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.
Status: Collect > Document > Analyse > Improve |
53.01 Landscape > Landscape: Rivers and streams
         
53.02 Landscape > Camille de Silvy - River Scene (1858)
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
 
The best landscape photographs go beyond the arrangements and proportions of land, water and sky and take the viewer into the realms of memory and emotion.
Here we see the Huisne river near the birthplace of Camille Silvy as he saw it in 1858 with the bands of clouds, wooden rural buildings and brick walls scattered on the left bank with column-like trees cutting vertical lines into the sky - a boat with a man sitting in it and a woman standing close by. On the right there is the meadow with some people on the grass. We can see the details of the picture but it represents far more than that - it has within it a harmony of elements that we feel comfortable with. We can all wish that we had been on the bridge that day with him and we yearn for past that has gone but are glad that he has shared a moment of Arcadian tranquility with us.
All is not as simple as it seems in this Arcadia; the print is a complex combination print that merges different images to create the harmonious whole. In the book on this image by Mark Haworth-Booth he argues the intriguing point that it is proto-impressionist - bringing together the edge of a town where it melds into a rural setting and at the same time mixes the social levels of the society with the country bourgeoisie and the working class.
In 1990 one of the leading exponents of color photography, Stephen Shore, was commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Museum to re-photograph the location and he obtained a very different image. You get a record shot of a place as it is but with none of the emotion. It is not that Stephen Shore is not a great photographer, he is, but his approach and sensibilities to landscape photography are totally different.
[Thanks to Mark Haworth-Booth for his insights on this.]
53.03 Landscape > Paris: The Seine
                
53.04 Landscape > Henry W. Taunt: The River Thames
  
The book A New Map of the River Thames from Oxford to London (1872) by Henry W. Taunt used tipped-in albumen prints that were added to maps of the River Thames in England showing locations of interest.
53.05 Landscape > Carleton E. Watkins: Columbia River
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
        
53.06 Landscape > Henry P. Bosse: Views on the Mississippi River
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
        
Henry Peter Bosse (1844-1903) was a civil engineer, draftsman, cartographer and photographer who took made cyanotypes to document his work along the upper Mississippi River. Railroad companies needed bridges over the river and he documented them with his 1893 album Views on the Mississippi River between Minneapolis, Minn and St. Louis, Mo. 1883-1891. Interest in his documentation was revised when an album came up at a Sotheby's auction in 1990.
alan@luminous-lint.com |
General reading
Neuzil, Mark, 2001, Views on the Mississippi: The Photographs of Henry Peter Bosse, (University of Minnesota Press) isbn-10: 0816636478 isbn-13: 978-0816636488 [Foreword by Marry A. Foresta] [Δ]
Readings on, or by, individual photographers
Henry P. Bosse
Anfinson, John. O., 1996, Henry Bosse's Views on the Upper Mississippi River, (MN, St Paul: Army Corps of Engineers) [Δ]
Bosse, Henry Peter, 1893, Views on the Mississippi River between Minneapolis, Minn and St. Louis, Mo. 1883-1891 [Album containing 169 oval cyanotypes each with a hand-written ink title. The album was shown at the World Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago] [Δ]
KCTA Public Television, 1991, Mississippi Minnesota: Henry P Bosse - Photographer, (KCTA) [Δ]
Wehrenberg, Charles, 2002, Mississippi Blue: The Photographs Henry P. Bosse, (Twin Palms) isbn-10: 0944092985 isbn-13: 978-0944092989 [Δ]
If you feel this list is missing a significant book or article please let me know - Alan - alan@luminous-lint.com
Henry P. Bosse (1844-1903) • Jarret Schecter | Home > Themes > Landscape > Landscape types > Rivers and streams
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