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Jul

Exhibition: ‘Sit. Pose. Snap. Brisbane Portrait Photography 1850-1950’ at the Museum of Brisbane

Categories: Australian artist, Australian cabinet cards and cartes de visite, Australian photography, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, light, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, postcards, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: 19th century studio photography, 19th century studio space, Albert Lomer & Co., Albert Lomer & Co. Three children, Andrew Weddell, Andrew Weddell Reproductions of a recently deceased man requested by the family, Andrew Weddell Three men acting for the camera, Anna Lee Group of friends at Cloudland Ballroom, Arthur Kean playing a flute, Australian 19th century studio photography, Brisbane, Brisbane Australia, Brisbane photogapher, Brisbane photography, Brisbane Portrait Photography, Brisbane Portrait Photography 1850 - 1950, Bushman with a swag, Caldwell Christmas party, carte-de-visites, Child with bucket and spade, Children's Hospital Ball, Cloudland Ballroom, Cloudland Dance Hall, Couple with child, daguerreotypes, Dana Studio, Dana Studio Lady wearing gloves with parasol, Daniel Marquis, Daniel Marquis The same woman in a crinoline dress posing with a chair, early Queensland photographer, early Queensland photography, Eddie Hutchison, Eddie Hutchison Freemason Elite, Elite Photo Co Eddie Hutchison, Elite Photo Co., Elite Photo Co. Girl in ballet shoes, Family portrait before the father left for the First World War, Fegan & Ruddle, Fegan & Ruddle Harry Smith Jr dressed as Duke of York, Ferdinand Sturgess, Fred Cherry, Freemason Elite, George Brown, George Brown Girl with fancy buckled shoes, George Hendry, George Hendry Norma Horniblow in a bathing costume, Girl holding a toy koala and boy holding a toy car, Girl in ballet shoes with pigeons, Girl with fancy buckled shoes, Grand Old Man of Queensland photography, Group of friends at Cloudland Ballroom, hand coloured photography, hand-coloured photographs, Hand-coloured postcard, Harry Smith Jr dressed as Duke of York, Jack Fegan, James Patching & Co., James Patching & Co. Young lady in feathered hat leaning on bamboo furniture, Jane and Thomas Mathewson, John 'Jack' Fegan, John 'Jack' Fegan Brisbane, John 'Jack' Fegan Family portrait before the father left for the First World War, John 'Jack' Fegan Lady holding flowers, John James William Rolling Fegan, John Wiley, John Wiley Seated lady holding flowers, Lady holding flowers, Lady in a heavily beaded bodice and skirt, Lady wearing gloves with parasol, Marcel Safier, Mathewson & Co., Murray Studios, Murray Studios Brisbane, Murray Studios The Noonans, Norma Horniblow, Norma Horniblow in a bathing costume, Paragon Portraits, Paragon Portraits Tim nearly 4 years-old and Darryl, photographic studios, portrait photography, postcards, Poul C Poulsen, Poul C Poulsen Bushman with a swag, Poul C Poulsen Queensland policeman, Poulsen Studio, Poulsen Studio Brisbane, Poulsen Studio Child with bucket and spade, Queensland photographers, Queensland photography, Queensland policeman, Regent Studios, Regent Studios Brisbame, Regent Studios Fred Cherry, Regent Studios Girl holding a toy koala and boy holding a toy car, Regent Studios Jane and Thomas Mathewson, Reproductions of a recently deceased man requested by the family, Seated lady holding flowers, Sit. Pose. Snap., Sit. Pose. Snap. Brisbane Portrait Photography 1850 - 1950, studio photography, Talma Studios, Talma Studios Arthur Kean playing a flute, Talma Studios Ferdinand Sturgess, The Noonans, The same woman in a crinoline dress posing with a chair, Thomas Mathewson, Thomas Mathewson & Co., Thomas Mathewson & Co. Two Salvation Army girls, Three children, Three men acting for the camera, Tim nearly 4 years-old and Darryl, Tosca Studio, Tosca Studio Couple with child, Trissie Deazeley Studio, Trissie Deazeley Studio Wedding party, Tuttle & Co., Tuttle & Co. Lady in a heavily beaded bodice and skirt, Two Salvation Army girls, Wedding party, Young lady in feathered hat leaning on bamboo furniture

Exhibition dates: 24th March – 30th July 2017

Poul C Poulsen (Australian born Denmark, 1857-1925)
Bushman with a swag
c. 1885
Cabinet photograph

This exhibition looks fascinating. I wish I could have seen it!

Information about some photographers is included in the posting, as much as I could find through research online. Also included is a beautiful photograph of the Cloudland Ballroom (not in the exhibition) which I digitally restored.

I tried to work out the height of the young man in Bushman with a swag (c. 1885, above). If you take the billy can at his feet (bottom left) at about 24cm, measured by my ankles, then his height is around 180cm or 5’9″. What was his name, what did he do in his life?

Also notice the covers on his shoes that hide the laces, and the idyllic, painted pastoral backdrop with bridge. These are the details that fascinate. The studio prop of a rock outcrop against which he stands also appears in another image by the same photographer, Queensland policeman (c. 1885, below). How many days or months were these photographs taken apart? Did they know each other, being of similar age?

The presence of the people in these photographs is incredible. Even though they are posed, they stare back at us from across time and reach out to us to speak of their lives in that moment, in that studio in Brisbane, Australia.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Poul C Poulsen (Australian born Denmark, 1857-1925)
Bushman with a swag (detail)
c. 1885
Cabinet photograph

The Poulsen Studio was a very important establishment recording Queensland’s development for a considerable period of time.

Poul C. Poulsen, founder of the Poulsen Studios in Brisbane, was born in Denmark in 1857 and arrived in Sydney in 1876. In 1882, he moved to Queensland and was later joined by his sisters and brothers from Denmark. He opened his own studio at no 7 Queen Street in 1885 and later opened branches, run by his brothers in other Queensland towns. Poulsen vigorously advertised constant improvements and modernisation in his studio and in the service he provided. His sons and grandson followed in his footsteps.

Text from the State Library of Queensland website

Installation views of the exhibition Sit. Pose. Snap. Brisbane Portrait Photography 1850-1950 at the Museum of Brisbane

Sit. Pose. Snap. Brisbane Portrait Photography 1850-1950 explores the phenomenon of studio portrait photography in Brisbane, and shows how the process of capturing and sharing a portrait evolved from the formal studio sittings of the 19th century through to candid and relaxed photographs of the mid-20th century.

With the introduction of commercial photography in the mid 1850s, dozens of photographic studios popped up in and around Brisbane capitalising on this popular new technology. Interest in this novel sensation was high, and profitable – with photographers increasingly savvy when it came to selling their service and products.

Featuring hundreds of Brisbane residents captured in original photographs from local studios between 1850-1950, this exhibition draws from the extensive private collection of Marcel Safier – one of Australia’s most significant collectors of portrait photography. Discover the variety, trends and historical progression of photographic types through this period, from the early forms of daguerreotypes through to carte-de-visites and postcards. Woven into the exhibition is an examination of photographic techniques and technologies; the popularisation of photography; and the ever-increasing control that subjects have over their portrayal.

Significant Brisbane photographic houses of the period and their legacies are also featured. Visitors will have the chance to experience what it felt like to visit Mathewson & Co., one of the leading studios of the time, through an immersive Victorian backdrop and a journalist’s account from 1889. They will also have a chance to take a selfie in this recreated 19th century studio space.

From personal portraits capturing life’s most significant milestones, to the curious and often humorous ways in which people presented themselves, Sit. Pose. Snap. is a charming and nostalgic glimpse into a 19th century photographic studio.

Press release from the Museum of Brisbane

Daniel Marquis (Australian born Scotland, 1829-1879)
The same woman in a crinoline dress posing with a chair, then a pedestal
1865-1870
Carte de visite

Daniel Marquis (1829-1879) was an early portrait photographer in Brisbane, Australia. Marquis was born in Glasgow, Scotland, where he had a studio as a professional photographer at 32 King Street, Stirling. Marquis travelled to Australia in 1865 and was given a land grant at Kangaroo Point, Queensland. He set up his photographic studio in 82 George Street, Brisbane, from 1866 to 1880.

Marquis was one of the earliest portrait photographers in Brisbane, working there exclusively until his death in 1879. Marquis had commissions to photograph leading members of society, for example the Governor of Queensland, Samuel Wensley Blackall, and Judge Alfred Lutwyche.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Andrew Weddell (active 1864-1874)
Reproductions of a recently deceased man requested by the family
c. 1870
Carte de visite

Located at Ann Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, Queensland from 1864-1874.

Andrew Weddell (active 1864-1874)
Three men acting for the camera
c. 1870
Carte de visite

Elite Photo Co., (Eddie Hutchison)
Girl in ballet shoes, with pigeons
1884-1891
Cabinet photograph

1884-1890: 8 Queen Street, Brisbane
Eddie T B Hutchison
1889: McDougal Terrace, Milton Estate
1895-1896: 183 Queen Street, Brisbane
1896-1897: 181A Queen Street, Brisbane
1897-1899: 37 Queen Street, Brisbane
1900: Warwick

Alan Davies and Peter Stanbury. The mechanical eye in Australia: photography 1841-1900.

“Oscar [Friström] was soon involved in the business of photography, a popular artistic and cultural pursuit of the time; and it was also a ready source of income. By 1885 he had gone into partnership with the established photographer D Hutchison, and later Edward TB Hutchison. The business operated under various names, including Hutchison, Fristrom and Company and Elite Photographic Company.”

Julie K Brown, Versions of reality, PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 1984, pp. 37, 274 cited in W Ross Johnston. “Reviving Oscar Friström: his Aboriginal paintings,” in the Queensland History Journal Volume 22, No. 4, February 2014, p. 272.

Elite Photo Co’s dates and locations from Alan Davies’ and Peter Stanbury’s book The mechanical eye in Australia: photography 1841-1900:

1894-1895: Charters Towers
Brisbane
(Eddie T B Hutchison)
Brisbane
(John S Wiley)
Brisbane
(S E Hill)
Brisbane
(J Brame & Co)

cabinet: Crown Street, Wollongong, NSW
1890: Wagga Wagga, NSW, late Fiddes

Eddie Hutchison
Freemason Elite
c. 1900
Cabinet photograph

Eddie T B Hutchison’s dates and locations from Alan Davies’ and Peter Stanbury’s book The mechanical eye in Australia: photography 1841-1900:

Poul C Poulsen (Australian born Denmark, 1857-1925)
Queensland policeman
c. 1885
Carte de visite

In 1885, Poul C. Poulsen opened his photographic studio at No.7 Queen Street in Brisbane and over time established himself as an important and longstanding early Queensland photographer. State Library of Queensland is fortunate to hold a large collection of photographs taken by the Poulsen Studios.

Polsen was born in Denmark in 1857 and travelled to Sydney in 1876. In 1882 he travelled to Brisbane and in 1885 opened the studio in Queen Street, previously occupied by Gove and Allen, photographers. Via advertisements in local newspapers that year Poulsen proclaimed himself “the people’s favourite photographer” and offered “high class work at moderate charges.” Poulsen’s success enabled him to expanded his business, opening studios in regional centres including Gympie, Maryborough and Laidley as well as additional studios in Brisbane. Poulsen retired to Cooran in 1915, passing away in 1925. He is interred at Bulimba Cemetery. His sons and grandsons continued the family business after his death.

Hundreds of images taken by Poulsen Studios have been digitised and can be viewed online. These photographs range from individual or group portraits to external street views. The quality of these images are superb, most likely due to Poulsen’s desire to use the latest photographic equipment available at the time.

Myles Sinnamon. “Early Queensland photography – Poulsen Studios,” on the State Library of Queensland website September 15, 2015 {online] Cited 10/03/2023

Poul C Poulsen (Australian born Denmark, 1857-1925)
Unknown couple
c. 1897
Cabinet photograph
Marcel Safier collection

Directly opposite Fegan Studios on Queen Street was the studio of Ada Driver. Driver was one of the successful female photographers in Brisbane in the early 20th century, along with Elsie and Trissie Deazeley, Mary Lambert and Dorothy Coleman.

Before starting her own studio, Coleman had gained experience as a camera operator with Thomas Mathewson. Mathewson, along with Poul C Poulsen, set the standard of quality for portrait photography in Brisbane; between them they trained and inspired future generations of photographers.

Poulsen moved to Brisbane in 1882 and opened a branch of Gove and Allen opposite the Treasury Building on Queen Street.

This studio was later known as the American Photo Co, and then Poulsen Studios (below), and remained at this location until 1918. The studio was considered the major ‘society’ studio in Brisbane; Poulsen established a reputation for taking fine portraits of stars of the stage, including Dame Nellie Melba in 1903, and he secured the patronage of several Queensland governors.

Phil Manning. “Northern Exposure,” in Portrait 57 Winter 2017 on the National Portrait Gallery website 25 July 2017 [Online] Cited 13/12/2021

Poulsen Studio
Child with bucket and spade
1920s
Postcard

Albert Lomer & Co., (Albert Lomer Australian, 1862-1899, active c. 1865 – c. 1895)
Three children
c. 1885
Cabinet photograph

Professional photographer and colourist of Brisbane, Sydney and Queensland who worked throughout the mid to late 19th century. A one-time partner of Andrew Chandler, Lomer’s later clients included the painter Samuel Elyard.

Lomer worked in Melbourne before 1865 when he opened a studio at Sydney in partnership with Andrew Chandler. They advertised as being from W. Davies & Co. of Melbourne, where both had presumably trained. Their studio, The London Photographic Company, was at 419 George Street, next door to Lassetter’s ironmongery store. By February 1867 Lomer was continuing alone but promising that ‘the business will be conducted in the same efficient manner and under the same liberal principles as hitherto’. He had reduced the old price for cartes-de-visite to two for 5s or 15s a dozen and sold cabinet and other portrait photographs ‘beautifully coloured (on the premises) in oil or water’. Lomer appears to have been his own colourist, regularly advertising as both ‘artist and photographer’ (which this normally signified). In 1872-73 Lomer was working at 57 Bourke Street, Melbourne. He then established a very successful Brisbane studio at 158 Queen Street which lasted from 1874 until 1905, although he apparently no longer ran it after 1880. Branch studios were opened in various parts of the colony: the Lomer studio at Mackay in 1887 (managed by J.P. Kemp), a studio at Toowoomba (1893-96) and one at Ipswich (1898-99). Lomer was again in Sydney in 1880-95. In April 1881 Albert Lomer’s Parlour Studios at 805 George Street opposite the railway terminus,’The Really Popular (and Cheap) Photographer’, was selling cartes-de-visite for 7s 6d a dozen.

Anonymous text. “Lomer, Albert (1862-1899),” on the Trove website [Online] Cited 13/12/2021

1862: Brisbane
1865-1870: 417-419 George Street, Sydney
18??: 775 George Street, Sydney
1872-1873: 57 Bourke Street East, Melbourne
1874-1900: 158 Queen Street, Brisbane
1887: Mackay, Queensland ( J P Kemp)
1893-1896: Toowoomba, Queensland
1894-1895: 158 Queen Street, Brisbane (G A Collins & F T E Keogh)
1896-1897: 158 Queen Street, Brisbane (G A Collins)
1898-1899: Brisbane Street, Ipswich, Queensland

Alan Davies and Peter Stanbury. The mechanical eye in Australia: photography 1841-1900.

Tuttle & Co.,
Lady in a heavily beaded bodice and skirt
1885-1894
Cabinet photograph

William Nutting Tuttle
died 7 April 1895 at Sydney Hospital, Macquarie Street, Sydney
buried Waverley Cemetery, Sydney

William Nutting Tuttle and Co. was a commercial photographic firm active in Australia in the 1880s and 1890s. The firm had various studios and were active in a variety of areas: Sydney 1883-91; Goulburn 1895; Brisbane 1885-95; Charters Towers 1888; Adelaide 1882-89; Melbourne 1881-94; Hawthorn 1888-89; Perth 1892, Fremantle 1892; Coolgardie 1895-96 (Davies and Stanbury 1985, p. 244).

“The enterprising gentlemen comprising the firm of Tuttle & Co. took the people of Melbourne by surprise some five years ago [1880]. Since then they have established studios and galleries in the principal cities of Australia. By careful attention to, and despatch of business, the elegance and attractiveness of their rooms, and the splendid finish of their work, they have earned a wide-spread reputation on the island continent, and lead the van there in the photographic art.”

1885-1895: 67 Queen Street, Brisbane
1888: Charters Towers, Queensland
1883-1891: 84 Elizabeth St., Melbourne

Alan Davies and Peter Stanbury. The mechanical eye in Australia: photography 1841-1900, p. 244.

Tosca Studio
Couple with child
1896-1900
Cabinet photograph

The management of the “Tosca” studios in Brisbane make it their proud boast that they are thoroughly up to date in every detail, and in this they challenge comparison with any photographic establishment in the Australian colonies. Their head studios, at 67 Queen-street, Brisbane, are known to all local residents, and since the commencement of their business a reputation has been established for high class work not only in the city of Brisbane, but throughout Queensland. Mr. W. T. Farrell, in whose hands is the sole control of the business, is a man of the widest range of experience in his particular line. He has gained his knowledge in the leading studios of Australasia. The high character of the work produced is vouched for by the fact that the chief operator, Mr. Stuart MacQee, was for many years under engagement to Messrs. W. and D. Downoy, Imperial Court photographers, of Ebury street, London, and was also five years with Messrs. Falle and Co., of Sydney. Branches of the “Tosca” studios have already been established at Gympie, Rockhampton, Charters Towers, and Townsville. It is also contemplated to establish branches in other country towns in the near future. As indicating the amount of business transacted, it may be mentioned that during the present year no fewer than 200,000 cabinet mounts have been imported by the firm. This is exclusive of mounts required for Paris panels, for which there is a very large demand. In the head studio alone, as much as £88 has been taken in one day from sitters.

Anonymous text. “The Tosca Portrait Studios,” in The Brisbane Courier Sat 11 Dec 1897, p. 6 on the Trove website [Online] Cited 13/12/2021

Dana Studio
Lady wearing gloves with parasol
1897-1898
Cabinet photograph

James Patching & Co.,
Young lady in feathered hat leaning on bamboo furniture
1897-1901
Cabinet photograph

John Wiley (active 1880s – 1890s)
Seated lady holding flowers
1899-1901
Cabinet photograph

John S Wiley’s dates and locations from Alan Davies’ and Peter Stanbury’s book The mechanical eye in Australia: photography 1841-1900:

Lomer & Co, Brisbane
Tuttle & Co, Brisbane
Toowoomba
1890-1894 8 Queen Street, Brisbane
Elite Photo Co
1894-1900 10 Queen Street, Brisbane

Thomas Mathewson & Co., (active c. 1854 – c. 1934)
Two Salvation Army girls
1910-1915
Postcard

Thomas Mathewson (born Helensburgh, Dumbartonshire, Scotland, UK, 1842 – died Brisbane 12 May 1934; arrived Australia 1853) was a professional photographer, was born in Helensburgh, Dumbartonshire, Scotland. He was orphaned in early adolescence, shortly after his family migrated to Moreton Bay, Queensland, in 1853. For a few months in 1854 he attended the Anglican Church School in Nicholas Street, Ipswich run by Alfred Hazelton, then learnt photography from Rev. Theophilus Beazeley in evening self-improvement classes at Ipswich. After practising as an amateur Mathewson set up as a professional photographer at Toowoomba in 1861. In 1865 he worked his way through the Darling Downs, via Roma, St George and the Gwydir River, reaching Sydney by late 1867. Travelling northwards, he took photographs at Gympie (1868-72), Rockhampton, Bowen, Charters Towers and Townsville.

Thomas’s brother Peter joined him in 1876 and the firm became Mathewson & Co. until the 1890s, operating mainly from Queen Street, Brisbane, but making regular tours to country towns and rural districts. Thomas, the senior partner, was said in 1894 to have made a speciality ‘of children and other pets’. Peter set up on his own in the late 1890s and his son Thomas eventually took over the firm, so the name Thomas Mathewson was associated with two separate Brisbane photographic studios. Thomas senior eventually renamed his business the Regent Studios, where he was assisted by his son Jack. Thomas junior called his father’s business the Austral Studio when he inherited it.

Thomas Mathewson senior died in Brisbane on 12 May 1934, aged ninety-three. Recognised as the ‘Grand Old Man’ of Queensland photography, he was said in 1894 to have left the ‘tracks of his tripod’ in every inhabited place from the Great Barrier Reef to the South Australian border. Before his death he wrote his recollections, depicting the excitement, initiative and hardships of an early cameraman as he trekked through the countryside ‘fully equipped with tents, one in which to photograph sitters, and another in which to live, together with all the needful paraphernalia of wet-plate photography, all packed in a two-wheeled vehicle drawn by two horses’.

Rod Fisher and Joan Kerr. “Thomas Mathewson,” on the Design & Art Australia Online website 1992 last updated 2011 [Online] Cited 13/12/2021

c. 1854: Ipswich, Qld
c. 1853 – c. 1854: Moreton Bay, Qld
c. 1867: Sydney, NSW
c. 1865 – c. 1867: Gwydir River, NSW
c. 1865 – c. 1867: St George, Qld
c. 1865 – c. 1867: Roma, NSW
c. 1868 – c. 1872: Townsville, Qld
c. 1868 – c. 1872: Charters Towers, Qld
c. 1868 – c. 1872: Bowen, Qld
c. 1868 – c. 1872: Rockhampton, Qld
c. 1868 – c. 1872: Gympie, Qld
c. 1865 – c. 1867: Darling Downs, NSW
c. 1861 – c. 1865: Toowoomba, Qld
c. 1876 – c. 1900: Queen Street, Brisbane, Qld

Thomas Mathewson & Co., (active c. 1854 – c. 1934)
Thomas Mathewson (inset) and his studio on Queen Street
c. 1908
Sandy Barrie collection

Thomas Mathewson is regarded as the father of photography in Queensland, having begun his business in 1864 (the Mathewson family would go on to have a presence in Brisbane’s photographic community until 1940). It is said that Mathewson left the tracks of his tripod in every inhabited place from the Great Barrier Reef to the South Australian border. He returned to Brisbane in 1876, going into partnership with his brother, Peter, in a studio on Queen Street. In 1895 they ended the partnership and Thomas continued on his own, establishing Regent Studios, while Peter established Austral Studios. Both brothers established branches of their respective operations throughout Queensland.

Phil Manning. “Northern Exposure,” in Portrait 57 Winter 2017 on the National Portrait Gallery website 25 July 2017 [Online] Cited 13/12/2021

Thomas Mathewson & Co., (active c. 1854 – c. 1934)
Lady in ‘snow’
c. 1880-1885
Cabinet photograph
Marcel Safier collection

Regent Studios (Thomas Mathewson)
Jane and Thomas Mathewson
1920s
Card-mounted sepia-toned silver gelatin photograph

Talma Studios (Ferdinand Sturgess) (Brisbane, 1866-1939)
Arthur Kean playing a flute
1915
Postcard

John ‘Jack’ Fegan (Australian, 1839-1919)
Lady holding flowers
c. 1915
Postcard

Jack Fegan was born John James William Rolling Fegan in 1839 and died in 1919. He operated photographic studios in Gympie and Brisbane. He was the first president of the Professional Photographers of Queensland.

Fegan & Ruddle
1902-1904: Brunswick St. Fortitude Valley
1918-1920: 126 Queen St. Brisbane
Fegan Ltd.
126 Queen St. Bris. 1918 -1920.
Fegan Studios
Mrs Fegan (wife of “Jack”, manager after Jack’s death in 1922)
126 Queen st,. Bris.

John ‘Jack’ Fegan (Australian, 1839-1919)
Family portrait before the father left for the First World War
1914-1918
Postcard

Fegan & Ruddle (1866-1939, Brisbane)
Harry Smith Jr dressed as Duke of York for Children’s Hospital Ball
1902
Cabinet photograph

George Brown
Girl with fancy buckled shoes
1912-1928
Postcard

Murray Studios (Brisbane & Gympie)
The Noonans
1916-1919
Postcard

George Hendry
Norma Horniblow in a bathing costume
c. 1920
Parisian Studio Postcard

Norma Gwendoline Horniblow (1904-1977)

Trissie Deazeley Studio (active c. 1924 – c. 1928)
Wedding party
c. 1925
Silver gelatin photograph

Trissie Deazeley (active c. 1924 – c. 1928) was an early 20th century Queensland photographer.

One of the first female photographers in Brisbane was Ada Driver, whose Brisbane studio was right in Queen Street Mall along with other female photographers Trissie Deazeley, Dorothy Coleman and Mary Lambert.

c. 1927 – c. 1928: Brisbane, Qld
c. 1924 – c. 1927: Toowoomba, Qld

Trissie Deazeley Studio (active c. 1924 – c. 1928)
Wedding party (details)
c. 1925
Silver gelatin photograph

Regent Studios (Fred Cherry)
Girl holding a toy koala and boy holding a toy car
1940s
Sepia-toned silver gelatin photograph in presentation folder

Anna Lee
Group of friends at Cloudland Ballroom, including Mrs Hobson (front left)
1947-1950
Salon Postcard

Read the fascinating history of Brisbane’s most iconic building, the big arch on the hill that was the Cloudland Ballroom.

“Cloudland Dance Hall” at the time, builders declared, “With its private alcoves, upholstered seating, dressing rooms, and perfect ventilation… the ballroom will be the finest of its kind in Australia.” It was no exaggeration, and Cloudland was without doubt one of the best dance and concert venues in the country. The venue was a classic World War II structure. Inside it had hard timber floors, decorative columns, sweeping curtains, domed skylights and chandeliers. Cloudland also had an upper circle of tiered seating which overlooked the floor and stage.

On a commanding hilltop site in the Bowen Hills above Brisbane, Cloudland’s distinctive parabolic laminated roof arch, nearly 18 meters high, was visible for miles, and was illuminated at night. Inside, as the photo clearly shows, it was famed for elegant decoration and its sprung dance floor, reputed to be the best in Australia. Cloudland was significant as a landmark, and as a place where generations of Brisbane residents went for entertainment. It was illegally demolished in 1982.

Unknown photographer
Cloudland Ballroom (digitally restored by MB)
Nd

Paragon Portraits
Tim, nearly 4 years-old, and Darryl, 2 years-old, at the Caldwell Christmas party
1949
Hand-coloured postcard

Museum of Brisbane
Level 3, Brisbane City Hall
King George Square, Brisbane

Opening hours:
Open 7 days a week, 10am – 5pm daily, and until 7pm Fridays

Museum of Brisbane website

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Jun

Postcards: This is a real photograph

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: black and white photography, documentary photography, existence, landscape, light, memory, Paris, photographic series, photography, postcards, reality, space, street photography, time and works on paper
Tags: Amiens Cathedral, Amiens et les environs - Cathédrale dans sous ses détails, Amiens Le Cathédrale, Armentières, Armentières L'Eglise Saint Roch, art postcards, B & G, B & G Lyon, Batalha Mosteiro Fachada das Capelas Imperfeitas, black and white postcards, British postcards, Bunyan's Chair and Prison Door, Bunyan's Door, Bunyan's Door Elstow Church, Caroline Amelie Lund, Caves of Han-sur-Lesse, Caves of Han-sur-Lesse and Rochefort - The Trophy, Credence Table and Pissina, Dallaporte, Dallaporte Monastery of Batalha, Dallaporte post card, des Grottes de Han, des Grottes de Han Le Trophée, Duniquaich, Dunkerque, Dunkerque - L'Eglise Saint-Eloi, Edward Lucien Roisin Besnard, Edward Nels, Elstow Church, Ely Cathedral, F. Frith & Co. Ltd, F. Frith & Co. Ltd Old Sarum Chapel Of St Nicholas, F. Frith & Co. Ltd Windsor Castle Long Walk Copper Horse, Facade of Milan Cathedral, French postcards, Gibraltar Southport Gate, Heliopolis Monument of the first Aviateur, Horsens, Inveraray Castle, Inveraray Castle and Duniquaich, J. Salmon Ltd, J. Salmon Ltd The Moot Hall Elstow, J. Valentine & Co., J. Valentine & Co. Inveraray Castle and Duniquaich, James Valentine, James Valentine Rosslyn Castle and Chapel, Joseph Max Lichtenstern, L'Eglise Saint Roch, L'Eglise Saint-Eloi, L. Caron, L. Caron Amiens - Cathedral, L. Roisin Gibraltar Southport Gate, La casa de la postal, Léon & Lévy, Léon & Lévy Amiens, Léon & Lévy Amiens Le Cathédrale, Léon & Lévy Armentières, Léon & Lévy Armentières L'Eglise Saint Roch, Léon & Lévy Dunkerque, Léon & Lévy Dunkerque L'Eglise Saint-Eloi, Léon & Lévy Paris, Léon & Lévy Paris Le Palais de Justice, Le Palais de Justice, Le Trophée, Lilywhite Ltd., Lilywhite Ltd. Bunyan's Door, Lucien Édouard Roisin Besnard, Luigi Grassi, Luigi Grassi Milano Facciata della Cattedrale, Lyon Amiens Cathedral, Milan The Arch of Peace, Milano Arco della Pace, Milano Facciata della Cattedrale, Monastery of Batalha, Monument of the first Aviateur, Nels, Nels des Grottes de Han-sur-Lesse et de Rochefort, Old Sarum Chapel Of St Nicholas, Photochrom Co. Ltd, Photochrom Co. Ltd Ely Cathedral, photographic postcards, photographs of Spanish landscapes, photography, Porta Sempione, postcard art, postcard photographs, postcards, Raphael Tuck & Sons, Raphael Tuck & Sons The Guard's Chapel, Raphael Tuck & Sons The Guard's Chapel The Font, Raphael Tuck & Sons The Guard's Chapel The Pulpit, Raphael Tuck & Sons The Guard's Chapel West End, Roberts & Kitchener Memorials, Roof of Chancel Rosslyn Chapel, Rosslyn Castle and Chapel, Rosslyn Chapel, South East corner of Nave, Spanish landscape postcards, Spanish landscapes, Spanish postcards, The Arch of Peace, The Bunyan Meeting, The Cairo Postcard Trust, The Guard's Chapel, The Guard's Chapel Credence Table and Pissina, The Guard's Chapel Roberts & Kitchener Memorials, The Guard's Chapel S. E. Wall of Sanctuary, The Guard's Chapel Series A, The Guard's Chapel Series B, The Guard's Chapel South East corner of Nave, The Guard's Chapel The East End, The Guard's Chapel The Font, The Guard's Chapel The Pulpit, The Guard's Chapel West End, The Guildhall Worcester, The house of the postcard, The Moot Hall Elstow, The R. A. (Postcards) Ltd., The R. A. (Postcards) Ltd. The Guildhall Worcester, The Trophy, this is real photograph, Valentine Series, Valentine Series Inveraray Castle and Duniquaich, Windsor Castle Long Walk Copper Horse

June 2015

Léon & Lévy (French)
Paris – Le Palais de Justice – La Façade
c. 1901-1920
LL 802 of the theme France
Levy Fils & Cie, Paris to verso
Carte Postale

A selection of black and white postcards that I recently purchased in a secondhand shop. It was fun investigating the publishers and places, especially as three of them contain my surname (and probably ancestor), John Bunyan. I particularly like the series by Raphael Tuck & Sons of the Guards Chapel at the bottom of the posting… that and the fact that some of them state and guarantee: ‘This is a real photograph’.

Marcus

.
Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

Léon & Lévy (French)
Dunkerque – L’Eglise Saint-Eloi
c. 1901-1920
LL 10 of the theme France
Carte Postale

Léon & Lévy was a French printer and a photograph editing company located in Paris. It was founded in 1864 and specialized in stereoscopic views and picture postcards of locations in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. The trade mark of the enterprise was “L.L.” (“LL”). The firm was one of the most important postcard editors in France… Léon & Lévy was founded in 1864 by Isaac and his son-in-law Moyse Léon. Isaac was also known as “Georges Lévy” at that time (to increase profits, he is known as J. Lévy, 1833-1913) .

With Levy sons, Abraham Lucien and Gaspard Ernest, the company will resolutely move towards the market of the postcard: the brand “LL” is filed in 1901 – we often confuse it with the signature “L & L” studio Lehnert & Landrock which was created three years later in Tunis: Lévy publishes numerous clichés and uses the same recipes and the same patterns as Lehnert. But Levy became the second largest publisher of postcards in France, producing 40 to 50,000 snapshots.

Léon & Lévy (French)
Amiens – Le Cathédrale – Vie de Saint-Jean-Baptiste
c. 1901-1920
LL 194 of the theme France
Levy Fils & Cie, Paris to verso
Carte Postale

J. Valentine & Co. Ltd (British, 1825-1963)
Inveraray Castle and Duniquaich
Nd
Valentine Series
Lithograph post card

J. Salmon Ltd, Sevenoaks (British, 1880 -)
The Moot Hall, Elstow, Nr. Bedford
After 1912
Salmon Series
Real Photo. Printed in England
Post card

Unknown maker (Danish)
Horsens. Caroline Amelie Lund
Nd
Lithograph post card

Caroline Amalie park is in everyday speech called “The Grove”. The park beautifully connects Horsens Museum and Horsens Art Museum. In the park, you can find the old water tower, designed by the known architect Viggo Norn. In the spring, a colour symphony of crocus sprouts through the grass, and later you can enjoy yourself in the shades of the beeches.

James Valentine, photographer (Scottish, 12 June 1815 – 19 June 1879)
Rosslyn Castle and Chapel
Nd
Lithograph post card

H. Coates, Wisbech (British)
The Derwent and Heights of Abraham, Matlock Bath
Nd
Lithograph post card

The Heights of Abraham, based in Matlock Bath, Peak District, offers stunning views of the surrounding landscape as well as providing a wonderful location for a family day out. The park first opened its gates in 1780 and boasts having the country’s first ‘Alpine Style’ cable car system, which was installed in 1984… The Heights of Abraham was named after the area of Quebec where Major General James P. Wolfe met his end during the Seven Years War, the British victory of which paved the way for the further expansion of the British Empire in Canada.

Originally designed as a Regency style ‘Savage Garden’ the park reflects the thoughts of the day from such as Shelley and Wordsworth, who extolled the virtues of promoting the wonderment of nature and the beauty of the environment. Even 200 years after opening the gates for the first time, many of the routes around the gardens remain as originally intended.

Unknown maker (British)
Bedford. The Bunyan Meeting
Nd
This is a real photograph
Post card

Dallaporte (Portugal)
Batalha – Mosteiro, Fachada das Capelas Imperfeitas [Monastery of Batalha, façade of the Imperfect Chapels]
Nd
Colecçâo passaporte “LOTY”
Photograph, post card

The Monastery of Batalha (Portuguese: Mosteiro da Batalha), literally the Monastery of the Battle, is a Dominican convent in the civil parish of Batalha, in the district of Leiria, in the Centro Region region of Portugal. Originally, and officially known, as the Monastery of Saint Mary of the Victory (Portuguese: Mosteiro de Santa Maria da Vitória), it was erected in commemoration of the 1385 Battle of Aljubarrota, and would serve as the burial church of the 15th-Century Aviz dynasty of Portuguese royals. It is one of the best and original examples of Late Gothic architecture in Portugal, intermingled with the Manueline style.

F. Frith & Co. Ltd., Reigate (British, 1959 – 1970)
Old Sarum, Chapel Of St Nicholas at angle of Wall, Castle well in foreground
1913
Frith’s series, Negative 65298
Lithograph postcard

Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898)

Francis Frith (also spelled Frances Frith, 7 October 1822 – 25 February 1898) was an English photographer of the Middle East and many towns in the United Kingdom. Frith was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, attending Quaker schools at Ackworth and Quaker Camp Hill in Birmingham (c. 1828-1838), before he started in the cutlery business. Leaving in 1850 to start a photographic studio in Liverpool, known as Frith & Hayward. A successful grocer, and later, printer, Frith fostered an interest in photography, becoming a founding member of the Liverpool Photographic Society in 1853. Frith sold his companies in 1855 in order to dedicate himself entirely to photography. He journeyed to the Middle East on three occasions, the first of which was a trip to Egypt in 1856 with very large cameras (16″ x 20″). He used the collodion process, a major technical achievement in hot and dusty conditions…

When he had finished his travels in the Middle East in 1859, he opened the firm of Francis Frith & Co. in Reigate, Surrey, as the world’s first specialist photographic publisher. In 1860, he married Mary Ann Rosling (sister of Alfred Rosling, the first treasurer of the Photographic Society) and embarked upon a colossal project – to photograph every town and village in the United Kingdom; in particular, notable historical or interesting sights. Initially he took the photographs himself, but as success came, he hired people to help him and set about establishing his postcard company, a firm that became one of the largest photographic studios in the world. Within a few years, over two thousand shops throughout the United Kingdom were selling his postcards.

His family continued the firm, which was finally sold in 1968 and closed in 1970. Following closure of the business, Bill Jay, one of Britain’s first photography historians, identified the archive as being nationally important, and “at risk”. Jay managed to persuade Rothmans, the tobacco company, to purchase the archive to ensure its safety. Frith was re-launched in 1976 as The Francis Frith Collection by John Buck, a Rothmans executive, with the intention of making the Frith photographs available to as wide an audience as possible. In 1977, John Buck bought the archive from Rothmans and has continued to run it as an independent business since that time – trading as The Francis Frith Collection. The company website enables visitors to browse free of charge over 125,000 Frith photographs depicting some 7,000 cities, towns and villages.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Photochrom Co. Ltd., Tunbridge Wells, Kent (British)
Ely Cathedral, Choir, East
Nd
Photograph, postcard 3826

Photochrom Co. Ltd., Tunbridge Wells, Kent (British)
Ely Cathedral, Choir, East (verso)
Nd
Photograph, postcard 3826

Léon & Lévy (French)
Carisbrooke Castle – King Charles I Window
c. 1901-1920
LL 18 of the theme Britain
Printed in France
Lithograph post card

Léon & Lévy (French)
Armentières – L’Eglise Saint Roch
c. 1883-1916
LL 13 of the theme France
Levy Fils & Cie, Paris to verso
Carte Postale

According to a brochure published for the centenary of the Saint-Roch church, it was built in the heart of a working-class neighbourhood in 1883 and 1884, at the initiative of the Dean Berteloot, who also built the churches of the Sacred Heart (1879) and St. Joseph (1884), in other districts of Armentières workers; the land is given free by the contractor César Debosque-Donte; the construction of the church is financed by a family of textile industrialists, the Cardon; the building is due to the architect Paul Destombes Roubaix, who is also the author of the churches of St. Joseph and the Sacred Heart; Simple originally emergency church, it was erected in parish church from 1886. Devastated in 1916 by the bombings of World War II, it was rebuilt in 1930 on the same plane as that of the original church and within a similar style.

Luigi Grassi, Milano (Italian)
Milano, Facciata della Cattedrale [Facade of Milan Cathedral]
Nd
Cartolina Postale, 07 19042
Lithograph post card

Unknown maker (F.W.H.) (British)
Roof of Chancel, Rosslyn Chapel
Nd
Lithograph post card

L. Roisin, Barcelona (Lucien Édouard Roisin Besnard, Paris, 1876 – Paris or Barcelona, 1943)
Gibraltar – Southport Gate
Nd
Lithograph post card, 53. 425

Edward Lucien Roisin Besnard (L. Roisin) (French, 1876-1943)

Edward Lucien Roisin Besnard (L. Roisin) (Paris, 1876 – Paris or Barcelona, 1943) French photographer and editor, based in Barcelona at the end of the First World War. Known in Spain for his trade postcards: La casa de la postal. Thanks to the high production work Roisin, it is possible to see the evolution of Spanish landscapes over thirty years. Most of his work is preserved with historical photographic archives of the Institute of Photographic Study of Catalonia.

His first Spanish postcards date from 1918. Roisin was not only in Barcelona, as in World War II, much of his family perished and our photographer was accompanied by two of his nephews, who held an important role in the family business and in the fate of the archives. His contract with Toldra finished he chose to remain on Spanish soil, and he acquires a local business in the Rambla de Santa Monica where he founded his magazine “the postal casa.” He specialises in postcards of a geographical nature. Accompanied by his nephew, they will make many trips by sharing tasks. Throughout the Spanish peninsula, Edward Lucien Roisin Besnard, with his urban experience, is responsible for photographing cities, shooting of the smallest villages and countryside and delegates to his nephew the task to photograph the inhabitants. The niece meanwhile will sell the cards in the family trade.

The beginning of the second war contributes to damage the health of Lucien Roisin Besnard who returns to France where he dies in 1943. At his death, his family continues to hold his stock until the year 1962. Roisin’s work then almost disappears even going for a short stay on the shelves of a secondhand store, to finally find refuge in the Institute’s archives Photographic Studies of Catalonia (it is not let less than 30,000 negatives, 77,000 photos or 40,000 postcards). The remaining shots are preserved in the National Archives of the Generalitat of Catalonia.

La casa de la postal

“The house of the postcard” was an eminently famous place whose reputation was well established and which featured prominently in all tourist guides. Roisin sold hundreds of thousands of postcards drawn from the photographs taken during his long wanderings through all Spain (Catalonia, Pontemeude, Andalusia, Malaga) over a period of more than twenty years. Roisin boasted to offer the public a comprehensive view, a complete inventory of sites and places of interest in all the Spanish provinces. The business was a success and at certain times over 10 vendors were recruited to deal with the request of a customer as well as local tourism. In the 1930s, “The postal casa”, always at the cutting edge, inaugurated the sale of completely innovative products such as postcard accordions which associated a choice of a dozen postcards and gathering views of the same subject taken from different angles. The counterfeiting phenomenon is not new, and to preserve [his copyright], Roisin was soon appear on its productions, a stamp that guaranteed its customers the authenticity of the products they were acquiring. The fame of Roisin was such that when a publication was published concerning Spain in the world, it was almost certain that the photographic credit the photo was derived from “the postal casa”.

Text Google translated from the French Wikipedia

Lilywhite Ltd., (British)
Bunyan’s Door. Elstow Church. Bedford
Nd
Guaranteed Real Photo and British Manufacture
Post card 28A

Unknown maker (British)
Bunyan’s Chair and Prison Door
Nd
Photograph, post card

Unknown maker (Italian)
Milano – Arco della Pace
Nd
Lithograph post card

Porta Sempione (“Simplon Gate”) is a city gate of Milan, Italy. The name “Porta Sempione” is used both to refer to the gate proper and to the surrounding district (“quartiere”), a part of the Zone 1 division (the historic city centre), including the major avenue of Corso Sempione. The gate is marked by a landmark triumphal arch called Arco della Pace (“Arch of Peace”), dating back to the 19th century, but its origins can be traced back to a gate of the Roman walls of Milan.

The Arch of Peace is a monument neoclassical Milan, located in the centre of the large area of Piazza Sempione. It was started in 1807 by Luigi Cagnola under the pressure of the town of Milan and of Napoleon. It was completed in 1838. The bronze chariot of Peace is by Abbondio Sangiorgio (1798-1879), the four wins equestrian bronze were made on the model of John Putti (1771-1847) while the marble sculptures are works of most representative neoclassical sculptors present in Milan in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, many of whom trained at the school of Camillo Pacetti (1758-1826); among these, we note the statues of History and Poetry of Louis Purchasing.

F. Frith & Co. Ltd., Reigate (British, 1959-1970)
Windsor Castle, Long Walk, Copper Horse
Nd
Frith’s series
Lithograph postcard

The R. A. (Postcards) Ltd., (British)
The Guildhall, Worcester
Nd
The Seal of Excellence Series
This is a Real Photograph
Photograph, post card

Nels (Belgium, 1898 – )
S. A. des Grottes de Han-sur-Lesse et de Rochefort – Le Trophée
[Caves of Han-sur-Lesse and Rochefort – The Trophy]
Nd
Lithograph post card

This publishing house was founded by Edward Nels in 1898. Their goal was to spread geographic knowledge while producing maps, guide books, and photographic and printed souvenirs. They soon became the largest producer of postcards in Belgium, and they also published many cards of the Congo and of Luxembourg. Though they produced a variety of card types, most were as collotypes, many of which were hand coloured in a dull pallet. Ernest Thill, who had ben the manager of the firm took over from Nels in 1913 and added his name to the company. In the 1960’s to 1975 they were purchased by a French firm, but they are now publishing postcards under their own name again, though for the most part they are now printed in Italy.

L. Caron (French, editor)
B & G, Lyon (Publisher)
Amiens – Cathedral
Amiens et les environs – Cathédrale dans sous ses détails – Eglises et Châteaux de Picardie
[Amiens and surrounding area – Cathedral detail – Churches and castles of Picardie]
Nd
3000 Vues éditées par L. Caron, photo, a Amiens
3000 views edited by L. Caron, photo, in Amiens
Lithograph post card

The Cairo Postcard Trust (Joseph Max Lichtenstern, Egypt)
Heliopolis – Monument of the first Aviateur (Oseri)
c. 1910
Serie 634
Lithograph post card

Joseph Max Lichtenstern moved to Egypt from Vienna in 1893 and took up permanent residence there in 1897. In 1899 he began publishing postcards under the name, Cairo Postcard Trust, but also issued black & white postcards under his own name. Two years later he teamed up with David Harari to form an importing business. They would also take up the publishing of postcards. Between 1904 and 1908 they seem to have taken on another partner, changing their name to Lichtenstern, Harari & Co., but they continued to use their original name, Lichtenstern & Harari on postcards. After Harari left in 1912 the firm was sold to Max H. Rudman, who had been a publisher from at least 1905. Lichtenstern continued to have some business dealings with Rudman, but after he returned to Vienna in 1914 for a visit, he ended up serving in the Austrian Army for the duration of World War One. There was a continuing relationship between this firm and the Cairo Postcard Trust but the specifics are uncertain.

Raphael Tuck & Sons (British)
The Guard’s Chapel, West End (front and verso)
Nd
The Guard’s Chapel Series A
Tuck’s Post Card
Art publishers to their majesties the King and Queen and to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales
Carte Postale
Photogravure Postcard

Raphael Tuck & Sons was a business started by Raphael Tuck and his wife in Bishopsgate in the City of London on October 1866, selling pictures and greeting cards, and eventually selling postcards, the latter being the most successful. Their business was one of the most well known in the ‘postcard boom’ of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Their contributions left a lasting effect on most of the artistic world. During The Blitz, the company headquarters, Raphael House, was destroyed including the originals for most of their series. The company never fully recovered.

Raphael was married to the former Ernestine Lissner in March 1848. She gave birth to seven children, four boys and three girls, all born in Prussia prior to their migration to England. As the family of seven children grew, the children provided more help to the business. Raphael sent out his sons, Herman, Adolph and Gustave to bring in more business. Herman and Adolph also went on selling trips, and at the end of the day they would check the results of the day’s work. The one with the higher sales would have the bigger egg next morning for breakfast. Three of the four sons participated in the firm established by their father. Their second son, Adolph, was chairman and managing director of Raphael Tuck and Sons, Ltd. until his death on 3 July 1926…

Raphael had received training in graphic arts in his home country; and, although he was not an artist himself, he had a flair for commercial art that prompted his interest in this new field. Upon coming to England, he caught the imagination of the public in such a way that he was able to create a new graphic arts business. He was so successful at it that, according to the The Times, he “opened up a new field of labor for artists, lithographers, engravers, printers, ink and paste board makers, and several other trade classes.”

Tuck’s continued to run very successful postcard competitions through the early 1900s with the focus changing to collectors of Tuck postcards rather than the artists whose work was depicted. The top part of the 1903 Tuck Exchange Register pictured above announces the second of Tuck’s prize competitions which began in 1900. The prize competitions aroused much interest. The first contest winner turned in a collection of 20, 364 cards over the 18-month duration of the contest. The second prize competition winner submitted 25, 239 cards. In 1914 the fourth prize competition was announced. The competitions were a novel and effective marketing technique.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Raphael Tuck & Sons (British)
The Guard’s Chapel, The Font (front and verso)
Nd
The Guard’s Chapel Series B
Tuck’s Post Card
Art publishers to their majesties the King and Queen and to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales
Carte Postale
Photogravure Postcard

Raphael Tuck & Sons (British)
The Guard’s Chapel, South East corner of Nave (front and verso)
Nd
The Guard’s Chapel Series B
Tuck’s Post Card
Art publishers to their majesties the King and Queen and to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales
Carte Postale
Photogravure Postcard

Raphael Tuck & Sons (British)
The Guard’s Chapel, The Pulpit (front and verso)
Nd
The Guard’s Chapel Series A
Tuck’s Post Card
Art publishers to their majesties the King and Queen and to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales
Carte Postale
Photogravure Postcard

Raphael Tuck & Sons (British)
The Guard’s Chapel, Roberts & Kitchener Memorials (front and verso)
Nd
The Guard’s Chapel Series B, South West Corner
Tuck’s Post Card
Art publishers to their majesties the King and Queen and to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales
Carte Postale
Photogravure Postcard

Raphael Tuck & Sons (British)
The Guard’s Chapel, Nave Mosaics (front and verso)
Nd
The Guard’s Chapel Series A
Tuck’s Post Card
Art publishers to their majesties the King and Queen and to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales
Carte Postale
Photogravure Postcard

Raphael Tuck & Sons (British)
The Guard’s Chapel, Credence Table and Pissina (front and verso)
Nd
The Guard’s Chapel Series A
Tuck’s Post Card
Art publishers to their majesties the King and Queen and to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales
Carte Postale
Photogravure Postcard

Raphael Tuck & Sons (British)
The Guard’s Chapel, S. E. Wall of Sanctuary (front and verso)
Nd
The Guard’s Chapel Series A
Tuck’s Post Card
Art publishers to their majesties the King and Queen and to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales
Carte Postale
Photogravure Postcard

Raphael Tuck & Sons (British)
The Guard’s Chapel, The East End (front and verso)
Nd
The Guard’s Chapel Series A
Tuck’s Post Card
Art publishers to their majesties the King and Queen and to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales
Carte Postale
Photogravure Postcard

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Jun

Exhibition: ‘Pacific Standard Time: Art in Los Angeles 1950-1980’ at Martin-Gropuis-Bau Berlin

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, architecture, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, designer, documentary photography, drawing, exhibition, existence, gallery website, light, memory, painting, photographic series, photography, portrait, printmaking, psychological, quotation, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: 'Pacific Standard Time: Art in Los Angeles 1950-1980, 100 BOOTS Move On, A Bigger Splash, abstract art, Allan McCollum, Allen Ruppersberg, Amarillo, American art, American artists, American conceptual art, American painting, American performance art, American photography, American pop art painting, Art in Los Angeles 1950-1980, Art School as Audience, artists’ catalogues, Back Seat Dodge '38, Berlin Red, Betye Saar, Betye Saar The Phrenologer's Window, books, British artist, Bruce Nauman, Bruce Nauman Four Corner Piece, CalArts, California, California Institute of the Arts, Case Study House #22, Charles Brittin, Charles Brittin Peace Tower, Chemosphere, Chouinard Art Institute, chris burden, Cloud Box (Large), collages, Craig Kauffman, Crosscurrents, Crosscurrents in L.A., Crosscurrents in L.A. - Painting and Sculpture, David Hockney, David Hockney A Bigger Splash, De Wain Valentine, Ed Bereal, Ed Bereal in His Studio, Ed Moses, ed ruscha, Ed Ruscha Standard Station, Edward Kienholz, Edward Kienholz People’s Wireless, Edward Kienholz Volksempfängers, Eleanor Antin, Eleanor Antin 100 BOOTS Move On, Four Corner Piece, gelatin silver print, Getty Research Institute, Greetings from L. A., Greetings from L.A. - Artists and Publics, In Mourning and in Rage, invitation cards, invitations, James Turrell, James Turrell Stuck Red and Stuck Blue, Jerry McMillan, Jerry McMillan Ed Bereal in His Studio, Joe Goode, John Baldessari, julius shulman, Julius Shulman Case Study House #22, Julius Shulman Chemosphere, Julius Shulman Malin Residence, letters and artworks, los angeles, Los Angeles 1950-1980, Malin Residence, Martin-Gropuis-Bau, Mary Corse, Mass Media, Pacific Standard Time, painting and sculpture, Peace Tower, Peter Alexander, Peter Alexander Cloud Box (Large), Photograph of Shirley Berman, photographs, phrenology, postcards, posters, Private Assembly, PST, Public Disturbances, Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, Sam Francis Berlin Red, sculptures and collages, Semina Cover with Wife, Shirley Berman, Silver-dye bleach print, Stuck Red and Stuck Blue, Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz-Starus In Mourning and in Rage, Texas, The Art of Protest, The Phrenologer's Window, Verifax Collage, Vietnam war, Wallace Berman, Wallace Berman Photograph of Shirley Berman, Wallace Berman Semina Cover with Wife, Wallace Berman Untitled (Verifax Collage)

Exhibition dates: 15th March – 10th June 2012

List of artists represented: Peter Alexander, John Altoon, Chuck Arnoldi, John Baldessari, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Karl Benjamin, Ed Bereal, Tony Berlant, Wallace Berman, Marjorie Cameron, Cameron, Vija Celmins, Judy Chicago, Mary Corse, Ronald Davis, Richard Diebenkorn, Laddie John Dill, Melvin Edwards, Frederick Eversley, Lorser Feitelson, Llyn Foulkes, Sam Francis, Joe Goode, Robert Graham, Frederick Hammersley, George Herms, David Hockney, Stephan von Huene, Craig Kauffman, Edward Kienholz, Helen Lundeberg, John Mason, Allan McCollum, John McLaughlin, Ron Miyashiro, Ed Moses, Lee Mullican, Bruce Nauman, Helen Pashgian, Ken Price, Noah Purifoy, Ed Ruscha, Betye Saar, Henry Takemoto, DeWain Valentine, Gordon Wagner, Norman Zammitt.

Ed Ruscha (American, b. 1937)
Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas
1963
Oil on Canvas
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
Gift of James Meeker, Class of 1958, in memory of Lee English, Class of 1958, scholar, poet, athlete and friend to all

What a bumper posting – so much to enjoy and something for everyone!

Marcus

.
Many thankx to Martin-Gropuis-Bau for allowing me to publish the artwork in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Betye Saar (African-American, b. 1926)
The Phrenologer’s Window
1966
Assemblage of two panel wood frame with print and collage
Private Collection; courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY

Eleanor Antin (American, b. 1935)
100 BOOTS Move On
1971-1973
Halftone reproduction
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA
© Eleanor Antin

Sam Francis (American, 1923-1994)
Berlin Red
1969-1970
Acrylic on canvas
Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
© Sam Francis Foundation, Cailfornia / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012
Foto: bpk / Nationalgalerie, SMB / Jörg P. Anders

Wallace Berman (American, 1926-1976)
Semina Cover with Wife (Photograph of Shirley Berman)
1959
Halftone reproduction on cardstock
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA

The exhibition project Pacific Standard Time – Art in Los Angeles, 1950-1980 traces the development of the Los Angeles art scene during the post-war period, when the city on the Pacific hosted an impressively varied and versatile art scene, thus proving that it was more than Hollywood and a sprawling metropolis in the land of sunshine and palm trees. Pacific Standard Time features such internationally esteemed artists as John Baldessari, David Hockney, Edward Kienholz or Ed Ruscha as well as protagonists that are yet to be discovered like the abstract painters Helen Lundeberg and Karl Benjamin, the ceramicists Ken Price and John Mason, and sculptors such as De Wain Valentine.

The mega show – over 60 institutions and galleries in Los Angeles were involved – is taking the two main core exhibitions of the Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute to Europe. The sole European venue is the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. The section of the exhibition that was to be seen in Los Angeles’ Getty Museum under the title of Crosscurrents in L.A. – Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970, presents painting and sculpture. In the second part that was to be seen in Los Angeles under the title of Greetings from L.A. – Artists and Publics, 1950-1980, posters, artists’ catalogues, postcards, invitation cards and other memorabilia are shown which offer a deeper insight into the networks of the Los Angeles art scene at that time. For Berlin the show has been supplemented to include photographs by Julius Shulman, whose architectural shots defined the image of the Californian lifestyle in the 1950s. His incomparable sensibility and intuitive feel for composition and the ‘critical moment’ established him as a master of his craft.

Part One: Crosscurrents

The first part of the Berlin show brings together more than 70 works by over 50 artists and traces the rise of the Southern Californian art scene between 1945 and 1980. The list of names reads like a Who’s Who of today’s internationally esteemed artists, as people like John Baldessari, David Hockney, Edward Kienholz, Bruce Nauman or Ed Ruscha began their careers here.

The entrée into Pacific Standard Time begins with British artist David Hockney’s iconic painting A Bigger Splash from the year 1967. It is one of the key pictures of the exhibition and stands for the hedonistic life under palm trees with permanent sunshine and never-ending parties.

The exhibition is structured both chronologically and thematically, comprising six sections that reflect the entire spectrum of the art trends that sprang up simultaneously in Los Angeles. Abstract works – ceramic sculptures and paintings of bleak clarity – are to be seen in the first section. The second section shows assemblage sculptures and collages by artists like George Herms, Wallace Berman and Ed Bereal, who paved the way for this artistic approach in the 1950s, and their successors, including many African-American artists. The third section documents the rise of Los Angeles to become an important art centre, while the fourth shows paintings by internationally recognised Los Angeles artists as Richard Diebenkorn, David Hockney and Ed Ruscha. It becomes clear that Southern California was one of the leading centres for large-format pop art and abstract painting in the 1960s. The fifth section examines how, at a time when painting was growing in significance on the Atlantic Coast of the USA, artists on the West Coast were beginning to extend their notions of traditional painting and sculpture, with perceptual phenomena and the material processes of artistic production coming to the fore. Here we find works that have arisen out of a collision between art and technology, such as a sculpture by De Wain Valentine, who uses industrial materials like polyester casting resin, or a canvas by Mary Corse, into which the smallest, high-grade reflecting glass microspheres have been worked. We are also introduced to a group of artists whose works show traces of their creation, such as those of Joe Goode, Allan McCollum, Ed Moses and Peter Alexander.

Berlin is supplementing the Getty exhibition by devoting a special room to the early international perception of art in Los Angeles. It will feature the works Berlin Red by Sam Francis, a 8 x 12 metre painting that was commissioned by Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie in 1969, and Volksempfängers (People’s Wireless) by Edward Kienholz. As a DAAD scholar Kienholz often lived in Berlin from 1973 on.

Another distinctive feature of the exhibition are the various room installations, including Stuck Red and Stuck Blue by James Turrell and Four Corner Piece by Bruce Nauman. In 1966 Turrell began working on his Light Room installations. In the work displayed in the Martin-Gropius-Bau that he designed in 1970, he uses light to dissolve the borders of spatial structures and transform them. In his Four Corner Piece from 1971 Bruce Nauman creates a particular spatial experience through the interplay of physical information vs. visual information.

Part Two: Greetings from L. A.

In the second part of the exhibition, elaborated by the Getty Research Institute, the Martin-Gropius-Bau shows over 200 objects – photographs, artists’ catalogues, books, posters, postcards, invitations, letters and artworks, of which many are on public view for the first time. We are given a sense of how Californian artists, through the involvement of a wide audience, brought art into contact with the general public. We also see how intensely the international networks linking groups of artists functioned.

Greetings from L.A. begins with Making the Scene and describes the gallery scene in Los Angeles from the 1950s to the 1970s. We are introduced to art dealers and collectors of the kind who congregated at La Cienega Boulevard – Rolf Nelson, Riko Mizuno and Betty Asher. On this gallery-lined boulevard, which crosses the Sunset Boulevard immortalised by Ed Ruscha, the reputation of Los Angeles as a city of modern and contemporary art was made.

Public Disturbances, the second section of the show, is devoted to three important exhibitions which drew fierce criticism and even led to arrests. Wallace Berman’s 1957 exhibition in the Ferus Gallery was closed down by the police. Violent controversies were triggered by the War Babies exhibition (1961) in the Huysman Gallery. There were also strong differences of opinion between the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors over the inclusion of Kienholz’s installation Back Seat Dodge ’38 (1964) in his grand retrospective of 1966.

The Private Assembly section of the exhibition focuses on the works created by Wallace Berman, George Herms, Charles Brittin and their circle in the 1950s and 1960s. The intimacy of these objects is explained not only by the unmistakable traces of artistic authorship they bear, but also by the fact that they were only accessible to a select, non-public audience. Mainly active outside the commercial gallery scene, this group of assemblage artists concentrated their energies on private artworks, which they handed over personally or sent by mail as a token of friendship.

The fourth section, Mass Media, introduces artists who selected the mass media as a model for their own art. Ed Ruscha, Allen Ruppersberg and Chris Burden occupied themselves with popular culture and mass production as alternative means of production and distribution. They used impersonal forms, such as those of objects or advertising materials commercially produced and sold as consumer goods. By avoiding conventional exhibition rooms, these artists reached a new public. They often exhibited anonymously, thus making the identity of artist and work secondary.

Art School as Audience, the fifth section of the exhibition, sheds light on the important role of art schools in the development of contemporary art forms. They served as the static pole, because in them artists constituted the audience of other fellow artists. The California Institute of the Arts, commonly known as CalArts, and its predecessor, the Chouinard Art Institute, were key venues for important groups of artists, as can be seen from the works of such students as Ed Ruscha and Joe Goode, and such teachers as John Baldessari, Miriam Schapiro and Judy Chicago. Other important forums were the new art faculties that came into existence at the universities and other higher education facilities in Los Angeles County. At the campuses of Irvine or San Diego in particular there was a stimulating audience for the experiments of such artists as Martha Rosler, Barbara Smith and Eleanor Antin.

The last section, The Art of Protest, examines how social and political developments mobilised artists to display their works in the street. In the 1960s Los Angeles became the scene of the first protests led by artists against the Vietnam War. This gave rise in 1966 to the construction of a Peace Tower at the corner of La Cienega and Sunset Boulevards. In the following decade it was feminism that moved many artists to become social activists, as can be seen from the work of Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz-Starus In Mourning and in Rage 1977, a highly esteemed protest performed on the steps of City Hall.

Greetings from L.A. offers a new look at art in Southern California by showing how the artists of this region changed the conventional relations between art and public and developed alternatives for a public role of art and its place in society.

The exhibition affords glimpses into some recently acquired archives, like those of Betty Asher, Hal Glicksman, George Herms, Wolfgang Stoerchle, High Performance magazine, the galleries of Rolf Nelson, Mizuno and Jan Baum as well as of the papers of Charles Brittin and Edmund Teske. These are supplemented by material from archives not normally associated with Southern California, such as the papers of the critics Irving Sandler, Barbara Rose and Lawrence Alloway of New York; of Marcia Tucker, the founder and curator of New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art; and of the Kasmin Gallery, London.

Part Three: Julius Shulman

The last part of the Berlin exhibition shows over 50 photographs by Julius Shulman – the most important American photographer of architecture in the post-war period. For more than thirty years he photographed Modernist houses – built by Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright, or Frank Gehry – thus making many of them into architectural icons. The exhibition shows some of his key works.

Press release from Martin-Gropuis-Bau website

Julius Shulman (American, 1910-2009)
Malin Residence, “Chemosphere”
1960
Gelatin silver print
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA
© J. Paul Getty Trust

Julius Shulman (American, 1910-2009)
Case Study House #22
1960
Gelatin silver print
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA
© J. Paul Getty Trust

Charles Brittin (American, b. 1928)
Peace Tower
1966
Silver-dye bleach print
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA
© J. Paul Getty Trust

Peter Alexander (American 1939-2020)
Cloud Box (Large)
1966
Cast polyester resin
Janis Horn and Leonard Feldman
© Peter Alexander
Foto: Brian Forrest

Jerry McMillan (American, b. 1936)
Ed Bereal in His Studio
c. 1961
Gelatin silver print mounted on board
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA
Gift of George Herms
© Jerry McMillan

David Hockney (British, b. 1937)
A Bigger Splash
1967
Acrylic on canvas
96″ x 96″
© David Hockney
Tate Gallery, London, 2011

Wallace Berman (American, 1926-1976)
Untitled (Verifax Collage)
1969
Verifax collage on board
Collection of Michael D. Fox, Berkeley CA, Courtesy Steven Wolf Fine Arts, San Francisco CA
© Courtesy of the Estate of Wallace Berman and Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles
Foto: Joe Schopplein

Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin
Niederkirchnerstraße 7
Corner Stresemannstr. 110
10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30 254 86-0

Opening Hours:
Wednesday to Monday 10 – 19hrs
Tuesday closed

Martin-Gropius-Bau website

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Jul

Review: ‘Paradise’ by Brook Andrew at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Exhibition dates: 18th June – 30th July 2011

Brook Andrew Paradise installation at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

This is a strong, refined photo-ethnographic exhibition by Brook Andrew at Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne, one that holds the viewers attention, an exhibition that is witty and inventive if sometimes veering too closely to the simplistic and didactic in some works.

Rare postcards of Indigenous peoples and their colonising masters and surrounded by thick polished wood frames (the naturalness of the wood made smooth and perfect) and coloured neon lights that map out the captured identities, almost like a highlighting texta and forms of urban graffiti. This device is especially effective in works such as Men and Women (both 2011, below) with their male and female neon forms, and Flow Chart (2011, below) that references an anthropological map.

Other works such as Monument 1 (2011, below) lay the postcards into the rungs of a small step ladder covered in white paint that has echoes of the colonisers renovation of suburban homes and becomes a metaphor for the Indigenous peoples being stepped on, oppressed and downtrodden. In a particularly effective piece, Monument 2 (2011, below) the viewer stares down into a black box with multiple layers of neon that spell out the words ‘I see you’ in the Wiradjuri language: we can relate this work to Lacan’s story of the sardine can, where the point of view of the text makes us, the viewer, seem rather out of place in the picture, an alien in the landscape. The text has us in its sights making us uncomfortable in our position.

The work Paradise (2011, six parts, above) can certainly be seen as paradise lost but the pairing of black / white / colour postcards is the most reductive of the whole exhibition vis a vis Indigenous peoples and the complex discourse involved in terms of oppression, exploitation, empowerment, identity, mining rights and land ownership. The two quotations below can be seen to be at opposite ends of the same axis in this discourse. My apologies for the long second quotation but it is important to understand the context of what Akiko Ono is talking about with regard to the production of Indigenous postcards.

“White… has the strange property of directing our attention to color while in the very same movement it exnominates itself as a color. For evidence of this we need look no further than to the expression “people of color,” for we know very well that this means “not White.” We know equally well that the color white is the higher power to which all colors of the spectrum are subsumed when equally combined: white is the sum totality of light, while black is the total absence of light. In this way elementary optical physics is recruited to the psychotic metaphysics of racism, in which White is “all” to Black’s “nothing”…”

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Victor Burgin 1

“In his study of Aboriginal photography, Peterson also looks at the dynamics of colonial power relations in which both European and Aboriginal subjects are constituted in and by their relations to each other. Peterson in the main writes about two different contexts of the usage of photography of Aboriginal people

1. popular usage of photographs, especially in the form of postcards in the early twentieth century (Peterson 1985, 2005)

2. anthropologists’ ethnographic involvement with photography (Peterson 2003, 2006).

Regarding the first, Peterson depicts how the discourses of atypical (that is, disorganised) family structures and destitution among Aboriginal people were produced and interacted with the prevalent moral discourses of the time. He makes an important remark about the interactive dimensions that existed between the photographer and the Aboriginal subject. Hand-printed postcards in the same period showed much more positive images of Aboriginal people (Peterson 2005: 18-22). These were ‘real’ photographs taken by the photographers who had daily interactions with Aboriginal people…

Peterson gives greater attention to photographs taken by anthropologists for scientific purposes, and in this second context provides a more detailed treatment of his insight regarding the discrepancies between the colonisers’ discourse and the actual visual knowledge that photography offers…

These two contexts are not, of course, mutually exclusive. By dealing with image ethics and the changing photographic contract, Peterson (2003) shows the interlocking formations of popular image, anthropological knowledge and Aboriginal self-representation. In particular, it is important to remember that Aboriginal people have not always rejected collaboration with and appropriation of the idioms of the coloniser. Aboriginal people were not bothered by posing for photographers to produce images such as ‘naked’ Aboriginal men and women in formal pose, accompanied by an ‘unlikely combination’ of weapons (Peterson 2005); and at times complex negotiations occurred between the photographer and the photographed – resulting in both consent and refusal (Peterson 2003: 123-31).

These anecdotes suggest the necessity of unravelling the ‘lived’ dimensions of colonial and / or racial subjugation and resistance to that subjugation from the site of their occurrence …

Rather than scrutinising the authenticity of Aboriginality or taking it for granted that ethnographic photography is doomed to reproduce a colonial or anthropological power structure, it is more important to attend to the ‘instances in which colonized subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the colonizer’s own terms’, as Pratt (1992: 7, emphasis in the original) suggests. She proposes the term ‘autoethnography’ to refer to these instances: ‘If ethnographic texts are a means by which Europeans represent to themselves their (usually subjugated) others, autoethnographic texts are those the others construct in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitan representations’ (Pratt 1992).

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Akiko Ono 2

The work Paradise buys into the first quotation in a big way, playing as it does with the idioms of black / white / colour. It can also be seen as a form of autoethnographic text that uses rare postcards to critique historical relations between peoples and cultures. What it does not do, I feel, is delve deeper to try to understand the “interlocking formations of popular image, anthropological knowledge and Aboriginal self-representation” and resistance to that subjugation from the site of their occurrence. As the quotation observes “Aboriginal people have not always rejected collaboration with and appropriation of the idioms of the coloniser” and it is important to understand how the disciplinary systems of the coloniser (the ethnographic documenting through photography) were turned on their head to empower Indigenous people who undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the coloniser’s own terms. Nothing is ever just black and white. It is the interstitial spaces between that are always the most interesting.

In conclusion this an elegant exhibition of old and new, an autoethnographic text that seeks to address critical issues that look back at us and say – ‘I see you’.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1. Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p. 131

2. Ono, Akiko. “Who Owns the ‘De-Aboriginalised’ Past? Ethnography meets photography: a case study of Bundjalung Pentecostalism,” in Musharbash, Yasmine and Barber, Marcus (eds.,). Ethnography & the Production of Anthropological Knowledge: Essays in honour of Nicolas Peterson. The Australian National University E Press [Online] Cited 16/07/2011 (no longer available online)

Peterson, N. 1998. “Welfare colonialism and citizenship: politics, economics and agency,” in N. Peterson and W. Sanders (eds.,). Citizenship and Indigenous Australians: Changing Conceptions and Possibilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 101-17.
Peterson, N. 1999. “Hunter-gatherers in first world nation states: bringing anthropology home,” in Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology 23 (4), pp. 847-61.
Peterson, N. 2003. “The changing photographic contract: Aborigines and image ethics,” in C. Pinney and N. Peterson (eds.,). Photography’s Other Histories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 119-45.
Peterson, N. 2005. “Early 20th century photography of Australian Aboriginal families: illustration or evidence?” in Visual Anthropology Review 21 (1-2), pp. 11-26.
Peterson, N. 2006. “Visual knowledge: Spencer and Gillen’s use of photography in The Native Tribes of Central Australia,” in Australian Aboriginal Studies (1), pp. 12-22
Pratt, M. L. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writings and Transculturation. London: Routledge

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Footnote 1. Peterson has built up a collection of process-printed (that is, mass-produced) postcard images and hand-printed images dating from 1900 to 1920 (that is, real photographic postcards), over 20 years, during which time he obtained a copy every time he saw a new image. He feels confident that he has seen two-thirds of the process-printed picture postcards from the period although it is harder to estimate how many hand-printed images were circulating (Peterson 2005: 25n.3). He had a collection of 528 process-printed postcards (Peterson 2005: 25) and 272 hand-printed photographs (p. 18) by 2005.

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Many thankx to Olivia Radonich for her help and to Tolarno Galleries for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Images courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. Photos by Christian Capurro.

Brook Andrew Paradise installation at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 1 (red)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
24.5 x 28.5 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 2 (orange)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
24.5 x 34 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 3 (yellow)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
24.5 x 28.5 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 4 (green)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
25 x 33.5 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 5 (magenta)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
24.5 x 28 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Flow Chart
2011
Rare postcards, sapele and neon
283 x 449.5 x 8.5cm

Brook Andrew Paradise installation at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Men
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
82 x 264 x 12.5cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Women
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
179 x 179 x 6cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Women (detail)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
179 x 179 x 6cm

Tolarno Galleries is pleased to present Paradise, a major solo exhibition by Brook Andrew. Widely regarded as a multi-disciplinary artist, Brook Andrew’s Jumping Castle War Memorial was a highlight of the 17th Biennale of Sydney. Recently his major installation, Ancestral Worship 2010, was included in 21st Century: Art in the First Decade at Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. His powerful new installation – Marks and Witness: A Lined crossing in Tribute to William Barak 2011 – was commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria and is currently on display at Federation Square, Melbourne.

Paradise expands Brook Andrew’s interest in forgotten histories. His new works ask us to think about what has disappeared from our worlds, literally, and also from our consciousness. The exhibition features a number of assemblages made in neon and wood and incorporating rare postcards and photographs collected over many years. Men 2011 includes the original postcard that became the source for Sexy and Dangerous, Andrew’s iconic work of 1995.

Brook Andrew’s continuing search for curious portrait images from the 19th and early 20th century represents his fascination with the way the camera has documented a particular ‘colonial’ gaze and an interest in the exotic. Outlining or highlighting these images in glorious coloured neon emphasises this point.

However bright the neon, Brook Andrew’s works are characterised by a formal beauty and simplicity that explores conceptually complex ideas and themes. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Monument 4, a ‘boomerang bar’ or Monument 2, a black lacquer box of neon containing the words ‘I see you’ in Wiradjuri. Gazing into this ‘well of words’ is like looking into infinity.

Brook Andrew’s work is held in every major collection in Australia. An important survey of his work: Brook Andrew Eye to Eye was presented by Monash University Museum of Art in 2007. In 2008 his work was showcased in Theme Park at AAMU Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art in The Netherlands. Major publications accompanied both of these solo exhibitions.”

Press release from Tolarno Galleries

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Monument 2
2011
Black lacquer, wood, perspex, neon, mirror and wire
38 x 99 x 87cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Monument 2 (detail)
2011
Black lacquer, wood, perspex, neon, mirror and wire
38 x 99 x 87cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
18 lives in Paradise
Single box detail
2011

The basic unit used in 18 Lives in Paradise is a cardboard printed box 50 x 50 x 50 cm. The boxes are the building blocks for a sculpture, wall or any other structure. The box is also a parody of the courier box – those containers daily transported around the globe in the vast movement of lives and identities today. What was thought of as fixed may not be so.

The images are sourced from postcards. The postcards range from the early to mid-twentieth century and form part of a worldwide curiosity in indigenous people, circus acts and personalities, environment and resources … The images come together as an assemblage of ‘freaks’ and represent the collision paths of indigenous and non-indigenous cultures; those being documented out of curiosity and those belonging to dominant cultures who have used the land and its people for entertainment and wealth.

18 Lives in Paradise can form a column or wall. It can be a barrier, a beacon or epitaph. En masse, the boxes are a symbol of many lives whose identities are sometimes twisted for the gaze of the curious world.

Brook Andrew 2011

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Monument 1
2011
Black lacquer, are postcards, wood, mirror and metal
104.5 x 69.5 x 58cm

Tolarno Galleries
Level 4, 104 Exhibition Street
Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia
Phone: +61 3 9654 6000

Opening hours:
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm
Sat 1pm – 4pm

Tolarno Galleries website

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Mar

Exhibition: ‘Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

By Dr Marcus Bunyan 1 Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, black and white photography, book, documentary photography, exhibition, gallery website, New York, photography, reality, space, Walker Evans and works on paper
Tags: American architecture, American art, american artist, american daily life, American documentary photographer, American documentary photography, American folk art, american photographer, American photography, American postcard, American postcards, American realism, authorless photographs, black and white photography, boats, book, Brooklyn Bridge, coloured photolithographic postcards, craze for picture postcards, Curve at Brooklyn Terminal Brooklyn Bridge New York, Detroit Publishing Company, Detroits, documentary photography, Empire State Building, ephemera, exhibition, factories, five-and-dime stores, folk document, Front Street Looking North Morgan City, Future New York, Future New York The City of Skyscrapers, gallery website, hand colouring, hand-colored postcards, hand-coloring, hand-coloured postcards, Holland Vehicular Tunnel, Hot Springs National Park, hotels, Lee Friedlander, Lighthouses, Main Street Showing Confederate Monument Lenoir, Men's Bathing Department, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Morgan City, New York, Outdoor Pleasures, paper, penny picture postcards, photolithographic postcards, picture postcard, picture postcard is folk document, postcards, postcards vernacular subjects, railroad stations, San Bernardino, Santa Fe station and yards, Santa Fe station and yards San Bernardino, silver gelatin photograph, small town life, Stable Natchez Mississippi, state capitols, Street Scene Morgan City Louisiana, Street Scenes, Summer Hotels, Tennessee Coal Iron & R. R. Co.'s Steel Mills, The City of Skyscrapers, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Walker Evans Archive, vernacular subjects, View of Easton Pennsylvania, View of Ossining New York, Walker Evans, Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard, Walker Evans Archive, Walker Evans Stable Natchez Mississippi, Walker Evans Street Scene Morgan City, Walker Evans Street Scene Morgan City Louisiana, Walker Evans View of Easton Pennsylvania, Walker Evans View of Ossining New York, Woolworth and Municipal Buildings from Brooklyn Bridge, works on paper

Exhibition dates: 3rd February – 25th May 2009

Unknown artist (American)
Front Street, Looking North, Morgan City, LA
1929
Postcard, Photomechanical reproduction
3 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. (8.9 x 14 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive, 1994

This looks a very interesting exhibition – I wish I could see the actual thing!

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

This exhibition will focus on a collection of 9,000 picture postcards amassed and classified by the American photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975), now part of the Metropolitan’s Walker Evans Archive. The picture postcard represented a powerful strain of indigenous American realism that directly influenced Evans’s artistic development. The dynamic installation of hundreds of American postcards drawn from Evans’s collection will reveal the symbiotic relationship between Evans’s own art and his interest in the style of the postcard. This will also be demonstrated with a selection of about a dozen of his own photographs printed in 1936 on postcard format photographic paper.

Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Street Scene, Morgan City, Louisiana
1935
Film negative
8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive, 1994

“Sold in five-and-dime stores in every small town in America, postcards satisfied the country’s need for human connection in the age of the railroad and Model T when, for the first time, many Americans regularly found themselves traveling far from home. At age twelve, Walker Evans began to collect and classify his cards. What appealed to the nascent photographer were the cards’ vernacular subjects, the simple, unvarnished, “artless” quality of the pictures, and the generic, uninflected, mostly frontal style that he later would borrow for his own work with the camera. Both the picture postcard and Evans’s photographs seem equally authorless – quiet documents that record the scene with an economy of means and with simple respect. Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard proposes that the picture postcard represented a powerful strain of indigenous American realism that directly influenced Evans’s artistic development.”

Text from the Steidl website

The American postcard came of age around 1907, when postal deregulations allowed correspondence to be written on the address side of the card. By 1914, the craze for picture postcards had proved an enormous boon for local photographers, as their black-and-white pictures of small-town main streets, local hotels and new public buildings were transformed into handsomely coloured photolithographic postcards that were reproduced in great bulk and sold in five-and-dime stores in every small town in America. Postcards met the nation’s need for communication in the age of the railroad and Model T, when, for the first time, many Americans often found themselves traveling far from home. In the Walker Evans Archive at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, there is a collection of 9,000 such postcards amassed by the great American photographer, who began his remarkable collection at the age of 10. What appealed to Evans, even as a boy, were the vernacular subjects, the unvarnished, “artless” quality of the pictures and the generic, uninflected, mostly frontal style that he later would borrow for his own work. The picture postcard and Evans’ photographs seem equally authorless, appearing as quiet documents that record a scene with both economy of means and simple respect. This volume demonstrates that the picture postcard articulated a powerful strain of indigenous American realism that directly influenced Evans’ artistic development.

Text from the Amazon website

Unknown artist (American)
Main Street, Showing Confederate Monument, Lenoir, N. C.
1930s
Postcard, Photomechanical reproduction
3 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. (8.9 x 14cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive, 1994

Walker Evans was the progenitor of the documentary style in American photography, and he argued that picture postcard captured a part of America that was not recorded in any other medium. In the early 20th century, picture postcards, sold in five-and-dime stores across America, depicted small towns and cities with realism and hometown pride – whether the subject was a local monument, a depot, or a coal mine.

Evans wrote of his collection: “The very essence of American daily city and town life got itself recorded quite inadvertently on the penny picture postcards of the early 20th century .… Those honest direct little pictures have a quality today that is more than mere social history .… The picture postcard is folk document.”

Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard is the first exhibition to focus primarily on works drawn from The Walker Evans Archive. The installation is designed to convey the incredible range of his collection and to reflect the eclectic and obsessional ways in which the artist organised his picture postcards. For example, Evans methodically classified his collection into dozens of subject categories, such as “American Architecture,” “Factories,” “Automobiles,” “Street Scenes,” “Summer Hotels,” “Lighthouses,” “Outdoor Pleasures,” “Madness,” and “Curiosities”.

Marty Weil. “Walker Evans’ Picture Postcard Collection on the ephemera: exploring the world of old paper website Feb 24, 2009 [Online] Cited 12/06/2022

Unknown artist (American)
Tennessee Coal, Iron, & R. R. Co.’s Steel Mills, Ensley, Ala.
1920s
Postcard, Photomechanical reproduction
3 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. (8.9 x 14cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive, 1994

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
View of Easton, Pennsylvania
1935
Postcard format gelatin silver print

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
View of Ossining, New York
1930-1931
Gelatin silver print
4 1/8 x 7 13/16 in. (10.5 x 19.8cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1999

Unknown artist (American)
Holland Vehicular Tunnel, New York City
1920s
Postcard, Photomechanical reproduction
3 9/16 x 5 1/2 in. (9 x 14cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive, 1994

Unknown artist (American)
Santa Fe station and yards, San Bernardino, California
c. 1910
Postcard, Photomechanical reproduction
3 9/16 x 5 1/2 in. (9 x 14cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive, 1994

Unknown artist (American)
Men’s Bathing Department, Bath House, Hot Springs National Park, Ark.
1920s
Postcard, Photomechanical reproduction
3 9/16 x 5 1/2 in. (9 x 14cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive, 1994

Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard

In 1903, the year Walker Evans was born, the US Postal service handled 700 million picture postcards. Evans would later recall his fondness for those “honest, direct, little pictures that once flooded the mail.” By the age of twelve he was a collector and through his lifetime, an obsessive. “Yes, I was a postcard collector at an early age. Every time my family would take me around for what they thought was my education, to show me the country in a touring car, to go to Illinois, to Massachusetts, I would rush into Woolworth’s and buy all the postcards.” For Evans, the addition of hand-colouring added a great deal of aesthetic value. …

Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard reproduces hundreds of cards from his collection including the three magazine features mentioned above. Also the fine addition of an “illustrated transcript” of his now famous Lyric Documentary lecture at Yale in 1964 makes this a bit more interesting than the title may suggest. …

Later in life Evans had friends around the country while on photo trips keeping an eye for postcards that might interest. He had a particular love for ones produced by the Detroit Publishing Company which were considered the “Cadillac” of postcards. Lee Friedlander related the following from a recent interview: “The Detroit Publishing Company had a formula. If a town had 2,000 people or so, it got a main street postcard; if it had 3,500, it got the main street and also a courthouse square. Walker liked the formula. He had everyone looking for this or that. He told me once in Old Lyme, “If you run across any ‘Detroits,’ get them for me.” I found sixty or seventy cards for him. He loved them.”

“Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard by Jeff L. Rosenheim,” on the 5B4: Photography and Books blog, March 1, 2009 [Online] Cited 12/06/2022

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Stable, Natchez, Mississippi
March 1935
Gelatin silver print
10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005

Unknown artist (American)
Future New York, The City of Skyscrapers
1910s
Postcard, Photomechanical reproduction
3 9/16 x 5 1/2 in. (9 x 14cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive, 1994

Unknown artist (American)
Woolworth and Municipal Buildings from Brooklyn Bridge, New York
1910s
Postcard, Photomechanical reproduction
3 9/16 x 5 1/2 in. (9 x 14cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive, 1994

Unknown artist (American)
Curve at Brooklyn Terminal, Brooklyn Bridge, New York
1907
Postcard, Photomechanical reproduction
3 9/16 x 5 1/2 in. (9 x 14cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive, 1994

Unknown artist (American)
Empire State Building, New York
1930s
Postcard, Photomechanical reproduction
3 9/16 x 5 1/2 in. (9 x 14cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive, 1994

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

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

Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard (Hardcover)
by Jeff Rossenheim and Walker Evans

The Metropolitan Museum of Art website

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Dr Marcus Bunyan

Dr Marcus Bunyan is an Australian artist and writer. His art work explores the boundaries of identity and place. He writes Art Blart, an art and cultural memory archive, which posts mainly photography exhibitions from around the world. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy from RMIT University, Melbourne, a Master of Arts (Fine Art Photography) from RMIT University, and a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne.

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bunyanth@netspace.net.au

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LISTING OF ALL AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS AND EXHIBITIONS THAT HAVE APPEARED ON THE ARCHIVE AT THIS LINK

LISTING OF ALL INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS AND EXHIBITIONS THAT HAVE APPEARED ON THE ARCHIVE AT THIS LINK

Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: ‘Orphans and small groups’ 1994-96 Part 2

Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: 'Orphans and small groups' 1994-96 Part 2

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Text: "In Press" chapter from Marcus Bunyan's PhD research 'Pressing the Flesh: S**, Body Image and the Gay Male',… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 6 days ago
Text: "In Press" chapter from Marcus Bunyan's PhD research 'Pressing the Flesh: S**, Body Image and the Gay Male',… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 6 days ago
Text: "In Press" chapter from Marcus Bunyan's PhD research 'Pressing the Flesh: S**, Body Image and the Gay Male',… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 6 days ago
Exhibition: 'Peter Booth' @ TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville wp.me/pn2J2-m1J "Anima (strikethrough)"… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago
Exhibition: 'Peter Booth' at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville wp.me/pn2J2-m1J "Anima (strikethrough)"… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago
Exhibition: 'Peter Booth' at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville wp.me/pn2J2-m1J "Anima (strikethrough)"… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago

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Art Blart

Posts Tagged ‘postcards

Postcards: This is a real photograph

June 2015

Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898)

Edward Lucien Roisin Besnard (L. Roisin) (French, 1876-1943)

La casa de la postal

Review: ‘Paradise’ by Brook Andrew at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 18th June – 30th July 2011

Exhibition: ‘Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Exhibition dates: 3rd February – 25th May 2009

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: ‘Orphans and small groups’ 1994-96 Part 2

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