Anonymous photographer Flower Seller in front of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy 1907-1930 Autochrome ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt
Travel, as a verb, means to make a journey, proceed along a route, or transmit signals (such as light or sound). Thus photography and travel are inextricably linked, for photography transmits light in the form of the representation of (a) reality, from place to place, from time to time. From past time to present time.
The travel photographs in this posting “document the landscape, people, cultures, customs, and history of a specific area to express the feeling of a time and place.” (Wikipedia)
While acknowledging the institutional and political control over the creation of some of these photographs, their creation for the commercial reasons to feed the tourist market, and their Western perspective picturing foreign and “exotic” countries and people (closely linked to colonialism in those very countries) … having acknowledged all that, these photographs still remain valuable “signals” that transmit the feeling of a time and place to us today, in all their beauty and majesty.
These early photographers knew how to frame subject matter, how to use the transmission of light, to embed aspects of the sublime in a photograph, the viewer standing at the limen – meaning threshold – standing at the threshold of another time and space brought into the present.
Sphinx, Imperial Castle, railway bridge, glacier, city, all transport us to another world, vanished worlds.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Albertina for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
When photography emerged during the nineteenth century, it revolutionised visual culture. Landscapes, monuments and distant civilisations could suddenly be reproduced with remarkable precision, replacing drawings and engravings as seemingly objective representations of reality.
Yet the exhibition also demonstrates that photographs have never been neutral…
Behind every remarkable image stood extraordinary effort. Early photographers transported heavy cameras, glass plates and portable darkrooms across continents while working for governments, scientific institutions or commercial publishers. Their photographs circulated through exhibitions, books and portfolios, fundamentally influencing how distant places became known…
In an age where billions of photographs are created every day, The World in Focus offers a timely reminder that images never simply reflect reality – they construct it.
Thomas Holzleithner. “The World in Focus,” on The Style Mate website, 21 July 2026 [Online] Cited 06/10/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Anonymous photographer Part of the Chintalarayaswami Temple Complex in Tadipatri, Andhra Pradesh, India 1858/59 Albumen print 26 x 21cm ALBERTINA, Vienna
Francis Bedford (English, 1815-1894) The Hypaethral Temple at Philae 1862 Albumen print 21.1 x 28.8cm ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes–Lehr–und Versuchsanstalt
For much of his career Bedford tended towards photography as an art form, painting in clouds, enhancing fine detail with pencil or brushes, and using tissue paper to darken negatives to improve lighting, but by the late 1870s, he was an advocate of simplicity. Between 1851 and 1894 he produced nearly 9,000 wet collodion negatives and albumen prints, making him one of the most prolific landscape photographers of his time
Today, photography and travel are inextricably linked – yet this connection dates back to the establishment of the new medium in the nineteenth century. The exhibition The World in Focus is dedicated to travel and expedition photography from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, when photography was increasingly employed to capture images of the world. Photographs were valued for their precision, wealth of detail, and reproducibility. Compared with the draughtsmen who had previously accompanied expeditions and were gradually replaced by photographers, work on site could also be carried out much more quickly.
The extensive series at the heart of the exhibition depict different regions of the world and tell of shifting claims to power, the expansion of mobility, the exploration of remote landscapes, and the emergence of tourism. The presentation also sheds light on the contexts in which photographers were sent on journeys, the conditions under which the images were created, and the ways in which they were presented in exhibitions, facilitated the transfer of knowledge, and had a lasting impact on perceptions of distant territories.
The World in Focus exclusively presents photographs from the ALBERTINA collection and from the collection of the Höhere Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, which is held at the ALBERTINA on permanent loan. With this exhibition, the ALBERTINA continues its series of thematic presentations drawn from its important photographic collection, revealing yet another facet of one of Austria’s most extensive photographic holdings.
Text from the ALBERTINA website
Gustav Jägermayer (Austrian, 1834-1901) The Crystal Water Glacier from North-West 1863 Albumen print 30 x 42.2cm ALBERTINA, Vienna
Christian Paier (Slovenian, 1839-1895) Panoramic View over the Old City of Jerusalem 1864 Albumen print ALBERTINA, Vienna
Christian Paier (Slovenian, 1839-1895) Panoramic View over the Old City of Jerusalem (detail) 1864 Albumen print ALBERTINA, Vienna
Adolf Schoon von Corbitzthal (Austrian, 1830-1904) Railway Bridge over the Dniester River near Halicz (today: Halych, Ukraine) 1866/67 Albumen print 20 x 25cm ALBERTINA, Vienna
Corbitzthal served as a soldier in the Austrian army and later worked as a railway official for the Lviv-Chernivtsi Railway (Lemberg-Czernowitz-Jassy Railway), where he famously documented the rail line’s infrastructure and surrounding cultural landscapes.
Giorgio Sommer (Italian born Germany, 1834-1914) Atrani, Italien 1868-1870 Albumen print 20.4 x 25.7cm ALBERTINA, Vienna
Giorgio Sommer (2 September 1834 – 7 August 1914) was one of Europe’s most important and prolific photographers of the 19th century. Active from 1857 to 1888, he produced thousands of images of archaeological ruins, landscapes, art objects, and portraits. …
Sommer’s catalog included images from the Vatican Museums, the National Archeological Museum at Naples, the Roman ruins at Pompeii, as well as street and architectural scenes of Naples, Florence, Rome, Capri, and Sicily. Most notably, Sommer published his comprehensive album Dintorni di Napoli, which contained over one hundred images of everyday scenes in Naples. In April 1872, he documented a very large eruption of Mount Vesuvius in a series of stunning photographs.
Wilhelm Burger (Austria, 1844-1920) Count Hans Wilczek (Austria, 1837-1922) Mitternachtssonne in der Meeresenge Matotschkin, Russland (Midnight sun in the Matochkin Strait, Russia) July 30, 1872 Albumen print, mounted on card Overall: 14.6 x 21.4cm (5 3/4 x 8 7/16 in.) Mount: 40 x 50cm ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes-Lehr-und Versuchsanstalt Inscribed: Mounting paper: lower left “Graf Wilczek sche Polar-Expedition 1872”; lower center “Nowaja-Semlja. / Mitternachtssonne in der Matotschkin-Scharr.”; Mount: verso: lower left “Die erste bekannt gewordenen photographische Aufnahme / einer Mitternachtssonne. Auf einer nassen Collodium- / Platte aufgenommen im August 1872.”; Mount: verso: lower left “BURGER, Wilhelm / WILCZEK, Hans”
NB. I’m not sure this photograph is in the exhibition but Burger’s photographs of a Polar expedition are mentioned in the press release
Wilhelm Burger (Austria, 1844-1920) Count Hans Wilczek (Austria, 1837-1922) Tragbare Dunkelkammer, Isbjörnbai, Spitzbergen (Portable darkroom, Isbjörnbai, Spitsbergen) 1872 Albumen print, on mount / stereo format Photographic paper (per image): 7.8 x 7.7cm (3 1/16 x 3 1/16 in.) Mount: 8.7 x 17.7cm ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes-Lehr-und Versuchsanstalt
NB. I’m not sure this photograph is in the exhibition but Burger’s photographs of a Polar expedition are mentioned in the press release
Long before smartphones turned every journey into an endless stream of images, photography was already transforming the way people encountered distant places. Beginning July 22, the ALBERTINA explores that history in The World in Focus, an exhibition tracing the development of travel and expedition photography from the mid-19th century through the early decades of colour photography.
On view in the museum’s Tietze Galleries through October 26, 2026, the exhibition brings together 107 photographs from the ALBERTINA’s photographic collection, along with a projection of several early autochromes. Curated by Anna Hanreich, the presentation looks beyond the scenic appeal of travel images to examine the political, scientific, commercial and cultural forces that shaped their production.
Photography and travel became closely linked almost as soon as the medium emerged. Compared with drawing, photography offered a faster and apparently more precise way to document landscapes, monuments, cities and people. Images could also be reproduced and distributed widely, allowing distant territories to enter the public imagination with unprecedented immediacy.
Yet the exhibition makes clear that these photographs were never neutral records. Many were produced during expeditions financed by governments, scientific institutions or commercial interests. Others were created for a growing tourist market eager for views of places that most Europeans would never visit themselves. In both cases, the images often reflected a distinctly Western perspective, shaping ideas about foreign cultures through assumptions that were tied to colonialism, imperial ambition and the conventions of the period.
The exhibition moves across an expansive geography, from the frozen heights of the Alps and the Arctic to Egypt, the Holy Land, Japan, India, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy and Norway. Together, the works show how photography accompanied the expansion of mobility, the growth of tourism and the increasing accessibility of remote regions.
Egypt occupies a prominent place in the exhibition. European fascination with the country intensified after Napoleon Bonaparte’s military campaign of 1798-1801, which helped trigger a widespread wave of “Egyptomania.” By the middle of the 19th century, photographers were travelling along the Nile and documenting ancient monuments, often before they underwent later restoration or alteration. Their images circulated through albums, books and international exhibitions, establishing visual routes that would eventually become familiar tourist itineraries.
Another section focuses on Wilhelm Burger, one of the Habsburg monarchy’s most sought-after expedition photographers. Working at a time when photography required heavy wooden cameras, glass plates, chemicals and portable darkrooms, Burger took part in the Austro-Hungarian East Asia expedition of 1868-1869 and later joined a support mission connected to the Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition. His photographs rank among the earliest images made in the Arctic region.
The exhibition also highlights Raimund von Stillfried-Rathenitz, who established an influential studio in Yokohama in 1871. Stillfried photographed historically important sites around Tokyo and Yokohama during a period of rapid transformation following the Meiji Restoration. His carefully composed landscapes appealed to the growing number of international travellers arriving in Japan and helped define how the country was represented abroad.
Images of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and surrounding areas reveal the close relationship between pilgrimage, politics and the emerging market for travel photography. Photographers such as Christian Paier produced views of sacred sites for European audiences already familiar with biblical narratives. These photographs did more than document religious landmarks; they connected contemporary travel with long-established ideas about history, faith and cultural identity.
Photography also served as a tool of political representation within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, Josef Löwy was commissioned to document the territory. Rather than concentrating on military action, he photographed roads, infrastructure and landscapes, presenting the occupation through images of modernisation and development. Stillfried returned to the region years later, producing more atmospheric scenes of daily life and local dress.
As railway networks expanded during the 19th century, travel became faster and more accessible. Railway companies quickly recognized photography’s promotional power and hired photographers to document stations, bridges, construction projects and the landscapes opened by new routes. These images functioned as corporate records, tributes to engineering and advertisements for destinations that had previously seemed unreachable.
By the end of the century, lighter cameras brought a more personal form of travel photography. Artists and wealthy amateurs began making spontaneous images based on their own interests rather than official assignments. The painter Johann Victor Krämer, for example, carried a portable Kodak camera during travels through Egypt and Palestine between 1898 and 1900, later using some of his photographs as material for paintings.
The arrival of autochrome plates in 1907 introduced another major shift. These early colour transparencies were especially popular for landscapes and travel scenes, although they had to be viewed through transmitted light or projected onto a screen. Public and private projection evenings became popular forms of entertainment, allowing audiences to experience vivid color views of Italy, the French Riviera, Norway and other destinations.
Among the press images associated with the exhibition are an autochrome of a flower seller standing before Florence’s Ponte Vecchio, an early colour view of Digermulen in Norway, Giorgio Sommer’s photograph of Atrani on the Amalfi Coast, and Stillfried’s image of the imperial palace in Tokyo. Seen together, the works reveal how travel photography gradually moved from heavy expeditionary equipment and official commissions toward the personal, immediate and colorful visual language still familiar today.
The World in Focus is on view at the ALBERTINA in Vienna from July 22 through October 26, 2026. The accompanying bilingual catalogue, edited by Anna Hanreich, is available in German and English.
Press release from ALBERTINA
Raimund Stillfried von Rathenitz (Austrian, 1839-1911) Imperial Castle, Tokyo, Japan c. 1875 Albumen print 37.6 x 44.6cm ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt
Baron Raimund von Stillfried, also known as Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Rathenitz (6 August 1839, in Komotau, Bohemia – 12 August 1911, in Vienna, Austrian-Hungarian Empire), was an Austrian military officer and early professional photographer in Japan. His historical photographs of Japan following the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in the 1870s have been appreciated for their documentary and artistic value and collected in international archives.
Josef Löwy (Austrian, 1834-1902) Busovaca im Kanton Zentralbosnien, ca. 20 km südlich von Zenica, im Hintergrund Baracken der österreichisch-ungarischen Besatzung (Busovača in the Central Bosnia Canton, approx. 20 km south of Zenica; in the background, barracks of the Austro-Hungarian occupation forces) 1878 Albumen print, on backing card Image: 20.6 x 25.5cm (8 1/8 x 10 1/16 in.) Card: 43.4 x 32.8cm (17 1/16 x 12 15/16 in.) ALBERTINA, Wien
NB. I’m not sure this photograph is in the exhibition but Löwy‘s photographs of Bosnia and the Austro-Hungarian occupation are mentioned in the press release
Josef Löwy (Austrian, 1834-1902) Strassencorrection vor Žepce an der Bosna zwischen Doboj und Zenica (heute: Kanton Zenica-Doboj in Bosnien und Herzegowina) (Road realignment near Žepce on the Bosna River, between Doboj and Zenica (present-day Zenica-Doboj Canton in Bosnia and Herzegovina)) 1878 Albumen print, on backing card Image: 20.6 x 25.5cm (8 1/8 x 10 1/16 in.) Card: 43.4 x 32.8cm (17 1/16 x 12 15/16 in.) ALBERTINA, Wien
NB. I’m not sure this photograph is in the exhibition but Löwy‘s photographs of Bosnia and the Austro-Hungarian occupation are mentioned in the press release
Raimund Stillfried von Rathenitz (Austrian, 1839-1911) Jajce with the Pliva Waterfall, Bosnia and Herzegovina 1889 Albumen print 19.5 x 24.5cm ALBERTINA, Wien
Anton Silberhuber (Austrian, 1839-1899) The Sphinx and the Pyramids, Egypt c. 1890 Collodion paper 16.6 x 23.4cm ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt
Anton Silberhuber (1839-1899) was an influential 19th-century Austrian travel and documentary photographer. He is best known for capturing early archaeological and expedition photography across regions such as Egypt, Greece, and the Balkans.
One of his most celebrated pieces is a collodion paper print depicting tourists interacting with the Great Sphinx of Giza. This specific photograph captures a striking cultural moment of early global tourism, showing tourists physically climbing onto the paws and shoulders of the Sphinx for a portrait.
Text from various sources
Johann Victor Krämer (Austria, 1861-1949) Künstlervorlagen (Artist templates) 1898-1900 Albumen print ALBERTINA, Vienna
NB. I’m not sure this photograph is in the exhibition but Krämer‘s photographs of Palestine are mentioned in the press release
Johann Victor Krämer (Austria, 1861-1949) Jerusalem Around 1900 Albumen paper (?), on backing card Photographic paper: 8.3 x 16.4cm (3 1/4 x 6 7/16 in.) Card: 14.1 x 20.5cm ALBERTINA, Vienna
NB. I’m not sure this photograph is in the exhibition but Krämer‘s photographs of Palestine are mentioned in the press release
Johann Victor Krämer (Austria, 1861-1949) Self-Portrait on the Terrace of the Austrian Pilgrims’ Hospice in Jerusalem c. 1900 20.6 x 28cm Gelatin silver print, retouched ALBERTINA, Vienna
Anonymous photographer (Photoglob & Co., Zurich) Porta Felice and the Marina, Palermo, Italy 1889-1905 Photochrome 16.51 x 22.23cm ALBERTINA, Vienna – Schenkung Harald Woschitz, Nachlass Christopher Cardozo, US
Anonymous photographer Digermulen, Norway 1913 Autochrome 9 x 12cm ALBERTINA, Vienna. Dauerleihgabe der Höheren Graphischen Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt
The Albertina Museum Albertinaplatz 1 1010 Vienna Phone: +43 (0)1 534 83 0
Curator: Joel Smith, Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head of Photography
1955-63: Beginnings
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987) Dead Fish, Fire Island 1960-1962 Gelatin silver print, mounted on board Image/Sheet: 10 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches (37.3 x 28.5cm) Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Peter Hujar Collection Gift of Stephen Koch
Hujar found an unlikely elegance in this unpromising subject, discovered as he began spending more time in the early 1960s on Fire Island, off the southern coast of Long Island. The excavation of beauty out of decay points to Hujar’s early admiration for the wide-ranging work that Irving Penn had been publishing in Vogue magazine since the 1940s.
Large print label text
An empathetic eye
As many of you may know from reading Art Blart over the years, I deeply admire the work of the American photographer Peter Hujar (1934-1987).
With this exhibition we get to dive into the contact sheets of the artist which give insight into “the nature of his attention and the unique personality of each of his subjects.” They allow us, the viewer, to better understand the flow of Hujar’s creative process and the focus of his vision – the consistency of that vision, how he approaches his subject matter, his understanding of light, framing, presence – and the “rhythm of Hujar’s looking.”
I feel (a critical word) that Hujar approaches his subject with an open and informed mind. Using the experience of his many years as a commercial photographer he has the innate ability in his personal work to put the camera in the right place at the right time, to find time and time again what he is looking for in direct, honest, beautiful photographs of places, animals and people.
I look at the contact sheet for Caven Point, New Jersey, with David Wojnarowicz (1984, below) and observe that not one shot is wasted, that Hujar knows exactly his directorial language. He is an auteur with a recognisable personal style, recurring themes, and deep artistic control.
While less confrontational, more empathetic, more cinematic in the feeling of spatiality in the image, Hujar’s approach to subject matter is similar to a photographer of a slightly earlier generation, Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971) who also ran a commercial photography studio, working as an art director, conceptualiser, and stylist before becoming disillusioned with the artificial demands of the commercial fashion world, then moving into mainly portrait photography.
Both artist’s know how to get the most from their subject matter letting the sitter – cow, horse, human, giant – speak of their place in the world, photographs revealing their inner spirit and energy. As Loring Knoblaunch observes, “As seen in these contact sheets, Hujar seemed to work best in a loose flow of time, where collaboration and connection were the variables that ultimately mattered to the capturing of a durable visual essence.” This is the embodiment of Hujar’s art.
Various texts insist on a sense of desolation (a state of extreme emptiness, destruction, or deep, hopeless sadness), fatalism and melancholy present in Hujar’s photographs:
“Woven throughout Peter Hujar’s photographs is a profound sense of fatality about the world. This bleakness in his art reflects both the abuse he faced as a child and his concern about the AIDS crisis which, at the time, only showed signs of worsening.” (Text from the Morgan Library & Museum Facebook page)
“Postindustrial Queens, windblown Caven Point, and burned-out, riot-torn Newark were places that appealed to Wojnarowicz’s and Hujar’s attunement to disaster. Their fatalism reflected the neglect and abuse each of them had known in childhood, as well as their consciousness of an AIDS crisis that only showed signs of deepening.” (Large print label text)
“Hujar’s work has always been filled with themes of darkness, melancholy, and alienation, and the visual evidence in his contact sheets reinforces those moods, but with a quiet undercurrent of attentive resolve.”
I don’t feel this at all.
As a gay man myself, having survived years of abuse growing up and having lived through the initial AIDS crisis in the 1980s and survived (and lost a lot of friends), I don’t find Hujar’s photography at all dark or bleak in regards to family, growing up or the AIDS crisis. In fact quite the opposite, I find his photographs uplifting, inspiring in their humanity and empathy.
Fatalism … what the hell is that anyway? “the philosophical and psychological doctrine that all events are fixed in advance by fate or an overarching power, making human free will, choices, and actions powerless to change the outcome”
No. Hujar’s very photographs speak against this concept (that human free will, choices and actions are powerless) through what he chooses to photograph, through the snap of the shutter (this instant not another) and through his photographs of protests against the lack of HIV/AIDS funding. Human actions DO matter in the outcome. And as to alienation (a state or feeling of being cut off, isolated, or estranged from people, society, or oneself), Hujar’s very engagement with the world – through his city, community and friends, through so many intersections with reality, so many points of view, forming such a nexus of connections – obviates such a reading of his work.
Through these contact sheets, through Hujar’s empathetic vision, we become, as Marina Vitaglione puts it, “immersed in the rhythm of Hujar’s looking.”
That looking is always lyrical, joyous and very human.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
PS. What we need now is an exhibition on the beginnings of Hujar’s artistic career!
Many thankx to the Morgan Library and Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting.
Many thankx also to Loring Knoblauch and the Collector Daily website for allowing me to publish the installation photographs in the posting. Permission is very much appreciated. Her review of the exhibition is excellent and offers the reader numerous insights into Hujar’s artistic practice.
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“The changing of a pose, the tilt of a head, a move a little closer, a different angle of approach, a laugh, a moment of relaxation, a moment of anxiousness or wariness, another shift, and then bang! There it is. And of course, Hujar couldn’t know whether he’d gotten or not, so he often kept going. But for students of studio portraiture, this is the master class on offer in this exhibit – watch what he was looking for, how he was moving and adapting (quietly and unobtrusively hunting even), and where he ultimately found the pivot point where something boring became something unexpectedly vulnerable or compelling.”
“Hujar’s work has always been filled with themes of darkness, melancholy, and alienation, and the visual evidence in his contact sheets reinforces those moods, but with a quiet undercurrent of attentive resolve. He actually found what he was looking for more often than not, which is part of the reason his place in photographic history is secure.”
installation views of the exhibition Hujar:Contact at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York City, New York, May – October, 2026. Many thankx to Loring Knoblauch and the Collector Daily website for allowing me to publish the installation photographs in the posting.
Near the end of their time in Italy, Hujar and Paul Thek visited the catacombs maintained by monks of the Capuchin order in Sicily. Thek was fascinated by the site, which he described as a room “decorated with corpses”; soon after returning to New York, he would be making sculpture exploring the decay of the flesh and the body’s status as an object. The photographs Hujar made in the catacombs in, as he said, “about 20 minutes,” proved to be of outsize importance in his later work, forming the second half of his 1976 monograph, Portraits in Life and Death.
The group portrait is one of the most purely functional genres of photography: Creativity is stymied by the logistical challenge of attaining an exposure in which nobody blinks. Photographer Peter Hujar was attracted to the challenge. As seen in the markings on his contact sheets, he treated the group setting as a means of eliciting responses from selected individuals. In each frame of the eleven sheets in which Hujar portrayed those connected with the Stable Gallery, he drew squares to single out his former boyfriend, Joseph Raphael.
Large print label text
Hujar:Contact offers an unprecedented look into the life, times, and creative evolution of a master photographer. The exhibition features more than 110 contact sheets and 20 enlargements from the Morgan’s Peter Hujar Collection, which includes over 5,700 contact sheets from throughout the artist’s career.
Peter Hujar (1934-1987) began filing contact sheets and assigning them job numbers at age twenty-one. His records make it possible to track his development – from two decades as a studio assistant (1955-1967), when he pushed himself to try work of every kind, into the late 1960s and his work as a freelancer in fashion, music, and advertising, through his mature period (1974-1987) as a fiercely independent and influential artist in the East Village.
Many of the contact sheets bear editing marks that indicate ideas about cropping and printing and contextualize the exposures Hujar ultimately decided to enlarge. The intense, interactive quality of his portrait work comes to life in contact sheets that read as intimate pictorial narratives, revealing the nature of his attention and the unique personality of each of his subjects. As Hujar matures and struggles, and as the character of his social world changes from the 1950s through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, his contact sheets tell the nuanced story of a lifetime, a community, and an era.
In October 1969 Hujar undertook a car trip to Pennsylvania and West Virginia with Jim Fouratt and the artist Ann Wilson. Wilson recalled gratefully that the journey was Hujar’s way of keeping her occupied after the sudden death of her husband, critic Gene Swenson, in a car crash. For Hujar, the purpose of the trip was making portraits of animals that he sought out along the way, including horses, sheep, and cattle. It would be another seven years before he pursued animal portraiture in depth.
The bond Hujar formed with Warhol “superstar” Jackie Curtis reflected, in part, their mutual rejection of familiar sexual identities. Curtis told The New York Times, “I’m not a boy, not a girl, not a faggot, not a drag queen, not a transsexual – just me, Jackie.”
This contact sheet comes from the session for a 1970 New Times magazine feature on New Yorkers who defined their historical moment. The print is from a separate session, which yielded a spread of full-page portraits of Curtis in issue six of Newspaper.
In November of 1971, the San Francisco troupe, the Cockettes, came to New York to perform at the Anderson Theatre. Peter Hujar photographed them in his Madison Square studio and on the street outside the theatre – solo, in pairs and trios, and in large groups. In all he shot over fifty rolls of film. Pictured here [below] is Fayette, one of the co-founders of the avant-garde experimental theatre troupe.
Many of these photographs ran in the final issue of Newspaper, which was devoted entirely to the group. Though the Cockettes’ shaggy performance style was roundly scorned by New York audiences, photographing them crystallised a theme – the stance of “genderfuck,” a madcap travesty of gender identities – that Hujar would explore in his work for the rest of his life.
At the turn of the 1970s, much of Peter Hujar’s paying work revolved around rock music publicity, including gigs ranging from concert coverage to record cover art to music magazine features. As documented in his contact sheets, Hujar frequently merged and swapped traditional gender codes in the presentation of the performers he photographed, such as Rick Derringer and Patti Smith pictured here.
Large print label text
This spring, the Morgan Library & Museum presents Hujar:Contact, an exhibition exploring the life, times, and creative evolution of photographer Peter Hujar (1934 – 1987). On view from May 22 through October 25, 2026, the exhibition features more than 110 contact sheets and 20 enlargements from the Morgan’s collection of Peter Hujar’s works.
Highlights include portraits of artists and performers such as Marsha P. Johnson, Jackie Curtis, Patti Smith, Candy Darling, John Zorn, and Ethyl Eichelberger, as well as Hujar’s creative collaborators and lovers, including Paul Thek, Joseph Raffael, and David Wojnarowicz. Hujar’s distinctive portraiture, alongside rare prints of his street photography, interiors, and landscapes, reveals the unflinching eye he cast upon a vast range of subjects.
In 2013, the Morgan acquired the 5,783 black-and-white contact sheets Hujar possessed at the time of his death, along with two notebooks, or “job books,” in which he recorded his photographic assignments and personal projects from 1954 until 1985. Together, these materials provide a detailed record of an artist who left no written reflection on his work, yet carefully preserved the traces of his decades-long photographic life. Hujar:Contact foregrounds the material processes that structured photographic practice in the era of film and chemical printing. Visitors to the exhibition will be transported to Hujar’s darkroom, invited to study these small images with the same attentiveness and care that Hujar himself brought to them.
“Following our 2018 exhibition Peter Hujar: Speed of Life, which explored the full length and breadth of Hujar’s artistic career for the first time, Hujar:Contact turns to his creative process,” said Colin B. Bailey, Katharine J. Rayner Director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “This exhibition advances the Morgan’s commitment to collecting and interpreting contemporary photography and to broadening appreciation for a medium that is both immediate and reflective.”
The exhibition elevates the contact sheet, traditionally a working tool, into an art object worthy of close visual reading in its own right. Each sheet reproduces an entire roll of film, allowing viewers to follow Hujar’s eye through a series of exposures. Many of the contact sheets include Hujar’s own handwritten notes, marks, and annotations, which indicate his changing approach to cropping and printing and elucidate the editorial decisions behind each final image.
“Contact sheets reveal an intimate history of Hujar’s habits, inspirations, and happy accidents – the intricacies hidden behind a final print,” said Joel Smith, curator of the exhibition and Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head of Photography at the Morgan. “Hujar:Contact illuminates the physical process that was central to his artistic practice.”
Reproduced at large scale on the walls are dozens of pages from Hujar’s job books, which provide the closest thing to a chronological account of his career. The earliest surviving page dates to 1954, when Hujar was just beginning to photograph friends and loved ones in New York. Over the following decades, the notebooks grew into a numbered record of hundreds of shoots, following the artist from his job as a studio assistant in the 1950s to his work in fashion and music journalism in the late 1960s, and ultimately to the independent portrait practice that defined his mature work in downtown New York.
By the mid-1970s, Hujar had become a central figure in the cultural life of New York’s East Village. Working primarily with a medium-format camera that allowed him to maintain eye contact with his sitters, Hujar cultivated an atmosphere in which photographer and subject shaped the image together. Visitors will gain a vivid sense of this collaborative process through the presentation of contact sheets alongside never-before-exhibited prints, unveiling how individual portraits emerged from a give and-take process grounded in patience and mutual curiosity.
Hujar:Contact is organised by Joel Smith, Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head of Photography.
The exhibition is accompanied by an eponymous catalogue that offers an authoritative and visually rich account of Peter Hujar’s creative process, featuring nearly five hundred reproductions of his contact sheets. Drawing from the Morgan Library & Museum’s extensive archive of more than five thousand original contact sheets and two job books created between 1954 and 1985, the publication provides an unprecedented look into the artist’s working methods.
Critical texts by Joel Smith establish a chronology of Hujar’s contact sheets, presenting a portrait of an artist developing, experimenting with, and refining his practice against the tumultuous cultural politics and sea changes of gay life conveyed by the words “Stonewall” and “AIDS.”
Throughout his career, Hujar recorded more than a thousand photo shoots in his job books. A complete transcription and annotation of these materials by Olivia McCall lends the volume unique scholarly value.
Published by the Morgan Library & Museum in association with MACK, the catalogue is available for pre-order in the Morgan Shop for $70.
In 1971 Hujar was introduced to theatre impresario Robert Wilson’s company, the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, through the involvement of Ann Wilson, Robyn Brentano, and other friends. His first photographs of the troupe record their ritual-like rehearsal of the “seven-part movement” that figured in the productions The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud (1969) and The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973). Hujar’s constant profile-view perspective lends the session’s contact sheets the hypnotic regularity of a score by Wilson’s frequent collaborator, Philip Glass.
As seen in the central frame of this contact sheet, Peter Hujar often turned the camera over to others, inviting them to take a picture of him. Because he rarely made prints of these frames, it is possible that the gesture was intended as much to ease others’ nervousness around the camera as to produce a portrait of himself.
The 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day Fair – the forerunner of the Pride March, from which this contact sheet originates – was notable for Sylvia Rivera’s historic speech in Washington Square Park, in which she advocated for members of the gay community who were homeless or incarcerated.
Peter Hujar’s famous photograph, “Candy Darling on Her Deathbed,” [below] printed from the top-right frame marked with a dot, appeared in the New York Daily News shortly after her death in March 1974, and in several other publications soon thereafter. Perhaps due to this wide public circulation, Hujar excluded the image from his 1976 book “Portraits in Life and Death.”
Before checking into Cabrini Health Care Center for testing in September 1973, Warhol superstar Candy Darling asked Hujar to make a portrait “for my fans.” The contact sheet reveals the most iconic still of Candy lying languidly in bed, surrounded by movement, laughter, and theatricality.
Hujar later described their session as a kind of performance, recalling that Candy was “playing every death scene from every movie.” He mirrored this cinematic sensibility in his composition and printing process, shaping the final image so that the dreary details of the room—fluorescent light, hospital bedding, a single rose – are transformed into an icon reminiscent of Hollywood’s golden-age portraiture.
Man and Woman portrays Hujar’s friends Robyn Brentano and Rick Brintzenhofe in a room at the home of friends in Briarcliff Manor, New York. As Brentano recalls, she and Brintzenhofe were on the verge of a breakup at the time. Between them hangs a poster of the famous Unicorn in Captivity tapestry (1495-1505) at the Cloisters. Hujar’s symbolically staged scene is anomalous in his work of the time, bearing greater resemblance to his magazine images of a few years earlier.
Hujar’s move into a large, low-rent space at 189 Second Avenue in the 1970s coincided with his decision to give up paid work altogether as he began to pursue more meaningful personal projects. As if trumpeting his arrival at the loft, in this contact sheet Hujar frolics and salutes the camera.
Hujar would live and work in the loft for the remainder of his life until New Year’s Day in 1987, when he received a tragic AIDS diagnosis. He quit abruptly thereafter, and even declined to catch up on his job-book entries for the preceding year’s work. He passed away that November due to related complications.
On a few occasions Fran Lebowitz invited Hujar and Vince Aletti to visit her family home in Morristown, New Jersey, and the three of them stayed overnight. Once, Hujar photographed each of his friends in the beds where they had spent the previous night, Aletti in Fran’s bedroom and Fran in her sister’s. The diaristic nature of the exposures looks ahead to the work of Nan Goldin, which Hujar would point to in the 1980s as a compelling next stage in the medium’s evolution.
The first page of Peter Hujar’s second job book begins with the heading “FOR BOOK” and the names of several dozen people he photographed for what would become “Portraits in Life and Death” (1976). Hujar’s friend Robyn Brentano, fashion editor Diana Vreeland, and artist/writer Joe Brainard did not make the cut. Of the finished book, Hujar told an interviewer, “In a sense, I’m still a fashion photographer. These people are chic, but in a dark kind of way. Most of them are unknown or maybe known to just a few, but they have all been creative adventurers and possess a certain spirit.” Perhaps he ultimately decided that Vreeland, like Andy Warhol and model Lauren Hutton, was too “known” to fit in. Hujar also appears to have striven to represent variety in his subjects’ age, personal style, gender, vocation, and disposition.
Joe Brainard was an American artist and writer associated with the New York School. His prodigious and innovative body of work included assemblages, collages, drawing, and painting, as well as designs for book and album covers, theatrical sets and costumes.
Peter Hujar’s engagement with New York’s downtown arts and queer communities is reflected in his photographs of fellow artists, writers, and activists, including Marsha P. Johnson, pictured here. Johnson participated in the Stonewall uprising and became one of the figures most closely associated with the movement that emerged from it.
Large print label text
1977-80: Recovery
The term “Recovery” aligns with a period of personal realignment and stabilizing focus following years of emotional, financial, and professional instability. During these years, Hujar established a more structured rhythm with his medium, producing intimate, deeply felt portraits of downtown cultural luminaries, friends, and chosen family.
In the early 1970s a former colleague of Hujar’s at Harold Krieger’s studio, Roy Hyrkin, moved with his family to a remote farming area in Orange County, New York. Hujar, who could not drive, visited them when he could get a ride. Roy Hyrkin recalls Hujar’s rare mood of “delight” upon returning from morning walks with ten-year-old Joseph to photograph animals, including the cows Joseph milked at the dairy next door. Farm animals had been a constant presence during Hujar’s childhood at his grandparents’ house in Trenton, New Jersey. Friends who saw him photograph animals recall that he spoke to them in the same manner he used during any portrait session with a person.
Among the ways that Hujar expanded his approach to portraiture was by zeroing in on parts of the body besides the face. In Paris for the opening of a gallery show of his work in 1980, he photographed the feet of the young fashion designer Pascal Humbert (misidentified in Hujar’s job book as “Imbert”), as well as close-ups of his face and scarred torso.
The defining relationship of Peter Hujar’s final years was with David Wojnarowicz. When they met, at the Bar on Second Avenue in January of 1981, Wojnarowicz was writing poetry and playing music, and Hujar encouraged him to focus on his visual art.
In his job book Hujar distinguishes between two early sessions, “David W #1” and “David W #2.” On the latter date (seen here), he used bounced light that emphasises the volume of Wojnarowicz’s features and hints at an inner life that was as important to the portraitist as his outward appearance.
The eyes dominate in Hujar’s portraits of artist Kiki Smith, in which he employs a softened version of the chiaroscuro lighting technique he evolved a few years earlier. A variant on this photograph is one of several portraits by Hujar, David Armstrong, and Nan Goldin that Cookie Mueller used for “before and after” illustrations in her book How to Get Rid of Pimples (1984), with hand-drawn dots added by the author to the “before” image of each sitter’s face.
Postindustrial Queens, windblown Caven Point, and burned-out, riot-torn Newark were places that appealed to Wojnarowicz’s and Hujar’s attunement to disaster. Their fatalism reflected the neglect and abuse each of them had known in childhood, as well as their consciousness of an AIDS crisis that only showed signs of deepening. Assigned in 1983 to make a cover photograph for the Village Voice about gay dread and mourning, Hujar had enlisted Wojnarowicz as his model. Their shared experience of abandoned locales was formative both for their work and for their deepening friendship.
Large print label text
Woven throughout Peter Hujar’s photographs is a profound sense of fatality about the world. This bleakness in his art reflects both the abuse he faced as a child and his concern about the AIDS crisis which, at the time, only showed signs of worsening.
It was with this in mind that he set out with David Wojnarowicz, a creative he had taken on as mentee, to shoot a cover photograph for a Village Voice issue on gay dread and mourning. The pair visited several locations in post-industrial Queens, windblown Caven Point, and riot-torn Newark that appealed to their eye for disaster. Trips to abandoned locations like these proved to be formative for both their work and friendship alike.
Text from the Morgan Library & Museum Facebook page
By the time of his final exhibition in early 1986, Peter Hujar’s health was in decline. He continued working for the rest of the year, but upon receiving a diagnosis of AIDS in early 1987, he quit abruptly, even declining to catch up on his job-book entries for the previous year’s work. Therefore, his final finished images, including these sensitive portraits of composer John Zorn, are dateable to 1986 by the very absence of detailed information about them.
Large print label text
Hujar:Contact book cover
“Less a monograph than an exposed nervous system: strips of images accumulating into something restless and alive, all hesitation, process, and thought still developing in the tray. … Across the pages of Hujar:Contact, [the images] become immersive. … the experience is less that of viewing discrete photographs than inhabiting the rhythm of Hujar’s looking.”
Marina Vitaglione, Blind Magazine
Hujar:Contact explores the Morgan Library & Museum’s extensive archive of original contact sheets and job books made by the beloved photographer Peter Hujar between 1954 and 1987, which come together to form an enthralling visual document of the artist’s creative process. Hujar’s empathetic eye focused in on varying subjects – crowds of protest, damaged relics, farm animals – but above all he was preoccupied with making portraits of the overlapping circles of artists, writers, and underground luminaries he moved within in New York. Accompanying critical texts by Joel Smith establish a chronology of Hujar’s contact sheets, presenting an artist developing, experimenting with, and refining his practice against the tumultuous cultural politics and sea changes of gay life conveyed by the words ‘Stonewall’ and ‘AIDS’.
Throughout his career Hujar recorded more than a thousand photo shoots in his job books. These documents, which are transcribed and annotated in Hujar:Contact, illuminate the contact sheets, rich in never-before-seen images as well as the earliest iterations of Hujar’s most iconic works, including portraits of Susan Sontag, David Wojnarowicz, Candy Darling, Gary Indiana, Fran Lebowitz, and Paul Thek. This volume provides captivating insight into a master at work, forming an immersive chronicle of Hujar’s poignant efforts to connect, through photography, with the creative communities that defined his life, outlook, and art.
If someone asked me who the two living photographers that I would most like to meet were, one of them would be Wolfgang Tillmans … and the other would be Sally Mann. Both artists produce work that has a social conscience, social conscience being a person’s moral sense of right and wrong, viewed as acting as a guide to one’s behaviour. In both artists’ cases this social integrity acts as a guide in the production of their art.
In this latest exhibition on Mann’s complex body of work built on years of personal reflection, reading and research the title is instructive, Macula et materia, which can be variously translated from the Latin as stain and matter; stain and substance; stain and spirit or, more poetically, “the blemish and the essence”. Personally I like the last translation which is particularly pertinent for Mann’s work.
In an erudite but anonymous piece of writing “Sally Mann. Macula et Materia,” on the diChroma photography website (see below) the author grasps the essences embedded within Mann’s photography, the stain and spirit of her work, that is, blemishes, clefts, black orbs and fragments, traces of history rendered present in our collective consciousness: knowledge of history, place, war, segregation, slavery, racism:
“Here, in Virginia and the Deep South, history and human memory lie still smouldering in the depths of the earth. Sally Mann’s images are crystalline impressions, imprints bearing these deep truths that she brings up to our eyes. They will live on through the centuries, and enrich our collective memory.”
What Mann does so well is that she listens to the passing of time and then inscribes an ode to what remains, the tainted blemish of the past re-inscribed in her photographs as an essence before our eyes – essence being that spark of pure consciousness and awareness that grounds our place on this earth, the silent (still?), timeless presence that flows underneath all time, space, place.
Mann is attuned to these vibrations of history, energy and spirit. She has grounded herself and her family in the place of the American South. She knows the region intimately, much as I would hope to know the stories and history of the city of Melbourne where I live. Her roots are there and she draws sustenance and inspiration from its history, the region’s blemishes in the continuum.
As the exhibition guide observes,
“The American South, a region steeped in tradition and mythology, occupies a central place in her imagination… The landscape is never neutral; it is permeated by a complex collective memory.
One of the strengths of her work lies in the interplay between the intimate and the collective. The photographs of her children belong to the family sphere. However, they question universal themes such as childhood, vulnerability or identity construction. Similarly, the landscapes of Virginia allude to American national history, despite being linked to Mann’s personal history and sense of belonging to that territory. In this way, the intimate and the political are inextricably linked.”
In this sense “knowing your place” has a double meaning, both knowing the place where you live / accepting your position or social status without trying to change it or question authority. “Historically and socially, it implies that a person should remain submissive or compliant to superiors rather than speak out or challenge the system.” Thus place – both territory (intimate) and tyranny (political) – is pertinent in terms of the history of racism and subjugation in the American South. The intimate and political inextricably linked.
As I observed in an earlier piece of writing on the artist’s work, “Mann’s sense of fusedness with others, both alive and dead, now and then, and here and there, leads to a temporal complexity bound up with the notion of history and collective memory. How she iterates such concepts in her sensual photographs “with affection” is at the core of her art practice: the discontinuity of life in all its contexts, made eternal.”1
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“From low to high doth dissolution climb, And sink from high to low, along a scale Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail; A musical but melancholy chime, Which they can hear who meddle not with crime, Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care. Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear The longest date do melt like frosty rime, That in the morning whitened hill and plain And is no more; drop like the tower sublime Of yesterday, which royally did wear His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air, Or the unimaginable touch of Time.”
William Wordsworth “Mutability” Ecclesiastical Sketches 1822
“A few signs, cosmic convergences, emerge in Sally Mann’s images, distilled like sunspots; brief, bright disturbances that alter the permanence of things, piercing and destabilising their meaning. A dark gash in the trunk of a tree, a bite mark, black orbs in the shape of bullet holes that pierce the image against a battlefield backdrop -these vivid marks are redolent of the words written by William Faulkner in The Sound and The Fury (1929). They speak of dark visions and plumb the horrific remnants of the American Civil War, of the crimes and violence perpetrated against minorities, of Emmett Till’s martyrdom on the banks of the Tallahatchie River, the great burnt swamps of the South, of segregation, slavery and racism. Here, in Virginia and the Deep South, history and human memory lie still smouldering in the depths of the earth. Sally Mann’s images are crystalline impressions, imprints bearing these deep truths that she brings up to our eyes. They will live on through the centuries, and enrich our collective memory.”
Anonymous. “Sally Mann. Macula et Materia,” on the diChroma photography website Nd [Online] Cited 02/10/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Installation views of the exhibition Sally Mann. Macula et materia at Kutxa Fundazioa Tabakaleran, San Sebastián, Spain, July – October, 2026 showing in the bottom image at left, photographs from Sally Mann’s series Virginia; and at right, photographs from her series Immediate Family
Installation views of the exhibition Sally Mann. Macula et materia at Kutxa Fundazioa Tabakaleran, San Sebastián, Spain, July – October, 2026 showing in the bottom image photographs from Sally Mann’s series Faces
Installation view of the exhibition Sally Mann. Macula et materia at Kutxa Fundazioa Tabakaleran, San Sebastián, Spain, July – October, 2026 showing from left to right, Sally Mann’s Lisa and the dog (1983-1985, below); Jenny Hanging (1983-1985, below); and Cindy and the Dog Statue (1983-1985, below)
Sally Mann (born in Lexington, Virginia, 1951) is one of the most important figures in contemporary American photography. Active since the late sixties, she has built up a consistent and demanding body of work that primarily focuses on her native region of the American South, which she continues to explore. She has received many awards, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation, and her work is now held in the collections of major international institutions.
From the outset, Sally Mann has been part of a photographic tradition that pays attention to the materiality of the medium and its place in history. Self-taught, she developed an early practice based on the use of large-format cameras, which demand patience, precision and technical rigour. This choice proved decisive, as it structures her relationship with time, her subjects and the landscape, imbuing her images with a particular density that is uniquely Mann’s.
The Macula et Materia exhibition at Kutxa Fundazioa Artegunea offers a journey through the major series that define her oeuvre. Among others, it brings together At Twelve (1983-1985), Immediate Family (1984-1994), landscapes of Virginia (1992-1996), Georgia (1996) and the Deep South (1998), as well as later works such as Faces (2004), Proud Flesh (2006-2015), Delta (2016), Platinum Stones (2022) and Goshen (2025). These series demonstrate the continuity of the artist’s concerns despite the apparent diversity of the themes addressed: childhood, family, landscape, historical memory, illness, decay and corporeality.
The creation of the At Twelve series represents one of the most significant moments in her career. Produced in her native region, it features portraits of twelve-year-old girls photographed in their everyday environments. The images explore the transition from childhood to adolescence, a time of instability and identity transformation, without any idealisation at all. Mann established here a working method based on collaboration with her models and the use of minimal staging, in which domestic or rural spaces play a defining role.
However, it is with Immediate Family that Sally Mann achieved international recognition and also media visibility marked by controversy. Produced over a period of ten years, the series documents the daily lives of her three children on the family property in Virginia. When the book was published in 1992, it sparked an intense debate in the United States because some critics considered it to be a transgression of social norms regarding the representation of childhood.
From the early 1990s onwards, Sally Mann shifted her focus to landscape photography without abandoning her concerns regarding history and time. The series dedicated to Virginia, Georgia and the Deep South mark a decisive turning point. In them, she photographed places associated with the American Civil War (1861-1865), slavery and racial segregation. Far from producing a strictly historical document, she offers a visual meditation on the persistence of the past in the landscape.
Human presence is often absent from these images, yet history inhabits them. Battlefields, swamps, rivers and forests are photographed as surfaces charged with memory. Mann occasionally uses antique processes, particularly wet collodion, a 19th-century technique that involves manually applying a chemical solution to a glass plate. The process, creating imperfections, fogging and alterations, enhances the material dimension of the image, establishing a direct link with the history of photography. Chemical accidents thus become an integral part of the work’s meaning, suggesting erosion, degradation and the fragility of traces.
The question of American history, particularly that of the South, is central to these works. The landscapes photographed are associated with episodes linked to violence. Rather than depicting these events directly, Sally Mann suggests their persistence through topography and light. Her approach therefore differs from traditional photojournalism or documentary photography, prioritising a form of visual meditation on the layers of the past.
This reflection on time continues in later works such as Faces and Proud Flesh. The first brings together a series of portraits in which the face is envisaged as a territory for recording time. Proud Flesh, images of her husband Larry Mann, who suffers from a Muscular Dystrophy, an untreatable muscle-wasting disease, explores the body’s progressive degeneration, physical fragility and the enduring nature of the marital bond. The body appears as a place where time is inscribed biologically, reminiscent of landscapes marked by history.
Through these different series, Sally Mann has created a body of work structured around several consistent themes: geographical roots in the American South, focus on the physical nature of the photographic medium, exploration of the relationship between personal memory and collective history and, finally, contemplation of the passage of time. Her use of antique photographic processes is far from merely an aesthetic choice, but part of an inquiry into photography as a trace.
The exhibition Macula et Materia highlights this coherence. By bringing together portraits, landscapes and studies of the body, it demonstrates that themes in Sally Mann’s work are not compartmentalised, but rather participate in a single enquiry into memory, transmission and disappearance. The American South is not merely a backdrop; it constitutes the historical and cultural context for which the artist constructs her work. The history of slavery, the Civil War and racial violence are present as a structural reality whose effects extend into the present day.
Consequently, Sally Mann’s work is framed within both an American photographic tradition – paying attention to landscape and national identity – and a personal inquiry into family, the body and loss. By articulating these dimensions, she creates work that questions the very conditions of visual memory: how can an image capture that which is no longer visible? How can time be inscribed onto a fixed surface?
More than a simple retrospective, Macula et Materia helps us understand the continuity of a trajectory spanning more than five decades. Rather than taking a strictly poetic or symbolic approach, Sally Mann’s work unfolds as a historical and material investigation of territory, the body and self-image.
Immediate Family: Childhood and Temporality
Between 1984 and 1994, Sally Mann created this series dedicated to her three children: Emmett, Jessie and Virginia. Taken in a rural setting, the photographs show the children playing, injured, pensive or absorbed in their activities. The series sparked significant controversy upon its publication, in some cases because of the childrens’ nudity, and in others because of the viewer’s feelings that the approach presented a problematic staging of childhood.
Nonetheless, beyond the controversy, the series belongs to a tradition of family portraiture, questioning the boundary between private life and public space. It also reflects on vulnerability, the construction of identity and family memory because the images do not necessarily resemble spontaneous family photographs, as they are carefully composed. The children often participated in the construction of the image, in some cases inspired by classical pictorial references.
Childhood is presented here as an intermediate stage, situated between freedom and the nascent awareness of finitude. The bodies are simultaneously powerful and fragile.
A fundamental aspect of this series is the suppression of contemporary temporal markers. Clothing, modern objects and period details are either absent or reduced to a minimum so that the images acquire a timeless quality, making the children seem as though they belong to an indeterminate, almost mythical time.
Photography here becomes a tool for suspending time. It captures a precise instant while simultaneously inscribing it within an extended duration. In Mann’s work, childhood is not merely a biological period; it is a symbolic territory.
Faces: Portraiture and Finitude
In 2004, Sally Mann began her Faces series, featuring intimate portraits of her adult children. The faces are framed closely, often bathed in soft light. Long exposure times produce a slight stillness and occasionally an opacity in the gaze.
Departing from the narrative energy of Immediate Family, these portraits introduce a more explicit reflection on the passage of time. The frontal presentation of the faces alludes to certain ancient traditions of funerary portraiture. The model’s fixed stare establishes a direct relationship with the viewer. The focus is no longer on capturing a moment of childhood, but on questioning the permanence of identity in the face of transformation.
Photography acts as a trace and paradoxical device in Faces: it captures while simultaneously pointing to future disappearance. The faces are recorded with almost sculptural precision, yet they are also subject to progressive alteration through changes in light and exposure time.
This theme would continue in the self-portraits Sally Mann produced later. The photographer’s aging body, in turn, becoming an object of exploration.
Proud Flesh: The Body and Illness
In the series Proud Flesh (2006-2015), Sally Mann photographed her husband, Larry Mann, who suffers from a degenerative muscular disease. The images show a body marked by the beginning of an inevitable and irreversible physical deterioration: muscle atrophy, fragility and loss of mobility.
Rather than adopting a clinical documentary approach, Mann treats the body with almost sculptural care. Light underscores volumes, folds and tensions. The illness is not aestheticised but integrated into a reflection on human vulnerability and dignity.
Materiality as Thought
One of Sally Mann’s key contributions is the importance she places on photographic matter. Chemical runoff, stains and alterations are not defects to be corrected. They are part of the work’s meaning.
Using antique processes such as wet collodion acts in favour of the work, reinforcing the image’s materiality, underlining the material and unstable nature of photography. Chemical alterations become visible signs of time in action. Rather than presenting a linear narrative, her work reveals cycles: birth, transformation, disappearance. Each image captures a moment while simultaneously reminding us that all presence is transient. It questions the memory inscribed in places and bodies, transforming photography into a means of reflecting on the human condition. Photography somehow ceases to be merely a record of reality and becomes a physical object subject to chemical processes, accidents and imperfection.
This approach aligns her work with a pictorial tradition in which the material trace – the brushstroke, the drip, the impasto – is an integral part of the work. Sally Mann’s work therefore belongs to a photographic tradition that transcends mere representation.
The Influence of the American South
The American South, a region steeped in tradition and mythology, occupies a central place in her imagination. This duality is evident in Sally Mann’s work: natural beauty and historical violence coexist. The landscape is never neutral; it is permeated by a complex collective memory.
One of the strengths of her work lies in the interplay between the intimate and the collective. The photographs of her children belong to the family sphere. However, they question universal themes such as childhood, vulnerability or identity construction. Similarly, the landscapes of Virginia allude to American national history, despite being linked to Mann’s personal history and sense of belonging to that territory. In this way, the intimate and the political are inextricably linked.
Sally Mann does not seek to illustrate a historical or theoretical discourse. She creates open images, inviting meditative interpretation. Each image is the result of a lengthy and arduous process. This temporal aspect of production is reflected in how the images are perceived: viewers are invited to look slowly.
Sally Mann’s work explores the relationship between time, memory and matter. Through landscapes of the American South, the faces of her children, her husband’s ailing body or her self-portraits, she examines human fragility and the enduring nature of traces.
Goshen: The Zero Degree of Color
In the Goshen series (2025), Sally Mann quite literally pushes color to its furthest limits, even to its ultimate point of exhaustion and extinction. Here, color survives only as the residual idea of itself, a kind of afterimage or lingering trace.
The images of these abandoned places are haunted by the lives that once inhabited them. Everything seems to be slowly drained of its narrative substance, as though subjected to a silent hemorrhage. Nothing happens; things remain suspended, floating, in a state of dissolution.
The texture and almost pointillist density of the images evoke both the earliest autochromes and Turner’s Pictures of Nothing: matter held in suspension, atmosphere, the density of air, the vibration of light. Barely an oscillation. Color is out of breath; it fades away without the slightest regret.
Reality appears sparingly before gradually withdrawing, and the image slowly slips toward a form of abstraction, ultimately resolving into a nearly monochrome image of faintly tinted white. The imperceptible final breath of color inevitably recalls the paintings of Robert Ryman, where the erased trace of a former image still persists.
It is here that Mann reaches the zero degree of color.
Curator: Alexander Moore, Creative Producer, Dulwich Picture Gallery
Artists: Berenice Abbott, Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Ilse Bing, Margaret Bourke‑White, Ted Croner, Imogen Cunningham, Bruce Davidson, Roy DeCarava, William Eggleston, Morris Engel, Walker Evans, Louis Faurer, Lee Friedlander, John Gutmann, Lewis Hine, Peter Hujar, André Kertész, William Klein, Dorothea Lange, Saul Leiter, Arthur Leipzig, Rebecca Lepkoff, Helen Levitt, Mary Ellen Mark, Elaine Mayes, Lisette Model, Nicholas Nixon, Ruth Orkin, Ed Ruscha, Aaron Siskind, Herbert Snitzer, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Weegee, Edward Weston and Garry Winogrand
Some well-known favourites sprinkled with photographs unknown to me:
Berenice Abbott’s Exchange Place, New York (1933) Margaret Bourke‑White’s Augusta, Georgia (1936) Morris Engel’s Harlem Merchant, New York (1937) Louis Faurer’s Looking at the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center (1949) Saul Leiter’s Orange Umbrella (c. 1950) William Klein’s Happy Days Bar, 3rd Avenue, New York (1954) Peter Hujar’s Richie (1985)
I thought I knew most of Hujar’s photographs but not this one!
My favourite of the photographs I haven’t seen before is Roy DeCarava’s Hallway (1953), a moody evocation of tenement life in an American city.
So many images so little time!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“The exhibition as a whole retells the American narrative of the city – almost all of the photographers here are first- or second-generation European immigrants. It also shows how photography became a way for artists to deal with the overwhelming nature of the city, to try to take hold of it, to make it their own – or try, like Garry Winogrand, to disappear into it completely, to come closer to “not existing” as the photographer described his process, a quote emphasised on the exhibition wall. Portrait of a City is about the multiplicity of quiet-but-dazzling instants that happen every day – like Peter Hujar’s Richie, standing to reflect for a second in the rain on a street in New York at night, raindrops glimmering on a car windscreen.”
Step into a century of American city life through photographs that capture the people who built, inhabited, and transformed urban spaces into living, breathing communities.
The exhibition explores one hundred years of American urban life through the people who lived, worked, and moved through its streets. Featuring works by 34 influential photographers from 1907 to 2012, the exhibition traces how photography evolved alongside the modern city, capturing individuals and communities shaped by and shaping their environments.
Photography and the American City
Set in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, the photographs reveal cities as dynamic stages for social change. From mass immigration and industrial growth to moments of counterculture and protest, photographers used urban spaces to examine identity, labour, and belonging. Adapting the traditions of portraiture, they recorded faces and lives that reflect the inner story of a nation in flux.
Artists and Highlights
Highlights include works by Alfred Stieglitz, Helen Levitt, Dorothea Lange, Lewis Hine, Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, and Bruce Davidson. Seen together, these portraits and cityscapes form a collective narrative that is both intimate and expansive, capturing the human experience at the heart of America’s evolving cities.
Partners and Collections
The exhibition is presented in special partnership with The Savings Bank Foundation DNB, drawing from its outstanding collection of twentieth-century American photography, with thanks to our partner, Lillehammer Art Museum.
Text from the Dulwich Picture Gallery website
Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940) Riding the Ball High up on Empire State c. 1930 Courtesy of The Savings Bank Foundation DNB Collection, on deposit at Lillehammer Art Museum
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) Main Street, Saratoga Springs, New York 1931 Gelatin silver print
Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) The Maypole (Empire State Building) 1932 Gelatin silver print
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Exchange Place, New York 1933 Gelatin silver print
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, California 1933 Gelatin silver print
Dulwich Picture Gallery announces Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography
In summer 2026, Dulwich Picture Gallery will present a major new exhibition Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography, bringing together more than 100 landmark works by some of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. The exhibition will chart the dramatic evolution of American city life from the early 1900s to the close of the 20th century. Featuring images from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, the exhibition draws exclusively from the DNB Saving Bank Foundation’s collection in Norway.
Showcasing 38 leading photographers of the modern era, Portrait of a City traces how photography has shaped our collective understanding of the American city.
It demonstrates how rapid urban expansion catalysed the medium’s rise as a tool to document changing conditions, presenting a compelling visual account of a nation in motion.
The exhibition opens in the early 1900s, a moment when American cities expanded rapidly through mass immigration, industrial growth and new forms of labour, drawing photographers to sites of social and economic shift. Evolving skylines became symbols of change, captured in works such as Lewis Hine’s Riding the Ball High up on Empire State, 1930. At the same time, photographers like Alfred Stieglitz were redefining the medium’s artistic potential; his seminal image The Steerage, 1907, reveals the realities of labour and class with striking immediacy.
After the Wall Street Crash in 1929, photography took on an urgent social role, recording mass unemployment, poverty and migration. Iconic works, including Dorothea Lange’s White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, 1933 and Margaret Bourke‑White’s Augusta, Georgia, 1936 trace the profound impact of the Great Depression, bringing into sharp focus the harsh realities of the following years for people across the United States.
Here, the exhibition changes gear, tracing the rise of photographic modernism through artists such as Walker Evans, whose work helped secure photography’s place within the modern art world. Alongside this, the influence of the New York Photo League is represented through photographers including Weegee, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, Aaron Siskind, Rebecca Lepkoff and Lisette Model, whose socially engaged images document the rhythms and pressures of everyday urban life. Also presented are intimate portrayals of marginalised communities in New York, including Helen Levitt and Saul Leiter’s studies of street life and Roy DeCarava’s tender images of Black life in Harlem.
The exhibition then turns to artists documenting the dramatic physical changes reshaping American cities in the mid‑20th century. Works by Berenice Abbott record the evolution of New York’s skyline, setting new architectural forms against the city’s historic fabric, while Arthur Leipzig’s Divers, East River, 1948 captures how peripheral urban spaces became sites of leisure and community.
Moving into the 1960s and 1970s, the exhibition explores how photographers responded to a nation undergoing cultural and political transformation. Artists such as Ed Ruscha and Robert Adams examined the structures and systems of the built environment, while Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander brought new immediacy to street photography. This section also presents powerful depictions of life on the margins, including Mary Ellen Mark’s The Damm Family in Their Car, Los Angeles, 1987, which confronts the realities of homelessness, and Peter Hujar’s Richie, 1985, offering an intimate insight into communities affected by the AIDS crisis.
Portrait of a City concludes with a presentation of Bruce Davidson’s renowned Subway series, 1980-85, whose vivid, unflinching photographs capture the diversity, individuality and raw immediacy of New York life, an enduring hallmark of the photographer’s career.
Alexander Moore, Creative Producer, Dulwich Picture Gallery and Curator of the exhibition, said: “American photography offers one of the most vivid and influential records of the modern city, and by bringing this remarkable collection to London, we invite audiences to reflect on how the rhythms, challenges and possibilities of urban life continue to echo through our own – a century of human stories told with extraordinary immediacy and invention.”
Anders Bjørnsen, Manager, Art & Culture, DNB Savings Bank Foundation, said: “These photographs capture the profound social and cultural changes that have shaped the modern American city. We are pleased to share this important collection with new audiences through our collaboration with Dulwich Picture Gallery, and to highlight photography’s unique ability to tell human stories across time and place.”
Jennifer Scott, Director, Dulwich Picture Gallery, said: “The spirit, aspiration, and reality of the 20th Century are captured in these photographs. Meticulously collected over the past ten years by the DNB Savings Bank Foundation, the exhibition is testament to this outstanding Norwegian art collection and creates exciting visual links to the landscape paintings in our Collection.”
Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography is curated by Alexander Moore, Creative Producer, Dulwich Picture Gallery (Curator of Unearthed: Photography’s Roots, 2021). The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-colour publication written and edited by Alexander Moore and Nils Ohlsen, Director, Lillehammer Art Museum, published by Dulwich Picture Gallery, June 2026.
Press release from the Dulwich Picture Gallery
Arthur Leipzig (American, 1918-2014) Divers, East River 1948 Gelatin silver print Arthur Leipzig/Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
Louis Faurer (American, 1916-2001) Looking at the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center 1949 Gelatin silver print Louis Faurer/Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
Roy DeCarava (American, 1919-2009) Hallway 1953 Gelatin silver print
Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) John F. Kennedy, Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles 1960 From the portfolio Big Shots Gelatin silver print
Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933) Untitled 1980-85 From the Subway series Dye-transfer/chromogenic print
“I wanted to transform the subway from its dark, degrading, and impersonal reality into images that open up our experience again to the color, sensuality, and vitality of the individual souls that ride it each day.”
“It’s a great social equalizer … From the moving train above ground, we see glimpses of the city, and as the train moves into the tunnels, sterile fluorescent light reaches into the stony gloom and we, trapped inside, all hang on together”
“I feel that there was a passion and a purpose to photographing in the subway. We were all in the same boat and I was just expressing the everyday occurrences in the subway at that point in 1980. It’s a different subway, although you still have to watch your back.”
~ Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933) Untitled 1980-85 From the Subway series Dye-transfer/chromogenic print
Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933) Untitled 1980-85 From the Subway series Dye-transfer/chromogenic print
Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933) Untitled 1980-85 From the Subway series Dye-transfer/chromogenic print
Exhibition dates: 9th March – 13th September, 2026
Curators: Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator, SFMOMA, and Cara Manes, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA, in collaboration with Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
There are some beautiful photographs of her wire sculptures on display in various exhibitions; of Asawa in her home with her work. Imagine living in such a home surrounded by your creations, continuous form within a form within the home as her studio. A nest of creativity, comfort and production.
What beauty and natural energy emanates from the soul of this work, work which contains ideas of transparency, continuity, and space. For the artist a way of growing and being as one with the energy of the world.
“Everything is connected, continuous.”
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special.”
“I was interested in wire because of the economy of a line, making something in space, enclosing it without blocking it out. It’s still transparent. I realised that if I was going to make these forms, which interlock and interweave, it can only be done with a line because a line can go anywhere.”
“My curiosity was aroused by the idea of giving structural form to the images in my drawings. These forms come from observing plants, the spiral shell of a snail, seeing light through insect wings, watching spiders repair their webs in the early morning, and seeing the sun through the droplets of water suspended from the tips of pine needles while watering my garden.”
Ruth Asawa
“What’s exceptional about Asawa’s practice is the multiplicity of her artistic pursuits and the marvellous ability to turn the simplest things into subjects of lifelong creative contemplation. The exhibition aims to offer multiple points of entry into her work, reflecting what Asawa described as the ‘total act’ of artmaking.”
Cara Manes, curator of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective
Across mediums and all stages of her practice, Asawa explored continuity, transparency, and the interchangeability of seemingly contradictory concepts like figure and ground, and abstraction and representation. She first articulated these core ideas at Black Mountain College (BMC), a multidisciplinary school with a sensory- and materials-based curriculum that she attended in 1946-49. There, Asawa took courses in mathematics, philosophy, music, and dance. She studied art under Josef Albers, among others, from whom she learned “how to see,” as she later put it.
Asawa’s early drawings, paintings, and wire works in this section took inspiration from natural forms and mathematical patterns, among other sources. A formative trip to Mexico in 1947 introduced Asawa to wire baskets and weaving techniques, which was a major turning point in her own work. By the time she left BMC in 1949, she had made an important discovery. “I continued one basket into a closed form and slowly, while learning to control the medium, began to realize the exciting potential in this way of making sculpture.”
In the early 1950s Asawa took classes in dance, commercial design, lettering, screenprinting, and painting at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University). In these years her work continued to gain local and national attention through exhibitions at the San Francisco and New York showrooms of the interior design company Laverne Originals, and in publications including Vogue.
During this period Asawa made a range of designs for commercial work, including plastic panels based on her paperfolds and wallpaper and textile patterns incorporating logarithmic spiral forms, the Black Mountain College (BMC) laundry stamp, and the footprints of her young children. Although Laverne Originals invited Asawa to mass-produce her looped-wire baskets as home decor, she declined. She explained: “I am interested in producing to sell, but the more I work the more ideas I get and I want to experiment, but experimenting is not producing, since there are always many flops.”
“These sculptures are made of a continuous wire … enclosing volumes transparently … and producing forms within forms. … The wire must be continuous and the hollow shapes can only be shapes that grow this way.”
~ Ruth Asawa
In 1949 Asawa moved to San Francisco, which became her permanent home. Following California’s repeal of laws prohibiting interracial marriage, she married architect and fellow Black Mountain alumnus, Albert Lanier, and together they started a family. In tandem Asawa began building her art career, dedicating herself full-time to experiments with form building both in space with her looped-wire sculptures and on a flat plane in drawings and prints.
Asawa’s unyielding search for new possibilities within her chosen processes resulted in her signature sculptural motif: a “continuous form within a form,” which she described as “a shape that was inside and outside at the same time.” In a single lobe, a sequence of spheres encloses one another, creating one uninterrupted surface. Asawa would continue to elaborate on this motif for decades to come, foregrounding continuity as a through line for her work. “You can show inside and outside, and inside and outside are connected,” she said. “Everything is connected, continuous.”
Asawa’s famous quote, “My home was and is my studio,” encapsulates her philosophy of seamlessly integrating family life and artistic creation, where her San Francisco home became a living, breathing art space filled with family, projects, and her iconic hanging wire sculptures. Taking inspiration from this motif, this gallery brings together works in different mediums from across the arc of Asawa’s career, alongside works by her lifelong friends, and pays testament to her boundless practice.
The heart of the Asawa-Lanier Noe Valley house was its cathedral-like main living space, which boasted south-facing windows and a double-height ceiling measuring over five meters tall. The space was filled with objects reflective of the constant creative activity the artist encouraged in her children and guests to the home. Its walls featured her own work along with art by friends including Josef Albers, among others. Its shelves displayed pots by Marguerite Wildenhain as well as art books. The most distinguishing feature of her living room was the spectacular array of Asawa’s wire sculptures suspended from the open overhead beams.
Both within and outside her home and studio, Asawa never stopped working: She sketched and drew her surroundings, coiled or bundled wire in preparation for the next sculpture, folded paper for origami, and welcomed other artists, educators, and advocates for continued collaborations.
Over the course of her career, Asawa tirelessly returned to depicting plants and flowers, tracing the shapes of irises, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums, and other flora from her garden in sketchbooks and works on paper. For Asawa, drawing from life was more than simple observation; it became a value and mode of engaging with the world and present moment. “Life draws,” she once wrote, expressing how the events and objects around her defined her work.
In 1985 Asawa was diagnosed with lupus and for nearly a year her physical capacity was significantly reduced, but her creative spirit remained undiminished. In the last decades of her career, she concentrated her creative output on botanical drawings, some of which are gathered in this section. These intimate works, at times extremely realistic, at others abstract, often began with a gesture of generosity: gifts of plants from the artist’s friends and family, after whom many works are titled – such as Albert’s Bouquet from the Garden (1999) or Valentine Bouquet from Adam (1991), referring to her son who often tended his parents’ flowering plants during their later years. Through the daily routine of recording the natural world around her, Asawa documented the extended community she shared it with, as well as the passage of time.
Unfolding across ten sections that span the arc of a six decade-long career, this exhibition traces the full breadth and depth of the innovative practice of an iconic artist. Ruth Aiko Asawa (b. 1926, Norwalk, California, USA; d. 2013, San Francisco, USA) integrated her creative work with all aspects of her life as an artist, educator and arts advocate. This interconnectedness is illuminated in photographs and ephemera presented alongside and in response to the works featured here, from the suspended looped-wire sculptures for which she is best known to nature-inspired tied-wire pieces, clay and bronze casts, paperfolds, paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and prints. Challenging distinctions between abstraction and representation, figure and ground, and negative and positive space, her work invites us to contemplate how disparate elements interact in a composition, which in turn engages with its surroundings.
Asawa was the fourth of seven children of Japanese immigrant farmers. During World War II, she and her family were forcibly incarcerated by the United States government because of their Japanese ancestry. In 1946, after being denied an art teaching degree because of anti Japanese prejudice, she enrolled at the progressive Black Mountain College in North Carolina. In the school’s democratic environment, she forged a creative path grounded in experimentation and an ethos of hard, continuous work. From her time at Black Mountain through the end of her life in San Francisco, where she moved in 1949, Asawa situated her artistic practice within set parameters to investigate ideas of transparency, continuity, and space. In the 1960s, she also expanded her life’s work to directly engage her community through public commissions, arts education, and civic advocacy.
Taking its cue from the artist’s multifaceted work, this retrospective charts Asawa’s career and legacy, highlighting her ceaseless experimentation with material and form evident in her radical innovations.
Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is an exhibition partnership between the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). This presentation was developed in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
The exhibition is co-curated by Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator, SFMOMA, and Cara Manes, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA, in collaboration with Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
Text from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao website
Installation views of the exhibition Ruth Asawa: Retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, March – September, 2026
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao proudly presents Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, an ambitious exhibition devoted to an iconic artist, Ruth Aiko Asawa (born Norwalk, California, 1926 ; died San Francisco, California, 2013) in the year that would have been her 100th birthday.
Asawa was one of the most uniquely gifted and productive artists to emerge in the postwar era in the United States. While the appreciation of her work has grown exponentially in the last decade, this international retrospective is the first major museum exhibition to fully consider every aspect of the artist’s exquisite, varied, and groundbreaking practice.
Unfolding across ten sections that span the arc of a six-decade-long career, this exhibition traces the full breadth and depth of the innovative practice of Ruth Asawa, who integrated her creative work with all aspects of her life as an artist, educator and arts advocate. This interconnectedness is illuminated in photographs and ephemera presented alongside and in response to the works featured in this exhibition, from the suspended looped-wire sculptures for which she is best known to nature-inspired tied-wire pieces, clay and bronze casts, paperfolds, paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and prints.
Challenging distinctions between abstraction and representation, figure and ground, and negative and positive space, her work invites us to contemplate how disparate elements interact in a composition, which in turn engages with its surroundings.
Asawa was the fourth of seven children of Japanese immigrant farmers. During World War II, she and her family were forcibly incarcerated by the United States government because of their Japanese ancestry. In 1946, after being denied an art teaching degree because of anti-Japanese prejudice, she enrolled at the progressive Black Mountain College in North Carolina. In the school’s democratic environment, she forged a creative path grounded in experimentation and an ethos of hard work. From her time at Black Mountain through the end of her life in San Francisco , where she moved in 1949, Asawa situated her artistic practice within set parameters to investigate ideas of transparency, continuity, and space. In the 1960s, she also expanded her life’s work to directly engage her community through public commissions, arts education, and civic advocacy.
Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is an exhibition partnership between the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). This presentation was developed in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Following its presentation at SFMOMA, MoMA, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the exhibition will then travel to Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland. International exhibition tour supported by The Henry Luce Foundation.
Press release continued below…
Installation views of the exhibition Ruth Asawa: Retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, March – September, 2026
Exhibition overview
“How To See”: Black Mountain College, 1940s
Across mediums and all stages of her practice, Ruth Asawa explored continuity, transparency, and the interchangeability of seemingly contradictory concepts like figure and ground, and abstraction and representation. She first articulated these core ideas at Black Mountain College (BMC), a multidisciplinary school with a sensory – and materials – based curriculum that she attended in 1946-49. There, Asawa took courses in mathematics, philosophy, music, and dance. She studied art under Josef Albers, among others, from whom she learned “how to see,” as she later put it.
Untitled (BMC.52, Dancers), c. 1948-49, features abstract dancing figures inspired by dance classes that Asawa took from Merce Cunningham and with Elizabeth Schmitt Jennerjahn in her final year at BMC. The work is composed of layered rounded forms on a yellow ground, and it was a precursor to the artist’s wire sculptures of the 1950s. Moreover, a formative trip to Mexico in 1947 introduced Asawa to wire baskets and weaving techniques, which was a major turning point in her own work. By the time she left BMC in 1949, she had made an important discovery: “I continued one basket into a closed form and slowly, while learning to control the medium, began to realise the exciting potential in this way of making sculpture.”
Commercial Designs, early 1950s
In the early 1950s Ruth Asawa took classes in dance, commercial design, lettering, screenprinting, and painting at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University). In these years her work continued to gain local and national attention through exhibitions at the San Francisco and New York showrooms of the interior design company Laverne Originals, and in publications including Vogue. During this period Asawa made a range of designs for commercial work, including plastic panels based on her paperfolds and wallpaper and textile patterns incorporating logarithmic spiral forms, the Black Mountain College (BMC) laundry stamp, and the footprints of her young children. Although Laverne Originals invited Asawa to mass produce her looped-wire baskets as home decor, she declined. She explained: “I am interested in producing to sell, but the more I work the more ideas I get and I want to experiment, but experimenting is not producing, since there are always many flops.”
“Everything is connected”: Forms within Forms, 1950s
“These sculptures are made of a continuous wire … enclosing volumes transparently … and producing forms within forms. … The wire must be continuous and the hollow shapes can only be shapes that grow this way.”
~ Ruth Asawa
In 1949 Ruth Asawa moved to San Francisco, which became her permanent home. Following California’s repeal of laws prohibiting interracial marriage, she married architect and fellow Black Mountain alumnus, Albert Lanier, and together they started a family. In tandem Asawa began building her art career, dedicating herself full-time to experiments with form building both in space with her looped-wire sculptures and on a flat plane in drawings and prints.
Asawa’s unyielding search for new possibilities within her chosen processes resulted in her signature sculptural motif: a “continuous form within a form,” which she described as “a shape that was inside and outside at the same time.” In a single lobe, a sequence of spheres encloses one another, creating one uninterrupted surface. Among those examples featured in this section include Untitled (S.427, Hanging Single-Lobed, Five-Layered Continuous Form within a Form), 1953; and Untitled (S.797, Hanging Two-Lobed, Three-Layered Continuous Form within a Form), c. 1954. Asawa continued to elaborate on this motif for decades to come, foregrounding continuity as a thorough line for her work. “You can show inside and outside, and inside and outside are connected,” she said. “Everything is connected, continuous.”
“Vocabulary of My Sculpture”
“The work is one which dictates a way of growing and the more one learns about this way of growing the more possibilities are opened up for the creating of sculpture peculiar to the process.”
~ Ruth Asawa
The works on view in this section offer a partial inventory of the vast array of sculptural forms Ruth Asawa invented throughout the 1950s using industrially sourced, wire that she looped by hand – what she described in 1955 as the “vocabulary of my sculpture.” These forms by turns layer, nest, interlock, ruffle, and cascade, creating continuous surfaces that delineate volume while remaining porous to surrounding space. Though their composite structures are symmetrical and balanced, the viewer’s experience of their shapes can change depending on the vantage point and proximity to other works.
Asawa used her looped-wire technique to make “sculpture that would itself have a form and volume, whose silhouette would also have volume, and sculptures whose shadow would have volume.” Most of the works in this section were chosen by Asawa to be exhibited in a sequence of solo shows at Peridot Gallery in New York in the 1950s, which introduced her art to a broader audience. Considered together, they shed light on the iterative nature of the artist’s practice. Among those works featured is Untitled (S.270, Hanging Six-Lobed, Interlocking Continuous Form within a Form with Spheres in the First and Second Lobes), 1955, re-fabricated in 1957-58, which contains multiple connected lobes that form long sculptural silhouettes while the interior elements, such as the scones or spheres, create overlapping layers.
The Tamarind Prints, 1965
The Tamarind Lithography Workshop was founded by June Wayne in Los Angeles in 1960 and vastly expanded the possibilities of fine art lithography in the United States. At the suggestion of her former teacher Josef Albers, who had previously printed there himself, Asawa was invited to do a residency for two months in 1965. During her short time there, she worked closely with seven printers to produce fifty-four radically experimental prints.
Asawa’s unique prints featured family members, flowers, plane trees, and chairs, as well as abstractions, of which some are on view in this section, including Poppy (TAM.1479), 1965, a virtuoso depiction of California’s delicate state flower. While never again focusing as intensively on printmaking as she did during her time at Tamarind, Asawa remained convinced of the merits of the medium, resisting “the myth that the crafts and printmaking are less important than painting and sculpture. A good piece is important regardless of category.”
Nature, Tied Wire and Later Sculpture, 1960s-1990s
“Nature is my teacher, and I have used materials that are a product of our twentieth century to study her growth patterns.”
~ Ruth Asawa
In 1962 a gift of a dried desert plant from Death Valley given to Ruth Asawa inspired her to pursue a new direction in her sculpture. Drawing the plant, she found “its intricacy … made it impossible,” and instead turned to wire, working with bundles and spools that she manipulated into complex branches and other botanical forms, as seen in Untitled (S.184, Hanging Tied-Wire, Single-Stem, Multi-Branched Form Based on Nature), c. 1962. Asawa went on to make “tied-wire” sculptures over the course of the decade and beyond. As she described, these works “take an impersonal material like wire, which is very hard, and then make it into a gentle thing that’s natural looking so that you can take an abstract piece of wire and turn it into a plant. And I like the transition from hard to soft.”
Asawa’s tied-wire works often began with a floral, starlike, or geometric centre, as seen in Untitled (S.451, Wall-Mounted Tied-Wire, Open-Center, Six-Branched Form Based on Nature), c. 1965. As she worked, and the form grew progressively outward, she both responded to the properties of her medium in following “what the wire dictates” and mirrored patterns in the natural world. Her hanging and wall-mounted sculpture also reinvigorated her drawing, which like her works in wire explored new possibilities in geometric designs, airy blooms, and branching tree-like patterns, as seen in Untitled (SD.017, Tied-Wire Sculpture Drawing with Open Pentagon in Center), 1980s to mid-1990s.
Throughout the 1970s and beyond, Asawa continued “to explore the limits of materials, growth, and form by making sculpture with wire.” As she created new variations of looped- and tied-wire compositions, some closed and some open, some suspended from above and others wall-mounted, she also furthered her material exploration of resin and experimented with coloured glass.
Public Art and Public Commissions, 1960s-1990s
In 1968 Ruth Asawa began advocating for the role of art in society through her tenures on the San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She also expanded her art practice into San Francisco’s civic life through public artworks and commissions “to make a sculpture that could be enjoyed by everyone.” These works, often collaborative in nature, became places where communities could gather for moments of remembrance and celebration. This section explores Asawa’s expanded engagement with her community through art, arts education and civic advocacy, drawing on artwork, video, photographs, archival documentation and other ephemera.
Her first outdoor commission was the bronze fountain Andrea (1968) in San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square. Responding to the waterfront location, she delivered a sculpture of two mermaids, one of whom holds an infant, surrounded by frogs and turtles.
Other large-scale works include her Origami Fountains (1975-76) at San Francisco’s Nihonmachi Pedestrian Mall, which explore her long interest in origami and paper folding. In 1994, Asawa debuted her monumental Japanese American Internment Memorial, commissioned by the City of San José. Created in collaboration with her artist-son Paul Lanier and artist Nancy Thompson, this sculpture more directly addressed personal and shared stories of the unlawful incarceration of people of Japanese descent during World War II.
“Life Draws”: From the Garden, 1980s-2000s
Over the course of her career, Ruth Asawa tirelessly returned to depicting plants and flowers, tracing the shapes of irises, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums, and other flora from her garden in sketchbooks and works on paper. For Asawa, drawing from life was more than simple observation; it became a value and mode of engaging with the world and present moment. “Life draws,” she once wrote, expressing how the events and objects around her defined her work.
In 1985 Asawa was diagnosed with lupus and for nearly a year her physical capacity was significantly reduced, but her creative spirit remained undiminished. In the last decades of her career, she concentrated her creative output on botanical drawings, some of which are gathered in this section. These intimate works, at times extremely realistic, at others abstract, often began with a gesture of generosity: gifts of plants from the artist’s friends and family, after whom many works are titled – such as Valentine Bouquet from Adam, 1991, referring to her son who often tended his parents’ flowering plants during their later years. Through the daily routine of recording the natural world around her, Asawa documented the extended community she shared it with, as well as the passage of time.
Noe Valley, 1960s-2000s
By 1960, Ruth Asawa, Albert Lanier, and their six children – Xavier, Aiko, Hudson, Adam, Addie, and Paul – had outgrown three San Francisco residences. Later that year she and Lanier purchased a large house in Noe Valley. The house from 1908 was designed by Walter Ratcliff and Alfred Jacobs in the spirit of Bernard Maybeck, the legendary professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who fuelled the region’s Arts and Crafts movement at the turn of the twentieth century. The cedar-shingled exterior blended with its site, while a deck off the kitchen made for a fluid relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces.
Overall, the design of the house evoked a casual ease of living. Lanier spent a year renovating – including excavating to create a studio for Asawa and additional bedrooms – before the family moved in during the fall of 1961. Asawa designed monumental new front doors, on view in this section, and the family went on to build walkways from cobblestones scavenged from San Francisco beaches, planting beds for flowers, herbs, and vegetables that would prove to be an enduring source of inspiration for her drawings. Additionally, the artist created hundreds of unique face casts of family, friends, and colleagues between 1966 and 2000, some of which are on view here, resulting in a veritable index of the comings and goings at the Noe Valley house.
“My Home was and is My Studio”
Ruth Asawa’s famous quote, “My home was and is my studio,” encapsulates her philosophy of seamlessly integrating family life and artistic creation, where her San Francisco home became a living, breathing art space filled with family, projects, and her iconic hanging wire sculptures. Taking inspiration from this motif, this gallery brings together works in different mediums from across the arc of Asawa’s career, alongside works by her lifelong friends, and pays testament to her boundless practice.
The heart of the Asawa-Lanier Noe Valley house was its cathedral-like main living space, which boasted south-facing windows and a double-height ceiling measuring more than five meters tall. The space was filled with objects reflective of the constant creative activity the artist encouraged in her children and guests to the home. Its walls featured her own work along with art by friends including Josef Albers, among others. Its shelves displayed pots by Marguerite Wildenhain as well as art books. The most distinguishing feature of her living room was the spectacular array of Asawa’s wire sculptures suspended from the open overhead beams. Both within and outside her home and studio, Asawa never stopped working: She sketched and drew her surroundings, coiled or bundled wire in preparation for the next sculpture, folded paper for origami, and welcomed other artists, educators, and advocates for continued collaborations.
Catalogue
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by exhibition curators Janet Bishop, Cara Manes, and Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, as well as a chronology by Dominika Tylcz, all shedding light on Ruth Asawa’s six-decade career, her unyielding search for new possibilities, and her unique artistic vocabulary.
Joan Pearson Watkins (also known as Joan Jockwig Pearson Watkins) was an American ceramist, museum curator, and photographer.
Joan Pearson Watkins’ archival photography serves as a vital historical record of the mid-20th century art scene, capturing intimate moments of iconic American artists in their creative spaces. Rather than staging rigid portraits, her camera documented the organic, daily environments where famous mid-century modernism was actively being built.
Her most famous body of photographic work documents the iconic Japanese-American sculptor Ruth Asawa. Watkins captured crucial archival images of Asawa’s life and environment including photos showing how Asawa lived alongside her intricate, hanging looped-wire sculptures, serving as an invaluable visual record for modern museum retrospectives
Rondal Partridge (September 4, 1917 – June 19, 2015) was an American photographer. After working as an assistant to well-known photographers Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams in his youth, he went on to a long career as a photographer and filmmaker. …
Career as a photographer
In 1940, he got a job with a New Deal agency called the National Youth Administration, documenting the problems faced by young people in the final years of the Great Depression.
In contrast to Adams, whose work focused on the beauty of the natural landscape, Partridge documented the human built infrastructure of Yosemite, as well as changes to the built environment of the San Francisco Bay Area. An example of such work is his mid 1960s photograph Pave It and Paint It Green. The photo shows iconic Yosemite peak Half Dome in the background, while the foreground consists of a parking lot filled with cars. In the photo, “the distinction between city and wilderness has disappeared”. Partridge also made a documentary film of the same name, which was shown on television. Adams, who did not appreciate irony or social commentary in photography, disapproved of Partridge’s 1960s work in Yosemite, although he later called Partridge a “fine photographer” in his autobiography.
Partridge has taken portraits of ordinary working people, as well as many notable people including Odetta, Ruth Asawa, Judy Dater, Peter Scott Lewis, John Carl Warnecke, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams and Diego Rivera as well as his mother, Imogen Cunningham.
By 1960, Asawa, Albert Lanier, and their six children – Xavier, Aiko, Hudson, Adam, Addie, and Paul – had outgrown three San Francisco residences. Later that year she and Lanier purchased a large house in Noe Valley. Lanier spent a year renovating – including excavating to create a studio for Asawa and additional bedrooms – before the family moved in during the fall of 1961.
Asawa designed monumental new front doors, on view in this section and titled Doors (S.528, Carved Redwood Doors for Ruth Asawa’s Home), 1961, which were featured prominently in her new home. She used a durable wood native to the West Coast and drew an allover pattern of interlocking waves that joined across the two doors when closed. Her older children also helped her to carve and finish the surface, using mallets and chisels to carve shallow, raised patterns across both sides of the doors, and smoothing the surface with a blowtorch and wire brushes. The family went on to build walkways from cobblestones scavenged from San Francisco beaches, planting beds for flowers, herbs, and vegetables that would prove to be an enduring source of inspiration for Asawa’s drawings.
Additionally, the artist created hundreds of unique face casts of family, friends, and colleagues between 1966 and 2000, some of which are on view in this section as well, resulting in a veritable index of the comings and goings at the Noe Valley house.
“While the photographs in this posting portray the cultures and communities associated with mining, the industries, towns and cities, the people and the landscapes what they don’t account for is the ongoing physical, psychological and emotional scars that the results of mining leave behind.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Exhibition dates: 23rd May – 23rd August, 2026
C0-curators: Diane Waggoner, curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art and Kristen Gaylord, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts at Milwaukee Art Museum
Mining helps improve our lives in so many ways and yet the harm it causes the planet, the severe environmental degradation, indigenous dispossession and systemic violence associated with resource extraction is undeniable.
The phrase “the rape of the earth” “characterises the literal carving up of the landscape. Large-scale operations – such as open-cut mining – strip topsoil, destroy ecosystems, pollute water tables, and leave irreversible physical scars on the terrain. Indigenous groups, such as the Sámi feminists against mining in Sábme, use the phrase to describe how mining fractures the sacred, interdependent web of connection between land, humans, and nonhuman lifeworlds.” (Google AI)
The interdependent web of connection between land, humans and nonhuman lifeworlds running beneath the surface, hidden from view, that life force of the world and the cosmos that is so violently ruptured in the mining process.
While the photographs in this posting portray the cultures and communities associated with mining, the industries, towns and cities, the people and the landscapes what they don’t account for is the ongoing physical, psychological and emotional scars that the results of mining leave behind. Scars that riddle the earth’s surface as much as they do the minds of the people that love this planet as a holistic entity. You only have to look at Zig Jackson, Rising Buffalo’s photograph Indian Man at Kennecott Copper Mine, Tooele, Utah (2004, above) to understand what I mean.
When it’s all too late only then will we have realised what we have lost.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
. Many thankx to the National Gallery of Art, Washington for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Unknown photographer (American) Portrait of a California gold miner with pick and shovel c. 1855 Quarter-plate daguerreotype Plate (quarter): 4 1/4 x 3 1/4 in. (10.8 x 8.26cm) Case (tray): 4 11/16 x 3 5/8 x 3/8 in. (11.91 x 9.22 x 0.97cm) The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
Environmental impacts of mining
The environmental impacts of mining are significant. Establishing mining sites requires an enormous amount of construction, which often causes deforestation and loss of wildlife habitats and biodiversity.
Surface mines, which require the use of explosives and heavy machinery to expose materials near the earth’s surface, cause massive canyon-sized holes in the land and lead to soil erosion and degradation around surrounding areas. Mountaintop removal mining, a method of coal mining, uses explosives to blast the entire top of a mountain.
Surface mines create a huge amount of waste materials. Mines release harmful substances into the air and water, and can cause serious health issues if inhaled or consumed. Mines also release acidic water, which can kill marine life and make freshwater unsuitable for drinking. Underground mining produces fewer waste materials than surface mines, but they are risky for mine workers.
The mining industry emits carbon via transportation and energy use, and produces fossil fuels – the largest source of carbon emissions in the world.
Even after mines are decommissioned, they continue to impact the environment. Acid mine drainage occurs after mines have been abandoned, and results in heavy metals entering water systems and harming the plants, animals and humans that consume it.
Social impacts of mining
Mining can create employment opportunities, boost economies and provide investment for local development projects. However, mining operations that don’t respect human rights or protect the environment can cause significant harm to surrounding communities.
American 19th Century Shipping Oil – Story Farm 1860s-1870s Stereoscopic albumen silver print Image/sheet: 7.94 × 14.92cm (3 1/8 × 5 7/8 in.) Mount: 8.73 × 17.46cm (3 7/16 × 6 7/8 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon Public domain
James F. Ryder (American, 1826-1904) Atlantic & Great Western Railway 1862 Albumen print Image/sheet: 18.8 x 23.7cm (7 3/8 x 9 5/16 in.) Mount: 25.3 x 32.4cm (9 15/16 x 12 3/4 in.) Mat: 14 x 18 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund Public domain
Thomas H. Johnson (American, b. 1821 – d. ?) Gibson’s Breaker, Rushdale, Del. & Hudson Canal Co., c. 1863-1865 Albumen print Image/sheet: 30.7 x 41cm (12 1/16 x 16 1/8 in.) Mount: 44.3 x 53cm (17 7/16 x 20 7/8 in.) Mat: 20 x 26 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund Public domain
Thomas H. Johnson (American, b. 1821 – d. ?) Birdsey Breaker, Archbald, Del. & Hudson Canal Co., 1863-1865 Albumen print Image/sheet: 30.6 x 40.8cm (12 1/16 x 16 1/16 in.) Mount: 45.4 x 55.6cm (17 7/8 x 21 7/8 in.) Mat: 20 x 26 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund Public domain
Andrew Joseph Russell (American, 1829-1902) Valley of Bitter Creek from Coal Mine 1867-1869 Albumen silver print 22.86 x 29.53cm (9 x 11 5/8 in.) The Museum of Modern Art, New York Gift of Union Pacific Railroad Company
Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American born Ireland, 1840-1882) Savage Mine, Curtis Shaft, Virginia City, Nevada 1868 albumen silver print Image: 14.45 x 19.53cm (5 11/16 x 7 11/16 in.) Sheet: 19.53 x 26.83cm (7 11/16 x 10 9/16 in.) Mount: 31.75 x 37.78cm (12 1/2 x 14 7/8 in.) Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Timothy O’Sullivan photographed men preparing to descend 900 feet into the mine.
Timothy H. O’Sullivan (American born Ireland, 1840-1882) Comstock Mine, Virginia City, Nevada 1868 Albumen print Image: 18.89 x 13.49cm (7 7/16 x 5 5/16 in.) Sheet: 18.26 x 26.99cm (7 3/16 x 10 5/8 in.) Mount: 31.59 x 37.31cm (12 7/16 x 14 11/16 in.) Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
O’Sullivan used a magnesium flash to illuminate a miner wielding an axe underground.
Thomas Houseworth (American, 1828-1916) Hydraulic Mining – Behind the Pipes, in the Kennebunk Claim, Birchville, Nevada County c. 1868-1869 Stereoscopic albumen prints Image: 7.9 x 20.6cm (3 1/8 x 8 1/8 in.) Sheet: 8.9 x 17.5cm (3 1/2 x 6 7/8 in.) Wikipedia Commons Public domain
B.F. Childs (American, 1841-1921) New York, Iron Mine [Michigan] c. 1871-1876 Stereoscopic albumen print Image: 7.9 x 15.9cm (3 1/8 x 6 1/4 in.) Sheet: 8.7 x 17.5cm (3 7/16 x 6 7/8 in.) Collection of Leonard A. Walle
Brainard F. Childs photographed a man outside an iron mine in Michigan. He’s dwarfed by its dark and cavernous entrance.
Brainard Fermont Childs (1841-1921) was an American 19th-century photographer best known for his studio portraits and stereoviews documenting the Great Lakes region, particularly Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Operating the Child’s Art Gallery in Marquette, Michigan, he captured extensive regional landscapes, scenes of early mining and shipping on Lake Superior, and local Ojibwe life. Today, many of his surviving albumen prints and glass-plate negatives are preserved in historical collections, including the British Museum.
Google AI
B.F. Childs (American, 1841-1921) Down the Franklin Tramroad c. 1867-1868 Stereoscopic albumen prints Image: 7.5 x 16.2cm (2 15/16 x 6 3/8 in.) Sheet: 8.3 x 17.2cm (3 1/4 x 6 3/4 in.) Collection of Leonard A. Walle
Dependent on precious metals from its inception, photography has always been intertwined with the natural resources that are fundamental to modern industrialised life. Beneath the Surface: Mining and American Photography is the first exhibition to exclusively examine how photographers from the mid-19th century to today have powerfully captured the effects of resource extraction on the land and communities of the United States. Featuring some 150 photographs that span 185 years, this exhibition focuses especially on the subterranean removal of the minerals and fossil fuels that power this country’s economy and industry. Together, these works demonstrate how photographers have drawn on changing technology and unique visual strategies to rise to the challenge of picturing these colossal industries.
Made for a variety of purposes, ranging from commercial boosterism and celebration of technical advancement to social documentation and community activism, the pictures in the exhibition shed light on how photography has revealed the costs of extraction and who benefits from its success. Divided into six broad, chronological sections that contextualise the complex history of photography and extraction, from daguerreotypes of the Gold Rush to large-scale, immersive photographs made in the last decade, Beneath the Surface highlights how artists have used photography to explore the relationship between extraction, society, and the environment.
This exhibition is curated by Diane Waggoner, curator of photographs, National Gallery of Art, and Kristen Gaylord, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts, Milwaukee Art Museum.
The exhibition is organised by the National Gallery of Art, in collaboration with the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.
Text from the National Gallery of Art website
Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829-1916) Malakoff Diggins, North Bloomfield, Nevada County [California] 1871 Albumen print Image: 41.59 x 54.61cm (16 3/8 x 21 1/2 in.) Mount: 55.88 x 71.12cm (22 x 28 in.) Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
F. Jay Haynes (American, 1853-1921) Granite Silver Mine, Montana c. 1880 Albumen print Image: 42.7 x 54.5cm (16 13/16 x 21 7/16 in.) Sheet: 43 x 54.9cm (16 15/16 x 21 5/8 in.) Mat: 22 x 28 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington Gift of the UBS Art Collection Public domain
Originally a studio photographer from the North Dakota Territory, Haynes spent most of his career documenting in pictures the development of the western territories. Commissioned in 1876 to make views along the route of the Northern Pacific Railroad, he traveled through the West until 1905, working in a railroad car equipped as both gallery and darkroom. Besides photographing spectacular views of natural scenery, Haynes produced an extensive record of the modification of the landscape by raliroad and industry.
On an 1881 trip to the newly created Yellowstone Park, via the new line of his railroad company employer, Haynes decided to pursue a commercial concession as park photographer. In 1884 he opened a studio and photography gallery in Yellowstone, selling to tourists prints of the park’s natural wonders, such as the Lone Star Geyser Cone. For more than thirty years Haynes served as the official photographer of Yellowstone National Park.
Merry A. Foresta American Photographs: The First Century (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996) on the Smithsonian American Art Museum website Nd [Online] Cited 21/07/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
West & Waddell (American, Bradford, Pennsylvania, active 1880s) Flowing Well 1880s Stereoscopic albumen silver prints National Gallery of Art, Washington Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon Public domain
Photographs of oil derricks document the rush that followed the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in 1859.
William H. Rau (American, 1855-1920) South Plainfield Coal Storage, capacity 100,000 tons c. 1890 Albumen print Image: 43.5 x 52.1cm (17 1/8 x 20 1/2 in.) Collection of Paul Sack
Lewis Wickes Hine (American, 1874-1940) “A lonely job.” Willie Bryden, a nipper, 13 yrs old, Pittston, Pa., 1911 Gelatin silver print Image: 11.43 x 13.49cm (4 1/2 x 5 5/16 in.) Milwaukee Art Museum Gift of Robert Mann
Frank J. Schlueter (American, 1874-1972) Goose Creek, Tex. oil field 1917 Gelatin silver print, panorama Sheet: 19.6 x 150.3cm (7 11/16 x 59 3/16 in.) Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. Public domain
Schlueter photographed the quickly growing Houston region in the first half of the twentieth century, retiring in 1964. Schlueter’s work was used by early oil producers in the region to document and promote their work
The National Gallery of Art presents Beneath the Surface: Mining and American Photography, the first exhibition to exclusively examine the relationship between resource extraction and American photography throughout its history. Spanning nearly 200 years, the exhibition examines how photographers have approached the challenge of capturing the significant but often hidden processes and impacts of the extraction of minerals, coal, and fossil fuels and its associated industries.
Featuring 150 photographs by more than 100 artists, including Richard Avedon, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Dorothea Lange, David Maisel, Gordon Parks, Mitch Epstein, Carleton Watkins, Will Wilson, and more, Beneath the Surface reveals how generations of photographers have utilised evolving technologies and distinctive visual strategies to document the industries that power and shape modern life. Beneath the Surface will be on view at the National Gallery of Art from May 23 to August 23, 2026, before travelling to the Milwaukee Art Museum in Wisconsin and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas.
“As a defining visual medium of our modern age, photography is an essential tool to capture and communicate our shared history,” said Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art. “Beneath the Surface brings together a dynamic range of works to shed light on the medium’s intersections with a shaping force in American history and industry.”
The featured works, many of which are drawn from the National Gallery’s significant photography collection, span early daguerreotypes from the time of the California Gold Rush in the mid-1800s to pictures of rapid industrialisation in the 20th century and contemporary photographs produced at an immense scale. This expansive selection traces the layered history of extraction and how artists have used photography as a lens through which to communicate the industry’s relationship with society and the natural world.
“Photography itself is dependent on precious metals for its very existence, from the light sensitivity of silver in early processes to the copper of contemporary digital-camera batteries. At the same time, it has been the principal visual medium employed to depict extractive industries, evolving alongside the expansion of mining on an industrial scale since the 19th century,” said Diane Waggoner, co-curator of the exhibition and curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art. “Beneath the Surface unites photographs made for a variety of purposes, from explicitly promotional and commercial uses to documentation efforts and socially engaged activism, shedding light on both the rewards and costs of resource extraction.”
The exhibition orients visitors with an introductory gallery displaying contemporary work, foregrounding themes relevant to the current moment and providing a critical framework for understanding the six broad, chronological sections that follow. Viewers will encounter works not only by historical photographers recognised for their work in capturing mining, drilling, and industrial subjects, such as Carleton Watkins, Margaret Bourke-White, Marion Post Wolcott, and Bernd and Hilla Becher, but also by less expected practitioners Florence Kemmler, Alma Lavenson, and Mary Morris. The exhibition includes works by contemporary photographers Edward Burtynsky, Binh Danh, Terry Evans, Victoria Sambunaris, and Cara Romero, among others.
“For almost two centuries photographers have played a central role in public understanding of resource extraction, drawing on a succession of technologies and strategies to capture activities that enable modern life but resist portrayal,” said Kristen Gaylord, co-curator of the exhibition and Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts at Milwaukee Art Museum. “This exhibition demonstrates how, time and again, photographers have creatively pushed against the medium’s boundaries in a quest to impart the enormity of the country’s extractive activities and their effects.”
Beneath the Surface centres on the challenges artists face in capturing the colossal scale of extraction and its far-reaching impacts on communities and the environment. It also reveals the inventive strategies they have employed to depict this subject. The works on view reflect the full breadth of the medium, spanning landscapes, portraits of workers and panoramas of affected communities, photobooks, aerial imagery, analog and digital collage, camera-less photography, historical processes, narrative and performance work, and pictures that otherwise harness photography to communicate the scope of these industries.
Press release from the National Gallery of Art
Florence Kemmler (American, 1900-1972) Oil Drums c. 1929 Chlorobromide print Image: 26.67 x 34.61cm (10 1/2 x 13 5/8 in.) Mat: 18 x 22 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund
The husband-and-wife team of Roland E. Schneider (1884-1934), and Florence B. Kemmler (1900-1972), were internationally exhibited salon photographers whose beautifully rendered works straddle both Pictorialist and modernist sensibilities. The San Diego couple worked together using the same 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 Graflex cameras and identical printing and mounting techniques. Nearly all their photographs were contact printed on warm, brownish black-toned chlorobromide papers.
Alma Lavenson (American, 1897-1989) Tanks, Standard Oil Company 1931 Gelatin silver print Sheet (trimmed to image): 24 x 18.4cm (9 7/16 x 7 1/4 in.) Mat: 20 x 16 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington The Marvin Breckinridge Patterson Fund for Photography
In 1930 she was introduced to Adams, Cunningham and Weston by art collector Albert Bender. Bender also wrote Lavenson a letter of introduction to give to Edward Weston. Two years later she was invited to participate in the famous Group f/64 show at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, although there is some uncertainty about whether she should actually be called a “member” of Group f/64, given her association with Pictorialism. The announcement for the show at the de Young Museum listed seven photographers in Group f/64 and said “From time to time various other photographers will be asked to display their work with Group f/64. Those invited for the first showing are: Preston Holder, Consuelo Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, Brett Weston.” However, in 1934 the group posted a notice in Camera Craft magazine that said “The F:64 group includes in its membership such well known names as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, John Paul Edwards, Imogene [sic] Cunningham, Consuela [sic] Kanaga and several others.” Lavenson was not mentioned by name in that notice, but her name is always listed as being associated with the group because of her place in the first exhibition. She was included in an exhibition of photography “by members and associates of Group f.64” held at Gallery 210, Lucas Hall, University of Missouri, St. Louis, Apr. 3-30, 1978.
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 1936 Gelatin silver print mounted on paperboard Sheet (trimmed to image): 19 x 23.8cm (7 1/2 x 9 3/8 in.) Support: 45.7 x 37.6cm (18 x 14 13/16 in.) Mat: 16 x 20 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington Gift of Mary and David Robinson
In 1936, Walker Evans captured several iconic photographs in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, during his landmark documentary work for the Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration. His lens famously depicted the stark juxtapositions of the city’s industrial boom, highlighting steel mills looming over residential neighbourhoods and graveyards, as well as scenes of local auto graveyards.
Arthur Rothstein (American, 1915-1985) Copper Pit, Ruth, Nevada 1940 Gelatin silver print Image: 24.13 x 18.73cm (9 1/2 x 7 3/8 in.) Sheet: 25.4 x 20.32cm (10 x 8 in.) Mat: 50.8 x 40.64cm (20 x 16 in.) Black Dog Collection
Born in New York City in 1915, Arthur Rothstein showed an early interest in photography. While studying at Columbia University, he met economics instructor Roy Stryker, who would later establish the photographic section of the Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration) in Washington, DC. Appreciating Rothstein’s technical proficiency and enthusiasm for photography, Stryker hired him in 1935 as the first staff photographer for the FSA. Praised for the directness and immediacy of his imagery, Rothstein produced notable photographic series on farming communities in the Midwestern Dust Bowl. After leaving the FSA in 1940, Rothstein took a position as photographer for Look magazine; he remained there until 1971, ultimately serving as the magazine’s director of photography.
Text from the International Center of Photography website
Russell Lee (American, 1903-1986) Butte, Montana. Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Train of fifty-ton cars of copper ore leaving mines at Butte for smelter at Anaconda Montana 1942 Gelatin silver print Mount: 29.21 x 24.29cm (11 1/2 x 9 9/16 in.) Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. Public domain
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Crude oil, fuel oil, gas oil, range oil and gasoline pipelines leading from the waterfront to the Everett Refinery. Everett, Massachusetts, May 1944 c. 1944 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 35.9 x 27.8cm (14 1/8 x 10 15/16 in.) Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Courtesy of Exxon Mobil Corporation
Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011) Doris McKinney with Her Two Sons, Republic Steel 1987 Gelatin silver print Image: 18.1 x 17.7cm (7 1/8 x 6 15/16 in.) Sheet: 25.2 x 20.3cm (9 15/16 x 8 in.) Mat: 14 x 16 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington Gift of Pierre Cremieux and Denise Jarvinen
Emmet Gowin (American, b. 1941) Mining Exploration near Carson City, Nevada 1988 Gelatin silver print Image: 24.5 x 25cm (9 5/8 x 9 13/16 in.) Sheet: 27.7 x 35.5cm (10 7/8 x 14 in.) Mat: 16 x 18 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Jane P. Watkins
Photographing American Mining and Energy
Elizabeth Fortune
For nearly two centuries, American photography and the mining of valuable natural resources have been deeply intertwined.
Introduced in 1839, photography premiered less than a decade before successive metal mining booms transformed the landscape and demographics of the American West. Emerging extractive industries hired photographers to promote their operations and attract investors and workers.
Since photography’s inception, artists have used a range of techniques and formats to depict resource extraction like coal mining and oil drilling, which often occurs in remote locations, sometimes underground. Their aims and attitudes range from enthusiastic boosterism to impassioned critique. Together, these photographers’ works unearth and make visible the history of industrial mining and its continued impact on our everyday lives and the American landscape.
Daguerreotypes
After the 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in California, hundreds of thousands of aspiring miners flocked to the West Coast. Posed with tools of his trade, this miner was one of many who sat for a daguerreotype to memorialise their quest for precious metals.
The mining of silver, copper, and mercury was essential for the creation of daguerreotypes: the process produces a unique image on a highly polished silver-coated copper plate.
Stereographs
Photographers took advantage of the stereograph to make immersive scenes of resource extraction. A popular photographic format from the mid-1850s to the early 1900s, the stereograph features two pictures of the same subject taken about 2 1/2 inches apart, roughly the distance between our eyes. When seen through a stereoscope viewer, the two pictures appear to combine into a three-dimensional image (the equivalent of early 3D glasses).
Photographers were dispatched across the country and American territories to document places of interest. Sites of resource extraction were a particular draw. The discovery and mining of oil, gold, silver, and other materials excited many with the promise of prosperity and beckoned fortune seekers to these burgeoning industries.
Commissions and Surveys
Mining companies, as well as related businesses like railroads, commissioned early photographers to document industrial infrastructure as a way to mark technological advancements and to attract investors.
The Delaware and Hudson Railroad and Canal Company hired Thomas H. Johnson to photograph the expansion of their coal mining operations in northeastern Pennsylvania These “breakers” broke coal into fragments and sorted them by size.
Government-sponsored surveys presented other opportunities for nineteenth-century photographers to travel across the country and document mining sites. While on a geological survey in 1868, Timothy O’Sullivan photographed silver mining at the Comstock Lode in Nevada. There, he produced some of the first subterranean photographs.
Panoramas
The enormous scale demanded by resource extraction calls for a grand mode of representation. The panorama, derived from the Greek words for “complete” and “view,” is an ideal format. Its size and breadth can accommodate the vastness of industrial enterprises.
Frank Schlueter’s 1917 panoramic photograph, taken at Goose Creek, Texas, captures men and horses working alongside huge oil derricks, some so tall they extend beyond the picture frame. In 1901, oil was discovered at Spindletop along the Gulf Coast of Texas, which ushered in the modern petroleum industry and the Texas oil boom. Seeking business as a photographer, Schlueter opened a nearby studio and began accepting commissions for pictures of oil fields.
A century later, Indigenous photographer Lewis deSoto (Cahuilla) used the panoramic format to show power generation in California. Here, a picturesque coastline is dotted with palm trees and people enjoying the sunny Southern California day. In the distance rises the Encina Power Station, which permanently closed in 2018. The panorama’s wide vista reveals the looming presence of industry in even the most scenic of places.
The title refers to Carlsbad, the current name of the city where the beach is located, and Payómkawichum, the name Native Americans of the area call themselves. deSoto invokes the Indigenous name to link industrial power generation with the ancestral power imbued in the land.
Modernist Forms
Modernist photographers, with their interest in abstract shapes and daring camera angles, found a fitting subject in the sharp geometric forms of industrial facilities and machinery.
In the late 1920s, Margaret Bourke-White spent several months photographing inside the Otis Steel Company in Cleveland, Ohio. She called the evenings spent at the factory “a photographic paradise.” Bourke-White’s picture of glowing molten metal celebrates what she deemed the “beauty waiting to be discovered” at the plant.
In 1944, Gordon Parks joined a group of photographers hired by Standard Oil New Jersey to promote the company’s role in supporting the war effort. In Parks’s dynamic composition, orderly rows of cylindrical pipes converge at the horizon line, carrying oil to the Everett Finery in Massachusetts. Plumes of white steam hover over the refinery, suggesting a constant churn of manpower and machinery.
Aerial Views
Adopting a bird’s-eye view has allowed photographers to record the extent of resource extraction and the way it has marked our landscape. Photographers can also bypass access restrictions to industrial sites by flying overhead with a plane or drone. From the sky, a paradox emerges: although we can see more from a distance, the elevation skews scale and at times heightens the aesthetic appeal of earthbound places.
Taken from a helicopter, Emmet Gowin’s picture of a mining exploration near Carson City, Nevada, reveals an elaborate pattern of topographical scars. Gowin acknowledged the distorting effect of viewing industrial sites from the sky, remarking, “From the air it seemed like everything I was seeing was miraculous.”
Photographer Will Wilson (Diné) used a drone to capture this aerial view of pearl and copper hued remediation ponds that hold residual waste from uranium mining. Located in northwest New Mexico on the lands of the Navajo Nation, Church Rock Mill is the site of the largest radioactive spill in American history. The radioactive waste poses risks to nearby communities and ecosystems. By surveilling the remediation ponds from above, Wilson calls attention to these hazardous sites.
Portraits
Pictures of laborers in extractive industries spotlight those who power our nation. Sometimes operating in high-risk environments, these workers feed important supply chains. Portrait photographers foreground the humanity of their subjects and individualise the massive workforce supporting our industrial economy.
From 1979 to 1985, Richard Avedon traveled across 17 American states to photograph working-class Americans for his portrait project In the American West. Coal miners and oil field workers were among his most frequent subjects. Avedon is known for his portraits of celebrities and politicians, but here he elevates each worker to a vaunted status.
Tom Stroud, an oil field worker from Velma, Oklahoma, stands before Avedon’s signature white backdrop and looks directly at the camera. His skin, clothing, and helmet are splotched with mud and oil (Avedon preferred to photograph subjects at the end of their shifts). The portrait’s large size – about five feet tall by four feet wide – gives monumental status to Stroud and his labor.
Large-Scale Color Photographs
At first glance, the tidy yards, pristine garden shed, and welcoming patio furniture form an idyllic suburban scene. But in the distance, massive smokestacks and a cooling tower overtake the hazy gray sky.
Mitch Epstein’s mammoth picture records the looming presence of the Amos Coal Power Plant in Raymond City, West Virginia. The exceptional size (62 x 80 inches) of Epstein’s composition places us within a serene neighbourhood dominated by the coal industry. Its monumental scale confronts us with the immensity of extractive operations and the impact these industries have on the lands and people of the United States.
This presentation draws from the National Gallery of Art Library collections. It looks at how artists use photobooks to reveal the impact of the energy industry on the American landscape and people.
In conjunction with Beneath the Surface: Mining and American Photography, the National Gallery of Art Library presents an installation of 25 books and 2 zines examining how photographers use photobooks to document the impact of energy extraction, production, and circulation on the American landscape and its communities.
The books and zines on view illustrate complex narratives about how America is powered today, revealing the visual strategies and design decisions contemporary photographers use to contextualise and share their work. In the library reading room adjacent to the exhibition area, additional photobooks are available for visitors to browse.
Books offer a different experience than seeing images on a wall or your social media feed. Complex stories are told when photos join text, other printed elements, and even the book binding. Come explore a wide-ranging selection of photobooks by contemporary photographers – then handle more examples in our reading room.
Curated by Yuri Long, special collections librarian at the National Gallery, this installation is on view from May 25 through August 21, 2026, in the East Building Library Atrium from 11.00 am to 4.30 pm, Monday through Friday, except federal holidays.
Andrew Borowiec (American, b. 1956) Blast Furnace, Cleveland 2016 Inkjet print Image: 67.95 x 101.6cm (26 3/4 x 40 in.) Sheet: 80.01 x 111.76cm (31 1/2 x 44 in.) Mat: 32 3/4 x 46 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Charina Endowment Fund
Will Wilson (Diné) (b. 1969) Shiprock Disposal Site, Shiprock, Navajo Nation, 36. 769690596277414 N / -108. 68547605691704 W 2020 Inkjet print Image: 60.96 x 121.92cm (24 x 48 in.) Sheet: 94.62 x 109.22cm (37 1/4 x 43 in.) Back mat: 35 15/16 x 43 1/2 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington Charina Endowment Fund in memory of Robert B. Menschel Courtesy of the artist and www.dineconnect.org
National Gallery of Art National Mall between 3rd and 7th Streets Constitution Avenue NW, Washington
Curators: Barbara Tannenbaum, Curator of Photography and Chair of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Cleveland Museum of Art
Unknown photographer Black Horseman in Front of a Doorway c. 1855 Salt print from wet collodion negative Image: 15.5 x 13.5cm (6 1/8 x 5 5/16 in.) Mounted: 47 x 30.6cm (18 1/2 x 12 1/16 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 40.6cm (20 x 16 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
The uniform of the rider identifies him as a major in the Chasseurs d’Afrique (African Light Infantry), a cavalry group within France’s colonial army in Africa. By 1855, African people were living in France, so he may have been born and raised there or have been African-born and in France for training.
Magnificent gems of 19th-century French photography.
The studied simplicity of Nadar’s Man on a Horse (c. 1860s, below), man and animal captured against a painted studio backdrop.
The formal beauty of Édouard Baldus’ architectural salted paper and albumen prints of Notre-Dame, Paris (1852-1853, below), Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, Paris (c. 1860s, below), Louvre, Façade rue de Rivoli, Paris (1855, below) and Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris (1856-1857, below) which emphasise the volume of the structures, their scale and grandeur.
Compare these to the spatial openness and intimacy of Charles Marville’s Rue de la Ferronnerie (c. 1865, below) only 10 years later which leads, inexorably, to the alleyways and architectural details of Eugène Atget capturing a disappearing Paris, an Old Paris, towards the end of the 19th century.
Dotted amongst these are an atmospheric landscape of the French interior near Lyon by that most bucolic of photographers Félix Thiollier; a pastoral village scene of impressionistic intimacy by Adolphe Braun, Untitled (Farm Animals) (1850s, below); and a superb photograph of a stone bridge set in mountainous landscape near the Spanish border taken by Gustave Le Gray, The Bridge of Palalda (near Amelieles-Bains) (1851-1852, below)
No conceptual histrionics, no untoward flourishes, just photographs of the utmost integrity of people and places in a time of change, photographs that hold the viewer’s gaze through the holistic balance and beauty of the images.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
. Many thankx to The Cleveland 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.
Nadar (French, 1820-1910) Man on a Horse c. 1860s Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 17 x 22.3cm (6 11/16 x 8 3/4 in.) Matted: 35.6 x 45.7cm (14 x 18 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of Robert Hershkowitz and Charles Isaacs
Nadar (French, 1820-1910) Portrait of Ernestine Nadar, the artist’s wife, wearing fur stole c. 1880-1883 Uncut sheet of three matte gelatin silver carte-de-visites Overall: 10.8 x 21.9cm (4 1/4 x 8 5/8 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
This striking and unusual uncut sheet of carte-de-visite exposures was taken by one of France’s most successful early portraitist photographers, Nadar. His wife Ernestine frequently modeled for him, including when he tried out new equipment or processes such as these gelatin silver prints. These portraits seem to be an intimate, direct exchange between sitter and camera, wife and husband.
Born Gaspard-Félix Tournachon in Paris, Nadar is probably the best known French photographer. His portraits of celebrities and public figures help define our impression of France in the second half of the 19th century; his panache in conducting his business helped popularize photography. Educated at the Collège Bourber, Paris (1833-36), Nadar moved to Lyon, where he studied medicine (1837-38) before continuing his studies at the Hôtel Dieu and the Bicêtre in Paris. He wrote satires and essays and drew caricatures (his pseudonym derived from his barbed wit aimed against the establishment) for a number of Paris publications, eventually founding several of his own, and was a highly visible figure in the city’s cultural and artistic life. Learning photographic technique from Adophe Bertsch and Camille d’Arnaud, Nadar founded a studio in 1854. Twenty years later his son Paul, also a photographer, became director of the business and by 1886 headed the firm. He also worked for a time with his brother, Adrien, who sometimes called himself Nadar jeune, a practice which later prompted Nadar to file a lawsuit. Nadar’s exploits with aerial balloon photography were of both photographic and historic importance. Below ground, he used artificial light to make surveys of the catacombs and sewers of Paris, novel and highly popular curiosities. With his son Paul as photographer, he is credited with the first photo-interview, conducted with the scientist and color theorist Michel-Eugène Chevreul on his 100th birthday in 1886. Because of the importance of his work and the notoriety of his sitters, among them Franz Liszt, George Sand, Sarah Bernhardt, and Honoré Balzac, Nadar will long occupy a key place in the development of photography. T.W.F.
About the exhibition
Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot lived during a tumultuous yet fertile period in France. Events included war and the loss of territory; modernisation and the rise of industry; and a shift from rural to urban living. As both artists were living in Paris, it became the largest city in continental Europe and the arts capital of the world. Manet and Morisot’s lifetime also coincided with the birth and rise of a new art form – photography – which recorded many of these social, political, and cultural changes.
Masters of the new medium such as Charles Marville and Édouard-Denis Baldus were commissioned by the Emperor Napoleon III, the Louvre museum, and the railroads to document both historic monuments and the construction of new architectural and engineering marvels throughout the country. This era also saw the rise of celebrity portraiture and of the general public as patron. Actresses such as Sarah Bernhardt and popular authors Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Alexandre Dumas, and others sat for photographers such as Nadar, André-Adolphe-Eugene Disderi, Gustave Le Gray, and Étienne Carjat. The resulting portraits were printed – and sold – in large quantities to meet a soaring public demand for portraits of the luminaries of the time. When the rising urban middle class sought to have their own likenesses recorded, they flocked to the same studios.
In this exhibition, drawn from the museum’s rich holdings of 19th-century French photography, we can feel that we, like the photographers, are eyewitnesses to the transformation of France in the 1800s. This show was organised to complement Manet & Morisot, on view in the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Gallery from March 29 through July 5, 2026.
Text from The Cleveland Museum of Art website
André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (French, 1819-1889) Monsieur Merlen 1861 Albumen print from wet collodion negative, uncut carte-de-visite proof print Image: 19.9 x 23.1cm (7 13/16 x 9 1/8 in.) Matted: 35.6 x 45.7cm (14 x 18 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of Paula and Robert Hershkowitz in memory of Sam Wagstaff Public domain
The carte-de-visite process was so inexpensive, Monsieur Merlen felt he could clown around, riding a child’s toy horse in the first two exposures.
The carte-de-visite, a small photograph mounted on card stock, was patented by André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri in 1854. This efficient, inexpensive process employed a camera with four lenses and a sliding plate holder that produced eight sequential exposures on a single glass negative. The resulting paper print was cut into individual images. This uncut sheet, which includes several humorous views, was probably produced for the sitter’s approval. The low cost of the carte-de-visite led to the trend of collecting celebrity portraits. By 1862, Disdéri’s studio was producing over 2,000 prints a day, making him reputedly the world’s richest photographer.
André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri
André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri French, 1819-1889
Disdéri is best known as a portraitist and populariser of the carte-de-visite. He spent 10 years as a painter and working in the theatre, and another five in the clothing business, before becoming seriously interested in photography around age 30. He first operated studios in Brest and Nîmes, then moved to Paris and opened a studio in 1854, and a second in 1863. In 1854 Disdéri patented the carte-de-visite, a method of producing a number of small images on a single negative that achieved great popularity. He later opened additional studios in London, Madrid, and Toulon. Disdéri was one of the best known portrait photographers of his day, with many important commissions and sitters. Like Mathew Brady, he was an innovator and entrepreneur as well as an artist. The carte-de-visite, which he did not invent, but rather adapted, helped photography to become increasingly versatile as a medium and available to people of all means. In 1879 Disdéri sold his business and moved to Nice. Despite his success, he died 10 years later in Paris in poverty, obscurity, and poor health. T.W.F.
André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (French, 1819-1889) Village Scene (Southern France) c. 1853 Salted paper print from waxed-paper negative Image: 15.2 x 12.2cm (6 x 4 13/16 in.) Matted: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri is best known for his development in Paris in 1854 of the carte-de-visite format for portraits. The year before, he was living in Southern France where he made this rural view. Disderi used waxed-paper negatives for only a short time. The oval cropping and picturesque scene – posed but seemingly spontaneous – suggest that this is meant to be an artistic, rather than a documentary, photograph.
Édouard Baldus (French, 1813-1889) Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, Paris c. 1860s Albumen print from collodion negative Image: 21.5 x 28.2cm (8 7/16 x 11 1/8 in.) Paper: 21.5 x 28.2cm (8 7/16 x 11 1/8 in.) Mounted: 32.6 x 43.5 cm (12 13/16 x 17 1/8 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund Public domain
For three decades starting in 1854, Paris was a construction site as Baron Haussmann replaced the crooked streets and crumbling buildings of medieval Paris with a modern city. The cobblestones in the foreground were for paving the newly expanded set of broad avenues that radiated from the Arc, part of Baron Haussmann’s urban renewal plans. Exposure times for film in the 1860s were usually too long to capture people in the street, but a man – perhaps the paver – paused long enough to leave his “ghost” to the left of the cobblestones.
Édouard Baldus (French, 1813-1889) Notre-Dame, Paris 1852-1853 Salted paper print from wet collodion negative Image: 29.5 x 44.7cm (11 5/8 x 17 5/8 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 61cm (20 x 24 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Edwin R. and Harriet Pelton Perkins Memorial Fund
Édouard Baldus photographed the side of the famed cathedral to capture the volume of the structure. Visible from this angle are two workshops for the church’s restoration, some of the construction materials, and scaffolding on three of its flying buttresses (architectural structures that form an arch with the wall they support).
Édouard Baldus
Édouard Baldus French, b. Prussia, 1813 – 1889
The large and regal prints made by Édouard-Denis Baldus are widely agreed to be among the finest photographic images ever produced. After serving as an artillery officer in the Prussian army, Baldus left his native country for France during the 1830s to become a painter. He exhibited his paintings of religious subjects, portraits, and genre scenes in the Paris Salons from 1841 – 51 and was naturalized as a French citizen in 1849, the same year his interests turned to photography. Combining his training in painting with an inquisitive, inventive technical expertise, Baldus produced a body of work of exceptional quality and interest. His subjects included architecture, landscape, and engineering feats. In 1851 the Commission des monuments historiques selected him for the Missions héliographique – a government project that sponsored the photographing of endangered classical and medieval architecture in France. For this important series Baldus produced views of Burgundy, Provence, and the Dauphiné, and the following year he completed a commission for the Ministry of the Interior. In 1855 he began his photography of railroads, some of his most distinctive work. A copy of his album recording the line between Paris and Boulogne was presented to Queen Victoria. He also documented the flooding of the Rhone, as well as construction of the new Louvre and other Paris views. A founding member of the Société héliographique and a member of the Société française de photographie (1857), Baldus exhibited his photographs widely in London, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Brussels, and Paris and won numerous medals of award. A master printer, he produced combination prints in the early 1850s, frequently retouching his images with pencil and ink. His best work appears most often in specially assembled albums – such as Les principaux Monuments de la France reproduits en héliogravure par E. Baldus, published in 1875 from plates drawn from earlier negatives. Today, his work continues to be much sought after and to set a standard by which other photographers are judged. T.W.F.
Édouard Baldus (French, 1813-1889) Louvre, Façade rue de Rivoli, Paris 1855 Albumen print Image: 28 x 21.8cm (11 x 8 9/16 in.) Paper: 39.9 x 29.9cm (15 11/16 x 11 3/4 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of William and Margaret Lipscomb
Édouard Baldus (French, 1813-1889) Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris 1856-1857 Salted paper print, albumenised, from wet collodion negative Image: 44.5 x 34.3cm (17 1/2 x 13 1/2 in.) Matted: 61 x 50.8cm (24 x 20 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
In 1854, Édouard Baldus and two other artists were commissioned to record construction of the New Louvre. New wings joined the Louvre Palace, started in the late 1100s, to the Tuileries Palace, begun in 1564. The Pavilion Richelieu, completed shortly before this photograph was taken, originally housed governmental offices and only became part of the Louvre Museum in 1993.
Opening this weekend at the Cleveland Museum of Art, France in the Time of Manet and Morisot offers visitors a vivid view of the people, places, and defining moments that shaped 19th-century France. With approximately 50 photographs from CMA’s rich holdings, visitors will get a firsthand glimpse of the rapid industrial growth and political upheaval in this tumultuous, yet fertile, period of time.
This CMA-organised companion exhibition was designed to complement Manet & Morisot, the first ever major exhibition dedicated to the artistic exchange between Édouard Manet often referred to as the father of modern painting, and Berthe Morisot, the only woman among the founding members of the Impressionist movement. While Manet & Morisot travels nationally, this companion exhibition is uniquely presented at CMA, offering visitors an experience available only in Cleveland. Visitors to the CMA will have the opportunity to experience both exhibitions now through July 5, 2026.
“It’s truly a pleasure to share our rich holdings of 19th-century French photography alongside Manet & Morisot,” said Barbara Tannenbaum, curator of photography and chair of prints, drawings, and photographs. “In the mid-1800s, when the two painters were living in Paris, it became the largest city in continental Europe and the arts capital of the world. However, France also endured war and the loss of territory; experienced modernisation and the rise of industry; and saw a shift from rural to urban living. These events coincided with the birth of a new art form – photography – which was used to record these social, political, and cultural changes.”
In the 19th century, masters of the newfound photography medium, such as Charles Marville and Édouard Baldus, were commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III, the Louvre museum, and the railroads to document both historic monuments and the construction of new architectural and engineering marvels throughout the country.
This era also saw the rise of celebrity portraiture and of the public as patron. Actresses such as Sarah Bernhardt and popular authors Charles Baudelaire, Alexandre Dumas, and others sat for photographers such as Nadar, André Adolphe-Eugene Disderi, and Étienne Carjat. The resulting portraits were printed – and sold – in large quantities to meet a soaring public demand for portraits of the luminaries of the time. When the rising urban middle class sought to have their own likenesses recorded, they flocked to the same studios.
France in the Time of Manet and Morisot, a free exhibition, will be on view in the Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Galleries from May 10, 2026, through August 23, 2026. Manet & Morisot, a ticketed exhibition, is on view in the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Gallery through July 5, 2026.
“Together, these exhibitions offer a compelling portrait of a society in transition – one that visitors can now experience firsthand at the Cleveland Museum of Art,” said Tannenbaum.
Press release for The Cleveland Museum of Art
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Opéra (Rostral Column) c. 1875 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 37.7 x 26.7cm (14 13/16 x 10 1/2 in.) Mounted: 35.4 x 26.7cm (13 15/16 x 10 1/2 in.) Matted: 71.1 x 55.9cm (28 x 22 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Purchase from the Karl B. Goldfield Trust
In the 1800s, gas lamps replaced the oil lights. When Napoleon III commissioned a new opera house in Paris in 1860, it was surrounded by a “Ring of Light,” including this column with three gas streetlights. The opera house became the setting for Gaston LeRoux’s 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera, which inspired the 1976 musical and 2004 film.
Charles Marville
Charles Marville French, 1813-1879
At the invitation of the city of Paris, photographer Charles Marville was among the first to document the ancient quarters of his birthplace. His views, taken in the late 1850s, were intended to record the many buildings and neighborhoods ultimately destroyed by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s urban planning project that would create the boulevards and open spaces of modern Paris. While Marville’s survey of the city, extensive and thorough in scope, prefigured other important efforts of its kind, it is distinguished by its emotional accessibility. His work beautifully reveals a Paris that has long disappeared. Originally trained as a painter and illustrator, Marville worked with both calotype and glass plate negatives. He photographed in France, Italy, Germany, and Algeria, becoming most well known for his architectural imagery but also producing acclaimed landscapes and studies of trees. Many of Marville’s early views, often considered his best, were included in the albums of Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Évrard before the printer’s establishment in Lille closed in 1855. Named official photographer of Paris in 1862, Marville also served as photographer to the Imperial Museum of the Louvre and to King Vittorio Emmanuelle of Italy. T.W.F.
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Sky Study, Paris 1856-1857 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 15.3 x 21.4cm (6 x 8 7/16 in.) Matted: 40.6 x 50.8cm (16 x 20 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
Thirty years before the construction of the Eiffel Tower, Charles Marville made a series of views of the skies over Paris, some from various rooftops and others from his apartment window. This view frames the city so that the dome of the chapel of Les Invalides – a retirement home and hospital for military veterans – dominates the skyline. In the 1850s, the light-sensitive coatings for photographic plates were incapable of properly exposing both earth and the sky in a single shot. Marville here set his camera to capture the dramatic sky and clouds, which meant that the city below, for the most part, became a dark mass of undifferentiated buildings. The scale, drama, and majesty of this natural spectacle overwhelm human achievements.
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Rue de la Ferronnerie c. 1865 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 28 x 27cm (11 x 10 5/8 in.) Matted: 61 x 50.8cm (24 x 20 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Charles Marville preferred photographing on overcast, rainy days when diffused light and glistening cobblestones yielded an image with the maximum tonal range and detail. In 1865, the ground floor spaces on the Rue de la Ferronnerie or “street of ironwork” (named in 1229) were occupied by businesses including a café, a hotel, and a men’s clothing store. Apartments on the upper floors housed some of the many people who moved from the country into the city during the Second Empire.
Attributed to Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) La Belle Jardinère: le magasin de la rue de la Cité pendant sa demolition, Paris 1864-1866 Albumen print from collodion negative Image: 22.9 x 34.6cm (9 x 13 5/8 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
Founded in 1824, La Belle Jardinière (The Beautiful Gardener) department store pioneered the sale of ready-to-wear clothing for those of modest means.
The department store was located on the Ile de la Cité in the Seine in the middle of Paris. In 1864, as part of the renovation of the city, the government ordered that the store be replaced with a new building for the country’s oldest hospital. While there are numerous photographs of new structures and broad streets that resulted from Baron Haussmann’s urban renewal plan, views of the demolition of the old structures are rare.
Étienne Carjat (French, 1828–1906) Sarah Bernhardt in “Zaire” by Voltaire 1874 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 27.3 x 21.3cm (10 3/4 x 8 3/8 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 40.6cm (20 x 16 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
Photographer Étienne Carjat established his reputation through celebrity portraiture. Famed French actress Sarah Bernhardt is seen here as the star of Zaire, a play by the French author Voltaire first performed in 1732. The actress, who studied sculpture, exhibited work in the Paris Salon for the first time in 1874. She just missed being in the same show as Morisot, who exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1864 to 1873, but in 1874 decided instead to show in the first Impressionist exhibition. Édouard Manet produced many portraits of actresses and performers.
Étienne Carjat
Étienne Carjat French, 1828-1906
Born in Fareins, Étienne Carjat and his friend and contemporary Nadar are considered the masters of 19th-century French portrait photography. Like Nadar, whose immense reputation tended to overshadow his own, Carjat was a caricaturist and journalist, and much involved in politics and the arts. In style, however, he was more straightforward and less overtly dramatic than Nadar, frequently portraying his subjects in simple settings and showing close attention to expression, pose, detail, and line. After study with Pierre Petit in 1858, Carjat first took up photography to produce his series Le Panthéon Parisien in the early 1860s. He had several studios in Paris, from which he conducted a portrait business and contributed to the important series Galeries des célébrités contemporaines. Among his sitters were Émile Zola, Antonio Rossini, Charles Baudelaire, and Gustave Courbet. Carjat was a founder of the satirical journal Diogène (1856), as well as an author, actor, poet, and playwright. He became less active in photography after 1867 and reportedly ceased altogether after 1875. In 1878 he and Nadar are believed to have been the only mourners at the burial of their fellow caricaturist, the acerbic Honoré Daumier. T.W.F.
Guglielmo Marconi (French, 1842 – after 1885) Male Nude c. 1870-1875 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 27.2 x 18.8cm (10 11/16 x 7 3/8 in.) Matted: 55.9 x 45.7cm (22 x 18 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
Guglielmo Marconi specialised in nude studies for use by painters and sculptors. Using children, women, and men as models, he photographed a variety of poses traditionally employed by models in academic studios. Artists purchased them because working from a photograph was much cheaper than hiring a live model.
Unknown photographer and maker Untitled (Case with portraits of a man and woman and hair ornaments) c. 1870s Photographs: photographs on enamel, framed in copper alloy metal frames; hair lockets: hair with pen and black and ink on cream-coloured backing; case: leather with metal push-clasp and velvet-lined interior Image: 3.5 x 3cm (1 3/8 x 1 3/16 in.) Case: 9 x 5 x 1cm (3 9/16 x 1 15/16 x 3/8 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John Cook Memorial Fund
The photographs of this man and woman, presumably husband and wife, are juxtaposed with clippings of their hair arranged to form their initials, A and M. In the late 1800s, photographic portraits and hair clippings combined in jewellery or frames served as mementos or memorials for loved ones. For permanence, the portraits here were vitrified on enamel, a process now used primarily for funerary monuments.
Camille Dolard (French, 1810-1884) Self-Portrait in Painting Studio c. 1843 Daguerreotype (full-plate) Platemark: 20.5 x 15cm (8 1/16 x 5 7/8 in.) Matted: 55.9 x 45.7cm (22 x 18 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Dolard, a portrait painter, may have offered photographs to prospective clients of lesser means. In this image, possibly made as an advertisement for his studio, he identifies himself as a painter, surrounded by the tools of the trade. The coat and the hookah suggest an interest in orientalism, a fashion that occupied many mid-19th-century artists. A remarkable technical achievement, this whole-plate image required Dolard to remain motionless for well over a minute, at least 30 times longer than the exposure for the smaller plates in the case below.
Camille Silvy (French, 1834-1910) The d’Orléans Family during a Fête Champêtre at Orléans House 1864 Enamelist: Lafon de Camarsac (French, 1821-1905) Enamelled photograph in original metal frame Plate: 11.5 x 15.5cm (4 1/2 x 6 1/8 in.) Framed: 27 x 29cm (10 5/8 x 11 7/16 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Jo Hershey Selden Fund
The image celebrates the d’Orléans family, who abdicated the French throne during the Revolution of 1848 and settled in England. The setting for this group portrait is d’Orléans House in Twickenham, where the d’Orléans hosted numerous grand social events such as the garden party that occasioned this sitting. Many of these events raised money to support monarchist and other activities in France.
Camille Silvy (French, 1834-1910) The d’Orléans Family during a Fête Champêtre at Orléans House (detail) 1864 Enamelist: Lafon de Camarsac (French, 1821-1905) Enamelled photograph in original metal frame Plate: 11.5 x 15.5cm (4 1/2 x 6 1/8 in.) Framed: 27 x 29cm (10 5/8 x 11 7/16 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Jo Hershey Selden Fund
Félix Thiollier (French, 1842-1914) Vue prise du Couvent des Dominicains, Chalais (Isère), France c. 1865 Albumen print from collodion negative Image: 13.1 x 20cm (5 3/16 x 7 7/8 in.) Paper: 13.1 x 20cm (5 3/16 x 7 7/8 in.) Mounted: 31.7 x 49.1cm (12 1/2 x 19 5/16 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
Félix Thiollier brought to landscape photography the emotional power and mystery of the Barbizon and naturalist painters whom he collected and befriended. This dramatic view provides a deep vista more commonly found in photographs of the Western United States at the time. Underlying it, however, are a geometric structure of overlapping triangles, curved top border, and atmospheric clouds and mist that relate directly to precedents in painting.
Auguste-Rosalie Bisson (French, 1826–1900) and Louis-Auguste Bisson (French, 1814–1876) Mount Maudit, Savoy 1860 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 23.2 x 39.2cm (9 1/8 x 15 7/16 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 61cm (20 x 24 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art James Parmelee Fund
The Bisson brothers’ photograph of Mount Maudit – which translates as “cursed mountain” – makes the 14,649-foot peak seem inaccessible. In fact, it was not summited until 1878. Photographing at high altitudes necessitated climbing while carrying heavy equipment, including large glass plates and a portable darkroom, and required extraordinary technical prowess and speed in working with the chemicals at low temperatures.
Bisson Frères – consisting of brothers Louis-Auguste and Auguste-Rosalie Bisson, also known as the Bissons âiné and jeune (older and younger) – was one of the most celebrated and widely known French photographic studios and publishing houses of the 19th century. Begun by their father, a heraldic painter, the Bissons’ first studio opened in Paris in 1841, shortly after the invention of the daguerreotype. Louis-Auguste, a student of architecture and chemistry, learned photography directly from Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and went on to advance the medium through a number of inventions and techniques, contributions for which the brothers received considerable praise. He retired from the business in 1865. Auguste-Rosalie, perhaps the better known of the two, was responsible for some of their more spectacular photographic successes, including the first closeup views of the peaks of Mt. Blanc (1861). Among the Bissons’ many accomplishments and honors were a set of 900 daguerreotypes of the members of the French National Assembly, which were later published in lithographic copies; their appointment as official photographers to Napoléon III and Pope Pius IX; their role as founding members of the Société française de photographie; and their numerous and much-admired series of landscape, architectural, and portrait photographs. After his brother’s retirement, Auguste-Rosalie continued to work in photography, including a voyage to Egypt in 1869 and views of the Siege of Paris in 1871. As late as 1900, the year of his death, he patented a heliochrome process for the printing of photographs in color with ink. T.W.F.
Auguste Giraudon’s Artist (French) Man with Walking Stick Late 1870’s Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 17.1 x 11.2cm (6 3/4 x 4 7/16 in.) Paper: 17.1 x 11.2cm (6 3/4 x 4 7/16 in.) Matted: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
During the 1870s, Giraudon commissioned one or more artists – probably a French painter who wished to remain anonymous – to create photographs of peasants. Now called Giraudon’s Artist, this photographer was one of the few in the 1800s specialising in rural figure studies created for use by artists. The images were likely taken near Barbizon, a destination popular with artists who wanted to work from nature. The artistry of these images derives from their skilful use of light, ability to render a subject in the landscape, and a perceptive depiction of human dignity.
Auguste Giraudon’s Artist (French) Female Peasant Carrying a Basket and Hay c. 1870 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 17.2 x 11.1cm (6 3/4 x 4 3/8 in.) Mounted: 20.7 x 15.8cm (8 1/8 x 6 1/4 in.) Matted: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
Jules DuClos (French, 1824-1879) Pont-de-Buis, on the Doufine, France c. 1865 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 33.8 x 30.1cm (13 5/16 x 11 7/8 in.) Matted: 61 x 50.8cm (24 x 20 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
The extension of railroad service from Paris across Brittany in northern France occurred in stages between 1840 and 1865. Extending railway service required the construction of railway bridges such as this masonry viaduct which crosses the Doufine River near Pont-de-Buis. Jules DuClos shows it under construction, with timbers supporting the arches and a man standing in the river below.
Adolphe Braun (French, 1812-1877) Untitled (Farm Animals) 1850s Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 28 x 39.4cm (11 x 15 1/2 in.) Framed: 53.7 x 63.8cm (21 1/8 x 25 1/8 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 61cm (20 x 24 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund
While the animals and farmers are in sharp focus in Adolphe Braun’s photograph, the buildings are blurred, suggesting that perhaps Braun intended to market these photographs to visual artists as models rather than intending them to be hung on people’s walls as a substitute for a painting.
Adolphe Braun
Adolphe Braun French, 1812-1877
Adolphe Braun, a French textile designer born in Besançon and trained in Paris, opened his own studio in Dornach, Alsace, before becoming involved in photography in the early 1850s. He produced several early floral textile designs that were published as lithographs. In 1853 Braun began work on a large album of some 300 photographic still-life studies of flowers, intended as aids for artists in the field of decorative arts. The work met with such success at the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris that he left the field of design for photography. Braun’s carefully executed still lifes are considered to be among the finest ever done. From the mid-1850s on, Braun’s firm, Adolphe Braun et Cie., later headed by his son Gaston (1845-1928), became one of the world’s largest studios and publishers of topographical views and of reproductions of works of art. In the latter effort, their importance was in part due to Gaston’s success with the orthochromatic process, in which photographic reproductions retained a tonal range very close to that of the original work of art. Braun et Cie. were the official photographers to Napoléon III and Pope Pius IX. Their reproductions of works in the Louvre, the Sistine Chapel, and many other subjects in architecture, sculpture, painting, and drawing, sometimes using the more permanent carbon or Woodburytype processes, were offered in all sizes and formats, and became the standard in their field. The number of negatives taken by the Brauns or their operators was variously estimated in 1870 to be between 4,000 and 8,000. The Brauns were members of the Société française de photographie. Both were awarded the French Legion of Honor-Adolphe in 1860, and Gaston in 1892. T.W.F.
Adolphe Braun (French, 1812-1877) Young Alsacienne Woman c. 1871 Carbon print on a ruled mount Image: 40 x 30.5cm (15 3/4 x 12 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
This woman wears a regional folk costume from the French region of Alsace, recalling traditions that were disappearing under the impact of industrialisation and modernisation.
At the end of the Franco-Prussian War, Prussia seized much of the regions of Alsace and Lorraine. That inspired Adolphe Braun to produce a series of images of women meant to personify those lost territories. The images proved so popular that they were reproduced on souvenir items including postcards and ceramic plates.
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Bridge of Palalda (near Amelieles-Bains) 1851-1852 Salted paper print from waxed-paper negative Image: 23.8 x 32.7cm (9 3/8 x 12 7/8 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 61cm (20 x 24 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
In 1851, Gustave Le Gray and his friend, photographer Auguste Mestral, travelled throughout southwestern France for the Commission of Historic French Monuments to document sites of historical importance, especially those in urgent need of, or undergoing, restoration. This image was taken from the left bank of the Tech River, situated below the old town of Palalda, four miles from the Spanish border. Le Gray stressed the rugged landscape over a close-up rendering of the ancient bridge, which was not on his list of assigned sites.
Gustave Le Gray
Gustave Le Gray French, 1820-1884
A master both technically and aesthetically, Gustave Le Gray (born in Villiers-le-Bel) was one of the most important figures in 19th-century French photography, bringing to the medium artistic integrity and visual imagination. Le Gray, trained as a painter, was exhibiting his work in the Paris Salons in the late 1840s and early 1850s when he became interested in photography. Along with Henri Le Secq and Charles Nègre, he was a student of Paul Delaroche, a painter of considerable reputation and ability who was one of the first to grasp the importance of photography. In 1851 Le Gray announced his invention of a waxed paper negative, a significant improvement over earlier paper methods that was later adopted by Louis de Clercq, Dr. August Jakob Lorent, and others. That same year the Commission des Monuments historiques named him as one of five photographers of the Mission héliographique, for which he produced well-known studies of army manoeuvres at Chalons. Le Gray also worked with François Arago, the scientist and champion of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, and later proposed a new method of toning prints, among other innovations. Le Gray was perhaps most admired for the effects he achieved with water and sky. To capture the subtle qualities of cloud patterns in some of his seascapes, he employed two negatives to produce the final image. His commissioned studies of historic monuments are classic examples of early architectural photography. In the early 1850s he worked in the Barbizon tradition at Fontainebleau and, in 1860, documented the uprising against François II in Palermo. He was a founding member of the Société héliographique and the Société française de photographie. Despite his influence and artistic success, Le Gray left Paris in 1865 to become a professor of design at the École Polytechnique in Cairo. He died in Egypt. T.W.F.
Charles Soulier (French, 1840-1875) Notre Dame de Paris early 1860s Albumen print from glass negative Image: 38 x 30.6cm (14 15/16 x 12 1/16 in.) Matted: 71.1 x 61cm (28 x 24 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
When the popularity of Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame drew attention to the church, the state hired architect and preservationist Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to restore it. His renovation, which lasted from 1844 to 1864, modified the cathedral: he added the spire, gargoyles, and griffins. Charles Soulier shows us the church’s front and some of the surrounding neighbourhood, bustling with carriages and new construction.
Charles Soulier
Charles Soulier French, 1840-1875
Charles Soulier operated in partnerships, first with A. Clouzard (1854-59) and later with Claude-Marie Ferrier and his son A. Ferrier (1860-64). Soulier was among the first to take naturalistic, snapshot-like views of Paris. His city street scenes were represented in an extensive set of glass stereographs, a medium preferred by Soulier for the delicacy of its reproductive range. Panoramas of the city were considered his specialty. In 1859 Soulier photographed Napoléon III on his campaign in Austria; he was later named photographer to the emperor. He became a member of the Société française de photographie in 1867 and in 1871 documented activities of the Paris Commune. His work includes topographical, urban, and landscape views, among them images of Mt. Blanc and other European scenery, as well as photographic reproductions of artwork. T.W.F.
Edmond Bacot (French, 1814-1875) Young Girl Seated on Straw, Leaning on a Basket 1862 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Paper: 22.7 x 18.2cm (8 15/16 x 7 3/16 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 40.6cm (20 x 16 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
While Impressionist painters were depicting women outdoors in gardens and parks, scenes of rural labor were popular subjects for many other painters. Those painters sometimes turned to photographs as models for the figures in those paintings. Another print of this photograph and several other images of the same girl were owned by the novelist Victor Hugo, a champion of the working classes. Edmond Bacot took them while visiting Hugo.
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève 1898 Albumen print, gold toned Image: 22 x 17.4cm (8 11/16 x 6 7/8 in.) Matted: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
This narrow street, the site of the founding of the University of Paris in 1112, ends in a church built in the 1600s. Atget sold his photographs not as art but as “documents for artists,” similar in purpose to the nude studies other photographers made for use by painters. That may be why he photographed early in the morning, when a normally bustling street like this one was empty.
Eugène Atget
Eugène Atget French, 1857-1927
Relatively unknown to the public during his lifetime, Eugène Atget is today an icon – one of the most celebrated and influential photographers of the 20th century. Born near Bordeaux, Atget first directed his efforts to painting and the stage before turning to photography shortly before 1890. He is best known for his documentary scenes of Paris and Versailles, but he photographed a number of other sites as well. Atget viewed his work as a historical and aesthetic record, regarding it as documentation for use by artists. Indeed, several artists are known to have painted from his images. Using relatively unsophisticated, even outdated equipment, Atget achieved a view of French architecture and culture that is both personal and factual. Along with the rediscovery of the images of Mathew Brady in the early 20th century, the recognition of Atget’s artistic accomplishments shortly before his death by Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, and others helped turn photographers away from the mannered style of Pictorialism toward the visual and technical clarity of modernism. Marked by a selective and highly individual method, his is among the most widely shown, published, and recognised work in photography today. T.W.F.
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Rue du Regard 1899 Albumen print, gold toned Image: 21.9 x 18.1cm (8 5/8 x 7 1/8 in.) Matted: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund
This entrance, which looks similar today, led into the courtyard for the “petit hôtel de Guiche,” built in the 1700s, which adjoined the larger “hôtel de Guiche.” Fragments of those buildings have been incorporated into the modern structures that now occupy the land behind the portal. The houses were named for the de Guiche family, aristocrats that occupied them in the mid-1700s. Their son was guillotined in 1794 following the French Revolution.
Cleveland Museum of Art 11150 East Boulevard Cleveland, Ohio 44106
In my humble opinion F.C. Gundlach is one of the greatest fashion photographers that has ever lived.
Formalism, style, charisma, minimalism, eloquence, use of colour, perspective, scale and pattern, inventiveness, beauty, presence.
While other fashion photographers over egg the solution, Gundlach is pure class. Magnificent!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
PS. A glorious portrait of a most beautiful woman, the actress Romy Schneider (see exhibitions A, B and C). Gundlach’s portrait Romy Schneider mit Kreuz (Romy Schneider with Cross) (1961, below) is the epitome of style and beauty … low depth of field, top lit, so that the neck disappears in shadow and the face floats in a sea of black, the light highlighting décolletage, smoothness of skin, cross, and the cut and sweep of the gown. Perfect.
Many thankx to Bucerius Kunst Forum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“A good fashion photographer must live in his time, must anticipate trends.”
From 8 May to 16 August 2026, you can explore over 200 exhibits – ranging from iconic magazine covers and unpublished black-and-white as well as colour shots to works by Gundlach’s role models, contemporaries and successors such as Richard Avedon, Erwin Blumenfeld, Regina Relang, Cindy Sherman and many others. In conversation with Gundlach’s own images, these pieces equally expose the love for the medium, mutual influences, societal discourses, and power dynamics. The exhibition is the first major presentation of Gundlach’s oeuvre since his death in 2021 and simultaneously celebrates his 100th birthday with special loans from the F.C. Gundlach Foundation.
As a fashion photographer from the 1950s onward, F.C. Gundlach helped shape the image of fashion and the related notions of trends, identity, and gender in both German and international magazines. At the same time, he forged creative networks between Paris, New York, and Tokyo. The exhibition demonstrates how Gundlach was constantly inspired to experiment with new stylistic forms, his curiosity about the global photographic discourse which in this way, set new standards for the visual culture of his era. Whether in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, or Berlin, his role as gallery owner, laboratory proprietor, and collector – as well as his commitment to supporting the emerging photography scene and nurturing new talents – was crucial in establishing a vibrant photographic culture that continues to resonate today. By presenting Gundlach’s multifaceted oeuvre, the show traces both the continuities and the ruptures in his personal trajectory and the broader photocultural developments of his time.
Alongside his celebrated, iconic photographs, the exhibition features previously unpublished fashion series, experimental works and recent discoveries from Gundlach’s own archive and that of his contemporaries. It reveals how deeply photography is interwoven with cultural and social developments and highlights the pioneering influence of Gundlach’s vision on today’s visual culture. By spotlighting defining phases of his life, the show offers fresh perspectives on his artistic legacy and on the emergence of the 20th-century photo-cultural scene.
The exhibition is organised by Bucerius Kunst Forum in collaboration with Stiftung F.C. Gundlach.
Text from the Bucerius Kunst Forum website
Installation view of the exhibition F.C. Gundlach. You’ll Never Watch Alone at Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, May – August, 2026 showing at left in the bottom image, Gundlach’s portrait Romy Schneider mit Kreuz (Romy Schneider with Cross) (1961, below) Photos: Ulrich Perrey
F.C. Gundlach. You’ll Never Watch Alone focuses on the impact of F.C. Gundlach (1926-2021) as a photographer, gallery owner, collector, entrepreneur and networker. The exhibition showcases his iconic colour photographs as well as unpublished black-and-white and colour shots, and works by his role models, contemporaries and successors. The exhibition is staged to mark the 100th anniversary of F.C. Gundlach’s birth as part of the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2026.
F.C. Gundlach became renowned for fashion photography taken around the globe. An influential photographer and leading figure in a fashion, art and culture network, he was closely involved in the production and reception of German fashion magazines. His many cover images not only shaped how fashion was staged and presented, but also the related social concepts of gender and identity.
Taking Gundlach’s work as a starting point, the exhibition investigates photography’s emergence as a visual culture, its associated milieu since the 1950s, and its impact on social trends and movements. As the show’s title implies, photography does not exist in a vacuum. Gundlach’s cooperations with others stretched from Paris to New York and Tokyo, connecting publishing, the photography industry, the gallery scene, and the museum world. They crucially shaped his ideas as a photographer, collector and supporter of this medium. His personal contacts constantly inspired him to experiment with new stylistic forms and, in this way, set new standards for others. His activities as a collector were similarly marked by the same curiosity and openness.
In showcasing Gundlach’s multifaceted oeuvre, the exhibition explores biographical continuities and fractures as well as photography’s social development as a visual medium. For instance, as a gallery and laboratory owner and a teacher in Hamburg and Berlin, Gundlach’s promotion of this medium lent a new visibility to new talents just as much as the discourse of photography itself. The exhibition seeks to locate F.C. Gundlach’s oeuvre in a comprehensive context and highlight his importance in developing photography in the contested space of commissioned works, art and technology.
Through his diverse activities, trips and dialogues with other actors in the field of photography, Gundlach decisively influenced the visual culture of his day. In turn, he was also shaped by social movements, political decisions and trends. In addressing such reciprocity, the exhibition not only examines photography’s inherent connection to cultural and social developments, but also illustrates how Gundlach’s landmark visions paved the way for decoding and understanding images in our own time.
Actively committed to Hamburg, the place he chose to live, he played a significant role in establishing a culture of photography in the city. His works and the collection, administered by the F.C.Gundlach Foundation, continue to have an impact today.
On display are 130 photographs by F.C. Gundlach and 70 works from his collection, which are placed in relation to one another, including works by Erwin Blumenfeld, Richard Avedon, Regina Relang, Cindy Sherman, and many others. The Foundation is the sole lender of works for this first major show of Gundlach’s oeuvre since his death in 2021. Although coinciding with the centenary of his birth, it is not intended as a retrospective. Instead, taking decisive stages in his life as exemplary offers new perspectives on his oeuvre and the scene around the culture of photography emerging in the 20th century. Apart from his famous, now iconic photographs, the exhibition is showing experimental works and new discoveries by Gundlach and the contemporaries influencing his artistic career.
Framing within a square or rectangle, Pflaum’s situational, observational photographs of everyday life in post-war Vienna are full of humans pictured singly or in groups against the urban backdrop.
The figures are rarely photographed front and centre with the photographer using the near-far compositional technique – placing a prominent object very close to the camera lens while capturing a distant figure or background for context – to create a strong three-dimensional depth within the image which enables the artist to enact a compelling visual story. Figures are also placed asymmetrically within the picture. Silhouetting is used to great effect as is the use of low depth of field.
There is a sense of “caught on the fly” abstraction in Pflaum’s personal work, even as her street photographs, her personal not commercial work, are eloquently structured, visualised and resolved, demonstrating “not only her extraordinary powers of observation, her humor, and her phenomenal sense of form, but also a profound social awareness.”
Part Henri Cartier-Bresson, part Edith Tudor-Hart, Pflaum’s enduring street photographs are strong and engaging and entirely her own vision. I just wish I had more of them to show you … but please enlarge the installation views of the exhibition in the posting to gain a greater appreciation of their presence.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to MAK Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Pflaum’s style was marked by poised restraint and subordination of the photographer to the motif, prioritising observation and patience over aggressive intervention, which lent her images an unconventional, artistic edge amid the era’s photojournalistic hustle. Influences from her graphic training extended to lighting and post-processing, where she favoured natural illumination and minimal alterations to preserve raw authenticity, while exchanging ideas with contemporaries like Franz Hubmann, Erich Lessing, and Harry Weber shaped her approach to dynamic yet empathetic framing. This method resulted in a oeuvre of standalone, motif-driven photographs that engaged viewers through subtle interpretive layers rather than overt narratives. …
Barbara Pflaum’s photography served as a visual chronicle of post-war Vienna and Austria during the Second Republic, capturing the city’s social and cultural revival from the 1950s to the 1970s through street scenes, urban portraits, and everyday vignettes. Her images documented the reconstruction era’s vibrancy, including spontaneous moments like pedestrians jumping over puddles on Heldenplatz (c. 1960) and leisure activities at the Prater amusement park with the Giant Ferris Wheel in the background (1961), highlighting the resilience of Viennese daily life amid lingering post-war recovery. These works portrayed ordinary figures – such as market women, newspaper sellers, and coal delivery workers – as typological subjects, emphasising authentic urban interactions without ideological overlay, as seen in her depiction of a motorcycle race on Wiener Höhenstraße (1956).”
Anonymous. “Barbara Pflaum,” on the Grokipedia website Nd [Online] Cited 31/07/2026
Barbara Pflaum (1912-2002) was one of the few women who worked as photojournalists for pictorial magazines in the 1950s.
Men dominated this profession in the first two postwar decades, while women in Europe and the United States returned to domestic life. This was not the case for Pflaum, who came across photography at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she had taken up studies as a 40-year-old divorcée with three children.
Her photographs garnered the attention of several people. In 1954 she published her first reports – about Venice and about an experimental school in Sweden – in the Wiener Illustrierte newspaper. A short time later, she was hired as a photographer for the Wochenpresse weekly, where she worked for over 20 years. She and her classic Rolleiflex medium format camera could be found at most theatre and opera openings, vernissages, and most of all at political events.
Her portraits of heads of state, party leaders, and famous artists often adorned the cover pages of the weekly magazine. As the proud photographer of these images, she showed them in exhibitions throughout her life. The presentation at the MAK will show a different, less well-known side of her work – one that nowadays especially has the capacity to delight.
Between vernissages, conferences, and premieres, Barbara Pflaum tirelessly roamed the streets of Vienna and observed its inhabitants. Situational photographs and masterful portraits not only bring to light her extraordinary powers of observation, her sense of humour, and her phenomenal flair for form, but also reveal an encompassing social sensibility. Taken for herself, in passing – these photographs are the subject of the exhibition.
Some found their way into a Vienna photo book published by Pflaum in 1961, but many have never been released. The images show the city’s inhabitants going about their daily lives, as well as street protests, condemned neighbourhoods, and scenes from the annual Christmas markets.
From 15 April, the MAK dedicates a solo exhibition to Barbara Pflaum (1912–2002), a pioneer of Austrian press photography, in the MAK Works on Paper Room. With her extraordinary powers of observation and outstanding sense of form, Pflaum counts among the trailblazers of Austrian photojournalism in the 1950s. For over two decades, she helped shape the visual style of the Austrian weekly magazine Wochenpresse. Aged 40, divorced and a mother of three, Pflaum began studying at Vienna’s Academy of Applied Arts (now the University of Applied Arts Vienna) where she discovered photography and devoted herself to it with passion from then on. The exhibition at the MAK shows more than 100 photographs from the late 1950s and early 1960s, revealing an aspect of her work as yet little known: thoughtful, often humorous observations of everyday life in Vienna.
Pflaum received her first camera from her then-partner, the traveler, writer, and photographer Herbert Tichy in the early 1950s. At first, she mainly photographed her children and friends. These portraits caught the attention of the photo lab owner where she had her films developed. He encouraged her to submit her work to a magazine. As a result, Pflaum worked for the Wiener Illustrierte between 1954 and 1958. At the same time, she met the renowned Japanese-American photographer Yoichi Okamoto, head of the photo department at the US Information Service. Okamoto trained young photographers in modern photojournalism. Pflaum’s collaboration with Okamoto had a decisive influence on her style and led to her first publications in the Wiener Kurier.
Equipped with her classic medium-format camera, Pflaum had been photographing for the Wochenpresse since the mid-1950s, and was a regular presence at theatre and opera premieres, art exhibitions, political gatherings, and social events. She captured heads of state, party leaders, and international artists, and documented parliamentary debates, receptions, conferences, and cultural highlights. Many of her portraits of prominent figures appeared on the weekly magazine’s front cover – photographs of which she was particularly proud and which she repeatedly exhibited during her lifetime.
She consolidated her position as a photographer through her work in the press and exhibitions at Vienna’s Konzerthaus, as well as through her own publications. In addition to official commissions, she tirelessly documented everyday life in Vienna: people in coffee houses, at markets, in parks or at parades, passers-by, street vendors, children at play or people in public spaces. Of especial fascination for her was the city’s transformation: old neighborhoods undergoing renovation, demolition, new construction, or the beginning of gentrification.
Many of these photographs were taken, as it were, en passant – personal observations, some of which found their way into her 1961 picture volume, wie ist Wien? Most, however, remained unpublished, lying in the photographer’s archive for years. Today, these photographs offer a view of the city and its inhabitants that is as lively as it is humorous. They depict scenes of everyday life, as well as street protests, Christmas markets, and neighborhoods about to be demolished. At the same time, they document an urban atmosphere undergoing gradual change in post-war Vienna.
Most of the prints on display in the exhibition come directly from Pflaum’s own archive, which is now held by brandstaetter images. These are prints she made herself, some of which bear clear signs of wear – revealing their use as working materials.
A key element of Pflaum’s photographic style has to do with her camera of choice. She worked with a Rolleiflex, a large twin-lens camera for 6 x 6cm film. This technique required a deliberate and considered approach: the film had to be changed after every twelve exposures, and the image was composed in a square format. For publication in the press, which usually required rectangular image formats, the photographs had to be cropped later during enlargement. The Rolleiflex was held at hip height as the image was projected onto a ground glass screen on the top of the camera, meaning it could only be viewed from above.
Many of Pflaum’s photographs are characterised by their strong, multi-layered composition: often, a blurred foreground area structures the image, with the spatial context of the scene unfolding behind it. Only on a third level does the actual action take centre stage – a fleeting moment, an encounter, a gesture. This pictorial structure imbues the photographs with a sense of dynamism, steering the viewer’s gaze towards the essence of the image.
Pflaum’s gift for observation, her ability to “lie in wait” and capture the right moment, are remarkable, as is the originality of many of her compositions. Whether dealing with common photographic subjects such as markets or leisure activities, or with current events such as demonstrations, Pflaum always took care to draw attention to the people, ensure a dynamic energy in the image, and evoke associations. In this way, she was able to create a sense of narrative.
What emerges is a multi-layered photographic portrait of Vienna from more than half a century ago. Barbara Pflaum’s photographs also demonstrate the wealth of possibilities contained within even a fleeting moment on the street – provided it is observed with attentiveness, patience, and artistic sensitivity.
Karolina Ziębińska is a curator and art historian specializing in photography. From 2021 to 2025, she was director of the Museum of Warsaw. Prior to that, she was a curator at the Centre Pompidou in Paris from 2014 to 2020; Ziębińska also worked for ten years at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. In 2008, she co-founded the Archaeology of Photography Foundation. Karolina Ziębińska has curated over 50 exhibitions and edited numerous publications on photographers of note.
“I feel the heavy weight of history permeating Sander’s almost melancholy portraits, portraits that emanate from a generations long uncertain cultural landscape.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Exhibition dates: 27th February - 28th June, 2026
Curator: Judy Ditner, the Richard Benson Curator of Photography and Digital Media
Heinrich Hoerle (1 September 1895 – 7 July 1936) was a German constructivist artist of the New Objectivity movement.
Generations
There have been so many words written about one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, August Sander (German, 1876-1964), his magnum opus People of the 20th Century (Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts) (1892-1954) – which consists of over 600 photographs organised into seven categories and 49 portfolios – and his influence on social realist photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, and the later typologies of conceptual photographers such as Bernd and Hiller Becher … what else is there left to say?
We know of his use of an “old fashioned” large-format camera, tripod, glass negatives and long exposure times used for the crispness and detail obtainable in the final print. We observe the many scenarios in which Sander took his photographs, from staged studio portraits, to seemingly impromptu photographs “on the road”, from closely cropped portraits, to medium distance group photos, to group photographs out in the Westwald or the Eifel or basket weavers embedded in the landscape. From low depth of field to high depth of field. From seriously “dead pan” to romantically engaged. We know of the influence of New Objectivity (known in German as Neue Sachlichkeit) on his frontal, unsentimental, realist portraits – his fascinating cast of personages, characters modulating the personal into universal typologies: the farmer, the skilled tradesman, the woman, the artists, etc… character templates that picture archetypes in German history.
All this is known and given. What else can be said?
Personally I feel the heavy weight of history permeating Sander’s almost melancholy portraits, portraits that emanate from a generations long uncertain cultural landscape:
~ The photographs from 1912-1913 in the first posting on this exhibition, such as Farmer Couple – Propriety and Harmony (1912, printed c. 1990-1999), Country Band (1913, printed c. 1990-1999), Country Lads from the Westerwald (1912, printed c. 1990-1999), and Farm Children (c. 1913, printed c. 1990-1999) emerge from a society facing “significant social and political unrest prior to World War I, driven by rigid class hierarchies, rapid industrialisation, and a growing labour movement. The landed aristocracy held significant political power, which bred resentment among the working and middle classes.”
In these four photographs by Sander we have an elderly farmer couple of propriety and harmony facing the prospect of old age and experiencing severe, devastating food shortages during World War I as conscription of agricultural workers and the requisitioning of draft horses for the Imperial German Army paralysed domestic food production, poor harvests and harsh winters further eroding the civilian diet, and inflation making even basic items unaffordable for many (the government taking away or strictly controlling the food produced by farmers during the war) – while the young men in the country band and country lads from the Westerwald would have become machine gun fodder on the fields of Europe.
The children would have had to live through this. The Burgfrieden (civil truce) which had brought political unity and the cessation of strikes at the beginning of the war fell apart during it.1 Revolution in 1918 led to “the downfall of the House of Hohenzollern, the dissolution of the German army, and the demise of the old German social order.”2 General Erich Ludendorff, defacto military commander resigned in October 1918; Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated in November 1918; Prince Max of Baden Chancellor of Germany resigned in November 1918; and King Ludwig III of Bavaria was overthrown in November 1918. Shootings and murders were the order of the day in Berlin.
“In November 1918 … the old regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II was swept away by a revolution. It ended the First World War and led to the establishment of democracy in Germany. The Weimar Republic was born out of the struggle for a new social order and political system.”3
Tumultuous times.
From the outset the new Weimar Republic was always under pressure as the cabaret of cultural life continued its unstable rollercoaster of protests, strikes, murders and social and political upheaval during the interwar years.
“During the interwar years, Germany experienced frequent, deadly street battles between communists and right-wing groups, which bordered on low-intensity civil war:
~ Following World War I, communist uprisings – such as the 1919 Spartacist Uprising in Berlin – were brutally suppressed by far-right volunteer paramilitaries known as the Freikorps.
~ Both sides formed official, heavily armed paramilitary wings. The Communist Party (KPD) utilised the Red Front Fighters’ League (Roter Frontkämpferbund or RFB). Their primary right-wing antagonists were the Nazi Party’s Stormtroopers (Sturmabteilung or SA), alongside the nationalist Stahlhelm and the Social Democratic Reichsbanner.
~ Violence peaked as the Weimar Republic collapsed. Nazi paramilitaries regularly marched directly into working-class, communist strongholds (such as the Wedding and Neukölln districts in Berlin) to intentionally spark brawls. Clashes escalated from brawls to armed gunfire, claiming hundreds of lives on both sides.” (multiple sources)
The great Wall Street Crash of 1929 ramped up the instability, causing severe economic depression in Germany and rampant inflation. “Millions of Germans faced severe hunger and malnutrition because the economic collapse left them without the income to buy food.” This was the era of political violence in Germany (1918-1933) before the fall of the Weimar Republic (1930-1933) when the expansive creativity of artists, the small, hard won civil liberties and the sense of liberal freedom were all swept away by the Nazis in the 1930s.
Tumultuous times.
NOW
You look at the photographs by Sander of human beings from the interwar years and you overlay this knowledge onto them and a kind of melancholy realism descends on you as you appreciate the import of historic events that they were caught up in, the maelstrom, malevolence and disaster of the Second World War that was quickly approaching.
I think of the farm children photographed in 1913 – in 1939 they will be in their thirties and will, most likely, be serving in the German armed forces during the second conflagration. I look at the Peddler (1930, printed c. 1990-1999 below) and the Itinerant Mason (c. 1927, printed c. 1990-1999) and wonder what they did during the war and whether they survived it. I flinch looking at the “Aryan” doppelgängers in Farmers Playing Cards (c. 1920, printed c. 1990-1999) as I imagine them in SS uniforms. And I look at the men in Workers’ Council from the Ruhr Region (1929, printed c. 1990-1999 below) and wonder whether they were later pressed into the army or, perhaps, the Volkssturm (national militia) at the end of the Second World War made up of the young, the injured, the old, to defend the Fatherland from the Russians. To refuse the call invited execution.
I wonder about the Country Girls, Westerwald (1925, printed c. 1990-1999) and how many babies they produced for the Reich and what medals they received. I think about the black man in Circus Performers (1926-1932, printed c. 1990-1999). I think about the persecuted, the Jews and the political prisoners including Sander’s son Political Prisoner [Erich Sander] (1941-1944, printed c. 1990-1999 below) “who was a member of the left wing Socialist Workers’ Party (SAP), was arrested by Nazis in 1934 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he died of an untreated ruptured appendix in 1944” (Wikipedia) because the guards couldn’t care less … and I imagine the pain and heartache that his father August went through at the time, loosing his eldest son.
I gaze at the faces of The Last People, the stare of an Inmate of an Asylum (1926-1930, printed c. 1990-1999) and the faces of Blind Children (c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999) and wonder whether they were all killed as part of the Nazis euthanasia program (code-named Aktion T4) “which was a systematic campaign of mass murder that targeted institutionalised people with physical and intellectual disabilities in Germany and annexed territories (between 1939-1945).”4
A tear rolls down my cheek.
And then you think of the persecution of Sander himself, the destruction in 1936 of all the publishers copies of his first book Face of Our Time (Antlitz der Zeit), published in 1929, the destruction of the printing plates and the confiscation of his negatives – because the portrayal of all strata of German society did not fit with right wing eugenics and defied the regime’s rigid ideology of the “master race”.
Finally, I think of the courage of Sander to keep on photographing, to keep on recording his people of the 20th century no matter who they were, no matter the peril he was in. What else could he do? Give in to oppression? To survive the vicissitudes of the Second World War only then to loose 25,000 to 30,000 of his negatives, part of his life’s work, destroyed in an accidental basement fire in Cologne in 1946.
AND NOBODY SAYS ANY OF THIS.
But in his photographs we can see and feel how …
“The faces of those he photographed show traces of this collective historical experience.”
Through the generations.
~
As I observed in a 2013 paper Transgressive Topographies, Subversive Photographies, Cultural Policies, “Photography has always opened up to artists the possibility of offering the viewer images open to interpretation, where the constructed personal narratives of the viewer are mediated through mappings of identity, body and place that challenge how the viewer sees the world and the belief systems that sustain that view.”5
Thus, we are trans/fixed (trans, derived from Latin, “trans-” means to go across, beyond, or through) by the photographs of August Sander, for in understanding their history and their gestures (the hands of the blind children, the outstretched arm of the farmer sowing), their behaviour, social interactions, and psychological tension6 we may go beyond the here and now, transcending a belief system that sustains a limited world view, embracing identities that are constantly shifting and evolving. In this way, Sander’s photographs change human consciousness.
They undermine Volksgemeinschaft, a German term translating to “people’s community” or “national community”,7 a central ideological concept in Nazi Germany used to describe a supposedly classless, racially unified society where the interests of the individual were strictly subordinated to the needs of the nation … for within the archetype there is always the individual, choice, difference, freedom of expression, freedom to say no. Enough. No matter what the cost.
Through individual and archetype, gesture and pose, Sander’s art becomes impervious to time, a guiding light for generations.
1/ “The right saw the Burgfrieden as a sign of support for the authoritarian state while the left expected their sacrifices to be rewarded by social changes after the end of the war.”
6/ “Identity however is constantly evolving, shifting, and even fragmenting, while gesture signals shifts in human consciousness, behaviour, social interactions, and psychological tension.”
Associate Professor James McArdle. “Entwine,” on the On This Date in Photography website 15/06/2026 [Online] Cited 16/02/2026
7/ “A central concept in Nazi ideology, “Volksgemeinschaft” (community of the People) was the name given to the fictional notion of a classless community of all “racially pure” Germans as a unified people, supposedly bound together by blood and culture as well as common experiences and beliefs. The idea of the “Volksgemeinschaft” was intended to evoke a strong identification of the majority of Germans with the Nazi regime and to promote their sense of obedience. Central was the exclusion of certain groups, such as Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, political opponents and people persecuted for being “antisocial”. They were all labelled as “aliens to the community”. Many were arrested and deported to concentration or death camps.”
Many thankx to the Yale University Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. All photographs were printed by Gerd Sander (German, 1940-2021). Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. See Part 1 of the posting.
“The stark reminder that there was a person behind the lens, who suffered loss along with so many during that time, only makes People of the 20th Century more remarkable in its monumental intimacy. Each image is its own stunning portrait. Cumulatively, they have the power to leave the viewer in a daze, awestruck at the way someone with a clear eye and a loudly beating heart could show us how to connect with people from three generations ago…”
“Seen together, Sander’s images form a pictorial mosaic of inter-war Germany. Rapid social change and newfound freedom were accompanied by financial insecurity and social and political unrest. By photographing the citizens of the Weimar Republic – from the artistic, bohemian elite to the Nazis and those they persecuted – Sander’s photographs tell of an uncertain cultural landscape. It is a world characterized by explosions of creativity, hyperinflation and political turmoil. The faces of those he photographed show traces of this collective historical experience.
Marta Hegemann (14 February 1894 – 28 January 1970) was a German artist associated with the Dada movement and with the Cologne Progressives.
Cologne Progressives
The Cologne Progressives was an art movement and were an informal group of artists based in the Cologne and Düsseldorf area of Germany. They came together following the First World War and participated in the radical workers’ movement.
History
The group was founded by Gerd Arntz, Heinrich Hoerle and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert. The group related their attitude to art to their political activism. As Wieland Schmied put it, they “sought to combine constructivism and objectivity, geometry and object, the general and the particular, avant-garde conviction and political engagement, and which perhaps approximated most to the forward looking of New Objectivity […] “. They originated Figurative Constructivism.
Other artists and designers associated with this group include Wilhelm Kleinert, Marta Hegemann, Angelika Hoerle, Anton Räderscheidt, and Gottfried Brockmann. Many members had come from the Stupid (art movement).
Key concepts – Reversibility
This concept comes from their concern not merely to communicate social and political necessities, but also to ensure that their artworks could be turned toward the viewers sensible reality and become tenable as an argument. This is tied to their political commitment to proletarian culture in the specific context of the Rhineland during the tumults of the 1920s.
Max Ferdinand Scheler (German: [ˈʃeːlɐ]; 22 August 1874 – 19 May 1928) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers, Scheler developed the philosophical method of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology.
The German photographer August Sander (1876-1964) is one of the most significant and influential photographers of the 20th century. This exhibition presents Sander’s ambitious and groundbreaking portrait series Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the 20th Century) (1892-1954), a canonical work in the history of photography. The presentation – of over 600 prints from the series – represents the most comprehensive installation of his life’s work.
For this monumental archive of modern humanity, Sander photographed German citizens from all classes and backgrounds, organising them into categories such as “The Skilled Tradesman,” “The Farmer,” “The Artist,” and “The Woman.” Sander conceived of the project in the 1920s, during the Weimar Republic, but included in it photographs he had made as early as 1892. His portrayal of marginalised individuals, including people with disabilities and the unemployed, provided visibility to those often excluded from mainstream representations and drew the ire of the Nazis. Striking for their unflinching realism and skilful observations of character, his images reflect the changing social landscape of Germany in the first half of the 20th century.
Erich Sander (1903-1944) was the eldest son of Anna and August , an intellectual, political activist and member of the Resistance who was introduced to photography by his father, with whom he worked. In Cologne, with his comrade Ernst Ransenberg, he took over the leadership of the local section of the SAP party (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschland – Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany), writing and publishing leaflets against the Nazi party in power. In 1934, Erich was arrested and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for high treason. He worked as a photographer for the prison administration and managed to smuggle in a camera that enabled him to take portraits of himself and his fellow prisoners, whom he managed to smuggle out of the prison. He left a substantial correspondence with his family (some letters written in secret ink), which constitutes essential documentation on life in prison during National Socialism. …
Erich Sander did not live to see the end of the war. He died on 23 March 1944, after his severe abdominal pain was ignored for days by the prison authorities.
Marie-Édith Agostini. “Portraits of a Time by August and Erich Sander,” on the Wer Ist Walter? website Nd [Online] Cited 03/06/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
One of his fellow prisoners was Marcel Ancelin, born in Paris in 1923. A member of the Front National de Lutte pour la Libération et l’Indépendance de la France (National Front for the Fight for the Liberation and Independence of France) and later the FTP (Francs-Tireurs et Partisans), he was arrested by the French police on 13 August 1941. Handed over to the German authorities and sentenced to hard labour, he spent several years in camps and prisons in Germany, among them in Siegburg where he met Erich Sander. Ancelin was finally liberated from a camp near Frankfurt with other inmates by American troops in April 1945, and returned to France. On 8 November 1956, he received the official title of “deported resistance fighter”. Marcel Ancelin died in 2003, having never told his family or friends about his heroic past.
Erich Sander wrote of him in a letter to his parents: “One of the three (French men) has some very striking features, which is sure to give father some pleasure […] Very intelligent chap, by the way. He wants to come and visit me after the war.” However, Erich Sander did not live to see the end of the war. He died on 23 March 1944, after his severe abdominal pain was ignored for days by the prison authorities.
Marie-Édith Agostini. “Portraits of a Time by August and Erich Sander,” on the Wer Ist Walter? website Nd [Online] Cited 03/06/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
In the history of photography, few projects have proven as groundbreaking as People of the 20th Century. August Sander (1876-1964) developed his ambitious series over more than six decades, capturing the diverse social fabric of his home country of Germany during a period marked by cultural upheaval and change. A new exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery showcases over 600 prints from this landmark work, inviting viewers to experience the breadth and depth of Sander’s vision. Never before has his output received such comprehensive treatment in a museum display.
Sander undertook to photograph people from all walks of life and organise them into groups, whether by class, gender, profession, or other traits – resulting in a sociological archive of Germany in the first half of the 20th century. The installation at the Gallery draws its structure from the typology he established: The Farmer; The Skilled Tradesman; The Woman; Classes and Professions; The Artists; The City; and The Last People. Each of Sander’s portraits at once represents an individual and a social archetype, exploring the tension between public identity and personal uniqueness. As he explained, “The individual does not make the history of his time, but he both impresses himself on it and expresses its meaning.”
In one image, the photographer’s eldest son, Erich, poses with his fellow working college students. He appears again in a photograph taken surreptitiously while imprisoned for leftist activity. Such reoccurrences make clear that Sander’s categories are not as fixed as they may at first appear, with many individuals and motifs showing up across different classifications. Further challenging the project’s claim to offer a neat and neutral study of social types is the deeply personal character of some of the pictures. Indeed, People of the 20th Century incorporates intimate portraits of Sander’s family, including the poignant My Wife in Joy and Sorrow showing his wife, Anna, with their twin infants, one of whom did not survive.
Sander was steeped in the avant-garde movements of early 20th-century Germany as he cultivated a realistic style aimed at portraying life as it was, without romanticisation. Among these influences were the Cologne Progressives, a collective of artists deeply invested in labor activism, and the New Objectivity, which countered the era’s prevailing Expressionism with a manner of ostensible impartiality or resignation. This turn away from subjective expression in art shaped Sander’s approach to framing his subjects. He situated figures carefully within their environments such that their surroundings tell parts of their stories: as in the above-mentioned Political Prisoner, the individual becomes inextricable from the context.
Following the rise to power of the National Socialist party in 1933, Sander remained in Germany and faced professional constraints due to the nature and content of his artwork. Defying the representational mandates imposed by Nazi ideology, he photographed marginalised peoples – those with disabilities, the unemployed, and the persecuted. Even when an early version of the project was destroyed by the regime, Sander persisted, documenting the stories of those often overlooked by society. Through his lens, every subject was given dignity and importance, creating a stark contrast to the dehumanising rhetoric of this period.
Judy Ditner is the Richard Benson Curator of Photography and Digital Media
Hans Heinz Lüttgen (actually Theodor Heinrich Lüttgen; born 16. November 1895 (according to another source 1898) in Düsseldorf; died July 1976 in New York) was a German architect, interior designer and artist. According to his designs, the Sartory rooms and settlement buildings in Riehl were built in Cologne, as well as a series of single-family houses and villas in Wuppertal, which can be attributed to the style of the New Building of the 1920s and 1930s and now have “cult status”.
Hedwig Mankiewitz (also known as Hedwig Hausmann, 1893–1974) was a German painter and a vital, yet frequently under-appreciated, figure in the European avant-garde and Dada art movements. She is best known as the second wife, muse, and collaborator of the influential Dadaist Raoul Hausmann. Mankiewitz played a crucial role in providing emotional and financial support to Hausmann, especially during the tumultuous years when he was classified as a banned artist under the Nazi regime.
Vera Broïdo (7 September 1907 – 11 February 2004) was a Russian-born writer and a chronicler of the Russian Revolution, as one who grew up through it and lost her mother to its aftermath…
During her time in Berlin in the 1920s, Broido met avant garde artist and Dadaist turned society photographer Raoul Hausmann and became his lover and muse, living in a ménage à trois with him and his wife Hedwig in the fashionable Charlottenburg district of Berlin between 1928 and 1934.
Martha Dix (née Lindner; other married name Koch; July 19, 1895 – March 6, 1985) was a German goldsmith and silversmith who was the wife of the painter Otto Dix.
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (German; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with George Grosz and Max Beckmann, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.
Martha Dix and the renowned German painter Otto Dix formed one of the most creatively documented couples of the Weimar era. She was a trained goldsmith and silversmith, and was her husband’s primary muse.
The twelve portraits in this series were taken by the German photographer August Sander in Cologne and nearby towns around 1938, at the height of Hitler’s power. Although Sander’s Jewish subjects were probably friends and neighbours, he labelled these photographs simply “Persecuted Jews.” It is possible that Sander, who was not Jewish, made the photographs to help desperate German Jews obtain exit papers. Sander himself had been a victim of Nazi persecution in 1934 when many of his plates were destroyed by the authorities and his eldest son was imprisoned for his antifascist activities.
![B.F. Childs (American, 1841-1921) 'New York, Iron Mine [Michigan]' c. 1871-1876](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/b.f.-childs-new-york-iron-mine-michigan-c.-1871-1876.jpg "B.F. Childs (American, 1841-1921) 'New York, Iron Mine [Michigan]' c. 1871-1876")
![Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829-1916) 'Malakoff Diggins, North Bloomfield, Nevada County [California]' 1871](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/carleton-e.-watkins-malakoff-diggins.jpg "Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829-1916) 'Malakoff Diggins, North Bloomfield, Nevada County [California]' 1871")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Painter [Heinrich Hoerle]' 1928, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/sander-maler_hoerle-web.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Painter [Heinrich Hoerle]' 1928, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Painter [Marta Hegemann]' c. 1925, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/august-sander-painter-marta-hegemann.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Painter [Marta Hegemann]' c. 1925, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Painter [Willi Bongard]' 1922-1925, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/august-sander-painter-willi-bongard.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Painter [Willi Bongard]' 1922-1925, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Philosopher [Max Scheler]' c. 1925, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/august-sander-philosopher-max-scheler.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Philosopher [Max Scheler]' c. 1925, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Political Prisoner [Erich Sander]' 1941-1944, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/august-sander-political-prisoner-b.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Political Prisoner [Erich Sander]' 1941-1944, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Political Prisoner [Erich Sander]' 1943, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/august-sander-political-prisoner-erich-sander.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Political Prisoner [Erich Sander]' 1943, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Political Prisoner [Marcel Ancelin]' 1943, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/august-sander-political-prisoner-marcel-ancelin.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Political Prisoner [Marcel Ancelin]' 1943, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'The Architect Couple [Dora und Hans Heinz Lüttgen]' 1926, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/august-sander-the-architect-couple-dora-und-hans-heinz-luttgen-dora.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'The Architect Couple [Dora und Hans Heinz Lüttgen]' 1926, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'The Dadaist Raoul Hausmann [with Hedwig Mankiewitz and Vera Broïdo]' 1929](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/sander-der_dadaist-web.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'The Dadaist Raoul Hausmann [with Hedwig Mankiewitz and Vera Broïdo]' 1929")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'The Industrialist [Max Spindler]' 1929, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/sander-the-industrialist-1929.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'The Industrialist [Max Spindler]' 1929, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'The Painter Couple [Martha und Otto Dix]' 1925-1926, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/11.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'The Painter Couple [Martha und Otto Dix]' 1925-1926, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Victim of Persecution [Miss Oppenheim]' c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/august-sander-victim-of-persecution-miss-oppenheim.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Victim of Persecution [Miss Oppenheim]' c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Victim of Persecution [Margarete (Grete) Trier Oppenheim]' c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/august-sander-victim-of-persecution-margarete-grete-trier-oppenheim.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Victim of Persecution [Margarete (Grete) Trier Oppenheim]' c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Victim of Persecution [Mr. Leubsdorf]' c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/august-sander-victim-of-persecution-mr.-leubsdorf.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Victim of Persecution [Mr. Leubsdorf]' c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Working Students [Erich Sander, far left; Richard Creutzberg, center left]' 1926, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/august-sander-working-students.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Working Students [Erich Sander, far left; Richard Creutzberg, center left]' 1926, printed c. 1990-1999")
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Young Photographer [Gunther Sander]' 1929, printed c. 1990-1999](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/august-sander-young-photographer-gunther-sander.jpg "August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Young Photographer [Gunther Sander]' 1929, printed c. 1990-1999")
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