Duane Michals (American, 1932-2026) What is Time? 1994 Gelatin silver print 16 × 19 7/8 inches (40.6 × 50.5cm) Gift of Duane Michals The Morgan Library & Museum
“Time is the duration of everything, and life is an event, a fluttering of wings.”
Duane Michals
There is no time
Vale the transcendent Duane Michals – storyteller.
Magician, poet, philosopher and dreamer.
An artist, like Joseph Cornell, who I have always felt a special affinity / infinity towards.
I wrote in earlier postings on his work:
“As he says, his work goes beyond description, beyond surfaces, to reveal the subject – not as it looks but as it feels. In his sequences he usually achieves this by posing a question that has no answer, a question that is like a Zen koan… what is the sound of one hand clapping? The grandfather ascends smilingly to heaven with little wings on his back as the child waves goodbye (if youth knew, if age could); the man as human condition turns into a galaxy; and the spirit leaves the body as it was left before. …
Michals staged, narrative scenes take us on a journey into his reality, one which “has entered a realm beyond observation.” He poses difficult questions that force us to examine ideas beyond the world of phenomena, beyond the world of surfaces. He challenges our repressed inner lives and our idealised image of ourselves, disturbing the boundaries of personality, ego, and identity.”1
And
“Duane Michals is one of the greatest photographic storytellers of the twentieth century. His parables – seemingly simple stories used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson – resonate, vibrate, with energy, and insight into, the human condition. They are as profound as the air we breathe but cannot see – expressing the invisible, presencing the spiritual. I feel, I know these stories, intimately. Those things-for-which-there-are-no-words. …
There are things here not seen in this photograph. The spirit leaves the body. William Blake and Duane Michals. Enchanted melancholy. The mysterious / music. In swift embrace. In love. In memory. In death. The fluidity of the line of the artist. Things are queer. The world implodes and ravages itself. Paradise is reborn. The letter, and love, from my father that I, also, never did receive. The nature of reality. Truth? … When I was young. What was time?”2
It was Michals great skill as an artist and a human being that enabled us the possibility of accessing some aspect of the mystery of our existence.
Stepping beyond … his spirit has left his body.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Marcus Bunyan. “Exposing your/self,” on the exhibition ‘Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals’ at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, November 2014 – February 2015 on the Art Blart website January 30, 2015 [Online] Cited 11/06/2026
2/ Marcus Bunyan. “The things-for-which-there-are-no-words,” on the exhibition ‘Illusions of the Photographer: Duane Michals at the Morgan’ at The Morgan Library & Museum, October 2019 – February 2020 on the Art Blart website January 24, 2020 [Online] Cited 11/06/2026
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“I write with this photograph not to tell you what you can see, rather to express what is invisible.”
Duane Michals 1966 in Johnson, B. (ed.,) 2004, ‘Photography speaks: 150 photographers on their art’, Aperture, New York p. 150
“The nature of consciousness is always the central question,” he asserted. In The Human Condition, his panel of six photographs from 1969 begins with a man standing on the 14th Street subway platform; the train arrives and he is bathed in a halo of light; the light becomes a swirl and in the last frame he is swept into a white disc the size of a galaxy passing through the night sky. From the immediate to the universal in six frames.
Duane Michals (American, 1932-2026) Things Are Queer 1973 Nine gelatin silver prints Images: 5 × 7 inches (12.7 × 17.8cm) each Gift of Duane Michals The Morgan Library & Museum
Duane Michals (American, b. 1932) The Spirit Leaves the Body 1968 Gift of Richard and Ronay Menschel The Morgan Library & Museum
Curator: Sabine Zorn (Head of Conservation/Restoration of Graphic Art and Photography, Hamburger Kunsthalle); Guest Curator: Dr. Bernd Pappe (Freelance restorer and art historian specialising in portrait miniatures)
I discovered this exhibition while surfing online and I couldn’t miss it before it closes tomorrow. Resistance is futile, especially for an avid collector of object d’arts.
I love miniatures, their sensitivity, their sensuality, their size. The fact they were held in the hand and carried close to the heart. Portraits of the self, relying on mirrors to capture the artist’s own reflection, portraits of loved ones, artists, anonymous men and women.
“Many master miniaturists (like Daguerre himself) used optical tools like the Camera Obscura to map proportions before painting. Using early cameras felt like a natural mechanical extension of this process.” (Wikipedia)
“Portrait miniaturists were already experts at arranging subjects for flattering, highly personalised, and dignified depictions. They brought these same framing, angling, and lighting rules – such as emphasising the face – to the camera.” (Wikipedia)
“As miniature painters attempted to mimic the technical precision of daguerreotypes, they lost the intimate, distinct appeal of their art form. As the former Metropolitan Museum scholar Harry Wehle put it in 1927, “The miniature in the presence of the photograph was like a bird before a snake; it was fascinated – even to the fatal point of imitation – then it was swallowed”.” (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
For me, there is a delicacy and romanticism to the painted miniature which can never be matched by the photographic miniature. Despite both being housed in small, protective leather and wood cases, each are constructed realities of a different aspect – one created through the eye and creativity of the painter, the other created through the eye and creativity of the photographer and the maximal, granular reality of the camera.
Where possible I have added bibliographic and other pertinent information for the artists in the posting.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Hamburger Kunsthalle for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (née Labille; 11 April 1749 – 24 April 1803), also known as Adélaïde Labille-Guiard des Vertus, was a French miniaturist and portrait painter. She was an advocate for women to receive the same opportunities as men to become great painters. Labille-Guiard was one of the first women to become a member of the Royal Academy, and was the first female artist to receive permission to set up a studio for her students at the Louvre.
Adélaïde Labille was born on 11 April 1749 in Paris. Her father, Claude-Edme Labille (1705-1788) was a haberdasher.
Labille-Guiard became a master at miniatures, pastels, and oil paintings. Little is known about her training due to the practices of the 18th century which dictated masters (who were predominately male) should not take on female pupils. During this time, women were perceived as incapable to follow instruction alongside men. During her adolescence, Labille-Guiard studied miniature painting with oil painter François-Élie Vincent and her early work was exhibited at the Académie de Saint-Luc.
Labille-Guillard married Louis-Nicolas Guiard in 1769, but separated from him eight years later, already able to support herself through her artwork. She apprenticed with the pastel master Quentin de la Tour until 1774. From 1776 to 1780, she began to study oil painting with her childhood friend François-André Vincent (the eldest son of François-Élie Vincent), who would later become her husband.
Exhibitions at the Académie de Saint-Luc
Labille-Guiard was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1767 when she was twenty years old. Her admission piece has since disappeared and sadly no records of its existence survive today. The Académie de Saint-Luc provided Labille-Guiard with a space to practice art professionally. In 1774, she exhibited her work at its Salon. This show was so successful that the Royal Academy took offence, and with the backing of the monarchy, issued an edict in March 1776 abolishing “guilds, brotherhoods, and communities of arts and crafts”, forcing the Académie de Saint-Luc to close its doors in 1777. However, this did not stop Labille-Guiard’s ambitions as an artist.
Becoming a member of the Royal Academy
Once the Académie de Saint-Luc closed its doors, Labille-Guiard began to learn oil painting, so she could apply to the Royal Academy which required her to present at least one oil painting for admission. During the late 1770s, she painted several portraits of leading academicians, creating contacts with the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.[6]
Labille-Guiard chose to display some of her work at the Salon de la Correspondance in 1779 and 1783. This included her self-portrait in pastel and oil portraits, which were well received by critics. Labille-Guiard’s talent as an oil painter and pastellist was quickly noticed, and she received national recognition, ultimately leading to her acceptance into the Royal Academy. On 31 May 1783 Labille-Guiard was accepted as a member of the French Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Her rival, Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, was also elected on that day; the two of them were the first women to be inducted. Both Labille-Guiard and Vigée Le Brun were immediately criticised following their admission by those who were furious at women’s entry; Labille-Guiard suffered attacks against both her art and character. One anonymous pamphlet Suite de Malborough au Salon 1783, accused Labille-Guiard of exchanging sexual favours for help with painting. The pamphlet punned on François-André Vincent’s name (though still unmarried, he was her rumoured paramour), saying that Labille Guiard had “vignt cents” (twenty-hundreds, or two thousand) lovers. Still, becoming accepted into the Royal Academy opened doors for Labille-Guiard as she gained patronage from the royal family. …
Style and context
Labille-Guiard often did not fit comfortably within the boundaries of feminine virtue in the 18th century. In order to appeal to a wide variety of viewers including upper-class men and women, she often incorporated recent fashions into her paintings, which allowed her to showcase her artistic ability. She was good at rendering details, such as showing luxurious folds and layers of complex skirts that were in fashion at the time. However, often she painted with a twist such as having women face directly at the viewer or with a low neckline, which was an uncommon practice in the 18th century when portraying women.
Further evidence of Labille-Guiard’s boldness can be seen in her self-portraits, which leave her exposed slightly more than usual, but not enough to evoke allegations of promiscuous behaviour. This is seen in her painting Self-Portrait with Two Pupils. Unlike some other paintings of female artists in the 18th century, Labille-Guiard chose to depict herself actively working rather than passive and at rest. Labille-Guiard also pushed against other restrictions, such as those that limited the number of females that could attend the Royal Academy. By depicting two female students in Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Labille-Guiard suggests more women should be allowed in to the Royal Academy. In this sense, Labille-Guiard was daring, but not too daring as to sabotage her reputation and lose the respect she worked hard to gain within the art world.
At the time, female artists were frequently related to the goddess Minerva. Therefore, Labille-Guiard and her rival Vigée Le Brun were both referred to as “modern Minervas.” Their rivalry was encouraged by both academicians and patrons at court.
Today, Labille-Guiard’s masterpiece, Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, after the Louvre rejected it in a final dismissal of the artist’s talent.
Friedrich Carl Gröger was a north-German portrait painter and lithographer. One of the most respected portraitists of his time in northern Germany, his works are to be found in several museums, including the Hamburger Kunsthalle, as well as in north German, Holstein and Danish private collections.
Johann Dominik Bossi, also known as Domenico Bossi, was a painter. Bossi, a student of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, was born in Trieste and worked primarily as a miniaturist in Germany, Austria, Sweden and Russia before he settled down in Munich, where he lived at Theresien Straße 19 in Munich around 1850.
Carl (Karl) Friedrich Demiani was born in 1768 in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), and died in 1823 in Dresden. He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and specialised in portrait miniatures.
Joseph Nicolaus Peroux was born in 1771, in Ludwigsburg. He was a well-known German miniature painter, etcher and lithographer of the Romantic era. Peroux was a student of the “Peintre du Duc de Wurtemberg” (first painter at the Württemberg court) Nicolas Guibal, who taught at the Académie des Arts and the Hohen Karlsschule in Stuttgart until his death in 1784. Peroux initially worked in Frankfurt am Main (from 1795) and in Hamburg from 1800, where he exhibited a portrait of Emma Hamilton and a self-portrait in 1803. He then opened an art school in Lübeck and became the young Friedrich Overbeck’s first drawing teacher. The turmoil of the French Period brought him back to Frankfurt in 1806. Accordingly, his works can be found primarily in the museums in Frankfurt, the Hamburger Kunsthalle and in the Behnhaus in Lübeck. The artist died in 1849, in Frankfurt am Main.
Text from the Wikipedia website translated from the German
[Stelzner] was the stepson of the portrait and miniature painter Carl Gottlieb Stelzner, who trained him in painting. In 1825 he traveled through Schleswig-Holstein and painted portraits of peasants and citizens. At the end of the 1820s he made study trips to Hamburg, Stockholm , Copenhagen and then to Paris where from 1831 to 1834 he was mentored by prominent miniature painters Jean-Baptiste Isabey and Claude Marie Dubufe. On return to Hamburg in 1837 he opened a studio, painting portrait miniatures.
Hearing of the new technique of photography, Stelzner returned quickly to Paris in 1839 to learn in person from Louis Daguerre how to make daguerreotypes. He then opened a daguerreotype studio in Hamburg with Hermann Blow (1804-1850). The partnership was short-lived and in 1843 he returned to his old studio to become the first daguerreotypist in Schleswig-Holstein and ultimately one of the best in Germany. His output was mainly portraits. His first wife Anna Caroline Stelzner (above), a miniaturist artist who was also his half-sister, coloured many of them and did the rephotography of the plates, since copying was the only way to reproduce the daguerreotype.
Despite the constraints of his medium, Selzner’s portraits rarely appear ‘frozen’. The position of Caroline’s arms and her sideways gaze are reinforced by the position of props such as the book on the table as a counterpoint to the one in her hand which infers movement, and the framing of the foliage of pot plants, repeated in the fabric of her dress and the tablecloth.
You can see Selzner experimenting with his own pose in these two self-portraits [one of which you can see below] on which Caroline no doubt assisted. Though these two images are dated five years apart on the Hamburg Art Museum website, the photographer’s clothing, hair and the background are identical. The only change is in the pose and a lowering of the camera to provide a more regal impression in the second image.
Associate Professor James McArdle. “December 30: Action,” on the On This Date In Photography website 30/12/2016 [Online] Cited 05/06/2026
With FOR YOUR EYES ONLY: Miniatures from the Romantic Era, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting the first major exhibition devoted to the multifaceted art of miniature painting in Hamburg, from its heyday circa 1800 to the 1840s, when it was replaced by early photography. These miniature portraits, usually measuring around 6 to 10 cm and artfully painted in watercolour and gouache on wafer-thin ivory plates, backed in some cases with silver foil, still fascinate us even today. A total of over 250 objects will be on view.
The show is based on portrait miniatures from the Kunsthalle’s own collection that were restored and catalogued in 2023–24. Around 60 of these miniatures will be shown for the first time here, together with some 200 works on loan from European and private collections, some of them also making their public debut.
These small portraits set in frames, brooches or cases were among the most personal and intimate likenesses people had painted of themselves. They were intended only for the eyes of the recipient and could be worn – often directly over the heart – and viewed at will. The portraits were a way to keep memories alive in the event of a long separation or to provide comfort after the loss of a loved one.
Portrait miniatures were widespread in Europe around 1800. Often made for the nobility, they also became popular with the aspiring bourgeoisie – including in Hamburg, which experienced an economic boom in the late eighteenth century that impacted the art world. Private collections were formed, the Kunstverein was founded, and exhibitions, liberal auction laws and new techniques such as the daguerreotype and lithography contributed to Hamburg’s emergence as an important art centre. Internationally renowned miniaturists such as Domenico Bossi and Pierre-Louis Bouvier lived and worked for a time in the Hanseatic city, which itself produced outstanding artists including Heinrich Jacob Aldenrath, Friedrich Carl Gröger, and Ferdinand and Caroline Stelzner.
Hénard was born in Bourg-en-Bresse on 11 February 1756. He was the son of the goldsmith Vincent Hénard and of Elisabeth Cadet. After having studied with Taraval, Hénard worked in both France and England. He exhibited at London’s Royal Academy from 1785 to 1800, and in Paris in 1791 and from 1806 to 1812. He worked in Hamburg from mid-1796 to the spring of 1797. After emigrating to the United States in 1811 on board of the Susquehanna, he lived in Baltimore and showed some of his works in 1812 and 1813 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
With FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. Miniatures from the Romantic Era, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting its first major exhibition devoted to the multifaceted art of miniature painting in Hamburg, from its heyday circa 1800 to the 1840s, when it was replaced by early photography. The show is based on portrait miniatures from the Kunsthalle’s own collection that were restored and catalogued in 2023-2024. Around 60 of these miniatures will be shown for the first time here, together with some 150 works on loan from European and private collections, some of them also making their public debut. Accompanying the miniature portraits are a number of paintings, drawings, prints and photographs, for example a self-portrait by the painter and miniaturist Bernhard Peter von Rausch (1793-1865). This material sheds light on how miniatures were made as well as their special function and the technical modifications they required. In total, over 250 objects are on display in the Harzen Cabinet that tell of an era marked by social transformation, European exchanges and technological innovations.
Even today, people still like to carry a likeness of a loved one on their person. Before the advent of photography, such miniature portraits were precious one-offs that took hours to paint. Their small format – usually around 6 to 10 cm – and skilled execution in watercolour and gouache on wafer-thin ivory plates, sometimes backed with silver foil, hold an enduring fascination. Set in frames, brooches or cases, these miniatures were among the most personal and intimate likenesses people had painted of themselves. The miniaturists held several sittings with their clients, painting “ad vivum” [from life], often on specially developed painting desks. One such desk from the estate of the miniaturist Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin (1759-1832) is exhibited here for the first time, along with painting utensils and measuring instruments such as a pantograph for the true-to-scale reduction of drawings. These aids illustrate the traditional technique used to produce minia-tures on ivory and white-primed paper as well as reproduction methods devel-oped in the late eighteenth century known as Bou-Magie and Physionotrace.
The commission to make a miniature arose from an intimate relationship between two people. The likeness was intended only for the eyes of the recipient, who might wear it as jewellery – often directly over the heart – and could admire it at will. Often, such portraits were designed to keep memories alive in the event of a long separation or to provide comfort after the loss of a loved one. Added locks of hair, artful plaits, inscriptions or symbolic messages hidden in the portrait in the form of flowers, objects or animals underscore the personal nature of these works while offering a glimpse of the emotional climate in the period around 1800.
Portrait miniatures were widespread in Europe during that era. No longer reserved for the nobility, they enjoyed increasing popularity among the aspiring bourgeoisie – including in Hamburg, which experienced an economic upswing in the late eighteenth century. After the setbacks of the Napoleonic era, a prolonged period of prosperity would have a lasting influence on the arts scene in the Hanseatic city. The first private collections were formed, the Kunstverein was founded in 1817, and exhibitions, liberal auction laws and new techniques such as lithography and later daguerreotype contributed to Hamburg’s rapid rise as an important northern art centre.
Internationally renowned miniaturists such as Giovanni Domenico Bossi (1767-1853), Carl Friedrich Demiani (1768-1823), Pierre-Louis Bouvier (1765-1836), Charles Hénard (1756-1813), Jan Gottlieb Jannasch (c. 1755-1804) and Edmé Quenedey (1756-1830) lived and worked in Hamburg for a time. And the Hanseatic city itself produced some outstanding artists during this period, including Leo Lehmann (1782-1859), Ernst August Abel (1720-1790), Karl Friedrich Kroymann (1781-1849) and Christopher Suhr (1771-1842). Friedrich Carl Gröger (1766-1838) and Heinrich Jakob Aldenrath (1775-1844) were particularly influential.
With the invention of photography in 1839, a medium rose to popularity that would take over the function of the portrait miniature and eventually replace it completely. The daguerreotype (also known as helio-graphy) made it possible to produce small-format portraits that were not only more realistic but also sig-nificantly faster to realise. A sitting for a miniature portrait soon took less than a minute. Thanks to the low cost of production, artists could now attract a new clientele. Carl Ferdinand Stelzner (1805-1894) from Hamburg and his wife Caroline (1808-1875) initially painted miniatures before Carl Ferdinand in particular successfully turned his attention to portrait photography in 1842. And yet, the portrait miniature did not go completely out of fashion. The artist Enrichetta Fioroni-Narducci (1806-1892), who worked in Rome, and her sister Teresa Fioroni (1799-1880), for example, augmented their income with miniature versions of famous paintings that were extremely popular with mid-nineteenth-century travellers. The Kunsthalle is home to five of their works, on display in the exhibition.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication (Michael Imhof Verlag, edited by Sabine Zorn and Bernd Pappe, approx. 160 pages), which is available in the museum shop or at http://www.freunde-der-kunsthalle.de for a price of 29 euros, as well as in bookstores.
Among all of the daguerreotypes produced before the advent of the wet-plate swept it aside, it is rare to see pictures of animals. Slezner’s portrait of his dog stands out as a tribute to his attaining an unusual facility in his medium.
No doubt obedient, Ulla the dog has nary a muscle during the long exposure, which, even if by 1860 Slezner was achieving high speeds with his lens and by pimping the daguerreotype process, would have still run into tens of seconds. It is quite a feat; a faint double image of snout and then only the slightest movement around the collar and end of the nose, due to a dog’s rapid breathing, can be discerned.
Associate Professor James McArdle. “December 30: Action,” on the On This Date In Photography website 30/12/2016 [Online] Cited 05/06/2026
Carl Ferdinand Stelzner (German, 1805-1894)
Carl Ferdinand Stelzner was a began his career as a lithographer and engraver, but became interested in photography in the early 1840s. He learnt the daguerreotype process from Louis Daguerre himself and opened his own studio in Berlin in 1845.
Stelzner quickly became known for his high-quality daguerreotypes, which were prized for their clarity and detail. He used a large-format camera that allowed him to capture images with incredible precision, and he experimented with different lighting techniques to create dramatic effects.
As well as his technical skill, Stelzner was also known for his artistic ability. He often posed his subjects in carefully composed scenes and was adept at capturing their personalities and emotions.
Stelzner’s work was exhibited widely throughout Europe and he won numerous awards for his photography. He continued to work as a photographer until his death in 1894 at the age of 88.
Today, Stelzner’s daguerreotypes are highly prized by collectors and museums around the world. They offer a fascinating glimpse into the early days of photography and continue to inspire photographers today.
Text from the Picryl website [Online] Cited 05/06/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Curators: Ron Magliozzi, Curator, with Katie Trainor, Film Collections Manager and Cara Shatzman, Collection Specialist, Department of Film.
Bob Beerman (American) Rock Hudson c. 1953 Sheet: 9 15/16 x 8″ (25.2 x 20.3cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Silhouetting the celebrity
MoMA always puts on interesting photography exhibitions and this one is no exception. Of course, they have a huge collection to draw from, but it still takes intelligence and curatorial inspiration to bring it all together.
It took me a long time to compile the posting. There were not many media images available but with a bit of digging around on the MoMA collection web pages, and searching online, I managed to find enough photographs to illustrate the exhibition / plus the installation photographs / and the addition of movie posters and magazines to illuminate the films the still photographs were taken from (please note: not in the exhibition). While many of the publicity shots were taken by unknown stills photographers, I have also added bibliographic information for the known photographers where possible.
This would be my only criticism of the exhibition: the inability of the viewer to visualise how these “covered with masking tape, marked up with crayon, or reconfigured with ghostly halos of white-out” photographs were actually used (in the press in everyday life) to create the fantasy ideals of Hollywood glamour stars. Perhaps this was a deliberate curatorial strategy, to concentrate on the pre-production rather than the post-production, to concentrate just on the still photos, without the distraction of further stimuli. And I can understand that decision.
In this posting I can show you three examples of how these still photographs were used: the untouched photograph Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in “This Earth is Mine”] by an unknown photographer (1959, below) has then been colourised and used on the front cover of the DVD release of this film; the Limehouse Blues movie poster (1934, below) features a white-out around George Raft’s head, similar to the white-out around Joan Crawford or Rock Hudson (above); and the hair of Elsa Manchester in Elsa Lanchester [in “The Bride of Frankenstein”] by an unknown photographer (1935, below) is graphically stylised and coloured in the The Bride of Frankenstein movie poster (1935, below).
Silhouetting, in-painting, masking, sectioning, and collage were all hands-on practices that readied the photographs for the press whilst in press they promoted the desirous ideal of the glamorous movie starlet, heroic action man, the fantasy ready and available for consumption by the reading public: the beautiful heroine available to the male gaze, aspirational for so many young women.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to MoMA for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Though Iris Barry, who in 1935 became the founding curator of The Museum of Modern Art’s Film Library, aimed to preserve the history of moving images as an art form, she didn’t stop at moving images. “She was trying to save the record of film history,” explains Ron Magliozzi, a curator in what is today known as the Department of Film. “When the department was founded, the silent period had just ended. And its whole history was considered irrelevant and of no interest. That’s why she was so aggressive in collecting it. Films were the most important thing, and images from film history were second.”
Today, the Museum’s Film Stills Collection includes well over a million publicity photos, production stills, and more – and it’s not all pristine, glossy prints. In the current exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, many of the images are covered with masking tape, marked up with crayon, or reconfigured with ghostly halos of white-out. It’s an occasionally startling reminder that the manipulation of photographs – and of celebrity itself – long predates Photoshop and Instagram.”
Jason Persse, Assistant Director, Content Team, MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art announces Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be drawn from the Museum’s film stills archive since 1993. On view in the Titus and Morita Galleries, the exhibition will offer a revisionist look at the Department of Film’s photographic archive, examining the evolution of editorial practice before the digital age, AI technology, and social media reshaped the experience of celebrity.
Face Value will feature over 200 works from 1921 to 1996, including studio photography of Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Katharine Hepburn, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Oprah Winfrey, and many others.
Text from the MoMA website
Installation views of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing in the left hand block of 9 photographs of the bottom image, from left to right top row to bottom row: Ray Jones’ Margaret Sullavan c. 1939 (below); Clarence Sinclair Bull’s Hedy Lamarr c. 1940; Adolph L. “Whitey” Schafer’s Rosalind Russell c. 1940; Ray Jones’ Mischa Auer c. 1940; Unknown photographer Harry Belafonte [in “The Angel Levine”] 1970; Irving Lippman’s George Raft c. 1933; Hal Phyfe’s Miriam Hopkins c. 1930; Unknown photographer Dorothy Gish c. 1929; and Imandt’s Joan Bennett c. 1939 Photos: Jonathan Dorado
Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947) Margaret Sullavan c. 1939 Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 7/8″ (35.2 x 27.6cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Installation view of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing at right in the bottom image at third left in top row, Unknown photographer Jackie Robinson c. 1950 Photos: Jonathan Dorado
Unknown photographer Jackie Robinson c. 1950 Sheet: 10 x 8″ (25.4 x 20.3cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
The Museum of Modern Art announces Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography, the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be drawn from the Museum’s film stills archive since 1993. On view in the Titus and Morita Galleries from June 28, 2025, through June 21, 2026, the exhibition will offer a revisionist look at the Department of Film’s photographic archive, examining the evolution of editorial practice before the digital age, AI technology, and social media reshaped the experience of celebrity.
Face Value will feature over 200 works from 1921to 1996, including studio photography of Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Katharine Hepburn, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Oprah Winfrey, and many others.
Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography is organised by Ron Magliozzi, Curator, with Katie Trainor, Film Collections Manager, and Cara Shatzman, Collection Specialist, Department of Film.
“Face Value will encourage viewers to see through the facade of glamour at how celebrity is fabricated and exploited,” says Ron Magliozzi. Showcasing work by over 58 photographers, the exhibition will juxtapose “untouched” images like Otto Dyar’s Carole Lombard (c. 1933) with those altered through traditional press practices such as silhouetting, in-painting, masking, sectioning, and collage, like James Manatt’s Joan Crawford portrait for the film Letty Lynton (1932). Face Value examines how these methods shaped representations of not only film stars but also sports figures, socialites, and politicians, from Jackie Robinson to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Eleanor Roosevelt. Presented in thematic suites, the installation highlights radical editing techniques, stylised visual motifs, and the gendered aesthetics embedded in the system, offering a revealing perspective on the fabrication of glamour and fame.
Since the Museum’s founding, photography has played a vital role in how it has documented the history of motion pictures. Face Value traces the origin of this early initiative to MoMA’s first film curator, Iris Barry, whose archival efforts led to the acquisition of editorial collections from Photoplay (1911-1980) and Dell (1921-1976), two leading publications that helped define Hollywood’s star system. The exhibition includes images of comic stars Buster Keaton, W. C. Fields, Lupe Velez, and Mae West; pioneering actress Hattie McDaniel with Ruby Berkley, the first Black accredited Hollywood correspondent; famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart on a Hollywood film set; and the last photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe.
Featuring promotional portraits crafted to cultivate celebrity personas, such as Ray Jones’s Anna May Wong portrait for the film Limehouse Blues, Soul of a Dragon (1934), the exhibition explores how these images were manipulated for public consumption through hands-on editing techniques long before digital tools became standard.
Press release from MoMA
Installation views of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing in the bottom two photographs, video stills from Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Benedetta Barzini, Ingrid Superstar, Nat Finkelstein: Danny Williams footage of unknown documentary film shoot c. 1965, processed 2024 (below) Photos: Jonathan Dorado
Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Benedetta Barzini, Ingrid Superstar, Nat Finkelstein: Danny Williams footage of unknown documentary film shoot c. 1965, processed 2024 The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Edie Sedgwick dances in Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory during a photoshoot
Installation view of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing at top centre, Jacqueline Kennedy with Caroline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Jr. 1960s; and a bottom centre, Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher with Michael Wilding Jr. andChristopher Wilding 1960s Photo: Jonathan Dorado
Installation view of the exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 – June 2026 showing from top left to right, top to bottom, Unknown photographer Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine 1957 (below); Gene Lester (American, 1910-1994) Dean and Jeannne Martin 1958; Bob Beerman (American) Rock Hudson c. 1953 (top of posting); Unknown photographer Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in “This Earth is Mine”] 1959 (below); Unknown photographer Jean Simmons [in “The Big Country”] 1958; Unknown photographer Elizabeth Threatt and Dewey Martin [in “The Big Sky”] 1952; Unknown photographer Dorothy Malone and Anthony Quinn 1957; Unknown photographer André De Toth and Veronica Lake 1944; Unknown photographer Edmund O’Brien and Tom D’Andrea [in “Fighter Squadron”] 1948; Unknown photographer Ward Bond and Ida Lupino [in “On Dangerous Ground”] 1951; Unknown photographer Aldo Ray and Katharine Hepburn [in “Pat and Mike”] 1952 Photo: Jonathan Dorado
Unknown photographer Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine [in “Island in the Sun”] 1957 Sheet: 6 15/16 × 9 1/16″ (17.6 × 23 cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Unknown photographer Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in “This Earth is Mine”] 1959 Sheet: 8 x 9 15/16″ (20.3 x 25.2cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
This Earth is Mine (1959) DVD cover
Otto Dyar (American, 1892-1988) Carole Lombard c. 1933 Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 1/2″ (35.2 x 26.7cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Hollywood stills photographers like Dyar “were not mirroring life, but illusion; their subjects were not humans but gods – of love, of allure, of luxury, perfection incarnate from the golden age of Hollywood glamor”
John Kobal (ed), Hollywood glamor portraits, Courier Corporation, 1976, p.V on the Wikipedia website
Otto Dyar was a prominent stills photographer who began his career at the Paramount studios in the 1920s. Initially working as an assistant on major film productions such as the 1927 ‘Wings’, Dyar quickly rose through the ranks to become one of Hollywood’s most notable image-makers.
During the 1930s and 40s, Dyar developed his own, highly dramatic style of lighting and photography that deviated from the neoclassical glamor of the 1920s. Edgy and expressionistic, Dyar’s photographs pushed the iconic features of movie stars like Carole Lombard, Cary Grant, Kay Francis and Joan Crawford to a grittier place that was more in accord with the aesthetics of films made in those decades. Of particular note are Dyar’s star portraits taken outside of the studio, an unusual and daring step at the time.
Despite all the high-contrast lighting, skewed angles and often tiny ‘surrealist’ interventions that point to the influence of photographers like Man Ray, Dyar faithfully accomplished the task of elevating the studio stars to the realm of deities. Like his peers George Hurrell, Ted Allen and Clarence Sinclair Bull, Dyar was not concerned with the psychologies of his sitters. What interested him was amplifying and consolidating the image the stars exuded in their roles, which was usually so powerful that it eclipsed the ‘real’ person that was in front of the camera.
Vigen Galstyan. “Dyar, Otto,” on the Lusadaran: Armenian Photography Foundation website 2015 [Online] Cited 02/04/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Otto Dyar (American, 1892-1988) Louise Brooks c. 1927 Sheet: 13 15/16 x 10 15/16″ (35.4 x 27.8cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Otto Dyar (American, 1892-1988) Anna May Wong 1930s Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 7/8″ (35.2 x 27.6cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947) Anna May Wong [in “Limehouse Blues”] 1934 Sheet: 12 7/8 x 10″ (32.7 x 25.4cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Limehouse Blues (1934) movie poster
Unknown photographer Anna May Wong c. 1934 MoMA Film Stills Archive Sheet: 8 x 6″ (20.3 x 15.2cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Unknown photographer Myrna Loy [in “Across the Pacific”] 1926 Sheet: 11 x 14″ (27.9 x 35.6cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Advertisement for the American romantic adventure film Across the Pacific (1926) with Monte Blue and Myrna Loy, on pages 6 and 7 of the October 26, 1926 Film Daily
John Miehle (American, 1902-1952) Dolores del Rio and Edmund Lowe [in “The Bad One”] 1930 Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 15/16″ (35.2 x 27.8cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
John Miehle was born on August 7, 1902 in Los Angeles, California. Being born so close to Hollywood Miehle went to work as an assistant camera man on the 1931 movie “Delicious” starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell.
He then worked exclusively in the Camera and Electrical Department doing uncredited still photography on some of the best known films, such as “What Price Hollywood?,” “Rain,” “Little Women,” “Top Hat,” “Kitty Foyle,” “Rope” and “Portrait of Jennie.”
He photographed many of the greats as well including Constance Bennett, Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne, Ginger Rogers, Ann Harding, William Powell, Joel McCrea, Katherine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Delores Del Rio, Randolph Scott, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Ruth Hussey, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Ethel Barrymoore, Laraine Day, Franchot Tone, Ann Blyth, Farley Granger, and Dana Andrews…
In addition, he did many publicity shots of such stars as Carole Lombard, Marilyn Monroe, and Lucille Ball.
Don’t Forget The Illustrator! “The Classics and “Ginger Rogers” photographer John Miehle,” on the Vintage Movie Star Photos blog Thursday, March 28, 2013 [Online] Cited 12/05/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
The Bad One (1930) movie poster
William Walling Jr (American, 1904-1983) Carole Lombard c. 1933 Sheet: 13 7/8 x 11 15/16″ (35.2 x 30.3cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
William Richard Walling, Jr. (October 6, 1904 – December 11, 1983) was an American actor, inventor, and portrait photographer for film studios.
Robert Coburn (American, 1900-1990) Vera Zorina [in “The Goldywyn Follies”] c. 1937 Sheet: 13 13/16 x 10 15/16″ (35.1 x 27.8cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Robert Coburn was one of the most influential portrait photographers working in the major Hollywood movie studios from the 1930’s to 1960’s. His star subjects included Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford, Kim Novak, Carole Lombard, William Holden, Glenn Ford, and Orson Welles. Coburn’s most infamous portraits immortalised Hollywood’s greatest icons and helped to define this era as the Golden Age of Cinema. In 1940, Robert Coburn began a twenty-year career with Columbia Pictures as the head of the still production department and the studio’s chief portrait photographer for many landmark films including “Picnic”, “Gilda”, and “The Big Heat”.
Text from the Fahey/Klein Gallery website
Goldwyn Follies (1937) movie poster
Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography Introductory text
For MoMA’s founding film curator, Iris Barry, building an archive of images that documented the history of motion pictures was second only to collecting films. Photographs from the study collection that she created were among the first works exhibited in MoMA’s theater gallery. Barry’s initiative eventually led to the acquisition of editorial archives from Photoplay (1911-1980) and Dell (1921-1976), leading fan magazine publishers supporting the Hollywood star system. The portrait photography featured in these publications was produced by film studios to promote the glamorous celebrities under contract to them. Face Value looks at these images and surveys how they were manipulated for public consumption in the decades before digital tools, AI technology, and social media revolutionized the process.
Over sixty photographers are represented in this installation, which intermingles images that survive untouched with those that show evidence of the hands-on practices that readied them for the press. The standard techniques used – silhouetting, in-painting, masking, sectioning, and collage – were applied not only to photographs of entertainers but to sports figures, socialites, and politicians as well. Organised in suites that highlight radical editing practices, stylised visual motifs, and the gender stereotypes inherent in the studio system, the exhibition offers a demystifying perspective on the glamour of celebrity.
Wall text from the exhibition
George P. Hommel (American, 1901-1953) Clara Bow c. 1929 Sheet: 14 x 11″ (35.6 x 27.9 cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Overshadowed by the work of 1920s Paramount colleagues Donald Biddle Keyes and Eugene Robert Richee, stillsman George P. Hommel crafted thoughtful portraits highlighting both the beauty and sorrow of those he photographed. Like Keyes, the peripatetic Hommel always looked for new challenges, new opportunities, keeping him on the move. Unobstrusive and elegant, Hommel’s work reveals hidden depths in those he shot. …
Hommel’s straightforward portraiture captured the vulnerability of his sitters, revealing a wistful and often melancholic look in their expressive eyes. His pensive work focused on serious matters, not straining to create fleeting moods but revealing the heart of those he photographed. Employing simple, dark-textured background, Hommel focused on the eyes and lips, creating a sharp image with an often soft-focus background. His portraits often feature shadows and strong angular lines, creating dramatic composition. Hommel could also capture the sometimes insouciant or even overly exuberant emotions of sitters, often covering their vulnerability and pain, such as in his Pierrot portraits of Clara Bow as clown.
James Manatt (American, 1896-1989) Joan Crawford [in “Letty Lynton”] 1932 Sheet: 13 x 10″ (33 x 25.4cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Letty Lynton (1932) movie posters
Elmer Fryer (American, 1898-1944) Lili Damita [in “The Match King”] c. 1932 Sheet: 14 1/16 x 11″ (35.7 x 27.9cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
The Match King (1932) movie poster
Bert Longworth (American, 1893-1964) Amelia Earhart with Helen Hayes [on set of “A Farewell to Arms”] 1932 Sheet: 13 15/16 x 10 7/8″ (35.4 x 27.6cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
As the studio system came into place with the advent of talkies, studios hired many stillsmen to take scene stills, off-camera images, and candids of both above and below the line talent. Photographers took massive amounts of stills around the lot, at public events, premieres, at homes, in posed shots, to be widely distributed to magazines and newspapers for free publicity promoting upcoming films, new talent, and established stars. The journals, fan magazines, and newspapers splashed these images throughout their pages, building awareness and star popularity.
Bert “Buddy” Longworth was one of the stills photographers taking these images. Longworth began his career shooting scene stills at MGM for Greta Garbo’s first three films, including “Flesh and the Devil,” with Longworth capturing the passion of Garbo and John Gilbert as they fell in love. He was employed for a short time at Paramount, but from 1929 on, he worked at Warner Bros. as an action specialist, working on Busby Berkeley’s spectacular musicals, crime pictures, off-set candids, as well as portraits. Scholar David Shields calls him “Hollywood’s foremost expressionist, often using unusual perspective, occasional use of multiple exposures.”
Unknown photographer Elsa Lanchester [in “The Bride of Frankenstein”] 1935 Sheet: 13 1/2 x 9 3/16″ (34.3 x 23.3cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) movie poster
I want to talk more about the edited photographs. In many of the photos white-out has been used to separate the subject’s head or face – and in one notable case, their bare legs – from the rest of the image. What are some ways in which these disembodied segments were used by the studios and by the magazines?
RM: We know they were from Photoplay magazine, so if we have a still that’s been edited for Photoplay, Cara went and looked for the issue that published the photograph to see how it was used. It might have been a feature on women’s legs, so that’s why they only focused on the legs.
There’s one grouping of photographs, I call it the “eat face grouping,” where the stars are very close up. There’s a photograph of someone eating someone’s chin. Those were all taken for a particular issue of Photoplay – that’s why they’re all edited in the same way.
With research and detective work you can determine how they were actually used in print. The floating heads, they would attach to biographies. They call that silhouetting, with the white-out.
CS: A lot of the uses I found were very gossipy, which was interesting, a lot of rumor columns. And then of course, like Ron said, highlighting certain aspects of celebrities’ bodies or features.
Back in 1980 MoMA’s exhibition Hollywood Portrait Photographers, 1921 to 1941 actually used a couple of the same images that appear in this show. But that nnnexhibition celebrated the artistry and glamor of these images. Why did you choose to focus more on the ways that these images have been manipulated and edited?
RM: The audience for photographs like this has changed. In 1980 there was a whole generation of people who knew who these performers were, who appreciated them as performers and appreciated their celebrity. Nowadays, younger audiences, in many cases, have no idea who these folks are. Even we sometimes have trouble identifying everyone. Displaying them in that way seemed dated. We wanted to mount them in a way that reflected how visitors today would need to look at them.
The photographs in 1980 were all matted in a very formal way that encouraged appreciation for the beauty of the photograph. I wasn’t interested in how beautiful the images were. I wasn’t interested in the celebrities. We’re mostly interested in the photographs. I wanted them to look like working photographs, and that’s reflected in the way they’re displayed. We did ours on plexi traps, which turned out to be very elegant, but the notion was that it would be a less precious way of mounting them so we would look at them in a less precious way.
The other thing we did differently was to have large numbers of photographs grouped in very dense clusters. To me that reflects social media today. The way we encounter images daily is so dense, and we’re forced to sort through a lot of images that come our way in any one moment. So I wanted visitors to have a contemporary view. It was meant to reflect a digital-age perspective, because analog-versus-digital was a subtext of the show in our heads.
There were two shows that were touchstones for this one: the Hollywood Portrait show of 1980, and the Fame After Photography show, a wonderful show in 1999 that MoMA’s Photography department mounted. They borrowed a lot of film stills for that show, which was also investigating celebrity and fame.
Unknown photographer Louis Armstrong [in “Cabin in the Sky”] 1943 Sheet: 8 x 10″ (20.3 x 25.4 cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Cabin in the sky (1943) movie poster
Unknown photographer Hattie McDaniel and Ruby Berkley Goodwin c. 1948 Sheet: 9 1/16 x 7″ (23 x 17.8cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
“[Ruby Berkley Goodwin] was also Hattie McDaniel’s publicist. And she was Ethel Waters’s publicist. She was the first Black American to have a syndicated newspaper column. She wrote this very famous autobiography called It’s Good to Be Black that was very, very popular. She was a poet. She was a fascinating person, and I was not familiar with her. That was a great aspect of learning about all of these people in these photographs.”
Unknown photographer Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis c. 1950 (detail) Sheet: 8 1/16 x 10″ (20.5 x 25.4cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Elvis Presley [Fans’ Star Library magazine, No. 13] 1959 Sheet: 7 x 5 1/8″ (17.8 x 13cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian born Mardin, Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), 1908-2002) Anna Magnani 1959 Sheet: 20 x 15 15/16″ (50.8 x 40.5cm) The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection
Anna Maria Magnani (Italian, 1908-1973)
Anna Maria Magnani (Italian; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Italian actress. She was the first Italian woman to win an Academy Award.
Born and raised in Rome, Italy or Alexandria, she worked her way through Rome’s Academy of Dramatic Art by singing at night clubs. During her career, her only child was stricken by polio when he was 18 months old and remained disabled. She was referred to as “La Lupa”, the “perennial toast of Rome” and a “living she-wolf symbol” of the cinema. Time described her personality as “fiery”, and drama critic Harold Clurman said her acting was “volcanic”. In the realm of Italian cinema, she was “passionate, fearless, and exciting”, an actress whom film historian Barry Monush calls “the volcanic earth mother of all Italian cinema.” Director Roberto Rossellini called her “the greatest acting genius since Eleonora Duse”. Playwright Tennessee Williams became an admirer of her acting and wrote The Rose Tattoo (1955) specifically for her to star in, a role for which she received an Academy Award for Best Actress.
After meeting director Goffredo Alessandrini, she received her first screen role in The Blind Woman of Sorrento (La cieca di Sorrento, 1934) and later achieved international attention in Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945), which is seen as launching the Italian neorealism movement in cinema. As an actress, she became recognised for her dynamic and forceful portrayals of “earthy lower-class women” in such films as L’Amore (1948), Bellissima (1951), The Rose Tattoo (1955), The Fugitive Kind (1960) and Mamma Roma (1962). As early as 1950, Life had already stated that Magnani was “one of the most impressive actresses since Garbo”.
Curator: Ann Shumard, Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington
Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896) John C. Calhoun 1849 Whole-plate daguerreotype Image/Sight: 20.2 x 15cm (7 15/16 x 5 7/8″) Mat (brass): 24.3 x 19.4cm (9 9/16 x 7 5/8″) Frame: 35 x 30 x 2.5cm (13 3/4 x 11 13/16 x 1″) Case closed: 5.8 x 34.3 x 39.7cm (2 5/16 x 13 1/2 x 15 5/8″) Case open: 5.8 x 72.7 x 39.7cm (2 5/16 x 28 5/8 x 15 5/8″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Gift of Stephan Loewentheil
Mathew Brady’s mastery of the whole plate is on full display in this compelling portrait – the last daguerreotype made of Senator John C. Calhoun before his death in 1850. A contemporary praised the portrait as one of “the best which Mr. Brady has taken himself,” adding, “So perfect was it regarded by the family [of Calhoun], that several copies of it have been made at their request.” Commenting on his subject’s most notable feature, Brady observed, “Calhoun’s eye was startling, and almost hypnotised me.” A painting based on this daguerreotype was commissioned by Brady and now hangs in the U.S. Senate.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
High-class portraits
Eight white men (all whole-plate daguerreotypes) and one black woman (whole-plate tintype) – sounds about right.
“To put the era’s pricing in context, a year’s supply of coal for a working-class family in 1850 cost $15 – the minimum price for a Southworth & Hawes whole-plate daguerreotype. The whole plate was therefore too expensive for most consumers… A whole-plate tintype was likely priced from $.75 to $1 in the 1860s, when the average daily wage of a labourer was only $2.”
Picture and price / detail and scale / delicacy of lights and shadows / beauty of execution – execution being the operative word, considering the upcoming devastation of the American Civil War.
Thus, from unapologetic enslaver (Calhoun) who “staunchly defended chattel slavery and its expansion beyond the American South” and whose painting based on Brady’s daguerreotype hangs in the American senate (really!) – to an unidentified literate Black woman, birthplace unknown, born May 10, 1811 taken by an unknown photographer.
I know which one I would rather honour.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the National Portrait Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Competition prompted photographers such as Mathew Brady and Southworth & Hawes to produce advertisements that provided a wealth of detail about the services offered by their respective establishments … I am inclined to think that word of mouth may well have played a greater role in motivating patronage. In the case of Brady and Southworth & Hawes, the knowledge that these studios counted national celebrities among their clientele could have been a strong inducement for the general public to patronise them as well. …
While the National Portrait Gallery’s collection of early photography is substantial, it’s the rare whole-plate daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes that stand out for their detail and scale. This exhibition allows visitors to consider how new photographic processes impacted the quality and appeal of the medium … As an aside, the impetus for ‘From Shadow to Substance’ was the extraordinary gift to the museum in 2023 of Mathew Brady’s iconic whole-plate daguerreotype of the powerful antebellum senator John C. Calhoun. A subsequent review of other whole-plates in the Portrait Gallery’s collection sparked consideration of the format’s staying power as a top-of-the-line offering through the succession of early photographic processes. This is the story the exhibition seeks to illuminate.”
Ann Shumard, Senior Curator of Photographs quoted in Kate Garibaldi. “How Portrait Photography’s ‘Grand-Scale’ Origins Changed History,” on the Petapixel website Aug 01, 2025 [Online] Cited 26/02/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896) John C. Calhoun 1849 (above)
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing Francis D’Avignon (French, 1813 – c. 1871) Copy after Mathew B. Brady (American, 1823? – 15 Jan 1896) John Caldwell Calhoun, 18 Mar 1782 – 31 Mar 1850 1850
Francis D’Avignon (French, 1813 – c. 1871) Copy after Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896) John Caldwell Calhoun, 18 Mar 1782 – 31 Mar 1850 1850 Lithograph on paper Sheet: 56.7 x 40.6cm (22 5/16 x 16″) Book:The Gallery of Illustrious Americans National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
During the first half of the nineteenth century, John C. Calhoun held sway as one of the nation’s most influential politicians. While serving as a senator from South Carolina (1832-1843; 1845-1850), he was unyielding in his advocacy for Southern interests. Under the banner of states’ rights, he supported the concept of nullification. This doctrine maintained that states had the authority to ignore federal laws by declaring them null and void. An unapologetic enslaver, Calhoun staunchly defended chattel slavery and its expansion beyond the American South. Though he died more than a decade before the Civil War began, his views were widely embraced in the Southern states. They ultimately provided justification for secession from the Union. Mathew Brady’s daguerreotype of Calhoun, on view nearby, is faithfully reproduced in this print. It is one of twelve lithographic portraits in a portfolio published by Brady and titled The Gallery of Illustrious Americans.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation views of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026
Photographers seeking customers during the medium’s early years often urged the public to “Secure the shadow, ere the substance fade.” Hinting at life’s fragility, this tagline underscored photography’s ability to capture a fleeting likeness and preserve it for posterity. Portraits in the impressive whole-plate format – measuring 8.5 x 6.5 inches – were among the premier offerings of the nation’s leading photographic studios.
Drawing on the National Portrait Gallery’s extensive early photography collection, this exhibition traces the evolution of the grand-scale, whole-plate format from the high-end daguerreotype to the mid-range ambrotype to the more affordable tintype. Examples of whole plates in each of these mediums illustrate how the format evolved as new photographic processes were introduced. Featured works include daguerreotypes representing U.S. senators Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun, as well as papal nuncio Gaetano Bedini; an ambrotype portrait of American landscape artist John Frederick Kensett; and a tintype likeness of an unidentified African American woman.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing Southworth & Hawes’ Issac P. Davis 1771-1855 and William Hickling Prescott 1796-1859 c. 1850 (below)
Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862) Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894) Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901) Isaac P. Davis, 7 Oct 1771 – 13 Jan 1855 William Hickling Prescott, 4 May 1796 – 28 Jan 1859 c. 1850 Whole-plate daguerreotype Image/Sight: 20.3 x 15.2cm (8 × 6″) Mat (brass): 23.6 x 18.6cm (9 5/16 x 7 5/16″) Case open: 25.3 x 40.2 x 2.3cm (9 15/16 x 15 13/16 x 7/8″) Case closed: 25.3 x 20.7 x 3.5cm (9 15/16 x 8 1/8 x 1 3/8″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Purchase funded by the photography acquisitions endowment established by the Joseph L. and Emily K. Gidwitz Memorial Foundation
Isaac P. Davis, 7 Oct 1771 – 13 Jan 1855 Born Plymouth, Massachusetts
William Hickling Prescott, 4 May 1796 – 28 Jan 1859 Born Salem, Massachusetts
This portrait depicts two prominent Bostonians who enjoyed considerable success in their respective careers and were also known for their philanthropy. Isaac P. Davis (left) amassed a sizeable fortune in manufacturing and real estate. An original member of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, which Paul Revere helped found, he was also a patron of American artists, including Gilbert Stuart. Historian William H. Prescott (right) first earned international acclaim for his three-volume History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic (1838). Blind in one eye and with low vision in the other, Prescott was a generous supporter of Boston’s Perkins Institute for the Blind.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 Southworth & Hawes’ Lemuel Shaw 1787-1861 c. 1851 (below)
Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862) Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894) Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901) Lemuel Shaw, 9 Jan 1781 – 30 Mar 1861 c. 1851 Whole-plate daguerreotype with silver-plated copper sheet support Plate (sight): 21.5 x 16cm (8 7/16 x 6 5/16″) Case Open: 23.4 x 36.3 x 0.9cm (9 3/16 x 14 5/16 x 3/8″) Case Closed: 23.4 x 18.2 x 1.8cm (9 3/16 x 7 3/16 x 11/16″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Conservation made possible by a grant from the Smithsonian’s Collections Care and Preservation Fund
Lemuel Shaw, 9 Jan 1781 – 30 Mar 1861 Born Barnstable, Massachusetts
The impact of rulings by Lemuel Shaw, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court (1830-1860), extended well beyond the borders of his home state. Particularly in cases affecting business and industry, his decisions influenced commercial law interpretation in courts throughout the nation. He also rendered judgments in key cases concerning the fate of those who had escaped from their enslavers. Though personally opposed to slavery, Shaw believed it was “too deeply interwoven in the texture of society to be wholly or speedily eradicated.” In 1851, he issued the principal opinion supporting the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing showing Southworth & Hawes’ Jonas Chickering 1853 (below)
Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862) Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894) Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901) Jonas Chickering, 5 Apr 1798 – 8 Dec 1853 1853 Whole-plate daguerreotype Image: 20 x 15cm (7 7/8 x 5 7/8″) Frame: 31.1 x 25.7 x 2.5cm (12 1/4 x 10 1/8 x 1″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Jonas Chickering, 5 Apr 1798 – 8 Dec 1853 Born Mason Village, New Hampshire
“The father of American piano making,” Jonas Chickering advanced the development of a one-piece, cast-iron frame that revolutionised piano construction. The result was an instrument that could withstand the tension exerted by its strings and resist extremes in temperature and humidity that impacted its ability to remain in tune. Chickering’s patented innovations also yielded pianos of greater volume and superior resonance. Honoured at the 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition in London, his pianos became the instruments of choice in U.S. and international concert halls.
When he posed for this portrait by Boston’s premier daguerreotypists, Chickering was at the zenith of his career.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing Mathew B. Brady’s John Frederick Kensett 1816-1872 c. 1856 (below)
Mathew B. Brady (American, 1822-1896) John Frederick Kensett, 22 Mar 1816 – 15 Dec 1872 c. 1856 Whole-plate ambrotype Image: 18.4 x 13.2cm (7 1/4 x 5 3/16″) Case Open: 23 x 36.4cm (9 1/16 x 14 5/16″) Case Closed: 23 x 18.4cm (9 1/16 x 7 1/4″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
John Frederick Kensett, 22 Mar 1816 – 15 Dec 1872 Born Cheshire, Connecticut
In a newspaper advertisement that was published on September 29, 1855, photographer Mathew Brady announced he was now offering “AMBROTYPES – a New Style of Picture on Glass, more durable and perfect than any known method of portraiture.”
Brady’s ambrotype represents artist and engraver John Frederick Kensett, one of the most popular members of the Hudson River School’s second generation of American landscape painters. Kensett was admired for his keen observations of nature, refined compositions, and sensitive rendering of light. A member of the prestigious National Academy, he helped found New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
National Portrait Gallery Presents “From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years”
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will present “From Shadow to Substance: Grand Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years” June 20 through June 7, 2026. Drawing from the museum’s extensive early photography collection, this exhibition traces the evolution of the grand scale, whole-plate portrait format from the high-end daguerreotype and mid-range ambrotype to the more affordable tintype. The exhibition is curated by Senior Curator of Photographs Ann Shumard.
Photographers seeking customers during the medium’s early years, from 1840 to 1860, often urged the public to “Secure the shadow ere the substance fade.” Hinting at life’s fragility, this tagline underscored photography’s ability to capture a fleeting likeness and preserve it for posterity. Portraits in the impressive whole-plate format – measuring 8 1/2 by 6 1/2 inches – were among the premier offerings of the nation’s leading photographic studios.
“This exhibition marks the first time these whole-plate daguerreotype, ambrotype and tintype portraits will be shown together at the Portrait Gallery,” Shumard said. Examples of whole plates in each of these mediums illustrate how the format evolved as new photographic processes were introduced. Featured works include daguerreotypes representing U.S. Senators Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun, an ambrotype portrait of American landscape artist John Frederick Kensett and a tintype likeness of an unidentified African American woman. Also included are original advertisements issued by photographers Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes, and Mathew B. Brady to promote their respective businesses. The exhibition will be presented in the Early Photography Alcove on the museum’s first floor.
Press release from the National Portrait Gallery
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing at left, Southworth & Hawes’ Daniel Webster 1782-1852 c. 1845; and at right, Unidentified photographer Daniel Webster 1782-1852 c. 1850
Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862) Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894) Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901) Daniel Webster 1782-1852 c. 1845 Whole plate copy daguerreotype National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Conservation made possible by a grant from the Smithsonian’s Collections Care and Preservation Fund
Daniel Webster 1782-1852 Born Salisbury, New Hampshire
Daniel Webster emerged as a major force in national politics at a time when rising sectionalism threatened to split the country apart. During his service in the House (1823-1827) and Senate (1827-1841; 1845-1850), Webster’s brilliant orations in defence of the Union marked him as one of the great public figures of his generation.
Boston-based photographers Southworth & Hawes excelled in creating whole-plate daguerreotypes of unrivalled quality. Consequently, their studio attracted numerous prominent figures, including Webster. Their majestic Webster portrait was so popular that it may have inspired them to produce this daguerreotype, a copy of the original.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Unidentified photographer Daniel Webster 1782-1852 c. 1850 Sixth-plate daguerreotype National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
A sixth-plate daguerreotype such as this portrait of Daniel Webster, would have sold for a fraction of the cost of a whole plate. To put the era’s pricing in context, a year’s supply of coal for a working-class family in 1850 cost $15 – the minimum price for a Southworth & Hawes whole-plate daguerreotype. The whole plate was therefore too expensive for most consumers.
Retailing for about $3, a sixth-plate was a more affordable option. There were tradeoffs, however. While the whole plate allowed for a dramatic, standing view of Webster, the Sith-plate accommodated only a bust-length image.
In a period when American federalism faced increasing challenges from states’-rights supporters, Daniel Webster emerged as one of the Union’s most eloquent defenders. Having gained acclaim as a lawyer who argued some of the young republic’s pivotal Supreme Court cases, Webster became a major force in national politics through his service in the House and in the Senate. There, his brilliant orations on behalf of the indivisibility of the Union marked him as one of the greatest public figures of his generation. Despite his national stature, Webster fell short of mustering the broad support that might have won him the presidency.
This daguerreotype represents Webster around the time of his controversial endorsement of the Compromise of 1850. In supporting the measure, Webster sought to preserve the Union through concession and compromise but succeeded principally in incurring the wrath of his northern constituents, who abhorred the legislation’s Fugitive Slave Act. Although attacks from his critics left Webster shaken and burdened by “the crushing weight of anxiety and responsibility,” he soldiered on until a liver ailment claimed his life in October 1852. The evergreen sprig preserved with this daguerreotype serves as a reminder of Webster’s endurance as a symbol and an icon in American history.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing a wood engraving by an unidentified artist of Southworth & Hawes’ Daguerreotype Rooms c. 1849 (below)
Unidentified Artist Southworth & Hawes’ Daguerreotype Rooms c. 1849 Wood engraving 20 x 12.7cm (7 7/8 x 5″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Gift of an anonymous donor in honour of Carlos G. Vertanssian
In 1843, photographer Albert Sands Southworth (1811-1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808-1901) formed a creative partnership that yielded daguerreotypes unrivalled for their artistry and technical achievement. Committed to the highest standards, the duo excelled in producing beautiful composed, evocative portraits, particularly in the large (8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.) and technically demanding whole-plate format.
In this advertisement for their Boston studio, Southworth & Hawes offered potential customers the assurance: ‘In style of execution and picturesque effect – in boldness of character and beauty of expression – in variety of size and delicacy of lights and shadows, we shall aim at the highest perfection’.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Southworth & Hawes (active 1843-1862) Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894) Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1901) Gaetano Bedini, 1806-1864 1853 Whole-plate daguerreotype Image: 20 x 15cm (7 7/8 x 5 7/8″) Case Open: 25.4 x 40.8 x 1cm (10 x 16 1/16 x 3/8″) Case Closed: 23.1 x 18.1 x 1.7cm (9 1/8 x 7 1/8 x 11/16″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Transfer from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Conservation made possible by a grant from the Smithsonian’s Collections Care and Preservation Fund
Gaetano Bedini, 1806-1864 Born Sinigaglia, Italy
In 1853, Italian archbishop Gaetano Bedini travelled to the United States at the request of Pope Pius IX to assess the condition of the Catholic Church in North America and to study the possibility of establishing a papal mission in Washington, D.C. Bedini’s multi-month, fact-finding tour coincided with an intense wave of anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant feeling fanned by the newly ascendant American (or Know-Nothing) Party. In several cities, his presence sparked hostile demonstrations. Upon returning to the Vatican, Bedini advocated successfully for the creation of a North American College in Rome to prepare Roman Catholic clergy for service in the United States.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing a wood engraving by an unidentified artist of Brady’s Daguerreotypes 1854 (below)
Unidentified Artist Brady’s Daguerreotypes 1854 Wood engraving on paper Image: 21.8 x 14.8cm (8 9/16 x 5 13/16″) Sheet: 24 x 18.6cm (9 7/16 x 7 5/16″) Mat: 45.8 x 35.6cm (18 1/16 x 14″) Published in the Illustrated American Biography, 1854 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Gift of George S. Whiteley IV
Mathew Brady placed this full-page advertisement in the Illustrated American Biography, a publication that marketed itself as a biographical volume but was actually a glorified business directory. With its cutaway image of a camera, Brady’s ad presents a fanciful view of the process by which sunlight passes through the camera’s lens to produce an image.
In 1851, Mathew Brady submitted forty-eight daguerreotypes to the “Great Exhibition,” the vast international fair organised by Britain’s Prince Albert at the Crystal Palace in London. A critic for the London Illustrated News noted, “The likenesses of various distinguished Americans by Mr. Brady are notable examples of this style of art.” It is reasonable to assume that whole-plate portraits were among the works Brady exhibited. When jurors pronounced his daguerreotypes “excellent for beauty of execution,” he proudly claimed one of the fair’s highly coveted medals.
Well aware of the marketing value of his prize, Brady touted it in full-page advertisements, such as this example. Presenting a cutaway image of a camera’s interior, the ad offers a fanciful view of the way in which sunlight, represented by an allegorical figure, passes through the lens to produce an image.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
Installation view of the exhibition From Shadow to Substance: Grand-Scale Portraits During Photography’s Formative Years at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, June 20, 2025 – June 7, 2026 showing a whole-plate tintype by an unidentified photographer of an Unidentified Woman c. 1865 (below)
Unidentified photographer Unidentified Woman c. 1865 Whole-plate tintype Image/Sheet: 21.6 x 15.2 cm (8 1/2 x 6″) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Unidentified Woman Birthplace unknown
A penciled note attached to the back of this tintype reads simply, “Born May 10 1811.” Regrettably, the woman pictured is not otherwise identified. However, her handsome dress, her gold-accented jewelry, the book on the table beside her, and the slim volume in her hands suggest she was a literate woman who could afford a top-of-the-line tintype.
This portrait’s large scale and studio setting distinguish it from the small, inexpensive tintypes commonly produced by itinerant photographers. A whole-plate tintype such as this was likely priced from $.75 to $1 in the 1860s, when the average daily wage of a labourer was only $2.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
National Portrait Gallery 8th and F Sts NW Washington, DC 20001
“Through his surreal, dream sequences captured in pop colour, punctum laden reality, Parr observed the absurdities of life on this planet…” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Exhibition dates: 30th January – 24th May, 2026
Curators: Quentin Bajac, in collaboration with Martin Parr and Clémentine de la Féronnière
“We are living in a time when, to borrow a phrase and book title of Sigmund Freud’s, civilization and its discontents are becoming painfully evident to us all. Our machine age technology with its private greed, ecologically disastrous policies, crass materialism, human alienation, incessant strife and conflict, and the portent of man’s destroying himself by his own recklessness, is taking its toll in terms of our confidence and optimism about life. …
John Anson Warner. “Introduction” to The Life & Art of the North American Indian. London: Hamlyn, 1975, p. 6.
A bewitching eye / the unfolding moment
A bewitching eye refers to eyes that are so powerfully, seductively attractive or charming that they appear to cast a spell, mesmerising or enchanting an onlooker. They possess an irresistible, magnetic allure that captivates the viewer, having an almost magical ability to draw someone in. This description could metaphorically be applied to the photographs of the legendary (and I don’t use that word lightly) contemporary British photographer Martin Parr (1952-2025).
Parr was an observer of life with a socially critical eye. Through his surreal, dream sequences captured in pop colour, punctum laden reality, Parr observed the absurdities of life on this planet – human, animal, inanimate – with curiosity and a sense of wonder even while questioning our path to destruction. While this exhibition is split into various sections – Leisure & waste lands; Last Chance To Buy; Small World; The Animal Kingdom; and Technological Addictions – in reality most of his images from each of the sections could fit into any other, for the whole world is interconnected in the excesses and grotesqueness of modern life, of civilization and its discontents.
Parr’s exploration of the pyschogeography of the urbanscape, the exploration of urban environments that emphasises interpersonal connections to places, is damming in its technicolor coat of glory. Mass tourism takes us to leisure spaces like the beach where technology is used to take selfies and mountains of waste pile up near the water’s edge. Mass human, mass cultivation (of palm oil or eucalyptus trees for example) is causing mass extinction of species across the planet. Mass consumption means that we are using the Earth’s resources indiscriminately to fuel (ha!) our desire for the latest, larger four-wheel drive we can get our hands on, the latest fashions that end up in landfill every 6 month cycle when they are not bought, or the brightest, pinkest, must luscious cup cakes you have ever seen in your life.
Parr’s colour saturated photos draw us into this consumptive world where the body is racked by disease, where the patient will soon be on life support. Through his mesmerising, enchanting, multilicious photographs he pokes a great big subversive stick at our follies, excesses, self-destructive desires. Unfortunately, while Parr’s photos seep into our subconscious, most images have little power to change public and personal opinion – all they can do is proffer alternate visions and interpretations of the world and hope that some glimmer of recognition of the environmental damage we are doing will permeate the mind of the viewer.
Of course, Parr’s famous photographs did not appear out of thin air. He was a dedicated photographer whose art practice required years of hard work, talent and skill to obtain his images. He emphasises that, “you have to look at the history of photography and learn what they have done and achieved and apply that, think about it and have it in the back of your head and then you can apply that to your own work.” By doing that, “you may have the rare opportunity actually to develop your own voice, and you can become a photographer with a particular voice.”
“What you are going to do, of course, is to find a good connection to the world out there. It is the quality of that connection that is really important. So, you find a subject you feel strongly about. Then work out how to articulate that and that hopefully will give you momentum for you to get good work.”
Nothing comes without hard work and perseverance.
In the video below where he is giving advice to young photographers he states that he might get only ten great photographs a year, sometimes only one, but he shoots heap of photographs and then discards the dross. What he also says that is really important is that he is attentive to the unfolding moment, he is aware and ready for what the energy of the world puts in front of his eye and his camera. If only the human race was so aware.
Parr was a human being that I would have really liked to have met. To have a conversation about the energy of the world, the passion and commitment of human beings to do good things, to see things differently, to make a difference.
We have his images for as long as the human race exists. But I miss him already.
Many thankx to Jeu de Paume for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“l’m creating entertainment, which has a serious message if you want to read into it, but I’m not trying to convince anyone – l’m just showing them what they think they may know already.”
Martin Parr, 2021
“We are heading towards catastrophe but we are all going there together. Who would dare ban cars or air travel?”
“When I take a photograph, I try to say something. Beyond the garish colours, there is a political message…”
Martin Parr
I now realise that almost all the images I have taken and produced are indirectly linked to climate change.”
Martin Parr 2009
“Global Warning gives us Parr in all his gluttonous, giddy glory, an attentive, unabashed and unpretentious observer of everyday absurdities. But through clever curatorial nudges, this show also gives us other unexpected sides to Parr, a creeping sense of a doom we are hurtling towards at breakneck speed.”
Martin Parr’s Advice to Young Photographers | Louisiana Channel
“You are probably going to fail, so unless you are obsessed, almost like a disease, you are not going to make it.” Legendary Martin Parr, regarded as the most crucial figure in contemporary British photography, offers advice to young photographers.
“What you are going to do, of course, is to find a good connection to the world out there. It is the quality of that connection that is really important. So, you find a subject you feel strongly about. Then work out how to articulate that and that hopefully will give you momentum for you to get good work.”
Another thing which is very important for Martin Parr to emphasise is that “you have to look at the history of photography and learn what they have done and achieved and apply that, think about it and have it in the back of your head and then you can apply that to your own work.” By doing that, “you may have the rare opportunity actually to develop your own voice, and you can become a photographer with a particular voice.”
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2022
This exhibition revisits the work of the late British photographer Martin Parr, bringing together a selection of series produced since the 1970s that find new resonance in light of the growing disarray of the contemporary world. For over fifty years, Parr travelled the globe not as an activist but as a relentless and amused observer, offering a lucid and unsparing portrait of global imbalances and the excesses of contemporary life: the grotesque face and damaging effects of mass tourism, the rise of car culture, our dependence on technology, unbridled consumerism, and our ambivalent relationship with other living beings.
Through his characteristically offbeat vision, Parr also indirectly engaged with the human behaviours driving contemporary climate change: the unrestrained use of transport, reliance on fossil fuels, global overconsumption, and environ mental degradation. Over time, and as social attitudes have shifted, what once appeared merely entertaining has revealed itself to be increasingly serious. ln retrospect, Parr’s corrosive irony places him within a long tradition of British satire: his sharp wit and deadpan humour deliver a critical, and at times merciless, view of the world we inhabit.
Text from the Jeu de Paume website
The Martin Parr: Global Warning exhibition at the Jeu de Paume (on display through May 2026) is organised into five thematic sections. These sections explore the excesses of modern life through about 180 photographs.
Leisure & waste lands: Focuses on recreational spaces like crowded beaches where pleasure often leads to environmental degradation.
Last Chance To Buy: Examines unbridled consumerism in supermarkets, malls, and luxury shops using Parr’s signature saturated colours.
Small World: Documents the rituals and “ravages” of mass tourism across five continents.
The Animal Kingdom: Explores our ambivalent relationship with animals – as pets, entertainment, or consumer products.
Technological Addictions: Highlights our growing dependence on machines, from slot machines to compulsive selfie-taking
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing Martin Parr’s black and white photographs of Ireland 1980-83 Photos: Salim Santa Lucia
Ireland 1980-1983
While living in Ireland, Martin Parr became interested in the abandoned morris Minors – the emblematic car of the post-war British middle classes – found throughout the Irish countryside. Through his lens, the vehicles become a new motif of contemporary ruin: modern vanities symbolising the inevitable decline of progress, a subtle criticism of pollution linked to the automotive industry, an homage to the beauty of Irish landscapes, an almost optimistic meditation on the resilience of nature, and a celebration of human ingenuity. In this sense, the series offers an implicit history of both pollution and adaptation.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left the wall text “Leisure & Waste Lands” and at centre, Martin Parr’s Mar del Plata, Argentina (2014, below)
Leisure & Waste Lands
Beginning in the 1980s, Martin Parr relentlessly documented how contemporary landscapes are periodically or permanently reshaped by the expansion of mass leisure. Many of these works capture the coexistence and constant intermingling of natural and man-made elements.
Parr’s photography explores the interests of ordinary people, with whom he identified. Although he never learned to swim – unlike his wife Susie, who is an excellent swimmer – he spent a great deal of time on beaches, which feature prominently in his work. His first major colour series, ‘The Last Resort’, focuses on the popular seaside resort, New Brighton, near Liverpool. Parr would go on to pursue this theme across all five continents, producing some of his most incisive social critiques, from ‘Benidorm’ – capturing life at a sprawling resort on Spain’s Costa Blanca – to ‘Playas’ – a survey of Latin America’s most frequented beaches.
‘You can read a lot about a country by looking at its beaches: across cultures, the beach is that rare public space in which all absurdities and quirky national behaviour can be found,’ he wrote in 2013. For Parr, the beach setting became a field of experimentation, rarely appearing in his work as exotic or pristine, but instead as spaces rife with the contradictions of the leisure industry. At once convivial and chaotic, beaches are places of relaxation, paradoxically crowded with bodies, colours and – on might even say – noise. They are sites where we reproduce our ordinary urban habits, and where consumerism is inextricably bound up with trash and waste in every imaginable form: a highly photogenic subject that Parr faithfully captured from the very beginning of his career.
‘I first came to Mar del Plata, the largest Argentine seaside resort, way back in 2007 when I was shooting images for my ‘Playas’ project, a survey of Latin American beaches. I was amazed then at the scale of the resort. It has two thousand hotels, sixteen kilometres of beaches, and welcomes over seven million visitors a year. In terms of scale, Mar del Plata dwarfs other well-known resorts across the globe, including Copacabana, Blackpool and benidorm, yet it is virtually unknown beyond Argentina.’
From Martin parr’s blog, Mar del Pata, 2004 Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s New Brighton, United Kingdom (1983-85, below); and at second left, Benidorm, Spain (1997)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Tokyo, Japan (2000, below); at second left, Melbourne, Australia (2008); and at right, New Brighton, United Kingdom (1983-85, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s photograph New Brighton, United Kingdom (1983-85, below); at at right, Mar del Plata, Argentina (2014)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at right, Martin Parr’s photograph Untitled (Hot Dog Stand), United Kingdom (1983-85, below) from Last Resort
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing from left to right, Benidorm, Spain (1997); Magaluf, Majorca, Spain (2003); Benidorm, Spain (1997); and at right, Tenby, United Kingdom (2018)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Benidorm, Spain (1997, below) and at right, Tenby, United Kingdom (2018)
This exhibition invites the public to revisit the work of Martin Parr. Through different bodies of work created from the late 1970s to the present day, Parr’s photographs capture the absurdities and malfunctions of our contemporary world. Over 50 years, in locations all round the globe, the photographer has built up a corpus of work that portrays the inequalities and excesses of our modern lifestyle. A number of themes recur throughout. These include: the ravages of tourism, the prevalence of car culture, our dependence on technology, consumer excess, and even our ambivalent relationship with the living world. Martin Parr brings his unique, off-beat perspective to several major causes of climate change and environmental damage: unchecked global travel, reliance on fossil fuels, and world-wide overconsumption. Seemingly light-hearted and humorous, Parr’s work is in fact deeply serious. The ironical nature of his work places Parr firmly within the traditions of British satire and offers an indirect yet profound critique of contemporary life.
Through some 180 images spanning fifty years of work – from his early black and white images to more recent output – this exhibition addresses the chaos of modern society. Five main sections, organised according to recurring themes, motifs and obsessions, convey the range and depth of Parr’s work. These sections explore the way in which our leisure pursuits impact the environment. Despite being a non-swimmer, Parr is repeatedly drawn to the beach as a site where the natural and artificial worlds coexist and pleasure leads to waste. In the section ‘Everything Must Go!’ our obsessive consumerism is explored. Parr draws up a crude inventory of sought-after objects and modes of consumption. Supermarkets, shopping malls, fairs and exhibitions provide the setting for a frantic materialistic race that is common to all classes of society. Sometimes even human beings become a form of merchandise.
In the ‘Small World’ section, named after one of his most celebrated series, Parr explores the joys, contradictions and dead ends of the tourism industry. In some of the world’s most iconic destinations, he focuses on the habits, behaviours, expectations and disappointments of the global tourist, against the backdrop of North/South, West/East imbalances. In ‘The Animal Kingdom’ he looks at the ambiguous relationship between humans and animals, from fascination and indulgence to neglect and exploitation. The final section – ‘Technological Addictions’ addresses our relationship with machines of all kinds: phones, cars, planes and computers as through them we navigate space, time and reality on a daily basis.
I create entertainment that contains a serious message if you are willing to look for it, but I’m not trying to convince anyone, I’m simply showing people what they think they know’ declared Martin Parr in 2021. Tireless photographer, frequent flyer, beach-lover, Martin Parr never tries to be a moral authority. He has often acknowledged that he himself is fully part of the world he documents and is clear-sighted about the environmental impact of his own lifestyle, particularly his significant carbon footprint: ‘We are heading towards catastrophe but we are all going there together. Who would dare ban cars or air travel?’
Aware that images alone are not enough to change the world, he advocates a form of discreet activism, a subtle visual guerilla warfare. If Parr uses humour it is always in the service of a commentary, often critical and satirical, that seeks to de-stabilise the idealised visions conveyed in the media by the cultural and tourism industries. Many of his images play with cliches, highlighting their inherent absurdity in order to subvert and deconstruct them. Tourist postcards, wildlife photography, foodie habits, selfies, all these and more provide the material that enables him to question, critique and occasionally mock the lifestyles and imagination of large sections of the world population. This exhibition is indeed a global warning.
Press release from Jeu de Paume
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Moscow (1992) ; and at right, the wall text to “Last chance to buy”
Last chance to buy
Beginning in the 1980s, Martin Parr began documenting a subject that relatively few photographers were exploring at the time: the myriad dimensions of consumer culture in Britain under Margaret Thatcher, and in particular the tastes, aspirations and attitudes of the middle class. Parr would sustain this interest throughout his career, later extending his investigation across Europe and the United Sates as well as to countries in Asia and the Middle East shaped by Westernised or Americanised lifestyles.
Today, Parr’s work offers a blunt and often humorous inventory of our consumer goods and ways of life – from food and art to luxury items and useless trinkets – framing consumption as a kind of new religion. In several series, parr deliberately subverted the visual vocabulary of advertising photography. In ‘Common Sense’, one of his most incisive critiques of consumer culture, close-ups and saturated colours produce a grotesque caricature of a world dominated by kitsch. Through his lens, supermarkets, hypermarkets, shopping malls, fairs, and trade shows become stages on which all social classes take part in a frenzied and absurd rush to accumulate goods of every kind. In this world, which seems ultimately to offer little pleasure, human beings themselves are at times turned into commodities.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at centre, photographs from Martin Parr’s series Common Sense (1999)
Installation views of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing photographs from Martin Parr’s series Common Sense (1999, below)
In his playfully titled Common sense series, British photographer Martin Parr confronts and amuses us in a similar way. Each image in the series is an isolated detail revealing one ghastly aspect of excessive consumerism and consumption after another. The images jostle for our attention like billboards on the side of a freeway, employing many of the tactics of advertising, using large-scale, saturated colour and shock value to attract our gaze.
In his photographs of food, Martin Parr pointedly examines the gross indulgence that is encouraged by manufacturers and their advertisers. Shown here as just another commodity, generic and mass-produced food becomes obscene in its abundance…. When seen in such lurid detail, the overblown details on the person’s hands, such as the ring with blue stone, a Band-Aid, and the imperfect application of the gaudy nail polish, become repulsive images of the ordinary. …
The Common sense series is a major body of work within Parr’s ongoing exploration of globalisation, mass tourism, class culture and consumerism. In common with much of his work, this series presents images critical of the contemporary culture with a distinctive sense of irony and British humour. There is something uncomfortable in all these photographs. We laugh at them while being slightly embarrassed by their familiarity and are acutely aware of the gulf between a dream of glamour and the sad synthetic reality.
Susan van Wyk, Curator, Photography, National Gallery of Victoria
Susan van Wyk. “Martin Parr’s Common Sense,” in Art Journal 46, 29 Jan 14 on the National Gallery of Victoria website [Online] Cited 16/04/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Cozumel, Mexico (2002, below); and at right, the wall text for “Small World”
Small World
Martin Parr maintained that he belonged fully to the world he documented and critiqued. He readily acknowledged the environmental impact of his own lifestyle – not least his substantial carbon footprint – and near positioned himself above his subjects. Although fully aware that images alone could never change the world, he nevertheless engaged in a form of subtle, visual guerrilla warfare that questioned dominant representations, particularly those promoted by the tourism industry.
Beginning in the 1990s, tourism emerged as one of his favourite subjects. He would explore it the world over, in all its pleasures, contradictions, and even dead ends, documenting the rituals and behaviours of the global tourist in the world’s most visited destinations. The sameness of gestures, attitudes and clothing encountered in every corner of the planet provides a humorous, slightly wistful counterpoint to the diversity of the sites and monuments photographed. Parr takes particular pleasure in overturning the codes of postcard perfect aesthetics, especially in his images of iconic landmarks, which he presents in degraded forms caught between over crowding, scenes of anxiety, and crude replicas. Through his lens, the quest for authenticity is a thing of the past.
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing Parr’s photograph Cannes, France (2018, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s photograph Sorrento, Italy (2014, below); and at right, The Matterhorn, Alps, Switzerland (1990)
‘Between the hours of 10am and 2pm the site is at its busiest with up to 4,000 visitors arriving each day. Knowing how inaccessible the place is, it is staggering where and how they emerge. It is also not a cheap visit as each foreign tourist has to pay 122 soies (roughly $40) to enter the site. I am convinced that this entrance payment, together with the cost of the journey and the trekking are probably keeping the Peruvian economy afloat, as 70% of all visitors are foreigners.’
From Martin Parr’s blog, Machu Picchu, 2008 Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at bottom left, Martin Parr’s photograph Notre Dame, Paris, France (2012, below); and at right, Kleine Scheidegg, Switzerland (1994, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s West Midlands Safari Park, United Kingdom (1990); and at right, Longleat Safari Park, United Kingdom (1994)
Unlike zoos, safari parks are designed to let animals roam freely, almost as if they were “in the wild”, while human visitors are meant to experience a sense of closeness to the animals natural state. In his images of safari parks, Martin Parr mocks this idea by deliberately including exactly what such photographs usually try to exclude: cars. The resulting images resemble absurd collages of two disjointed realities, in which – in typical Par-like fashion – he plays with the incongruous encounter between the natural world and a human-made, artificial dimension
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at second left, Martin Parr’s photograph Snow Polo World Cup, St Moritz, Switzerland (2011, below) from the series Luxury; and at second right, Venice Beach, California, USA (1998, below)
“I am not saying that tourism is bad – far from it as it brings a livelihood for many people. Organisations like Tourism Concern in the UK make a very important contribution to a better understanding of the yin and yang of tourism. This charity highlights the problems caused by tourism – from water shortages in newly developed sites to the pure rape of our ever decreasing natural habitats – and tries to ensure that local people benefit from the fruits of tourism. We need to adopt a better understanding of the issues surrounding this huge business. These photographs, I hope, will offer a good starting point. For remember we, in the wealthy West, are the ones that seek out the pleasures of tourism, so we’re all in this together.”
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing the wall text “Technological Addictions” with at bottom left, Martin Parr’s Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai, India (2018, below); at second right, Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England (2022, below) and at right, New York, USA (1999, below)
Technological Addictions
Even in his exploration of technology, Parr remains a humanist in both his practice and overarching project: what interests him is our relationship to the technology rather than the object or machine itself. As a keen observer of behaviour and constantly on the lookout for unexplored for unexplored topics, Parr examined how the human body interacts differently with each new technological object. He also probes technology’s growing role in daily lives and imagination, and the dependency it engenders. At the same time, he implicitly explores the way technology profoundly alters our perception of reality and our relationship to space and time.
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England (2022, below); and at top right, England, United Kingdom (1994) and at bottom right, England, United Kingdom (1994)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing Martin Parr’s Great Dorset Steam Fair, Dorset, England (2022, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s New York, USA (1999, below); and at right top, Salford, United Kingdom (1986) and right bottom, Dublin, Ireland (1986)
‘I was hanging around a petrol station like a pervert. Photographers at the time would have said that this was the craziest place to take a picture. Because it’s a very unglamorous subject matter. Boring. There’s no drama here. But there’s something really interesting about boring. Something that seems very ordinary at the time becomes interesting when you look back at it later, almost 40 years later: the pump has changed, the clothes have changed, the car has changed. It tells us something about consumerism, and how we depend on fuel, oil and petrol.
From Martin Parr’s interview, ‘”There’s something very interesting about boring” Martin Parr on his life in pictures.’ The Guardian, 24 August 2025 Wall text from the exhibition
‘Although many museums have now banned the selfie stick, outside in the street, especially in front of that iconic monument or landmark the stick comes into its own. Getting the photo of you and your loved one(s) with the landmark in the background is de rigueur. The tourism industry, which is the biggest in the world, now dictates that the first requirement of any trip is to prove you were there with the necessary photo. It connects you to the world that we know and understand, and it is a vital part of any successful holiday experience. We used to have to ask a passing tourist to take the photo, but thanks to the selfie stick those days are over and we are now self sufficient.’
From Martin Parr’s blog, The Selfie Stick, 2015 Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at left, Martin Parr’s photographs Advertisement for Sony PlayStation, England, United Kingdom (2003); and at right, Ooty, India (2018, above)
Installation view of the exhibition Martin Parr: Global Warning at Jeu de Paume, Paris, January – May, 2026 showing at right, Martin Parr’s photograph from The Republican National Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, USA (2016, below)
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1938 Gelatin silver print
If there is one photographer in the history of the medium that captures the spirit of childhood, the spirit of a single city, and the spirit of life – then that photographer is the incomparable and beloved American photographer Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009).
I have posted on this exhibition before when it was displayed at Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona but I have now added many more photographs to the exhibition posting. Despite emails to the gallery I have been unable to secure any installation photographs of the exhibition.
It’s worth quoting from my text “Levittation” from the earlier posting on this exhibition for indubitably it holds true:
“In her photographs there is an (in)direct engagement with the people that surrounded her (in her early works “she often hid her camera under her coat to capture candid, unnoticed moments on the streets”), an exchange of energy from the photographer to the subject and back through the camera onto the film… evidencing a generosity of spirit on the part of the artist towards her subjects. Here there is no pressing the camera into the face of the victim a la Garry Winogrand to evince a reaction, but a genuine sense of compassion and empathy towards the people who live in the great city of New York. …
As with any great art, the artist that produced it (even as she is ambitious) seems to be without ego. She lets the picture and the emotions tell the story without the shadow of the artist getting in the way (unlike much contemporary art and photography). For the work of art to have value in itself.
Thus, her photographs speak to us directly, or not at all.”1
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Marcus Bunyan. “Levittation,” on the Art Blart website, November 28, 2025 [Online] Cited 17/04/2026
Many thankx to Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Helen Levitt was one of the first women to stand out in the world of photography, especially in the field of urban photojournalism. She always avoided imposing an explicit narrative on her images and preferred not to comment on them, letting them speak for themselves. The commitment to this discretion, far from diminishing the value of her work, is precisely one of the keys that make it so fascinating and unique.”
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1939 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1938 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York City c. 1940 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1938 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1939 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1939 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1939 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) began photographing the streets of New York, her hometown, in the late 1930s, focusing mainly on poor neighbourhoods such as Spanish Harlem or the Lower East Side, where the street is the main stage of daily life. Her camera was directed primarily toward children and their street games. These childhood scenes are the central theme of a body of work that captivates us with its ability to transform everyday situations into images that convey all that life can hold of emotion, mystery, or humour and that, although lacking an explicit narrative, manage to establish an immediate connection with the viewer. Levitt’s work soon received the recognition it deserved, and as early as 1943 the Museum of Modern Art in New York organised her first solo exhibition (Photographs of Children).
In later years, she became deeply interested in film and colour photography. Regarding the former, in 1948 she collaborated on the documentary The Quiet One and co-directed In the Street, another documentary about the streets of Spanish Harlem. Both titles would be highly influential in the subsequent evolution of documentary cinema, inspiring artists such as Jonas Mekas and Andy Warhol. On the other hand, after receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959 to explore chromatic techniques, she began experimenting with colour photography, a medium in which she would also develop pioneering work.
A socially committed artist, Levitt was one of the first women to forge a professional career in photography. This exhibition is the first to be organised based on the entirety of her work and archives, which have only recently been made available for public consultation.
Text from the Fundación MAPFRE website
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) began photographing the streets of New York City, her hometown, in the late 1930s, focusing primarily on poor neighbourhoods like Spanish Harlem and the Lower East Side, where the street plays a central role as the stage for daily life. She documented intimate and fleeting moments of human connection, becoming a key figure in 20th-century photography.
Her training began as an apprentice in a Bronx studio, and in 1934 she acquired her first camera. Shortly after, she joined the New York Film and Photo League, where she met Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose influence was decisive in Levitt’s decision to pursue photography independently.
Between 1938 and 1942, she captured some of her most iconic images, documenting everyday life in working-class neighbourhoods of New York with a spontaneous, empathetic, and unpretentious eye. Her approach, focused especially on childhood and the fleeting moments of urban life, broke with the traditional canons of photojournalism and opened new avenues for photography as a means of poetic and social expression.
In 1943, MoMA dedicated her first solo exhibition to her, solidifying her place in art history.
Although her name is associated with “street photography,” since it was precisely the streets of her hometown that provided the context for her images, throughout her career she ventured into film and visited other countries, such as Mexico.
Levitt also explored colour photography and film, pioneering both fields. She co-directed the documentary In the Street and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959 to research new colour techniques. Although a 1970 robbery resulted in the loss of much of her colour work, she resumed her photography, and MoMA screened her slides in 1974. During the following decades, she continued to photograph intermittently, returning to black and white and exploring new settings such as the New York subway. Her work, marked by ambiguity and restrained emotion, has been recognised for its ability to capture fleeting moments of human connection in complex urban environments.
The exhibition, curated by Joshua Chuang, offers a comprehensive overview of Levitt’s career through nine sections and some 220 photographs. It includes previously unseen works, as well as pieces taken in Mexico in 1941 and a significant portion of her colour work, which she began in the 1950s. In addition, her film In the Street, directed by Levitt herself along with Janice Loeb and James Agee, is presented, along with a screening of colour slides taken by the artist.
Press release from Fundación MAPFRE
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1939 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) Gypsy Boy, Harlem, New York c. 1939 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1939 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1939 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York 1939 Gelatin silver print
Information
Dedicated full-time to her artistic activities, the photographer Helen Levitt (New York, 1913-2009) did not begin to gain public recognition until relatively late in life. Although her name has always been associated with “street photography,” as it was precisely the streets of her native city that provided the context for the production of her images, throughout her career Levitt made forays into film, visited other countries such as Mexico, and also focused on colour photography. Her images, almost invariably ambiguous and mysterious although not necessarily at first glance, are also characterised by their spontaneity, warmth and sensitivity. The movements and gestures of the figures captured by her lens and the communication between them transcend that inclination to “photograph children” which many critics pointed out after her first exhibition at the MoMA in 1943, entitled Helen Levitt: Photographs of Children.
Levitt’s work as a whole goes far beyond the latter aspect, revealing her acceptance of the pleasures, terrors and complexity of existence at all ages, traits often overlooked by the viewer when immersed in the harsh reality of the urban landscape.
The exhibition, the first to be devoted to the artist on the basis of the entirety of her work and archives, which have only recently become available for study, offers a broad overview of Levitt’s career through nine sections and around 220 photographs. It includes previously unexhibited images, as well as work produced in Mexico in 1941 and a large proportion of the artist’s work in colour, which she explored from the 1950s onward. It also features her film In the Street, directed by Levitt in collaboration with Janice Loeb and James Agee, and a projection of her colour slides.
Born in Brooklyn to a Russian-Jewish family, Helen Levitt dropped out of high school early and began her photography training in a Bronx studio. Influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson, she pursued independent photography, capturing everyday life in New York neighbourhoods between 1938 and 1942. Her first solo exhibition was at the MoMA in 1943. She also experimented with film, making In the Street, and with colour photography, which gained her a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959. Levitt continued to work intermittently, exploring new settings such as the subway and rural areas. Her creative output is recognised for its ability to capture moments of human connection in complex urban environments.
Key themes
Enigmatic photographs
Helen Levitt’s images possess a mysterious quality that transforms them into true visual enigmas. Her unique and highly perceptive gaze turns everyday scenes into compositions that are hard to define, creating an immediate connection with the viewer even when there is no clear narrative to explain them.
A pioneer with her own voice
Helen Levitt was one of the first women to make her way in the world of photography, especially in the field of street photography. She always avoided constructing an explicit narrative in her images and preferred not to talk about them. Far from diminishing its value, that decision is one of the key traits that make her work so interesting. Despite this characteristic of reserve, Levitt’s photographs connect with the viewer through the universal emotions they convey.
Text from Fundación MAPFRE
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York 1940 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1940 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1940 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1940 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1940 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1940 Gelatin silver print
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) became a photographer in the mid-1930s after meeting Henri Cartier-Bresson and seeing his radical new pictures made with a discreet, handheld camera. By the end of the decade, she had developed a unique sensibility, one informed by Surrealism and a love of avant-garde cinema but focused on the interactions of ordinary people in the streets, sidewalks, stoops, and vacant lots of her native city.
Grounded in gritty realism but brimming with subversive humor, mischief, and pathos, Levitt’s pictures are open-ended and enigmatic, concealing as much as they reveal. Her uncanny photographs of urban children and their games brought Levitt early renown even as she remained attentive to the quiet gestures and movements of a broader swath of humanity observed with her 35mm Leica, especially in Spanish Harlem, where the activity of everyday life often spilled out of doors.
Following a months long foray in Mexico City, Levitt began to work in filmmaking, leading to a long hiatus in her photographic activity. In 1959, advances in the sensitivity colour film spurred her to take to the streets again with her Leica. She continued to photograph in colour throughout the 1970s, reverting to black-and-white film for a series of pictures taken in the New York City subway. Levitt continued to photograph intermittently until the early 1990s, when she became known as the “unofficial poet laureate” of New York and her oeuvre universally acknowledged as one of the most timeless and affecting in the history of the medium.
Joshua Chuang Comisario / Curator
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) Mexico City 1941 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1942 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1942 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York c. 1945 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York 1948 Gelatin silver print
In the Street, 1948 – A Film by Helen Levitt, ft. New Musical Score by Ben Model | From the Vault – The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Filmed in East Harlem just after the end of World War II, “In the Street” is a dynamic, tender, and often humorous portrait of life in New York City: children dance and play in alleyways, shopkeepers sweep the sidewalks, onlookers watch from their windows. This captivating film presents the bustling theater of city life, where “every human is a poet, a masker, a warrior, a dancer.” Directed by the renowned photographer Helen Levitt, in collaboration with Janice Loeb and James Agee, and featuring a new musical score written and performed by Ben Model.
Text from the YouTube website
Early Work / Graffiti / Gypsies
Only a few examples survive from Levitt’s first year using a Leica camera. Amid the backdrop of the Great Depression, her pictures of lone figures hunched over or lying on the ground appear documentary in their impulse, while other depictions of people in urban surroundings are notably more ambivalent in their view.
In 1937, while employed by the Federal Art Project to teach at a public school in East (Spanish) Harlem, Levitt noticed the many chalk drawings and messages illicitly scrawled by children on streets and buildings on her way to work, and began to document them in all their variety, innocence, and vulgarity. She sometimes also portrayed the artists themselves posing next to their ephemeral interventions.
Around 1938, on the advice of Walker Evans, Levitt began to use a right-angle viewfinder, a device that allowed her to face one direction while pointing her camera in another. This was particularly effective in recording the uninhibited interactions of the “gypsy” families prevalent in Spanish Harlem and Yorkville. Drawn to their way of life, she also borrowed Evans’s 4 x 5-inch view camera and tripod to make portraits of “gypsy” children in their homes.
1938-1940 / Mexico City / A Way of Seeing
By 1940 Levitt had established her terrain, subject, and approach. In a rare statement, she later described her intent “to seize upon and record those apparently accidental disarrangements that nevertheless and in seeming contradiction provide a more intense apperception of reality.” Uninterested in portraying New York City as a bustling metropolis, Levitt instead saw it as an environment whose “size and varied character constantly forces into the open material for my camera.” The working class, immigrant neighbourhoods she frequented – where adults chatted on stoops, mothers and children leaned out of windows, and children were left to their own devices – proved to be an especially fertile ground for her work.
In 1941, again inspired by Cartier-Bresson’s example, Levitt, a reluctant traveller, went to Mexico City with a friend to photograph there. Initially struggling with the challenge of working in new environment, she was eventually able to find her artistic footing, producing a body of work that at once acknowledged rawer social realities while locating a subtle lyricism unique to the city and its people. It would be her only trip abroad.
Upon her return to New York City, Levitt picked up where she left off, picking up on more sober themes of melancholy, alienation, and what she referred to as “the deep repressions of the unyoung.” After having photographed for a decade, Levitt collaborated with her friend, the writer and critic James Agee, to edit and sequence a book of her New York photographs. Envisioning the project as an urban counterpart to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, his 1941 collaboration with Walker Evans, Agee wrote an extensive essay to accompany Levitt’s pictures that heralded their lyric qualities, the sum of which presented “unified view of the world, an insistent but irrefutable manifesto.” After a series of setbacks, the book, eventually given the title A Way of Seeing, was not published until nearly two decades later in 1965.
Color / Metro / Anys 1980
In 1959, Levitt was granted a Guggenheim fellowship to experiment with “the latest techniques in colour photography.” Her Leica loaded with colour slide film, she walked some of the same streets she had frequented in the 30s and 40s, newly attentive to the chromatic character of her compositions. After the bulk of her slides were stolen by a burglar in 1970, Levitt redoubled her efforts, photographing throughout the decade with renewed zeal, developing an intuitive system of colour that was at once transporting and transparent. In 1974, a continuous projection of forty of Levitt’s slides were featured at MoMA in New York, after which she began to realise select images as dye transfer prints.
Around the same time, Levitt also decided to revisit the subterranean theater of New York City subway as a site to make pictures, having served as a decoy for Walker Evans’s subway project work more than three decades earlier. With her subjects largely stationary in train cars and platforms, Levitt attended to the nuances of expression and gesture, recording quiet dramas amid unflattering light and cramped quarters.
From the 1980s onwards, Levitt continued to photograph, but only intermittently, working mainly in black and white, both in the city and outside it.
Text from Fundación MAPFRE
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York 1975 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York (Woman and taxi) 1982 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York Nd Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York 1971 Dye transfer print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York 1972 Dye transfer print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York 1974 Dye transfer print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) Cat next to red car, New York 1973 Type C print 18 x 12 inches
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York 1976 Dye transfer print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) New York City (phone booth) 1988 Dye transfer print
Fundación MAPFRE Recoletos Exhibition Hall Paseo Recoletos 23, 28004 Madrid Phone: +34 91 581 61 00
Opening hours: Mondays (except holidays): 2pm – 8pm Tuesday to Saturday: 11am – 8pm Sunday and holidays: 11am – 7pm
In the 1970s and 1980s, Bremen professor Muhlis Kenter photographed Turkish workers, then known as guest workers.
Only a little text tonight as I’m battling chronic depression and the little grey cells are not firing on all cylinders.
Absence, longing, loneliness, hard work, isolation, family, home.
Social inequality, sexism, racism and life in exile.
As noted by Annabelle Steffes-Halmer in her article “Migrants’ stories for a new home” (2021) on another exhibition on the same theme, In Situ: Photo Stories on Migration (Museum Ludwig, June – October 2021), photographs of this type are “a story of emancipation. [They] tell tales of people who came to a foreign country, which they discovered for themselves and which ultimately became their home. It is not only a (photo) history of migration, but also the history of Germany.”
Have a great Easter everyone.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“They Used To Call Us Guest Workers”: Extending the Photography and the New Media Collection
The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G) is expanding its collection with key works by the photographers Muhlis Kenter, Nuri Musluoğlu, Asimina Paradissa and Mehmet Ünal. After coming to Germany from Turkey and Greece in the 1960s and 70s, the four documented life, work and their political engagement there from a migrant perspective. The exhibition “They Used to Call Us Guest Workers” presents around 80 photographs and collages that depict the everyday lives of people with and without a migration background in the Federal Republic of Germany while addressing the themes of social inequality, sexism, racism and life in exile. Viewers have the opportunity to discover here an often-overlooked perspective on socio-political issues that are still highly topical today.
With a shared interest in society and politics, each of the four amateur photographers developed a unique approach and yet they all took up the tradition of the workers’ photography movement. Like its historical role model in the interwar period, this movement was dedicated to the battle against class barriers and social inequality. The aim was for workers to pick up a camera themselves to raise awareness of the realities of their lives and help shape the public debate with their images.
Workers’ Photography
John Heartfield and his contributions to the illustrated magazine “Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung” (AIZ) in the 1930s were an important source of inspiration for the workers’ photography movement. Founded in Hamburg in 1973, the magazine “Arbeiterfotografie” saw itself as a successor to the AIZ. The main figures in the workers’ photography movement all engaged with developments in society and politics but each developed a different approach. Their common goal was to use their cameras in the battle against social inequality. Workers were encouraged to pick up a camera in order to raise their own awareness for the realities of their lives and enable them to intervene in the public debate.
Between 1975 and 1990, the theme of migration played a central role in workers’ photography. The reports provide an in-depth look at those living in exile, at living and working conditions and women’s work, and at the peace movement and unequal educational opportunities for immigrants. The articles in the magazine were often published anonymously. The images were supplied by the 30 or so local working groups, who often took the photos together.
Muhlis Kenter
Bremen-based amateur photographer Muhlis Kenter (b. 1952 in Istanbul, Turkey) depicts work and everyday life in Germany. He documents Turkish workers in mining, the metal industry and a textile factory, and accompanies educational projects for Turkish children and young people with a migration background. In his expressive portraits, Kenter spotlights personal stories. His photographs spotlight people navigating between the sense of being foreign in an unfamiliar country and finding their place in Germany. But Muhlis Kenter also observes German society with his camera, focusing on pigeon breeding, fishing and gardening, which he sees as typical German hobbies.
Muhlis Kenter provides behind-the-scenes glimpses of factory work. He for example photographed workers of Turkish origin in a textile factory where people from different backgrounds work side by side in production. The photos were taken as part of a photo story for the magazine “Arbeiterfotografie”. Kenter often focuses on individuals and personal histories, resulting in expressive portraits. For his reportages, he creates complex compositions that highlight in an arresting way the interplay between people and technology at the companies he visits. In one series, he turned the tables, looking not at the lives of immigrants of Turkish origin but rather at “white German” society and what he regards as typical hobbies: pigeon breeding, fishing and gardening.
Muhlis Kenter was born in 1952 in Istanbul, Turkey. In 1972 he took up mechanical engineering studies in Aachen, where he joined a “workers’ photography” group. Alongside his studies, he acted as a support teacher for Turkish-speaking classes. Kenter later worked as a professor of mechanical engineering at the City University of Applied Sciences in Bremen, and he continues to avidly pursue photography.
Nuri Musluoğlu
Nuri Musluoğlu (b. 1951 in Istanbul, Turkey) photographs public life. The images he produced between 1975 and 1988 show mainly demonstrations, peace marches, strikes and protest actions, especially those taking place in his hometown of Heilbronn. Supplemented by footage of sporting events, street festivals and celebrations, as well as photos of his own family, a dense panorama emerges of German-Turkish coexistence as a collective experience. Musluoğlu’s photos document particularly vividly the protest culture during the years in question – including the peace movement and European Peace Marches, the trade union struggles and the anti-nuclear movements, and the resistance of Turks living in Germany against the military dictatorship in Turkey. He also lifts the veil on xenophobia in public spaces and the living conditions in asylum shelters.
Nuri Musluoğlu is a photographer and political activist. His camera accompanies him to demonstrations, such as the strike for a 35-hour week and protests by the peace movement, or the blockade of the US missile base in Mutlangen in 1983. He not only captures protest posters and scenes but also documents moments of solidarity – such as workers with and without a migration background dancing. Musluoğlu’s photographs chronicle political struggles as well as everyday moments in German-Turkish life, such as family celebrations and trips home. He examines in detail protest posters that touch on migration issues and in another image shows a worker of Turkish origin playing the saz.
Born in Istanbul in 1951, Musluoğlu came to Germany in 1965, trained as a toolmaker, and later became a social worker for the “Arbeiterwohlfahrt” (Workers’ Welfare Association). He is active in trade unions (IG Metall, ver.di) and the peace movement. Since 1985, his photos have appeared under a pseudonym in the weekly newspaper “Türkiye Postası”, which is aimed at workers and people seeking political protection.
Asimina Paradissa
Asimina Paradissa (b. 1945 in Vrastama, Greece) occupies a special position in amateur photography as one of the few migrant women behind a camera. She documented her own life in Germany from 1968 onwards, showing everyday life in a hostel for unmarried female workers in Wilhelmshaven as well as scenes of factory work captured from the workers’ point of view. Paradissa’s many self-portraits deal with questions of self-image and what it feels like to live in a certain place. Although her photographs are private, they are at the same time significant testimonies to contemporary history: By giving the women portrayed names and voices, they draw attention to the stories of female migrants and thus add a rare female perspective to the way in which we view migrant labour.
Asimina Paradissa gazes directly out at us from her pictures. Perched on her bicycle, she laughs openly into the camera, while in another picture she looks us earnestly in the eye as she sits on her bunk bed in a dormitory for unwed workers run by the Olympia typewriter works and caringly embraces her friend Evangelia Manolakaki. Even though others usually press the shutter, these images can still be described as self-portraits. Starting in 1966, Paradissa took photos on a regular basis as a way of reassuring herself about her new life in Germany. Among the “guest workers” who came to West Germany in the 1960s, one in three were women who lead lives largely hidden from the public eye. Paradissa is one of the few women of this generation to document her self-determined life in Germany with her camera. Her pictures are at once private remembrances and documents of the times.
Asimina Paradissa was born in 1945 in Vrastama, Greece. She came to Wilhelmshaven with her brother in 1966 as part of the recruitment agreements concluded between West Germany and Greece, among other countries. In 1972 she settled in Wuppertal. Alongside her job, she began to make photography and write poetry.
Mehmet Ünal
Mehmet Ünal’s (b. 1951 in Çanakkale, Turkey) photographic practice includes political image-text collages that emerge from actions and protests. In addition to individual images and series, he also produces posters that incorporate writing and found objects – often from public authorities and agencies – and thus comment on the particular experiences of migrants when dealing with bureaucracy. With their thematic acuity and compositional density, these posters are independent artworks that relentlessly expose exclusion and marginalisation.
Mehmat Ünal’s collages combine written, photographic and found objects from the world of German bureaucracy that reflect experiences of racism. Ünal expresses himself through satire and exaggeration; for example, he created a fake Deutsche Bahn advertising campaign offering a “foreigner’s pass” promoting the return transport of people to Turkey. He compares the application for a work permit to a “TÜV certificate for humans”. In his text-image combinations (circa 1982), Ünal criticizes Germany’s official policies towards immigrants and the degrading treatment of those who were once invited to the country as “guests”. After the recruitment of foreign workers was discontinued in the wake of the economic crisis of the early 1980s, Ünal observed a growing atmosphere of hostility towards those regarded as “foreigners”. The first arson attack on a refugee shelter took place in 1980 in Hamburg-Billbrook. Works that Ünal produced against the backdrop of political street protests were published in the magazine “Arbeiterfotografie” in 1984. In several collages, he draws on the legacy of John Heartfield, whose political montages in the mid-1920s brought him recognition as the founder of this genre.
Mehmet Ünal was born in Çanakkale, Turkey, in 1951. In 1976, he moved to Mannheim, where the former actor works as a photographer and journalist.
Text from the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G)
Asimina Paradissa was 20 years old when she moved to Wilhelmshaven in northern Germany. In the photo, the Greek woman poses in front of the dormitory at the Olympia company. Back then, she took pictures of weddings, parties and visits to the zoo for her colleagues and friends. The 76-year-old is still a passionate photographer.
life alone and free like a tree and brotherly like a forest is our longing
Mehmed Nâzım Ran (17 January 1902 – 3 June 1963), commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet, was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director, and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the “lyrical flow of his statements”. Described as a “romantic communist” and a “romantic revolutionary”, he was repeatedly arrested for his political beliefs and spent much of his adult life in prison or in exile. His poetry has been translated into more than 50 languages.
The Brooklyn Museum continues to orchestrate (now that’s an appropriate word) wonderful exhibitions that select, organise, and interpret items in “interpretive exhibitions”- curating and contextualising these items in order to establish their meaning, history, and cultural significance. In this regard the magnificent exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens is no exception.
In the exhibition Keïta’s direct, honest, and incisive black and white photographs – often taken outdoors on bare earth in natural light with mud walls, hanging textiles and blankets as backdrops – are contextualised with regard to West African history, placed in context “in a period defined by a rapidly expanding modern world and a new sense of Bamakois identity.” (Press release)
In the Brooklyn show Keïta’s photographs from the African environment are surrounded by cultural artefacts that reflect a new sense of nationhood as Mali moved toward independence post-French colonialism – “clothing, hand-fashioned dresses … pagnes (wrappers), wall hangings, and commemorative cloths that span the rich history of Malian textile design and trade”, gold, jewellery, lace, marabaka (a Czech-style hat that became a widespread symbol of Pan-African solidarity), traditional and modern textiles, blankets, family heirlooms, family photographs and a trove of film negatives – all combining to create a rich mosaic of references, an intertextuality (where things refer to, influence, or interrelate with one another) of identity, place and space.
What is particularly interesting about the presentation at the Brooklyn Museum is the mixture of vintage and modern prints, where the viewer can compare the scale and tonalities of old and new, where small jewel-like gold toned and hand-coloured prints of great presence and intensity can be compared to larger, contrast laden modern prints (for which the artist has become famous) which reveal hidden details in the negative.
Also of interest is the exhibition design itself in which the different colour of the walls, the spaces between them, the symmetrical layout, together with the clothing, textiles and wall hangings … all add a terrific spatial dimension to the whole. Witness the entrance to the exhibition where Keïta’s vintage photograph Untitled (1954, above) is placed in communion with a larger modern print, allowing the viewer to compare and contrast both old and new, one of the major pictorial themes of the exhibition. Then – and this is to me the essence of good exhibition design – you look at the line of sight of that entrance and in the space between the walls hanging in the distance, hovering above the photographs, is a colourful textile banner with face and garment which the viewer can visually correlate to the garments of the three women standing in front of the car in the modern print below. Just a small thing but inspiring exhibition design nonetheless, which reflects the holism of the exhibition.
Along with the work of other African photographers such as Malike Sidibé (Malian, 1935-2016), James Barnor (Ghanian, b. 1929) and Sanlé Sory (West African, b. 1943), Keïta’s photographs help touch, in African light, that most wonderful sense of the spirit and culture of a nascent independent nation, evidenced in his images through an intimate interconnection between people and place.
What is undeniable is that there is nothing like a photograph to remind you of difference, to challenge your perceptions on how you view and interact with the world around you, to open up new ways of seeing (Professor Stuart Hall). Thus the photographs in this exhibition may allow us a deeper insight into not only the conditions of our own becoming (while human beings have agency, the circumstances under which they act and develop their humanity are largely shaped by existing material, social, and historical conditions that they did not choose) but the conditions of other people’s becoming.
Hopefully these insights in turn promote a greater understanding and acceptance of difference in others in opposition to learnt bigotry and racism.
Just the joy of picturing, and being, and living, human.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Brooklyn Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation views of the exhibition ‘Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens’ at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing Keïta’s self-portrait Untitled, 1956
Dressed in a crisp white shirt, holding a flower gently to his chin, Keïta turns the camera on himself with the same control and precision he granted his subjects. As French Soudan faced political uncertainty and turmoil in the lead-up to independence, Keïta’s studio, whether indoors or on the street, offered sitters a place to create a self of one’s own.
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom two images, Keïta’s photograph Untitled 1954 (above)
The smaller, vintage print and the larger, modern one of Keïta’s 1954 photograph highlight the material and historical distinctions between the types of prints on view in the exhibition. Often made by Keïta himself, the vintage prints were produced around the time the photograph was taken. Such works feature a particular range of tonalities – the result of earlier technologies, less environmental control in the darkroom, and the paper’s age. The modern prints were made later in Keïta’s life, some of them posthumously. These works are larger, in part, to accentuate the details of the image, such as Keïta’s own reflection on the car’s surface. Following his landmark New York and Paris exhibitions in the 1990s, Keïta came to be known for the distinctive black-and-white tonalities of these modern prints.
Reflecting on his work in 1997, Keïta revealed he had always hoped to make large-format prints (30 x 40 in., 40 x 50 in., and 50 x 60 in.) but seldom had the chance. Sitters rarely requested them due to cost. Together, both vintage and modern prints demonstrate the range and impact of Keïta’s artistry. They also inspire questions about photography’s nature as both artwork and heirloom objects imbued with social and ritual meaning as they pass from hand to hand.
Encounter an artist who changed the face of portrait photography. Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens is the most expansive North American exhibition of the legendary Malian photographer’s work to date. More than 280 works include iconic prints, never-before-seen portraits, textiles, and Keïta’s personal artifacts, all brought to life with unique insights from his family.
Organised by the Brooklyn Museum, the exhibition brings us to Bamako from the late 1940s to early 1960s, an era of profound political and social transformation. Collaborating closely with his sitters, Keïta recorded Mali’s evolution through their choices of backdrops, accessories, and apparel, from traditional finery to European suits. These bold yet sensitive photographs began to circulate in West Africa nearly 80 years ago. In the early 1990s, they reached Western viewers, rocking the art world and cementing Keïta as the premier studio photographer of 20th-century Africa – a peer of August Sander, Irving Penn, and Richard Avedon.
Witness the power of photography through these richly layered images, which reveal not only Malians’ emotional landscapes but also the textures of life in a rapidly changing country.
A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, offering new insights into the photographer, his work, and Malian material culture. The publication features a biography by Catherine E. McKinley based on extensive interviews with Keïta’s heirs, as well as essays by prominent scholars and curators including Drew Sawyer, Howard W. French, Duncan Clarke, Awa Konate, Sana Ginwalla, and Jennifer Bajorek.
Text from the Brooklyn Museum website
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing at left in the bottom image, Keïta’s photograph Untitled 1949-1951 (below)
The exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens honors the artistry and legacy of Seydou Keïta (Malian, c. 1921-2001), who documented a critical chapter in West African history – one of immense hope, politically and socially – in a period defined by a rapidly expanding modern world and a new sense of Bamakois identity. The show features over 280 works, including renowned portraits, rare images, and never-before- seen negatives as well as textiles, jewellery, dresses, and personal items that fully immerse visitors in Keïta’s rich photographic landscape. Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens is organised by guest curator Catherine E. McKinley with Imani Williford, Curatorial Assistant, Photography, Fashion, and Material Culture, Brooklyn Museum.
Keïta was born around 1921 to a Malinke family in Bamako-Coura, or New Bamako, a growing colonial commercial center within the historic Malian city. His childhood saw emerging liberation struggles across the continent and growing expressions of modernism as Bamako served as the capital of French Soudan and subsequently the newly independent Mali in 1960.
Keïta documented Malian society in the late 1940s to early 1960s, an era of transformation and aspirations for independent statehood. A master at lighting and composition, Keïta has a unique ability to capture the tactile qualities of his sitters – from their fashion and choice of accessories to the personality and self-presentation they put forward. In collaboration with his subjects, he sculpted their poses, clothing, and style, forming monuments to their selfhood. When they first reached Western viewers in the early 1990s, his images drew unprecedented attention in the worlds of art, music, fashion, design, and popular media, forever changing the global cultural landscape. Today, these bold and engaging portraits continue to invite viewers into direct dialogue with Keita’s sitters.
Largely self-taught, Keïta first received a camera as a gift from his uncle at age 14. In 1935, he became an apprentice to his mentor, Mountaga Dembélé (1919-2004), Mali’s first professional photographer to earn a living with his studio. From there, Keïta opened his own studio in 1948 in front of his family home in Bamako-Coura, becoming Mali’s second photographer. The studio became a destination for people from all levels of Malian society, welcoming not just the elite citizens of Bamako but also remote villagers, international travelers, and those passing through on the Dakar-Niger railroad. Keïta’s work is notable for capturing how the people in his studio saw themselves, allowing for a playful self-expression backgrounded by increasing political tensions and rapid evolutions in the government. His studio offered props, including European and Malian clothing, motorbikes, Western watches, and novelties. Through the years, Keïta developed his very own style of portrait photography and a new type of modernist expression.
This period lasted until 1963, when Keïta was enlisted to work for the newly independent Socialist Republic of Mali. Forced to relinquish his studio, he documented state affairs and performed forensics for increasingly punitive governments until 1968 when he retired to work in camera and automotive repairs. In May 1991, the exhibition Africa Explores: Twentieth Century African Arts opened at the Center for African Arts in New York, where Keïta first debuted to Western audiences. In 1994, the Fondation Cartier in Paris presented Keïta’s first solo exhibition, which rocked the art and photography world, cementing him as the premiere African studio photographer of the twentieth century. The exhibition positioned Keïta as a peer of noted photographers such as Irving Penn, August Sander, and Richard Avedon, his contemporaries in portrait photography, and created enormous interest in Keïta’s work.
“Thirty-four years since Keïta was first introduced to American audiences we have an opportunity to view new discoveries in his work and understand just how singular he was, practicing at one of the most pivotal moments in African and world history. He had an extraordinary artist’s ability to render the tactile. We can visually ‘finger the grain’ of the sitter’s lives and better understand them beyond just their relationship to studio photography or documentary,” says Catherine E. McKinley, guest curator, author of The African Lookbook, and director of The McKinley Collection.
“It is very exciting and deeply moving to rediscover Keïta’s work and to feel the presence of his sitters – some of whom we meet here for the very first time – thanks to Catherine E. McKinley’s thoughtful research,” says Pauline Vermare, Phillip and Edith Leonian Curator of Photography. “We hope visitors feel the wonder and possibility that Keïta’s studio represented for so many people.”
A Tactile Lens brings together a remarkable range of Keïta’s photographs, which demonstrate the breadth of his oeuvre and the splendour of his artistry. Thanks to a generous loan from the Keïta family, an extraordinary group of never-before-published works has been preserved and imaged by the Museum on the occasion of the exhibition. A selection of the portraits will be displayed – on lightboxes and as a projection – for the first time. In addition, an array of vintage prints, many made by Keïta himself, and some of which are hand-painted, offer renewed emphasis on the photographic object itself. Rounding out the selection are larger prints made later in Keïta’s life, or posthumously, which feature the distinctive black-and-white tonalities that Keïta came to be known for. Joining the photographs is an immersive installation of personal belongings, textiles, garments, and jewellery that can be seen in Keïta’s portraits.
Together, these objects highlight the self-invention, search for identity, and syncretism of Mali that Keïta’s sitters sought in the mid-twentieth century.
A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition, featuring a new biographical essay by Catherine E. McKinley based on extensive interviews with his heirs and from leading art professionals and historians such as Jennifer Bajorek, Duncan Clarke, Howard W. French, Sana Ginwalla, Awa Konaté, and Drew Sawyer, offering new insights into the photographer, his work, and Malian material culture.
Press release from the Brooklyn Museum
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing at third left in the bottom image, Keïta’s photograph Untitled 1952-1955 (below); and at right, Untitled 1956-1957 (below)
Looking over her shoulder, her back to the camera, this woman flaunts the French coins – called Louis d’or – hanging at her temples. Gold held decorative and talismanic properties: the shine of the metal was believed to ward off the evil eye and protect the head and soul of the wearer.
When Seydou Keïta opened his photography studio in 1948 in Bamako, Mali (then part of French Soudan), the region was on the cusp of dramatic transformation. After more than seventy years of French colonial rule, the country would soon gain independence as the Republic of Mali in 1960. With extraordinary sensitivity, Keïta documented a profoundly pluralistic society at a crossroads. Mali at this time faced intense ideological clashes over its future, emerging concepts of statehood, and how to reconcile Malian and European visions of modernity with indigenous systems.
As a photographer, Keïta possessed a singular ability to convey a tactile presence, finding the exquisite in details that communicate the inner lives of his subjects. They gaze into the camera with self-assurance and poise, presenting themselves in an array of fashions and posing with studio props or treasured personal possessions. With nuance and care, Keïta chronicled the elegance and sophistication of his sitters’ self-expression during a pivotal moment of nation-building.
Organised thematically, this exhibition highlights the breadth of Keïta’s vibrant oeuvre, spanning iconic portraits and rarely seen photographs to never-before-shown film negatives. A selection of textiles, garments, and jewellery, in turn, illuminates the layered social and cultural exchanges reflected in his portraits. This presentation is also informed and enriched by contributions from the Keïta family. Their oral histories and loan of personal heirlooms and negatives, uncovered in the family archive, helpshed new light on his studio practice and enduring legacy. Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens invites visitors to connect with Keïta and his subjects’ intimate pursuit of identity, selfhood, and community.
Self-portraiture
Seydou Keïta’s photography business expanded and deepened the relationships between the artist, his family, and his art. His younger siblings and children were active participants in his studio. They arranged and held up backdrops as he shot, assisted with equipment, and performed the tea rituals that were at the centre of social exchanges. Family members often waited late into the evening for the final sitters to leave before coming to sleep in the studio – one of the few places in Bamako with electricity – while Keïta worked well into the night in his darkroom.
Keïta often used the final frames on a roll of film to photograph himself and his family – intimate and striking images that became part of his oeuvre. These portraits reflect his deeply felt responsibility as a Malinke patriarch, able to provide for his large extended family a life of modern comfort due to an unusual and enviable talent that would reach a world stage. His brothers describe Keïta’s “immaculate” presentation of a social self – a man who valued social reserve and Malinke tenets of modesty and stern leadership. In these portraits, we also see him as a self-styled bon vivant, carefree in his European sportswear and playfully connected to those around him.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing at left text for the section “Self-portraiture” and then Keïta’s Untitled, 1956, printed 2018
Dressed in a crisp white shirt, holding a flower gently to his chin, Keïta turns the camera on himself with the same control and precision he granted his subjects. As French Soudan faced political uncertainty and turmoil in the lead-up to independence, Keïta’s studio, whether indoors or on the street, offered sitters a place to create a self of one’s own .
Being Bamakois
In 1960 Mali achieved independence, becoming one of seventeen African countries to end colonial rule. “The Year of Africa,” as 1960 became known, intensified vital questions about self-determination, national identity, and the shape of a post-independence future. Even as many Malians embraced the prospect of a free and modern nation-state, debates grew over the roles that religion, the military, and traditional societal structures would play in governance and civil life.
Bamako’s population doubled in the mid-twentieth century, driven by increased colonial settlement since the 1930s and labor migration from rural areas. Long a cosmopolitan city, post-independence Bamako became a site of new social tensions. The rigid strictures of the systems of French class and indigenous caste, which had coexisted uneasily in the colonial era, were increasingly at odds as Mali became entrenched as a socialist Islamic state.
In Seydou Keïta’s portraits, Bamako’s citizens sought to express a vision of self and society that mirrored the promises of the growing city. Questions around status, decolonisation, and the ever-evolving definition of what it means to be both Bamakois and modern play out in the symbolic choices behind the making of each photograph.
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom image at bottom second left, Keïta’s photograph Untitled 1957 (below)
Posing with aplomb on a Vespa – likely Keïta’s – these women have become the subjects of one of his most iconic photographs, seen here as a vintage print. They present themselves as aspirational members of the Bamako Vespa Club, whose membership was reserved for men. Expensive and rare, Vespas were costly symbols of affluence that were inaccessible to most Bamakois in the French colonial economy. Keïta, one of the club’s founders, purchased his own using earnings from his photography.
The Pretenders
In the 1950s, Bamakois began favouring Western novelties – wristwatches, handbags, bicycles, and other imported goods, many of which appear in Seydou Keïta’s portraits – as expressions of their modern dreams and discontents. Expensive and inaccessible to many, imported goods became markers of status, replacing traditional adornment, heirlooms, and protective talismans. This generation would later be dubbed “The Pretenders” by their children, who viewed with scorn their parents’ embrace of French aesthetics and colonial-era fashion. Yet their critique often overlooked the ways their parents had simply transferred the social and spiritual meanings once imbued in gold and other materials to new subjects.
Ironically, the next generation, who came of age in a newly independent Mali, expressed their own dreams and discontents in the 1960s and 1970s using Western cultural symbols. By embracing American, particularly African American, and British popular culture – dancing to the music of James Brown and The Beatles, wearing afros, dressing in bell bottoms and miniskirts – they pushed back against an increasingly restrictive Islamic socialist regime that promoted particular ideals of Africanity, tradition, and modesty. Their confidence and spirit of rebellion would be captured by the next generation of Malian photographers who followed in Keïta’s footsteps.
Coming of Age
Young men and women often arrived at Seydou Keïta’s studio dressed in their best clothing and adorned with jewellery that hinted at the worth of future dowries or the scale of family ambitions. They posed for portraits that became cherished mementos. Such small-format photographs were exchanged as offerings of friendship, used in matchmaking and marriage proposals, and commemorated births and weddings. They also served as keepsakes of religious holidays such as Eid and Tabaski (Eid al-Adha). Together, the works on view celebrate the beauty of youth and the significance of coming of age – moments of transformation, growth, and entry into adulthood.
The Elegants
Seydou Keïta’s subjects radiate elegance in every photograph, resplendent in tailor-made ensembles that reflect the wearer’s ingenuity and creativity. Many of the outfits seen in Keïta’s portraits blend handwoven West African textiles with Islamic fabrics and imported European cloth, often in inventive ways. Whether made from velvet, Dutch wax print, or eyelet lace, a gown could always be paired with a traditional pagne (wrapper) showing at the hem, adding the requisite touch of beauty. The men, women, and youths on view present themselves as mirrors to the cultural syncretism and self-invention of mid-twentieth-century Bamako.
As the Islamic socialist regime rose to power in the 1960s and 1970s, it began imposing increased restrictions on dress, enacting punishments and “re-education” for the wearing of Western or secular clothing. Keïta’s portraits capture a brief window just before these strictures took hold – a moment when his sitters fashioned an expression entirely their own. He helped document, in the words of Nigerian art critic Okwui Enwezor, fashion’s power to offer people a means of “resistance to confining oneself.”
Delicately presenting a plastic flower, this man exudes elegance and poise in his double-breasted suit, silk handkerchief and fountain pen tucked neatly in his breast pocket. He meets the camera’s gaze with inviting eyes that exude a quiet openness. His confident, relaxed presence speaks to Keïta’s gift for making his subjects feel at ease – enabling them to fully express themselves in front of the camera.
The Loungers
The figure of the languid, reclining odalisque, or female attendant, is seen by many American and European viewers as an exoticizing colonial trope. However, in Seydou Keïta’s portraits, the lounger appears as a modern Bamakois – worldly, confident, adorned with the enduring garments, jewellery, and symbols of her heritage. In these portraits, each woman asserts her power, status, wealth, and values. The self-fashioned, richly layered settings re-create the intimate interiors of domestic life. The beds, textiles, and Islamic tea ceremonies shown here reflect the subject’s mastery of hospitality – an essential trait for the model Soudanaise woman – as well as her standing in family and society.
With slender, henna-stained hands and feet, modest dress, and composed bearing, these women affirm traditional social values even as they shape a modern visual identity. These photographs are an ode – to the women, their world, and the form of the lounger herself.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing at second right bottom, Keïta’s photograph Untitled 1953-1957 (below)
“Keïta La” offers a glimpse into the world of Seydou Keïta’s studio – and into his family’s efforts to steward and preserve his legacy. Together, the objects on view pose important questions about conservation and personal and artistic archives.
In the mid-twentieth century, near the elegant colonial centre of Bamako-Coura, Keïta La, the family compound, sat on a wide avenue that buzzed with traffic and was lined with a canopy of trees, casting dappled shadows that lent a lazy air. Just outside the compound’s walls was the artist’s studio. As a photographer, Keïta moved seamlessly between the compound yard, the avenue, the nearby walls of sites, and the studio and darkroom where he made prints late into the night. Keïta ran the studio until 1963, when he was forced to dedicate himself exclusively to government service. He turned the business over to his brother and sons, who had become familiar with cameras as children. Upon his retirement, he returned to Keïta La – but not to his studio. Instead, he embraced his second love: the repair of cameras and cars.
Today, the Keïta family have been vital collaborators in the conceptualisation of this exhibition, their oral histories enriching our understanding of the man behind the camera. In addition, their loan of the photographer’s few remaining family heirlooms and a trove of film negatives imbues this section with Keïta’s personal presence. These negatives, which have been preserved and imaged by the Brooklyn Museum on the occasion of this exhibition, expand our knowledge of Keïta’s oeuvre. A selection of these portraits is presented here – on lightboxes and as a projection – for the first time.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing text for the section “Keïta La” on the left hand wall, as well as the photograph Undated family portrait taken in Seydou Keïta’s studio (below)
Undated family portrait taken in Seydou Keïta’s studio Seated left of centre is Keïta’s uncle Tièmòkò Keïta (wearing eyeglasses), with Hamed Lamine “Papa” Keïta behind him at left and Cheickine Keïta at far right (holding child). Today, Papa and Cheickine serve as the principal stewards of the Keïta estate Courtesy the Seydou Keïta Family
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Keïta’s photograph Untitled late 1940s to mid-1970s (below); and at right, text for the section “Keïta La” together with the photograph Undated family portrait taken in Seydou Keïta’s studio (above)
Fashioning A New Nation
Photography studios are spaces of performance, an invitation to try on new styles, personas, and identities. Costly and newly available beginning in the 1930s, studio photography offered Seydou Keïta’s subjects a rare chance to see themselves not in a mirror or a small I.D. photo, but as others might. As French Soudan approached independence, fashion increasingly became a site of negotiation – blending ethnic and religious aesthetics, Pan-African identity, and even Hollywood glamour.
This gallery brings together prestige clothing, hand-fashioned dresses – some with the exquisite detailing of couture – pagnes (wrappers), wall hangings, and commemorative cloths that span the rich history of Malian textile design and trade. It also pays homage to the boubou, the marker of West African elegance, that became a quiet symbol of anti-colonial resistance in the postwar years. While European imported cloth had been highly coveted in West Africa since the seventeenth century, colonial trade restrictions and the economic impact of World War II made such materials harder to access, sparking new forms of creativity. Bright synthetic dyes, hybrid silhouettes, and inventive combinations of tradition and modernity emerged in response.
The works on view reflect both this history of innovation and the distinctly Malian patterning that serves as a through line for textile designs from as early as the eleventh century. Trending styles of 1940s-60s Bamako are juxtaposed with the early 1980s sartorial legacy of post-independence Mali. Some are nearly identical to the garments and backdrops featured in Keïta’s photographs; others represent the diverse cultural, ethnic, and regional affiliations of his sitters. Grouped by theme, this section invites a closer look at pattern, colour, weave, and technique to give further dimension – and colour – to the fashions worn by Keïta’s subjects.
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing text from the section “Fashioning A New Nation”
Handheld
“Fly dirt,” pen marks, dog-eared corners, red Sahelian dust, humidity, and traces of touch infuse Keïta’s vintage prints with a particular life and beauty. Each print is indelibly marked by the photographer, the printer, and the many hands through which it has passed – as tokens, gifts, souvenirs, expressions of love, ritual displays, or precious heirlooms.
Since Keïta first became known in Europe and the United States in the 1990s, vintage prints of his photographs have made their way into private collections and institutional archives. Despite consisting of the same images, they were often considered secondary to the modern prints that were produced, exhibited, and stored as fine art pieces. Only recently has this value system been upended, reflecting shifts in the art market and in the field of art history. As African studio photography continues to gain recognition, artists and arts professionals of the African diaspora have called for such images to be valued not by colonial or market standards but by their material history and significance as loved, cherished objects.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing a vitrine with text from the section “Handheld”
The Self That Travels
Over time, African studio photography by Keïta and other artists became part of a global circulation of images. A photographic print could be sent from Bamako to a relative stationed during the war years in France, or Indonesia, or Russia. Portraits were exchanged locally, regionally, and farther afield through a web of relations in matchmaking attempts between families. A private image may have been usurped by a colonial publisher for use on a postcard. Perhaps a collector on eBay, fifty years later, was delighted by the image or recognised Keïta’s stamp and had it shipped to the United States from Belarus. All told, vintage prints are part of an economy that reveals complex histories of commerce and human desire.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing a vitrine with text from the section “The Self That Travels”
A Golden Touch
After printing, photographs could be tinted by hand to heighten the subject’s beauty and status – and to imbue the photograph with the protections afforded by gold. Chekna Touré was a picture framer who hand-coloured photographs for many of Keïta’s clients, often highlighting the subject’s gold jewellery, accessories, and cosmetics. As a marker of wealth, beauty, and identity, gold was essential to Malian women’s dress.
Mali’s vast gold reserves are some of the world’s oldest and a source of national pride. Its lustrous qualities carried talismanic powers, yet the metal also inspired fear. Believed to be a living organism, gold was said to have its own soul and powers. Goldsmiths would thus meld the element with other metals to help shield the wearer from its full force.
The vintage prints in this case feature colorisation. While Touré colourised many of Keïta’s photographs, the differing skill levels seen here suggest other people also performed this work, perhaps doing so at home.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing gold and carnelian jewellery
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing text from the section “A Golden Touch” with at bottom centre, Keïta’s photograph Untitled c. 1948-1963 (below)
The Keïta family’s generous loan of film negatives from the estate’s remaining archive presents a rare opportunity to reflect on the practical, ethical, and technical questions involved in the preservation of African photography. Conservation of African photographic archives from the continent faces distinct challenges, ranging from climate-related degradation and limited access to preservation materials and technologies to an overall lack of institutional infrastructure and support for artists and their legacies.
Too fragile to survive extensive handling or prolonged light exposure, Keïta’s negatives could not be cleaned or scanned without risking damage. Instead, each was photographed under controlled conditions at a conservation lab and reproduced for the exhibition.
Lace
Lace features prominently in Keïta’s photographs – appearing as trim on dress sleeves, integrated into garments made from wax print and other fabrics, worn as full lace dresses or as sheer boubous layered over other clothing. European lace was highly coveted, expensive, and difficult to obtain. In response, Soudanaise women created their own lace by hand, layering two pieces of white cotton percale and cutting intricate patterns using stencils. These garments, now rare heirlooms, were once considered second to colonial imports. Today, they are recognized for their exceptional beauty and craftsmanship, emblems of pride in Soudanaise women’s creativity and cultural identity.
Carnelian Beads
Carnelian beads have been traded for centuries, from the Cambay region of India through Mecca to the Middle East and Africa. By the mid-nineteenth century, the German town of Idar-Oberstein began sourcing carnelian from Brazil and producing beads in local factories for export to these same markets.
Valued for both their beauty and protection, carnelian necklaces were worn as amulets – believed to hold protective powers through their colour and surface – and were often included as part of a woman’s dowry. Multi-strand necklaces of small carnelian beads appear on many of Keïta’s sitters and were especially fashionable among the Lebu, Tuareg, and Fulani.
Marabaka
During the independence era, anticolonial leader Amílcar Lopes Cabral popularised the marabaka, a Czech-style hat that became a widespread symbol of Pan-African solidarity. First imported from Czechia, the hat, known as zmijovka in Czech, derives its zigzag pattern from that observed on the skin of a viper (zmije in Czech).
In West Africa, the hat’s black-and-white design is reminiscent of Islamic aesthetics seen on indigenous textiles such as Dogon and Bamana resist cloths and weaving. The snake motif also speaks to the region’s affinity for the culturally significant serpent and water snake.
Commemorative Cloths
In the post-independence era, political leaders often commissioned commemorative cloths bearing their own images to bolster support and cultivate loyalty – and even foster cults of personality. Citizens wore such cloths regardless of political affiliation, at times out of fear of reprisal. Advances in textile printing and the development of more affordable “fancy print” cloths in the 1940s made many commemorative cloths inexpensive to produce. The examples on view span a range of iconography, from wax-print cloths honouring African soldiers who served in World War II and Mali’s first post-independence president, Modibo Keïta, to a fancy print featuring French President Charles de Gaulle .
Pagne
A woman’s pagne is the foundation of her wardrobe. Typically woven or cut to a length of about two yards, the pagne functions as a wrap that conceals the waist, thighs, and buttocks. Beyond their function, pagnes also symbolize lineage, protection, and a woman’s evolving identity.
Finely woven and dyed pagnes are presented at birth and during key life rituals such as dowry exchanges, marriage celebrations, and pregnancies. Women rarely part with their pagnes. Above all, they are talismans – protective layers passed down from generation to generation. A woman selects which ones to give to her children and which, ultimately, will accompany her to the grave.
Dutch Legacies
Known in the postwar era as “the Chanel of Africa,” the Dutch textile company Vlisco has been the foremost purveyor of African wax-print textiles since the late nineteenth century. The company industrialised the Indonesian batik process, in which patterns are drawn in wax on cotton fabric that is then dyed. When the wax is removed, the design is revealed, protected from the dye by the wax resist.
Though Vlisco did not actively market its products in the Sahel region in the 1940s to 1970s, wax prints spread through African trade networks and became widely popular, including among many of Keïta’s sitters. While the patterns were created by Dutch designers, they were named by Ghanaian and Togolese female fabric traders and their female clients, who interpreted the patterns’ meanings through a local, social, or spiritual lens .
The colour, design, and pattern names of wax prints thus carry personal and communal meanings – much like Keïta’s photographs.
Widely associated with coming-of-age rituals, wax prints have long marked key life events such as birth, puberty, and marriage. As independence movements gained momentum across the continent, wax-print textiles came to symbolise cosmopolitanism and a growing sense of Pan-African identity.
The Studio Backdrop
In Keïta’s photographs, traditional and modern textiles appear as studio backdrops or layered on European-style beds, their bold patterns often echoed in the sitters’ garments. Featuring examples of such textiles, this installation highlights the evolution of Malian weaving traditions during the independence era. The 1950s and early post-independence years saw rapid innovations in textile design, particularly in the use of colour. In contrast with traditional indigo and earth tones produced using natural dyes, these modern fabrics feature vivid hues made from synthetic dyes and incorporate more elaborate, figurative motifs that reflect the period’s shifting social concerns and aspirations.
These blankets served multiple functions. In everyday use, they provided protection from mosquitoes, cold temperatures, and sandstorms in the Sahel. When folded and draped over the shoulder of a well-dressed man, they signaled status. They were also important in systems of exchange – traded, gifted, and ceremonially displayed, most notably during dowry presentations and marriage celebrations.
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing vitrines with facsimile cellulose acetate negatives and positive reproductions from digitised negatives c. 1950-1959
Installation view of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026 showing Keïta’s medium format cameras and his photograph, Untitled late 1940s to mid-1970s (below)
Seydou Keïta (Malian, c. 1921-2001) Untitled late 1940s to mid-1970s Positive reproduction from digitised negative Courtesy of the Seydou Keïta Family
Seydou Keïta (Malian, c. 1921-2001) Untitled late 1940s to mid-1970s Positive reproduction from digitised negative Courtesy of the Seydou Keïta Family
With one hand on the handlebars of a bicycle and the other tucked in his pocket, this child meets the camera with a stern expression. Here, the boy’s French beret, shoes, and bicycle – imported goods reserved for the elite – speak to the deep-rooted impact of French colonialism across generations, even as the country moved toward independence.
Installation views of the exhibition Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, October 2025 – May 2026
Brooklyn Museum 200 Eastern Parkway Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052 Phone: (718) 638-5000
Opening hours: Wednesday – Sunday 11am – 6pm Closed Mondays and Tuesdays Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day
In the nearly eighteen year history of constructing this archive there has never been a posting on the American photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard (American, 1925-1972) which tells you a/ how rare exhibitions of his work are today and b/ how under appreciated his art is in recent times when compared to his white, male contemporaries such as Harry Callahan, Minor White and Aaron Siskind. Thus it is a great pleasure to promote this exhibition on Art Blart. I just wish I had more photographs to show you!
His work is polarising. People either hate it or love it. I’m in the latter camp. I admire Meatyard’s disturbing? challenging photographs where youth and innocence meld into a dystopian old age of special beauty, where other worlds of which we know very little are brought close to our imagination.
I admire them for their unconventionality, for their spectral aspect … that fluid dichotomy between reality and fantasy, dreams and nightmares, where the mask comes to stand for another state of being of its subject1 – shadowy, other-worldy phantoms brought into our presence through romantic-surrealist, abstract realisms – un/earthly in/corporealities, bodies and people who are both grounded in the present and transmogrifying in a tumult of magic realism (a literary and artistic genre that seamlessly blends fantastical or mythical elements into otherwise realistic, mundane settings, treating the supernatural as normal).
This unexplained magic, fluid time contains a social critique of childhood, family and adulthood and (most importantly) mortality, merging real-world settings with unbelievable elements.
Meatyards’s staged scenes – often using exposure, shadow (in Jung referencing the unconscious, hidden part of the personality), depth of field, or motion blur – suggest “an absurd fantasy set in the dilapidated houses and banal suburban environs near his home in Lexington, Kentucky … [which] reveal Meatyard’s search for inner truths amid the ordinary.” (Text from the High Museum of Art)
His photographs contain elements of his imagination in segments of the actuality around him, an interface of emotion and feeling about the world which is reflected back to us through his experimental, fantastical images. His subjects simply exist in youth and old age and resonate (that musical influence) “within the infinite possibilities of this fictional world.” Thus, in this fictional world, the masks serve “… to equalise his subjects and shift focus elsewhere – to the poignant juxtaposition of otherworldly faces on human bodies, to the ambiguous and unknowable in human nature.”2
The unknowable in human nature. The phenomenal (appearances) and the noumenal (the harsh reality of things-in-themselves).3 Interstitial. Interspatial. The space between…
Dreams and realities, masks and identities, emotions and fluidities. Gestures on what it is to be human.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ “The word “persona” originally refers to a theatrical mask worn by actors to depict the roles played by them…
The ego refers to our centre of consciousness which is responsible for our continuing sense of identity throughout our life and the persona is the social mask that we put on. We all embody different masks in different settings, as it is our way to adapt to the demands of society, playing an important part in shaping our social role and in how we deal with other people.”
3/ The phenomenal world is the reality we experience through senses and mental structures (space/time), while the noumenal is the unknowable, objective reality existing independently of perception, such as God or the true nature of objects.
Many thankx to the High Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“I seek to create a picture that has implications which may be explored for a new concept of thinking – a picture seen largely from the subjective viewpoint. The man of ideas and ideals will search for and find elements of his imagination in segments of the actuality around him. My pictures are an extension of myself and invite the viewers to participate in my thinking about the object pictured.”
Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Lexington Camera Club, Creative Photography – 1956 catalogue statement
“I adhere to the techniques of the earliest and most sincere workers of the camera – straight, unmanipulated pictures. That which I present is that which I see. However, I work a great deal in romantic-surrealist as well as abstract for I feel that ‘more real than real’ is the special province of the serious photographer.”
Ralph Eugene Meatyard, quoted in Beaumont Newhall, “New Talent in Photography USA,” Art in America 49, No. 1, 1961
Installation view of the exhibition The Family Album of Ralph Eugene Meatyard at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
As an optician by profession, Meatyard’s photography training was largely self-taught. He grew up in Normal, Illinois, and eventually moved to Lexington to take a job at the Tinder-Knaus-Tinder optical shop. Through his occupation, he became fascinated by visual perception, but he did not pick up a camera until the early 1950s when his first son, Michael, was born. He began experimenting with photography and joined the Lexington Camera Club, a group of serious amateur photographers that met regularly to share their work. Meatyard made this self-portrait outside a warehouse in downtown Lexington. The composition, with the artist standing next to the word yard, is a playful visual take on his unusual surname.
A largely self-taught photographer, Ralph Eugene Meatyard (American, 1925–1972) was a pioneering and inventive artist who created some of the most original images of the mid-twentieth century. His work defies easy categorization as he experimented across various genres and subjects, and throughout his career, he maintained the ethos of an amateur, approaching photography with a sense of affection, discovery, and surprise. He is best known for his staged scenes that suggest an absurd fantasy set in the dilapidated houses and banal suburban environs near his home in Lexington, Kentucky. These scenes, often featuring his family as actors and using props such as masks and dolls, reveal Meatyard’s search for inner truths amid the ordinary.
This exhibition, coinciding with the artist’s centenary, features the thirty-six prints that comprise the artist’s first monograph (Gnomon Press, 1970) – one of only two books he published in his lifetime – which Meatyard intended to stand as his definitive artistic statement. All thirty-six prints were recently acquired by the High for the Museum’s permanent collection. Through his idiosyncratic selection of images, this exhibition explores how Meatyard’s singular approach and voracious curiosity expanded photography’s expressive and conceptual potential.
Since his untimely death in 1972, American photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard has come to be regarded among the most pioneering and inventive artists of the medium, and his expressive, surreal photographs are widely celebrated today. This winter, the High Museum of Art presents “The Family Album of Ralph Eugene Meatyard” (Dec. 12, 2025 – May 10, 2026), an exhibition featuring 36 photographs that Meatyard considered his best work, created for one of only two monographs published by the artist in his lifetime. The High recently acquired the prints from his estate, making the museum one of the leading repositories of his photographs in the world.
“Ralph Eugene Meatyard created some of the most original photographs of the mid-20th century, and the prints in this exhibition are exquisite examples of his innovation and creativity,” said the High’s Director Rand Suffolk. “We are grateful to his estate for the opportunity to acquire and present these works and to celebrate his unorthodox yet remarkably generative practice with this exhibition.”
Born in Illinois in 1925, Meatyard eventually settled in Lexington, Kentucky. Because of his professional training as an optician, he was fascinated by visual perception, but he did not pick up a camera until the early 1950s. He began experimenting with photography and joined the Lexington Camera Club, immersing himself in the city’s creative community, which included artists and writers Van Deren Coke, Jonathan Williams, Wendell Berry and Thomas Merton.
Over the next 15 years, Meatyard maintained the ethos of an amateur, approaching the medium with a sense of affection, discovery and surprise. He experimented across various genres and subjects, including portraiture, abstraction, landscape and gothic narrative, constantly seeking to distort proper vision through photographic processes and the unconventional narrative structures that would make him an innovator of the medium.
He is best known for his staged scenes that suggest absurd fantasies, played out in the dilapidated houses and banal suburban environs of Lexington. Often featuring his family as actors and including props such as masks and dolls, the scenes reveal his search for inner truths among the ordinary. Though he wasn’t unknown in his lifetime – he exhibited, lectured and showed his work regularly throughout the 1960s – he worked both geographically and conceptually outside of the mainstream of photographic modernism, and it wasn’t until after his death that his reputation began to grow steadily.
More than a dozen books of Meatyard’s photographs have been released to date, but he only published two monographs in his lifetime. “Ralph Eugene Meatyard” (Gnomon Press, 1970), edited while he was dying of cancer, is a survey of what he considered his best work. He hoped the book would stand as his definitive artistic statement, offering his own perspective on his distinctive photographs.
This exhibition features rare prints the artist made of the 36 photographs in the book. These include signature photographs from Meatyard’s “Romance” series, which depict his family in fantastical scenarios, staged in abandoned buildings and bucolic landscapes. The series subverts the traditional family snapshot with a sense of the uncanny, combining youthful innocence with a sense of mortality. Meatyard often referred to these pictures as “romantic-surrealist,” and their fictional aspects were motivated by his desire to make photographs that weren’t bound by reality but were still grounded in the world as we see it. The exhibition also includes a selection of Meatyard’s portraits of writers, poets and artists from his circle, including Merton, Williams, Berry and Guy Davenport, among others. Collectively, the photographs create an unconventional family album by one of the most distinctive artists of the post-war period. The exhibition delves into Meatyard’s personal perceptions of his photographs and his process as a maker and will underscore the important influence of his artistic and intellectual contemporaries in Lexington, all of whom greatly affected his work. It also explores how Meatyard’s singular approach and voracious curiosity expanded photography’s expressive and conceptual potential.
“A family album is a relatable practice of memory, storytelling, aspiration and fabrication familiar to almost everyone,” said Gregory Harris, the High’s Donald and Marilyn Keough Family curator of photography. “While these works echo that nostalgic format, they also offer plenty of surprises and an extraordinary window into Meatyard’s life and creative process. We’re thrilled to share them with our audience.”
“The Family Album of Ralph Eugene Meatyard” is presented in the Lucinda Weil Bunnen Gallery for Photography on the lower level of the High’s Wieland Pavilion.
Meatyard suffered a heart attack in 1961. After this brush with mortality, he gave himself ten years to master photography. A sense of anxiety runs through many of his photographs. This image of a vacant masked face with hands pressed against its cheeks and a shard of broken mirror floating above embodies the persistent sense of pressure and tenuousness motivated by the finiteness of time.
Meatyard began editing the Gnomon Press book soon after he was diagnosed with cancer in 1970, and the looming reality of his fragility no doubt informed his selection of images. Arnold Gassan echoed the need to confront death in the longer, unpublished version of his essay for the book.
The 36 photographs include a number of signature portraits from Meatyard’s series Romance, and portray his family members, sometimes masked, inhabiting abandoned southern landscapes. Meatyard challenges the idea of traditional family portraits. In some images, children play in deserted rooms, maintaining their innocence in disconcerting environments. They are not afraid or amused – they simply exist within the infinite possibilities of this fictional world. In one image, an unrecognisable figure jumps out of a window into a yard where a little boy awaits. The movement of the jumping figure makes it resemble a spirit appearing to the boy in a dream. In creating this series, Meatyard was inspired by Ambrose Bierce’s definition of “romance” in “The Devil’s Dictionary” – defined as “fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They are.”
Victoria Gonzalez. “The Family Album of Ralph Eugene Meatyard,” on the Musee website December 15, 2025 [Online] Cited 15/02/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
As an adult, Meatyard lived in the South but grew up in Normal, Illinois – an apt birthplace for this man who led a very normal life. (“Meatyard” is an arcane 17th century English surname, but its surrealistic sound is an apt byline for the photographer. Meatyard himself collected strange names that he noted in a loose-leaf binder.) He did not consider himself a Southerner, although he has often been associated with Southern photography.
Although Meatyard counted himself as an amateur and hobbyist, he exhibited his work nationally with fine art photographers such as Minor White (who introduced him to Zen Buddhism), Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind and Emmet Gowin. His national reputation had grown enough that his 1972 passing garnered a New York Times obituary that described Meatyard as living (somewhat disparagingly) in a backwater. Yet, it was living outside major centers of art and photography that allowed him the freedom to pursue his idiosyncratic creative strategies.
The photographs of his friends are more straightforward but equally poetic and surrealistic. An example is his portrait of close friend and fellow Lexington Camera Club member Cranston Ritchie (1923-1961). Like Meatyard, Ritchie received an untimely terminal cancer diagnosis, resulting in multiple amputations of his arm. Facing forward, Cranston stands with an armless mannequin and mirror, a humorous but tragic take on fate and mortality.
Cranston Ritchie was a photographer in the Lexington Camera Club and friend of fellow club member, Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Ritchie died young at the age of 38 from cancer. James Rhem in his essay, Gene’s Friend – Cranston Ritchie, writes, “A little knot the size of a grape and sore to the touch appeared on his right hand. It turned out to be a malignancy. Doctors then thought if the arm were removed above the elbow, the cancer might be stopped from continuing to his lungs. It wasn’t. After five surgeries, each an effort to stop the cancer’s spread, Ritchie died the day after Christmas in 1961.” Rhem quotes Meatyard’s 1971 recollection of Ritchie, “He will certainly be recognised in years to come as an outstanding individual photographer as many of the 19th century men are being recognised today.”
While Meatyard regularly photographed his family, his pictures are rarely conventional portraits and are not necessarily indicative of his relationships. Even when he wasn’t including masks, he often obscured his sitters’ identities by skilfully deploying exposure, shadow, depth of field, or motion blur. In this silhouetted image, his wife, Madelyn, and their daughter, Melissa, become the archetypal mother and daughter, their fused forms expressing intimacy and connection. The title of the piece, Madonna, and Meatyard’s use of the arched window as a framing device indicate his desire to place his work within an art historical lineage.
The High Museum of Art 1280 Peachtree St NE Atlanta, GA 30309
This is an example of one of his shots of an impressive cloud formation. It features the R-100 airship, noted for its more oval, aerodynamic shape in comparison to the traditional Zeppelin. The R-100 embarked on its maiden flight in 1929 but in 1930 it was deflated and removed from service following the crash of her sister ship, the R-101, with the loss of forty-eight lives. Buckham painted the airship into the scene by hand.
Flights of fancy
What a man, what a daredevil, what an artist!
Member of the Royal Photographic Society and lecturer in photography before the First World War.
Joined the Royal Naval Air Service (precursor to the Royal Air Force) in 1916 and taught young recruits the basics of photography before requesting a transfer to active service. He became a pioneer in aerial reconnaissance over France when the pilots and observers/camera operators of biplanes over the trenches had no parachutes.
Invalided out of the service in 1918 after multiple crashes. After his ninth crash he had to undergo a tracheotomy and spent the rest of his life breathing through a tube.
Determined to continue his love affair with flying and photography, he rented planes and, strapping himself in and leaning over the side with his heavy plate camera, he captured romantic, rugged, aerial landscape photographs which combined dramatic, atmospheric shots of the landscape with photographic manipulation inside and outside the darkroom.
Rather than scratching in the original negative and/or making a composite negative (a la the Australian photographer Frank Hurley, 1885-1962) or using photomontage (the cutting and pasting physical photographs together), Buckham used combination printing – the use of multiple negatives to create seamless, “perfect” images, such as adding detailed skies to landscapes and biplanes to the skies, planes that were photographed on the ground – in the final, unique print. He often scratched the final print to emphasise highlights, and then used watercolour paints to blend in the areas where the different negatives overlapped in the print or to paint in details of aircraft wheels or bridge supports.
Buckham’s photographs of the landscape are truly beautiful. I love them.
The final prints are a heady mixture of romantic landscape (with their underlying nod to Pictorialism, emotional, romantic, and atmospheric scenes over realistic documentation) and modernist elements, of cutting edge machines, bridges, aeroplanes, airships and flying boats added through photographic manipulation in the darkroom, further enhanced by hand, through scratching and painting on the actual print.
To finally reveal what Buckham felt of the physical thrill of flying and the deeply felt emotional reaction to the landscape beneath him – can you imagine being him! – creating these photographs with deep, inward feelings impinging on his mind, his imagination, his memory. To perfectly present “so nearly, the effect that I saw” when in the air. Clouds in a sea of air.
These. These were his flights of fancy.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“I always stand up to make an exposure and, taking the precaution to tie my right leg to the seat, I am free to move about rapidly, and easily, in any desired direction; and loop the loop, and indulge in other such delights, with perfect safety… If you stand erect you will not have to resist the fatal tendency to rest your arms on the side of the aeroplane whilst making the exposure, for if you do so your photograph will surely be spoiled by the vibration of the engine.”
“Unfortunately, Nature does not always surmount her landscapes with clouds such as will compose well, as a whole, in the picture space, consequently I have provided a store of over 2,000 cloud negatives for such contingencies and from this suitable clouds for combination purposes are selected. And here is just where the hasty or unobservant worker may go badly astray, producing incredible or even appalling results. For the lighting of the landscape must be in correct relation to the light coming down from the sky, and heavy cloud masses insist that they shall have corresponding shapes upon the earth. Selection for the right negative for the purpose may entail the inspection of fifty or more, and on the print some handwork with a chemical reducer and stumping chalk, or other medium, is usually required to bring the whole into harmony. So before venturing upon combination work it is surely wise to serve some years of apprenticeship sketching and painting in the open air, which happens to have been my own way of approach to photography.”
“The open cockpit of a not-too-speedy airplane affords better facilities for working than a cabined plane. When the best weather conditions prevail for pictorial photography, the skyroad is disposed to be bumpy, descending and ascending currents of air moving beneath the big banks of cumulus cloud. A sudden drop of 300 or 400ft may be a little alarming if one is not prepared for it.”
Alfred Buckham
Installation views of the exhibition Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh Photos: Aly Wight
Installation view of the exhibition Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh showing Buckham’s photograph Edinburgh (about 1920, below) Photo: Aly Wight
Buckham had crashed nine times before he was discharged from the Royal Naval Air Service as a hundred per cent disabled. Continuing to indulge his passion for aerial photography, he wrote that ‘If one’s right leg is tied to the seat with a scarf or a piece of rope, it is possible to work in perfect security’. Presumably these were the perilous conditions in which the photographer took this dazzling picture of Edinburgh, one of the city’s most popular aerial views.
Installation view of the exhibition Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh showing Alfred Buckham wearing googles by an unknown photographer (1918, below) Photo: Aly Wight
Take to the skies and discover the world from above the clouds through the remarkable work of Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer.
A trailblazer in his field, Alfred Buckham soared above the realms of what was thought to be possible in 20th century photography and aviation. Meet the man behind some of the most iconic aerial photographs, marvel at the death-defying lengths he took to capture the perfect image and explore how his innovative techniques paved the way for modern technologies such as Photoshop and AI.
Text from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery website
Alfred Buckham’s first ambition was to be a painter, but after seeing JMW Turner’s pictures in the National Gallery in London, he returned home and made a bonfire of his own work. He was the first head of aerial reconnaissance for the Royal Navy in the First World War and later a captain in the Royal Naval Air Service. After crashing nine times he was obliged to undergo a tracheotomy and was discharged as a hundred per cent disabled. While recovering from surgery Buckham started making photo-montages, combining two or three photographs he had taken to compose a single image. He would look for a sky which complemented the city or landscape below, and even add tiny planes to create the look of a one-shot photograph. He continued to take aerial photographs with a heavy plate camera, leaning perilously out of the aeroplane, where his delight in picture making greatly increased the risk of accident.
[This film consists of animations illustrating the photographic techniques described in the narration]
Narrator
How would you have combined multiple photographs into one image in the days before Photoshop? From wartime aerial reconnaissance photographer to intrepid explorer, Alfred Buckham was a true daredevil.
But when he entered the darkroom, he was a meticulous and innovative artist. Let’s take a look at one of his most iconic composite photographs: Edinburgh, which was made using three separate negatives.
The first stage would have been to select one of the negatives he captured while literally dangling from his cockpit at death-defying heights.
He would then select a second negative from his impressive library of over 2,000 negatives of clouds. Selecting the right clouds sometimes required inspecting 50 or more options, and occasionally, he created new cloud formations by taping two negatives together.
He also built up a library of plane negatives, masking each plane from the background. All these planes were photographed from the ground, because it would have been impossible to capture a clear image of a plane, mid-flight, from another moving vehicle.
To make a photographic print, the negative would be placed into a device called an enlarger. Think of it like a top-down projector, shining light through the negative to project its image onto a sheet of light-sensitive photographic paper.
This paper would become a canvas for combining multiple negatives into one image. Buckham would first expose the image of Edinburgh onto the lower half of the paper for just the right amount of time. Next, he would expose the image of the sky onto the upper half. The longer the light projected the negative onto the paper, the darker the final image would be.
Throughout the exposure process, he used dodging and burning techniques to soften the horizon where the two negatives met. Dodging involves using your hand, or a piece of card, to block light on specific areas of the paper during exposure, making them appear lighter in the final print. Burning works in the opposite way, where you block light on the areas you’re happy with, and expose for longer the areas you want to darken.
Buckham used a pin mark to identify his chosen spot for the aeroplane. He would have to adjust the height of the enlarger to change the apparent size of the aeroplane. In this case, he also inserted the negative into the enlarger back to front to reverse the plane’s direction. Did you spot the backwards tail number?
After all three exposures, he would then place the paper into a shallow chemical bath called a developer for a set time. Slowly, as if by magic, the composite image would begin to appear on the paper. Subsequent chemical baths stopped the development process before fixing the image in place.
After washing and drying the paper, the print was ready for final adjustments. Buckham rarely edited negatives directly, as was common for photographers using glass plates. Instead, he made all his final adjustments in the print.
Here, he has used black watercolour to enhance the contrast between the brooding castle and the rest of the city. He would sometimes scratch away dark areas of the print to reveal the lighter colour of the paper beneath. Using this method, he could create the impression of spinning propeller blades or light glinting on key landmarks.
These artistic interventions resulted in each print being truly unique. Buckham’s photographs not only capture breathtaking moments at daring, dizzying heights, but are also the meticulous creations of a pioneering visionary artist.
A negative of The Forth Bridge, looking north towards Fife, was used as the basis for several prints. It was also used to produce this Christmas card for RAF Turnhouse in 1918. Showing an aeroplane flying towards the Forth Bridge, this is probably one of the first composite photographs Buckham created as it was made while he was still serving in the air force.
Alfred Buckham (British, 1879-1956) Cloud Turrets about 1920 Gelatin silver print 38.00 x 45.70cm National Galleries of Scotland Purchased with Art Fund support, 2008
This dramatic, and almost surreal photograph, shows the diversity of cloud formations during a fierce thunderstorm. Over the years Buckham amassed a vast collection of photographs of skies which he could integrate with a separate landscape photograph to enhance the drama and create a more impressive composition. He also often manipulated his images further by adding a hand painted aircraft, such as in this image, which heightens the viewer’s awareness of the dominating power and scale of the natural world.
Alfred Buckham (British, 1879-1956) Clouds Massing Before a Thunderstorm about 1920 Gelatin silver print 37.80 x 30.00cm Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Purchased with Art Fund support, 2008
Buckham was renowned for his atmospheric shots of the landscape. He felt that the most spectacular cloud formations and theatrical light could be captured on ‘stormy days, with bursts of sunshine and occasional showers of rain’. Over the years Buckham built up a vast collection of photographs of skies which he could integrate with a separate landscape photograph to enhance the drama and create a more impressive composition. This is an example of one of his shots of an impressive cloud formation before a thunderstorm.
Buckham was the leading aerial photographer of his day and was renowned for his atmospheric shots of the landscape. He felt that the most spectacular cloud formations and dramatic light could be captured on “stormy days, with bursts of sunshine and occasional showers of rain”. Over the years Buckham amassed a vast collection of photographs of skies which he could integrate with a separate landscape photograph to enhance the drama and create a more impressive composition. This photograph of the landscape over the Pentlands Hills near Edinburgh demonstrates this technique. It also illustrates another feature of Buckham’s photographs in the perfectly positioned silhouette of a biplane against the broken clouds, which Buckham would have painted on later.
Crafting an image | The photographic techniques of Alfred Buckham
Louise Pearson
Alfred Buckham created some spectacular photographs of the earth from the air. In 2018 curator Louise Pearson looked at how these images were created through a unique combination of daring escapades in the air and clever photographic manipulation on the ground.
Alfred Buckham was a passionate enthusiast of both photography and flight. By 1914 he was already an established photographer and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. During the First World War he was involved in the relatively new discipline of aerial reconnaissance, both as a teacher and a practitioner. It was a dangerous occupation and his military career ended as a result of the injuries sustained to his throat during his ninth crash. Despite this, his wartime activities had sparked a love of flying and on leaving the Royal Naval Air Service it seemed natural that he would continue to take photographs from the sky. Buckham subsequently created an astonishing series of photographs, ranging in subject from the Forth Bridge to the skyscrapers of New York and the volcanoes of South America.
The National Galleries of Scotland holds a group of Buckham’s photographs including Edinburgh, which has become one of the most popular works of art in the collection. When we decided to have a photography exhibition on the theme of transport it was clear that Buckham’s aerial photographs would take centre stage. I selected several of Buckham’s photographs for inclusion, including Edinburgh and The Forth Bridge, and started to look at the photographs in more detail with conservator James Berry. We also started planning a blog to explain how Buckham was able to create such dramatic images.
From previous research, and the work James was doing on conserving the photographs ahead of the exhibition, we knew that Buckham was using a technique called combination printing. This is when a photographer uses a number of different negatives to create a single photographic print. In order to fully understand his working methods, we needed to see the negatives he was using. Fortunately, Alfred Buckham’s entire archive of around 1400 negatives, nearly 300 prints, camera and associated archive material has remained with his family and is currently in the care of his grandsons Richard and John Buckham. Richard kindly allowed me to spend a day at his home in London, looking through this fascinating collection. Being able to compare the negatives to the prints in our collection, and read Buckham’s accounts of his photographic work, helped us to piece together how he would have made the atmospheric photograph Edinburgh.
The first stage in taking an aerial photograph is to select the right plane. Buckham took photographs around the world and would have used a number of different planes flown by various pilots to take his photographs. However he recorded that he always preferred to use older planes with open cockpits that travelled at the fairly sedate speed of 60 to 80 miles per hour. Through trial and error he discovered that flying between 1,000 and 2,000 ft gave the best results, as at that height the landscape could be captured with just the right level of detail. …
The other essential piece of equipment was the camera. Happily, as Buckham’s camera survives, we know exactly what he was using to make his exposures. In an article written for the benefit of prospective aerial photographers, he advised using the kind of cameras used by newspaper reporters, which operated at eye-level, rather than the cumbersome cameras which had originally been developed for aerial photography. ‘The camera best suited to the purpose and the one I usually employ has a F4.5 lens and a large direct vision view-finder the same size as the plate, fitted on the top of the lens panel’. He cautioned however that the leather bellows needed to be reinforced with cardboard or aluminium, as the otherwise delicate bellows could not withstand the force of the winds encountered at altitude.
The kind of camera favoured by Buckham used glass plate negatives, which was a conscious decision by Buckham at a time when photographic film was becoming readily available. He favoured double-coated panchromatic plates made in the USA, with dimensions of 10.0cm x 12.5cm. Throughout his career he reiterated that despite their bulk and delicacy, plates gave a far superior result to film.
Buckham built up a library of negatives depicting only aeroplanes, where the original background was masked out. This meant that when the negative was exposed on top of an existing print the plane would appear to be part of the chosen landscape. Buckham would have also been able use an enlarger to match the scale of the plane to the landscape, making the scene appear realistic. While in most cases this technique produces a believable, if slightly incredible, final image there are examples where the planes appear too close together, or at impossible angles.
For Buckham, the final stage of creating a finished image was to use watercolour paints and sometimes ink to add detail to the final print and soften the areas where the two negatives meet. In some of his photographs these hand-drawn elements are easily visible, though in the case of Edinburgh they are more subtle. The clouds on the horizon have been softened to make the join where the two negatives meet less noticeable in the finished print, highlights have been added to the clouds to make them more dramatic and the light below Arthur’s Seat has been adjusted to better match the clouds above. In addition, some areas have been highlighted and others darkened to sharpen the details of key landmarks and make them more recognisable. The use of black watercolour or ink to strengthen and define specific areas of the photographs shows Buckham’s ingenuity. Whilst other photographers would alter the negatives and perhaps scratch out an area that they wished to appear darker, Buckham added the darker tone to the photographic print itself. He also used a scratching out technique, similar to Turner, where a dark area of the photograph is scratched revealing the lighter colour of the paper beneath. This artistic intervention results in each photograph being a unique piece of work. No two can be exactly the same.
It is clear then that Buckham’s photographs are not the result of a single, breath-taking moment in time but instead are a carefully crafted piece of art. He was using known photographic techniques, but created a style which was very much his own. As a result it is easy to see why Edinburgh has become one of the most popular artworks in the collection.
In this image the undulations of the snow covered hills are mirrored in the cloudy sky. Buckham introduces a sense of scale through the lone plane silhouetted against a cloud.
Buckham felt that the most spectacular cloud formations and theatrical light could be captured on ‘stormy days, with bursts of sunshine and occasional showers of rain’. This creativity led to him being regarded as the leading aerial photographer of his day and he was renowned for his atmospheric shots of the landscape. Over the years he amassed a vast collection of photographs of skies which he integrated with a separate landscape photograph to enhance the drama and create an imposing composition. This image over the Firth of Forth, Scotland, encapsulates the romantic fusion of man’s engineering achievements against the dramatic beauty of nature. The three steel arches of the Forth Rail Bridge are mirrored in the three biplanes, which Buckham added later by hand, silhouetted against the spectacular sky.
This image shows Captain Jordan flying his Black Camel biplane at very close proximity to Buckham’s aircraft. Taken over the landscape around Rosyth, Fife, Scotland this was near to where Buckham crashed for the ninth time in 1918 and sustained serious injuries.
This autumn at the Portrait gallery in Edinburgh, take to the skies and see the world from above the clouds through the remarkable work of Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer. From 18 October 2025 – 19 April 2026, meet the man behind some of the most iconic aerial photographs ever taken, marvel at the death-defying lengths he took to capture the perfect image and explore how his innovative techniques in the darkroom paved the way for modern technologies such as Photoshop and AI. Free to visit at the National Galleries Scotland: Portrait, this will be the first major exhibition dedicated to Alfred Buckham and can only be seen in Scotland.
This exhibition will bring together over 100 photographs and objects including popular works from the Scottish national collection, alongside extensive archival material generously loaned by Alfred Buckham’s grandsons, Richard and John Buckham. Thanks to the support of the Buckham family, personal objects including letters, photographs and even the passport Alfred Buckham used will be put on public display for the first time.
A maverick of early aviation, Alfred Buckham (1879-1956) created his own unique style of photography by combining daring exploits in the air with innovation in the darkroom. Born in London, Buckham learned his craft by teaching photography before joining the Royal Naval Air Service in 1916, a predecessor to the Royal Air Force. Hailed as an exceptionally skilled flyer, he combined his talent for aviation with his passion for photography, resulting in remarkable endeavours and trailblazing images. Based for most of his military career at RAF Turnhouse, now Edinburgh Airport, central Scotland became a natural playground for Buckham to refine his photographic techniques and let his imagination soar. Daredevil Photographer will chart his phenomenal story from his early photographic experiments in Scotland to exciting adventures in South America and look closer at the skilled and inventive ways he created his work.
Explore Scotland from the air and get a new perspective of well-known sights, just as Buckham himself would have. Daredevil Photographer celebrates the impact Scotland had on Buckham’s work through his images of recognisable landmarks including St Andrews Golf Links, Linlithgow Palace and the Wallace Monument in Stirling. The exhibition will also feature several images of the Forth Rail Bridge, Buckham’s most photographed landmark. The iconic bridge was the subject of one of his first composite photographs and appeared on the 1918 RAF Turnhouse Christmas card, which will go on display alongside the original photography.
Daredevil Photographer will delve into the darkroom and uncover more about the creative processes used to bring Buckham’s unique images to life. After the First World War, Buckham began experimenting with composite photography; a technique where several negatives are used to create one photographic print. While this wasn’t a new concept, composite photography added a layer of creative freedom to Buckham’s work, much like a very early form of Photoshop. From his vast collection of glass negatives – he had over 2000 cloud images alone in his ‘cloud library’ – Buckham had the means to create images which became immersive, giving a unique sense of flying alongside these incredible aircraft while viewing the world below.
It was through the technique of composite photography that some of Buckham’s most famous works were born, including the iconic aerial view of Edinburgh (about 1920). This striking photograph shows a bi-plane hovering amongst wispy clouds above Edinburgh Castle, with Arthur’s Seat visible through the mist in the background, and the bustling city below. For the first time, Edinburgh will be displayed alongside the camera and original glass negatives Buckham used to capture and create this much-loved image. Visitors will also be encouraged to get inspired and try their hand at creating their own composite creations through interactive exhibits.
Telling Buckham’s story through his own words and memories, Daredevil Photographer allows visitors to meet the courageous and humorous man behind the camera. Firsthand accounts of his incredible exploits in the air and ingenious creative methods on the ground will enhance his story and highlight his adventurous spirit: Ah! One was a rare daredevil in those days! (Alfred Buckham, The New York Times, 1930). A free and unique immersive audio experience will bring Buckham’s world of flight and imagination to life through his own words. Hear Buckham’s grandson Richard give a voice to his grandfather’s memories and reflections on his daredevil persona.
Daredevil in every sense of the word, Buckham went to incredible feats to capture the perfect shot, which the exhibition will explore. His preferred methods included standing in an open cockpit while mid-air, with his leg tied to the seat as a nod to safety. As a result, he experienced no less than nine crashes in his lifetime, one ending in a serious throat injury that cut his military career short. However, he would not be deterred, describing his eccentric photography methods in a surprisingly relaxed way:
“It is not easy to tumble out of an aeroplane, unless you really want to, and on considerably more than a thousand flights I have used a safety belt only once, and then it was thrust upon me. I always stand up to make an exposure and, taking the precaution to tie my right leg to the seat, I am free to move rapidly, and easily, in any desired direction; and loop the loop; and indulge in other such delights, with perfect safety” – Alfred Buckham, The Camera, January 1927.
Daredevil Photographer will celebrate Buckham’s skill in the air through a range of his mesmerising photographs. Encounter stunning images of the leading aircraft of the day, such as the Bristol Fighter, a two seated bi-plane designed for aerial reconnaissance, and the bizarre airships of the 1920s. See them soaring through the skies in all weathers, amongst an array of remarkable landscapes. The exhibition will include one of his most well-known works, The Heart of the Empire (1923), on loan from the V&A Museum in London and displayed in Edinburgh for the first time. The photograph follows a bi-plane as it glides across the London skyline, with landmarks such as Tower Bridge and the River Thames in view. Exhibited by the Royal Photographic Society in 1925, The Heart of the Empire secured Buckham’s position as one of Britain’s leading aerial photographers.
Experience the golden age of travel through Buckham’s portfolio of images spanning across the globe. In 1931, a commission from Fortune Magazine took Buckham on an epic fifteen-week trip across the Americas, covering 19,000 miles and setting a world record. Starting in New York City and taking the opportunity to capture the newly built Empire State Building, Buckham photographed his intrepid journey from the United States to the tip of South America to share with the world. Daredevil Photographer will chart Buckham’s incredible journey, from expansive views of Christ the Redeemer in Rio De Janeiro and the snowy caps of the Andes Mountains to perilous scenes of smoking volcanic creators in Guatemala and Mexico. Through his death-defying adventures and stunning photographs, Buckham expanded public understanding of the world, creating an exciting legacy which continues to capture imaginations today.
Louise Pearson, curator of photography at the National Galleries of Scotland says: “Alfred Buckham’s eye-catching photograph of Edinburgh is one of the most popular artworks in the National Galleries of Scotland collection. This enthralling image becomes even more intriguing when you learn that it is a darkroom jigsaw – a composite photograph made through a combination of technical skill and creative vision. Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer tells the remarkable story of this maverick of early aviation whose adventures took him from aerial reconnaissance photographer to intrepid explorer via numerous loop the loops.”
This photograph of Castle Island, where Mary, Queen of Scots was imprisoned in 1567, shows the vast expanse of the rolling countryside around Loch Leven, Scotland. The cloudy sky enhances the depth of the image and the small biplanes, which Buckham added later by hand, reinforce the dramatic scale.
Alfred Buckham (British, 1879-1956) Flying Boat Over Sea 1930 Gelatin silver print 45.5 x 37.6cm National Galleries of Scotland Purchased with Art Fund support, 2008
This photograph captures the stormy ocean with its swelling crests of the waves illuminated white. Silhouetted against the threatening sky is a flying boat. This specialised form of aircraft was purposely designed to take off from, and land on, water. This feature was exploited during the World Wars but its use rapidly declined thereafter. Buckham was aware of the flying boat from his time in the Royal Naval Air Service and, specifically, his involvement in photographing the alterations required that allowed planes to take off from, and land on, a ship.
In 1930 Buckham was commissioned by Fortune magazine to produce a portfolio of aerial photographs of his chosen area of the Americas. Buckman opted for central and South America and this dramatic photograph captures the centre of Mexican volcano, Popocatepetl. The snow covered edge of the crater contrasts against the ominous dark sky, creating a shot which captures the awe-inspiring power of an active volcano. Buckham described the journey of the flight as his aeroplane turned down into the crater: ‘Almost at once the aeroplane dropped about two hundred feet… Beneath us the circular lake of boiling lava emitted numerous spouts of smoke and steam, whilst round its edge played occasional fires which, suddenly springing up and flickering awhile, as suddenly disappeared.’
Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer
Paperback – 12 Nov. 2025 by Louise Pearson (Author), James Crawford (Other Contributor)
![Installation view of the exhibition 'Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography' at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 - June 2026 showing from top left to right, top to bottom, Unknown photographer Harry 'Belafonte and Joan Fontaine' 1957; Gene Lester (American, 1910-1994) 'Dean and Jeannne Martin' 1958; Bob Beerman (American) 'Rock Hudson' c. 1953; Unknown photographer 'Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in "This Earth is Mine"]' 1959; Unknown photographer 'Jean Simmons [in "The Big Country"]' 1958; Unknown photographer 'Elizabeth Threatt and Dewey Martin [in "The Big Sky"]' 1952; Unknown photographer 'Dorothy Malone and Anthony Quinn' 1957; Unknown photographer 'André De Toth and Veronica Lake' 1944; Unknown photographer 'Edmund O'Brien and Tom D'Andrea [in "Fighter Squadron"]' 1948; Unknown photographer 'Ward Bond and Ida Lupino [in "On Dangerous Ground"]' 1951; Unknown photographer 'Aldo Ray and Katharine Hepburn [in "Pat and Mike"]' 1952](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/face-value-installation-q.jpg "Installation view of the exhibition 'Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography' at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, June 2025 - June 2026 showing from top left to right, top to bottom, Unknown photographer Harry 'Belafonte and Joan Fontaine' 1957; Gene Lester (American, 1910-1994) 'Dean and Jeannne Martin' 1958; Bob Beerman (American) 'Rock Hudson' c. 1953; Unknown photographer 'Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in \"This Earth is Mine\"]' 1959; Unknown photographer 'Jean Simmons [in \"The Big Country\"]' 1958; Unknown photographer 'Elizabeth Threatt and Dewey Martin [in \"The Big Sky\"]' 1952; Unknown photographer 'Dorothy Malone and Anthony Quinn' 1957; Unknown photographer 'André De Toth and Veronica Lake' 1944; Unknown photographer 'Edmund O'Brien and Tom D'Andrea [in \"Fighter Squadron\"]' 1948; Unknown photographer 'Ward Bond and Ida Lupino [in \"On Dangerous Ground\"]' 1951; Unknown photographer 'Aldo Ray and Katharine Hepburn [in \"Pat and Mike\"]' 1952")
![Unknown photographer. 'Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine [in "Island in the Sun"]' 1957](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/unknown-photographer-harry-belafonte-and-joan-fontaine.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine [in \"Island in the Sun\"]' 1957")
![Unknown photographer. 'Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in "This Earth is Mine"]' 1959](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/jean-simmons-and-rock-hudson.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Jean Simmons, Rock Hudson [in \"This Earth is Mine\"]' 1959")
![Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947) 'Anna May Wong [in "Limehouse Blues"]' 1934](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ray-jones-anna-may-wong.jpg "Ray Jones (American, 1901-1947) 'Anna May Wong [in \"Limehouse Blues\"]' 1934")
![Unknown photographer. 'Myrna Loy [in "Across the Pacific"]' 1926](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/unknown-photographer-myrna-loy.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Myrna Loy [in \"Across the Pacific\"]' 1926")
![John Miehle (American, 1902-1952) 'Dolores del Rio and Edmund Lowe [in "The Bad One"]' 1930](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/john-miehle-dolores-del-rio-and-edmund-lowe-1.jpg "John Miehle (American, 1902-1952) 'Dolores del Rio and Edmund Lowe [in \"The Bad One\"]' 1930")
![Robert Coburn (American, 1900-1990) 'Vera Zorina [in "The Goldywyn Follies"]' c. 1937](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/robert-coburn-vera-zorina.jpg "Robert Coburn (American, 1900-1990) 'Vera Zorina [in \"The Goldywyn Follies\"]' c. 1937")
![James Manatt (American, 1896-1989) 'Joan Crawford [in "Letty Lynton"]' 1932](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/james-manatt-joan-crawford.jpg "James Manatt (American, 1896-1989) 'Joan Crawford [in \"Letty Lynton\"]' 1932")
![Elmer Fryer (American, 1898-1944) 'Lili Damita [in "The Match King"]' c. 1932](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/elmer-fryer-lili-damita.jpg "Elmer Fryer (American, 1898-1944) 'Lili Damita [in \"The Match King\"]' c. 1932")
![Bert Longworth (American, 1893-1964) 'Amelia Earhart with Helen Hayes [on set of "A Farewell to Arms"]' 1932](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/bert-longworth-amelia-earhart-and-helen-hayes.jpg "Bert Longworth (American, 1893-1964) 'Amelia Earhart with Helen Hayes [on set of \"A Farewell to Arms\"]' 1932")
![Unknown photographer. 'Elsa Lanchester [in "The Bride of Frankenstein"]' 1935](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/elsa-lanchester.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Elsa Lanchester [in \"The Bride of Frankenstein\"]' 1935")
![Unknown photographer. 'Louis Armstrong [in "Cabin in the Sky"]' 1943](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/louis-armstrong.jpg "Unknown photographer. 'Louis Armstrong [in \"Cabin in the Sky\"]' 1943")
!['Elvis Presley [Fans' Star Library magazine, No. 13]' 1959](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/elvis-presley.jpg "'Elvis Presley [Fans' Star Library magazine, No. 13]' 1959")
![Ray Wilson. 'Mia Farrow [in "Rosemary's Baby"]' c. 1967](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ray-wilson-mia-farrow.jpg "Ray Wilson. 'Mia Farrow [in \"Rosemary's Baby\"]' c. 1967")
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