The Haystack (1844) by Fox Talbot

William Henry Fox Talbot

The Haystack  April 1844

salted paper print

Printed by Nicolaas Henneman

19 x 22.9 cm; image: 16.4 x 21 cm

Purchased 1975

National Gallery of Canada (no. 33487.31) 

source: National Gallery of Canada

plate from THE PENCIL OF NATURE, London, 1844 by Fox Talbot

read it here: Project Gutenberg

download it here

Bayard, the "forgotten pioneer"

[Windmills, Montmartre], 1839
Hippolyte Bayard (French, 1801–1887)
Direct positive print

3 3/8 x 3 15/16 in. (8.5 x 10 cm)
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005 (2005.100.32)

source: Metmuseum 

Hippolyte Bayard
French, 1847
Salt print
6 1/2 x 4 13/16 in.
source: Getty

Hippolyte Bayard: Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man, 1840
(Direct Positive Print) 1840

Hippolyte Bayard’s (20 January 1807 – 14 May 1887) role as a pioneer of photography, both as a photographer and as inventor, was overshadowed by Daguerre’ s support by the scientific establishment of his time and by the French government’s monetary rewards for his public disclosure of the Daguerreotype process.  Bayard’s commentary of “protest” on his situation as a “forgotten” photographer and pioneer of photography is expressed in one of his most famous and intriguing images the Self-portrait as a drowned man - drowned by indifference and neglect, as he writes to explain the photograph:

“The corpse which you see here is that of M. Bayard, inventor of the process that has just been shown to you. As far as I know this indefatigable experimenter has been occupied for about three years with his discovery. The Government, which has been only too generous to Monsieur Daguerre, has said it can do nothing for Monsieur Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned himself. Oh the vagaries of human life....! ... He has been at the morgue for several days, and no-one has recognized or claimed him. Ladies and gentlemen, you'd better pass along for fear of offending your sense of smell, for as you can observe, the face and hands of the gentleman are beginning to decay.”

The visible world and the act of seeing are the focus of pioneer photographers such as Talbot and Bayard, as Ian Jeffrey observes (1). And yet, a self-conscious grasp of the structures of vision and, therefore, a representation that emphasizes the organization of the visible field: masses, forms, contrasts, the materiality of surfaces and forms as well as their transformations by and into lights and shadows, differentiates the work of the Frenchman from the British inventor.

At least in the sense that Bayard’s photographs present, in a way, a more coherent approach or perhaps we should say, a more deliberate or persistent pursuit of effects or types of vision that Talbot is also able to create and recreate in some of his best works. However, in the multiplicity of interests and subjects (as well as the various functions ascribed to photography) of the British photographer, something of the “random” or tentative experiences, doings and frame of mind proper to the inventor comes to the fore in ways that at times divert the concentration of the photographer (and the viewer) from the particular qualities and themes or concepts of photography as such.  Of course, such a consideration can in a sense be understood as purely “retrospective”, for Talbot as Bayard are explorers of a new visibility without prior standards.

And yet, if both, as Ian Jeffrey states, “exult in appearance”, and therefore "celebrate (pure) presence” they do so with somewhat different degrees of conviction, with different assertive strategies, goals and results.  As Talbot in the "Open door" (1844) explicitly refers (or "justifies" it in connection ) to Dutch painting and Baroque art , the deliberate vision of Bayard anticipates, in Ian Jeffrey' s somewhat over-emphatic characterization,  the self -conscious, analytical explorations of vision and of the visible by the Cubists (2).

Marcelo Guimarães Lima

1) Jeffrey, Ian: Photography – a concise history, London, 1981

2) Jeffrey, 1981, p. 25

 

Walker Evans (1903-1975)

"Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is the defining of observation full and felt."

Walker Evans

Walker Evans began to photograph in the late 1920s, making snapshots during a European trip. Upon his return to New York, he published his first images in 1930. During the Great Depression, Evans began to photograph for the Resettlement Administration, later known as the Farm Security Administration (FSA), documenting workers and architecture in the Southeastern states. In 1936 he traveled with the writer James Agee to illustrate an article on tenant farm families for Fortune magazine; the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men came out of this collaboration.

Throughout his career Evans contributed photographs to numerous publications, including three devoted solely to his work. In 1965 he left Fortune, where he had been a staff photographer for twenty years, to become a professor of photography and graphic design at Yale University. He remained in the position until 1974, a year before his death.

source: Getty Museum
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1634&page=2

 Walker Evans
New York City, 1929
Gelatin silver print
7 1/4 x 5 in.

 Walker Evans
 Brooklyn Bridge, 1928-29
Gelatin silver print

 

 Walker Evans
Girl in Fulton Street
New York, 1929

Walker Evans
New York City, 1929
Gelatin silver print

Walker Evans
6th Avenue and 42nd Street, 1929
Gelatin silver print

Walker Evans
Subway portrait
1938 - 1941
Gelatin silver print
6 1/2 x 9 1/2 in. 

Walker Evans
Five Men Playing Basketball: For the Series "Dress"
New York City, April 9, 1963
Gelatin silver print
8 5/16 x 11 3/4 in.

 Walker Evans
Graffiti: Dead End
about 1973-74
Polaroid SX-70 print
3 1/8 x 3 1/16 in


  

  
Walker Evans
 Saint Martin, West Indies, 1974
Dye diffusion print
4 1/4 x 3 1/2 in.


© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Paul Strand (1890 – 1976)

"Paul Strand's debut in photography coincided with the first stirrings of modernism in the visual arts in America. Born in New York in 1890, he attended both the class and club in photography taught by Hine at the Ethical Culture School in 1908. A visit to Stieglitz's 291 gallery arranged by Hine inspired Strand to explore the expressive possibilities of the medium, which until then he had considered a hobby. 

Although he was active for a brief period at the Camera Club of New York, whose darkrooms he continued to use for about 20 years, his ideas derived first from the circle around Stieglitz and then from the group that evolved around the Modern Gallery in 1915, including Sheeler and Schamberg. Strand's work, which was exhibited at 291, the Modem Gallery, and the Camera Club, gained prizes at the Wanamaker Photography exhibitions and was featured in the last two issues of Camera Work. 

From about 1915 on, he explored the visual problems that were to become fundamental to the modernist aesthetic as it evolved in both Europe and the United States. During the 1920s he mainly photographed urban sites, continued with the machine forms begun earlier, and turned his attention to nature, using 5 x 7 and 8 x 10 inch view cameras and making contact prints on platinum paper. In these works, acknowledged as seminal in the evolution of the New Objectivity, form and feeling are indivisible and intense. In addition, Strand's writings, beginning in 1917 with "Photography and the New God," set forth the necessity for the photographer to evolve an aesthetic based on the objective nature of reality and on the intrinsic capabilities of the large-format camera with sharp lens."

source:  A World History of Photography by Naomi Rosenblum

 http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/strand/strand_articles2.html

Paul Strand. 

Porch Shadows, 1916. 

Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 

©Aperture Foundation Inc., 

Paul Strand Archive.

http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/exhibition/shadows

 Paul Strand (1890 – 1976)

Blind woman, New York, 1917

Paul Strand 

Double Akeley, New York 1922

Peter Henry Emerson and Naturalistic Photography

Peter Henry Emerson 
b. 1856 Sagua la Grande, Cuba, d. 1936 Great Britain 


Born in Cuba and raised there and in the United States before moving to England as a teenager, physician and scientist Peter Henry Emerson took up photography at age twenty-six. Often described as a difficult zealot, he vocally championed a naturalistic approach to imagemaking. He favored rural subjects presented in a simple, direct manner. Emerson's influential 1889 book Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art outlined his thesis that photography's ability to record nature truthfully was its most expressive one. He argued that the photograph should imitate nature rather than alter it. 

Emerson was a passionate lecturer and writer about photography, never mincing words and thus earning as many foes as supporters. He was an early and tireless champion of photography as a fine art, and he became the unofficial godfather of the Photo-Secessionist movement, founded by Alfred Stieglitz in 1902.

source: GETTY

P.H. Emerson
The Haunt of the Pike

or
Wroxham Broad
ca. 1885
platinum print
21.1 x 29.6 cm.

source: GEH

P. H. Emerson: Confessions from
‘Pictures From Life In Field And Fen’, 1887

P. H. Emerson "Ricking the reed",
from  Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads, 1886

source: Wikipedia

 

Alexander Gardner (1821-1882)

Alexander Gardner
The home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg (1863)

 

Alexander Gardner

 Dead Confederate sharpshooter at the foot of Round Top. 

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 1863.

 

 

 

 

Alexander Gardner.
Richmond, Virginia. "Ruins of Gallego Mills." April 1865

The Lincoln Conspirators, 1865

Alexander Gardner, Lincoln 1865

Mathew Brady (1822-1896)

 

Mathew Brady upon his return from the First Battle of Bull Run,
wearing a saber given to him for defense by New York Fire Zouaves.
Date 22 July 1861
unknown author in Mathew Brady's studio

source: Wikipedia

American Civil War Photographs

source: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/brady-photos/

Abraham Lincoln

link: Mathew Brady Portraits

Mathew Brady : Photographs of the Civil War

 

source: YouTube Smithsonian Magazine

Documentary Photography - 19th Century: Charles Marville (1816 - 1879)

" Originally trained as a painter, engraver, and illustrator, Charles Marville ( b. 1816 Paris, d. 1879) became known as a landscape and architecture photographer. He traveled to Italy, Germany, and Algeria and used both paper and glass plate negatives. In the late 1850s the city of Paris commissioned Marville to document the ancient quarters of the city before encroaching urban modernization changed them forever. He photographed renovations and new construction, including the new Paris Opéra. Marville was also commissioned by the Musée du Louvre to make reproductions of artworks in their collection. He was named official photographer of Paris in 1862. "

source: GETTY Edu

 
Charles Marville
rue de Constantine, Paris, 1865

 Charles Marville
Paris 13e Arrondisment
c. 1865

Charles Marville
rue de la Ferronnerie, Paris
c. 1865

 

Charles Marville
Hotel de Ville 1871 after the

combats of the Commune of Paris

 

Charles Marville

Ingres in his deathbed, 1867

Documentary Photography - 19th Century: Philip Henry Delamotte (1820–1889)

Progress of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, 1854

Philip Henry Delamotte (British, 1820–1889); Henry Negretti (British, born Italy, 1818–1879)
Albumen silver prints
Source: Philip Henry Delamotte: Progress of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham (52.639) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Roger Fenton (1819-1869)

" The photographic career of Roger Fenton (1819-1869) lasted only eleven years, but during that time he became the most famous photographer in Britain. Part of the second generation of photographers who came to maturity in the 1850s—only a decade after the process was invented—Fenton strove to elevate the new medium to the status of a fine art and to establish it as a respected profession. He was the first official photographer to the British Museum and one of the founders of the Photographic Society, later named the Royal Photographic Society, an organization he hoped would help establish the medium's importance in modern life."

 source: http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2004/fenton/index.shtm

 

 Roger Fenton
Self-Portrait, February 1852Albumen silver print from glass negative
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

source: http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/fenton/exhibition.shtm

 

 Roger Fenton, Seated Odalisque, 1858

  Roger Fenton, Discobolos, 1857
source: British Museum

The Crimean War Photographs

Marcus Sparling, full-length portrait,
seated on Roger Fenton's photographic van.salted paper; 17.5 × 16.5 cm., 1855

 

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roger_Fenton%27s_waggon.jpg

The valley of the shadow of death
Fenton, Roger, 1819-1869, photographer, 1855,
salted paper ; 28 x 36 cm.
Dirt road in ravine scattered with cannonballs.
Part of Roger Fenton Crimean War photograph collection,
Library of Congress 

Mortar batteries in front of Picquet house Light Division
Fenton, Roger, 1819-1869, photographer, 1855
salted paper ; 24 x 35.5 cm.
Photo shows five men and three mortars at a mortar battery with bomb-proof shelter.
Part of: Fenton, Roger, 1819-1869. Roger Fenton Crimean War photograph collection,
Library of Congress Collection

Mission Héliographique, 1851

 

Roman Arch at Orange], 1851
Édouard Baldus (French, born Prussia, 1813–1889)
Salted paper print from paper negative
35.3 x 26.2 cm

 

"In 1851, the Commission des Monuments Historiques, an agency of the French government, selected five photographers to make photographic surveys of the nation's architectural patrimony. These Missions Héliographiques, as they were called, were intended to aid the Paris-based commission in determining the nature and urgency of the preservation and restoration of work required at historic sites throughout France. The French rail network was still in its infancy and many of the commissioners had never visited the monuments in their care; photography promised a record of such sites that would be produced more quickly and accurately than the architectural drawings on which they had previously relied."

Malcolm Daniel
Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Source: Mission Héliographique, 1851 | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art