| Newsletter for Collectors - Vol 6.1 | Jan 15, 2012 | | | Home • What‘s New • Photographers • Online Exhibitions
Visual Indexes • Galleries & Dealers • Timelines • Techniques
Library • Contact us Welcome to 2012 and another Luminous-Lint Newsletter.
Conference on Carol Szathmari, Pioneer Photographer and his Contemporaries (14-16 May, 2012, Romanian Academy, Bucharest) |
Carol Szathmari
Self-portrait
Albumen print
Library of the Romanian Academy
The deadline for submissions to the conference on Carol Szathmari, Pioneer Photographer and his Contemporaries is 1st March 2012 and the organizers welcome
papers on the contemporaries of Szathmari including Roger Fenton, James Robertson, Gustave Le Gray and Henri Le Secq. It will include research on the Crimean War and studio portraiture of the period.
Please send the title and an abstract of your paper (max. 300 words) as well as a curriculum vitae, to the following addresses: istartro@yahoo.com and adriansilvan@hotmail.com.
The board of organization:
Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, Alan Griffiths, Ruxanda Beldiman, Cornelia König
NEW ONLINE EXHIBITIONS
WARNING
Some of the online-exhibitions in this Newsletter contain images that may be considered disturbing and if you are of a sensitive disposition I would advise against viewing them. You have been warned. |
- Photograph albums from North American Private Collections
The patenting of the Carte de Visite (CDV) by Andre Disderi of France in 1854 and subsequent introduction to North America in 1859 made it possible for everyone to have their photographic portrait taken. The cost was low, it was easy to order duplicates, the small business card size made it ideal for mailing and, if there was no photo studio nearby, a travelling photographer would soon show up in a horse-drawn carriage outfitted with cheap backdrops and a primitive darkroom. Enterprising inventors on both sides of the Atlantic created a bewildering array of devices designed to showcase numerous CDVs at once... the album being the most popular and enduring.
Whole new industries sprang up to supply the album manufacturers with special papers, boards, gilded clasps, porcelain rests etc., in addition to the leathers, velvets, carved woods, composition and thermoplastic materials used for the covers. Costly machines were invented for the cutting and gilding (bronzing) of the pages. Gilders and other craftsmen couldn‘t be hired fast enough. The public demand for albums was unrelenting. There was no limit to the variety and richness of ornamentation, except the means of the buyer. Prices started at 75 cents to $50 or more, depending on the decorations. While many businesses folded during the Civil War, the manufacturers of albums thrived. One of the earliest was William Harding of Philadelphia, a prominent Bible maker, who registered an album patent, possibly as early as 1853, to be followed by others up to 1872. The most prolific maker was Samuel Bowles & Co. of Springfield, Mass. Statistics available for the year of 1864 state that, in that year alone, the firm "employed about 100 hands, used 50 tons of paper and 125 tons of pasteboard and album board, with other material to match". The popularity of the Cabinet Card ca.1880-1890 spelled the end of these jewels of bookbinding.
Partially excerpted from the Springfield Republican, December 28, 1864.
With thanks to Pam Ferrazzutti for getting the ball rolling with enthusiasm and humor. Thanks to Stephen Evans who put us in touch and to Paul Berg, Matt Isenburg and Jules Martino - collectors of photographica - for proving additional examples.
- Fabricated Cameras and Contemporary Pinhole Photography
This exhibition is one of the most extraordinary I‘ve put together and was a fortunate surprise. After meeting pinhole camera maker Benjamin Wooten in Halifax at a gallery opening in November 2011 we discussed the idea for bringing together examples of contemporary pinhole cameras and the photographs made with them. I sent around an email and seven of the leading camera makers graciously provided examples of their works - and quite a variety of cameras it is - Band-Aid boxes, gas masks, human skulls, complex underwater contraptions, cardboard boxes, ceramic cameras, ammo boxes, human blood, an RV, a VW camper and a wheelie bin.
I‘d like to thank the artist-inventors and pinhole enthusiasts who have supplied examples:
Jo Babcock
Alyson Belcher
Wayne Martin Belger
Steve Irvine
Donald Lawrence
Justin Quinell
Benjamin Wooten
Thanks to you all - You create tangible visions.
- Icons of the South - Portraits of Ouleds-Nails (Algeria 1860-1910)
“Exposed to the curious eyes of foreigners in all the showcases of the photographers, is a portrait of a woman of the south in a bizarre costume, with the impressive face of an idol from the old Orient […], the face of a bird of prey with eyes full of mystery …” So begins Le Portrait de l’Ouled Nail, written by Isabelle Eberhardt at the very beginning of the twentieth century. Classic iconographs of the Algerian south, the Ouled Nail never ceased to fascinate travellers and artists, from Fromentin to Gide and Robert Hitchens, who popularised the legend of these Bedouin women leaving the desert for Biskra and Bou Saada, well before the arrival of the first Europeans, to become dancers and prostitutes for long enough to build up a satisfactory dowry and return to marry a man of their own tribe.
From the introduction by Michel Mégnin.
Thanks to Gilles Dupont, great grandson of Auguste Maure; and to Bruno Tartarin, the Photo-Verdeau gallery, Paris. Special thanks to Angela Martin for an attentive and sensitive translation from the original French.
- New Objectivity
An online exhibition on New Objectivity has been added covering the works of August Sander, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Karl Blossfeldt and Walter Peterhans.
Ideas for improving this selection are most welcome.
- Insights into the Photographic Collection of the Austrian Geographic Society
The Geographic Society (Die Geographische Gesellschaft, ÖGG) was founded in 1856 in Vienna. Its collection contained about 3,300 photographs, including 1,500 from the era of the former monarchy. Here, a passion for discovery becomes visible in a unique manner, meant to be disseminated among a broad public using photography, which was considered an authentic medium.
The holdings demonstrate what kinds of visual information about far-away, exotic and (yet) unexplored places the Austrian public was confronted with: the majority of the images served as models for illustrations in magazines and books. The world appears as an object of discovery, of research of every kind, but also as a place that is changed and exploited by colonialism. The photographs are of ethnographic and geographic character, but often also deal with current affairs. They tell of fascinating architecture and foreign customs, of revolutions, natural disasters and industrialization as it spread out to the furthest corners of the world, of the construction of bridges and railways, oil drilling, agriculture and labor under a wide variety of circumstances.
[Translation: Alexa Nieschlag]
With special thanks to Dr. Monika Faber and Magdalena Vukovic of the Photoinstitut Bonartes, Vienna, Austria for their assistance.
- Surrealism
A long overdue online exhibition on Surrealism has been added including portraits of key protagonists including Jean Cocteau, Andre Breton, Man Ray, Dora Maar, Magritte, Hans Bellmer and those on the periphery such as Picasso and Dali. The exhibition includes solarizations, photograms (rayograms), the contorted dolls of Hans Bellmer, the baby armadillo (Père Ubu) taken by Dora Maar in 1936 and the high viewpoints of Umbo. Two of the alienating shop windows of Eugène Atget have also been included.
Surrealism has never died out although its popularity has varied over time - the Christmas cards of Angus McBean, distortions by André Kertész, Weegee and Robert Doisneau, and the floating tree photomontages of Jerry N. Uelsmann are all part of this continuum.
- Drawing and optical devices - Camera Lucida
This covers the Camera lucida and the examples by Henry Fox Talbot during his visit to Lake Como.
- Drawing and optical devices - Camera Obscura
As an aid to research I am bringing together a number of illustrations on drawing, drafting and optical devices that played a part in the development of photography. The first of these is on the Camera obscura.
- Drawing and optical devices - Physionotrace
Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1754-1811) invented a mechanical device to assist in the creation of portraits. This online exhibition includes an early illustration of the device and a number of examples.
- Drawing and optical devices - Silhouettes
A few examples of silhouettes and I‘d welcome others. Are there any surviving silhouette portraits of photographers, opticians, chemists and scientists involved in the early days of photography?
- Countess de Castiglione
The other day I was browsing through the "Dossier Photographies sur le Second Empire réunies par l‘abbé Misset" at ARCHIM - Service interministériel des archives de France and I came across some of the hand-painted photographs of the Countess of Castiglione by Louis Pierson that I hadn‘t seen. They may well be in the book by Pierre Apraxine and Xavier Demange, La Divine Comtesse: Photographs of the Countess de Castiglione (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) but not having a copy I‘m unable to check and I‘m sure that some of you will let me know. The collection of the portraits of the Countess de Castiglione at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is extraordinary and I felt it would be enjoyable to give them another showing.
- Pictorialism
Thanks to the attentive support of collectors, particularly PhotoSeed (formerly the Spencer Photographic Archive), and galleries Luminous-Lint has been able to mount a number of online exhibitions that include many of the key publications on pictorialism along with exhibitions on significant photographers and schools. For those of you that see Camera Work as the most significant publication this will be a treat and a revelation as the less well known European publications started almost ten years earlier.
Publications
A Record of the Photographic Salon of 1895 (London)
Kodak Portfolio: Souvenir of the Eastman Photographic Exhibition 1897
Alfred Stieglitz: Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies (1897)
Die Kunst in der Photographie (1897)
Die Kunst in der Photographie (1898)
Die Kunst in der Photographie (1899)
Die Kunst in der Photographie (1900)
Die Kunst in der Photographie (1901)
Die Kunst in der Photographie (1897-1908)
G.L. Arlaud: Vingt Études de Nu en Plein Air
Gustave Marissiaux: Visions d’Artistes (1908)
Japanese pictorialism: Bunka Shashin-shu (1922)
Première Exposition d‘Art Photographique - 1894 (The Photo-Club de Paris)
Deuxième Exposition d‘Art Photographique - 1895 (The Photo-Club de Paris)
Troisième Exposition dArt Photographique - 1896 (The Photo-Club de Paris)
Quatrième Année Salon de Photographie - 1897 (The Photo-Club de Paris)
Wiener Photographische Blätter: Herausgegeben Vom Camera-Club In Wien (1894)
Wiener Photographische Blätter: Herausgegeben Vom Camera-Club In Wien (1896)
American Pictorialism: Camera Work (1903-1917)
Photographers and schools
A. Aubrey Bodine: Baltimore Pictorialist
The Clarence H. White School of Photography
Themes
Erotica: A Pictorialist perspective
Flowers: A Pictorialist perspective
Trees: A Pictorialist perspective
Portraits: A Pictorialist perspective
Japanese Art Photography preserved on Postcards
- F64 - As a continuation of the series of exhibition on Movements I would like to do an exhibition on F64. Can anybody assist with this who understands the rights and has possibly already curated an exhibition in this area?
- Bauhaus / New Bauhaus / Art Institute of Chicago - I‘d welcome suggestions for a curator who might be able to assist with an online exhibition..
- Portraits of photographers - Portraits are now arriving in almost every day and we have over 1500 online. If you can assist with any portraits of photographers it would be greatly appreciated. All works are credited and linked back. Have you ever attended a workshop or a photo-festival and taken some portraits? If you have I‘d like to hear about it. Perhaps you have some anecdotes to share?
The online exhibitions on Luminous-lint are never static so if you have better quality scans or a correction let me know.
Join in when you can - sharing makes the world a better place.
Alan - alan@luminous-lint.com
My own page on Facebook
Subscribe to my Facebook page - Alan Griffiths
to keep updated about what is happening on Luminous-Lint and in the wider world of photography. To everybody who is participating thanks for all your friendship, knowledge and support.
ADDRESS
Want your invitations, catalogs, books and prints to arrive at my place? Well check your address book:
Alan Griffiths
Luminous-Lint
Box 33055
Quinpool RPO
Halifax NS B3L 4T6
CANADA
IMPORTANT: Couriers, such as Fedex and UPS, require a street address and telephone number so send me an email (alan@luminous-lint.com) to obtain further instructions if that is the way you ship.
To get a wider perspective on the topics covered on Luminous-Lint the following links will help. |
|
What‘s New on Luminous-Lint |
Frédéric Brenner (1959, 15 January - ) was born - France, Paris. Concentrates on Jewish issues of exile and the Diaspora.
Francis Benjamin Johnston (1864, 15 January - 1952, 16 March) was born - US, WV, Grafton. American photographer. Her Hampton Album on a craft school for Black and Native Americans in the early 1900s is outstanding.
Lisa M. Robinson (1968, 15 January - ) was born - US, GA, Savannah.
Shõmei Tõmatsu (1930, 15 January - ) was born - Japan, Nagoya. Japanese freelance photographer. He has produced a large number of books with several in the 1960s examining the impact of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
Thérèse Bonney (1894, 15 July - 1978, 15 January) died - France, Paris. She recorded the plight of children that was caused by World War II first concentrating on the civilians on the Russian-Finnish front and later those in Western Europe. She was awarded the Order of the White Rose of Finland for bravery.
Mathew B. Brady (1823 - 1896, 15 January) died - US. NY, New York. American photographer best known for portraits of famous contemporary Americans and his photographs of the American Civil War.
His obituary in the New York Times (Jan 19, 1896, p.3) read:
Death of MATTHEW B. BRAD [sic]
More... |
| |
|
LuminousLint 
@LuminousLint
