Photography Collection

At precisely the same time that Frank Lloyd Wright uttered the then-blasphemous words that “the machine is no less, rather more, an artist's tool than any that he has ever had or heard of, if only he would do himself the honor of learning to use it,” another American artist was finding in a machine the medium through which he would, years later, cause his fellow men to become aware of the beauty and the significance of the commonplace. That man was Edward Weston, also of the middle West, also filled with the instinctive feeling for creation which the elders choose to term “rebellion.”
-- Merle Armitage, 1932

Edward Weston: Life Work, on view at the Akron Art Museum surveys the five-decade career of this American master through an outstanding grouping of over 100 vintage photographs. Astonishingly, all the works are from the collection of one couple, New York photography collectors Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg. Weston, who was one of the greatest photographic printers of the 20th century, often reserved his choicest prints for family and close friends. Mattis and Hochberg managed to acquire many works – in fact, most of the prints in this exhibition – directly from members of the Weston family. “This exhibition makes it clear why Hochberg and Mattis consider Weston ‘the Picasso of the camera.’ We get to see not just Weston’s signature images, but also a number of previously unpublished masterpieces,” says Dr. Barbara Tannenbaum, director of curatorial affairs at the Akron Art Museum. “The amazing range and depth of Mattis and Hochberg’s collection gives us a fresh look at Weston’s art and broadens our understanding of his thought process.” To see a chronological survey of Weston’s art “is to witness a purposeful and heroic shelling away of subjective addenda, of all the trimming that, to the average observer, transmutes a photograph into a work of art,” wrote painter Jean Charlot. Weston’s striking 1909 outdoor Pictorialist study of his wife Flora is perhaps his first nude. His famous image of Armco Steel in Middletown, Ohio, 1922, marked his final break from the confines of Pictorialism and studio work, and announced the emergence of a sharply focused style. In the mid-1920s, Weston unleashed his newly spare approach to photography in Mexico with Heaped Black Ollas and his famous image of a toilet, Excusado. Returning to Glendale in 1926, he continued to experiment with pure form and disconcerting scale shifts in his long exposures of shells, peppers, mushrooms, radishes and kelp. These memorable still lifes, which Weston termed “quintessences,” segue naturally into a remarkable set of sculptural nudes done between 1933 and 1934.

Edward Weston, Dunes, Oceano (“White Dunes,” 47SO), 1936, gelatin silver print, 8 x 10 in., Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg. ©1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents.

Subsequently, Weston pulled back and loosened up his style considerably as he turned to the open landscape. This exhibition includes an important suite of six dune studies made near Oceano, California in 1934 and 1936. In addition to landscapes and studies of desert detritus made with the support of a Guggenheim grant, portraits of prominent artistic and literary figures are also well represented. The exhibition concludes with Weston's consummate final photograph, nicknamed The Dody Rocks, 1948. Whether exploring still life, the human face, the landscape or the nude, it is the picture—its composition, style, mood and technique—that is Weston’s subject. Weston’s goal is not a literal recording; it is depicting the object “in its deepest moment of perception,” when it reveals the photographer as well as the photographed. Viewing this exhibition, you will realize that Weston’s prints are not merely black and white. Dody Weston Thompson has described how they, “shine with a mysterious inner light, arousing a sensuous response to their print quality alone: the blacks seemed rich as oil or deep as velvet, a thousand intermediate grays gleamed out—soft pewters, glinting silvers—and at the upper end of the scale were whipped cream, pearls and sunlight.

Weston Book and Video
An accompanying monograph published by Lodima Press contains essays by Sarah M. Lowe and Dody Weston Thompson, as well as “his and hers” collectors' prefaces by Hochberg and Mattis. Featuring full-size reproductions printed in 600 line-screen quadtone on two different paper stocks for maximum fidelity to the originals, it is acknowledged as the most beautiful book ever published on Weston. Also accompanying this exhibition is a 30-minute video, remembering Edward Weston, featuring interviews with Charis Wilson (his wife), sons Brett and Cole Weston, Beaumont Newhall and Dody Weston Thompson.

This is an exhibition not to miss if you didn't have the chance to visit Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913 - 2008 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). It is the first major exhibition to bring together the magazine’s historic archive of rare vintage prints with its contemporary photographs, on through March 1. The exhibition explores the ways in which photography and celebrity have interacted and changed, with portraits from the magazine’s early period (1913–1936) displayed in conjunction with works from the contemporary Vanity Fair (1983–present). The Los Angeles presentation, which is sponsored by Burberry, will be the only U.S. stop on the exhibition’s international tour. “The exhibition is a timely consideration of portraiture in the last century in relation to magazines and photography,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “We’re happy to bring the show to Los Angeles from the National Portrait Gallery in London. So many of the early twentieth-century portraits originate in London and New York, and so many of the more recent portraits relate to Los Angeles—interesting evidence of our changing world.” “It’s quite fitting that the exhibition show in Los Angeles,” says Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair editor, “and LACMA is the ideal venue—a place where the artistry of all of these incredible portraits can be appreciated, yet close enough to Hollywood that a picture of the governor on skis in his action-hero days seems almost right.”

In 1913, Vanity Fair launched with the birth of modernism, the dawning of the Jazz Age, and the groundbreaking Armory Show that introduced avantgarde art to the American public. Publisher Condé Nast (1873–1942) partnered with editor Frank Crowninshield (1872–1947) to create a magazine that would engage with this vibrant modern culture—a magazine that would not only comment upon, but also champion all that was at the forefront of change and innovation in the arts. The publication thus became a cultural catalyst, defining and celebrating key figures of the early twentieth century, from contemporary artists and literary talents to theater luminaries and silent-screen stars. To rightfully capture these icons, Crowninshield commissioned the world’s leading photographers including Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton, Baron De Meyer, Man Ray, and George Hurrell. The pairing of notable figures with these portraitists resulted in some of the most memorable images of the time. Among the exceptional sitters featured in the exhibition are Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, Jesse Owens, James Joyce, Katharine Hepburn, and Fred and Adele Astaire. The move to modernism in the early twentieth century influenced the era’s photographers, as many produced images that were as much about form and experimenting with format as they were about substance. The introduction of modernism into photography was particularly evident in the progressive work of Edward Steichen (1879–1973), who held the title of Vanity Fair’s chief photographer for thirteen years. Steichen was America’s leading photographer of style, taste, and celebrity, and perhaps best remembered for capturing actors, whose likenesses in print or on-screen helped shape popular culture. Many of Steichen’s iconic photographs will be seen in Vanity Fair Portraits, including those of Gloria Swanson, Louise Brooks, Anna May Wong, and Paul Robeson.

The exhibition also showcases definitive portraits of the Jazz Age, including now classic studies of Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker, and No?l Coward. Although Vanity Fair suspended publication in 1936, it would be resurrected in another period of decadence and excess—the 1980s—when Silicon Valley and Wall Street were buoyant, high society was in full swing, and the art market was exploding. Relaunched in 1983, the publication’s purpose once again was to define contemporary celebrity and identify the leading cultural figures. As in the early period, portrait photography was the graphic bedrock of the magazine. In the tradition of Frank Crowninshield, the revived magazine commissioned such leading photographers as Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Nan Goldin, Herb Ritts, Harry Benson, Mario Testino, and Bruce Weber. Once again, these portraitists photographed cultural icons, but in a new period of celebrity and magazine culture. New platforms arose for entertainment and information–the CD and camcorder, satellite television, the personal computer, and MTV. Media consumers, in turn, became increasingly preoccupied with the figures that permeated the video clips, audio streams, and computer and movie screens. In this media-entrenched age, the news cycle continually became shortened, and even at a time when the news was frequently measured in minutes, Vanity Fair managed to break news as a monthly publication with exclusive access to interviews and photo shoots. In 2005 alone, the magazine revealed the identity of Deep Throat, the confidential source of the Watergate scandal, and also published the first interview with actress Jennifer Aniston after her publicly scrutinized separation from actor Brad Pitt. Since the magazine’s relaunch, various cover images have made news, including presidential couple Nancy and Ronald Reagan dancing in their formal evening attire (1985), a disrobed and pregnant Demi Moore (1991), a formal portrait of President Bush’s Afghan- War Cabinet (2002), and most recently actresses Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley posing naked with designer Tom Ford
(2006).

The name of one photographer in particular has become synonymous with Vanity Fair and contemporary celebrity—Annie Leibovitz. Just as Edward Steichen dominated Vanity Fair’s first incarnation, Leibovitz elaborately chronicles today’s version of celebrity. Selected from the several hundred shoots directed by Annie Leibovitz—often collaborating with photography Director Susan White and features editor Jane Sarkin—portraits of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kate Winslet, Lance Armstrong, George Clooney, as well as Leibovitz’s signature group portraits of the great talents of Hollywood will be on view at LACMA. To provide a greater sense of the process and creative mindset behind each portrait, LACMA will be introducing new elements to the exhibition, such as behind-the-scenes videos from key Vanity Fair shoots, including footage of photographer Mark Seliger shooting the members of John F. Kennedy’s inner circle, and Annie Leibovitz and Michael Roberts’s epic “film noir” story from the 2007 Hollywood Issue. Additional elements of the exhibition include an extensive wall grid of Vanity Fair covers from both its early and modern periods, along with memoranda and memorabilia drawn from the magazine's early twentieth-century archive, which reveal the characters and issues that define the spirit of Vanity Fair.

Robert Capa formed the collective consciousness of war in Europe and the USA with his photos. After all he covered five different wars before he stepped on a landmine in Indochina: The Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 - 1945), World War II, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the First Indochina War (1946 - 1954). On December 3, 1938 Picture Post introduced him with a spread of 26 photographs taken at the battle of Ebro. The «greatest war photographer» hated war. He was born Andre Friedman, a Jew from Budapest, and studied political science at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik in Berlin (1931-33). At the same time he was working part-time in the lab of the Ullstein magazines group to whom he sold his first published picture of Leon Trotsky’s 1931 Copenhagen meeting. Driven out of the country by the beginnings of the Nazi regime, he settled in Paris in 1933. In Paris he participated in the beginnings of the agency Alliance Photo and met the journalist and photographer, Gerda Taro. Together they invented the «famous» American photographer Robert Capa and sold his prints under that name. He met many artists, among them Picasso and Hemingway, and began friendships with colleagues that would be essential in the creation of Magnum, such as David «Chim» Seymour and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Beginning in 1936, Capa’s coverage of the Spanish Civil War appeared regularly in Vu, Regards, Ce Soir, Weekly Illustrated and Life. His 1936 picture of the Loyalist soldier falling to his death brought him international reputation and became a powerful symbol of war. In Spain Capa also shot newsreels for March of Time, Time-Life’s film department. After his companion Gerda Taro was killed in Spain Capa traveled to China (1938), then emigrated to New York in 1939. From 1939-45 he photographed World War II (most famously the landing of American troops in Omaha beach, the Liberation of Paris and the battle of the Bulge) as a Life and Collier’s correspondent in Europe. In 1947 he founded Magnum Photos, in conjunction with Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, George Rodger and William Vandivert. The next year Capa traveled to Russia with John Steinbeck, and from 1948-1950 to Israel with Irwin Shaw, completing the first of a number of stories for Holiday. In 1951 he became president of Magnum and initiated several group projects involving all his colleagues. Robert Capa died on May 25, 1954, in Thai-Binh, Indochina, after stepping on a land mine while photographing for Life. He was awarded the War Cross with Palm by the French army. The Robert Capa Gold Medal Award was established in 1955 to reward exceptional professional merit.

John Steinbeck once wrote that his friend Robert Capa knew that “you cannot photograph war, because it is largely an emotion.” However, continued Steinbeck, “he did photograph that emotion by shooting beside it. He could show the horror of a whole people in the face of a child.”

Michel Comte, Helena Christensen, Vogue Italia 1993

The NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft Duesseldorf in Germany presents a retrospective with photographs of Michel Comte. He was born in Zurich in 1954. He trained as an art restorer and then taught himself photography. In 1979, he received his first advertising commission from Karl Lagerfeld for the fashion label Chloé and moved to Paris. In 1981 he moved to New York and later to Los Angeles for his work on American Vogue. He describes his restless life with the words: ‘I have always lived on the edge’. As soon as he notices that his life is lacking risk, he moves on and focuses on something new. Perhaps it is in his genes. After all, he is the grandson of aviator Alfred Comte. Within the space of a few years, Comte went from being an unknown photographer to being the most wanted man in the business and had established himself as one of the world’s busiest fashion and magazine photographers. He has worked for Vanity Fair and Vogue, and shot portraits of celebrities from the world of art, music, and entertainment including Julian Schnabel, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Mike Tyson, Carla Bruni, and Michael Schumacher, creating icons of portrait photography in the process. But in addition to portrait and fashion photography, Comte is increasingly branching out into journalistic and documentary photography. He has worked for the Red Cross and for his own Water Foundation and has travelled through war zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, or the Sudan. He is currently working on a film about the atrocities committed during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. The NRW-Forum retrospective will also include these kinds of photographs, thereby showcasing both facets of Michael Comte’s talent.

Michel Comte - Retrospective

02/01 - 05/10/2009

NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft

Ehrenhof 2

Duesseldorf

Opening hours:

Tuesday to Sunday: 11 am - 8 pm

Friday: 11 am - 12 pm

A conserved glass-plate image of Abraham Lincoln from 1860 is being presented to the public for the first time — and is not only Lincoln’s personal favorite portrait but it is the closest one will get to “seeing” Lincoln. In honor of the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, a display titled “Lincoln Portrait: Conservation of a National Treasure” will go on view beginning Feb. 1 at George Eastman House International Museum of Photography & Film. The museum is showcasing its two-year conservation treatment of a partially shattered glass-plate interpositive of Lincoln. The image, depicting a “handsome” and beardless Lincoln, was taken when he was beginning his presidential run. It is celebrated as one of the best portraits made of the 16th president, and he was in agreement. “That looks better and expresses me better than any I have ever seen; if it pleases the people I am satisfied,” Lincoln said, in response to the portrait. The interpositive — an intermediate format used to generate negatives for volume production of prints — was made directly from the original wet-plate collodion negative, which captured the light from Lincoln’s face during the June 3, 1860 sitting. This is the only known interpositive of this portrait. The original negative, held at the Smithsonian Institution, is shattered. This image “is the closest you will ever get to seeing Lincoln, short of putting your eyeballs on the man himself,” explained Grant Romer, director of the museum’s Advanced Residency Program in Photograph Conservation, who is one of the world’s leading experts on 19th-century and Lincoln photography. “This is Lincoln in high definition. You can see more detail than you’ll ever see in a copy print.”
As a world leader in photograph conservation, Eastman House was sought out by the plate’s owner, who chooses to remain anonymous. The glass plate was conserved by Eastman House conservation staff and fellows in the Advanced Residency Program in Photograph Conservation. Much of the work involved research in innovative methods, using materials that stabilize the fragile glass and image emulsion for today, and will preserve this national treasure for future generations. The original portrait was taken by Alexander Hesler and the silver gelatin interpositive was made by George P. Ayres. Also on view from the Eastman House collections will be a treasured 8x10” albumen print of Lincoln made by Ayres, derived from this interpositive. The “Lincoln Portrait” display is included with regular museum admission.
“We know Lincoln not because of a painting of Lincoln, not because of a statue of Lincoln, but because of photographs of Lincoln,” said Romer, who noted there are 130 to 140 different portraits of Lincoln. Eastman House holds a rich collection of Lincoln images, and many will be on view this winter at Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery, in the exhibition “Lincoln in Rochester.”

Romer discusses the Lincoln glass-plate restoration project as part of a podcast, which you can access at Lincoln Lectures.

Eastman House will present two lectures in relation to the conservation project and Lincoln bicentennial:

“Facing Lincoln”
6 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5

Grant Romer, director of George Eastman House’s Advanced Residency Program in Photograph Conservation, and one of the world’s leading experts on 19th-century and Lincoln photography, will discuss how the face of Abraham Lincoln has been an essential element of historical fascination, and the role that photography has had in establishing Lincoln’s iconic presence in American culture. The lecture will be held in the Dryden Theatre and is included with museum admission.

“Abraham Lincoln: From Shards of Glass to National Treasure, the Conservation of the Hesler-Ayres Portrait Interpositive”
6 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26

Ralph Wiegandt, assistant director for Conservation Education in George Eastman House’s Advanced Residency Program, will describe the challenges in reconstructing a seminal Lincoln image on glass, and the conservation procedures innovated in the museum’s conservation laboratory. The lecture presents the glass plate’s condition as it came into the laboratory, and takes the audience through the process that was carried out so the image can be viewed and appreciated today, and preserved for the future. The lecture will be held in the Dryden Theatre and is included with museum admission.

A legal fight over seven nude and seminude photographs taken during Marilyn Monroe's "Last Sitting" has been settled amicably, both sides of the dispute said Monday. The pictures were among some 2,500 shots Bert Stern took of the movie star at the Bel Air Hotel in Los Angeles in 1962 for Vogue magazine just before her drug overdose death that year.The photos show Monroe, star of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and other movies, in various gently erotic poses behind a piece of transparent, white gauzy fabric. Stern recreated the shots in February 2008 with actress Lindsay Lohan. Stern, 78, sued three photographers for $1.7 million last year after they told him they had found seven film transparencies of the shoot. He said he believed the film had been stolen after he loaned it to now-defunct Eros magazine in the summer of 1962. Photographers Donald Penny and Michael Weiss said colleague Robert Bryan had found the film in curbside garbage in midtown Manhattan in the 1970s and kept it in a shoe box as memorabilia for the last 35 years. Their lawyer, Jamie Brickell, said Stern acknowledges in the settlement that his clients did nothing wrong. Brickell said Penny, Weiss and Bryan never asked Stern for any money; he said they only discussed returning the transparencies in exchange for a set of prints that they could keep. Brickell and Stern's lawyer, Stephen Weingrad, said Stern, Penny and Weiss will develop nine sets of photos from the transparencies and sell them. He said the issue of how the proceeds are to be distributed is confidential. "Since only nine sets of seven prints each will be produced, we are very excited," Weiss of Mount Kisco, N.Y., and Penny of Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., said through Brickell. "These are great shots of Marilyn Monroe. With the original film and the digital tools we now have at hand, we will be able to create wonderful, unique one-of-a-kind prints." (AP)

William Eggleston’s early photographs were black and white. In the 1960s he began to photograph in colour and almost single-handedly heralded in the era of fine art colour photography. A solo show at the MoMA in 1976 made him famous. Eggleston’s snapshot aesthetic and his psychologising use of colour was still unusual at the time; in an annual review, the MoMA show was even called, "The most hated show of the year." Today Eggleston enjoys a cult status among younger generations of photographers and film directors. The exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany, traces Eggleston’s artistic production from his early black and whitephotographs and his pioneering shift to colour photography to the present. Included among the 160 exhibition pieces are rarely published and exhibited works, as well as some that have never been on view:
- early black and white photographs from 1961-68
- 25 original dye-transfer prints from "William Eggleston’s Guide" from 1969-72
- the video diary "Stranded in Canton" (1973-74, video, b/w, sound, 77 min)
about Eggleston’s legendary nocturnal excursions
- 15 exhibition prints from "The Democratic Forest" created in the 1990s
- 12 digital prints from 1999-2001 (premiere)
- 20 exhibition prints from "Election Eve" from 1976 (premiere)
William Eggleston still lives in Memphis, where he was born in 1939. He spent his childhood in Sumner in Mississippi. His family was well off thanks to the cotton plantations they owned. William Eggleston never had to earn his own living and was thus able to devote his time to his own interests: music and photography, film and sound technology. He did not conform to social norms, and, although fashion in his day was becoming more and more informal, he usually wore a suit. His serious appearance, however, contradicted his unconventional behaviour. His work clearly reflects the fact that he was a free thinker who acted independently "a rebel who looked like a silent film actor, who was partial to alcohol, drugs and beautiful women" (Thomas Weski). Eggleston’s earliest images are raw, sketch-like black and white photographs of scenes in Sumner, Mississippi. They give the viewer the feeling that Eggleston simply casually selected the scene and accepted everything that took place in the defined framework. The result is photographs that integrate the incalculable in their composition, thus accepting coincidence. The belief that the uncontrollable quality of the moment enriches the fixed image was one that Eggleston shared with Henri Cartier-Bresson. In 1959 Eggleston discovered the Cartier-Bresson’s monograph "The Decisive Moment", published in 1952; the book became Eggleston’s photographic point of reference in the years that followed. Eggleston’s central theme is found in the everyday life that surrounds him: supermarkets, which were built in urban outskirts; sidewalks, driveways, terraces, polished automobiles, set dinner tables, gas stations; middleclass homes and southern interiors; bars and their regulars. Everything that takes place in front of the camera is essentially worthy of being photographed, regardless of how irrelevant or trite it may seem. A stuffed freezer or shoes underneath a bed Eggleston directs his ’democratic’ gaze towards everything and treats it all with the same attention. His focus is on places in his hometown, in Memphis, New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta; he also, however, travels around the globe for commissioned works.

With his focus on everyday life, Eggleston set himself clearly apart from the elevated motifs of the master photographers of the time who had to work very slowly and carefully because their plate cameras could only be used with a tripod. The works of the leading photographers of the period, such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, were characterized by severe composition, brilliant handling of photographic techniques and the treatment of classical subject matter majestic landscapes, idealized portraits and nudes. William Eggleston, by contrast, used various types of cameras, from small and mid-sized formats to large ones. Following his shift to colour photography, he also experimented with different methods of production, from drugstore and C-prints to dye transfer printing. His discovery of dye transfer printing became decisive for his artistic course. This was a technique developed by Kodak in the 1940s in which the motif was transferred onto a paper surface from three successive negatives. The result was a relatively permanent colour print in which the individual colours could be altered or intensified without influencing the complimentary colours. Eggleston was thus able to orchestrate the individual elements of the colour scheme; above all, he could also influence the emotional content and the psychological effect of his images. In this way, the warm afternoon light lent the portrait of a supermarket employee a conciliatory touch while it simultaneously cast a sobering glance on the American dream.
The photographs are often taken from unusual perspectives. Lying on the ground, Eggleston photographed a tricycle, thereby citing a child’s still unrestrained, free gaze on an object that can develop several different meanings through play. The image conveys this openness with regard to interpretation and takes the viewer back to his own childhood. The monochrome shot of a red ceiling became an icon: a blood-red sky, photographed from a housefly’s perspective. Many of the artist’s most powerful images display a similar suggestive effect. With alarming strength, they surpass themselves and can invade the subconscious to such an extent, that the actual object is only perceived as a motif defined by the artist. As familiar as the motifs are to the viewer, Eggleston’s series of everyday scenes resist a quick and clear interpretation. With their unconventional perspectives, the selected scenes and the subjective use of colour, the images free the way for additional associations and meanings. Through the abundance, or over-abundance, of the range of items for sale spread out before customers and consumers, atmospheric images are created that certainly make a point about the symptoms of a mass society and the state of mind of the individuals in it. Loss, estrangement, loneliness and desire are exposed as contemporary phenomena in many of his photographs.

The presentation in the Haus der Kunst is the show’s only European station. It will then return to the United States and be on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.