Check out some of these sales results:

Paul Strand, Camera Work XLVIII 1916

Sotheby’s Sale N08730 April 6, 2011

Lot 33 Paul Strand, selected images from Camera Work 48. $31,250

Lot 36 Alfred Stieglitz The Steerage (Large-format photogravure on tissue). $34,375

Swann Sale 2240 March 24, 2011

Lot 69 Camera Work Numbers 12 through 21 & 38.  $43,200

Lot 70 Alvin Langdon Coburn, London. $10,800

Lot 93 Alvin Langdon Coburn, New York (inscribed). $45,600

AIPAD March 17 – 20, 2011

Alvin Langdon Coburn, New York (w/ rare Dust Jacket). $75,000

Paul Strand, Photographs of Mexico (1940). $22,500

Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage (small format). $9,500

The Pictorialists were a loose confederation that encouraged artists to be subjective with their cameras. Impressionist suggestion was preferred over clinical frankness, allegory to journalism. Prints visibly altered by the hand of the photographer were judged to be the most beautiful prints.

Stieglitz’s gradual disgust with this creed and his conversion to the idea that “objectivity is of the very essence of photography”—announced in a 1917 article—slammed shut the pre-World War I chapter of his past. Thereafter, the superiority of sharply focused images and “straight” printing became fundamental for his league of followers and for modernists everywhere.

“TruthBeauty” illustrates what must have been obvious, most of all to Stieglitz: Modernist photographers owed a lot to their despised predecessors, and the line between them was fuzzier than the triumphant upstarts later wanted to admit.

Read the Review

Alvin Langdon Coburn, The Tunnel Builders, New York 1913

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

March 16 – June 20, 2010

From the museum’s website…..

In 1895, only ten years after abandoning medicine to take up photography, Peter Henry Emerson published Marsh Leaves, his last illustrated book. Today it is difficult to imagine the feelings these landscapes inspired in readers of the time – images as uncontrived and evanescent as those in his first collection, Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads published in 1886, were a concentrated representation of rural life.

There was a clear development between the two books from the pictorial model of Jean-François Millet to a style influenced by James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Japanese art, from a documentary approach to pure poetry. Although we in the 21st century can immediately appreciate the formal radicalism that Emerson finally achieved, it is more difficult for us to imagine the fierce aesthetic debates that his first masterstroke aroused at the time.
His writings, as well as formulating Naturalistic photography, are a reminder that below the calm waters of this timeless vision of rural England lurked one of the most virulent polemicists in the history of photography.

Brassai, Open Gutter from "Paris by Night" 1933

Brassai’s Paris de Nuit is highlighted in Andrew Roth’s 101 Best Photography Books, “The photogravures are so rich that the sooty blacks still look like they’ll rub off the page… Brassai became a master of drawing luminosity from the darkness.”

Was Roth correct in referring to the images in this book as photogravures?  Just what does the term ‘photogravure’ really mean? Truth of the matter is that while the images in Paris de Nuit are by strict definition photogravures, they are ’sheet-fed’ photogravures which cannot really be compared in quality or craftsmanship to ‘hand-pulled’ photogravures.

Sheet fed photogravures were printed by relatively high volume presses and are typically found on relatively low-quality paper. Production efficiency and automation trumping aesthetics, the ink was thinned with solvents in order to be able to be applied mechanically.  The ink was also applied thinly to aid in quick drying.  Further compromising quality, a grid like screen was used to generate the gradation of tone rather the more organic and time-consuming aquatint dust used in the hand-pulled photogravure process.  So while sheet fed photogravures did reproduce images in ink with an intaglio plate, that’s where the comparison ends.

The photogravures highlighted on this site are all handmade.  They are old school. The tone defining grain is organic rather than a screen. The ink is thick and rubbed deep into the plate by hand.  The plate is run through the press slowly, one sheet at a time, to insure the complete transfer of the pockets of ink deep into the oftentimes hand handmade tissue or paper.

It is no wonder photogravure is so misunderstood (translate: undervalued.) If the same word is used throughout the photography collecting community to describe both something that is machine made AND something that is hand-made, who wouldn’t be confused?

Roger Fenton, Water Gate, Raglan Castle, 1856

Google alerts are great if you are searching for information on obscure subjects.  That is exactly how I discovered Paul Morgan.  Paul was offering a talk at the National Media Museum entitled ‘Paul Pretsch and Photogalvanography 1850 – 1870′.  Surprised not only to find someone interested in the subject but also to see one of photography’s most prestigious institutions offering a talk on photogralvonagraphy, I emailed Paul to introduce myself and see if he would let me read his lecture.

Paul and I have since had in depth correspondence about Pretsch.  He has provided me with a plethora of images and text regarding Pretsch, photogalvanography and Fenton.  Eventually,  I asked for Paul’s bio.  Expecting to see something like Professor of Art History – Oxford, I was surprised to see that he is a layperson with a passion for creating, learning and writing — rendering his work on Pretsch all the more impressive.

From Paul’s bio….”I was educated at Rossall, then took a degree in Communication Studies at Aston in Birmingham. Have been through quite a variety of jobs, but the main spell was living and working with profoundly handicapped youngsters. Have always been involved in the arts, my own output including painting, drawing, photography, poetry, drama, and prose. Usually occupied in writing of some variety, in latter years mainly odd articles, covering subjects from local history to Captain Morgan the pirate.  My interest in Pretsch came about from finding some photogalvanographic prints, but very little information about them.  I ended up spending a decade intermittently pursuing the full story. Now have turned my attention to an investigation of the Battle of Loos in 1915, where my maternal Grandfather died.”

Paul has generously agreed to let me publish his work on Pretsch in the text section of the site.  It is as comprehensive essay on Photogalvanography you’ll find, celebrating the forgotten innovation that lead to the first published photographic art portfolio in ink – Photographic Art Treasures.

Thank you Paul.

This summer Eric Lutz, Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs for the St. Louis Art Museum, asked me to give a talk to the museum’s Friends of Photography collectors group. It was my first opportunity to present my research to a captive audience. I was concerned that it might be hard to fill the 90 minutes with relevant information, so I edited together a Keynote presentation complete with video clips, sound bites and fancy graphics.

The problem was, I never timed it. Well best laid plans…turns out the talk I prepared would have taken 90 hours! I shifted from plan A to just winging it and the 90 minutes went by in a flash and resulted in just a brief overview. The good news is everybody not only stayed awake, but also left excited about photogravure. Eric later said it was some of the best group energy he had seen at a Friends talk.

The experience was an affirmation that the topic is broad, relevant, rich in detail and able to be appreciated by a wide audience.

Thanks to David Spencer forh is help and for supplying this image of Karl Klic’s first published photogravure.

The turn of the century saw the establishment of an ‘international style’ in photography, laying claim to the medium’s recognition as a fine art. An additional goal of the Pictorialist movement was modernity; in contrast to the medium’s commercial and private uses, art photographers aspired to transform reality. By adapting the subjects of Symbolism, art nouveau’s awareness of form, and the craftsmanship of the Arts and Crafts Movement, they participated in the artistic avant-garde of fin de siècle Modernism and conveyed a very clear message: Photography is art.

Rather than being obvious or shocking, this modernity was hidden within individual aesthetic expression and in the art object’s sumptuous materiality. Numerous photography clubs, magazines, and museum exhibitions provided art photographers with a forum for critical recognition. The movement’s important centers included Vienna, Hamburg, and London, and it found its most important champion in the American Alfred Stieglitz, who published the magazine Camera Work.

Study, Heinrich Kuehn, photogravure 1911

Exotic techniques such as gum bichromate printing, pigment printing, and platinum printing made possible the felicitous translation of painterly and graphic impressions into Pictorialist photography. The eye and hand of the artists were evident throughout, in the prints’ refined compositions as well as their elaborate printing methods. Thus did the camera’s mechanical coldness seem to be surmounted. Like Impressionism, Pictorialism was an art of atmosphere, one that privileged the ’subjective eye’ (Augeneindruck – Hans Watzek).
Through the deliberate use of soft focus – its best known stylistic device – it drew the viewer’s attention toward the formative power of light.

Heinrich Kühn, more than any other, was masterful at harnassing the effects of light for his photographs. The palpably light-filled atmospheres of his careful, intentionally simple compositions emphasized the essence of his respective subjects. Kühn, born in Dresden and based in Innsbruck from the 1890s on, formed the group Trifolium – cloverleaf – together with Hans Watzek and Hugo Henneberg, two friends from the Wiener Camera-Club (Vienna Camera Club). Between 1897 and 1903 the three artist travelled and exhibited together, signing their works with the three-leaf clover motif. It is Henneberg who taught the gum bichromate printing technique to his comrades, a method that Kühn would bring to perfection in the following years.

Both Kühn and Henneberg would exert a lasting influence over Rudolf Koppitz. His Hungrige Raben (Hungry Ravens – before 1914), which brings to mind a Japanese woodcut, derives its modern quality from the high contrast of black and white as well as from the abstracting effect of the bromoil printing process. The Dresden court photographer Erwin Raupp was meanwhile putting his own interpretations of landscapes into practice in large-format gum bichromate prints.

A key figure of British Pictorialism was the Scotsman James Craig Annan. Son of the early photographer Thomas Annan, a member of the Linked Ring, and the first president of the International Society of Pictorial Photographers, he and his father learned the technique of photogravure in Vienna from its founder Karl Klíc. Annan would perfect it, as well as such specialized printing methods as the carbon print, in his genre scenes and portraits.

Gertrude Käsebier, one of Pictorialism’s most influential woman photographers, opened her own studio in New York in 1897 after studying painting in New York and photography and photochemistry in Berlin. The evocative atmosphere of her portraits, particularly of women and children, and of her landscapes, is a hallmark of her work. Among the exhibition’s new discoveries is the photographic oeuvre of the painter Elise Mahler, who found the subjects for her landscapes in the course of extensive travels in Italy and elsewhere.
A limited-edition catalogue accompanies the exhibition. Lavishly designed and produced, in cooperation with Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna, it contains contributions by Monika Faber and Wilfried Wiegand plus more than forty images in four-color printing.

I see the term ‘color photogravure’ here and there but never really know what it means.  Is it a photogravure printed with a vibrant conté color ink? Or is it a plate inked simultaneously with multiple colors, like Aperture’s version of Steichen’s Moonrise, Mamaroneck? Or maybe it means plates run through the press multiple times each time using a separate color ink to achieve some type of Warhol screen-print effect?

Well Crown Point Press has teamed up with Susan Middleton (celebrated photographer of endangered species) to set the record straight.  Together they have produced a series of true full-color photogravures.

The technique incorporated produces four-color positive separations from a color negative and etches each onto four individual copper plates. The plates are then inked with the appropriate color and printed in perfect registration resulting in a full-range color photogravure.

And while I have not seen one in person, I can’t help to believe that they would be anything less than beautiful.  I hope to see one soon. If you are anywhere near the Crown Point Gallery in San Francisco, then it would be worth a visit to see for yourself.

The Crown Point Press gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. A brochure is available.

Video of Susan Middleton talking about the project

About three weeks ago I received in the mail Imagining Paradise, the new book highlighting the world-class collection of photographically illustrated books in George Eastman House’s Menschel Library.  I immediately read the book cover to cover.  It represents a concise, well-designed and beautifully printed book offering an overview of many of the publications that are represented on this site.
 
Then I recalled, when learning the wet-plate collodion process several years ago, I was allowed access to the GEH collection to view examples of vintage ambrotypes.  I realized I could take a field trip to Rochester to see, in person, the books highlighted in Imagining Paradise.
 
So I assembled a list of titles that interested me (using their powerful Voyager catalog.)  The list was ambitious to say the least, but it did not intimidate my gracious host, Rachel Stuhlman, the curator of rare books. She said she would see what she could do and agreed to meet me early the day I arrived so I could get a jump on the project.  I was joined by friend and fellow photogravure enthusiast, David Spencer.  His list doubled the number of titles I wanted to see.
 
When we arrived she was ready and waiting in the study room with carts of books. We wondered – could it really be this easy?  We were beginning to understand what a powerful resource the George Eastman House is.  Rachel was not just an accommodating hostess, but she was also a wealth of information when it comes to the photographically illustrated book.  Having nurtured the library since 1982, she could answer questions about obscure variations in editions of ancient titles and could immediately put her hands on anything.
 
Believe it or not, our time was not spent only looking at books.  We also had the good fortune to meet with and learn from the superb and talented staff of the GEH.
 
Mark Osterman, the process historian for the Advanced Residency Program for Photographic Conservation, gave us a crash course on a plethora of early photographic techniques including the use of a Camera Lucida and a Physionotrace.
 
Valentina Branchini, a research fellow in the Advanced Residency Program, provided fascinating insight into the work of Alvin Landon Coburn, teaching me more in a couple of hours than I have garnered from any book I have read on the subject.  Together we examined Coburn photogravures, prints and negatives, comparing the subtle variations that may have motivated the directio
n of his work.
 
Sheila Foster, an independent researcher and co-editor of Imagining Paradise, (and a big fan of Camera Work photogravures) shared with us plans for an exciting new web resource on which the GEH is working and plans to unveil at the upcoming APAID.
 
Joe Struble, assistant archivist of the photo collection, pulled from the collection some rare examples of George Davison gravures as well as the large Coburn plates.  Knowing we were in a hurry, he allowed us to take over the print viewing room, spreading out work that he would happily put away after we left.
 
Even Director of the ARP program, Grant Romer, made a point of stopping by to introduce himself and welcome us.
 
In short, we were very well taken care of at the GEH, so well in fact that we left with way more than what we originally expected to see, and plan on returning for we only scratched the surface of this great resource – a resource available free to anyone interested in almost any facet of history, processes, conservation or art of photography.
 
Thank you, GEH.
 
Please consider helping the George Eastman House continue to fulfill its responsibility as stewards of its consequential collection of photographs by visiting their website where you can find information about becoming a member or making a donation

Rochester, N.Y.  — George Eastman House International Museum of Photography & Film focuses on the masterworks of Pictorialism with the exhibition TruthBeauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945, on view Feb. 7 through May 31, 2009. Featured will be more than 100 hauntingly beautiful photographs that illustrate Pictorialism’s desire to elevate photography — seen at one time as merely a mechanical tool of documentation — to an art form equal to painting and drawing.

Pictorialist photographs are among the most spectacular photographs in the history of the medium. TruthBeauty will reveal Pictorialism’s rich aesthetic, diverse approaches and technical innovations. Pictorialism was simultaneously a movement, a philosophy, an aesthetic, and a style. While its undisputed role in shaping our idea of the photograph cannot be overlooked, critical opinions on the movement’s artistic importance and historical significance have been deeply divided for at least the last 50 years.

Through photography clubs, exhibitions, and journals, Pictorialism spread from Britain to Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America. Adopting a soft-focus approach and utilizing dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles, and bold technical experimentation, the Pictorialists created highly atmospheric compositions that opened up a new world of visual expression in photography. Like Impressionism, which upset the traditions of painting and to which it is often compared, Pictorialism continues to be highly influential more 100 years after it began.

This exhibition traces Pictorialism from its early influences to its lasting impact on photography and art. TruthBeauty examines the generation of photographers who continued to strive to meet Pictorialist ideals long after the movement had concluded, particularly the transition from Pictorialism to Modernism — with the exhibition featuring some surprising early work by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, on whom the influence of Pictorialism is not generally recognized.

TruthBeauty was curated by Dr. Alison Nordström, George Eastman House curator of photographs, who also edited a critically acclaimed book by the same title as the exhibition (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Douglas & McIntyre, 2008, $60).

“It was the Pictorialists’ core assertion that photography could be a vehicle for personal expression — rather than merely a factual description of the world around us — that is now widely accepted despite the changes in style and philosophy that have characterized the medium through its subsequent phases,” wrote Nordström, along with Eastman House archivist David Soures Wooters, in the book’s essay “Crafting the Art of the Photograph.” 

Originally organized in collaboration with the Vancouver Art Gallery, the current TruthBeauty exhibition features work drawn solely from the George Eastman House collections and is currently on a sold-out North American tour.

TruthBeauty has been made possible by M&T Bank and Rotenberg & Co. LLP.

TruthBeauty Programs

6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 19
TruthBeauty Gallery Tour
TruthBeauty curator and author Alison Nordström shares her insider perspective on selecting more than 100 works for the exhibition, and provides background on Pictorialist photography and artists. Book signing to follow. Included with museum admission.

6 p.m. Thursday, May 7
Pictorialism Lecture
Presented by Eastman House Director Anthony Bannon in the Dryden Theater. Included with museum admission.

For more information, visit www.eastmanhouse.org or call (585) 271-3361. Admission to Eastman House is $10 for adults; $8 for senior citizens (60 and older); $6 for students; $4 for children (5-12); and free for children 4 and under and museum members. It does not surprise me that the signature image and cover of the exhibition catalog

The exhibition is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery in collaboration with George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. Curated by Alison Nordstršm, Curator of Photographs, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film.

From: http://thebeat.iloveny.com/

Andrè Jammes is recognized as one of this century’s greatest photography collectors. An expert in early French photography, the photographically illustrated book and the history of photomechanical reproduction, Jammes was an early advocate of the importance and beauty of photogravure. This portfolio, printed in 1982, is a testament to Jammes’ belief that the photogravure process holds a relevant place in the history of the medium.

“Charles Nègre (1820-1880) was one of the most influential photographers of the XIXth century.  His approach to architecture and his special taste for genre photography made him famous.  He played a leading part in the field of photomechanical process in which he made important discoveries.  As early as 1855 he brought the hand-pulled photogravure process to an extraordinary degree of perfection.  His work, thus translated into permanent photographic etchings, is classical in the history of photography. So much so that at the Universal Exhibition of 1855, some critics considered that he had reached such perfection that “the important question of engraving through the action of light was finally resolved.”

The present portfolio demonstrated his successive trials, from the modest “Maçon accroupi” published in La Lumière in 1854, to the large-scale plates of Chartes cathedral, which are his masterpieces.

The fragile silver salts of normal photography are transcribed in the photogravure process with printing ink.  This process adds to an appreciated esthetic improvement the guarantee of absolute permanence.  These values have always been recognized as famous photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand adopted photogravure with enthusiasm in Camera Notes and Camera Work.  It ceased being used after the Second World War because of its cost.  It is only recently that a few workshops have revived this old and marvelous process.

At Saint-Prex, in Switzerland, there is an exceptional experimental atelier where numerous innovative techniques are being essayed, including the revival of photographic etching.  It was therefore only natural to have the old steel plates of Charles Nègre printed in the mot favorable condition at this atelier.

These thirteen plates are hand-pulled photogravures, printed from the original steel plates made 125 years ago.  The printing methods are absolutely similar to those employed in the XIXth century.  When reprinting old photographic negatives, there are difficult problems of chemistry and personal interpretation. Here the approach was quite different:  The only goal was to obtain by traditional methods, the best proofs possible.  A special ink adapted to each plate had to be devised, a very powerful and precise press used, and a hand-made paper produced, covered with “chine collé” according to the methods so appreciated by the Romantics. Each proof thus has the velvet of chine and the strength of vellum.

This portfolio is a resurrection undertaken in a spirit of scrupulous honesty, presenting images faithful to the old proofs, which now are almost impossible to locate at any price.  Curators and collectors will appreciate the absolute permanence of these proofs, which risk no damage in being exposed to the full light.

The thirteen plates are presented in a box with three compartments (86×67 cm.), containing the two large-size plates, the 11 smaller ones, and descriptive and historical notes.  The edition is limited to 110 copies, 100 of which are for sale.  An original etching by Charles Nègre, engraved from the famous self-portrait drawing of Ingres, is included in the text.”

André Jammes, 1982

View Portfolio

For information please contact Hans P. Kraus, Jr.

"I have been making photogravures for about a year and learning this process has been as exciting and gratifying as my first contact sheet in the darkroom was 30 years ago. From the moment I rolled back my first sheet of paper off the press I realized that this was what I had been trying to do with my photographic prints for 30 years. I cannot imagine doing anything else now.

Seeing the image actually embedded in the beautiful paper surface, the quality of the sharp grain and long tonal range make this process by far the most aesthetically rewarding. And I’m proud to be in the company of many great photographers who have and are using it."
-Josephine Sacabo

Josephine’s images are currently showing at A Gallery for Fine Photography New Orleans,  Verve Gallery in Santa Fe and will be at the Hallmark Museum of Contemporary Photography in January.

When EXIT – Image and Culture asked for permission to reproduce an image from this site in their upcoming issue Pictorialism, I happily obliged. Only when I received a complimentary issue did I understand the significance of this publication.  In addition to being beautifully designed and printed, the entire issue (175 pages) is devoted to Pictorialism and its ‘reheating’.  In her introduction, editor Rosa Olivares points out that while the Pictorialism of the late 1800’s was the avant-garde of the time “shaking the very foundations of the visual arts establishment,” today many consider it anachronistic or old-fashioned. But recently “Ever more young artists are inclined to take up this type of photography, in spite of fashions … And it is not just a matter of the reconceptualisation of the tableau vivant … but also the recovery of a certain type of beauty still alive among us.”

The journal includes a dozen articles by photographers, historians and critics as well as beautiful examples of both traditional and contemporary pictorial photographs like those of Desiree Dolron, Jeff Bark and Anoek Steketee.

Read “Is Beauty Old-Fashioned?” by Rosa Olivares

Is Beauty Old-Fashioned? Rosa Olivares
Beyond any theoretical or constructive consideration, when we think of pictorial photography we think of beauty. The fact that the picture is a faker construction than a Vuitton handbag sold in China does not affect us, nor do we stop to consider that the light is unnatural, the idea is usually based on a scene borrowed from pictorial tradition (and therefore Pictorialist), and still less that this practice is (though it may be more fitting to say was) an offence against the fundamental principles of the birth of photography. We like its beauty, those white women’s cadaverous languid, bodies, actually about to expire. We love those now virtually impossible landscapes. After all, we find it irresistible to get a glimpse of a world different from that in which we live, one that appears to be free of the problems we experience on this other side of reality, one in which everything is designed to seem pleasant to us. Quite the opposite of contemporary photography, which is so concerned with transmitting ideas, concepts, situations that inevitably lead us to question all sorts of issues and, of course, to take responsibility for them; so obsessed with non-beauty, with offering us the cruel, vulgar, ugly part of reality, perhaps even reality itself and without a doubt, part of ourselves. No, in pictorial photography none of this is so. Beauty, order, stillness takes precedence over any other quality. That is, falsehood triumphs. But, how do we associate falsehood and beauty? Maybe this is because every beautiful thing entails something irremediably false, especially these days when beauty seems to be a laboratory formula. Appearance, as we have always known, does not cease to be an individualised staging for a global dramatisation of existence. In any case, let us be happy and oblivious for a little while and delight in essentially beautiful pictures. Not to worry, there are no side effects. It seems as though beauty has been expelled from the world of contemporary art. Today, to say of a work of art that it is lovely, beautiful or pretty, is to denigrate it rather than to commend it. And if everything beautiful seems anachronistic, that is: of another era, old-fashioned, then, is beauty old-fashioned? What the idea of beauty actually contains has changed a lot in a short time, perhaps too quickly, much more than our own tastes, to be sure, for otherwise it would be hard to understand how a trend such as photographic Pictorialism could have survived beyond 1920, when this movement fell into decline and virtually disappeared. However, it must be remembered here, though the following essays explain in more detail, that pictorial photography came into being around 1880 and it was the authentic avant-garde of the time, shaking the very foundations of the visual arts establishment. The dream of those Victorian photographers was that photography would be accepted as a serious art form, on the same level as other existing practices. It is hard to see how its followers can now be slated as old-fashioned and working against photography’s autonomy. It is true that those who are bent on untimely pursuits of once avant-garde trends that are clearly in decline can become simple pastiches, pathetic imitations of themselves, and this undoubtedly happened in the late 1970s, when the worst practitioners of Pictorialism proliferated. Nevertheless, we are currently witnessing a pictorial reheating. Ever more young artists are inclined to take up this type of photography, in spite of fashions and quite possibly bolstered by a market that knows how to place value on and exploit those products that maintain traditional elements, and are thus more easily accepted by the well-off bourgeoisie. And it is not just a matter of the reconceptualisation of the tableau vivant by artists ranging from Jeff Wall to thousands of young photographers who insist on constructing unlikely settings, but also the recovery of a certain type of beauty still alive among us. It is a matter of a reconsideration of the body, a still complacent vision of landscape, a sophistication of interiors in an effort to imbue the commonplace with sensuality and pleasure, to make the strange attractive and mysterious. A reconstruction of some pictures made to be enjoyed, to be contemplated with self-absorption, merely for the sake of pleasure-seeking.One theme for reflection that we can develop when contemplating these Pictorialist pictures is the hybridisation that, since the emergence of photography, has been taking place in the world of visual arts: painting influences photography, design and fashion influence photography, painting and photography influence film, film influences photography, photography influences painting, film influences painting,… and then video was born. The origin of the idea that everything works as a source, as a seed, as a starting point can be seen clearly in Pictorialism. This is something that has been essential for the current evolution of art and that nevertheless disqualifies many of those who practice it, as was the particular case of Pictorialism.It goes without saying, and in the following pictures it is plain to see, that the 21st century Pictorialists are not the same as those of the 19th century. They are certainly much more daring, more exuberant and also more mysterious, for their frames of reference are much more varied. They are influenced by cinema that did not exist then, as well as much more elaborate literature, and they have exceedingly more refined technical expertise and, possibly, a more versed taste. Also a much more sharpened perverseness. They are artists who have begun their careers at a time when photography is undoubtedly another art form, one free of complexes. They have found a real market that could not even be dreamt of before. In this situation they decide to look backwards or, at least, to look another way. And it is the body that most attracts that gaze, the body within certain canons of beauty and self-complacence that are surprising in any other contemporary art media; they are steeped in the contemplation of the apparently insignificant, in impossible scenes, in strange settings. They let time pass before their eyes while they contemplate the river flowing before them.In conclusion, they do not seem to be living at the same time or in the same place as the photographers that usually fill these and other pages of publications on contemporary art. And then we realise that a female nude, clearly resembling those of the late Renaissance, looks obscene to us, in a society in which sex and nudity is everywhere, this women, who in her solitude lies down naked, leaves us with a bizarre sensation of discomfort. And it is not the exquisite, languid nude lacking in morbid fascination, but the real nude, the real body. That way of looking at intimacy, solitude, beauty, the construction of spaces for the slowest pleasure, gives rise to this photography that can lose track of time because it is developed outside it in an everlastingly absolute and irreversible way. The difference between the historical Pictorialists and the modern-day Pictorialists lies in the fact that the former were considered avant-garde, innovative and ground-breaking, whereas the latter are somewhat anachronistic aestheticists exploring territories that do not interest the more radical creators. It may be that what they have in common is that both those of yesterday and today are viewed as unworthy by the critics and the established models, by the school that every age defines as model.Translated by Dena Ellen Cowan

Peter Henry Emerson and
American Naturalistic Photography
May 3—September 7, 2008

Minneapolis, April 22, 2008—America’s first movement of creative photography and its revolutionary founder, Peter Henry Emerson, are the subjects of a new exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA.) Nearly one hundred naturalistic photographs by Emerson and twenty other photographers will be on view May 3 through September 7, 2008. Drawn largely from the MIA’s permanent collection, these sensitively portrayed images span the movement’s history from the 1890s to the 1930s. Other images on display include those by Edward Curtis, Alfred Stieglitz, Henry Troth, and Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr.

Organized by the MIA, “Peter Henry Emerson and American Naturalistic Photography” will travel to the Palmer Art Museum (Pennsylvania State University) in University Park, and to the Art Museum of Western Virginia in Roanoke. A catalogue, the first in-depth study of the subject, accompanies the exhibition.

Peter Henry Emerson (British, born Cuba, 1856–1936) spent his early years on his family’s sugar plantation before moving to England as a teenager. A physician and a scientist, he took up photography at age 26. He formulated naturalistic photography in 1889 when he published his groundbreaking book, Naturalistic Photography for the Students of the Art. In it, Emerson defined a new style of camera work and made a case for photography as a fine art. He advocated simple compositions, differential focusing, and nature as subject and inspiration. He advised creatively inclined photographers to make images that read as one harmonious whole by choosing a single point of interest and downplaying all surrounding detail. By sharply rendering only the primary subject of an image and making everything else ease into moderate softness, he introduced an approach he believed mimicked normal human vision.

Following Emerson’s lead, other naturalist photographers in the United States took nature as their muse and consequently spawned a movement of naturalistic photography in this country. Like Emerson, these photographers spent considerable time communing with nature and carefully studying its elements. They photographed the land in all its forms and seasons, as well as the devoted individuals who farmed and fed it. Many lived in or near rural areas, giving them easy access to unbridled nature. American naturalists were content to work close to home, essaying the everyday and ordinary.

Nature presented a wide variety of subjects for these photographers. Henry Troth, for instance, regularly photographed the fields in rural Pennsylvania, while William B. Post and Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr., became known for their winter landscapes and studies of snow. Flowers and gardens were fertile material for Edwin Hale Lincoln, while Theodore Eitel concentrated on the trees of Kentucky. Beyond pure landscapes, the naturalists photographed the sky, farm life, ocean shorelines, and recreational activities such as boating and bicycling.  

A number of American naturalistic photographers revealed strong ethnographic interests. Mirroring Emerson’s examination of traditional coastal inhabitants of England, several photographers turned their attention to the indigenous American and immigrant cultures. Most notable among them were Doris Ulmann and Edward S. Curtis. Ulmann initially photographed New England religious groups, such as the Mennonites and Shakers, but soon directed her attention to African Americans of the Appalachian Mountains and elsewhere in the South. Curtis spent his career documenting Native American tribes, not only in pictures but also in the written word. His multi-volume set The North American Indian, published between 1903 and 1930, includes more than two thousand photographs, and remains the most exhaustive study of the subject.

Alfred Stieglitz also admired Emerson’s sensitive images and absorbed his revolutionary theories. Even as he moved on to making and promoting Modernist work, he conceded the naturalistic movement still had currency in the 1930s. In 1933, he and Emerson corresponded for the last time, only three years before the latter’s death. Stieglitz concluded his letter by writing, “Not long ago I had your portfolio of gravures in my hand and also your book Naturalistic Photography. Both took me back many years–and both seem still alive.”

Exhibition Catalogue
Published in conjunction with the exhibition, Peter Henry Emerson and American Naturalistic Photography is a beautifully illustrated catalog and the first major examination of American naturalistic photography. Written by Christian Peterson, Acting Curator of Photographs at the MIA, the book investigates a distinct and defining movement in the history of photography and includes early work by such leading pictorialists as Alfred Stieglitz and Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr. The book rediscovers some significant photographers and puts the imagery of Edward S. Curtis and Doris Ulmann into a new context. The catalogue is available for purchase in the MIA’s Museum Shop.

About the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), home to one of the finest encyclopedic art collections in the country, houses more than 80,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history. Highlights of the permanent collection include European masterworks by Rembrandt, Poussin, and van Gogh; modern and contemporary painting and sculpture by Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Stella, and Close; as well as internationally significant collections of prints and drawings, decorative arts, Modernist design, photographs, prints and drawings, and Asian, African, and Native American art. General admission is always free. Some special exhibitions have a nominal admission fee. Museum hours: Sunday, 11 A.M.–5 P.M.; Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 10 A.M.–5 P.M.; Thursday, 10 A.M.–9 P.M.; Monday closed. For more information, call (612) 870-3131 or visit www.artsmia.org.

– Brighton Gazette, 1858

A ‘photogenic drawing’ erroneously attributed to Henry Fox Talbot was recently pulled from a high-profile Sotheby’s auction because the “worlds leading Talbot expert” pronounced that the image may not be Fox Talbot’s and in fact might predate any photograph known to exist. (“An Image is a Mystery for Photo Detectives”, New York Times 4/17/08 p. B1.)

The expert quoted in the article is Dr. Larry Schaaf, an independent photographic historian based in Baltimore, Maryland. Schaaf is the founder and Director of The Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot archives http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk and was elected the 2005 Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University. Schaaf’s books include Out of the Shadows: Herschel, Talbot & the Invention of Photography (Yale University Press);  The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot (Princeton University Press); and In Focus: William Henry Fox Talbot Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum.

According to Dr. Schaaf,   “It often surprises people that the inventor of photography on paper, William Henry Fox Talbot, was also the father of photogravure…  Equally striking is the fact that Talbot actively worked on photogravure for the last twenty-five years of his life, a span of time more than double that which he devoted to photography itself.”

Photogravure.com is privileged to be able to include in its text section the essay by Dr. Schaaf, “Etchings of Light” written as the introduction to the exhibition catalog, Sun Pictures; Talbot and Photogravure that accompanied an exhibition of the same title at the gallery, Hans Kraus, Jr., in October of 2003.  Included in this catalog is a selection of outstanding Fox Talbot photogravures and it alone is an invaluable resource for anyone serious about studying the history of photogravure.

Many thanks to Dr. Schaaf and Hans Kraus, Jr. for allowing the inclusion of this important essay on this site and for their continued support.