Curatorial and planning notes
This theme will also include the subversion of advertising and commercial photography by Andy Warhol and the billboard collaborations of Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan. |
Contents
| This theme includes example sections and will be revised and added to as we proceed. Suggestions for additions, improvements and the correction of factual errors are always appreciated. |
Advertising and commercial photography
295.01 Advertising > The distinction between commercial photography and advertising
  
Distinguishing between commercial and advertising photographs is not straightforward and requires contextual understanding such as associated text and logos to confirm that the image was used to advertise a product or service.
If we look at the three images by Alfons Himmelreich of a Kidma moveable lift the first is a straight commercial product shot whereas the other two use the same photograph for advertising as the overall context makes clear.
295.02 Advertising > Advertising photography
                                                                                                     
Examples of advertising
295.03 Advertising > Carte de visites: Advertising for photographers
295.04 Advertising > Carte de visites: Advertising
   
295.05 Advertising > Ranger & Austen: Clairvoyant Medical Examinations - Buffum & Cleveland
  
Send lock of hair and $1.00, with name, age and residence, plainly written, and receive by mail complete diagnosis of disease and advice concerning treatment.
Address
Buffum & Cleveland,
Syracuse, N.Y.
N.B. - The Photograph on the reverse is of Dr. C.T. Buffum, taken while entranced, and showing the controlling power, RED JACKET.
295.06 Advertising > Contemporary uses of carte de visites for employment
  
295.07 Advertising > Cabinet cards: Advertising
          
295.08 Advertising > Robinson & Roi: The Famous Glass Dress - Royal Robe of Princess Eulalia
 
In this cabinet card shows a mannequin wearing the glass dress that was ordered by the Spanish Princess Eulalia at the 1893 World's Fair. The back of the card provides the context and serves as a promotion for The Libbey Glass Company.
295.09 Advertising > McDonald: Advertising cabinet cards for the Storm Sign Co., South Bend, Ind.
  
295.10 Advertising > I.W. Taber: The Taber photographic album of principal business houses, residences and persons (1880)
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
295.11 Advertising > Banner ladies
         
295.12 Advertising > New York facades shown in cabinet cards
                                
New York’s prominent display of industry and socio-economic development was pertinent early in the nation’s history, but it was not until the developmental construction of the city boroughs in the mid-nineteenth century that the city was transformed by spiralling metropolitan growth. Marshes were drained, farming land built over and lower class ramshackle developments were torn apart enabling the city to evolve into a new and upwardly mobile marketplace.
Urban dwelling in mid-nineteenth century New York brought with it all the problems of a city undergoing unbridled growth. Soon, during the "Gilded Age" of American entrepreneurial efforts spearheaded by families like the Vanderbilts – Gotham, as it would later be called, was prosperous and changing so fast that it is a wonder that commerce could exist in the forms shown in these photographs. New York as we know it today bears little resemblance to the gainful opportunities that it held for immigrants looking to make their way in New World.
These cabinet cards document New York’s internal struggles to build capital and wealth through every strata of its economic fibre – they are testimonies to fixed social standing amidst rapid economic change.
Proud shopkeepers and small factory workers stand in front of their workplaces as if to testify to their contribution to the growth of their places of employment, but more generally to New York City as a whole. Inn keepers, grocers, iron workers, and marketplace owners all make up the rich tapestry of life that permutated in the works of topographic firms such as Marksville, Wolff, The Manhattan Photo View Co, N.Y Phot Co., and the Metropolitan View Company among others. These firms recorded New York’s development in the age of collodion.
The subjects range from chicken pluckers to children on the tenement steps. It is indeed a record of amazing elasticity, confined by the edges of the photograph mount rather than one’s imagination. Though the photographers were not the first or the last to discover the importance of their topography, they did so with a sensitive eye that is rare in the stereoviews of the better known firms such as Anthony or Stacy.These firms ignored the people of New York to concentrate on the architectural grandeur. Perhaps, there was just no room for the individual in a city swallowing it’s own amidst canyons of offices and tenements.
There is another subtle quality about these images that predates the work of Eugčne Atget in Paris. The surreal and wonderful items found in storefront windows - an optician’s glaring sign, a mannequin hanging from a sign, or a delicious corset factory gave American cities a whisper of unguided, but lofty exuberance. These are memories from a time and a place that resonates with change - indeed some of these images hint at the cusp of modernity.
Brad Feuerhelm (August 2006)
Further research
We would like to hear from people who have information on the following New York photographic companies:
Corliss & Bancroft, Photographers, 260 West 27th Street
Gardner & Corliss, Out Door Photographers. Office 249 W. 27th Street, Room 13.
It also lists W.O. Long Fine Portraits on 395 and 687 Eighth Avenue.
W.E. Garrison Photographer. 209 E. 47th Street
S. Marksville. 343 East 34th Street
Mercantile View Company, 381 Canal Street, New York
Metropolitan View Co., No 237 East 44th Street
This firm was a partnership of the better known firms of L. Wolff & S. Marksville.
National Photographic View Co. (G.W. Heppner) No. 339 East 34th St.
The National Photographic View Co., 235 East 34th Street
The National Photographic View Co., W.O. Long and G.W. Heppner, 235 East 34th Street, New York
N.Y. Photograph Co., G.W. Bancroft, Landscape Photographer, No. 337 East 34th Street, New York
New York Photographing Co. (Corliss & Bancroft), 260 West 27th Street.
Photo View, 757 3rd Ave.
D.C. Redington, Photographer, N.W. corner 34th St. & Broadway, New York
L. Wolff, Landscape Photographer, 23 Chauncey Street
We have included backmarks within the exhibition.
Please send any information to alan@luminous-lint.com and I‘ll forward it on to Brad Feuerhelm.
295.13 Advertising > Sports cards and cigarette cards
  
295.14 Advertising > Gelatin silver prints: Advertising
    
Photographers
295.15 Advertising > Margaret Watkins: Advertising
Margaret Watkins (1884-1969) was a Canadian photographer who began studying at the Clarence White School of Photography in Maine in 1914. Her skill was appreciated and she taught at the school between 1916 and 1928 with her students including Margaret Bourke-White, Laura Gilpin, Paul Outerbridge,
Ralph Steiner and Doris Ulmann. This period was one of fluxing trends in photography as Pictorialism and Modernism intertwined and her work reflects this. Margaret Watkins was one of the first women photographers to be accepted within the male-dominated world of advertising in the 1920s and she worked for the Fairfax advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson and Macy’s Department Store.
295.16 Advertising > J. Pécsi: Photo und Publizität - Photo and Advertising (1930)
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
 
J. Pécsi Photo und Publizität - Photo and Advertising (Berlin: Josef Singer A.-G, 1930), First edition. 4to. 15,[2], xxxiipp. Original photographic wrappers protected by modern mylar. Rare first edition of József Pécsi's remarkably bold advertising photomontages, and one of the first books on the subject of photography in advertising. Both the leading prize in commercial photography in Hungary and the library at the House of Hungarian photography are named after this key figure of the New Objectivity and European avant-garde. Illustrated with 36 photomontages printed in red and black. Pages unopened as issued. Text in German and English.
295.17 Advertising > Lejaren ŕ Hiller: Surgery through the Ages
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
 
Lejaren ŕ Hiller used sets and costumes to reconstruct tableaux vivants of surgical procedures and produced one a year between 1927 and the 1950s as advertising for the American medical suture company Davis & Geck. Some of these were published in 1944 in the book Surgery Through the Ages: A Pictorial Chronicle (New York: Hasting House) with text by Paul Benton and John H. Hewlett.
alan@luminous-lint.com |
General reading
Jacob, John, 2012, Kodak Girl, (Steidl) isbn-10: 3869303247 isbn-13: 978-3869303246 [Δ]
Nassar, Issam; Almarcegui, Patricia & Worswick, Clark, 2010, Gardens of Sand: Commercial Photography in the Middle East 1859-1905, (Turner Ediciones) isbn-10: 8475068987 isbn-13: 978-8475068985 [Δ]
Sobieszek, Robert A., 1988, The Art of Persuasion: A History of Advertising Photography, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.) [Δ]
Travis, David & Siegel, Elizabeth (eds.), 2002, Taken by Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937–1971, (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, in association with The University of Chicago Press) [Δ]
Readings on, or by, individual photographers
Lejaren ŕ Hiller
Brown, E. H., 2000, December, ‘Rationalizing consumption: Lejaren ŕ Hiller and the origins of American advertising photography, 1913–1924‘, Enterprise & Society, vol.1, pp.715–738 [Δ]
Hiller, Lejaren ŕ; Banov, Leon & Benton, Paul, 1944, Surgery through the Ages: A pictorial chronicle, (New York: Hastings House) [Δ]
József Pécsi
Pécsi, J., 1930, Photo und Publizität - Photo and Advertising, (Berlin: Josef Singer A.-G,) [Δ]
Margaret Watkins
Pauli, Lori, 2012, Margaret Watkins: Domestic Symphonies, (National Gallery of Canada) isbn-10: 0888849036 isbn-13: 978-0888849038 [Introduction by Joseph Mulholland] [Δ]
If you feel this list is missing a significant book or article please let me know - Alan - alan@luminous-lint.com
Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) • Brian Duffy (1933-2010) • Lejaren ŕ Hiller (1880-1969) • Nickolas Muray (1892-1965) • Anton Stankowski (1906-1998) • Edward Steichen (1879-1973) • Margaret Watkins (1884-1969) | Home > Themes > Advertising
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