Those with an interest in early photography and what are now referred to "alternative processes" cannot do better than to view the selection of portraits currently on view at the Hans P. Kraus Jr. Gallery at Park Avenue and 82nd Street. One has here an opportunity to study the manner in which the earliest photographers apporached the venerable tradition of portraiture and employed the new medium not only to build on that tradition but also to create innovative effects quite distinct from those acheieved by painters.
First there are prints by the famous names from the very dawn of photography. Henry Fox Talbot is represented by Bust of Patroclus (1842), a salt print from a calotype negative. In choosing an immobile sculpture as his subject, Talbot found a means of dealing with the inordinately long exposures required by the early processes. Thus Talbot was able to achieve a degree of sharpness that is highly unusual in a salt print and is testament to his emerging skill with a camera. That he photographed the sculpture from different angles (this one is more full face than the better known profile in the collection of the Met Museum) demonstrates that he was making a conscious effort to master the intricacies of portraiture.
Perhaps the finest photography to have been created in the medium's first decade was that of the Scottish team of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. Though their photographs of Edinburgh citizens going about their business appear quite spontaneous, the poses were carefully orchestrated and then frozen for the length of the exposure. Hill's knowledge of painting was indispensable in allowing the pair to imbue everyday scenes with a sense of authenticity. At this exhibit they are represented by two works, one of women fishsellers hawking fresh herring and the other of young women gathered by a bird cage (the latter is a modern carbon print made from an original calotype negative).
Though long unrecognized, Julia Margaret Cameron was one of the greatest portraitists of the Victorian era. This can clearly be seen in her study of her niece Julia Duckworth, mother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell and a favorite model of the pre-Raphaelite painters. The photo has an otherworldly quality as the sitter's eyes seem to stare heavenward at some vision only visible to her.
Lewis Carroll (the pen name of Charles Dodgson), best known as the author of Alice in Wonderland, was also an accomplished photographer whose finest works, not surprisingly, were depictions of children. This can easily be seen in his 1873 Xie Kitchin as a "Dane," an albumen print from a collodion negative. In contrast to this portrait of a young girl in costume a nearby profile of a seated man, also by Carroll, seems lifeless even if technically correct.
The most fashionable portraitist in nineteenth century Paris was inarguably Nadar (pseudonym of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) who in the course of his long career photographed virtually every important French writer, painter, and composer. The reason for his success can easily be seen in his portrait of Alexandre Dumas, père. Although the novelist stands motionless, the sitter's volcanic personality blazes forth in this 1865 photograph and brings him vividly to life.
Edgar Degas was not a professional photographer and worked with the medium for only a relatively short period late in his career. As described in Edgar Degas, Photographer, a Met Museum catalog that accompanied its 1998 exhibit of the artist's photographs, Degas's methods were totally unorthodox and yet the knowledge he had gleaned from his years as a painter allowed him to achieve some stunning effects with only minimal lighting. At this exhibit he is represented by a portrait of one of the Halévy family. Degas was close to the Halévys during the time he worked at photography, and much of the information we have concerning his technique is derived from the correspondence of Daniel Halévy. The Halévys, however, were Jewish and Degas a virulent anti-Dreyfusard so that a rift between them was inevitable.
The surprise at this exhibit was something of an anachronism - a 1929 portrait of an old man in Taos by Ansel Adams. Taken long before Adams cofounded the f64 School, the portrait, printed on warm tone matte paper, is almost soft focus - or at least shot with the lens aperture wide open - and all the more engaging for that. I've never cared for Adams's supersharp Yosemite landscapes printed on glossy paper that in my opinion aren't anything more than well crafted calendar art, but this atypical portrait is engaging and conveys very well the sitter's personality as well as giving a strong sense of wisdom acquired through age. It's a shame Adams didn't create more work in this vein; he would have been a much more interesting photographer.
The exhibit continues through April 11, 2018.
No comments:
Post a Comment