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History of Photography
Introduction
History of Photography
A World History of Photography
The Story Behind the Pictures 1827-1991
Photographers' Dictionary
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Chapter 7
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ART PHOTOGRAPHY
ANOTHER ASPECT
1890-1920
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Art is not so
much a matter of methods and processes as it is an affair of
temperament; of taste and of sentiment. . . . In the hands of the
artist, the photograph becomes a work of art. . . . In a word,
photography is what the photographer makes it—an art or a trade.
William Howe
Downes, 1900
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THE PROMOTION OF THE PHOTOGRAPH to
the Status of an art object was the goal of a movement known as
Pictorialism. Based on the belief that camera images might engage the
feelings and senses, and nourished initially by the concept of Naturalism
articulated by Peter Henry Emerson, Pictorialism flourished between 1889
and the onset of the first World War as a celebration of the artistic
camera image. The aesthetic photographers who were its advocates held that
photographs should be concerned with beauty rather than fact. They
regarded the optical sharpness and exact replicative aspects of the medium
as limitations inhibiting the expression of individuality and therefore
accepted manipulation of the photographic print as an emblem of
self-expression. Animated by the same concern with taste and feeling as
other visual artists, Pictorialists maintained that artistic photographs
should be regarded as equivalents of work in other media and treated
accordingly by the artistic establishment. Many of the images made under
the banner of Pictorialism now seem little more than misdirected
imitations of graphic art, as uninspired as the dull documentary images to
which they were a reaction, but a number have retained a refreshing
vitality. More significantly, the ideas and assumptions that sparked the
movement have continued to inspire photographers, even though as style
Pictorialism became outmoded around 1912.
Why the growing interest in
artistic camera images in the last decade of the 19th century? It followed
from the simplification of processes and procedures discussed in Chapter
6, and reflected the divergent uses to which the medium was being put as
industrialization and urbanization proceeded. The dramatic expansion in
the number of photographers (owing to the introduction of dry film and
hand cameras) permitted many individuals to regard the photograph simply
as a visual record, but it encouraged others to approach the medium as a
pastime with expressive potential. Simultaneous with the publication of
photo-graphs of daily events, social conditions, and scientific phenomena
in reading matter for the increasingly literate public, the wide
dissemination of accurate reproductions of masterworks of visual art—also
made possible by photographic and printing technologies—made the public
more aware of visual culture in general. Furthermore, the emphasis on
craft: and artistry in journals and societies devoted to amateur
photography was specifically aimed at fostering an aesthetic attitude
toward the medium on the part of photographers.
This multiform expansion in
photography took place against a background of stylistic transition in all
the arts. As a consequence of greater familiarity with the arts of the
world through reproductions, art collections, and increased travel,
artists were able to expand their horizons, confront new kinds of subject
matter, and embrace new concepts and ideologies. Within the diversity of
styles that emerged, an art of nuance, mystery, and evocation, an art
"essentially concerned with personal vision" held a special attraction.
Realism, the ascendant motif in the visual arts during much of
photography's early existence, was challenged by Symbolists and Tonalists
who proclaimed new goals for the arts. Less involved with the appearances
of actuality, or with the scientific analysis of light that had engaged
artists from Courbet to Monet, Symbolists maintained that while science
might answer the demand for truthful information, art must respond to the
need for entertainment and stimulation of the senses. However, in
photography the situation was complicated by the fact that while some
aesthetic photographers held truth and beauty to be antithetical aims,
others viewed the medium as a means of combining the aims of art and
science and imbuing them with personal feeling.
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Pictorialism: Ideas and Practice
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During the 1890s, serious amateurs
as well as professionals deplored the "fatal facility" that made possible
millions upon millions of camera images of little artistic merit. In
seeking to distinguish their own work from this mass of utilitarian
photographs, Pictorialists articulated a dual role for the medium in which
images would provide an unnuanced record on the one hand, and, on the
other, provoke thought and feeling. Aesthetic photographers were convinced
that in the past "the mechanical nature" of photography had "asserted
itself so far beyond the artistic, that the latter might... be described
as latent," and they sought to redress this perceived imbalance by
selecting subjects traditional to the graphic arts, by emphasizing
individualistic treatment and by insisting on the artistic presentation of
camera images. Photographs, they held, should be regarded as "pictures" in
the same sense as images made entirely by hand; that is, they should be
judged for their artistry and ability to evoke feeling rather than for
their powers of description. In their insistence that photographs show the
capacity to handle "composition, chiaroscuro, truth, harmony, sentiment
and suggestion," Pictorialists hoped to countervail the still prevalent
attitude among graphic artists and the public in general that the camera
could not duplicate "the certain something . . . personal, human,
emotional... in work done by the unaided union of brain, hand and eye."
They hoped also to appeal to collectors of visual art for whom aesthetic
quality and individuality were important considerations. Individuality of
style was expressed through the unique print, considered by many at the
time to be the hallmark of artistic photography. Using non-silver
substances such as bichromated gelatin and carbon (see A Short Technical
History, Part II)—materials originally perfected to assure
permanence—photographers found that they were able to control tonalities,
introduce highlights, and obscure or remove details that seemed too
descriptive. Many of these effects were accomplished by using fingers,
stumps, pencils, brushes, and etching tools to alter the forms in the soft
gum, oil, and pigment substances before they hardened, or by printing on a
variety of art papers, from heavily textured to relatively smooth Japanese
tissues. In that no positive print emerged as an exact version of the
negative, or an identical duplicate of itself, these manipulations and
materials, in addition to serving the expressive needs of the
photographer, also satisfied collectors who preferred rare or singular
artifacts. Gum printing, which involves a combination of gum arabic,
potassium bichromate, and colored pigment, became popular after 1897 when
photographers Robert Demachy in France and Alfred Maskell in England
together published Photo-Aquatint, or the Gum-Bichromate Process. In 1904
a method of printing in oil pigments evolved, resulting in a greater range
of colors available to the photographer. These procedures could be used
only if the print were the same size as the negative, but in 1907, the
Bromoil process made it possible to work with enlargements as well as
contact prints.
These procedures, sometimes called
"ennobling processes" because they permitted the exploration of creative
ideas by hand manipulation directly on the print, provoked a lively
controversy among aesthetic photographers themselves as well as among
critics. Excessive handwork produced photographs that at times were
indistinguishable from lithographs, etchings, and drawings and led some
Pictorialists to deplore the eradication of the unique qualities of the
photograph; others cautioned discretion, observing that gum printing "is
only safe in exceptionally competent hands," which regrettably were not
numerous. During the early 1900s, the viewpoint that initially had held
that the artistic quality' of the final work would justify whatever choice
of printing materials and techniques had been made gave way, as
prestigious figures in artistic photography joined with less sympathetic
critics to decry murky, ill-defined photographs as "fuzzygraphics."
Pictorialist advocates of straight
printing did not usually intervene directly in the chemical substances of
the print, although on occasion they might dodge or hold back portions of
the negative. In the main, they followed the course marked out by Emerson,
finding in carbon- and platinum-coated paper (Platinotype) the luminous
tonalities and long scale of values they believed were unique to the
expressive character of the medium. Again like Emerson, many preferred to
make multiple images by the hand-gravure process—a method of transferring
the photograph to a copper plate that was etched, inked, and printed on
fine paper on a flatbed press to produce a limited edition of nearly
identical prints.
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Pictorialism: Styles and Themes
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In looking to painting for
inspiration, late-19th-century aesthetic photographers were confronted by
a confusing array of outmoded and emerging artistic ideologies and
stylistic tendencies, from Barbizon naturalism to Impressionism, Tonalism,
and Symbolism. Not surprisingly, many were attracted by motifs that
already had been found acceptable by art critics and the public, among
which the idealization of peasant life, first explored by Barbizon
painters at mid-century, ranked high. This concept in the work of Emerson
and Frank Sutcliffe is expressed with down-to-earth robustness, while
other aesthetic photographers turned such scenes into embodiments of the
picturesque and artful. In one example, Waiting for the Return (pi. no.
353)—a photograph of the wives of fishermen waiting on the beach at
Katwyck, Holland, for the boats to come in—Alfred Stieglitz selects a
vantage point from which he can create an uncluttered arrangement; he
controls the tonalities to suggest an atmospheric haze that softens the
forms and at the same time endows the women with larger-than-life stature.
The horizontal format, the flat tonalities of the figural groups, and the
treatment of recessional space also suggest the influence of Japanese
woodblock prints.
A theme that attracted both
aesthetic photographers and painters was the pure natural landscape. In
common with the Symbolist and Tonalist painters who viewed nature as the
only force "undisturbed by the vicissitudes of man," aesthetic
photographers in Europe and America regarded landscape with a sense of
elegiac melancholy. Taking their cues from the Nocturnes of Whistler, the
mystic reveries of the Swiss painter Arnold Boecklin, or the poetic
impressions of the Americans George Inness and Henry Ward Ranger, they
regarded suggestiveness as more evocative than fact, and preferred the
crepuscular moment to sun-drenched daylight, the quiet, intimate pond to
dramatic mountain wilderness. Instead of the crisply defined forms and
strong contrasts of earlier topographical imagery, they offered the vague
shapes and subdued tonalities visible in Woods Interior (pi. no. 354) by
Edward Steichen, a work obviously related in its organization, treatment,
and mood to Ranger's scene, Bradbury's Mill Pond, No. 2.
The female figure, both as a study
in beauty and a symbol of motherhood was another subject of common
interest to painters and aesthetic photographers. Softly focused portraits
of elegantly attired enigmatic women— favored by Pictorialists
everywhere—stressed stylishness and charm rather than individual strength
of character. A related theme, women and children engaged in leisurely
domestic activity or at play in home and garden, appealed to both men and
women photographers, who produced idealized visions of intimate family
life, transforming what formerly had been a prosaic genre subject into a
comforting visual idyll of middle-class gentility. With its seemingly
random arrangement, curvilinear forms, and delicate tonalities, The
Picture Book (also called Instruction pi. no. 356) by the renowned
American portraitist Gertrude Kasebier isolates its two intertwined
figures in a peaceable terrain untroubled by domestic or social friction.
Few motifs better illustrate the
gulf that developed between aesthetic camera "pictures" and straight
camera documents than the nude figure. Around the turn of the century,
Pictorialists on both sides of the Atlantic approached the unclothed body
with great diffidence, picking their way timidly through the "canons of
good taste." Camera studies of the nude by artists, among them those made
by Czechoslovak painter Alphonse Marie Mucha for various decorative
commissions in his native land, France (pi. no. 357), and the United
States, or the numerous studies of the undraped figure taken by Thomas
Eakins (or his students) as study materials for paintings, or for anatomy
classes as celebrations of the human form (pi no. 254) were not intended
for exhibition or public delectation. Convinced that "ART alone"12 might
sanction this troublesome yet attractive subject, photographers avoided
ordinary or coarse-looking models and selected ideally proportioned
females whose bodies, it was believed, would suggest beauty rather than
sensuality (pi, no. 358). Combining classical poses in landscape settings,
to which props suggestive of the "Antique" were sometimes added, with
artistic lighting and handwork (at times, extensive) to obliterate telling
details, aesthetic photographers hoped to prove that in photography "nude
and lewd" need not necessarily be "synonymous terms."
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ALFRED STIEGLITZ. Icy Night,
1893
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see also:
ALFRED STIEGLITZ
(see collection)
Alfred Stieglitz.
The Steerage, 1907
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354. EDWARD STEICHEN. Woods
Interior, 1898.
Platinum print. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Alfred Stieglitz
Collection, 1933.
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see also:
EDWARD STEICHEN
(see collection)
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356. GERTRUDE KASEBIER. The
Picture Book, 1903.
Gravure print. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
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GERTRUDE KASEBIER
(see collection)
(From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia)
American portrait
photographer Gertrude Käsebier (née Stanton) (1852 - 1934) was a part of
the PhotoSecession movement along with Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon
Coburn and Clarence Hudson White and a founder of the Pictorial
Photographers of America.
While studying painting in her late thirties, she shifted her interests to
photography. With minimum professional training, she opened a studio in
1897, and used the proceeds to support her ill husband. She was a founding
member of the Photo-Secession group along with Alfred Stieglitz, who
printed several of her photographs in the first issue of his magazine
Camera Work.
Using relaxed poses in natural light, emphasizing the play of light and
dark, Kasebier let her subjects fill most of the frame. She was also noted
for her printing process and ability to produce images with a painterly
quality. She was the first woman to be in the Linked Ring and the founding
member of the Pictorial Photographers of America. Motherhood is a central
theme for her work.
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GERTRUDE KASEBIER.
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357. ALPHOSE MARIA MUCHA. Figures Decoratives, 1903.
Gelatin silver print. Collection Jiri Mucha, Prague.
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358. CLARENCE WHITE. Nude, c.
1909.
Platinum print. Private collection.
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CLARENCE WHITE
(see collection)
(From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Clarence
Hudson White (April 8, 1871 – July 7, 1925) was an American photographer
and a founding member of the Photo-Secession movement. During his lifetime
he was widely recognized as a master of the art form for his consummate
sentimental, pictorial portraits and for his excellence as a teacher of
photography. Toward the end of his career he founded the Clarence H. White
School of Photography, which produced many of the best-known photographers
of the Twentieth Century including Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange,
and Paul Outerbridge.
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CLARENCE WHITE.
The Torso (Miss Thompson), 1907
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Other than those engaged in a
commerce in erotic images, early photographers of the nude had been
constrained by the realistic nature of the medium and by Victorian
attitudes toward the unclothed human bodv to endow their images with
allegorical dimension (when they did not direct them to the needs of
graphic artists). Attitudes began to change shortly before
the turn of the century, and as the nude in painting and graphic art
emerged from a long history of masquerading as goddess or captive slave
(or as in Edouard Manet's Olympia as prostitute), the female nude figure
became a motif in and for itself in both painting and aesthetic
photography. Some photographers still cast their nude figures as sprites
and nymphs, but others no longer felt the need to obscure their attraction
to the intrinsically graceful and sensuous forms of the unclothed female.
Indeed, the very absence of allegory or narrative in this treatment served
to emphasize the new role of the photograph as a strictly aesthetic
artifact.
While Pictorialists everywhere
photographed the nude, aesthetic photographers working in France and the
United States most enthusiastically explored the expressive possibilities
of this motif. Conventional academic poses and extensive manipulation of
the print, typified by the works of French photographers Demachy and Rene
LeBegue and the American Frank Eugene (pi no. 360), rendered
some photographs of the nude almost indistinguishable from etchings and
lithographs, while a group portrait of nude youngsters by American Pictorialist Alice Boughton (pi, no. 361) exemplifies the less derivative
arrangement and more direct treatment of light and form that also was
possible.
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360. FRANK EUGENE. Study, 1899 or
before.
Platinum print. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Alfred Stieglitz
Collection, 1949.
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FRANK
EUGENE
(see collection)
(1865-1936) was born in New York but moved to Munich in
his 20s where he studied art and soon became well-established as a
portrait painter before he took up photography about 1885. He was
elected to the Linked Ring in 1900 and was a founder of the
Photo-Secession movement, undoubtedly because of his close personal and
professional relationship to Alfred Steiglitz. A biography, The Dream of
Beauty, was published in 1955. Eugene was known for his substantial
manipulation of his negatives—so much so that the output was often a
cross between a graphic work and a photographic print. In that he
anticipated a number of contemporary artists and printmakers.
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FRANK
EUGENE.
Nude study,
1900
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361. ALICE BOUGHTON.
Sand and Wild Roses, 1906.
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The great majority of aesthetic
images of the nude were of adult females, the undraped male body being
considered by nearly everyone as too flagrantly sexual for depiction in
any visual art intended for viewers of mixed sexes. However, articles on
nudity in photography (written largely by men), which had begun to appear
in camera journals after 1890, suggested that young boys would make
especially appropriate models because their bodies were less sensually
provocative than those of women. Wilhelm von Gloeden and F. Holland Day
were two significant figures of the period who chose to photograph not
only adolescent boys but older males, too. Von Gloeden, a trained painter
who preferred the mellow culture of the Mediterranean to that of his
native Germany, worked in Taormina, Sicily, between 1898 and 1913 (pi. no.
362), while Day, an early admirer of Svmbolist art and literature, was an
"improper" Bostonian of means working in Massachusetts and Maine during
the same period. Their images display a partiality to the trappings of
classical antiquity, perhaps because they realized that to be artistically
palatable the male nude—youthful or otherwise—needed a quasi-allegorical
guise. However, although the head wreaths, draperies, and pottery that
abound in Von Gloeden's works may have suggested elevated aesthetic aims,
and the images were in fact proposed as "valuable for designers and
others," his young Sicilians often seem unabashedly athletic and sexual to
modern eyes. On the other hand, Day handled the poses and lighting of the
nude male presented in the guise of pastoral figures with such discretion
that a contemporary critic observed that "his nude studies are free of the
look that makes most photographs of this sort merely indecent."
Some Pictorialist photographers
embraced allegorical or literary themes, posing costumed figures amid
props in the manner of the Pre-Raphaelites and Julia Margaret Cameron,
with results that ranged from merely unsuccessful to what some consider
ridiculous. Among the more controversial examples of this penchant for
historical legend were reconstituted "sacred" images by Day, by the French
Pictorialist Pierre Dubreuil, by Lejaren a Hiller (an American
photographer who eventually turned this interest into a success in
commercial advertising), and by Federico Maria Poppi, an Italian
Pictorialist. The fact that Day's series of religious images were
obviously staged, with die photographer himself posing for the Christ
figure (pi. no. 363), prompted the critic Charles H. Caffin to call "such
a divagation from good taste intolerably silly."
Possibly even more misguided
because they lacked any originality, subtlety, or psychological nuance
were camera images that aimed to emulate high art by appropriating actual
compositions painted by Renaissance masters or Dutch genre painters. Guido
Rey and Richard Polack (pi. no. 364), from Italy and the Netherlands
respectively, pho-tographed costumed models arranged in settings in which
props, decor, and lighting mimicked well-known paintings. In view of the
absence of conviction or genuine emotion in all of these works, one could
conclude that the orchestration necessary to re-create religious or
historical events or painted scenes conflicts with the nature of pure
photography. As one critic noted about Day's tableaux, "In looking at a
photograph, you cannot forget that it is a representation of something
that existed when it was taken."
A strong interest in light and
color, which for some Pictorialists had found an outlet in pigment
printing processes, prompted others to experiment with Lumiere Autochrome
plates when this color material reached the market in 1907. In general,
European Pictorialists who favored gum and oil pigment processes for
working in color regarded Autochrome as too precise for artistic effects.
An exception was the Austrian Heinrich Kuehn (see Profile), who joined
with the Americans Alvin Langdon Coburn, Frank Eugene (pi. no. 350),
Steichen, and Stieglitz to investigate the range and possibilities of the
material. Kuehn was highly successful in harmonizing the dyes—cool, airy
blues and greens—to achieve a sense of spontaneous intimacy in views of
family life , despite the long exposures required. Works in Autochrome by members of the American Photo-Secession (see below), several
of which also pictured family members and their activities, are somewhat
more static in organization and more mellow in color, reflecting the
somber harmonies of some fin-de-siecle painting in Europe and the United
States. The fact that Autochrome transparencies were difficult to exhibit
and to reproduce may account for their relatively brief popularity among
the leading Photo-Secessionists, but other (later) American Pictorialists,
including Arnold Genthe and Laura Gilpin, continued to use
the material into the 1920s.
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362. WlLHELM VON GLOEDEN. Study,
Taormina, Sicily, 1913.
Gelatin silver print. International Museum of Photography at George
Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.
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WILHELM VON GLOEDEN
(see collection)
(From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden
(September 16, 1856–February 16, 1931) was a German photographer who
worked mainly in Italy. He is mostly known for his pastoral nude studies
of Sicilian boys, which usually featured props such as wreaths or amphoras
suggesting a setting in the Greece or Italy of antiquity. From a modern
standpoint, his work is commendable due to his controlled use of lighting
as well as the often elegant poses of his models. Innovative use of
photographic filters and special body makeup contribute to the artistic
perfection of his works.
Famous in his own day, his work was subsequently eclipsed for close to a
century, only to re-emerge in recent times as "the most important gay
visual artist of the pre–World War I era" according to Thomas Waugh.
Von Gloeden claimed to be minor German aristocrat from Mecklenburg.
Suffering from what appears to have been tuberculosis, he came to Taormina
in Sicily in 1876. He was wealthy, and also scrupulously shared the
proceeds of his sales with his models, providing a considerable economic
boost in this comparatively poor region of Italy, which might explain why
the homosexual aspects of his life and work were generally tolerated by
the locals.
The von Gloeden family and its heirs have always insisted that no such
person existed in their family records and his claim to The Barony von
Gloeden was without warrant; the barony become extinct in 1885 with the
death of Baron Falko von Gloeden.
Von Gloeden generally made different kinds of photographs: The ones that
garnered the most widespread attention in Europe and overseas were usually
relatively chaste, featured clothes like togas and generally downplayed
their homoerotic implications.
More explicit photos in which the boys were nude and which, because of eye
contact or physical contact were more sexually suggestive were traded by
the Baron "under the counter" to close friends.
The popularity of his work in Germany, England, and America can possibly
be attributed to three major reasons:
The Classical and painterly themes in which his work wreathed itself
served as a cultural "badge of protection". At that time male-male-love
was unthinkable to many who saw his images. New printing technologies
enabled the mass reproduction and sale of his work in postcard form. In
total the Baron took over 3,000 images, which after his death were left to
one of his models, Pancrazio Buciunì, also known as Il Moro for his North
African looks. Il Moro had been Von Gloeden's lover since the age of
fourteen, when he had first joined the household of the Baron. In 1936,
over 2,500 of the pictures were destroyed by Mussolini's police under the
allegation that they constituted pornography. Most of the surviving images
therefore come from private collections.
Von Gloeden's cousin, Guglielmo Plüschow, similarly photographed male
nudes in Rome, Italy. From an artistic standpoint, Plüschow's work is
somewhat inferior to von Gloeden's as the lighting in Plüschow's works is
often too harsh and the poses of the models look quite stilted.
It is worth noting that Plüschow was already a firmly established
photographer when von Gloeden started doing photographs of his own in the
early 1890s. It is even speculated that von Gloeden was taught the (then
difficult) art of photography by Plüschow himself. However, von Gloeden
soon eclipsed Plüschow, and later works by Plüschow were frequently
erroneously attributed to von Gloeden.
Up until 1907, his assistant Vincenzo Galdi secretly made work which he
tried to pass off as von Plüschow's own. However, Galdi's pictures lack
elegance, often also feature females and generally tend to border on the
pornographic.
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WILHELM VON GLOEDEN. Nude
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WILHELM VON GLOEDEN. Nude
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363. F. HOLLAND DAY.
An Ethiopian Chief, c. 1896.
Platinum print. Libran' of Congress, Washington, D.C.
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F. HOLLAND DAY
(see collection)
From Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia)
Fred Holland Day (July 8,
1864 - November 12, 1933) was a noted photographer and publisher.
At the turn of the century, his influence and reputation as a photographer
rivalled that of Alfred Stieglitz, who later eclipsed him. The high point
of Day's photographic career was probably his organization of an
exhibition of photographs at the Royal Photographic Society in 1900. It
presented 375 photographs by 42 photographers, 103 of them by Day, and
evoked both high praise and vitriolic scorn from critics.
Day belonged to the pictorialist movement which regarded photography as
fine art. His photographs allude to classical antiquity in manner,
composition and often in theme. He often made only a single print from a
negative. He used only the platinum process, being unsatisfied with any
other, and lost interest in photography when platinum became unobtainable
following the Russian Revolution.
Day's life and works have always been controversial. His photographic
subjects were often nude male youths. Pam Roberts, in F. Holland Day (Waanders
Pub, 2001; catalog of a Day exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum) writes:
"Day never married and his sexual orientation, whilst it is widely assumed
that he was homosexual, because of his interests, his photographic subject
matter, his general flamboyant demeanor, was, like much else about him, a
very private matter."
Day spent much time among poor immigrant children in Boston, tutoring them
in reading and mentoring them. One in particular, the 13-year-old Lebanese
immigrant Kahlil Gibran, went on to fame as the author of The Prophet.
Day co-founded and self-financed the publishing firm of Copeland and Day,
which from 1893 through 1899 published about a hundred titles. The firm
was influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement and William Morris's
Kelmscott Press. The firm was the American publisher of Oscar Wilde's
Salomé, illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley; The Yellow Book, also illustrated
by Beardsley; and The Black Rider and Other Lines by Stephen Crane.
From 1896 through 1898 Day experimented with religious themes, using
himself as a model for Jesus. Neighbors in Norwood, Massachusetts assisted
him in an outdoor photographic reenactment of the Crucifixion. This
culminated in his series of self-photographs, The Seven Words, depicting
the seven last words of Christ.
Day became all but forgotten for a number of reasons. He was eclipsed by
his rival, Stieglitz. The pictorial photographic style went out of
fashion. Most of his prints and negatives were tragically lost in a 1904
fire. And Day himself lost interest in photography and withdrew from the
photographic scene.
Day's house at 93 Day Street, Norwood, Massachusetts is now a museum, and
the headquarters of the Norwood Historical Society.
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F. HOLLAND DAY. Youth
sitting on a stone (Nicola Giancola), 1907
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F. HOLLAND DAY.
Menelek
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364. RICHARD POLACK. The Artist
and His Model, 1911.
Platinum print. Roval Photographic Society, Bath, England.
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