| Jan 15, 2012 | Icons of the South - Portraits of Ouleds-Nails (Algeria 1860-1910) | | | |
“Exposed to the curious eyes of foreigners in all the showcases of the photographers, is a portrait of a woman of the south in a bizarre costume, with the impressive face of an idol from the old Orient […], the face of a bird of prey with eyes full of mystery …” So begins Le Portrait de l’Ouled Nail, written by Isabelle Eberhardt at the very beginning of the twentieth century. Classic iconographs of the Algerian south, the Ouled Nail never ceased to fascinate travellers and artists, from Fromentin to Gide and Robert Hitchens, who popularised the legend of these Bedouin women leaving the desert for Biskra and Bou Saada, well before the arrival of the first Europeans, to become dancers and prostitutes for long enough to build up a satisfactory dowry and return to marry a man of their own tribe.
From the introduction by Michel Mégnin.
Thanks to Gilles Dupont, great grandson of Auguste Maure; and to Bruno Tartarin, the Photo-Verdeau gallery, Paris. Special thanks to Angela Martin for an attentive and sensitive translation from the original French.
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Exhibition: Icons of the South - Portraits of Ouleds-Nails (Algeria 1860-1910)
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| | Jan 15, 2012 | Countess de Castiglione | | | |
The other day I was browsing through the "Dossier Photographies sur le Second Empire réunies par l'abbé Misset" at ARCHIM - Service interministériel des archives de France and I came across some of the hand-painted photographs of the Countess of Castiglione by Louis Pierson that I hadn't seen. They may well be in the book by Pierre Apraxine and Xavier Demange, La Divine Comtesse: Photographs of the Countess de Castiglione (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) but not having a copy I'm unable to check and I'm sure that some of you will let me know. The collection of the portraits of the Countess de Castiglione at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is extraordinary and I felt it would be enjoyable to give them another showing.
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Exhibition: Countess of Castiglione
More about this photographer
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| | Jan 7, 2012 | Fabricated Cameras and Contemporary Pinhole Photography | | | |
This exhibition is one of the most extraordinary I've put together and it was a total surprise. After meeting pinhole camera maker Benjamin Wooten in Halifax at a gallery opening in November 2011 we discussed the idea for bringing together examples of contemporary pinhole cameras and the photographs made with them. I sent around an email and seven of the leading camera makers came up with examples of their works and quite a variety of cameras including Band-Aid boxes, gas masks, human skulls, complex underwater contraptions, cardboard boxes, ceramic cameras, ammo boxes, human blood, an RVs, a VW camper and a wheelie bin.
I'd like to thank the artist-inventors and pinhole enthusiasts who have supplied examples:
Jo Babcock
Alyson Belcher
Wayne Martin Belger
Steve Irvine
Donald Lawrence
Justin Quinell
Benjamin Wooten
Thanks to you all - You create tangible visions.
Alan Griffiths
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Exhibition: Fabricated Cameras and Contemporary Pinhole Photography
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| | Jan 7, 2012 | Photograph albums from North American Private Collections | | | |
The patenting of the Carte de Visite (CDV) by Andre Disderi of France in 1854 and subsequent introduction to North America in 1859 made it possible for everyone to have their photographic portrait taken. The cost was low, it was easy to order duplicates, the small business card size made it ideal for mailing and, if there was no photo studio nearby, a travelling photographer would soon show up in a horse-drawn carriage outfitted with cheap backdrops and a primitive darkroom. Enterprising inventors on both sides of the Atlantic created a bewildering array of devices designed to showcase numerous CDVs at once... the album being the most popular and enduring.
Whole new industries sprung up to supply the album manufacturers with special papers, boards, gilded clasps, porcelain rests etc., in addition to the leathers, velvets, carved woods, composition and thermoplastic materials used for the covers. Costly machines were invented for the cutting and gilding (bronzing) of the pages. Gilders and other craftsmen couldn't be hired fast enough. The public demand for albums was unrelenting. There was no limit to the variety and richness of ornamentation, except the means of the buyer. Prices started at 75 cents to $50 or more, depending on the decorations. While many businesses folded during the Civil War, the manufacturers of albums thrived. One of the earliest was William Harding of Philadelphia, a prominent Bible maker, who registered an album patent, possibly as early as 1853, to be followed by others up to 1872. The most prolific maker was Samuel Bowles & Co. of Springfield, Mass. Statistics available for the year of 1864 state that, in that year alone, the firm "employed about 100 hands, used 50 tons of paper and 125 tons of pasteboard and album board, with other material to match". The popularity of the Cabinet Card ca.1880-1890 spelled the end of these jewels of bookbinding.
Partially excerpted from the Springfield Republican, December 28, 1864.
With thanks to Pam Ferrazzutti for getting the ball rolling with enthusiasm and humor. Thanks to Stephen Evans who put us in touch and to Paul Berg and Matt Isenburg - collectors of photographica - for proving additional examples.
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Exhibition: Photograph albums from North American Private Collections
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| | Jan 6, 2012 | The Austrian Geographical Society | | | |
Unidentified photographer
In front of a mosque, Istanbul
1895 (ca)
Photochrom
© Photoinstitut Bonartes
The Geographic Society (Die Geographische Gesellschaft, ÖGG) was founded in 1856 in Vienna. Its collection contained about 3,300 photographs, including 1,500 from the era of the former monarchy. Here, a passion for discovery becomes visible in a unique manner, meant to be disseminated among a broad public using photography, which was considered an authentic medium.
The holdings demonstrate what kinds of visual information about far-away, exotic and (yet) unexplored places the Austrian public was confronted with: the majority of the images served as models for illustrations in magazines and books. The world appears as an object of discovery, of research of every kind, but also as a place that is changed and exploited by colonialism. The photographs are of ethnographic and geographic character, but often also deal with current affairs. They tell of fascinating architecture and foreign customs, of revolutions, natural disasters and industrialization as it spread out to the furthest corners of the world, of the construction of bridges and railways, oil drilling, agriculture and labor under a wide variety of circumstances.
[Translation: Alexa Nieschlag]
With special thanks to Dr. Monika Faber and Magdalena Vukovic of the Photoinstitut Bonartes, Vienna, Austria for their assistance.
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Exhibition: Insights into the Photographic Collection of the Austrian Geographic Society
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| | Jan 6, 2012 | Pictorialism | | | |
Luminous-Lint includes an excellent range of online exhibitions on Pictorialism but this online exhibition has been brought together to give a general overview of key works taken from the key volumes.
Related online exhibitions
Thanks to the attentive support of collectors, particularly PhotoSeed (formerly Photoseed), and galleries Luminous-Lint has been able to mount a number of online exhibitions that include many of the key publications on pictorialism along with exhibitions on significant photographers and schools. For those of you that see Camera Work as the most significant publication this will be a treat and a revelation as the less well known European publications started almost ten years earlier.
Publications
A Record of the Photographic Salon of 1895 (London)
Kodak Portfolio: Souvenir of the Eastman Photographic Exhibition 1897
Alfred Stieglitz: Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies (1897)
Die Kunst in der Photographie (1897)
Die Kunst in der Photographie (1898)
Die Kunst in der Photographie (1899)
Die Kunst in der Photographie (1900)
Die Kunst in der Photographie (1901)
Die Kunst in der Photographie (1897-1908)
G.L. Arlaud: Vingt Études de Nu en Plein Air
Gustave Marissiaux: Visions d’Artistes (1908)
Japanese pictorialism: Bunka Shashin-shu (1922)
Première Exposition d'Art Photographique - 1894 (The Photo-Club de Paris)
Deuxième Exposition d'Art Photographique - 1895 (The Photo-Club de Paris)
Troisième Exposition d'Art Photographique - 1896 (The Photo-Club de Paris)
Quatrième Année Salon de Photographie - 1897 (The Photo-Club de Paris)
Wiener Photographische Blätter: Herausgegeben Vom Camera-Club In Wien (1894)
Wiener Photographische Blätter: Herausgegeben Vom Camera-Club In Wien (1896)
American Pictorialism: Camera Work (1903-1917)
Photographers and schools
A. Aubrey Bodine: Baltimore Pictorialist
The Clarence H. White School of Photography
Themes
Erotica: A Pictorialist perspective
Flowers: A Pictorialist perspective
Trees: A Pictorialist perspective
Portraits: A Pictorialist perspective
Japanese Art Photography preserved on Postcards
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Exhibition: Pictorialism
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| | Jan 1, 2012 | How I feel... | | | | I've taken cough drops, consumed hot mugs of honey and lemon, tried to sleep but all to no avail - I've started the year with a cold and this is how I feel...
Oscar Gustave Rejlander
Night in Town
1862
Albumen print
20.3 x 15.4 cm (8 x 6 1/16 in.)
Princeton University Art Museum
Museum purchase, gift of Mrs. Max Adler, Object Number: x1986-13
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| | Jan 1, 2012 | Surrealism | | | |
A long overdue online exhibition on Surrealism has been added including portraits of key protagonists including Jean Cocteau, Andre Breton, Man Ray, Dora Maar, Magritte, Hans Bellmer and those on the periphery such as Picasso and Dali. The exhibition includes solarizations, photograms (rayograms), the contorted dolls of Hans Bellmer, the baby armadillo (Père Ubu) taken by Dora Maar in 1936 and the high viewpoints of Umbo. Two of the alienating shop windows of Eugène Atget have also been included.
Surrealism has never died out although its popularity has varied over time - the Christmas cards of Angus McBean, distortions by André Kertész, Weegee and Robert Doisneau, and the floating tree photomontages of Jerry N. Uelsmann are all part of this continuum.
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Exhibition: Surrealism
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| | Jan 1, 2012 | New Objectivity | | | |
An online exhibition on New Objectivity has been added covering the works of August Sander, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Karl Blossfeldt and Walter Peterhans.
Ideas for improving this selection are most welcome.
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Exhibition: New Objectivity
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| | Dec 26, 2011 | The Facade of Notre Dame | | | | 
As the visual indexes on Luminous-lint mature we can start to use the collections of images from diverse institutions and private collections to create detailed series on specific buildings of photographic significance. The collection shown here of the facade of Notre Dame in Paris in the 19th century has an almost Becher-like quality.
If you collect images on specific buildings and would like to participate let me know. alan@luminous-lint.com
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