Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill, 'Mr Lane in Indian Dress'

Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill, 'Mr Lane in Indian Dress', 1843-47. Museum no. 3127-1955

Robert Adamson (1821-48) and David Octavius Hill (1802-70)
'Mr Lane in Indian Dress'
1843-7
Calotype
Width 13.2 cm x heigth 18.5 cm
Museum no. 3127-1955

The Photograph

The calotype process coincided with the contemporary taste in art, portrait painters favouring the generalised treatment. It is important to note that its development fell to a small group of artists such as Hill, who were interested in the tradition of picture-making and photography's role within its established aesthetic.

Hill and Adamson's portrait of Mr Lane is a good example of the rich tone of the calotype. The lack of precision in detail of the image creates a beautifully soft and suggestive image. The image appears to be part of the paper, rather than lying in a coating on the paper. This was certainly one of the qualities of the process that appealed to artists who experimented with the photographic technique. It is not known whether Mr Lane was the Edinburgh actor of this name or the explorer Edward William Lane, as his costume could signify either profession. It is also worth noting that Mr Lane is posed in the open air since interiors were not light enough for a negative to be quickly produced. The setting of the portrait, however, does not acknowledge the open-air location, and is arranged to look like an interior scene

The Photographers

Fox Talbot was concerned that, although he had not patented the calotype in Scotland, someone should practice it on a professional basis.

Robert Adamson, the younger brother of one of the first Scotsmen to experiment with the technique, was proposed and accepted as the first professional calotype photographer in Scotland.

The Hill and Adamson partnership lasted from 1843 to 1847, starting soon after Hill had visited Adamson's photography studio. Initially Hill was interested in using the calotype process to produce studies for his paintings.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13.

Roger Fenton, 'Hardships in the Camp'

Roger Fenton, 'Hardships in the Camp', 1855. Museum no. 64:847

Roger Fenton (1819-69)
'Hardships in the Camp'
Crimea
1855
Albumen print from a wet collodion negative
Width 15.8 cm x height 17.5 cm
Museum no. 64:847

The Photograph

Fenton gave his account of the difficult journeying conditions in the Crimea to the Photographic Society of London in November 1855. The large amount of equipment which the wet collodion process required was hard to manoeuvre in the rough terrain of the Crimea. Fenton experienced further difficulty during the summer months when the weather was hotter so that it was difficult to keep the collodion wet and the nitrate bath (for developing) in good working order. Fenton, however, produced up to 360 images of the Crimea. The images are mainly topographical views and portraits of the serving British Army.

This particular image shows three soldiers in the foreground at rest, eating and drinking. The image has a conventional composition but its significance is transformed by the knowledge of the event in which the scene takes place. The stillness of the image highlights the waiting and sense of impending action of the battlefield.

The Photographer

Over the ten years that he was a practising photographer, Roger Fenton produced images of a great breadth of subject matter, which reflected contemporary interests such as architecture, engineering, art and also the Crimean war.

Roger Fenton was instrumental in forming the Photographic Society of London in 1853 and was made honorary secretary. He was also an important figure in gaining photographers' protection under the copyright laws as artists in their own right. In March 1854 he was appointed the official photographer at the British Museum, employed to document the museum's collection.

Later in the same year he was approached by the Manchester publisher Thomas Agnew to be sent under semi-official patronage to the Crimea. The government wanted to obtain scenes from the battlefield and of the British Army and Agnew would gain some financial return in selling prints. The images, therefore, had to be informative, but also palatable to a British audience.

On his return Fenton began various other projects such as landscapes, still life and oriental studies. He retired from photography in 1862, returning to his career as a lawyer. It is possible that by 1862 he had achieved all the breadth and quality in his work that he wished.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13.

 

Philip H. Delamotte, 'Fountains Abbey'

Philip H. Delamotte, 'Fountains Abbey', about 1855. Museum no. PH.405-1981

Philip Delamotte
'Fountains Abbey'
England
About 1855
Albumen print from a wet collodion negative
Width 23.5 cm x height 28.8 cm
Museum no. PH.405-1981

The Photograph

This image of Fountains Abbey appeared as an illustration in 'A Photographic Tour among the Abbeys of Yorkshire' by Cundall & Delamotte (1856). The image shows the crumbling walls of the abbey and represents the preoccupation of the 19th century with the romantic ruin. It is a fine example of the great clarity which was made possible by the wet collodion negative and its ability to capture the smallest detail of the scene, showing the beautiful textures of the natural and the crumbling man-made forms.

There was, generally, no practical advantage in being able to count each mortar course in the brick wall of a distant building, but it was nevertheless a pleasure to look at a picture that allowed one to do this. It produced 'the satisfactory illusion that all was revealed, nothing withheld'. John Szarkowski, 'Photography Until Now', MoMA, 1989

The Photographer

Philip Delamotte was the son of William De La Motte, the landscape painter. Philip was possibly tutored by his father and went on to teach drawing and perspective at King's College, Cambridge from 1855 to 1857 and later became Professor of Drawing.

He began taking photographs in the late 1840s using the calotype process and went on to use the wet collodion negative. He not only produced photographs (often used for book illustrations) but taught photography and wrote about photographic techniques.

He was commissioned to document the reconstruction of Crystal Palace at Sydenham in 1854, the bright light of the glass interior making it possible to take interior 'news' photographs.

The commitment of his professorship at King's College meant that his career as a photographer was short-lived and by the end of the 1850s his prolific photographic output had ceased.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13.

Gustave le Gray, 'Seascape'

Gustave le Gray, 'Seascape', 1856. Museum no. 67.999

Gustave le Gray (1820-82)
'Seascape'
Normandy, France
1856
Albumen print from a collodion-on-glas negative
Width 41.4cm x heigth 32.6 cm
Museum no. 67.999

The Photograph

The photograph is created from two negatives, joined along the horizon line. In order that the sky be fully exposed, the sea region would have been under-exposed. Therefore le Gray captured the optimum detail of both sea and sky by producing two negatives, each of which concentrated on one of the two elements. The combined negatives create an intense and calm image which is heightened by the mellow colouring of the toned print.

This photograph was exhibited in London and Manchester in 1857 and was ecstatically received by critics. The print was acquired by Chauncey Hare Townshend, a connoisseur of early photography and a patron of the arts. The print was bequeathed to the South Kensington Museum, along with other highly significant early photographs, at Townshend's death in 1868.

The Photographer

Gustave le Gray was born in Villiers-le-Bel in 1820. He studied painting under Delaroche in Paris from 1839, for four years.

In 1843, having returned to Paris, he experimented with photographic techniques, firstly the daguerreotype and then the paper negative.

In 1851, he became one of the founding members of the French photographic society, the Société Héliographique, whose members included Henri Le Secq and Charles Nègre.

He introduced the wax-paper negative (whereby the negative was waxed before exposure) and introduced his process to the Académie des Sciences in the spring of 1851.During the same year he produced a series of images of the Fôret de Fontainebleau using the waxed paper negative.

Le Gray also used the wet collodion negative process and produced magnificent seascapes and maritime views during the mid to late 1850s using this technique. In 1857 he was commissioned to photograph Napoleon III's new military camp east of Paris. He travelled throughout the Mediterranean in 1860 with Alexandre Dumas taking images of the architecture of, for example, Greece, Beirut and Lisbon. By 1864 he had settled in Cairo, working in the court of Ismail Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt. He died in Egypt in 1882.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13.

 

Francis Frith, 'Sphinx'

Francis Frith, 'Sphinx', 1858. Museum no. PH.744-1987

Francis Frith (1822-98)
'Sphinx'
Egypt
1858
Albumen print from collodion-on-glass negative
Width 49.2 cm x height 38.5 cm
Museum no. PH.744-1987

The Photograph

Francis Frith was one of the most successful commercial photographers from the 1860s onwards. Throughout the 1850s and 1860s photographs of historical and topographical sights were highly desirable and Francis Frith was one of the most successful commercial photographers to cater for this demand.

The detail of the wet collodion negative, apparent in this image, produced prints which British publishers readily marketed. This photograph was produced from one of Frith's large negatives (16x20 inches) and captures the monumentality of Egyptian landscape and architecture, the dramatic light and its play on sand and stone.

The Photographer

Francis Frith became a photographer in 1856 and in that year embarked on his first tour of Egypt. He was using wet collodion negatives, which proved difficult to keep wet in the intense heat of Egypt.

He returned the following year and two publishing companies (Negretti & Zambra and Agnews) issued many of his photographs from Egypt. The photographs received wide critical acclaim and Frith was commissioned by Negretti & Zambra to photograph in Egypt, Syria and Palestine which were published on his return in 1858.

He returned again the following year. Frith opened a printing studio in Surrey in 1859, reprinting his photographs to meet the great demand for his images of the Near East. He went on to take and commission photographs of topographical views of Britain and the continent. Frith died in 1898, his family continuing the printing business until 1968.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13b.

Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden

Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden, 'Photographic Study', 1857-64. Museum no. 372-1947

Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden (1822-65)
'Photographic Study'
Portrait of the photographer's daughter
England
1857-64
Albumen print from a collodion-on-glass negative
Width 23.5 cm x height 23.8 cm
Museum no. 372-1947
Given by Lady Clementina Tottenham

The Photograph

This photograph shows her daughter Clementina (born 1847) posed in fancy dress in the light-filled interior of 5 Princes Gardens. The image is typical of the highly sensuous and evocative interior scenes which Lady Hawarden produced. She often used props such as mirrors, drapes and rugs and dressed her children in theatrical costume.

In this photograph, as in many others, the sitter is posed to suggest a heightened moment within a suggested, but not explicit, narrative. Lady Hawarden was working at a time when photography was becoming commercialised, but amateurs, such as Lady Hawarden, were free to explore aesthetics, concentrating, for example, on the possibilities of light and creation of 'tableaux vivants'. Her work has been much analysed in recent years by feminist art historians, who have found in her images a radical revision of the female subject.

The Photographer

Clementina Elphinstone Fleeming was born near Glasgow in 1822. She became Lady Hawarden on her marriage in 1845 to Cornwallis Maude, 4th Viscount Hawarden. In 1857 the Hawardens moved to Dundrum, the family estate in Ireland, where Lady Hawarden began photographing the romantic landscape. It is likely that Oscar Rejlander instructed her in photography.

In 1859 they returned to London, to a newly built house at 5 Princes Gardens, South Kensington, close to the South Kensington Museum, which is now the V&A. The first floor of the Princes Gardens home was given over to Lady Hawarden's photography. She mainly used her eldest children (she gave birth to ten children) as models for her photographs.

She first showed her photographs at the 1863 Photographic Society of London exhibition and was awarded a silver medal for 'the best contribution by an amateur'. At the Society's 1864 exhibition she was awarded a silver medal for 'the best group, or composition or compositions, each from a single negative'. In the following year, at the age of 42, she died of pneumonia.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13.

Julia Margaret Cameron, 'St Agnes'

Julia Margaret Cameron, 'St Agnes', about 1864-79. Museum no. 44.751

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79)
'St Agnes'
Portrait of Mary Anne Hillier 
Britain
About 1864-79
Albumen print from collodion-on-glass negative
Width 21.3 cm x heigth 26.7 cm
Museum no. 44.75

The Photograph

Cameron used collodion negatives and her images have an out-of-focus quality. She was criticised by some of her contemporaries for what they considered the technical failure of her work given that the collodion negative could produce images of great clarity and detail. The appearance of her work, however, was intentional.

'When focussing and coming to something which, to my eye, was very beautiful, I stopped there instead of screwing on the lens to the more definite focus which all other photographers insist upon.' Julia Margaret Cameron, 'Annals to my Glass House', 1874

Her exposure times of three to seven minutes compounded the soft focussing of her images as her subjects were likely to move during that time.

The Photographer

In 1863 Julia Margaret Cameron's daughter (Julia) and her son-in-law had given her a camera and she had been taught basic photographic skills by the photographer and painter David Wilkie Wynfield. Despite the criticism of her techniques, the sensuous quality and the mood she created in her images were recognised. At the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867 her work was shown next to photographs by Henry Peach Robinson and Oscar Rejlander, which endorsed an elevated position for Cameron's work.

Cameron's early work concentrated on allegorical and religious themes. By 1866 she was producing her best known work, which was portraiture.

In the early 1870s her photographs were used as illustrations of literary works including Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King' (1874-5). The Camerons moved to Ceylon in 1875, where she produced a few works and where she died in 1879.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13.

 

John Thomson, 'Street Life in London'

John Thomson, 'Street Life in London', 1877-8. Museum no. PH. 323-1982 to PH.327-1982

John Thomson (1837-1921)
'Street Life in London
England
1877-8
Carbon print (woodburytype)
Museum no. PH. 323-1982 to PH.327-1982

The Photographs

In the late 1870s Thomson embarked on his most well known project, photographing the lives the people living on the streets of London.

'Street Life in London' was published in twelve instalments throughout 1877 and the beginning of 1878. Three of Thomson's photographs appeared in each edition with three stories mainly written by the journalist Adolphe Smith, who held reformist views and worked as the official interpreter for the TUC from 1886 to 1905.

With social problems gaining increased attention in the 1870s through the work of such men as Charles Dickens and the founder of homes for destitute children, Dr Barnado, these vignettes of survival among the poor proved popular with the public. The hopes and aspirations, values and needs of those portrayed were recognisable to the readers of other classes. The photographs added a graphic realism to the stories. Stephen White, 'John Thomson', Thames & Hudson, 1985. The 12 instalments were published in a single volume in 1878.

The Photographer

Born in Edinburgh in 1837, John Thomson travelled widely in Asia during the 1860s, taking images of places such as Singapore, Siam, Cambodia and China.

In 1873 he returned to England and began compiling and publishing books based on his travels. In the late 1870s he photographed London street scenes. He travelled to Cyprus in 1879 and returned to London to set up a portrait studio in 1881. He died in 1921.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13.

Frederick Evans, 'Ely Cathedral'

Frederick Evans, 'Ely Cathedral', about 1900. Museum no. 569-1900

Frederick Evans (1853-1943)
'Ely Cathedral'
England
About 1900
Photogravure
Museum no. 569-1900

The Photograph

During the 1890s Evans travelled to the cathedral towns of England, pausing several weeks, for instance at Ely, simply to study the light. His rule was to place the camera as far from his subject as possible, select the lens that would fill his viewing screen, and expose for minutes on end, preferably with the lens stopped down to f.32 to achieve a clear depth of field. Mark Haworth-Booth, 'The Golden Age of British Photography', Aperture, 1984

Evans produced pure and unforced images of Ely Cathedral, based on his long contemplation, over a number of days, on the light within the cathedral and his noting of which hour would reveal the deepest shadows and softest detail of the architecture. Evans had arranged with the Dean of the Cathedral to have Victorian gas fittings and chairs removed while he was taking photographs. Evans did take some exterior views of English cathedrals, but his preference was for the interior of which this image is a fine example.

The Photographer

Frederick Evans began experimenting with photography in the mid 1880s while running a bookshop in Cheapside, London. He placed great emphasis, from the beginning, on producing technically brilliant and unmanipulated images.

In 1898 he took up photography professionally, concentrating on architectural subject matter. He produced exquisitely unfettered images of the play of light on architectural forms.

He was elected to the Linked Ring, an organisation dedicated to the promotion of photography as an art, in 1894.

He was the first photographer to have his work reproduced in Camera Work and had his photographs shown by Stieglitz in the '291' gallery in New York. He continued to produce architectural photography in the 1900s, working for Country Life, but had completed his photographic career by 1913.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13a.

Eugène Atget, 'Shopfront

Eugène Atget, 'Shopfront, Quai Bourbon, Paris', about 1903. Museum no. PH.2208-1903

Eugène Atget (1856-1927)
'Shopfront, Quai Bourbon, Paris'
France
About 1903
Albumen print
Width 17.5 cm x height 21 cm
Museum no. PH.2208-1903

The Photograph

This photograph is an albumen print, contact printed by Atget from a 24x18 glass negative. You can see the dark shapes of two clips which held the negative in place on the right edge of the image. This image was one of many photographs bought by the V&A directly from Atget, in this instance in 1903. This photograph would have been bought as simply an illustration of ironwork in Paris.

The albumen process was almost unused by the early 1900s and so it refers the image to the 19th century and also to the non-art status intended for the photograph. There is, however, an ambiguity in the reading of this image and most strongly in the reflection in the door of the shop of the street scene with Atget and his camera. This is one of Atget's images where it is possible to see why his photographs have fascinated 20th-century photographers; it carries, whether intended or not, a strangeness which invests the image with potential meaning beyond its primarily documentary role.

The Photographer

Eugène Atget was a commercial photographer who worked in and around Paris for over thirty years.

At his death in 1927, his work was known only by a few archivists and artists who had an interest in his photographic record of French visual culture.

After a failed attempt at a career as an actor, Atget set up as a photographer in Paris in 1890. Initially he supplied artists with photographic models, taking pictures of landscapes, posed figures and still lifes. He was friends with, and his work served, artists but he was never to consider his own photographs primarily artistic.

By 1897 he had begun a self-motivated photographic survey of Paris concentrating on the architecture and design of historic buildings in Paris. There were three general groups of buyers of his photographs: artists (his original market), craftsmen wanting to refer to old style architectural details such as ironwork and stone carving, and libraries and museums wanting an illustrative survey of 'Old Paris'. The latter group was the largest buyer of his work and from 1907 to 1912 Atget carried out commissions for them.

He was happiest working without constraints and returned to his life's project, documenting what he wished of Paris, in 1912. In the 1920s avant-garde artists, including Man Ray, whose studio was in the same street as Atget's home, became interested in his work. Some of his images seemed to them to be self-consciously modern and surreal.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13a.

Eugène Atget, 'Boucherie

Eugène Atget, 'Boucherie, Rue Christine, Paris', about 1900. Museum no. Circ.411-1974

Eugène Atget
'Boucherie, Rue Christine, Paris'
France
About 1900
Gold toned gelatin-silver print
Width 17.5 cm x height 23 cm
Museum no. CIRC.411-1974

The Photograph

After Atget's death in 1927, his archive was divided between the Monuments Historiques in Paris and Berenice Abbott. She had first met Atget and seen his photographs when working in Man Ray's studio a few years earlier. This print was made from one of the negatives in her collection and was printed in 1956. The print is gold toned, creating a beautifully stark and deeply toned print that contrasts with the vintage albumen print of the other photograph by Atget. Just as Atget's albumen print denies the modern artistic quality of his photographs, the gold toned print declares his work in 1956 as 'art' photography and belonging to 20th-century aesthetics.

The Photographer

Eugène Atget was a commercial photographer who worked in and around Paris for over thirty years.

At his death in 1927, his work was known only by a few archivists and artists who had an interest in his photographic record of French visual culture.

After a failed attempt at a career as an actor, Atget set up as a photographer in Paris in 1890. Initially he supplied artists with photographic models, taking pictures of landscapes, posed figures and still lifes. He was friends with, and his work served, artists but he was never to consider his own photographs primarily artistic.

By 1897 he had begun a self-motivated photographic survey of Paris concentrating on the architecture and design of historic buildings in Paris. There were three general groups of buyers of his photographs: artists (his original market), craftsmen wanting to refer to old style architectural details such as ironwork and stone carving, and libraries and museums wanting an illustrative survey of 'Old Paris'. The latter group was the largest buyer of his work and from 1907 to 1912 Atget carried out commissions for them.

He was happiest working without constraints and returned to his life's project, documenting what he wished of Paris, in 1912. In the 1920s avant-garde artists, including Man Ray, whose studio was in the same street as Atget's home, became interested in his work. Some of his images seemed to them to be self-consciously modern and surreal.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13a.

Lewis Hine, 'Child Labour Exhibition Panel'

Lewis Hine, 'Child Labour Exhibition Panel', 1910. Museum no. PH.1191-1980

Lewis Hine (1874-1940)
'Child Labour Exhibition Panel'
USA
1910
Vintage gelatine-silver prints
Museum no. PH.1191-1980

The Photograph

The untitled photograph above is one of Hine's many images of children that he produced while involved with the NCLC. Hine's photographs of this period were used for social reform and the photograph on the left shows the image incorporated into an exhibition board promoting the idea of 'permits and inspection'. Hine holds a central place in reform photography but was also aesthetically innovative, finding an alternative to the out-of-focus Pictorialist style that was still dominant at this time.

The Photographer

Lewis Hine began to take photographs in about 1904 when he was teaching at the Ethical Culture School in New York.

He used photography for educational purposes, to promote the idea of the dignity of working men and women's lives, and also to celebrate the multicultural nature of contemporary American society.

Hine wanted to faithfully represent working people and commonplace things, a theory that for him had an aesthetic justification in 19th-century literary and visual realism. Hine believed that realist photography was not only defined on aesthetic grounds but also served a social purpose.

He began freelance work for the National Child Labour Committee (NCLC) while teaching in New York. The NCLC was an agency whose purpose was to help enact laws prohibiting child labour. Hine's photographs of child workers helped the organisation prove that there was widespread abuse of the laws against child labour. In 1918 he became a captain in the Red Cross and travelled to France. Later he went to other parts of Europe to document the work of the Red Cross and the social impact of the First World War.

When he returned to New York, he moved away from representing people in the depths of oppression and produced images of people (mostly adults) working. He hoped to show working people the beauty in their way of life. Hine's reputation was not established at the time of his death in 1940. His importance as an artist with a progressive spirit was not debated until the 1960s.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13a.

.

Paul Strand, 'The White Fence'

Paul Strand, 'The White Fence', 1916. Museum no. PH.374-1982

Paul Strand (1890-1976)
'The White Fence'
1916
Museum no. PH.374-1982

The Photograph

This image, taken in 1916, is a dramatic shift away from the Pictorialist photographic style that Strand had previously adopted and was still dominant at this time. Strand was breaking new ground in both subject matter and presentation. He chose the fence in order to show that an ordinary object (one which would not at that time have been considered an artistic subject) was invested with a striking aesthetic appeal. He represents the fence in sharp focus, its impact heightened by the out-of-focus buildings in the background. The power of the image suggests that Strand was declaring a new visual language for photography.

The Photographer

Paul Strand studied photography at the Ethical Culture High School in New York and had joined the classes of Lewis Hine. It was his interest in Pictorialist photography, however, that inspired him to become a professional photographer in 1912.

In 1913-14 Strand became interested in modern art such as the work of Picasso, Brancusi and Braque, which he saw at the '291' gallery and the Armory Show in 1913. He began to explore their work and to consider how photography could respond to modern art.

His work of 1915-17 was highly experimental and marked a radical shift in the vision of photography. The photographs he produced at this time are credited as being the first abstract still lifes and brutally candid shots intended as art rather than reportage photography. He used his great technical skill to create striking images that were always sensitive to the quality and substance of the subject matter.

Stieglitz was greatly impressed by his work, gave him a show at the '291' and reproduced his work in two editions of 'Camera Work' in 1916 and 1917. Strand continued to reassess photographic subject matter and presentation throughout the late 1910s and the 1920s producing, for example, close-ups of machinery and natural forms, and 'candid' portraits.

In the 1930s most of his creative energy was devoted to cinematography, working in Mexico and the USA. He returned to still photography in 1943 and travelled to many locations including Europe (he came to live in France), Africa, and the Middle East, producing enduring images of the people, their land and its details. He died in his home in Orgeval in France in 1976.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13a.

August Sander, 'Die Boxer

August Sander, 'Die Boxer, Paul Roderstein, Hein Hesse', 1928. Museum no. 141-1979

August Sander (1876-1964)
'Die Boxer, Paul Roderstein, Hein Hesse'
Germany
1928
Gelatin-silver print
Museum no. 141-1979

The Photograph

This image of two boxers was taken by Sander for his project 'Man of the 20th Century'. It is typical of much of the series in the pose of the figures, shown in full length, hands by their sides, facing and acknowledging the camera. The men are posed against a wall, which gives the image an unstaged quality. This is also emphasised in the sharp focus of the image and the unromantic posing of the men. Sander often photographed people in pairs, which makes us compare the men physically and speculate on the differences in their character.

The Photographer

August Sander became interested in photography as a young man. He bought a portrait studio in Austria in 1903 and produced the soft, Pictorialist-style portraits that were fashionable at that time.

In 1910 he moved his business to Cologne and began his project 'Man of the 20th Century', photographing people in their own environments, ordered into groups defined by trade or appointed function. These images were naturalistic and not retouched, Sander's preferred visual style for his own work. In 1927 he exhibited 60 images from the 'Man of the 20th Century' project in Cologne and his first book 'Faces of our Time' (1929) also showed a small selection from his physiognomic study.

The Nazi regime was wholly unsympathetic towards Sander's photography and his family's political beliefs (his eldest son died in prison in 1944). In 1934 the printing plates for 'Faces of our Time' were confiscated.

Sander's photography was not political but his project included many types of people, some of which were persecuted by the Nazis. Sander not only presented German people as made up of various groups, but also in a realistic rather than heroic light. The opposition to his work led him to concentrate on photographing landscapes and botanical studies, work which continued to contemplate the German environment but did not create conflict with Nazi officials.

After the war Sander returned to the 'Man of the 20th Century' project, reprinting old negatives and producing some new photographs. MoMA in New York accepted 40 of his photographs into their collection in 1953 and some of his work appeared in the 'Family of Man' exhibition curated by Edward Steichen at MoMA.

Sander's wife died in 1957, after which Sander did not feel strong enough to continue his life's project. He died three months after a severe stroke in 1964.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13a.

Herbert Bayer, 'Hands Act'

Herbert Bayer, 'Hands Act', 1932. Museum no. Circ.650-1969

Herbert Bayer (1900-85)
'Hands Act'
1932
Museum no. Circ. 650-1969

The Photograph

Photomontage appealed to Bayer because its elemental structure came from the imagination and did not rely on the actual spatial arrangement of objects. In this image Bayer has arranged photographs of hands (two wearing plastic gloves) onto a map and re-photographed it. The joins of the different photographs are barely visible. The image has a surreal quality; the meaning of the arrangement of forms is not clear. Bayer, however, was from the Bauhaus movement and although the photomontage may be the closest Bauhaus came to Surrealist thinking, it is perhaps more a personal gesture of wit and irony than a direct reference to Surrealism.

The Photographer

Herbert Bayer was one of the leading figures in the Bauhaus movement in Germany and was throughout his career a highly influential graphic designer and artist.

Bayer began to experiment with photography while he was a master at the Bauhaus school in Dessau. He produced some straight photographs, highlighting the abstract structures and sculptural qualities of things, but was never interested in the technical side of photography and so his exploration of straight photography was limited.

He left the Bauhaus in 1928 and established himself as a leading designer. It was at this stage that he took an interest in photomontage. He used the technique for his own artistic work but also in advertising work, where he was partly responsible for establishing photomontage as a key commercial visual style in the 1930s.

His main body of photographic work was produced in the late 1920s and the 1930s, after which he continued to develop other areas of visual design.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13a.

 

Ansel Adams, 'Frozen Lake and Cliffs

Ansel Adams, 'Frozen Lake and Cliffs, Sierra Nevada', 1932. Museum no. 590-1975

Ansel Adams
'Frozen Lake and Cliffs, Sierra Nevada'
1932
Museum no. 590-1975

The Photograph

This photograph was taken in 1932 and shows Adams's confident transition into 'straight' (unmanipulated) photography. In it, he creates very sharp images with a full tonal range. Adams recollected that it was difficult to anticipate the best exposure for the image when there were areas of deep shade and blinding sunlight. He developed the 'zone system', which was a framework for understanding exposure and development, and visualising their effect in advance. The printing of the image was also complicated.

'[Adams's] method was to divide the basic exposure into two parts, just burning in the foreground reflection area starting from the top of the ice, then burning the cliffs starting from the bottom of the ice ... Thus the ice receives about twice the exposure given to the cliffs and the reflection area.' Ansel Adams, 'Examples', Little, Brown, 1983

This illustrates Adams's belief that making prints involved using controls and manipulations in order to produce an image approximating what he saw and felt when he made the exposure, representing both the photographer's internal emotions and the external beauty of a scene.

The Photographer

Ansel Adams had begun to visit the Sierra Nevada when he was 14. He was deeply affected by the grandeur of the landscape, and the conservation and depiction of the Sierra's beauty became a lifelong passion. He had begun to explore the landscape with a camera in the mid 1910s, but it was not until the early 1930s that he devoted himself to a career as a photographer (Adams was a very talented pianist and had seriously considered this his vocation until this point).

He produced images of the monolithic and also the tiny details of the natural forms in the Sierra Nevada as well as other impressive landscapes in, for example, New Mexico. Increasingly through the 1920s his photographs lost any stylistic association with Pictorialist photography as he came to believe that highly detailed, 'straight' photography could best represent the photographer's relationship to the external world.

Throughout his working life he published books of his photographs as well as technical guides. He also taught photography and was instrumental in setting up the Centre for Creative Photography in Arizona. In 1975 he announced that he would no longer take orders for his photographs from commercial galleries and would only produce prints for non-profit making organisations, such as museums. He died in 1984. The following year a peak in Yosemite National Park was named Mount Ansel Adams.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13b.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo, 'The Crouched Ones'

Manuel Alvarez Bravo, 'The Crouched Ones', 1932-4. Museum no. PH.232-1976

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
'The Crouched Ones'
1932-34
Museum no. 232-1976

The Photograph

Alvarez Bravo's photographs show a detachment from the highly politicised artistic creation of his contemporaries such as the Mexican mural painters and the Surrealist movement. His work should not be seen as wholly autonomous, however, since he met and discussed photography with leading figures such as Paul Strand and Cartier-Bresson and he also shared with his Mexican contemporaries a concentration on the lives of Mexican people. This image showing a line of men seated at a bar is a good example of the compassionate yet unromantic way in which he represented everyday life.

'He often brings our attention to the peripheral, or sub-dramatic, moments or transactions or places. It is often as though the photograph had virtually composed itself.' Jane Livingstone, 'M. Alvarez Bravo', London 1978

It is also typical of the short depth of field which Bravo used in his images; he tends rather to use light and shade to articulate mood. In this photograph the deep shadow ominously used to blank out the heads and features of the drinkers is contrasted with the luminosity concentrated in the lower part of the image and specifically on the chains which join the bar stools. The chains seem to symbolise the chaining of the unidentified group to the bar and, to take the symbolism a step further, of the working man to alcohol.

The Photographer

Manuel Alvarez Bravo began to develop an interest in photography in his early twenties, buying his first camera in 1924. He met Tina Modotti in 1927 when she was working in Mexico City, and through her sent his portfolio in 1929 to Edward Weston, who was impressed by Bravo's work.

He taught photography at the Academy of San Carlos in 1930 (when Diego Rivera was director) and again in 1932-3. He was commissioned in 1930 to photograph painted murals by Mexican artists including Frida Kahlo and David Siqueiros.

During the 1930s Bravo was exposed to many artistic influences through meeting leading cultural figures including Paul Strand in 1933, with whom he developed a close friendship, and the Surrealist poet and artist André Breton (who was living in Diego Rivera's house in 1938). He also met Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1934 and they had a joint exhibition the following year, which was shown in New York and Mexico.

During the late 1940s and 1950s Bravo was employed as a photographer and cameraman at the Mexican Institute of Cinematography and carried out very little personal photographic work. He left the Institute in 1959 to begin the Editorial Foundation of Mexican Plastic Arts, which published fine art books of Mexican art in which many of Bravo's photographs of Mexican material culture appeared. Bravo donated his early photographs to the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico in 1972. He died in 2002, in Mexico City.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13b.

Weegee (Arthur Fellig), 'Arrested for Bribing Basketball Players'

Weegee (Arthur Fellig), 'Arrested for Bribing Basketball Players', 1942, printed 1985. Museum no. PH.60-1986

Weegee (Arthur Fellig)
'Arrested for Bribing Basketball Players'
1942, printed 1985
Museum no. PH.60-1986

The Photograph

This photograph was taken during the period when Weegee was nightly using the police radio to be present at the scenes of New York crimes. In many of Weegee's photographs of such scenes, the characters do not acknowledge Weegee and his camera and it is as if the chaos of the scene absorbs them. In this photograph, however, it is likely that the men shield their faces from Weegee and the camera. The men are backed up against a wall. Possibly Weegee has cropped the image to emphasise the sense of the men being trapped in a corner.

The Photographer

Born Arthur Fellig in Austria in 1899, Weegee emigrated to America (where his father was already living) aged ten. He left school at 14 and after a few casual jobs began his photographic career as a tintype (or ferrotype) street photographer. In his mid-twenties he became a darkroom assistant at the Acme News Services, developing and printing New York's news photographs. He worked at Acme for 12 years, learning what types of images were newsworthy and the visual trends of reportage photography. At the age of 36 he became a freelance photographer.

In 1937 Weegee bought a car, received a press card and was granted a short-wave police radio. Weegee was the only person in New York outside of the police force who was given access to their radio frequency.

This enabled him to be the first photographer at the scene of a crime, sometimes arriving before the police. Serious urban crimes usually took place during the night (when most salaried photographers would not be working) and Weegee was famous for sleeping in his clothes, ready to rush out to the latest scene of crime. He was said to have photographed a murder every night for over ten years.

Weegee's name was derived from the Ouija board because of his ability to seem to know where the news would occur before anyone else. By the mid 1940s Weegee had a reputation not only as an almost fanatical reportage photographer, but also as a great photographer, producing images that had a resounding quality which transcended the temporary or throw-away status of the newspaper image.

Weegee published his first book of photographs in 1945, entitled 'Naked City', and it led to further critical acclaim and commissions from 'glossy' magazines such as Vogue. He sold the film rights to 'Naked City' in 1953. During this period Weegee was experimenting with image manipulation using lenses which distorted the image. Distortion allowed Weegee to project how he felt onto images of, for example, politicians and celebrities, rather than capturing the emotions of the people represented. He died in 1968.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13b.

Lee Friedlander, 'Cincinnati

Lee Friedlander, 'Cincinnati, Ohio', 1963. Museum no. PH.769-1980 © Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Lee Friedlander (born 1934)
'Cincinnati, Ohio'
Ohio, USA
1963
Gelatin-silver print
Width 16.9 cm x height 25.5 cm
Museum no. PH.769-1980
© Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

The Photograph

This image is typical of Friedlander's work since it does not offer us an obvious meaning. His choice of the shop window as a subject matter calls up an obvious reference to the photographs of Parisian shop fronts taken by Eugène Atget at the turn of the century. We could, with this relationship in mind, read this image as a value-free document of a shop window. It could, however, also refer to Atget's adoption by the Surrealist movement as the 'father' of uncanny images of street objects and architecture.

The image is also partly a self-portrait (he produced a series of self-portraits around this time, some of which showed him reflected in windows and shop-fronts). If we look carefully at the centre of the image, just below and to the right of the 'cashier' sign, a silhouette and three fingers poised on a camera are just visible.

There is also a sense that the image has a symbolic content, although what is signified is not clear. Does the bed stand for anything? Is the play with interior and exterior, with the reflection of the street 'into' the shop a symbol of some sort? The ambiguity of meaning in his photographs gives them an uneasy resonance, which is probably Friedlander's intention.

The Photographer

Lee Friedlander received his first public recognition from his portraits of jazz musicians which he began to produce while in Los Angeles in 1954. He moved to New York in 1956, working mainly for Atlantic Records.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s Friedlander was absorbing the work of photographers such as Robert Frank ('The Americans' was published in 1959) and Atget, which he saw at Walker Evans's home. Friedlander also met his contemporaries Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus when he moved to New York.

Like Winogrand and Arbus, Friedlander was producing street photographs at this time and their work was brought together in a show at MoMA in 1967 entitled 'New Document'.

Although these photographers had a strong effect on each other's work, they differed in concept and intent. Winogrand and Arbus, generally speaking, chose subject matter that was inherently demanding, at times bizarre, while Friedlander concentrated on commonplace objects, the meaning of which is elusive. His images create an uncommon understanding of the ordinary objects.

Friedlander's street photographs, produced in the 1960s (including this image), form the body of his work that has received the most attention. It constitutes, however, only a fraction of his output. Over the last twenty-five years he has worked continuously on commissioned projects and there are many publications of his photographs. He has produced, for example, self-portraits, nudes, images of people in their working environment, portraits and landscapes in Japan and Egypt.

The image is also partly a self-portrait (he produced a series of self-portraits around this time, some of which showed him reflected in windows and shop-fronts). If we look carefully at the centre of the image, just below and to the right of the 'cashier' sign, a silhouette and three fingers poised on a camera are just visible.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13b.

Don McCullin, 'Fallen North Vietnamese Soldier'

Don McCullin, 'Fallen North Vietnamese Soldier', 1968. Museum no. PH.1281-1980 © Don McCullin

Don McCullin
'Fallen North Vietnamese Soldier'
Vietnam
1968
Gelatin-silver print
Width 25.7 cm x height 38.5 cm
Museum no. PH.1281-1980
© Don McCullin

The Photograph

'I think there's a sense in which he's the kind of conscience of mankind. I think he presents us with the dark side of ourselves and forces us all to look at it.' Sir Tom Hopkinson speaking on 'Kaleidoscope', October 1980

In 1968 Don McCullin had joined a battalion of American marines (he had full official accreditation to do this) as they crossed the Perfumed River to the city of Hue, which had been captured by a regiment of North Vietnamese soldiers. The Americans anticipated that they would easily reclaim the city, but suffered heavy casualties and the city was destroyed.

This image is highly representative of McCullin's ability to show the human consequences of war. The power of the image to affect us comes not only through the depiction of a dead man, but the way in which McCullin has composed the scene. He uses stark black and white photographic paper, since he believed that black and white has an impact on the viewer that colour could not match.

The composition of the image is also a crucial part of the image's power. The photographs and other personal items are placed in the foreground and are lighter in tone and sharper in focus than the man's body. It is the delayed impact of realising the significance of the objects, that the North Vietnamese soldier is a husband and father that makes this image have such resonance. Perhaps McCullin did not find this scene exactly as we see it. The small loose photographs scattered over an opened tin are all image side up. There is a sense that the objects are displayed for us to read. Does this devalue in any way the image as a whole?

This image was a double-page spread in the Sunday Times Magazine. It had accompanying text. To a certain extent reportage photography needs some form of written explanation. We need to know who the dead man is, in order to understand fully the image's meaning. This image as you are seeing it has been taken out of its original context. The intention is not to 'elevate' the photograph onto purely aesthetic grounds, but to emphasise McCullin's sophisticated graphic style alongside the image's value as document.

The Photographer

Don McCullin's significance as a photojournalist began in 1964 when he was sent by The Observer to cover the civil war that had just started in Cyprus. For the next twenty years McCullin worked mainly for the Sunday Times Magazine, photographing sites of human and ecological disaster. His work of this period is primarily made for multiple publication, for mass consumption and awareness. His assignments include the Vietnam War, the Nigerian civil war, uprising in Cambodia (1970-5), famine in Guatemala (1971) and poverty in Northern England (1976-8).

Since 1985 McCullin has devoted his time to other subject matter such as landscapes and still lifes, as well as commercial photography.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13b.

Garry Winogrand, 'Los Angeles

Garry Winogrand, 'Los Angeles, California', 1969. Museum no. PH.148-1987 © The estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Garry Winogrand
'Los Angeles, California'
1969
Gelatin-silver print
Width 31.7 cm x height 21.7
Museum no. PH.148-1987
© The estate of Garry Winogrand,
courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

The Photograph

This image, like much of Winogrand's best work, is highly disquieting. Typically, Winogrand has used a wide-angle lens, capturing the people in detail and also much of their surroundings. He has also tilted the camera (which was not done arbitrarily) which further distorts the scene. Without the figure in the wheelchair it would be simply one of Winogrand's many images of women on the street.

The extraordinary refraction of light in the centre of the image silhouettes the women's legs. The centrality of their legs (and their prettiness and sexuality by connotation) is emphasised by the long shadows they cast. The women look towards the man slumped in the wheelchair, a begging cup between his knees, and their momentary glance becomes the central activity of the image. The women's sexuality, youth and mobility are contrasted with the man's poverty and immobility.

The position of the camera places the viewer at street level, giving us a sense of the immediacy of the scene and our relationship to it. Winogrand would have strongly denied the notion that he used photography to illustrate his own perspective of the world - rather that he discovered the existence of unanticipated perspectives - through experiment, play of intuition and luck. The fact, however, that Winogrand clearly understood photography's ability to reconstruct the real world in a meaningful way is perhaps proof that the images he selected were describing something meaningful to him.

The Photographer

Garry Winogrand represented a new generation of photographers who became active in the 1950s. Initially, he worked in photojournalism. There his work, and that of his contemporaries such as Dan Weiner and Diane Arbus, seemed very casual in comparison with work by established photojournalists. It also seemed to be lifted directly and spontaneously from the flow of real life.

By the 1960s, partly due to the decline of photo magazines and also to his growing awareness of photographers such as Robert Frank, Winogrand increasingly orchestrated his subject matter into a larger, personal scheme. This is reflected in the division of much of his work into general themes.

From 1960 to 1965, for example, he was preoccupied with photographing women walking on the street. He produced a series of images in the 1960s of zoos observing human behaviour as well as the animals. In the early 1970s he shot over two thousand photographs of public events.

Winogrand gave up commercial photography in 1969. He had received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1964 and had enjoyed the freedom of having no commercial pressures. During the 1970s and early 1980s he took up lecturing posts in American universities. He was uneasy about teaching, not only because he was self-taught, but also since he strongly defended his own work against theoretical interpretations. He left a vast body of work unfinished at his death in 1984, possibly 300,000 exposures that he had not developed or printed.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13b.

Christopher Killip, 'The Mart

Christopher Killip, 'The Mart, St John's', 1970-2. Museum no. PH.705-1980

Christopher Killip
'The Mart, St. John's'
1970-2
Museum no. 705-1980

The Photograph

This photograph was taken in the early 1970s when Chris Killip had first become a freelance photographer and was working in the Isle of Man. The size of the image, the tonal range and the sharpness of the print are all reminiscent of earlier photographers and, in particular, the work of Paul Strand.

The men in the image are gathered for the sale of livestock. Some seem to acknowledge the camera and others do not. The sunlight coming in through the windows in the roof casts a theatrical lighting over the scene. Killip has always stressed that when you look at a photograph you are seeing the opinion of the photographer. He has created an almost timeless, possibly religious, image of the disappearing lifestyles on the Isle of Man.

The Photographer

Chris Killip began his career as a commercial photographer when he moved to London from the Isle of Man in the early 1960s.

He became a freelance photographer in 1969 and moved back to the Isle of Man. Over the following two years he photographed the people and the landscape of the island, representing the islander's disappearing traditional lifestyles.

He returned to England and in 1975 moved to the north east, initially to take up a two-year fellowship, and remained there. The book 'In Flagrante' (1988) is a compilation of his work in the north east including his powerful series of images of sea-coalers at Lynemouth. Killip has stressed that these photographs are not specifically about the north east and rather about de-industrialisation, the decline of traditional industries, in England.

His work, however, does show the wealth divide between the north and south of England, which widened in the 1980s. Killip's position as one of the most important realist photographers was recognised in 1989 when he was the first recipient of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award. He now teaches at the University of Harvard.

 

This photograph can be found in Print Room Box 13b.