Lisette Model, 1901-1983, a gutsy photographer

Lisette Model, Self-portrait.

Born in Vienna an Austro-Hungarian November the 10^th 1901 she died in New York City an American the March the 30^th 1983. Her father, a doctor of Jewish descent, was Austro-Italian and her mother was a French Catholic. She studied music and was influenced all her life by the teachings of the composer Arnold Schönberg. She left Austria for France when her father died in 1924. She then stopped studying music in order to start to learn visual arts. She was the student of André Lhote whom will also teach Henri Cartier Bresson and George Hoyningen-Huene. She starts practicing photography with her sister Olga Seybert before studying this medium under the teaching of Rogi André. Throughout this training she will learn “never to take picture of things which do not passionate her”.

Lisette Model, La Promenade des Anglais, Nice, France, 1938.

1.       A woman photographer.

Christina Zelich, a museum curator, gives us a good explanation as to why Lisette Model and many other women of her generation chose to become professional photographers. According to her “photography gave women a means of subsistence while allowing then to express artistically and eventually to access notoriety, placing them on an equal footing with men.” We have to keep in mind the Lisette model was born and raised in machos society where only men where accepted in other artistic fields.

Lisette Model, La Promenade des Anglais, Nice, France, 1938.

In 1937 she marries Evsa Model and together they live France to go to the United States. There, she will become a professional photographer and a member of the New York Photo League. In 1940, after being published many times in the Harper’s Bazaar, some of her most significant picture were bought by the MoMA. This pictures were presented to the public in 1948 next to those of Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan and Ted Croner. Lisette Model thus became a renowned photographer and a financially independent woman.

Lisette Model, Coney Island Bather, New York, 1939-1941

2.       A career tempered with by the McCarthyism

When she arrives in the United States she realizes some series of photos including one known as the Running Legs picturing the legs of the people walking in the streets of New York, describing the atmosphere of the City through these simple movements. She also photographed people marked by their life, those persons who were on their faces the traces of how they lived.

Lisette Model, Running Legs, 1940-1941

From 1951 until her death she taught at the New School for Social Research in New York. Among her students where Diane Arbus, Eva Rubinstein, Larry Fink… Through her teaching she kept influencing American Street Photography. At the same time she kept working as a portraitist and photographed many stars such as Franck Sinatra, Georges Simenon, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. However her career as a street photographer was greatly slowed by the “witch hunt” held against people suspected to have ties with the Communists.

Lisette Model Louis Armstrong, 1954-1956

Also she was carful never to mention it, the first series of photos she took portraying the people walking the “Promenade des Anglais” in Nice, were publish by Regards, a French magazine known for its ties with the Communist Party.

Lisette Model, Sammy’s, New York, 1940-1944

In her work as a street photographer, she uses the Close-up as a non-sentimental way to photograph people and as a mean to underline vanity which is for her a symptom of a society tormented by insecurity and solitude. It is because of her technique and because of her will to underline the problems of the society she lives in, that Lisette Model is considered as a Social Photographer.  In order to take her pictures, Model never speaks to her subjects and that what she advised her students. According to her, people “have the physiognomy of the life they’ve had and of their emotions.” Through the surface transpires the reality of what people really are.

It is in this spirit that she worked with the Photo League. Unfortunatly, this institution was soon accused by the McCarthyism. Also she was interrogated by the authorities, she never was accused of being a Communist. However, her career was deeply affected by “the witch hunt” and she never was able to sell her pictures to magazines afterword. Nevertheless she kept taking pictures, going back to her old passion by taking pictures of people going to the Opera House, giving us a great panorama of the New York Society of her time.

• Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York, NY
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisette_Model
• http://www.jeudepaume.org/index.php?idArt=1118&page=article présentation de Christina Zelich
• http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/showcases/model/index_f.jsp
• http://www.jeudepaume.org/pdf/DE_LisetteModel.pdf

Paul Strand (1890-1976) and the rising of modernism in the world of photography

Portrait of Paul Strand, by Alfred Stiglietz (1919)

Paul Strand was born in New York City in october1980. His parents sent him to the Ethical Culture Fieldston Shool where he waslucky enough to follow photography classes given by Lewis Hine, whose work we
have already praised in a previous post. During a fieldtrip to Alfred Stiglietz’
Gallery organized by Lewis Hine, the young Paul Strand will discover the work
of great artists as Julia Margaret Cameron, Frederick H. Evans, Gertrude
Kasebier, David Octavius Hill, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz and Clarence
White. Then and there, he decided to dedicate his life to photography. Lewis
Hine will not only teach him this medium but also turn him into a real
humanist. During seven years Paul Strand will dedicate all his time to photography,
largely influenced by the pictoralist movement, inspired by artists like Edward
Steichen and Clarence White.

Stieglitz is his mentor and he pays him regular
visits to present him with his photos. Throughout critics and encouragement
Strand will improve his thoughts on the medium and progress in his esthetical
research.

As soon as 1915,
Paul Strand will part away from Pictoralism and adopt a new technic working on
three main themes: movement in the city, abstractions and street portraits.

1.      
Movements in the
city.

From the El, 1915 – Paul Strand (American, 1890–1976). Platinum
print; 13 ¼ x 10 3/16 in. (33.6 x 25.9 cm). Alfred
Stieglitz Collection, 1949 (49.55.221)

Throughout the 1910’s Strand photos of New York
City’s streets were structured around slow movements and represented in most
cases a single person as the above picture illustrates. Strand’s goal is to
capture contrasts between the urban rigor and the lives of the inhabitants of
the Big Apple. This picture is representative of this goal. The power of the
iron structure and the shadows of the street contrast strongly with the small
stature of the lonely walker on the top right inside of the picture.  

2.    Abstractions

Abstraction, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, 1916 Paul Strand – Silver–platinum print;
12 15/16 x 9 5/8 in. (32.8 x
24.4 cm)

Paul Strand is largely
influenced by the painters exposed in Stieglitz’ gallery « The Little
Galleries of the Photo-Secession », on 291 Fifth Avenue. Stieglitz will participate in the
rising of modern art by exposing for the first time in the United States
artists such as Rodin, Matisse, Cézanne and Picasso. This will start
Paul Strand reflection on the construction of his photos and the relationship
between the shapes of the objects he shoots. Through this reflection he learned
how to create depth and movement in the compact universe of photography. Slowly
Strand gave up on the realty of objects and recognizable shapes trading them
for abstract structures. The most representative picture of this movement would
be « Abstraction, Twin Lakes,
Connecticut » shoot in 1916. It is considered as the first intentionally
abstract photography. 

Geometric Backyards, New York, 1917 Paul Strand – Platinum print; 10 x 13 1/8
in. (25.4 x 33.3 cm)

This picture is the view from Paul Strand’s
family apartment. It is a view he was given to see almost every day for 24
years, but it is only in 1917 that he sees the geometrical abstraction of the
place and notices that the whole city of New York is a “visible abstraction”.

Impressed by Strand’s work, Stieglitz gives him
the great opportunity to expose in his gallery. Many of his pictures will be
exposed in Camera Work, a magazine
created by Alfred Stieglitz in order to promote Pictoralism. For Stieglitz,
Strand’s pictures are “the direct expression of the passing time”.

3.    Street portraits

Blind, 1916 Paul Strand – Platinum print; 13 3/8 x
10 1/8 in. (34 x 25.7 cm) Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933
(33.43.334)

Paul Strand is also known for the portraits of New-Yorkers
he took. The persons he shoots are representative of the city of the time and especially
of Five Points in Lower East Side which is the heart of the slumps where
migrants lived. He shot the bearded beggars, the Irish, the elderly Jews, the
scrambling Europeans and the blind street sellers

Paul Strand portraits of New York inhabitants
were taken in a fascinating fashion. He wanted to take his pictures without
people noticing him and therefore he had to invent and ingenious stratagem. He
installed a fake lens on his camera in order to distract the subjects of his
photos. When the people came closer he would make a 90° turn pointing the fake lens
another direction. The real lens however was hidden under his armpit and faced
the person he wanted to photograph. As Lewis Hine before him, Paul Strand
documented poverty in New York City and the way of life in a modern urban
context.

Bling was published in 1917 in Camera Work, and immediately became the symbol of the new American photography.
This picture represents the objectivity of documentary photography while
following the simple lines of modernism.

Harold Greengard, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, 1917 Paul Strand. Silver–platinum print; 10 x 13 in.
(24.5 x 33 cm)

Paul Strand gives up on
esthetical principles and rejects stylization to become one of the first photographers
to promote « straight photography ». This portrait of his best friend,
Harold Greengard, is a perfect illustration of this movement. The spontaneity
of the picture is of the outmost evidence. Throughout the following decades
Paul Strand will become a film maker. In 1920 he will make whith Charles
Sheeler his first short film: Manhatta. In
the mute movie, they describe the day to day life of New York City.

Rebecca, New York, ca. 1923 Paul Strand. Palladium print; 7 5/8 x
9 11/16 in. (19.4 x 24.6 cm)

In 1922 Paul
Strand gets married with Rebecca Salsbury whome he will often photograph in
very intimate times and at close range.

Seated
man, Uruapan de Progreso, Michoacan Mexico
(1933)

After his divorce he will move to Mexico where
he’ll live from 1932 to 1935. Sensitive to social reforms lead by the Mexican
Revolution and artists like Diego Rivera, he will work on a movie, Redes
(1936). This work is half documentary and half fiction and was commissioned the
Mexican government who wanted to illustrate a fishermen’s strike. This movie
will be the first realized by Fred Zinnemann. Paul Strand also worked on other
documentaries such as The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936)
and Native Land (1942) a movie denouncing police
forces violence and private militias working for employers in order to promote
civil rights movements.

Paul Strand will remarry in 1935 with Virginia
Stevens whom he will divorce in 1949 before going to the Native Land Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia where
he will receive an award.

In 1950 the photographer
moves to France where he gets married with Hazel Kingsbury, the woman whom will share his
life until the end in Orgeval. During this last period of his life he will
publish six books: Time in New England
(1950), La France de Profil (1952), Un Paese (1955), Tir a’Mhurain / Outer Hebrides (1962), Living Egypt (1969) and
Ghana: an African portrait (1976).

Young Boy Gondeville France, (1951) – Paul Strand

Tailors apprentice, Luzzara (1953) – Paul Strand 

The family Luzzara, Italy (1953) – Paul Strand 

Young Ali, Kalata el Kobra, Delta, Egypt (1959) – Paul Strand 

Chief and Elders, Nayagnia, Ghana (1976) – Paul Strand 

Asena Wara, Leader of the Womens’ Party, Wa Ghana (1976) – Paul Strand

Sources :

http://www.metmuseum.org

http://etudesphotographiques.revues.org

http://www.mutualart.com

http://proof.nationalgeographic.com

Alice Austen (1866-1952) a woman ahead of her time

(Self) Portrait, Monday, September 19th 1892, 3:45pm

1.      A humanistphotograph before time

Alice Austen was abandoned by her father and raised
by her mother and grandparents in the family house, Clear Confort,
where she will live all her life. She has the chance to live in a
very loving familial environment and protected from any material
difficulties despite the absence of her father.

At 11, Alice Austen receives from her uncle, captain
for the Danish merchant marine a photographic camera. She is
immediately fascinated by this new invention and will dedicate 40
years of her life to the production of more than 8000 pictures.
Helped by another uncle, Peter, a chemistry professor, she will learn
from a very young age the necessary theory to develop her
photographies. She installs her photographic laboratory in the attic
of the family house where she has to bring water thanks to a bucket.
At 18, Austen photographic abilities can already be compared to those
of a professional photograph. The oldest photos taken by Austen are
from that time. They depict her daily life as well as her family, her
friends, her love, her house, her garden and makes some
self-portraits more elaborated.

Julia Martin, Julia Bredt and Self dressed up as
men, 4:40 p.m., Oct. 15th, 1891

Very quickly she stops conforming with these
proximity photographies. She starts discovering the streets of Staten
Island with her bike and the 25 kg of photographic equipment. One of
the only photographies published with a commercial purpose is the one
of her friend Violet Ward (author of Bycicling for Laidies) riding
a bike, as slow as possible so
the picture is not blurry.

Weeling, 1896

Very often she alto takes the ferry to go to
Manhattan where she takes a lot of pictures. Known for her street
photography, she captures accurately the immigrants coming down from
the ship to Ellis Island, as well as the sweepers, postmen or
shoe-shiners.

Contrary to her contemporaries (Jacob Riis
particularly) she doesn’t photography the misery of New York slums,
but the smiles of the less wealthy (Deux Chiffonniers 1897).
Nobody can say that this way of photographing persons is a a way of
denying the existence of misery. Nevertheless, by doing so, Austen
gives us a representation of those men and women dignified and
serene.

Rag Pickers, 23rd Street, 1896

She is one of the first woman photographer in the
United States and certainly the more prolific one. Moreover, Alice
Austen is different to her contemporaries because she dares to go out
with her camera leaving the security of a studio. Her street
photographies are between an artistic representation and a
documentary. She describes the world in images and gives us her point
of view on the life during that time. She documents precisely her
pictures, giving indications about the technique used, the time of
pause, the lighting conditions and the subject she is representing.

She choses to photograph her friends but also does
more creative work without ever veritably looking to live from her
art. She participates in the illustration of her friend’s work, Daisy
Elliot a gymnastic professor presenting the good and bad postures to
have during exercise.

She also participates in a work commanditated by
Doctor Doty, from the public health services about the local
establishment of Quarantine, reserved for immigrants who just arrived
to the continent. It will be a work that will take her almost a
decade. During that time, she will go to the Hoffman and Swindurn
Island, next to Ellis Island, reserved for the quarantine of the
newcomers.

Quarantine Island, 1896

The composition of her images reminds us the canon of
classical beauty of the 19^th century. They refer to the
idea that the nature represented by the artist must capture the
beauty of the surroundings and the spirit that comes from it.

2.       A woman ahead
of her time

Austen is not only a photographer, she is also an
independent woman with multiple facets. Landscaper, athlete, she is a
known tennis-woman (she will be member of the first tennis club of
the US in Livington), she is also the first woman in Staten Island to
have a car.

She will never get married and will spend 50 years in
company of Gertrude Tate, which is very uncommon for that Victorian
time she lives in.

Gertrude Tate will be the subject of some of her
photographies. Professor and dancer, Tate will accompany Alice during
her travels to Europe and will move in with her in Clear Confort in
1917, even though her family doesn’t approve of this union.

Alice Austen, Trude & I, August 6, 1891, 11pm

During her lifetime, Alice Austen is an important
figure in Staten Island and New York and is part of many clubs.
Horticulturist, she creates a club for this other passion.

This doesn’t prevent Alice Austen to be another
victim of the 1929 crisis and at 63 years she finds herself in a very
difficult economic situation. With her partner she opens a Tea Salon
in the family house before having to sell, one by one, all her
furniture. She manages to protect her photographies by giving them to
a friend Loring McMillen. Gertrude Tate’s family accepts to give her
an apartment, but only to her. This will live Alice Austen obliged to
find another refuge. Her work will be found by Oliver Jensen who
wishes to edit the work of known women. The benefice of this
publication will allow Alice Austen to get out of poverty. She will
have the chance to assist to the first important exposition of her
work.

Auteur inconnu, Alice Austen le jour de la
première exposition.

The city of New York will recognise the importance of
her work for the city history. She will then be able to buy the house
where she grew up. Clear Confort is today a museum where are exposed
Alice Austen work as well as other contemporary creations. The
pictures presented in this article come from the permanent collection
of this museum.

Sources :

·        
http://aliceausten.org/her-photography

·        
http://aliceausten.org/her-life

·        
http://www.historichousetrust.org/item.php?i_id=32

·         « Tout
sur la Photo, Panorama des mouvements et des chefs-d’œuvre »,
ed Flammarion, sous la direction de Juliet Hacking. ;Zo���N

Atget, a documentary photographer, and much more

Joueur d’orgue, 1898, Paris.

What exactly inEugène Atget’s work fascinated surrealists, archives and Parisian museum andpeople like Walter Benjamin? What gave the thousands of pictures he took this
ambivalence? Are his pictures a work of art, a simple attempt to document his
time or a social work? What strike one whom reads Atget’s biography is the
modesty with which he describes his own work. Although he played the Parisian artistic
field at the end of the XIXth century, he seemed to put himself at the fringes
of this little world. He considered his photographical work as one of a blue
collar. His aim was to give painters raw inspirational material, without even
thinking his own picture could be art.

At that time
photography was not yet a medium wildly used by artists to create art pieces.
Photography interested them for its instantaneity which gave this technic the
value of a proof a the present instant. It might be for this reason that Atget
walk the streets of Paris doomed to demolished and took pictures of buildings
about to be put to the ground. Much has been written about the mutations of the
City of Paris whether it was to celebrate the modernity of the new building (synonym
to safety and public health) or on the contrary to regret the disappearing of landmarks
of “ancient times”, to comment changes usually indicates there is an uneasiness
around social mutations created by modern life in general. Atget, while he
claimed only to be collecting images to document the work of others or to help
painters, was a sociologist and an historian of the present times.  

Bérénice Abbott
gives us the key to understand Atget’s work by stating that “we will remember him
as an historian of urbanism, a true romantic, a lover of Paris, a Balzac of
camera, whom work allows us to weave a large tapestry of the French
civilization.”

Bitumiers, 1899-1900, Paris.

With this
picture Atget shows a kind of work about to disappear. Indeed, few years after
it was taken Atget would have been only able to shoot large engines covering
the ground with asphalt. If this picture is overexposed, it seems that it
portrays perfectly the atmosphere of a sunny summer day. Details in high lights
are lost but the men working are well exposed and the attitude frozen for
eternity. The way the two characters are kneeling seems to be exhausting. The
man standing, carrying a jar full of tar seems to be in no less pain. His
posture, the belt that we can see around his lower back to protect him portrays
a life of hard labor. This picture is quite simple to read, it was framed from
bellow in order for the photographer to be at eye level with the people spending
there life in there crooked position. The aim of the photographer is obviously
to document his day to day life, but doing he immerses us in the lives of the
laboring class.

Marchande de mouron, 1899, Paris.

Atget did a series
on the forgotten jobs of Paris in order to show not only that this job existed
but the changes that happened during his period. Why did he choose to show
these little street jobs and the people earning their living this way? These
jobs are slowly but surely disappearing. By fixing them on the planks of his
camera obscura, Atget fixes at the same time the reality of his everyday life,
a urban landscape, and situations and figures about to disappear.

The Marchande de mouron is quite revealing of the humanity with which
Atget takes his pictures. Contrary to the series he took shooting empty
streets of Paris; here he clearly photographed the woman. Her face is clear and
almost at the center of the picture. She looks at us strait in the eyes and
smiles frankly. She is seated on the pavement and we can imagine that the
photograph had to lower himself in order to take his picture with his heavy camera.
We also notice that the woman carries a sleep babe in her arms, at the same
level as the “mouron” she is selling. Her surrounding are all blurred has if
the interest of the picture was not the job of this woman, nor the place where
she is, but her mare presence in the street. Her stare and her smile are
hypnotic.

Porte d’Italie : zoniers.

The series Atget
took on the « zoniers » was a commissioned work. Here again his work
is ambivalent. His will to give a faithful account of the situation
is evident, as evident as the human vision of the photographer. He shoots this
slum with the same care his photographed the entrance of beautiful shops and
Parisian buildings. The multiple shades of grey enhance the details of the
detritus on the floor giving us an incongruous picture.

Eugène Atget,
Romanichels, groupe, 1912, Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print, 21.2 x
17 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Abbott-Levy Collection, Partial
gift of Shirley C. Burden.

Just
as in the picture of the Mouron seller, Atget shows us here the face of a proud
woman right in the middle of the picture. Here again the photographer lower
himself at the level of his subject and makes her the center of our attention.

Eugne Atget (1857-1927), A photographer and reluctant artist

Portrait

Born in Libourne, France. Atget enters in the navy at13 years old. Later, we know that he is part of a theatre troupe heis forced to quit in 1898 after an infection of his vocal cords.

He considers photography as a source of documentation
for painters and other professionals. During 20 years he takes
pictures of Paris and sells them in his studio. He will take more tan
8000 street pictures that are gathered in series and sub-series. He
sells his pictures to historian and to libraries.

Cours de l’Auberge du Cheval Blanc.

Very little known during his life-time, his work is
recognised by the vary famous Man Ray in the 1920’s. To take his
pictures, Atget continues to use a view camera, which is outdated but
gives them a surrealistic effect. Thanks to the insistence of Man
Ray, Atget is published in the magazine Révolution Surréaliste.
At the beginning, Atget refuses. Brassaï reminds us that « Atget
doesn’t consider himself as an artistic photographer, but as a
documentarist able to give painters, theatre or cinema decorators any
view of the city ». For
this reason, he doesn’t want his job to be associated to artistic
photography. Moreover, if his picture « Parisians
observing a solar eclipse in 1912 » makes
the cover of the surrealistic magazine in 1926, he demands that the
picture stay anonymous.

Parisiens observant une éclipse du soleil en 1912

Man Ray is fascinated by Atget new photographic
language. He does the opposite of pictoralism and gives to the
situation he is photographing a neutral point of view. Nevertheless,
he concentrates on details that would be otherwise ignored. Most of
the time he represents phantasmagoric individuals or persons in
incongruous situations. In other words he proposes pictures without
artifice. This neutrality and coldness makes the critic, Walter
Benjamin, say that Atget images can be compared to pictures of crime
scenes (very popular in that time). According to Robert Sobieszek he
embodies « everything the 19^th century photography
aspires ».

Even if Man Ray has contributed significantly to
Atget reputation, Berenice Abbott gave to the artist and his
influence on history of photography, an international dimension. With
Julien Levy, owner of a New York art gallery, they buy a part of
Atget work. Thanks to this publicity, Atget’s work will influence a
new generation of street photographers. Since 1935, the french
photographer influence will impact the New York photography. The
images he produces sacrifice the foreground clearness  in favour of
the background. This is a very important composition element in Atget
work. We will study it in detail tomorrow.

Atget has a subjective approach influenced by
surrealism. He looks for a visual mode to reflect the modern life,
its speed and the alienation that follows. These are the
characteristics of Atget work and will influence later street
american photographers as Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand or Lee
Friedlander.

Zoniers.

He photographs poverty on the street of Paris.
Brought by the industrial revolution, slums grow at the outskirts of
the capital, between the city fortifications and surrounding areas.
« Zoniers » are
the inhabitants of this geographical area. They live in precarious
barracks or in trailers and can only survive by waste recovery. Atget
photographs them and constitute an album entitled Zoniers
(1913).

His whole life he
had to face financial difficulties, and dies in complete misery.

Sources :

Tout sur la Photo, Panorama des mouvements et des
chefs-d’œuvre, ed Flammarion, sous la direction de Juliet
Hacking.

La photographie sociale, collection Photo Poche,
édition Actes Sud. Michel Christolhomme.

http://expositions.bnf.fr/atget/arret/01.htm

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=229

http://www.atgetphotography.com/The-Photographers/Eugene-Atget.html

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Atget

Lewis Hine, photograph to change the world

Breaker boys working in Ewen Breaker of Pennsylvania Coal Co.

As we saw it previously, Lewis Hine is a sociologistbefore being a
photograph. He dedicates his life to writing articlesdenouncing extreme
poverty and working conditions of the poorest. His
work is recognised as having participated in the collective awareness
of the necessity to improve labor law and to protect the most
precarious workers. It is also known that Lewis Hine gave an image of
working children and allowed the appearance of laws forbidding work
for young children. We will study today some of his best-known
pictures and we will take an interest in the way they allowed to
impact consciences.

1. A fierce fight against child labour

Sadie Pfeifer, Girl worker in Carolina cotton
mill, 1908, épreuve argentique, 26.5×34.5 cm, New York Museum
of Modern Art.

Hine contributes to raise awareness among the
american population on the very precarious situation of children at
work. Thanks to his publications in the illustrated press, he
denounced by his papers their living conditions an proves his
allegations through pictures. He has a factual and documentary
approach of photography and he uses this medium as an argumentative
tool that allows citizens form the ruling classes to open their eyes.

With Breaker Boys, Hine shows us very young
children that recently ended their working day at the bottom of
carbon mines. Their dirty faces and their working rags are shocking.
The whites of their eyes are more visible and touches our soul. For
some americans of that time, child labour in the mines was only a
legend that becomes tangible through this photographic proof.

Lewis Hine does a similar work with children employed
in spinning and textile industries. In order to take those pictures
he has to lie to the factory owners claiming to be a sales
representative who came to photograph machines.

Sadie Pfeiffer is without a doubt one of his best
known pictures of this series. He choses to give the name of the
little girl for the title of this picture. By doing so, he creates a
link between the spectator and the subject of the picture and somehow
he makes us feel in her shoes. The gigantic size of the machine
contrasts with the size of the frail child in front of this metal
wall. The field depth increases this impression. At the end of the
perspective we can guess the ghostly presence of an adult certainly
the foreman in charge of monitoring the young girl.

Michael McNelis, age 8, a newsboy. This boy has
just recovered from his second attack of pneumonia. Was found selling
papers in a big rain storm. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

With this image Hine shows us a common profession in
the big cities of that time. News distributors are in every street
during day and night. They are an integrated part of the urban
landscape. However, few are the persons who are really aware of their
living conditions.

Once again, the title of this image has the name of
the child. This time we also learn how old he is and his health
condition. The child is just recovering from his second pneumonia and
certainly shouldn’t be on the streets selling newspapers.

The man stature who is leaning over him, highly
contrast with the child short hight. The child jacket is to big for
him, the sleeves rolled up, his shirt and his way of holding the
newspapers under his arm reminds us of the image of a child who
became too quickly and adult.

2. The working class sublimated

Icarus Empire State Building, 1920  

Lewis Hine has a humble background. He himself has
worked from a very young age to satisfy his basic needs and to
finance his studies. He admires the working class of his time and
sublimates with his pictures the work of those persons who build the
country we know today. The documentary he did on the workers who
constructed the Empire State Building is a tribute to all the
workers, often immigrants from the Old continent who came to America
with the hope of a better future.

Empire State Building, 1931 Silver gelatin print
Musée de l’Élysée, Lausanne.

The pictures he takes can make us dizzy. He shows a
men working on what became an American symbol, just recovering from
the ‘29 crisis by the construction of this monument that still today
represents the american dream. Men working on this construction are
represented as heroes of their time.

“Power house mechanic working on steam pump,”
1920

This way of sublimating workers is also found in
another of his most-known pictures. In this last cliché,
we can observe a very muscular man working on the “Modern
Times” machine that will send
us back to Charlie Chaplin movie. In its style this picture is very
close to fashion photography. The man’s hair is perfectly cut and his
posture allows to enhance his physical aspect of a Greek god. His
look is determined, he seams very focused on his work. The image that
Hine gives us of working class is far from the clichés the
middle and upper class could have in that time. According to the
social-photograph, it is thanks to the working class that the United
States could progressively become a powerful nation.

John Thomson, a social reformist

The Crawlers, 1977, From ‘Street Life in London’

“Some of these crawlers are not, however, sodevoid of energy as we might at
first be led to infer. A few days’ good lodgingand good food might
operate a marvellous transformation. The abject misery into
which they are plunged is not always self sought and merited; but is, as
often,
the result of unfortunate circumstances and accident. The crawler, for
instance, whose portrait is now before the reader, is the widow of a
tailor who
died some ten years ago. She had been living with her son-in-law, a
marble
stone-polisher by trade, who is now in difficulties through ill-health.
It
appears, however, that, at best, "he never cared much for his work,”
and innumerable quarrels ensued between him, his wife, his
mother-in-law, and his
brother-in-law, a youth of fifteen. At last, after many years of
wrangling, the
mother, finding that her presence aggravated her daughter’s troubles,
left this
uncomfortable home, and with her young son descended penniless into the
street.
From that day she fell lower and lower, and now takes her seat among the
crawlers of the district.“

This first image explained
by the text of Adolphe Smith, illustrates the achievement of his and John Thomson
work. The photographer reminds us the representation of classic art through
this portrait of a Madonna with child. The woman doesn’t seem to have enough strength
to continue with her quest. Behind her we can see the teapot and cup which
indicates her belonging to the Crawlers in London. We can guess the
child profile. His pale skin reminds us the symbolic representation of
innocence. Children are usually used by photographers to illustrate the
injustice of a situation as they can never be considered as being responsible
for the situation they are in.

Workers on the ‘Silent Highway’, From ‘Street
Life in London’

1. Co-author of "Street Life in London”.

In the twelve publications of the Street Life in London, John Thomson and
the journalist Adolphe Smith, present in detail, life of their less wealthy
contemporaries in the streets of London. Each picture is accompanied by Smith
comments, a factual description of their life.

The magazine will appear every month during 12 months
between 1876 and 1877. At the end of their collaboration, Thomson and Smith
will publish a compilation of these magazines in a Street Life in London destined to the wealthiest families in London.

“Caney” the Clown, from The Street Life in
London.

2. Technique at the service of nature.

For this work,
John Thomson chose the technique of woodburytype
invented by Walter Bentley Woodbury in 1864.

The Woodburytype, is a reproduction and impression process of
photographic images allowing a certain relief in production that can be
compared to a very smooth bas-relief.

This technique, along with the optic technical progress
achieved during the 19th century, allows to achieve these street pictures. The
final result is surprising, thanks to this technique photographers can fixate
movement and have a very detailed quality in low tones.

In 1876 John
Thomson is at the maximum of his art. The pictures he takes are very natural.
Characters don’t seem to be posing for the photograph. They simply continue
with their daily activities. The staging of pictures seems to be the result of
the photographer choice of framing

and the deepness.

An Old Clothes Shop, St Giles, from The Street
Life in London.

3. A great social photograph

The work
accomplished by Thomson and Smith has an important educational purpose. It can
be considered as a reportage series, close to photojournalism. But the importance
of the two friends work and the great level of detail allow us to qualify it as
a documentary work. It is only for the ability Thomson has to guide our look
towards these humble and dignified persons that we can actually qualify this work as a
social documentary.

Laborers at Covent Garden Market, from The Street Life in London.  

If you are interested in discovering more of John
Thomson and Adolphe Smith work, the magazine Street Life in London is
available (which should be the case of every free book) by clicking in the
following link : http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/streetlifeinlondon

Thomas Annan 1829- 1887

To begin this week we will study Thomas Annan’s work. Despite a thorough search on Internet and between the pages of thisstrange media
that are books, we haven’t found any image of the onewho achieved one of
the first genuine social « photo-reportage ».

Fifth child in a family of seven children, Thomas
Annan was born in 1829 in Dairsie, Scottland. He first received an
education on lithography and worked for a while in the workshop of the
famous Joseph Swan. Feeling that this medium would ultimately be
replaced by
photography, Annan started studying the technique of humid collodion
and opened his own photography workshop in 1857 in Sauchiehall Street.
He started his activity dedicating himself to architectural and
artistic photography. As O.G. Rejlander he reproduced the paintings
of great masters of painting using this innovating medium. But he
will start gaining reputation with his « carte-de-visite
portraits ».

This portrait of David Livingstone was taken by
Annan:

David Livingstone, 1864, épreuve au charbon,
36.90×30.20 cm, National Galleries of Scotland Commons, from
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.

As well as this portrait of Horatio McCulloch
: 

Horatio McCulloch, épreuve albuminée, v.1860,
9×5,9 cm, National Portrait Gallery.  

Thomas Annan experimented with all the photographic
techniques of his time and learns to control them all. It is for his
expertise that the group Glasgow City Improvement Trust
will ask him to work for them in 1868. He is in charge of
photographing the poor neighbourhoods of the city. This work will
have as a result the publication of an album named Photographs
of Old Cloth/Street &Co,
appeared in 1878. According to Michel Christolhomme, this work is the
first reportage in history of photography. Others simply see in this
commissioned work one of the first publications of wide range
photojournalism. As a matter of fact, contrarily to John Thomson whom
we will study at the end of the week, Thomas Annan can’t be
considered as a social reformist. He doesn’t present any desire of
political change and his photographies aren’t focused on people but
on the architecture where they live, although some of his
photographies seem to prove the opposite.

Photographs of Old Cloth/Street & co, Thomas
Annan, 1878.

Photographs of Old Cloth/Street & co, ThomasAnnan, 1878.

Thomas Annan is also the father of James Craig Annan,
a photographer also member of the very select group Photographers
and Photographic Engravers to her Majesty of Glasgow.
James will take over the studio created by his father and will
develop it. This business still exists today under the name The
Annan Fine Art Gallery, located
in Noodlands Roand, West End – Glasgow.

Portrait de James Craig Annan par Alvin Langdon
Coburn.

References :

Tout sur la photo, panorama des mouvements et
deschefs-d’œuvre, ed Flamarion.

La photogrphiesociale, photo poche, Actes
Sud.

http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/Mar2006.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Annan

O.G. Rejlander, the subjective photographer

    1. A thought about social photography

Rejlander et les colporteurs, vers 1862-1868, O.GRjlander, épreuve albuminée d’après un négatif verre aucollodion humide.  

As we saw it during this week, O.G. Rejlander isn’t
only a portraitist of great talent, he is also a complete artist,
engaged in new reflexions around the medium of photography as an
artistic expression.

Representation of others in photography is
problematic because it theoretically represents an accurate picture
of the person portrayed and the situation she is in. As we saw it,
this accurate representation has a consequence for the audience. If
victorian society accepts without arguing nude representations in
paintings, when O.G. Rejlander proposes The two ways of life,
he offends.

O.G. Rejlander is a
master of the art of staging. He knows how to play with the poses of
his subjects. He uses the the technique of compiling different
diapositives in order to construct complex art work leaving the
observer perplex.

By the choice of his staging, he uses different
photographical techniques. O.G. Rejlander proves that photography can
be used to recreate an imaginary universe. This will question the use
of photography that was supposed to be used only to represent
reality.

This possibility to counterfeit reality is an
important element that we should keep in mind when we observe a
photography. This is particularly important for social photography.

For his work on poor workers and children living in
the streets, O.G. Rejlander choses sentimentalism. He creates
photographies that send us to the imaginary world of Charles Dickens.
Admittedly he manipulates images in an artistic goal. For us, staging
and photographing children as he does can seem suspicious. This
feeling was already present at that time but it was more about moral
questions. This can be explained by the suspicious relationship
photographers where known to have with their naked feminine models.
Even if O.G. Rejlander affirms to only use theatre actors for the
nude photographies, his opponents affirm that they are prostitutes.

O.G. Rejlander portraits children leaving in the
streets. But the children appear clean and sometimes posing in
gainful occupations. We mustn’t forget that the work of children
wasn’t forbidden in the victorian time. At the contrary, this was
very common for the poor working classes and for farmers. The fight
for children’s rights was just at the beginning. In fact, allow
children to work was considered as « moral » because it
kept them away from vagrancy, begging, stealing and even
prostitution.

To represent children isn’t an anodyne choice for the
victorian photographer. This subject allows to represent the social
reality of that time. However the explanation of why Rejlander choses
this subject goes beyond the simple necessity to represent social
reality. We can think that the photogenic aspect of children allows
critical staging of their social role and in extension of the whole
society’s. Children are like adults in miniature, and in the
collective psyche they are yet not corrupted by modern society. The
contrast between the situation and the alleged ingenuity can give as
a result an interesting gap, and even create a certain unease for the
spectator. 

It won’t rain today,1865, O.G Rjlandder, épreuve
albuminée d’après un négatif verre au collodion humide,
20.8×16.5, the J.Paul Getty Museum.

    2. An actor of documentary
photography

I) héliographie de O.G. Rejander 2) Illustration
du travail du Dr Duchenne de Boulogne, The Expression of the emotions
of man and animals, Charles Darwin, 1872, ed John Murray.  

When he works with Charles Darwin, Rejlander seems to
use photography as a tool to reproduce reality. It seemed to be a
return to the origins of photography for the artist. Nevertheless,
even with this work, he shows that this medium can largely be
manipulated.

Rejlander is motivated by an artistic recognition and
not a scientific one. Yet he participates in Darwin thinking on the
representation of human emotions. His approach of photography is
subjective and his capacity to manipulate the image through staging,
are pretences at the service of real emotions.

Double Self-Portrait, 1872, O.G Rjlandder, épreuve
albuminée d’après un négatif verre au collodion humide.  
 

3. One of the advocates of art
photography

Allegory, entre 1850 et 1859, épreuve albuminée
d’après un négatif verre au collodion humide,46.7×12.4 cm.  

If O.G. Rejlander is still considered as the
« father » of artistic photography, it is thanks to his
capacity of making this medium as malleable as a painting brush.

This quality, is shared with some of his
contemporaries as Charles Nègre, whom we studied last week; or Le
Gray, whom we have mentioned numerous times. However, the complexity
of O.G. Rejlander compositions make of him a special artist. He
pushes the subjectivity of this medium to its limits. Nevertheless we
found an artistic equivalent in Henry Robinson. He will be criticised
by his contemporaries for the same reasons as O.G. Rejlander. His
best-known work, Fading Away,
will be considered as « too morbid and too painfully
personal to be a photographic representation ».

Fading Away (1858), Henry Robinson, épreuve
albuminée au sel d’argent d’après un négatif verre, 23.8 x 37.2
cm,The Royal Photographic Society at the National Media Museum,
Bradford, United Kingdom.

Complementary sources :

• http://etudesphotographiques.revues.org/203

• http://etudesphotographiques.revues.org/3065

• http://metmuseum.org/exhibitions/view?exhibitionId={36d81705-241d-4934-ab02-fd7c8dbbb3e5}&oid=302289

O.G. Rejlander at the frontier of social photography

‘A night on the streets of London’ (Poor Joe),v. 1860, O.G. Rejlander, épreuve albuminée d’après un négatifverre au collodion humide, 20X15cm,
Rochester, Geroge Estman House.

1. Poverty as an artistic subject

Technical progress of the industrial revolution have
allowed the large diffusion of novels like Victor Hugo or Charles
Dickens novels. Both of them have influenced artists of their time.
It is not surprising to see photographers of the second half of 19^th
century point their cameras to the misery described by these two
pillars of literature.

Writers and photographers of that time live in cities
impoverished by rural exodus. It is not surprising that O.G.
Rejlander choses to capture through photography the poverty that
marks his everyday life.

Tired by his artistic work on photography using the
collage technique, he decides
to put it aside and to continue with his portraitist work  creating,
in a documentary style, portraits of kids living in the streets. The
choice of the subject isn’t surprising. In fact, according to Henry
Mayhew, a social reformist, author of Workers and poor
people in London (1851), around
10 000 and 20 000 children having less than 15 years lived in the
streets in London in complete poverty.

A night in the streets of London, also
known as Poor Joe, is
also part of a series of portraits of children living in the street
taken by O.G. Rejlander. The child is posing, sitting on steps of
stairs. This chiaroscuro is
surprising because of the level of detail provided. The modelling of
the clothes, the child posture and the richness of the shades of grey
make this portrait a genuine painting. All the elements in this
composition are carefully chosen. The shot is perfectly controlled.
Nothing is left to chance which is actually the opposite of what we
can imagine is the life of the child in the picture.

We found in Poor Joe
the explanation of why O.G. Rejlander is considered to be the father
of artistic photography.

Urchins playing a Game. O.G. Rejlander, épreuve
albuminée d’après un négatif verre au collodion humide.

This photography is another example of O.G. Rejlander
work on poverty. These children playing with small bones almost seem
to be moving. We found here the illusion created by the scenarios of
Charles Nègre in his street photography. Here the vision of the
children is more sentimental.

2. Poverty staged

According to the art historian Stephanie Spencer,
O.G. Rejlander workshop, in Malden Road, in the north of London, is
very close by of Chalk Farm Ragged School for Boys. This institution
was in charge of give shelter and food to the children living in the
streets as well as giving them an education. Which makes de historian
say :”children in Rejlanders photographies are clean and well
fed; they are not real children of the street but rather children
taken care by a charitable institution.”

We also know that
the photograph gives clothing to the children he stages. He is known
to ask people passing by to give their clothes for his realisations.
His representation of poverty can be compared to the one depicted by
Charles Dickens in Bleak House.
O.G. Rejlander gives a very touching image of poor children and is
not scared of adding a hint of humour in his realisations. Even if
his style is very close to be a documentary, the representation
remains nearest of an artistic realisation.  

3. Children as subjects

Alice Liddell disguised as a beggar, Charles
Dodgson, épreuve albuminée d’après un négatif verre au
collodion humide.

The fact of choosing children to pose, particularly
when they don’t have parents to protect them, generates many ethical
questions. Questions related to image rights don’t exist in the
victorian England. Nevertheless, we feel uncomfortable watching these
images today.

O.G. Rejlander intention is, officially, to document.
But the staging that he choses in this pictures put’s it further away
from this. He manipulates our look and awaken in us a melancholic
feeling.

O.G. Rejlander choice of photographing children has
to be put in its context. The photograph is a friend of Julia
Margaret Cameron and Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Caroll.
They both take picture of children. They pose as models and allow the
artist to describe a world of thoughtlessness. Both photographs take
pictures of children sometime very poorly clothed or having shocking
attitudes for the time. This can still bother the careful observer.

A study of Alice Liddel disguised as a beggar,
can help us understand the reasons of the controversy bout Lewis
Carroll. In this image, the photographer show us Alice Liddle, the
little girl for whom he wrote Alice in Wonderland.
The little girl is almost naked. We can see her legs up to the knee
and even one of her nipples. She is fixating the camera and her cold
gaze make us feel unease. Her hand, placed as if she were begging is
too close to her body and her fist is on her hip. According to some
art historians, this position reminds the positions of young
prostitutes in London. Lewis Carroll novel, depicted through these
photographies increases the controversy according to which he was a
pedophile. Others contradict this interpretation comparing these
photographies with those taken by Julia Margaret Cameron. She stages
her own daughters, sometimes even undressed, which is a very bold
representation for the Victorian time. The photographies taken by the
author of Alice in Wonderland
should be put into their context. Nevertheless we should note that
after this series of photographies the relationship between Charles
Dodgson and little Alice stopped brutally, without any appearing
reason.

4. Poverty and sentimentalism by O.G Rejlander

Hard Times, O.G. Rejlander, v. 1860, épreuvealbuminée d’après un négatif verre au collodion humide.

We saw it, OG. Rejlander
treats poverty as an art subject and with a certain sentimentalism.
This is mostly observed in his photography Hard Times. He
illustrates the living conditions of a poor worker. We can see a
father, with a tool on his hand, the gaze deep in his darkest
thoughts. Behind him we can image his wife and child sleeping, having
to share a unique bed. Maybe it is the anxiety that is keeping him
awake. The man is a physical worker but his clothes are clean but
simple. O.G. Rejlander gives an aesthetic but artificial
representation of poverty.

This representation is in opposition with the one of
his contemporaries. We can mainly talk about the work achieved by
Thomas John Barnes for Dr Barnardo. The collaboration between these
two men gives birth to the first wave of communication to collect
money using the medium of photography. The work of these two men,
staging children of the institution where they work will be largely
criticised. Thomas John Barnes makes photomontages. The first one
represents children living in the streets with a pitiful staging. The
second one show us the same child working in new clothes.

This work almost promotional can be distinguished
from O.G. Rejlander work on aesthetics. In the same period we can
also present the approach proposed by Alice Austen who portraits
subjects with the dignity that we must recognise in every human been. 

Alice Austen