I walked across Central Park on Thursday afternoon to view the exhibit of nineteenth century landscapes from the Jay McDonald collection now on view at Hans P. Kraus, Jr. The gallery specializes in showing work from the very beginning of photography and so offers visitors a rare opportunity to see images otherwise locked away in private collections or only occasionally put on display at the Met Museum.
The photographs shown at the current exhibit were all landscapes, most of them taken in the 1850's less than twenty years after Talbot's invention of the medium. The process still in use at that time was Talbot's original "salt print" method in which paper was hand sensitized with a solution of silver chloride. This was a printing out process (POP) distinct from the calotype negative, a developing out process (DOP) in which the paper, after having been first sensitized with silver iodide, was dried and then coated with potassium iodide before being allowed to dry a second time. The calotype method was preferable for use in negatives because it greatly shortened the necessary exposure time in the camera. The earlier salt print method, on the other hand, was generally used for positive prints because it was easier to use, less expensive and, at least in Talbot's opinion, gave more attractive results.
Obviously, the taking of landscape photos was much more problematical in the mid-nineteenth century than it is today. The equipment - consisting of large format view camera, tripod and plate holders - was cumbersome to carry even to a nearby location in the countryside. How much more amazing then are the photographs of Ernest Benecke - represented here by Coptic Village in Upper Egypt (1852) - who worked in the Mideast and Linnaeus Tripe who created portfolios documenting his journeys in India and Burma. The primitive conditions in which these photographers were forced to work, not to mention the extremes of heat to which they were exposed, were much more arduous than any faced by modern day shooters working for National Geographic.
Benecke and Tripe are celebrated today for having been among the earliest travel photographers. In spite of this, little is known of Benecke's life other than the bare facts of the Grand Tour he took through the Near East in 1852. It was only in 1992 that a portfolio of his work was located and the extent of his accomplishment in ethnography made clear. A 1994 New York Times article details the discovery and the subsequent purchase of the portfolio by the German collector Werner Bokelberg. More is known of Tripe who was an officer in the British East India Company and official photographer of the Madras government. In 1855 he accompanied an British expedition to Burma where he photographed sites previously undocumented by Westerners. Tripe was also incredibly proficient at his craft. Though he also used the salt print process, he achieved greater sharpness by apparently treating the prints with a coating of albumen. (Though I have a working familiarity with some of the alternative photographic processes, I have never come across a description of this particular method and am curious to know how it is achieved.) Also, in contrast to other photographs from this period in which the sky shows no detail at all, only a blank white surface, Tripes's prints - The Hill Fort at Trimium, Poodoocottah, India (1858) and Beekinpully, Veerabuddradroog, Madras, India (1857-1858) - have a great deal of detail in the sky area. When I asked at the gallery how this was possible, I was told he touched up these areas of the print with watercolors. If this was indeed the case, Tripe was masterful in his use of paints. Even on close examination, no trace of brushwork can be seen in the finished prints.
The works of many other photographers were on display at this exhibit. The most notable of these were Charles Nègre, who once studied painting under Ingres and whose medium format (9,3cm x 10.8cm) Woman at the Seashore (1860's) was my personal favorite among the images shown, and Roger Fenton, who shortly thereafter gained great acclaim for his photographs of the Crimean War.
The exhibit continues through November 20, 2015.
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