History of Photography



Introduction  History of Photography (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

A World History of Photography (by Naomi Rosenblum)

The Story Behind the Pictures 1827-1991 (by Hans-Michael Koetzle)

Photographers' Dictionary  (based on "20th Century Photography - Museum Ludwig Cologne")






 

Chapter 11

 

PHOTOGRAPHY SINCE 1950:



THE STRAIGHT IMAGE


 

Straight Photography in Canada and Latin America

Like their counterparts below the border, many Canadian photographers have turned away from perceiving camera images as basically descriptive or informative. They were engaged by the cooler, more ironic approach initiated by Frank and the social landscapists of the 1960s. Sharing this sensibility, Lynne Cohen (pi. no. 700), Charles Gagnon, and Gabor Szilasi are among those who have transformed uningratiating urban environments into deliberately structured visual entities, at times infused with biting humor. Street photography that integrates the common elements of the style—automobiles, reflections, perplexing space—is exemplified by the lucidly organized St. Joseph de Beance, Quebec (pi. no. 701) by Szilasi, a Hungarian-born photographer whose aim is to allow people "to gain awareness of the environments they live in."

In a contrasting approach, Robert Boudreau works with a large-format camera in the tradition (and at times on the actual sites) of the grand masters of 19th-century landscape photography, communicating a fresh appreciation of a theme that too often results in banality. Along with increased activity among Canadian photographers, interest in the history of the medium has spurred James Borcoman of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa to organize a national collection of photography; other museums, notably the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, have acquired specialized collections and still others, archives of local work.

For Latin American photographers, the year 1977 signaled the end of "the utter obstinacy which persisted in denying photography its quality as art," when a hemi-sphere-wide conference held in Mexico City revealed the vigor and diversity as well as the geographic and ethnic differences that characterized camera expression through-out the region. During the 1970s and '80s, photographers in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela were most interested in exploring the effects of rapid social and economic change on the traditions of their societies. Although they were initially less involved with aesthetic experimentation for its own sake or with the picturing of private realities, recent work suggests that these concepts have now found fertile ground.

A range of attitudes characterizes Latin American portrayals of urban and provincial life, which for the most part are seen by the public in books and periodicals rather than on gallery walls. The strength of the humanist tradition is exemplified by the Panamanian photographer Sandra Eleta's spirited images of ordinary working people (pi. no. 702). Infused with grace, these images transcend the moment and convey the vibrancy of intimate relationships. A similar intensity transforms studies of the Yanomani and Xingu tribesmen by the Brazilian photographers Claudia Andujar and Maureen Bisilliat from routine anthropological documentation to inspired interpretation. By the late 1980s, as photography in Brazil expanded to include images made for personal expression as well as for documentation and advertising, those involved with the medium reached out beyond the country's borders, initiating international conferences, opening a museum for photography in Sao Paulo, and starting publication programs.

One direction in social documentation that found adherents throughout Latin America can be seen in work by Roberto Fontana (pi. no. 703) of Venezuela and by the Argentine photographers Alicia D'Amico and Crete Stern, all of whom use the small camera to capture the condition of those alienated by sickness or poverty from contemporary society. Although the predominant interest throughout the region is the human condition, notable landscapes, still lifes, and architectural views have also been made by Christian Alckmin Mascaro of Brazil and Jose Gimeno Casals of Peru (pi. no. 704).

700. LYNNE COHEN. Corridor.
Gelatin silver print. Courtesy Motel Fine Arts, New York,

701. GABOR SZILASI. St. Joseph de Beauce, Quebec, 1973.
Gelatin silver print.

702. SANDRA ELETA. Lovers from Portobek, 1977.
Gelatin silver print.

703. ROBERTO FONTANA. Scene in an Asylum, 1980.
Gelatin silver print.

704. JOSE GIMENO CASALS. Puruchuco, 1979-80.
Gelatin silver print.

An opposing approach to social documentation, which inspired the work of a small number of photographers— most notably, Paolo Gasparini in Venezuela—was intended to illuminate the social and economic consequences of the intrusion of foreign capital and culture into Latin American life by appending unequivocal texts to images. One might have expected that this didactic view of social documentation would also be espoused by the first generation of photographers working in Cuba after the revolution of 1959. Instead, they were influenced by the diverse directions being pursued in the United States. The buoyant humor in the work of the Cuban photographers Raul Corrales, Maria Eugenia Haya, and Mario Garcia Joya—working mainly in the 1970s and '80s—is unusual in Latin American photography, which is generally more earnest in dealing with reality. With its use of serial imagery, texts, set-ups, colorization, and montages, recent work by young Cubans demonstrates even greater familiarity with current trends in the United States.

Mexican government support of the arts during the 1920s and '30s and the presence in Mexico of Tina Modotti, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and other foreign photographers enabled Mexican photographers to respond to the need for social documentation and at the same time to personalize the medium. The nation's most highly regarded native-born photographer, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, found it possible to embrace the mythic implica-tions of his own culture while acknowledging concepts, such as Surrealism, imported from Europe and the United States (pi. no. 501). A similar focus on indigenous culture— emphasizing both popular rituals and artistic and intellectual activities—characterizes the work of his former wife, Lola Alvarez Bravo, whose portraits of distinguished individuals have only recently been acknowledged for their artistic and documentary value.

Images by Pedro Meyer, who was born in Spain but was active in Mexico after 1962 and in the United States in the 1990s, suggest the mysterious nature of folk ritual through harsh tonal contrasts, ambiguous gestures, and the intensity of facial expressions, as in The Unmasking in the Square (pi. no. 705). In his recent work, Meyer has become more concerned with personal autobiography while embracing computerized methods of production. Other contemporary Mexican photographers who are engaged by folk culture and ritual include Flor Garduno, Graciela Iturbide (pi. no. 706), Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Jose Angel Rodriguez (pi. no. 707), and Jose Luis Neyra.
 

705. PEDRO MEYER. The Unmasking in the Square, 1981.
Gelatin silver print.

7O6. GRACIELA ITURBIDE. Senor de Pajoros, 1984.
Gelatin silver print. Courtesy Gracida Iturbide.

707. JOSE ANGEL RODRIGUEZ. Gampesina (Peasant), 1977.
Gelatin silver print. Collection Jain and George W. Kelly, New York.

Straight Photography in Europe

The second World War, lasting from 1939 to 1945, disrupted cultural life in Europe but did not entirely wipe out photographic activity there. August Sander, for example, was prevented from continuing his documentation of German life (pi. no. 447) but made luminous landscapes of his native region. In Czechoslovakia, Josef Sudek, whose photographic ideas had been nurtured by both Pictorialism and the New Objectivity, continued to produce lyrical tabletop still lifes (pi. no. 708) as well as neo-Romantic garden scenes.

By the mid-1960s, Europeans had recovered sufficiently from the dislocations of the war to welcome a range of fresh ideas about photography. The numerous directions being explored in America soon attracted photographers who were initially tempted to varying degrees by abstraction, conceptualism, and symbolism. Perhaps the most telling influence was Frank's ironical approach to documentation or "subjective realism," as the German photographer Otto Steincrt called "humanized and individualized photography." Even though critical acclaim and financial support for the photograph as an art commodity was still insignificant compared to the response in the United States, and even though photographers could find employment only as photojournalists, a variety of modes began to flourish as new equipment and materials, including Polaroid and color film, became available and less expensive.

Besides embracing photojournalistic ways of depicting actuality, by the late 1970s some younger Europeans looked to the subjective and conceptual approaches popular in the United States. Others became aware of the experimental-ism practiced by a previous generation of European photographers and elected to work with collage, montage, and sequencing. Like their American counterparts, they created narratives using sequenced photographs and took part in performances that they documented and exhibited. These productions sometimes obscured the distinctions between what was found in nature and what was enacted, between straight depiction and hand manipulation of print processes, between what was recorded through the effects of light and what was added by the application of pigments. Combining drama, photography, and graphic art, they sought to infuse photographic expression with greater complexity than they thought was possible in straight images (see Chapter 12).

As camerawork became more frequently exhibited, collected, and reproduced in Europe, the quickening of interest in contemporary photography prompted the estab-lishment of workshops, conferences, and foundations for the support of the medium. Even though the high-quality photographic print as such remains less esteemed in Europe than in the United States, photography theory has attracted philosophers such as Roland Barthes, giving the medium an intellectual cachet formerly lacking.

These developments were accompanied by increased concern for the rich treasuries of historical images housed in national and private archives and by a consequent atten-tiveness to historical scholarship and preservation. Among the leading European figures who supervised the creation of archives in their countries have been Ute Eskildsen and Otto Steinert, who created a distinguished collection of German photographs in the Folkwang Museum in Essen; Fritz Kempe, director of the Staatliche Landesbildstelle in Hamburg; Samuel Morozov in the former Soviet Union: Jean-Claude Lemagny in France; Terence Pepper and Mark Haworth-Booth in England; and Petr Tausk and Vladimir Birgus in Czechoslovakia. As collections have grown, they have engendered investigations into the history of the medium, resulting in serious publications in Czechoslovakia, England, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, and Spain. To give but one example, the Swedish photographer Rune Hassner encouraged interest in the history of American and European photojournalism and social documentation through his extensive curatorial, research, and publishing activities.

Among British photographers the documentary tendency remained strong, prompted by long experience with photojournalism. Curiously, the focus on informational content in England had been reinforced by Moholy-Nagy; during a brief sojourn in London in 1936 this catalyst of experimentalism in the United States had promoted the camera image as a way to observe "a fragment of present day reality from a social and economic point of view."20 Traditional documentation was carried on and modified after the war by the photojournalists Philip Jones Griffiths, Bert Hardy, Thurman Hopkins, Don McCullin, Grace Robertson, and George Rodger, among others. It was transformed in the 1960s by Roger Mayne, who sought to give documentation a somewhat more consciously aesthetic and equivocal aspect, and by Tony Ray-Jones, whose work displayed an ironic but charitable humor. Glyndeboume (pi. no. 709) is a witty view of upper-class pleasures that suggests Bill Brandt's themes, Robert Doisneau's whimsicality, and Frank's irony.

Brandt, Britain's best-known photographer of the postwar years, was a unique phenomenon. He had been involved with Surrealism through his association with Man Ray in the 1920s and with the documentation of contrasts among the classes in the 1930s, which he collected in his first publication, The English at Home (1936). Brandt's portraits, landscapes, and nude studies made after the war encompass a variety of different approaches. In the search for what he termed "something beyond die real," he found that optic distortions (pi. no. 710)—the result of using an extremely wide-angle lens and a very small aperture—produced a curious yet poetic landscape in which human form and nature merged. This particular approach has attracted relatively few followers in his native country, but Brandt's emphasis on capturing inner realities through the imaginative use of light inspired the work of Paul Hill, whose affinity to the mysticism of Minor White is also apparent in Arrow and Puddle, Ashbourne Car Park (pi. no. 711). Though more attuned to the sociological changes occurring in Britain during the 1970s and '80s, Chris Killip's documentations of working-class life also reflect his understanding that photographs can be considered as aesthetic objects as well as records of actuality.

By the 1980s, British photographers had begun to explore a multiplicity of directions: installations by Richard Hamilton and others satirizing British life, scenes of gritty working-class squalor by Martin Parr and Nick Wapplington, didactic conceptualizations by Victor Burgin, mixed-media constructions based on popular icons and symbols by Gilbert and George (pi. no. 741). During the same years, British women photographers became greatly more prominent, and a number organized themselves into cooperatives in an effort to make visible a feminist view of family and society. Like their counterparts elsewhere, they have often found that the directorial mode best serves their particular intentions.
 

708. JOSEF SUDEK. Window in the Ram, 1944.
Gelatin silver print. Collection Jaroslav Andel, New York.

JOSEF SUDEK (see collection)

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Josef Sudek (March 17, 1896, Kolín, Bohemia - September 15, 1976) was a Czech photographer, best known for his haunting night-scapes of Prague.
Originally a bookbinder, During The First World War He was drafted into Austro-Hungarian Army. In 1915 and served on the Italian Front until he was wounded in the right arm in 1916. Although he had no experience with photography and was one-handed due to his amputation, he was given a camera. After the war he studied photography for two years in Prague under Jaromir Funke. His Army disability pension gave him leeway to make art, and he worked during the 1920s in the romantic Pictorialist style. Always pushing at the boundaries, a local camera club expelled him for arguing about the need to move forwards from 'painterly' photography. Sudek then founded the progressive Czech Photographic Society in 1924. Despite only having one arm, he used large, bulky cameras with the aid of assistants.
Sudek's photography is sometimes said to be modernist. But this is only true of a couple of years in the 1930s, during which he undertook commercial photography and thus worked "in the style of the times". Primarily, his personal photography is neo-romantic.
His early work included many series of light falling in the interior of St. Vitus cathederal. During and after World War II Sudek created haunting night-scapes and panoramas of Prague, photographed the wooded landscape of Bohemia, and the window-glass that led to his garden (the famous The Window of My Atelier series). He went on to photograph the crowded interior of his studio (the Labyrinths series).
His first Western show was at George Eastman House in 1974 and he published 16 books during his life.
Known as the "Poet of Prague", Sudek never married, and was a shy, retiring person. He never appeared at his exhibit openings and few people appear in his photographs. Despite the privations of the war and Communism, he kept a renowned record collection of classical music.
 

JOSEF SUDEK. Still Life


 

709. TONY RAY-JONES. Glyndebourne, 1967.
Gelatin silver print.

710. BILL BRANDT. Nude, East Sussex Coast, 1953.
Gelatin silver print.

BILL BRANDT (see collection)
 

711. PAUL HILL. Arrow and Puddle, Ashbourne Car Park, 1974.
Gelatin silver print.

The revitalization of photography in France after the war was evident in several developments. One was the establishment of a movement to encourage artistic photography. In the south of France, members of the Expression libre (Free Expression) group, founded in 1964, sought to enhance the status of photography by urging, among other measures, that it be introduced into univer-sity curricula. Acknowledgment of photography's visual significance spurred the opening in 1982 of the Ecole Nationale de Photographic in Aries, the establishment of galleries devoted to the medium in Paris and Toulouse, and the initiation of annual and biennial photographic festivals in Aries, Cahors, and Paris. With the support of the government, the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie opened in Paris in 1996, giving France its first international center devoted to photography.

In their own productions, the photographers initially active in this resurgence—Denis Brihat (pi. no. 768), Lucien Clergue (pi. no. 767), and Jean Dieuzade (pi. no. 766), among them—intervened in the photographic process by directing the model, establishing the settings, or manipulating negative and print. The straight work of Francois Hers and Bernard Plossu (now living in the United States) follows the direction known as "subjective realism"; their themes appear to be social in nature, but they are concerned mainly with expressing what one of their colleagues called "a personal vibration ... an autobiographical sign." An approach to nature that combines lyricism and irony in a disquieting manner can be seen in recent landscapes of former battlefields by Jeanloup Sieff.

In Italy during the 1960s, and in Spain and Portugal somewhat later, photographers emerged from what has been called a "peripheral ghetto"—the result of more than 20 years of cultural isolation and indifference to the camera as an expressive tool. For example, no retrospective of Portuguese photography was held until 1991, with the result that work done in the earlier years of this century was unknown both in that country and to the rest of the world. With increased tourism from the United States and South America facilitating the exchange of examples and ideas, and with greater opportunities in their own countries for exhibition and publication, photographers soon embraced a full array of contemporary modes.

The Italian photographs that seem to achieve the greatest formal resolution in terms of conventional straight photography are landscapes. The beauty of the land, made even more poignant by encroaching industrialization, has prompted Gianni Berengo, Franco Fontana, Mario Giacomelli, and Georgio Lotti—all photojournalists—to produce views of nature that are romantic in tenor and transcendent in effect. Exemplified by an early depiction by Giacomelli of the harvest in the Marches region (pi. no. 712), these images sustain interest because they mediate between the world as it is and as it is photographed, with-out calling undue attention to the aesthetic or conceptual aspects of the medium. In another approach to documentation, Italian photographer-anthropologist Marialba Russo captures the stages of ritual observances in a style that neither heightens nor dramatizes the visual experience but presents it as though the viewer were a participant in the event who does not necessarily understand its significance. Indigenous rituals have also engaged the Spanish photographer Cristina Garcia Rodero, who believes that her extensive "portrait" of such customs reveals "the mysterious, genuine, and magic soul of Spain" (pi. no. 713).
 

712. MARIO GIACOMELLI. Landscape 289, 1958.
Gelatin silver print. Bristol Workshops in Photography, Bristol, R.I.

713. CRISTINA GARCIA RODERO. Pilgrimage from Lumbier, Spain, 1980.
Gelatin silver print. Gallery of Contemporary Photography, Santa Monica, Cal.

Photojournalism Outside the United States

Photojournalism provided an outlet for the skills of numerous photographers from a variety of countries who contributed to the vitality of both European and American picture journals during the 1960s and '70s; photojournalists tend to be peripatetic internationalists who do not necessarily reside in their countries of origin. Even though by the 1970s photoessays had become more or less predictable in style and superficial in content, individual photographers were at times able to transcend these limitations. One example is the work of Peter Magubane, South Africa's leading photojournalism His strong images of the struggles of black South Africans, among them a photograph of a gesture that seems to symbolize their sorrow and anger (pi. no. 473), were no doubt intensified by the photographer's own imprisonment under apartheid.

Photojournalists outside the United States could not rely on the foundation support enjoyed by some of their American counterparts, but many nevertheless managed to produce in-depth documentation of social circum-stances no matter where they came from or where they were assigned. Images by Sabine Weiss explore the delights of childhood play in Paris neighborhoods; those by Marie-Paule Negre expose the poverty of life at the outer fringes of French society'; those by Raymond Depardon reveal the look of the terrain and the forms of daily life in Africa (pi. no, 714).

During the 1970s, a number of European photojournalists joined collectives such as Saftra in Sweden and Viva in France in order to carry out progressive social documentation that the established agencies and journals no longer welcomed. Martine Franck, one of the founders of Viva, used a rigorous formal structure to document the effects of middle-class culture on the individual. The angular shapes, staccato tonal contrasts, and spatially isolated figures seen in Provence (pi. no. 715) suggest the dehumanization and oppressiveness of affluence. Jean-Philippe Charbonnier and Gilles Peress take a similar formal approach to social issues, except that Charbonnier's attitude is more distanced, his structuring less obvious, and his message more ambiguous. Peress, who has documented strife in Ireland, Iran, and Bosnia, has made his photoreportage distinctively personal, whether imbuing it with ironic detachment or using the structure and forms of the picture to create a powerful sense of alienation and chaos (pi. no. 716).

A number of photojournalists have shaped their own projects, among them Magnum photographers Depardon, Josef Koudelka, and Scbastiao Salgado (the latter two originally from Czechoslovakia and Brazil, respectively). For his documentation of gypsy life, Koudelka worked in Rumania, Spain, France, and the British Isles throughout much of the 1960s, probing the varied aspects of their nomadic existence—familial affection, pride in animals (pi. no. 717), love of the dramatic gesture, isolation from the larger culture. Like many others of his generation, Koudelka uses lens distortion, blurs, tipped horizons, and unusual formats to evoke emotion. His recent images of the despoliation of land and waterways in Eastern Europe caused by industrial pollution were made in panoramic format, which seems to enhance the sense of desolation. Salgado, whose magazine assignments have brought him face to face with the wretched of the earth in South America and Africa (pi. no. 482), has undertaken on his own an extensive and poignant documentation of the conditions of poor laborers throughout the world. In other such pro¬jects, Raghubir Singh has endeavored to reveal both the inner and outer worlds of life in his Indian homeland.

Photojournalism as exemplified by Yevgeny Khaldey's shot of the victorious Red Army in Berlin (pi. no. 601) continued to be the predominant concern of photographers in the Soviet Union before its dissolution in 1989- With few exceptions, photography as a personal means of artistic expression or as a foil for texts with messages other than those required by the press received little official support or exposure. Nevertheless, many of the younger photographers who came of age during the 1960s and '70s embraced the same techniques used in both subjective and photojournalistic photography in the West. Among them was Boris Savelev, whose treatment of light gives his casual-seeming color images made on the streets of Moscow and Leningrad (before it was renamed St. Petersburg) an agreeable romantic dimension. Others employed the distortion of spatial perspective, the blurring of part of the visual field, and the incorporation of lens reflections to convey a grittier view of life. The Lithuanian photographer Aleksandras Macijauskas, for example, used a wide-angle lens to heighten the viewer's sense of the emotional drama in such ordinary activities as a procedure in a veterinary hospital (pi. no. 718).
 

714. RAYMOND DEPARDON. Angola (Luena, Street Scene), February 1994.
Gelatin silver print. Magnum Photos, New York.

715. MARTINE FRANCK. Provence, 1976.
Gelatin silver print.

716. GILLES PERESS. N. Ireland: Loyalists vs. Nationalists, 1986.
Gelatin silver print.

717. JOSEF KOUDELKA. Rumania, 1968.
Gelatin silver print.

JOSEF KOUDELKA (see collection)

(b Boskovice, nr Brno, 10 Jan 1938).

Czech photographer of Moravian birth. He graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Higher Institute of Technology in Prague (1961) and became an engineer of aircraft engines. He began to photograph as an amateur at the age of 14. In 1961, with the encouragement of the photographer and critic Jiri Jenнcek (1895–1963), he held his first exhibition, at the popular Prague theatre Semafor. He was also influenced by the theorist Anna Fбrovб. From 1962 he worked as a photographer for the journal Divadlo and from 1965 for the avant-garde Theatre behind the Gate (Divadlo za Branou), led by the director Otomar Krejca, which enabled him to become professional. In 1965 he was accepted as a member of the Photography Section of the Association of Czech Artists, and in 1967 he left his job as an engineer to dedicate himself to photography.
 

JOSEF KOUDELKA. Czechoslovakia, 1968

 

718. ALEKSANDRAS MACIJAUSKAS. In the Veterinary Clinic, 1977.
Gelatin silver print. Private collection.

Japan and China

Given the homogenization of contemporary global culture, one would expect to find Japanese photographers responding to the same influences as Americans and Europeans, but while this has indeed been the case, photography in Japan has evolved under unique conditions. After a brief but rich period of modernist creativity during the 1920s, noncommercial photography in Japan parroted painting or soft-focus Pictorialism. Following the war and until about 1960, with the exception of the exquisite documentation of traditional Japanese art objects by Ken Domon (pi. no. 719), there was little interest in photography as artistic expression. The concepts of large-format camerawork as conceived by Edward Weston and of modernist experimentalism were brought to Japan by Yasuhiro Ishimoto when he returned in 1953 after studying at the Institute of Design in Chicago. But the network for disseminating photographs that emerged, which was very different from that in the States, influenced the kind of photographs being produced. Because the museum and commercial gallery activities that sustained the West's market for artistic camera images did not exist in Japan, most Japanese photographers worked mainly for books and magazines, favoring a realistic style and images arranged in sequences rather than the single print. As a consequence, until recently there was little interest in Japan in producing fine prints or in experimenting with process and techniques in order to create singular artistic objects. Museums and galleries devoted exclusively to photography did not develop there until the 1990s.

The goal of Japancse photographers during the 1960s and '70s, according to the critic Shoji Yamagishi, was to "demonstrate that photography is a kind of consciousness that can be shared by everyone in his daily life, rather than simply an expression of one's own personality or identity."

This concept is central to the work of Shomei Tomatsu, a former photojournalist and the author of eight photo-graphic books (including one on the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombing done in collaboration with Domon). Sandwich Man, Tokyo (pi. no. 720) (from the book Nippon) is a forceful but enigmatic image of a tradition on the verge of obliteration due to the radical changes in contemporary Japanese life—a theme that has engaged this photographer since the 1960s. The socially oriented images by Daidoh Moriyama—-among them, a series called Nippon Theater— involve ideas related to Tomatsu's and similarly share with the work of many Westerners a preference for close-ups, graininess, blurs, and stark tonal contrasts used to heighten the emotional pitch of the situations they depict.

Polished images of nudes and landscape by the highly regarded Kishin Shinoyama seem to tit stylistically and thematically into the tradition of ukiyo-e woodblock art at the same time that they satisfy the modern demand for unambiguous photographic representation. In contrast, Nobuyoshi Araki deals with less conventional behavior in a range of styles influenced by photographers as varied as Frank and Mapplethorpe. Araki's interests encompass urban street scenes, still lifes, ambiguous-looking sexual forms, and overtly masochistic stagings of women in bondage.

Ikko (born Ikko Narahara) may be, along with Araki and Eikoh Hosoe (pi. no. 757), the Japanese photographer best known internationally. Though a straight image in terms of technique, his Two Garbage Cans, Indian Village, New Mexico, U.S.A. (pi. no. 721), part of a series entitled Where Time Has Vanished, is surreal in effect. Its razor-sharp focus and the strange juxtaposition of organic forms and mechanically produced objects convey the photographer's reaction to the perplexing contrasts between nature and culture in the American West. American influence, in particular that of Weston's work, moved Toshio Shibata to use the direct expressive power of the camera to produce enigmatic images of land and water. Notions about gender equality emanating from the United States have led to an increase in the number of women photographers active in Japan in recent years. Among them are Miyako Ishiuchi, who deals with issues of aging by photographing in close-up the hands and feet of women, and Yoshino Oishi, considered Japan's most prominent contemporary photojournalist.
 

719. KEN DOMON. Detail
(Left Hand of the Sitting Image of Buddha Skakanmni in the Hall of Miroku, the Muro-ji), c. 1960s.
Gelatin silver print.

720. SHOMEI TOMATSU. Sandwich Man, Tokyo, 1962.
Gelatin silver print. Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gift of the artist.

721. IKKO. Two Garbage Cans, Indian Village, New Mexico, USA., 1972.
Gelatin silver print.

Photography in China during the 20th century has contrasted with developments elsewhere. For some 80 years, camerawork there has been valued almost entirely in terms of its contributions to the political struggles that have consumed the nation. Isolation from Europe and the United States, as well as China's relative underdevelopment, has deprived photographers of access to the rich creative ideas of modernism and the tradition of Western social documentation. In the wake of the revolutionary ferment during the first decade of this century, Chinese picture-news journals emerged to promote photo-reportage as a means to document the facts of life while emphasizing the country's political and economic advances. Le Monde (edited in Paris and published in Shanghai), which was started in 1907 as the first Chinese-language picture journal, reproduced between 100 and 200 images per issue. Following the outbreak of the war with Japan in 1937, photoreportage on the Communist side was limited by the lack of materials. In an effort to gain adherents to their cause, the Communists devoted their scarce resources almost exclusively to presenting information about the activities of the Eighth Route Army in the remote areas of northwestern China.

After the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, the appearance of picture magazines such as China Pictorial and China Reconstructs increased the demand for photojournalistic images, but the images became less factual and more frankly propagandistic, a role they continued to play during the Cultural Revolution. Remaining somewhat proscribed until the 1980s, photographer's continued to portray industrial workers, peasants, and indeed ail sectors of the populace in a confident and picturesque fashion. Though technically proficient, their images seldom probed beyond superficial appearances or investigated problematic aspects of life in China.

Given the extent of China's political and social turmoil throughout this century, it is hardly surprising that photography as artistic expression did not receive the same support as photoreportage. Books of scenic views emphasizing the beauty of the countryside were published in Shanghai in the early part of the century, and in the 1930s the Pictorialist style attracted a small following of amateurs and professionals who sent works to the international salons and competitions. Among them was Wu Yinbo, the most consciously artistic of professionals, who later became a photojournalist for China Pictorial. The emulation of the themes, compositions, and styles of scroll painting that characterized Chinese Pictorialist photography continued into the early 1980s, with calligraphed characters sometimes added to the negative or sometimes brushed onto the print. An effort was made during the 1930s to adapt this style to working-class themes, as in Construction (pi. no. 722) by Liu Ban Nong. In another approach (pi. no. 723) photographer Zhang Yin Quan tried to fuse the European experimental ideas of the "new vision" with socially significant subjects; both these attempts appear to have been short-lived. On the whole, although there were fine photographers at work, such as the veteran photojournalist Zhang Shuicheng, Chinese photography was circumscribed by a number of factors: by the high cost of materials and of reproduction in a relatively poor nation, by the strong grip of traditionalism on all visual expression, and by the limited interest within officialdom (where funding was controlled) in the medium's potential to create images that would transcend utilitarian purposes.

In the past fifteen or so years, this situation has changed dramatically as photography has become almost a passion among the Chinese. The number of individuals involved in photographic societies has increased from 100, before 1980, to more than 30,000 now. The practice of the medium has become diversified, with individuals not only working for government agencies but also freelancing by selling their work for publication and taking pictures as personal expression. These changes have been triggered by increased contacts with, and greater acceptance of, American and European ideas and individuals, as well as by easier access to materials now that foreign manufacturers have established factories in China producing photographic equipment and film. In addition, for the first time, officials in charge of cultural activities admit that differing concepts of photography exist, freeing individuals to choose their own directions.

Chinese photographers currently involved in social documentation have shown themselves less inclined to idealization. The inadequate schools that rural children must endure have been pictured by Xie Hailong (pi. no. 724.), and the rapid changes brought about by rampant building are presented as mixed blessings by Xu Yong, whose images of disappearing hutongs bring to mind photographs made by Westerners mourning the loss of cherished elements of their own past. The wide-spread excavations in China of archaeological remains have provided photographers with the occasion to document their country's ancient culture. Acknowledgment of the medium's aesthetic potential has afforded former pilot Chen Changfen an opportunity to combine aerial views in color of earth, moon, and sun, merging modern aesthetic concepts with ancient philosophical ideas (pi. no. 726).

 

722. LIU BAN NONG. Construction, early 1930s.
Gravure. Courtesy Zhang Shuichcng, Beijing.

723. ZHANG YIN QUAN. Cart Pullers, 1935.
Gelatin silver print. Courtesy Zhang Shuichcng, Beijing.

724. XIE HAILONG. The Entire School, Nanyantou Village, Shenyoiugou Township, Shanxi Province, 1992.
Gelatin silver prim. China Photography Publishing House, Beijing.

726. CHEN CHANGFEN. Environmental Metamorphic Fission, c. 1983.
Chromogenic color print. Chinese Photographers Association, Beijing.

Portraiture

Formal portraiture—a time-honored photographic specialty that still engages photographers everywhere— has been less influenced than other types of photography by changes in theory and in technique during the postwar years (with the exception of digitally produced portraits). The basic treatment of the human face has, in fact, changed little since the medium's infancy. Expression, gesture, lighting, and decor continue to be seen as keys to revealing (neighborhoods) in Beijing (pi no. 725) the sitter's class, profession, and psychology. This traditional outlook has been encouraged in part by consumers' unsated desire for images of the famous, which in turn has prompted editors and publishers to reproduce such images in magazines and books. There are notable photographers— among them Philippe Halsman (pi. no. 727), Yousuf Karsh (pi. no. 728), Arnold Newman, and Annie Leibovitz—who have devoted themselves almost exclusively to this pursuit. Working both in color and in black and white, Newman, for instance, incorporated into richly orchestrated representations emblems that suggest either his sitter's artistic style or subject matter. His approach is exemplified by Georgia O'Keeffe, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico (pi. no. 729), in which the treatment of space and the props are meant to bring to mind the artist's own preoccupation with the landscape of the American West. Leibovitz has adapted this approach to contemporary sensibilities by placing her sitters in settings that at first glance may seem less formal but are equally artificial and considerably more startling. Richard Avedon, whose interests include portraiture as well as fashion, occasionally uses eye-catching props but always places sitters against a flat monochromatic back-drop. Other notable portraitists, who worked either on commission or from personal choice—including Gisele Freund and Madame D'Ora in France, Brandt in England, Chargesheimer (born Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer) and Fritz Kempe in Germany, and Anatole Sadermann in Argentina— suggested personality by capturing characteristic expression and by manipulating lighting, as in the D'Ora portrait of Colette (pi. no. 730).

Many photographers have portrayed themselves in the course of their life's work, but within the past two decades or so, there has appeared a distinctive use of the self-portrait to comment upon the anxiety and strangeness of contemporary existence. The Finnish photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen directs scenes in which his body—or a portion of it-—appears as an integral part of the landscape— such as an outcropping or rock formation. Dieter Appelt, a German former opera singer, also stages scenes to be photographed, tying his nude body to trees or encasing portions of it in cement (pi. no. 731). Neither has self-portraiture as his primary purpose; rather, like Cindy Sherman (pi. no. 743), they use drama and ritual in conjunction with photography to make transcendent statements.

Uncommissioned portraits of uncelebrated people, often strangers to the photographer, are largely a 20th-century phenomenon made possible by the camera's having become a commonplace, unobtrusive tool. Street photographers from Carrier-Bresson to Winogrand have frequently had multiple aims for such portraiture: to capture facial expression and gestures that reveal emotional states; to express subjective feelings about a situation; to serve as a vehicle for statements about the irrationality of existence. While some photographers continue to view candid portraiture—whether of strangers in the street or family at home (pi, no. 732)—as a way of effecting a seamless interplay of fact and feeling, others now find directorial techniques to be a more effective means of expressing feelings and ideas about the individual and society. This approach is embodied in portraits by the California photographer Judy Dater, who worked during the 1970s (with Jack Welpott) on a series entitled Women and Other Visions. Those works are emblematic of the photographer's interest in the role of women in American society. The sitters, shot in their own homes, were given a degree of freedom in the choice of pose and costume; the distinctive sense of self they convey, as in Laura Mae (pi. no. 733), may have been encouraged by their awareness of Dater's involvement in the emerging feminist movement. This chapter has shown that individualized expression in straight photography has expanded considerably during the past several decades. Photographers and the public have come to accept the camera image as a metaphor, as the expression of private experience, as a subjective document, and as a statement about the potential and the limitations of photography In addition, although it is being transformed by electronic technology, the camera continues to play a vital role in journalism. Owing to the fact that photographs are relatively inexpensive and that they easily move from one country to another (either as originals or in reproduction), photographic concepts and styles formulated in one place can quickly become part of an international mainstream. In effect, camera expression has become a language with more or less a common vocabulary throughout the industrialized nations of the world. When one adds the possibilities offered by color and by manipulations of all sorts—to be discussed in the next chapter—this language will be seen to be one or invigorating richness.
 

725. Xu YONG. Hutong in the Rain, I989.
Gelatin silver print. Chinese Photographers Association, Beijing

727. PHILIPPE HALSMAN. Dali Atomicus, 1948.
Gelatin silver print. Neikrug Gallery, New York.

PHILIPPE HALSMAN  (see collection)
 

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Philippe Halsman (Latvian: Filips Halsmans; 2 May 1906 Riga, Latvia - 25 June 1979 New York City) was a Latvian-born American portrait photographer.
Born to a Jewish family of Morduch (Max) Halsman, a dentist, and Ita Grintuch, a grammar school principal, in Riga, Halsman studied electrical engineering in Dresden.
In September 1928, Halsman went on a hiking tour in the Austrian Alps with his father, Morduch. During this tour, Morduch died from severe head injuries. The circumstances were never completely clarified and Halsman was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for patricide. The case provoked anti-Jewish propaganda and thus gained international publicity, and Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann wrote in support of Halsman. Halsman was finally released in 1931, under the condition that he leave Austria for good, never to return.
Halsman consequently left Austria for France. He began contributing to fashion magazines such as Vogue and soon gained a reputation as one of the best portrait photographers in France, renowned for his sharp, dark images that shunned the old soft focus look. When France was invaded, Halsman fled to Marseille and he eventually managed to obtain a U.S. visa, aided by family friend Albert Einstein (whom he later famously photographed in 1947).
Halsman had his first success in America when the cosmetics firm Elizabeth Arden used his image of model Constance Ford against the American flag in an advertising campaign for "Victory Red" lipstick. A year later in 1942 he found work with Life magazine, photographing hat designs, one of which, a portrait of a model in a Lily Daché hat, was his first of the many covers he would do for Life.
In 1941 Halsman met the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and they began to collaborate in the late 1940s. The 1948 work Dali Atomicus explores the idea of suspension, depicting three cats flying, a bucket of thrown water, and Salvador Dalí in mid air. The title of the photograph is a reference to Dalí's work Leda Atomica which can be seen in the right of the photograph behind the two cats. Halsman reported that it took 28 attempts to be satisfied with the result. Halsman and Dali eventually released a compendium of their collaborations in the 1954 book Dali's Mustache, which features 36 different views of the artist's distinctive mustache. Another famous collaboration between the two was In Voluptas Mors, a surrealistic portrait of Dali beside a large skull, in fact a tableau vivant composed of seven nudes. Halsman took three hours to arrange the models according to a sketch by Dali.
In 1947, he made what was to become one of his most famous photos of a mournful Albert Einstein, who during the photography session recounted his regrets about his role in the United States pursuing the atomic bomb. The photo would later be used in 1966 on a U.S. postage stamp and in 1999, on the cover of Time Magazine, when Time dubbed Einstein as "Person of the Century."
In 1951 Halsman was commissioned by NBC to photograph various popular comedians of the time including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Groucho Marx, and Bob Hope. While photographing the comedians doing their acts, he captured many of the comedians in mid air, which went on to inspire many later jump pictures of celebrities including the Ford family, The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Marilyn Monroe and Richard Nixon.
Halsman commented, "When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears." The photographer developed a philosophy of jump photography, which he called jumpology. He published Philippe Halsman's Jump Book in 1959, which contained a tongue-in-cheek discussion of jumpology and 178 photographs of celebrity jumpers.
His 1961 book Halsman on the Creation of Photographic Ideas, discussed ways for photographers to produce unusual pieces of work, by following three rules: "the rule of the unusual technique", "the rule of the added unusual feature" and "the rule of the missing feature".
Other celebrities photographed by Halsman include Alfred Hitchcock, Judy Garland, Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy Dandridge, and Pablo Picasso. Many of those photographs appeared on the cover of Life.
In 1952, John F. Kennedy had two photograph sittings by Halsman. The result was that one photograph from the first sitting appeared on the jacket of the original edition of Profiles in Courage. In the second sitting a photograph was used in the senatorial campaign.
In 1958 Halsman was listed in Popular Photography's "World's Ten Greatest Photographers", and in 1975 he received the Life Achievement in Photography Award from the American Society of Magazine Photographers. He also held numerous large exhibitions worldwide.

PHILIPPE HALSMAN. Untitled

 

728. YOUSUF KARSH. Winston Churchill, 1941.
Gelatin silver print. International Center of Photography.

YOUSUF KARSH (see collection)
 

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Yousuf Karsh (December 23, 1908 – July 13, 2002) was a Canadian photographer of Armenian heritage, and one of the most famous and accomplished portrait photographers of all time.
Yousuf or Josuf (his given Armenian name was Hovsep) Karsh was born in Mardin, a city in the eastern Ottoman Empire (currently in Turkey). He grew up during the Armenian Genocide where he wrote, "I saw relatives massacred; my sister died of starvation as we were driven from village to village." At the age of 14, he fled with his family to Syria to escape persecution. Two years later, his parents sent Yousuf to live with his uncle George Nakash, a photographer in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. Karsh briefly attended school there and assisted in his uncle’s studio. Nakash saw great potential in his nephew and in 1928 arranged for Karsh to apprentice with portrait photographer John Garo in Boston, United States. His brother, Malak Karsh, was also a photographer famous for the image of logs floating down the river on the Canadian one dollar bill.
Karsh returned to Canada four years later, eager to make his mark. He established a studio on Sparks Street in Ottawa, Ontario, close to Canada’s seat of government. Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King discovered Karsh and arranged introductions with visiting dignitaries for portrait sittings. Karsh's work attracted the attention of varied celebrities, but his place in history was sealed on 30 December, 1941 when he photographed Winston Churchill after Churchill gave a speech to Canadian House of Commons in Ottawa.
The image of Churchill brought Karsh international prominence, and is claimed to be the most reproduced photographic portrait in history. In 1967, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and in 1990 was promoted to Companion.
Of the 100 most notable people of the century, named by the International Who’s Who [2000], Karsh had photographed 51. Karsh was also the only Canadian to make the list.
In the late 90s he moved to Boston and on July 13, 2002 (He was 93 years old) Karsh died at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital after complications following surgery. He was interred in Notre Dame Cemetery in Ottawa. Karsh was a master of studio lights. One of Karsh's distinctive practices was lighting the subject's hands separately. He photographed many of the great and celebrated personalities of his generation. Throughout most of his career he used the 8×10 bellows Calumet (1997.0319) camera, made circa 1940 in Chicago. Journalist George Perry wrote in the British paper The Sunday Times that "when the famous start thinking of immortality, they call for Karsh of Ottawa."
Karsh had a gift for capturing the essence of his subject in the instant of his portrait. As Karsh wrote of his own work in Karsh Portfolio in 1967, "Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can. The revelation, if it comes at all, will come in a small fraction of a second with an unconscious gesture, a gleam of the eye, a brief lifting of the mask that all humans wear to conceal their innermost selves from the world. In that fleeting interval of opportunity the photographer must act or lose his prize."
Karsh said "My chief joy is to photograph the great in heart, in mind, and in spirit, whether they be famous or humble." His work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, New York's Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Bibliotheque nationale de France, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the National Portrait Gallery of Australia and many others. Library and Archives Canada holds his complete collection, including negatives, prints and documents. His photographic equipment was donated to the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa.
Karsh published 15 books of his photographs, which include brief descriptions of the sessions, during which he would ask questions and talk with his subjects to relax them as he composed the portrait. Some famous subjects photographed by Karsh were Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, Audrey Hepburn, Clark Gable, Dwight Eisenhower, Ernest Hemingway, Fidel Castro, Jacqueline Kennedy, Frank Lloyd Wright, General Pershing, George Bernard Shaw, Georgia O'Keeffe, Grey Owl, Helen Keller, Humphrey Bogart, Indira Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Laurence Olivier, Marian Anderson, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, Muhammad Ali, Pablo Casals, Pandit Nehru, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Paul Robeson, Joan Baez, Peter Lorre, Picasso, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Pope Pius XII, Pope John Paul II, Princess Elizabeth, Princess Grace, Prince Rainier of Monaco, Robert Frost, Ruth Draper, Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, the rock band Rush and, arguably his most famous portrait subject, Winston Churchill.
The story is often told of how Karsh created his famous portrait of Churchill during the early years of World War II. Churchill, the British prime minister, had just addressed the Canadian Parliament and Karsh was there to record one of the century's great leaders. "He was in no mood for portraiture and two minutes were all that he would allow me as he passed from the House of Commons chamber to an anteroom," Karsh wrote in Faces of Our Time. "Two niggardly minutes in which I must try to put on film a man who had already written or inspired a library of books, baffled all his biographers, filled the world with his fame, and me, on this occasion, with dread."
Churchill marched into the room scowling, "regarding my camera as he might regard the German enemy." His expression suited Karsh perfectly, but the cigar stuck between his teeth seemed incompatible with such a solemn and formal occasion. "Instinctively, I removed the cigar. At this the Churchillian scowl deepened, the head was thrust forward belligerently, and the hand placed on the hip in an attitude of anger."
The image captured Churchill and the Britain of the time perfectly — defiant and unconquerable. Churchill later said to him, "You can even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed." As such, Karsh titled the photograph, The Roaring Lion.
However, Karsh's favourite photograph was the one taken immediately after this one where Churchill's mood had lightened considerably and is shown much in the same pose, but smiling.
Karsh has influenced many other photographers in different styles to become more independent and further motivate other artists.

YOUSUF KARSH. Jean Sibelius

 

729. ARNOLD NEWMAN. Georgia O'Keeffe, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, 1968.
Gelatin silver print.

ARNOLD NEWMAN (see collection)
 

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Arnold Abner Newman (3 March 1918, New York, NY —6 June 2006, New York, NY) was an American photographer, noted for his "environmental portraits" of artists and politicians. He was also known for his carefully composed abstract still life images.
Newman graduated high school in Miami Beach and attended the University of Miami studying painting and drawing with an introduction to Modernism. Unable to afford continuing after two years, he moved to Philadelphia, PA to work for a studio making 49-cent portraits. His time there taught the importance of interacting with his subjects and allowed him to develop his technique.
Newman returned to Florida in 1942 to manage a portrait studio in West Palm Beach. Three years later he opened his own business in Miami Beach. In 1946, Newman relocated to New York, opened Arnold Newman Studios and worked as a freelance photographer for Fortune, Life, and Newsweek.
Newman found his vision in the empathy he felt for artists and their work. Although he photographed many personalities — Marlene Dietrich, John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan and Mickey Mantle — he maintained that even if the subject is not known, or is already forgotten, the photograph itself must still excite and interest the viewer.
Newman is often credited with being the first photographer to use so-called environmental portraiture, in which the photographer places the subject in a carefully controlled setting to capture the essence of the individual's life and work. Newman normally captured his subjects in their most familiar surroundings with representative visual elements showing their professions and personalities. A musician for instance might be photographed in their recording studio or on stage, a Senator or other politician in their office or a representative building. Using a large-format camera and tripod, he worked to record every detail of a scene.
"I didn't just want to make a photograph with some things in the background," Newman told American Photo magazine in an interview. "The surroundings had to add to the composition and the understanding of the person. No matter who the subject was, it had to be an interesting photograph. Just to simply do a portrait of a famous person doesn't mean a thing."
Newman's best-known images were in black and white, although he often photographed in color. His black and white portrait of Igor Stravinsky seated at a grand piano became his signature image, even though it was rejected by the magazine that gave the assignment to Newman. He was one of the few photographers allowed to make a portrait of the famously camera-shy Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Among Newman's best-known color images is an eerie portrait that shows convicted former Nazi slave labor boss Alfried Krupp in one of Krupp's factories.
Newman taught photography at Cooper Union for many years.
 

ARNOLD NEWMAN. Henry Miller

 

730. MADAME D'ORA (DORA KALLMUS). The Writer Colette, c. 1953.
Gelatin silver print. Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.

MADAME D'ORA (DORA KALLMUS) (see collection)
 

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Dora Kallmus (1881 - October 28, 1963) was an Austrian photographer.

With Arthur Benda, she opened a photography studio under the pseudonym Madame d'Ora in Vienna in 1907. She was popular among the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy, and worked as a salon photographer until she left Vienna for Paris in 1925. In Paris, she became internationally known for her society and fashion photography during the 1930s and 1940s. Her subjects included Josephine Baker, Tamara de Lempicka, Alban Berg, Niddy Impekoven, Maurice Chevalier, Colette, and other dancers, actors, painters, and writers.
 

MADAME D'ORA (DORA KALLMUS). Untitled

 

731. DIETER APPELT. Hands, from Memory's Trace, 1978.
Gelatin silver print. Shashi Caudill and Alan Cravitz, Chicago.

732. EMMET GOWIN. Edith, Ruth, and Mae, Danville, Virginia, 1967.
Gelatin silver print. Light Gallery, New York.

EMMET GOWIN  (see collection)
 

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Emmet Gowin (born 1941 in Danville, Virginia) is an American photographer.
After graduating from Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University) in 1965, Gowin attended the Rhode Island School of Design. While earning his MFA, Gowin studied under influential American photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind.
Gowin teaches at Princeton University and lives in Pennsylvania with his wife Edith.
Gowin first gained attention with his intimate portraits of his wife and family. His almost exclusive use of a large format camera led to both optical and darkroom experiments. Using a 4x5 lens with an 8x10 camera allowed Gowin to expose the full image circle, surrounded by a dramatic vignette, in his family portraits and rural landscapes.
Beginning with a trip to Washington State soon after Mt. Saint Helens erupted, Gowin began taking aerial photographs. For the next twenty years, Gowin captured strip mining sites, nuclear testing fields, large-scale agricultural fields and other scars in the natural landscape.
Gowin received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1977 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1979.
 

EMMET GOWIN. Edith
 

 

733. JUDY DATER. Laura Mae, 1973.
Gelatin silver print.

JUDY DATER (see collection)

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Judy Dater is an American photographer. She is perhaps best known for her photograph, Imogen and Twinka, featuring an elderly Imogen Cunningham encountering Twinka Thiebaud nude, in the woods. Dater was born in 1941, in Hollywood. She grew up in Los Angeles, and studied art there, before moving to San Francisco to take a photography course with Jack Welpott, whom she later married. In 1975, they published a joint work, titled Women and Other Visions.

In 1964, Dater met Imogen Cunningham, whose life and work had greatly inspired her. In 1979, three years after Cunningham's death, she published Imogen Cunningham: A Portrait, containing interviews with many of Cunningham's contemporaries, and photos by both Dater and Cunningham.
 

JUDY DATER. Self-Portrait With Stone