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Sun In Rock
Minor White, 1947
Silver Gelatin Print
This image is from the book Minor White: The Eye that Shapes by Peter C. Bunnell. It was published by on the occasion of a an exhibition of the same name, which appeared from 1989 to 1991 at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Portland Art Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Art, George Eastman House, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Art Museum, Princeton University.
Minor White (1908-1976) was an influential and controversial American photographer, writer, and professor. You can read about him here.
To quote Minor White, "When you approach something to photograph it, first be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence. Then don't leave until you have captured its essence."
Shadow Faces
Edward P. McMurtry, 1932
Carbro print
This week, we're back to the book Pictorialism in California: Photographs 1900-1940, with essays by Michael G. Wilson and Dennis Reed, published in 1994 by the J Paul Getty Museum.
Edward P. McMurtry (1883-1969) lived most of his life in Pasadena California, and was independently wealthy. He patented several inventions and tools related to photography, and joined the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles in 1929. The American Annual of Photography rated him as the second most exhibited pictorialist photographer in the world between 1930 and 1935: submitting his work to salons throughout the world, he showed 929 prints in 179 salons.
Texture, composition, chiaroscuro, feeling, understatement...
The Water Rats
Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, 1886
Carbon print (?)
Another image from the book A Personal View: Photography in the Collection of Paul F. Walter published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1985.
Frank Meadow Sutcliffe made his pictures in England, in the fishing village of Whitby, in York. His principal teacher was his father Tom Sutcliffe, a well-known watercolorist, printmaker, teacher, and amateur photographer. This photograph was awarded a medal by the Photographic Society of London, and was frequently imitated by others at the time. It is Sutcliffe's most famous picture.
Sutcliffe disliked shooting under direct sunshine. "The first and best plan," he said, "is to keep the camera at home until nature herself has wrapped the subject in a veil of mist"
Atmosphere, tonality, timelessness
Light Rays on Trains, La Salle Street Station, Chicago
William M. Rittase, 1931
Gelatin Silver print
Another image from the book A Personal View: Photography in the Collection of Paul F. Walter published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1985.
William M. Rittase was a highly successful commercial photographer. This picture was made for his client the American Railroad Association, for a series entitled "The Lone Traveller". Although he worked on assignment, he submitted his photographs to salons and pictorialist annuals of the 1920s and 1930s. The 1937 exhibition Photography 1839-1937, organized by Beaumont Newhall, featured four of his works.
Atmosphere, composition, tonality, timelessness
Jagmandar: Water Palace at Udaipur
Colin Murray, 1872-73
This 150 year old masterpiece is from the book A Personal View: Photography in the Collection of Paul F. Walter published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1985.
This photograph is an Albumen-Silver print, made from a wet-collodion glass negative.
Atmosphere, composition, tonality, timelessness
Water Lilies, Kapaa, Hawaii
12x20 inch Palladium Print
Dick Arentz, 1987
This photograph is from the book Platinum & Palladium Printing Second Edition by Dick Arentz, printed in 2005 by Focal Press. It's a superb volume with comprehensive and detailed instruction, and it includes many wonderful illustrations such as the one above. The text contains contributions by Bob Herbst, Sandy King, Stan Klimek, Mark Nelson and Keith Schreiber, who are great photographers and noted experts in their own right.
Dick Arentz is one of the great names in Large Format Photography: artist, teacher, technical master, author of several beautiful books. You can read more about him and see many of his stunning Platinum/Palladium prints here.
These water lilies have a natural and alive quality: they seem to float and move about the image. This is a musical image, with rhythm and color. A small reproduction will not likely do justice to the detail and luminosity of a Palladium contact print from a 12x20 inch in-camera negative...but it will hopefully give us a suggestion.
Penn Station
Dr. Drahomir Jospeh Ruzicka, 1919
Another photograph from the book O Say Can You See, American Photographs 1839-1939 by Thomas Weston Fels. The sub-title of the book is "One Hundred Years of American Photographs from the George R. Rinehart Collection". It catalogs an exhibition at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield Massachusetts, and was published in 1989 by the M.I.T. Press.
According to the book, Dr. Drahomir Jospeh Ruzicka (1870-1950) was born in Bohemia, emigrated to the USA at the age of 6, and practiced Medicine until 1922. "Ruzicka exhibited in Europe and America after 1912, developing a wide reputation as an outstanding Pictorialist. Among his European followers was Joseph Sudek, with whom he shared a circle of friends with photographic interests in Prague. He was well recognized in his own time, serving as President of the New York Camera Club, honorary member of the Royal Photographic Society, founding member of the Pictorial Photographers of America, and fellow of the Photographic Society of America".
Handsome and grand. Dramatic and refined. Documentary and artistic. Fact and feeling.
Little Girl with Parasol
Dwight A. Davis
Platinum print ca. 1904
This photograph is from the book O Say Can You See, American Photographs 1839-1939 by Thomas Weston Fels. The sub-title of the book is "One Hundred Years of American Photographs from the George R. Rinehart Collection". It catalogs an exhibition at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield Massachusetts, and was published in 1989 by the M.I.T. Press.
According to the book, Dwight A. Davis (1852-1943) "was widely recognized as one of the fathers of American Pictorialism. He was a founding member of the Pictorial Photographers of America, along with Clarence White, Gertrude Käsebier and others, and a member of the Council of Forty, representing Massachusetts... Davis' work was reproduced in Photo-Era and other journals of the day."
Shadows and sunshine. Sharp and soft. Posed and natural.
Boy Fishing
Wynn Bullock, 1959
This photograph is from the book Wynn Bullock, by Chris Johnson and Barbara Bullock-Wilson. It was published by Phaidon in 2001, as part of their 55 series.
Wynn Bullock was an American photographer who lived from 1902 to 1975. Along with Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, he was part of the "West Coast school" of landscape and figure photography that flourished during the 1940's and 50's. Bullock was a classical vocalist before taking up photography at age 40. He achieved great notoriety when several of his images were chosen by Edward Steichen for the 1955 exhibition entitled Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which was seen by over 9 million people in over 38 countries, and which became a book of which more than 4 million copies have been sold.
Along with technical strength and precision, Bullock's photographs are always infused with an element of mystery. Some of them are more like investigations than "pictures of something". This photo is a bit more objective perhaps, but there's still just something about it...
Negro men and women working in a field, Bayou Bourbeaux Plantation, Natchitoches Louisiana
Marion Post Wolcott, 1940
This photograph is from the book Marion Post Wolcott: A Photographic Journey, by F. Jack Hurley. It was published by the University of New Mexico Press in 1989.
Marion Post Wolcott lived from 1910 to 1990 and made pictures for the Farm Security Administration in the USA during the Great Depression. Her photographs document the extreme circumstances of the rural people who lived through that era. You can read more about her interesting life story here and here.
Although it's a documentary image of people at work, it's also a very handsome group portrait. Each person stands like a sculpture. Each has a distinct posture and gaze. Each is draped in clothing that is beautifully rendered by the light. To borrow from William Blake, good photographs help us to "see a world in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour".
Manhattan Bridge, seen from the FDR Drive
Jan Staller, 1988
This photograph is from the book Frontier New York, by Jan Staller. It's a time-exposure: the red line across the center was created by the tail-lights of passing automobiles. Because the photo was made during a snowstorm - or in deep fog - it's hard to determine the time of day. These factors give the image a kind of timeless quality.
Jan Staller makes photos of human artifacts: what we might call "urban landscape". You can read a recent New York Times article about him here, see more of his work here, and read his blog here.
Staller's recent work is generally more abstract and flat - revealing beauty where we might never expect it - but this photo comes from an older, more "naturalistic" period. Frontier New York deals more with the influence of Nature on the works of Man. It shows how rain, snow and the depths of night soften and ameliorate the harshness of industry.
Oak Tree, Holmdel, New Jersey
George Tice, 1970
This photograph is a Palladium Print. Palladium prints are made with Palladium instead of Silver (or ink). A variant of Platinum printing, it's an old process which produces delicate tonality and shading. For the right subject - like this one - it can render images of subtle beauty.
According to Wikipedia, "George Tice (1938) is an American photographer best known for his large-format black-and-white photographs of New Jersey. Tice was born in Newark, New Jersey, and self-trained as a photographer. His work is included in major museum collections around the world and he has published many books of photographs, including Fields of Peace: A Pennsylvania German Album (1970), Paterson, New Jersey (1972), Seacoast Maine: People and Places (1973), Urban Landscapes: A New Jersey Portrait (1975), and Hometowns: An American Pilgrimage (1988)."
Here's an interview with George Tice, part of John Paul Caponigro's excellent series. It first appeared in the July/August 1996 issue of View Camera magazine.
It's the first Palladium print I ever saw, and at the time I didn't even know what that meant, but it looked more like a sculpture wrought out of Palladium, than "a picture of something". We can see the same effect in Paul Strand's 1954 portrait of Murdoch McRury, who appears to be made of Bronze.
Accordion Player
Eduard Van Der Elsken, 1950
This photograph appears in the book PARIS THE CITY AND ITS PHOTOGRAPHERS by Patrick Deeds-Vincke. It was published in 1992 by Bulfinch Press.
Eduard Van Der Elsken (1925-1990) was a Dutch photographer who studied painting and drawing until the outbreak of World Word II, when he joined the Resistance. Arriving in Paris in 1950 with only a Leica camera and two rolls of film, he lived under bridges and worked making photos in cafés at night. Eventually, he became a photojournalist, received several awards, and published The Sweet Life, a book for which he was awarded the Netherlands National Film Award. He travelled the world and created several other books from his photographs of Africa, Paris, and Amsterdam.
Subject matter and design work together here to make an image with a strong sense of presence. It also captures an impression of Paris from that time. It will look even more remarkable in another 60 years.
The Veiled Lady
Louis Fleckenstein, 1920
Another image from the book Pictorialism in California: Photographs 1900-1940, with essays by Michael G. Wilson and Dennis Reed, published in 1994 by the J Paul Getty Museum.
Louis Fleckenstein (1866-1942) started out as a painter, but switched to Photography before 1900. He won many awards and medals, and helped establish the First American Photographic Salon and other camera clubs, including the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles. He maintained a portrait studio there until 1923, and served on the city of Long Beach's first arts commission.
More than beautiful tones and textures, it is intimate and feminine, yet a rather bold and powerful design. Simple and direct, it is at the same time understated and mysterious.
Paper Bird
Hiromu Kira, 1928
Another image from the book Pictorialism in California: Photographs 1900-1940, with essays by Michael G. Wilson and Dennis Reed, published in 1994 by the J Paul Getty Museum.
Although Pictorialism is commonly associated with soft-focus and romantic themes, many pictorialists used sharp focus and shot abstract subjects. Pictorialists were amateurs in the strict sense of the term: amateur (from the Latin amātor) denotes one who does something out of love - as opposed to professionals, whose work the pictorialists considered manufactured and uninspired.
Wonderful tones, imaginative composition. Graceful lines. Masterful lighting. Light-hearted, playful.
Sunbathing on the Shores of a Sierra Lake
Ansel Adams, 1928
This image is from the book Pictorialism in California: Photographs 1900-1940, with essays by Michael G. Wilson and Dennis Reed, published in 1994 by the J Paul Getty Museum.
Pictorialism was a movement in reaction to commercial photography. Today, we would call it "Fine Art Photography". The term pictorial was first used by Henry Peach Robinson in 1869 to distinguish fine art photography from technical, scientific, and documentary approaches. One of its early exponents in California was none other than Ansel Adams, who wrote the following:
"I am more than ever convinced that the only possible way to interpret the scenes hereabout is through an impressionistic vision... Form, in a material sense, is not only unnecessary, but sometimes useless and undesirable." (Ansel Adams, Letters and Images 1916-1984 by Alinder and Stillman).
It's a very nice photo, especially when we consider that it's from an Ansel Adams with whom very few people are familiar. This is the Ansel Adams from before the advent of "straight" photography, as championed by Group f/64, of which he was a founding member.
Rome, Arch of Constantine 10
Aaron Siskind, 1963
This image is from the book Aaron Siskind Pleasures and Terrors, by Carl Chiarenza, published in 1982 by the New York Graphic Society.
Aaron Siskind was an American photographer who lived from 1903 to 1991. He taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and was a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education. He received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and an NEA grant. You can read more about him at the Aaron Siskind Foundation.
Siskind has been called an Abstract Expressionist Photographer. Many of his images are entirely flat in their appearance, with intense blacks and dramatic texture. Most of his subjects are walls. This image is a bit different, but still has the power.
Morning
Clarence H. White, 1905
This image is from the book Landscape as Photograph, by Estelle Jussim and Elizabeth Lindquist-Cock, published in 1985 by Yale University Press. The image appears in the chapter entitled "Landscape as Symbol".
Clarence Hudson White was an American photographer who lived from 1871 to 1925. A founding member of the Photo-Secession movement, he was recognized for his pictorial portraits and for his contributions as a teacher of the art.
It evokes a special feeling. According to Alvin Langdon Coburn (see below), "If I were asked to name the most subtle and refined master photography has produced... I would name him."
Cattails, Cheney Lake, Kansas
Steve Mulligan
This photograph is from the book Terra Incognita, published in 1998 by the University of Kansas Press. Steve Mulligan is a Large Format landscape photographer who lives in Utah. You can read about him and see more of his images here. The term terra incognita means "unknown territory".
Because they are Large Format images, the photographs in Terra Incognita are of very high resolution: they can't be adequately reproduced in a web browser. Much of their impact comes from Mulligan's keen attention to the most sensitive details of shading and texture. This image, while simpler, conveys a hint of that impact.
To quote from the book's introduction: "I have become convinced that everything in nature - including the most familiar and mundane of subjects - is imbued with a certain degree of mystery. By searching out these skewed and esoteric visual enigmas, by skating the fine line between vision and abstraction, I have journeyed - albeit unknowingly for many years - into my own terra incognita."
Barn, Gaspé
Paul Strand, 1936
Another photograph from the Gaspé Penninsula: this one by Paul Strand. It is from the book Taking Place - Photographs from the Prentice and Paul Sacks Collection. The book documents an exhibit by the same name, held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005.
The textures. The tones. The wonderful composition which reveals just a slice of puffy clouds and deep sky. The edge of the next building on the left: crop that off and the beauty is lost. The flat perspective broken by the depth we feel when looking through the open door, through a distant window, at the wall of yet another barn.
Gaspé Quebec
Fred Picker, 1977
From the book Fred Picker, published to accompany an exhibition at the Prakapas Gallery in New York in 1979. Fred Picker was a well-known 20th-Century Large Format photographer, author and educator. He developed and sold a line of cameras and products for Large Format photographers. He influenced several generations and helped to widely popularize the medium.
This image is deceptively simple. A careful choice of camera position has placed the ocean, sky and buildings into exquisite arrangement. Fine Art photographs need to be seen in person, but even this reproduction conveys a sense of the clear air and silvery light we encounter near the ocean when conditions are just right. It illustrates the rugged beauty of the Gaspé Peninsula.
Mary and Lotte, Insbruck-Tyrol
Heinrich Kühn, 1908
This image demonstrates the potential inherent in gum bichromate images: depth and subtlety of warm tones. The composition is imaginative, but beyond that, it draws you into the photograph and establishes a mood of intimacy and graceful poise.
Taos Ovens, New Mexico
Laura Gilpin, 1926
This is a lovely platinum print. It's a sensitive and feminine rendition of a subject that has been photographed harshly, and so often as to become a cliche.
Laura Gilpin wrote the following: “The greatest tool at our command is the very thing that is photography. Light. Light is our paintbrush and it is a most willing tool in the hands of the one who studies it with a sufficient care”.
November, 1997
Claire Yaffa
Heaven knows, many figure studies have been made. This one is lovely, but it's understated, suggestive. It's evocative, but indirect.
Stump, Early Morning Mist, Emerald Lake, Canada
John Sexton, 1988
The first few lines of the book say it all: "It is the light that reveals, light that obscures, light that communicates. So it is the light I 'listen' to. I find my listening time with light when it is quiet - before sunrise, after sunset."
Screen Door, Hudson Wisconsin
John Szarkowski, 1950
Great photographers reveal the extraordinary present in the ordinary.
During the Reed Harvest
Peter Henry Emerson, 1886
His photographs convey a sense of harmony between man and nature, and this one has a magical timeless quality. It was Emerson who wrote the following:"We strongly advise those desirous of doing artistic study of work to begin by studying tone."
The Red Man
Gertrude Käsebier, 1902
Northwest Native
Immogen Cunningham, 1934
She's perhaps best known for her sensual photos of flowers, but here is one of her wonderful environmental portraits. A fine and clever composition, this photograph is clear, direct, and charming.
Regent's Canal
Alvin Langdon Coburn, 1905
A life-long student of mysticism and metaphysics, his photographs are beautiful - but they go beyond mere design. They have a poetic quality suggestive of something... more.
Callanish after hailstorm, Lewis
Fay Godwin, 1980
Lewis is an island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Earlier inhabitants left monuments in the form of standing stones throughout the British Isles, including this famous one near the village of Callanish. While countless photographs of these monuments have been made, this is one of the most handsome I have ever seen.
Swell, Southern Ocean, Near 50d S
from the M/V PROFESSOR ZUBOV
Stuart Klipper, 1992
This is a photograph with excellent detail and powerful atmosphere. It has strong feeling of presence: it feels alive.
Cable Car, San Francisco
Max Yavno, 1947
Great photographs show us something we don't ordinarily see or recognize. Here is such a case. The mundane business of Life has been revealed to be a dance. The dance has frozen into a coordinated geometry of living statues.
Child, Uruapan, Michoacan
Paul Strand, 1933
I could show a different Paul Strand photograph every week, for a very long time. This one is typical of his portraits. The tones and textures are magnificent. Nothing is contrived. It's just perfect.
Paris
Jeanloup Sieff, 1991
Beauty, grace, repose. A figure study, a documentary image. It tells a story, paints an impression. Light and shadow. Near and far. Two views at once.
Martin Schweig Studio
St Louis Missouri, 1965
It's over the top, as they say.
Marthe
Pierre Bonnard, 1900
Two men talking, Washington D.C.
Roy DeCarava, 1963
It's poignant. It's elegant. It's visually bold but has depth as well as surface content. It has a powerful sense of presence: it's as though we're looking over this man's shoulder, right now. Like so many of his images, it captures the feeling of an era, now almost 40 years past. You can learn more about Roy DeCarava here.
Ship Lady Isabella
J. Wynne Jones, Commander
Wilhelm Hester, 1899
I like old photographs like this: well-crafted and handsome. Like others in this series, they reach across the limits of time.
An Experiment in Hypnotism
Stereograph
A.E. Moxley, 1901
Stereographs can be quite beautiful - and fun ! If you cross your eyes, you can see this image in stereo. Is the man really suspended in the air ? It looks pretty convincing !
Tidal marsh, Mount Desert Island, Maine
Eliot Porter, 1964
Traveling along the coast of Maine, many of us admire these beautiful tidal marshes and wonder what it would be like to photograph them. Eliot Porter did more than that: he captured the essence of their vast and quiet beauty.
Bamboo and plum blossoms
Shinji Takama, 1986
In the section entitled Spring, the poet Keiichi Ito writes the following: "Now, more than anything else, it is the bamboo shoots which speak to something deep inside of me. They burst forth green and fresh and beyond all praise."
Still Life
Christopher Broadbent, 2011
William Finley with a black-throated sparrow
Irene Finley, 1910
This photo is from the book entitled "William L Finley, Pioneer Wildlife Photographer" by Worth Mathewson. I like the pictures of the photographers, more than those of the birds they photographed. This finely seen image not only tells a story: it captures the feeling of a bygone era.
South Fork of the Tuolumne River, Yosemite
Marion Patterson, 1993
It breathes. It flows. It undulates. It really feels like stone and water.
Ellen Terry at Age Sixteen
Julia Margaret Cameron, 1864
Ramiel
Edward Weston, 1929
This photograph is as much a study in tones, textures and shapes, as it is the likeness of an individual. Weston reaches the fine point of balance, between things as they are and - as Minor White put it - things for what else they are.
Tina
Edward Weston, 1923
It all depends upon Tina's white hand, against her jet-black dress. Remove that hand from the photo, and there's nothing left.
Negro Barber Shop Interior, Alabama
Walker Evans, 1936
Excellent composition and lighting. Wonderful detail. A sense of presence and silence. Another subject which appeared "ordinary" at the time - but which the photographer recognized.
Roadside Stand Near Birmingham Alabama
Walker Evans, 1936
At the time, this scene appeared perfectly commonplace, nothing special. People probably asked him "What are you taking a picture of ?" Today - 75 years later - it's obvious.
Leaf and Ferns, Hawaii
Brett Weston, 1979
Composition. Elegance. Sensuality. Power. Subtlety. See the Brett Weston Archive online. View his photographs in person if you get the opportunity.
Georgia O'Keefe
Alfred Stieglitz, 1924
The lighting isn't soft. The pose isn't flattering. She's not smiling. It's all about the tones. Study Stieglitz to study tones. Study Stieglitz to study simplicity.
Aeroplane
Alfred Stieglitz, 1910
This photo has a magical feeling. Over 100 years old, it conveys the sense of another era. The lighting is sublime, the composition is imaginative and effective. Somehow, it evokes a moment outside of time.
Sentinel Rock, Snowstorm, Yosemite
Charles Cramer, 1982
Although much of his work is in color - very tasteful color - this monochrome image of Yosemite really works with the imagination. Many have photographed Yosemite, and shown us the glory, but often with a measure of over-statement. This image conveys the colossal scale and grandeur of Yosemite, but leaves us in silence and awe.
Murdoch McRury
Paul Strand, 1954
This is one of the most engaging portraits I have ever seen. The subject is relaxed, but looking directly into the camera. He appears to be made of platinum or some other fine metal. There's not much else I can say about this photograph: just compare it to other portraits, and see for yourself.
Wedge & Bush
Bruce Barnbaum, 2001
Many acclaimed photographers have trekked the dunes, including giants like Edward Weston and his sons - but I can't remember seeing *any* images on this level of Elegance, Mystery, Atmosphere, Luminosity, Silence, Grandeur, and Timelessness. The only others like it, are the other photographs in Barnbaum's series entitled Death Valley Dunes.
Twelve Birds
Brian Kosoff, 2003
Misty View from Skye
Brian Kosoff, 2001
Beauty and mystery. Mystery and beauty. Simplicity. Perfect composition. Exquisite tones. Kosoff is an artist who happens to use a camera. Have a look at his more recent work: it's on an even higher aesthetic plane.
Jug
Christopher Broadbent, 2010
Broadbent is a poet. He's probably the reincarnation of a great Italian master painter: He knows how to handle color, and he understands lighting. When I see his work, I say Bravo !
This photo is not the only one he has made of such beauty. Broadbent has many such images,
with subtle rendition, rich coloration, high definition, and textures that delight the eye. It was hard to pick just one !
Rialto
Colin Flannery Graham, June 2009
Graham's photographs have a sense of quiet and vastness at the same time. His rendering of light and atmosphere is marvelous. Artists call this chiaroscuro: "light and dark".
Many people take photographs of the sea. Few, however, manage to capture a sense of Eternity. Graham's interpretation is understated - and elegant. Like the Ocean itself, it is... deep.