Tag: Pictorialism

Edward Weston

“One does not think during creative work, any more than one thinks when driving a car. But one has a background of years – learning, unlearning, success, failure, dreaming, thinking, experience, all this – then the moment of creation, the focusing of all into the moment. So I can make ‘without thought,’ fifteen carefully considered negatives, one every fifteen minutes, given material with as many possibilities. But there is all the eyes have seen in this life to influence me.”  –  Edward Weston

Note:  Not much of Weston’s photographs are in the public domain.  Therefore, I have include links to his more important photographs so you can enjoy them.

Early Life

On March 24, 1886, Edward Henry Weston was born in Highland Park, Illinois into an intellectual family.  His father, Edward B. Weston, was an obstetrician and his mother, Alice J. Brett, was a Shakespearean actress.  His mother died when he was only five years old and little Edward was raised mostly by his sister Mary who was fourteen years old at the time.  Weston called her “May” or “Maisie.  They would develop a close relationship which lasted throughout the years.

His father remarried when Weston was nine but neither he nor his sister got along with their stepmother or stepbrother.

When Weston was 11, Mary married and relocated from the Midwest to Southern California, settling in Tropico (later renamed to Glendale).  Once Mary left, Weston’s father devoted most of his time to his new wife and her son.  He had no interest in books or school and dropped out.  He also had a lot of time on his hands and spent it mostly by himself in his room.

In 1902, while on vacation on a farm in Michigan, his father gave him his first camera, a Kodak Bulls-Eye No. 2 for his 16th birthday.  His dad included a note which read in part, “you’ll not have to change anything about the Kodak. Always have the sun behind or to the side—never so it shines into the instrument. Don’t be too far from the object you wish to take, or it will be very small. See what you are going to take in the mirror. You can only take twelve pictures, so don’t waste any on things of no interest.”

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Edward Steichen

A brief biography of Edward Steichen, one of the most influential pioneers of photography on whose shoulders we stand.

 

“It is rather amusing, this tendency of the wise to regard a print which has been locally manipulated as irrational photography – this tendency which finds an esthetic tone of expression in the word faked. A MANIPULATED print may be not a photograph. The personal intervention between the action of the light and the print itself may be a blemish on the purity of photography. But, whether this intervention consists merely of marking, shading and tinting in a direct print, or of stippling, painting and scratching on the negative, or of using glycerine, brush and mop on a print, faking has set in, and the results must always depend upon the photographer, upon his personality, his technical ability and his feeling. BUT long before this stage of conscious manipulation has been begun, faking has already set in. In the very beginning, when the operator controls and regulates his time of exposure, when in dark-room the developer is mixed for detail, breadth, flatness or contrast, faking has been resorted to. In fact, every photograph is a fake from start to finish, a purely impersonal, unmanipulated photograph being practically impossible. When all is said, it still remains entirely a matter of degree and ability.” – Edward Steichen

In Luxembourg, a small country wedged between Germany, Belgium and France, is the little known Clervaux Castle secluded in the north of the country. It was built in the 12th century but destroyed in the Battle of the Bulge in the Second World War. Since then it has been restored and now houses the town’s administrative offices and a small museum.

The museum contains an exhibition of over 500 photographs collected from photographers in 36 countries that were assembled and first shown in 1955 at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Since its first showing, the exhibition has traveled around the world and has been seen by more than 9 million people. Finally, it was donated to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and reached its permanent home in the Castle.

00070138-01Éduard Jean Steichen was born on March 27, 1879 to Jean-Pierre and Marie Kemp Steichen in Bivange, Luxembourg. He was still a toddler when his parents moved to the United States and settled in Hancock located in Michigan’s upper peninsula where his father worked in the copper mines. When his father became incapacitated, they moved to Milwaukee. There his mother supported the family by working as a milliner.

He attended Pio Nono College, a Catholic boys’ high school when he was 15 and was already showing artistic talent in his drawings. But before finishing high school, he dropped out to become a lithography apprentice at the American Fine Art Company of Milwaukee. He continued drawing and took up painting. In 1895 at the age of 16 he bought his first camera, a secondhand Kodak box “detective” camera. Together with several of his friends who also enjoyed photography, they pooled their money to rent a small room in a Milwaukee office building and formed the Milwaukee Art Students League.

Steichen continued drawing and painting, but he also took to photography for which he obviously had an eye. The first showing of his photographs, at the age of 20, was at the Philadelphia Photographic Salon in 1899. In 1900 Steichen exhibited his photographs in the Chicago Salon. It is there that Clarence H. White, one of the leading proponents of Pictorialist photography and a colleague of the legendary Alfred Stieglitz, saw his photographs and was greatly impressed. He decided he had to introduce Steichen to the Stieglitz in New York, the photographer whose lifelong obsession was to establish photography as a legitimate art and the driving force behind the Pictorialist movement in America. White wrote a letter to Stieglitz, telling him of his find. Stieglitz was interested.

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Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz left a lasting legacy on fine art photography. Read a brief history of his life and accomplishments.

“It is not art in the professionalized sense about which I care, but that which is created sacredly, as a result of a deep inner experience, with all of oneself, and that becomes ‘art’ in time.”

– Alfred Stieglitz

New Year’s Day in 1864 didn’t seem at first to be any more unusual than the start of any new year in recent years. It might have been thought to be special because it was leap year. But the Civil War was going full throttle and the United States was split asunder.

In Hoboken, New Jersey a boy was born to German Jewish immigrants Edward Stieglitz, a lieutenant in the Union Army, and his wife Hedwig Ann Werner. The baby boy was the firstborn to Edward and Hedwig and would be followed by five more siblings.

The child was given the name Alfred. There was no way in predicting in those early years that little Alfred would make the name Stieglitz synonymous with the most revered and influential photographer in America.

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Photography’s Struggle to be Recognized as Art – Pictorialism

Photography had a hard time establishing itself as a valid art medium. Read about the first movement that launched this push.

Photography is Mechanical

 

Between 1840 and 1860 the growth of photography was all about science.  The development of light sensitive media was dependent on a few brilliant scientists figuring out how to make them and experimenting with what would work best.  And Kodak was decades away from inventing roll film and the camera it came in.  If you wanted to be a photographer you had to master the chemistry of your chosen medium and in some cases, as we shall soon see, you had to be able to take your darkroom with you.

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Ansel Adams – The Making of 40 Photographs: Lodgepole Pines

Another post in a continuing series based on Ansel Adams’ wonderful book, “Examples – The Making of 40 Photographs.” This post covers a photograph from his Pictorialist period – Lodgepole Pines.

AA24-Lodgepole_Pines

Lodgepole Pines (1921)

This Ansel Adams photograph has always stood out from the rest of his works.  It doesn’t have the usual crispness or drama that one normally expects.  Instead the focus is soft and the shadows are not full and rich.  It almost seems like it might have been created by another person.  And for that reason I find it all the more interesting.

It’s difficult to imagine the great Ansel Adams as an amateur, a novice photographer.  One normally associates him with a supremely confident master of his art, a pioneer of techniques, both technical and aesthetic, that we still use and revere today.  And this is certainly an accurate characterization.  But like all of us, he had to start somewhere.  We all go through a period where our art is in its formative stages, where we are discovering ourselves, our vision and our voice.  And this photograph was part of the process for Adams.

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Ansel Adams – The Making of 40 Photographs: Frozen Lake and Cliffs

Explore with me Ansel Adam’s comments on the making of “Frozen Lake and Cliffs.”

It was in the  ‘70s when I was backpacking through the Kaweah Gap areas of the Sierra Nevada mountains.  We were two days out and came upon this lake.  I instantly recognized it from on of Ansel Adams that I particularly liked – Precipice Lake.  It was exciting and we spent the night there.

Frozen Lake and Cliffs (1932)

I’ve always been a fan of this Ansel Adams classic.   For me it has a feeling of immensity and majesty.  So it  has a special meaning to me reading about it in “Examples.”   A few things caught my attention in Adams’ narrative…

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