)
Tea Merchant (On Duty) and Tea Merchant (Off Duty) (installation view)
1873
Albumen prints
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Lewis Carroll is best known as the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but he was also an accomplished amateur photographer. Approximately half of his photographs are portraits of children, sometimes wearing foreign costumes or acting out scenes. Here, Alexandra ‘Xie’ Kitchen, his most frequent child sitter, poses in Chinese dress on a stack of tea chests.

 

Charles Lutwide Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll)(British, 1832-98) 'Tea Merchant (On Duty)' 1873

 

Charles Lutwide Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll)(British, 1832-1898)
Tea Merchant (On Duty) (installation view)
1873
Albumen prints
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Charles Lutwide Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll)(British, 1832-98) 'Tea Merchant (Off Duty)' 1873

 

Charles Lutwide Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll)(British, 1832-1898)
Tea Merchant (Off Duty) (installation view)
1873
Albumen prints
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815-1879) 'Pomona' 1887

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815-1879)
Pomona (installation view)
1887
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

The South Kensington museum (now the V&A) was the only museum to collect and exhibit Julia Margaret Cameron’s during her lifetime. This is one of several studies she made of Alice Liddell, who as a child had modelled for the author and photographer Lewis Carroll and inspired his novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Cameron, Carroll and Liddell moved in overlapping artistic and intellectual circles. Here, surrounded by foliage, a grown-up Alice poses as the Roman goddess of orchards and gardens.

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815-1879) 'Pomona' 1887

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815-1879)
Pomona (installation view)
1887
Albumen print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Alvin Langdon Coburn (American 1882-1966) 'Frederick Holland Day' 1900

 

Alvin Langdon Coburn (American 1882-1966)
Frederick Holland Day (installation view)
1900
Gum platinum print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

The British-American photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic. Active in the early 20th century, he gained recognition from a young age as a talented photographer. His style ranged from the painterly softness of Pictorialism to the unusual vantage points and abstraction of Modernism. As well as being a practising photographer, Coburn was an avid collector. In 1930 he donated over 600 photographs to the Royal Photographic Society. The gift included examples of Coburn’s own work alongside that of his contemporaries, many of whom are now considered to be the most influential of their generation. Coburn also collected historic photographs, and was among the first in his time to rediscover and appreciate the work of 19th-century masters like Julia Margaret Cameron and Hill and Adamson.

 

Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933) 'Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia' 1905

 

Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933)
Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia (installation view)
1905
Gum platinum print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Day made this portrait when he visited the Hampton Institute in Virginia, which was founded after the American Civil War as a teacher-training school for freed slaves. The institute’s camera club invited Day to visit the school and critique the work of its students. Day’s friend and fellow photographer, Frederick Evans, donated this strikingly modern composition to the Royal Photographic Society in 1937.

 

Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933) 'Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia' 1905

 

Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933)
Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia (installation view)
1905
Gum platinum print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933) 'Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia' 1905

 

Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933)
Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia (installation view)
1905
Gum platinum print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933) 'Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia' 1905

 

Fredrick Holland Day (American, 1864-1933)
Head of a Girl, Hampton, Virginia
1905
Gum platinum print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum

 

Gertrude Käsebier (American, 1852-1934) 'The Letter' 1906

 

Gertrude Käsebier (American, 1852-1934)
The Letter
1906
Platinum print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum

 

 

Käsebier studied painting before opening a photography studio in New York. Her Pictorialist photographs often combine soft focus with experimental printing techniques. These sisters were dressed in historic costume for a ball, but their pose transforms a society portrait into a narrative picture. In a variant image, they turn to look at the framed silhouette on the wall.

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation views of the V&A Photography Centre, London
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Francis James Mortimer (British, 1874-1944) 'Alvin Langdon Coburn at the Opening of His One-Man Exhibition the Royal Photographic Society, London' 1906

 

Francis James Mortimer (British, 1874-1944)
Alvin Langdon Coburn at the Opening of His One-Man Exhibition the Royal Photographic Society, London (installation view)
1906
Carbon print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Annie Wardrope Brigman (American, 1869-1950) 'The Spirit of Photography' c. 1908

 

Annie Wardrope Brigman (American, 1869-1950)
The Spirit of Photography
c. 1908
Platinum print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum

 

Alvin Langdon Coburn (American 1882-1966) 'Kensington Gardens' 1910

 

Alvin Langdon Coburn (American 1882-1966)
Kensington Gardens (installation view)
1910
Platinum print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Cover of 'Camera Work'

 

Cover of Camera Work Number XXVI (installation view)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) 'Portrait – Lady H' 1908

 

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Portrait – Lady H (installation view)
1908
Camera Work 22
1908
Photogravure
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) 'Portrait – Lady H' 1908

 

Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973)
Portrait – Lady H
1908
Camera Work 22
1908
Photogravure
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum

 

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976) 'New York' 1916

 

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
New York (installation view)
1916
Camera Work 48
1916
Photogravure
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) was an American photographer, publisher, writer and gallery owner. From 1903-1917, he published the quarterly journal Camera Work, which featured portfolios of exquisitely printed photogravures (a type of photograph printed in ink), alongside essays and reviews. Camera Work promoted photography as an art form, publishing the work of Pictorialist photographers who drew inspiration from painting, and reproducing 19th-century photographs. It also helped to introduce modern art to American audiences, including works by radical European painters such as Matisse and Picasso.

 

Alvin Langdon Coburn (American 1882-1966) 'Vortograph' 1917

 

Alvin Langdon Coburn (American 1882-1966)
Vortograph (installation view)
1917
Bromide print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Rudolph Koppitz. 'Movement Study' 1925

 

Rudolph Koppitz (American, 1884-1936)
Bewegungsstudie (Movement Study)
1926
Carbon print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum

 

 

Koppitz was a leading art photographer in Vienna between the two World Wars, as well as a master of complex printing processes, including the pigment, gum and broccoli process of transfer printing. Tis dynamic and sensual composition captures dancers from the Vienna State Opera Ballet frozen mid-movement.

 

Herbert Bayer (Austrian American, 1900-85) 'Shortly Before Dawn' 1932-39

 

Herbert Bayer (Austrian American, 1900-85)
Shortly Before Dawn (installation view)
1932-39
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Bayer had a varied and influential career as a designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director and architect. He taught at the Bauhaus school in Dessau, Germany, and later began to use photomontage, both in his artistic and advertising work. Using this process, he combined his photographs with found imagery, producing surreal or dreamlike pictures.

 

Herbert Bayer (Austrian American, 1900-85) 'Shortly Before Dawn' 1932-39

 

Herbert Bayer (Austrian American, 1900-85)
Shortly Before Dawn (installation view)
1932-39
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Bernard Eilers (Dutch, 1878-1951) 'Reguliersbreestraat, Amsterdam' 1934

 

Bernard Eilers (Dutch, 1878-1951)
Reguliersbreestraat, Amsterdam (installation view)
1934
Foto-choma Eilers
Given by Joan Luckhurst Eilers
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

In the 1930s, the Dutch photographer Bernard Eilers developed an experimental new photographic colour separation process known as ‘Foto-chroma Eilers’. Although the process was short-lived, Eilers successfully used this technique to produce prints like this of great intensity and depth of colour. Here, the misty reflections and neon lights create an atmospheric but modern view of a rain-soaked Amsterdam at night.

 

Bernard Eilers (Dutch, 1878-1951) 'Reguliersbreestraat, Amsterdam' 1934

 

Bernard Eilers (Dutch, 1878-1951)
Reguliersbreestraat, Amsterdam (installation view)
1934
Foto-choma Eilers
Given by Joan Luckhurst Eilers
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958) 'Valentine to Charis' 1935

 

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Valentine to Charis (installation view)
1935
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

When Weston met the model and writer Charis Wilson in 1934, he was immediately besotted. This valentine to her contains a cluster of objects arranged as a still life, including the photographer’s camera lens and spectacles. Some of the objects seem to hold a special significance that only the lovers could understand. The numbers on the right possibly refer to their ages – there were almost thirty years between them.

 

Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999) 'Portrait of Gabrielle ('Coco') Chanel' 1937

 

Horst P. Horst (German-American, 1906-1999)
Portrait of Gabrielle (‘Coco’) Chanel
1937
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum

Variant, American Vogue, 1 December 1937, p. 86: ‘Fashion: Mid-Season Prophecies’

Caption reads: Chanel in her fitted, three-quarters coat / Mademoiselle Chanel, in one of her new coats that are making the news – a three quarters coat buttoned tightly and trimmed with astrakham like her cap. 01/12/1937

 

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965) 'Women with headscarf, 'McCall’s' Cover, July 1938' 1938

 

Nickolas Muray (American, 1892-1965)
Women with headscarf, McCall’s Cover, July 1938 (installation view)
1938
Tricolour carbro print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum

 

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) 'Hardware Store' 1938

 

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Hardware Store (installation view)
1938
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Between 1935 and 1939, the Federal Art Project emptied Abbott to make a series of photographs entitled Changing New York, documenting the rapid development and urban transformation of the city. This picture shows the facade of a downtown hardware store, its wares arranged in a densely-packed window display with extend onto the pavement.

 

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) 'Hardware Store' 1938

 

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Hardware Store (installation view)
1938
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) 'Hardware Store' 1938

 

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Hardware Store
1938
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-75) 'Photographs of African masks, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York' 1935

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-75)
Photographs of African masks, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (installation view)
1935
Gelatin silver prints
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

In 1935, the Museum of Modern Art commissioned Evans to photograph objects in its major exhibition of African art. Using his 8 x 10 inch view camera, he highlighted the artistry and detail of the objects, alternating between front, side and rear views. In total, Evans produced 477 images, and 17 complete sets of them were printed. Several of these sets were donated to colleges and libraries in America, and the V&A bought one set in 1936 to better represent African art in its collection.

The term ‘negro’ is given here in its original historical context.

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-75) 'Photograph of African mask, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York' 1935

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-75)
Photograph of African mask, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (installation view)
1935
Gelatin silver prints
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-75) 'Photograph of African mask, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York' 1935

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-75)
Photograph of African mask, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (installation view)
1935
Gelatin silver prints
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-75) 'Photograph of African mask, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York' 1935

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-75)
Photograph of African mask, from an exhibition entitled African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (installation view)
1935
Gelatin silver prints
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Bill Brandt (British, 1904-83) 'Dubuffet’s Right Eye, Alberto Giacometti’s Left Eye, Louise Nevelson’s Eye, Max Ernst’s Left Eye' 1960-63

 

Bill Brandt (British, 1904-1983)
Dubuffet’s Right Eye
Alberto Giacometti’s Left Eye
Louise Nevelson’s Eye
Max Ernst’s Left Eye (installation view)
1960-1963
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Bill Brandt (British, 1904-83) 'Dubuffet’s Right Eye' 1960-63

 

Bill Brandt (British, 1904-83)
Dubuffet’s Right Eye (installation view)
1960-1963
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

German-born Brandt moved to London in the 1930s. In his long and varied career, he made many compelling portraits of people including Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas, the Sitwell family, Robert Graves and E.M. Forster. For this series he photographed the eyes of well-known artists over several years, creating a substantial collection of intense and unique portraits. The pictures play upon ideas of artistic vision and the camera lens, which acts as a photographer’s ‘mechanical eye’.

 

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976) 'Simple Still Life, Egg' 1950

 

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Simple Still Life, Egg (installation view)
1950
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Throughout his career, Sudek used various photographic styles but always conveyed an intensely lyrical vision of the world. Here, his formal approach to a simple still life presents a poetic statement, and evokes an atmosphere of contemplation. Sudek’s motto and advice to his students – ‘hurry slowly’ – encapsulates his legendary patience and the sense of meditative stillness in his photographs.

 

Otto Steiner (German, 1915-78) 'Luminogram' 1952

 

Otto Steiner (German, 1915-1978)
Luminogram (installation view)
1952
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Otto Steiner (German, 1915-78) 'Luminogram' 1952

 

Otto Steiner (German, 1915-1978)
Luminogram (installation view)
1952
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943) 'True Color' 1974-87

 

Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943) 'True Color' 1974-87

 

Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943)
True Color (installation views)
1974-1987
Portfolio of thirty dye transfer prints, printed in 2007
American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of The Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Known for his dynamic street photography, Cohen’s work presents a fragmented, sensory image of his hometown of Wiles-Barre, Pennsylvania. This set of pictures was taken at a time when colour photography was just beginning to be recognised as a fine art. Until the 1970s, colour had largely been associated with other advertising or family snapshots, and was not thought of as a legitimate medium for artists. Cohen and other photographers like William Eggleston transferred this perception using the dye-transfer printing process. Although complicated and time-consuming, the technique results in vibrant and high quality colour prints.

 

Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943) 'True Color' 1974-87

 

Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943)
True Color (installation view detail)
1974-1987
Portfolio of thirty dye transfer prints, printed in 2007
American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of The Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943) 'True Color' 1974-87

 

Mark Cohen (American, b. 1943)
True Color (installation view detail)
1974-1987
Portfolio of thirty dye transfer prints, printed in 2007
American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of The Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Graham Smith (British, b. 1947) 'What she wanted & who she got' 1982

 

Graham Smith (British, b. 1947)
What she wanted & who she got (installation view)
1982
Gelatin silver print
The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Since the 1980s, Graham Smith has been photographing his hometown of South Bank near Middlesbrough. His images convey his deep sensitivity towards the effects of changing working conditions on the former industrial north-east. In this photograph, despite the suggested humour of the title, we are left wondering who the couple are and what the nature of their relationship might be.

 

Jan Kempenaers (b. 1968) 'Spomenik #3' 2006

 

Jan Kempenaers (Belgian, b. 1968)
Spomenik #3
2006
C-type print

 

The Kosmaj monument in Serbia is dedicated to soldiers of the Kosmaj Partisan detachment from World War II.

 

Jan Kempenaers (b. 1968) 'Spomenik #4' 2007

 

Jan Kempenaers (Belgian, b. 1968)
Spomenik #4
2007
C-type print

 

This monument, authored by sculptor Miodrag Živković, commemorates the Battle of Sutjeska, one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in the former Yugoslavia.

 

 

Kempenaers toured the balkans photographing ‘Spomeniks’ – monuments built in former Yugoslavia in the 1960s and ’70s on the sites of Second World War battles and concentration camps. Some have been vandalised in outpourings of anger against the former regime, while others are well maintained. In Kempenaers’ photographs, the monuments appear otherworldly, as if dropped from outer space into a pristine landscape.

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London

 

Installation view of the V&A Photography Centre, London
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
London
SW7 2RL
Phone: +44 (0)20 7942 2000

Opening hours:
Daily 10.00 – 17.30
Friday 10.00 – 21.30

V&A website

V&A Photography Centre website

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14
May
19

Exhibition: ‘The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day’ at ONE Gallery, West Hollywood, California

Exhibition dates: 1st March – 17th May 2019

Curator: David J. Getsy

 

 

Greg Day. 'Stephen Varble in the Suit of Armor' October 1975, printed 2018

 

Greg Day (American, b. 1944)
Stephen Varble in the Suit of Armor
October 1975, printed 2018
Digital print
© Greg Day 2019

 

 

“Varble’s total irreverence is no more evident than in his willingness to “cross party lines,” as he did when he wore his Suit of Armor, constructed with gold VO labels from Seagram’s boxes, to both the 1975 Easter Parade and to West Village leather bars! He was an equal opportunity offender, rubbing up against conformity in all forms.”

Bob Nickas. “Stephen Varble: Now More Than Ever,” on the Affidavit website [Online] Cited 10/04/2019

 

 

Confusing queen reigns, on parade

I love doing these posts on artists that certainly I, and I suspect a lot of the readers of this website, would have never have heard of. Artists full of spunk, full of daring-do, artists who rise to challenge the patrons of patriarchy, and the colluders of capitalism (Varble became ever-more critical of commodification and capitalism). Artists who declaim the value of the individual, who shine a light on the plight of the downtrodden and those discriminated against. Can you not once bring yourself to utter the word “AIDS” you bigoted president?

In an era of reactionary religious and right wing hypocrisy – Christian sleaze and paedophilia anyone, anti-Muslim and anti-gay Facebook posts in the Australian election, murderous right wing rampage in New Zealand – now more than ever, we need artists like Stephen Varble (American, 1946-1984). Human beings that speak up and speak out against bigotry, discrimination, and awful men in high places.

“Varble made the recombination of signs for gender a central theme in his increasingly outrageous costumes and performances… [He] sought to make a place for himself outside of art’s institutions and mainstream cultures all the while critiquing them both.” Australian artists such as Leigh Bowery and Brenton Heath-Kerr have a lot to thank Varble for.

He might have risen from the gutter, but his intentions were full of stars.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

 

 

Varble’s work wasn’t drag in the conventional cross-dressing sense, or “gay art,” which was often defined from a predominantly masculine perspective in the immediate post-Stonewall years. His intention was to stretch and break down the very idea of binary identities, confuse the concept of gender, leave it optional. And this goal puts him well in the framework of queer and transgender thinking now. …

For a series of mid-1970s performances he called “Gutter Art,” he would arrive, elaborately dressed, by limousine (paid for by a Japanese patron, Miyazaki Morihiro) in front of luxury stores on the Upper East Side. Once parked, he unloaded old kitchen utensils from the trunk and started washing them with black ink, as if referring to the domestic life of sweatshop labor. He soon gained notoriety as a kind of cultural terrorist. (Tiffany’s hired guards to keep him out.) He turned up, uninvited, at red carpet events – film premieres, the Met’s Costume Institute gala – to dazzle and deride the guests.

.
Holland Cotter. “Stephen Varble: The Street Was His Stage, the Dress Was His Weapon,” on The New York Times website January 10, 2019 [Online] Cited 10/04/2019

 

 

Greg Day. 'Stephen Varble in the Demonstration Costume with Only One Shoe (for the Chemical Bank Protest)' 22 March 1976, printed 2018

 

Greg Day (American, b. 1944)
Stephen Varble in the Demonstration Costume with Only One Shoe (for the Chemical Bank Protest)
22 March 1976, printed 2018
Digital print
© Greg Day 2019

 

 

“A chauffeured Rolls Royce glides glacially to the curb in front of the Chemical Bank at New York’s Sheridan Square. The uniformed driver, out in an instant, holds open the passenger door. Rather than a well-heeled person to which such a car would belong, a more hallucinatory sight will emerge, equally glamorous and ridiculous. Two legs appear, only one of which has a shoe. The full length of the body gradually appears, improbably covered in netting and not much else, the entwined nets adorned with crumpled bills. What seem to be bare breasts droop from the chest of a figure of otherwise unidentifiable gender, further confused by a toy fighter jet, poised for takeoff, at crotch level. While no words are spoken, a cartoon speech bubble overhead proclaims, cheerily but with a disgruntled undertow: Even Though You May Be Forged, Chemical Still Banks Best!”

Bob Nickas. “Stephen Varble: Now More Than Ever,” on the Affidavit website [Online] Cited 10/04/2019

 

The Chemical Bank Protest was Varble’s most notorious and widely reported disruption, and it encapsulated his disdain for commerce, capitalism, and propriety. To contest a forgery against him, Varble went to the Sheridan Square bank to demand his money returned. He created his Demonstration Costume with Only One Shoe from Christmas tree packaging, gold leaf wrappers, and fake money. His costumes often combined different signs of gender, and here he wore tow condoms filled with cow’s blood for breasts and a toy jet fighter as a codpiece. The toy referenced the plane ticket the forger purchase with the money, and one shoe was missing to “symbolise his economic loss.” Hovering over his head, a speech bubble touted, “Even Though You May Be Forged, Chemical Still Banks Best!”

Varble’s performances often affected an ironic enthusiasms for his targets (be it a bank, a boutique, a gallery, or a presidential candidate), and his insincere flattery was meant to provide cover for his disruption of business as usual.

Arriving in a borrowed limousine, Varble boldly entered to make his demands as the line of customers at the teller window gawked. On being told by the manager that he could not be helped, Varble punctured the blood-filled condoms and dipped a pen in the spilled blood to write checks (for “none-million dollars”) in his dramatic, mime-like movements before sweeping out to the sound of applause from the customers.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

“Varble began to truly set himself apart from other gender-focused 1970s performance artists with his outré 1976 performance at Chemical Bank in Sheridan Square. After hearing that someone had forged his signature and emptied out his bank account, Varble walked into the bank dressed in fake money, with breasts made out of condoms and filled with cow’s blood. He demanded his money back. When the bank teller could not comply, Varble punctured his condom-breasts, spilling blood all over the floor, and wrote checks in blood for “none-million dollars,” which he addressed to his companion at the bank, Peter Hujar. The exhibition includes a photograph Hujar took that day, evoking a time when the lax security in banks allowed artists to perform and express themselves, however outrageously (although Varble was then escorted out of the cow’s blood-filled bank by security).”

Extract from Michael Valinsky. “A Forgotten Precursor of Genderqueer Performance Art,” in Hyperallergic website [Online] Cited 14/05/219

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day' at ONE Gallery

Installation view of the exhibition 'The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day' at ONE Gallery

 

Installation views of the exhibition The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day at ONE Gallery

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day' at ONE Gallery

 

Installation view of the exhibition The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day at ONE Gallery showing, at left top, Greg Day’s Stephen Varble with the Enormous Pink Satin and baby Doll (1975); left below Stephen Varble Performing in a Garbage Can at his Loft on Franklin Street (1975); and at centre, Closing Party with Varble’s Enormous Pink Satin Skirt (1975)

 

 

Franklin Street Exhibition and Party Performance

in 1976, Varble organised an exhibition of his own work in the loft her share with Jim McWilliams on Franklin Street. He painted the interiors pink, built large decorations, and displayed all his costumes on cut-out mannequins mounted on the walls. The largest piece in the exhibition was a new work the Enormous Pink Satin Skirt, some fifteen feet in length. The object played a central role in the “Gala Ending” party that closed the exhibition, as can be seen in the photograph (main above). For this major event Varble enlisted the help of established gender non-conforming performers such as Mario Montez, Jackie Curtis, and Taylor Mead to act as living mannequins for his most iconic costumes. Modelling Varble’s art they paraded with his satin silhouette dolls through the crowd and did impromptu performances – such as when Agusta Machado enacted a campy drama of claustrophobia in Varble’s refrigerator. Day was there to capture the wild party, managing to take individual portraits of some of the major performers in attendance…

In the midst of the playful chaos, Varble gathered these Warhol stars and others (such as Paul Ambrose and New York drag personality Ruth Truth) inside the Enormous Pink Satin Skirt, and at a designated time they al burst forth dancing. As the exhibition gave attendees a retrospective view of his output the performance provided a testament to Varble’s place in the queer performance culture of New York. As the art critic Gregory Battock remarked, “It was the kind of event only Stephen Varble could have planned: chaotic, meandering, spurious and very New York […] Even though invitations were hard to come by, everybody was there.”

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day' at ONE Gallery

 

Installation view of the exhibition The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day at ONE Gallery with, from left, Greg Day’s Stephen Varble Destroying his Blue and Green Corrugated Paper Dress from the Camera (October 1975); Stephen Varble in the Elizabethan Farthingale; and Stephen Varble in the Suit of Armor

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day' at ONE Gallery

 

Installation view of the exhibition The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day at ONE Gallery

 

'Stephen Varble, Gutter Art flyer' [recto] 1975

 

Stephen Varble, Gutter Art flyer [recto]
1975
Xerographic print on paper
Courtesy Greg Day and the Leslie-Lohman Museum
Photo: Courtesy Greg Day and the Leslie-Lohman Museum

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day' at ONE Gallery

 

Installation view of the exhibition The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day at ONE Gallery

 

Greg Day. 'Stephen Varble in the Elizabethan Farthingale' October 1975, printed 2018

 

Greg Day (American, b. 1944)
Stephen Varble in the Elizabethan Farthingale
October 1975, printed 2018
Digital print
© Greg Day, 2019

 

 

In costumes made from street trash, food waste, and stolen objects, Stephen Varble (1946-1984) took to the streets of 1970s New York City to perform his “Gutter Art.” With disruption as his aim, he led uninvited costumed tours through the galleries of SoHo, occupied Fifth Avenue gutters, and burst into banks and boutiques in his gender-confounding ensembles. Varble made the recombination of signs for gender a central theme in his increasingly outrageous costumes and performances. While maintaining he/him as his pronouns, Varble performed gender as an open question in both his life and his work, sometimes identifying as a female persona, Marie Debris, and sometimes playing up his appearance as a gay man. Only later would the term “genderqueer” emerge to describe the kind of self-made, non-binary gender options that Varble adopted throughout his life and in his disruptions of the 1970s art world.

At the pinnacle moment of Varble’s public performances, the photographer Greg Day (b. 1944) captured the inventiveness and energy of his genderqueer costume confrontations. Trained as an artist and anthropologist and with a keen eye for documenting ephemeral culture as it flourished, Day took hundreds of photographs of Varble’s trash couture, public performances, and events in 1975 and 1976. Varble understood the importance of photographers, and Day was his most important photographic collaborator. This exhibition brings together a selection of Day’s photographs of Varble performing his costume works and also includes Day’s photographs of Varble’s friends and collaborators such as Peter Hujar, Jimmy DeSana, Shibata Atsuko, Agosto Machado, and Warhol stars Jackie Curtis, Taylor Mead, and Mario Montez.

Varble sought to make a place for himself outside of art’s institutions and mainstream cultures all the while critiquing them both. The story of Varble told through Day’s photographs is both about their synergistic artistic friendship and about the queer networks and communities that made such an anti-institutional and genderqueer practice imaginable. Together, Varble and Day worked to preserve the radical potential of Gutter Art for the future.

The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble builds upon the 2018 retrospective exhibition of Stephen Varble’s work at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, titled Rubbish and Dreams: The Genderqueer Performance Art of Stephen Varble, as featured in the New York Times on January 11, 2019. The new ONE Gallery exhibition, with its focus on the collaboration of Varble with the photographer Greg Day, will explore the ways in which Varble’s disruptive guerrilla performance art has lived on primarily through vibrant photographs that captured his inventive costumes, transformed trash, and public confrontations.

The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s photographs by Greg Day is curated by David J. Getsy, Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor of Art History at the  School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble is organised by the ONE Archives Foundation, Inc. Generous support is provided by the City of West Hollywood.

 

About the ONE Archives Foundation, Inc.

The ONE Archives Foundation, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) dedicated to telling the accurate and authentic stories of LGBTQ people, history and culture through public exhibitions, educational projects and trainings, and community outreach programs. Our exhibitions, school programs, and community outreach programs are free. We depend entirely on members of the public and private foundations for support.

Press release from the ONE Gallery [Online] Cited 10/04/2019

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day' at ONE Gallery

 

Installation view of the exhibition The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day at ONE Gallery showing, at left, a still from Stephen Varble’s video Journey to the Sun (1978-1983); and at right Greg Day’s Stephen Varble in the Piggy Bank Dress (1975)

 

Stephen Varble (American, 1946-1984)
Journey to the Sun
1978-1983
U-matic video transferred to digital, 2018
Courtesy David J. Getsy

 

 

Varble receded from the art world and from street performance around 1977, becoming ever-more critical of commodification and capitalism. As he told an interviewer that year, “This is the age of pornography and contempt. The dollar is good. […] The end of capitalism is coming.” Varble instead began to develop private performances and videos about his private mythologies and messianic dreams. His last five years were consumed with working on an epic, operatic work of video art: Journey to the Sun. It started in 1978 as a performance about the mythology of Greta Garbo, and Varble invited friends to his Riverside Drive apartment to view his monologues accompanied by project slides. His ambitions soon outgrew this format, and he turned to video for its ability to combine text, image and performance. He considered these videos to be revivals of illuminated Medieval manuscripts with their rich visual play between words and pictures, and he called his group of collaborators in the video the “Happy Arts School of Manuscript Illumination.” The aim of the “school” was to promote Varble’s vision of societal transformation through the making of modern fables in the form of videos, books, and prints. His “video books,” as he called the tapes, offered an “antidote to nature’s ruin on this heavenly globe.”

Journey to the Sun tells the story of a musician, the Grey Crowned Warbler, who undergoes tribulation and metamorphosis on a journey to transcendence. The tale is a loosely autobiographical fable of an artist who encounters a stern mystical teacher, Sage Purple Pythagoras (played by his partner, Daniel Cahill) who tests the Warbler. Many of Varble’s iconic costumes feature in the video, and he combined elements of his own history with references to literature, religion, and popular culture (notably, Garbo). Combining heavily scripted monologues with improvised performances. Journey to the Sun does not offer a tidy or easily understood narrative. Rather, it sketches a fantastic and surreal visual world in which dreams are realised through the transformations of everyday objects, popular imagery, and rubbish.

To make this “rodeo-paced” video, Varble filled his apartment with drawings and writings on the walls, blacked out the windows, and began filming scenes both scripted and improvised with collaborators. Journey to the Sun is remarkable for its time due to the complexity and density of the video editing – all of which was done by Varble in his apartment. He only completed about thirty percent of his planned work before his death from AIDS-related complications in January 1984. This screening copy presents a continuous segment of around 80 minutes that has been selected from the three surviving U-matic master tapes, but no changes have been made other than the choice of where to begin and end this combined excerpt. This is but a fragment of the much longer video epic Varble hoped would be his major contribution.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day' at ONE Gallery

 

Installation view of the exhibition The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s, photographs by Greg Day at ONE Gallery showing Stephen Varble’s Blue Boy

 

 

“One afternoon, Stephen invited me to accompany him to a performance in midtown Manhattan. He bought Blue Boy with him. We took the F train uptown from Washington Square. Sitting on the subway car bench and wearing his Chemical Bank Protest attire. Stephen hugged, kissed, fondled and poked Blue Boy. He spoke to him in an affectionate and sometimes argumentative language of moans, “ohs” and clicks. I sat across from him and watched as people entered the car. They stared, laughed, gasped, and made disparaging remarks about his sanity before moving to another part of the subway car. Even riding the train was an opportunity for Stephen to shock.”

Greg Day
Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Gutter Art: Stephen Varble and Genderqueer Performance on the Streets of 1970s New York with David J. Getsy from Leslie-Lohman Museum on Vimeo.

 

Greg Day. 'Stephen Varble at the 12th Annual Avant-Garde Festival' 1975

 

Greg Day (American, b. 1944)
Stephen Varble at the 12th Annual Avant-Garde Festival
1975
Digital print
© Greg Day 2019

 

 

ONE Gallery, West Hollywood
626 N. Robertson Boulevard
West Hollywood, CA 90069

Opening hours:
Temporarily closed

ONE Archives website

ONE Gallery, West Hollywood website

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20
Apr
19

Exhibition: ‘Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future’ at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Exhibition dates: 12th October 2018 – 23rd April 2019

Curators: Curated by Tracey Bashkoff, Director of Collections and Senior Curator, with the assistance of David Horowitz, Curatorial Assistant, and organised with the cooperation of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm.

 

The exhibition Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future has attracted more than 600,000 visitors since its opening, making it the most-visited show in the history of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The survey of Hilma af Klint’s work is the first major solo exhibition in the United States devoted to the Swedish artist.

“For me, the 2018-19 art season will always belong to the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944). I say this simply as a measure of the psychic and historical shift caused by the Guggenheim Museum’s extraordinary full-dress retrospective of her nearly 40-year career.” ~ Roberta Smith, The New York Times

 

 

Installation viInstallation view of the exhibition 'Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future', Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 12, 2018 - April 23, 2019

 

Installation view of the exhibition Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 12, 2018 – April 23, 2019
Photo: David Heald

 

 

What can one say…

Magical, mystical, enchanted; chakra, mandala, golden ratio; music, spirit, energy.

Af Klint imagined displaying these works in a spiral temple, but the building never came to fruition. Now they are displayed in the spiral of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. I think she would have been very pleased.

She stipulated that her paintings not be shown for 20 years following her death, convinced the world was not ready for them. She was probably correct in that assumption. But now, now we are ravished by her creativity and prescience.

If she only knew how much she is now loved and adored. An enigmatic star that burns so very bright in the cosmos.

For Joyce Evans

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

 

 

 

 

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece' (Grupp X, nr 1, Altarbild) 1915 (detail)

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece (Grupp X, nr 1, Altarbild) (detail)
1915
From Altarpieces (Altarbilder)
Oil and metal leaf on canvas
237.5 x 179.5cm
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece' (Grupp X, nr 1, Altarbild) 1915

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece (Grupp X, nr 1, Altarbild)
1915
From Altarpieces (Altarbilder)
Oil and metal leaf on canvas
237.5 x 179.5cm
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future', Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 12, 2018 - April 23, 2019

Installation view of the exhibition 'Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future', Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 12, 2018 - April 23, 2019

Installation view of the exhibition 'Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future', Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 12, 2018 - April 23, 2019

Installation view of the exhibition 'Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future', Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 12, 2018 - April 23, 2019

 

Installation views of the exhibition Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 12, 2018 – April 23, 2019
Photos: David Heald

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'The Ten Largest, No. 7., Adulthood, Group IV' [The age of men] 1907

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
The Ten Largest, No. 7., Adulthood, Group IV [The age of men]
1907
Tempera on paper mounted on canvas
315 x 235cm
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

 

 

From October 12, 2018, to April 23, 2019, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents the first major solo exhibition in the United States of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944). When af Klint began creating radically abstract paintings in 1906, they were like little that had been seen before: bold, colourful, and untethered from recognisable references to the physical world. It was several years before Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, and others would take similar strides to free their own artwork of representational content. Yet af Klint rarely exhibited her remarkably forward-looking paintings and, convinced the world was not ready for them, stipulated that they not be shown for 20 years following her death. Ultimately, her work was not exhibited until 1986, and it is only over the past three decades that her paintings and works on paper have received serious attention.

Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future offers an opportunity to experience af Klint’s artistic achievements in the Guggenheim’s rotunda more than a century after she began her daring work. Curated by Tracey Bashkoff, Director of Collections and Senior Curator, with the assistance of David Horowitz, Curatorial Assistant, and organised with the cooperation of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm, the exhibition features more than 170 of af Klint’s artworks and focus on the artist’s breakthrough years, 1906-20. It is during this period that she began to produce nonobjective and stunningly imaginative paintings, creating a singular body of work that invites a reevaluation of modernism and its development.

Hilma af Klint was born in Stockholm in 1862 and went on to study painting at the city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, graduating with honours in 1887. She soon established herself as a respected painter in Stockholm, exhibiting deftly rendered figurative paintings and serving briefly as secretary of the Society for Swedish Women Artists. During these years, she also became deeply engaged with spiritualism, Rosicrucianism, and Theosophy. These forms of spirituality, which were also of keen interest to other artists, including Kandinsky, František Kupka, Malevich, and Mondrian, were widely popular across Europe and the United States, as people sought to reconcile long-held religious beliefs with scientific advances and a new awareness of the global plurality of religions.

Af Klint developed her new approach to art making together with her spiritual practice, outside of Stockholm’s male-dominated art world. She had begun to regularly hold séances with four other women by 1896. During a meeting in 1906, one of the spirits that the group often channeled asked af Klint to create a cycle of paintings. Af Klint immediately accepted. She worked on the project between 1906 and 1915, completing 193 paintings and works on paper collectively called The Paintings for the Temple. These works, which included her first forays into non-objectivity, were a radical break from the more staid paintings she produced as part of her public practice. Stylistically, they are strikingly diverse, utilising biomorphic and geometric forms, expansive and intimate scales, and maximalist and reductivist approaches to composition and colour. She imagined installing them in a spiral temple, but the building never came to fruition. Af Klint described the final group of The Paintings for the Temple, called the Altarpieces, as “the summary of the series so far.” Recent research suggests this group of paintings was exhibited in 1928 at the World Conference of Spiritual Science and Its Practical Applications in London – the only known public display of The Paintings for the Temple during the artist’s lifetime. After she completed The Paintings for the Temple, af Klint continued to test the limits of her new abstract vocabulary. In these years, she experimented with form, theme, and seriality, creating some of her most incisive works.

 

Exhibition catalogue

Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue representing her groundbreaking painting series while expanding recent scholarship to present the fullest picture yet of her life and art. Edited by Tracey Bashkoff, the volume includes contributions by Tessel M. Bauduin, Daniel Birnbaum, Briony Fer, Vivien Greene, Ylva Hillström, David Max Horowitz, Andrea Kollnitz, Helen Molesworth, and Julia Voss. Essays explore the social, intellectual, and artistic context of af Klint’s 1906 break with figuration and her subsequent development, placing her in the context of Swedish modernism and folk art traditions, contemporary scientific discoveries, and spiritualist and occult movements. A roundtable discussion among contemporary artists, scholars, and curators considers af Klint’s sources and relevance to art in the 21st century. The volume also delves into her unrealised plans for a spiral-shaped temple in which to display her art – a wish that finds a fortuitous answer in the Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda, the site of the exhibition.

Press release from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum website [Online] Cited 11/03/2019

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'Untitled' 1920

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Untitled
1920
From On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees (Vid betraktande av blommor och träd)
Watercolor on paper
17.9 x 25cm
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'No. 1' (Nr 1) 1917 (detail)

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
No. 1 (Nr 1) (detail)
1917
From The Atom Series (Serie Atom)
Watercolor on paper
27 x 25cm
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'No. 1' (Nr 1) 1917

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
No. 1 (Nr 1)
1917
From The Atom Series (Serie Atom)
Watercolor on paper
27 x 25cm
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'Group IX/SUW, The Swan, No. 17' (Grupp IX/SUW, Svanen, nr 17) 1915

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Group IX/SUW, The Swan, No. 17 (Grupp IX/SUW, Svanen, nr 17)
1915
From The SUW/UW Series (Serie SUW/UW)
Oil on canvas
150.5 x 151cm
©  The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'Group IX/SUW, The Swan, No. 17' (Grupp IX/SUW, Svanen, nr 17) 1915 (detail)

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Group IX/SUW, The Swan, No. 17 (Grupp IX/SUW, Svanen, nr 17) (detail)
1915
From The SUW/UW Series (Serie SUW/UW)
Oil on canvas
150.5 x 151cm
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'No. 2a, The Current Standpoint of the Mahatmas' (Nr 2a, Mahatmernas nuvarande ståndpunkt)1920

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
No. 2a, The Current Standpoint of the Mahatmas (Nr 2a, Mahatmernas nuvarande ståndpunkt)
1920
From Series II (Serie II)
Oil on canvas, 36.5 x 27cm
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'Group I, Primordial Chaos, No. 16' (Grupp 1, Urkaos, nr 16) 1906-1907

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Group I, Primordial Chaos, No. 16 (Grupp 1, Urkaos, nr 16)
1906-1907
From The WU/Rose Series (Serie WU/Rosen)
Oil on canvas
53 x 37cm
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'Group V, The Seven-Pointed Star, No. 1n' (Grupp V, Sjustjärnan, nr 1) 1908

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Group V, The Seven-Pointed Star, No. 1n (Grupp V, Sjustjärnan, nr 1)
1908
From The WUS/Seven-Pointed Star Series (Serie WUS/Sjustjärnan)
Tempera, gouache and graphite on paper mounted on canvas
62.5 x 76cm
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'Tree of Knowledge, No. 5' (Kunskapens träd, nr 5) 1915 (detail)

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Tree of Knowledge, No. 5 (Kunskapens träd, nr 5) (detail)
1915
From The W Series (Serie W)
Watercolor, gouache, graphite and metallic paint on paper
18 1/16 x 11 5/8 inches (45.8 x 29.5cm)
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'Tree of Knowledge, No. 5' (Kunskapens träd, nr 5) 1915

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Tree of Knowledge, No. 5 (Kunskapens träd, nr 5)
1915
From The W Series (Serie W)
Watercolor, gouache, graphite and metallic paint on paper
18 1/16 x 11 5/8 inches (45.8 x 29.5cm)
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) 'Tree of Knowledge, No. 5' (Kunskapens träd, nr 5) 1915 (detail)

 

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Tree of Knowledge, No. 5 (Kunskapens träd, nr 5) (detail)
1915
From The W Series (Serie W)
Watercolor, gouache, graphite and metallic paint on paper
18 1/16 x 11 5/8 inches (45.8 x 29.5cm)
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

 

 

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 5th Avenue (at 89th Street)
New York

Opening hours:
Open daily 11am – 6pm
Saturdays until 8pm

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum website

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07
Oct
18

Exhibition: ‘African American Portraits: Photographs from the 1940s and 1950s’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Part 2

Exhibition dates: 26th June – 8th October 2018

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

“To the eye and spirit, pictures are just what poetry and music are to the ear and heart.”

“With the clear perception of things as they are, must stand the faithful rendering of things as they seem. The dead fact is nothing without the living expression.”

.
Frederick Douglass. “Pictures and Progress”

 

“True art, when it happens to us, challenges the ‘I’ that we are.”

.
Jeanette Winterson. “Art Objects,” in Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, 1996

 

 

Without worry … here ‘I am’

Part 2 of this glorious posting: mainly 1940s, African American “studio” portrait photography. Lets see what we can garner about these “studio” spaces by looking at the photographs. View Part 1 of the posting.

Firstly, they are very small, usually with bare floorboards, carpet or linoleum on the floor. Some (such as the photography of the man holding his child) are literally just big enough to pose and light the subject. As can be seen in the photograph of the lady holding a large handbag, the painted backdrops can be changed in and out, in this instance the scrim placed in front of another painted background. Notice also the worn lino in this photograph, where so many people have walked in an posed in this studio, in this very spot. Historically, painted backdrops have been used since the earliest days of photography, appearing in ambrotypes and tintypes of American Civil War soldiers. It would not surprise me is some of the studios from that time were still going in the 1940s.

Secondly, we can observe the lighting and depth of field. The lighting seems to be either by one or two lights (probably not moved between clients) that sit on axis, meaning there is a horizontal line between the light, the camera and the subject – a nearly horizontal light source. The depth of field is low, the camera probably pre-focused on the table, chair or pedestal within the studio space. Because of the small studio space, the subject placed up tight against the painted backdrop, and the low depth of field… there is a consequent flattening of the subject within the image plane. The photographs are either full figure standing, sitting or cropped closer at the waist.

While the idyllic painted backdrops add context to these studio portraits, it is the pose of the sitters that is so mesmerising in the photographs. These people were living in anxious, dangerous times – the Second World War, the Cold War, and the ever present racism against African Americans were some of the issues that they had to deal with – and yet they pose quite confidently for the camera, seemingly with no hidden agenda or deception. They are choosing to pose for their own reasons. As Jeff Rosenheim, the Met’s photography curator observes, “In these pictures, we see them in reflection of where they are and what their conditions are.”

I think there are a few things happening at once here. These studios give the impression that they are really joyous places. Is it the staff, or the need to document an important occasion like the birth of a child, a marriage, a graduation, or sisters, or is it something more intangible? The studios seem a great place to be. There is this JOY that seems to radiate off of the sitters and then there is a pride that is not referencing being accepted in a white community, but has layers of self containment / their own self, their friends, and something else.  

“You live the life you’ve got.” So says a character from one of my favourite British TV series Vera. And that is what these photographs picture – the life they are living, the life they have got. In these photographs there is a direct vision, direct seeing… and looking, which is what makes them so powerful and effective. Unlike contemporary popular portraits, blasted over the airwaves on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc. there is a direct connection to the lives of these people. While they lived in anxious times, their representation by the camera is clear and focused. Today our anxiety is more prescient, more at the forefront of out consciousness, our identity formation, the way we interact with the world. Who is looking and who is watching, and what is our image. Selfies on sticks or images in front of mirrors step to the front.

When looking at these photographs I have to ask, is there something here that is gone? Something we can remember yet has been sneakily stolen from us?

In contemporary portrait photography what has been stolen from us is the sense of joy, happiness, and intimacy in our own self, and how devolved we have become from the essence of our own being. The “dead pan” looks on people’s faces, the anxiety to get the right shot, the hands in the air with mobile phones to capture anything that is seen as worthwhile (just because you can) has become ubiquitous the world over. We have gone through a recent period of devolution and may need to regain lost ground, for what makes these photographs special – magical in the truest sense sense of the word – is that they just are. No ego from subject or photographer, no prejudice encroaching from the outside world, these people and their photographic trace just capture the essence of their being. Without worry… here ‘I am’.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

.
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.

 

This exhibition will present more than one hundred and fifty studio portraits of African Americans from the mid-twentieth century, part of an important recent acquisition by The Met. Produced by mostly unidentified makers, the photographs are a poignant, collective self portrait of the African American experience during the 1940s and 1950s – a time of war, middle-class growth, and seismic cultural change.

 

 

Charles "Teenie" Harris (1908-1998) 'John Davis after being beaten by police officer Dan McTague, in his home at 1303 Wylie Avenue, Hill District, August 1951' 1951

 

Charles “Teenie” Harris (American, 1908-1998)
John Davis after being beaten by police officer Dan McTague, in his home at 1303 Wylie Avenue, Hill District, August 1951
1951
Gelatin silver print

 

Charles "Teenie" Harris (1908-1998) 'Mary Reid holding threatening notes with swastikas and American Nazi Party propaganda, in July 1964' 1964

 

Charles “Teenie” Harris (American, 1908-1998)
Mary Reid holding threatening notes with swastikas and American Nazi Party propaganda, in July 1964
1964
Gelatin silver print

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

African American Portraits: Photographs from the 1940s and 1950s, on view June 26 through October 8, 2018, will present more than 150 studio portraits from the mid-20th century. The exhibition offers a seldom seen view of the African American experience in the United States during World War II and the following decade – a time of war, middle-class growth, and seismic cultural change. Part of an important acquisition made by The Met in 2015 and 2017, these photographs build on and expand the Museum’s strong holdings in portraiture from the beginning of photography in the 1840s to the present. The exhibition is made possible by the Alfred Stieglitz Society.

The portraits on view generally feature sitters in a frontal pose against a painted backdrop – soldiers and sailors model their uniforms, graduates wear their caps and gowns, lovers embrace, and new parents cradle their infants. Both photographers and subjects remain mostly unidentified.

In the wartime economy, photographic studios became hubs of activity for local and regional communities. Some studios were small and transient, others more established and identifiable, such as the Daisy Studio in Memphis, Tennessee. Using waterproof direct positive paper rather than film, the studios were able to offer their clientele high quality, inexpensive portraits in a matter of minutes. The poignancy of these small photographs lies in the essential respect the camera offers its subjects, who sit for their portraits as an act of self-expression.

African American Portraits: Photographs from the 1940s and 1950s is organised by Jeff L. Rosenheim, Joyce Frank Menschel Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs at The Met.

Press release from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

SAME STUDIO AND PERSON

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

SAME STUDIO, SAME AND DIFFERENT BACKDROPS

You can tell by the legs of the seat.

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

SAME STUDIO DIFFERENT BACKDROP

You can tell by the curtain at right, and the pedestal.

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print with hand colouring
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

SAME STUDIO DIFFERENT BACKDROP

You can tell by the style of the painting, the positioning of the flowers, and the decoration on the carpet of the stairs.

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Unknown American maker. 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Unknown American maker
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print with hand colouring
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

DAISY STUDIO

 

Daisy Studio (American, active 1940s) 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Daisy Studio (American, active 1940s)
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Daisy Studio (American, active 1940s) 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Daisy Studio (American, active 1940s)
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Daisy Studio (American, active 1940s) 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Daisy Studio (American, active 1940s)
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Daisy Studio (American, active 1940s) 'Studio Portrait' 1940s-50s

 

Daisy Studio (American, active 1940s)
Studio Portrait
1940s-1950s
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2015, 2017
Image courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York, New York 10028-0198
Phone: 212-535-7710

Opening hours:
Sunday – Tuesday and Thursday: 10am – 5pm
Friday and Saturday: 10am – 9pm
Closed Wednesday

The Metropolitan Museum of Art website

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