The Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Photographs - History (1992 - 2009)

The Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Photographs - History

Established as an independent curatorial department in 1992, the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Photographs houses a collection of more than 20,000 works acquired by the Museum over 80 years.

The Museum's collection spans the history of photography. Among the treasures from the early years of the medium are an extremely rare album of photographs by William Henry Fox Talbot, made just months after he presented his invention to the public; a large collection of portrait daguerreotypes by the Boston firm of Southworth and Hawes; landscape photographs of the American West by Timothy O'Sullivan and Carleton Watkins; and fine examples of French photography from the 1850s by Edouard Baldus, Eugène Cuvelier, Gustave Le Gray, Henri Le Secq, Nadar, and others.

In addition, in 1997 the Museum acquired 78 nineteenth-century photographs from the renowned Rubel Collection. This group includes rare and beautifully preserved examples by the major figures of early British photography—William Henry Fox Talbot, the painter-photographer team David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Roger Fenton, and Julia Margaret Cameron—and constitutes one of the most extraordinary representations of Britain's rich photographic history in the United States.

Alfred Stieglitz, a passionate advocate for the acceptance of photography into the pantheon of fine arts, made several important gifts to the Metropolitan (in 1928, 1933, and in his bequest of 1946) that ultimately numbered more than 600 works. In addition to superb examples of his own photography, his gift comprises the best collection anywhere of works by the Photo Secession, the circle of Pictorialist photographers shown at his influential gallery. The Stieglitz Collection is especially rich in large master prints by Edward Steichen; of special note are three large, unique prints of the Flatiron building, each a slightly different hue, evoking a different moment of twilight in the city. Also featured in the Stieglitz Collection are F. Holland Day, Adolph de Meyer, Gertrude Käsebier, Paul Strand, and Clarence White.

Building on the Stieglitz Collection, in 1997, through a major gift of Jennifer and Joseph Duke and The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, the Museum acquired 73 portraits of artist Georgia O'Keeffe taken by Alfred Stieglitz. Documenting one of the most famous and intimate artistic collaborations of modern times, the photographs are part of Stieglitz's extraordinary composite portrait of O'Keeffe, a series of more than 300 images produced between 1917 and 1937 that he considered to be among his greatest achievements.

The Ford Motor Company Collection, 500 works collected by John C. Waddell and donated to the Museum in 1987 as a gift of the Ford Motor Company and Mr. Waddell, represents avant-garde European and American photography between the two World Wars. Berenice Abbott, Brassaï, Walker Evans, André Kertész, Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, and some 70 other photographers chart the urban, technological, and psychological revolutions of the modern age.

In addition to these extensive holdings, the Metropolitan's representation of the first century of photography (1839-1939) was immeasurably enriched by the 2005 acquisition of the Gilman Paper Company Collection, widely regarded as the world's finest collection of photographs in private hands. Propelling the Metropolitan to the topmost ranks of museums collecting the art of photography, the Gilman Collection consists of more than 8,500 photographs, including many unique and beautiful icons of photography by the medium's greatest masters as well as works by little known—even unknown—photographers and extensive bodies of work by pioneers of the camera.

The personal archive of Walker Evans, acquired in 1994, traces the development of this American master and poet laureate of the documentary style, and provides scholars and the general public with a unique opportunity to study the complete creative output of this seminal photographer. The archive contains nearly 40,000 negatives and transparencies as well as Evans's boyhood snapshots, short stories, correspondence, library, postcard collection, and seldom-seen color Polaroids made in the year before his death.

In 2007 the Museum announced the gift and promised gift of the complete archive of Diane Arbus, including hundreds of the artist's early photographs; negatives and contact prints of 7,500 rolls of film; and her photography collection, library, and personal papers. The Diane Arbus Archive will be fully catalogued and eventually made available for research. Simultaneous with this acquisition, the Museum purchased 20 of Arbus's most iconic photographs.

The post-war years are also represented by important American photographers such as Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, William Klein, and Garry Winogrand. The Museum's collection is especially strong in representing the varied paths of photography since 1960: its role in conceptual art, earth art, and performance art, as seen in works by Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Douglas Huebler; the "Dusseldorf School," featuring works by Bernd and Hilla Becher and their students Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, and Andreas Gursky; the "Pictures Generation," including Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince; and other important contemporary artists who use photography, such as Jean-Marc Bustamante, Adam Fuss, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rodney Graham, Sigmar Polke, and Charles Ray. The Museum has also recently added examples by younger artists such as Sharon Lockhart, Roe Ethridge, Rachel Harrison, Jane and Louise Wilson, and Doug Aitken, among others.

In 2001, the department acquired the Metropolitan's first work of video art—Ann Hamilton's a,b,c (1994/99)—and has since gone on to represent significant developments in film, video, and new media by artists including Lutz Bacher, David Hammons, Maria Marshall, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, and Karin Sander.

In September 2007 the Museum inaugurated the Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography, the Metropolitan's first gallery designed specifically for and devoted exclusively to the display of photographs created since 1960. Menschel Hall, with installations that change every six months, allows the department to show its contemporary holdings within the broader context of photographic traditions on view in the adjacent Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery. Also nearby is The Howard Gilman Gallery, the Museum's first permanent gallery dedicated exclusively to the display of photographs, which opened in October 1997. Addressing a changing roster of themes and topics, installations in the Gilman Gallery rotate three times a year and are drawn from the Metropolitan's collection and, on occasion, from those of other institutions.

The Department of Photographs periodically presents special exhibitions in the Galleries for Drawings, Prints, and Photographs or special exhibition galleries elsewhere in the Museum. Among the major exhibitions organized by the Metropolitan during the past 15 years and accompanied by scholarly catalogues have been:

The New Vision: Photography Between the World Wars (1989)
The Waking Dream: Photography's First Century, Selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collection (1993)
The Photographs of Édouard Baldus (1994)
Nadar (1995)
Sugimoto (1995-1996)
Georgia O'Keeffe: A Portrait by Alfred Stieglitz (1997)
Paul Strand Circa 1916 (1998)
Edgar Degas, Photographer (1998-1999)
Walker Evans (2000)
Earthly Bodies: Irving Penn's Nudes, 1949-50 (2002)
Richard Avedon: Portraits (2002)
Thomas Struth (2003)
The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes, 1839-1855 (2003)
Diane Arbus Revelations (2005)
All the Mighty World: The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 1852-1860 (2005)
The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult (2005)
Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860 (2007)
The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984 (2009)
Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans (2009)

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART - NEW YORK

www.metmuseum.org

Updated 07-02-2025

La Boheme at Museum Ludwig Cologne - The Staging of Artists in photography of the 19th and 20th century

“La Bohème”. The Staging of Artists in photography of the 19th and 20th century
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
25 September 2010 - 9 January 2011

In his 1851 novel Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, the French author Henri Murger created the image of the artist as an outsider who, in the midst of the middle class era, lived in romantic poverty. Bohemian life, viewed through rose-tinted glasses and elevated to undying popularity by Puccini’s opera, constituted in Murger’s view a transitional stage: “Bohemia is the first stage in artistic life; it is the preface to the Academy, the hospital, or the Morgue.” The term became synonymous with the 19th century artist who was dependent on an anonymous market and, while free of constraints, had to sell the fruits of his labours without the patronage of the courts. In the middle of this period in which the legend of the Bohemian swelled to bolster the artists’ feelings of self-confidence, came the invention of photography. Just how far this colourful approach to life was mirrored in photographic stagings of artists are examined in this exhibition at Museum Ludwig. It traces out the idea of the Bohemian milieu in photographic portraits, scenes and stagings.

The span of the work covered here extends from the earliest Daguerreotypes to the striking portraits by Nadar and the opulent artists’ banquets of the 1920s. Thus for instance Louis Alphonse de Brébisson staged around 1842 a group of friends painting and playing instruments as the quintessence of a romantic artists’ association in Bohemia. Felix Tournachon, known as Nadar, was not only a leading member of the Parisian Bohemians, he also created legendary portraits of his friends and contemporaries. No less ingenious was the collaboration between David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, whose group photographs such as Edinburgh Ale aimed at positioning themselves close to the artistic Bohemia. Historical pageants and so-called tableaux vivants tell of the lengths people went to dress up, not least for the artists’ and academy balls in the 19th century. Also on show are numerous poetic stagings done after historical models by David Wilkie Wynfield, a Pre-Raphaelite photographer, and Julia Margaret Cameron.

Paris remained however the metropolis of art and artists, and so the self-stagings from around 1900 by the artists of Montmartre and Montparnasse, such as Modigliani and Picasso, testify to their will to style. Likewise the figure of the dandy rose up amid this milieu in 19th century France. Stunning examples of this include the self-representations of the Pictorialists, such as Alfred Stieglitz and Frank Eugene Smith. The outlandish costumes in which the author Pierre Loti dressed up and the studio scenarios created for instance by Alphonse Mucha were also directly imbued with typical French flair. A special highlight will be the photographs of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, in which self-staging was wed with deep psychological introspection. Opulent and fanciful were the artists’ parties of the 1920s; on show will be examples from the Malkasten Düsseldorf, from Cologne, Hamburg, and from the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, photographed by leading photographers such as August Sander and T. Lux Feininger.

The Museum Ludwig, Cologne

The Museum Ludwig is one of Germany’s most important museums for 20th century art and contemporary art. It was founded in 1976 when Peter and Irene Ludwig presented the City of Cologne with 350 works of modern art. These works predominantly consist of American Pop Art paintings, objects, and sculptures (e.g. by Lichtenstein, Rosenquist, Warhol, and Wesselmann). In this genre the Museum Ludwig boasts the most significant collection outside the USA. A collection of Russian Avant-garde art spanning the years between 1905 and 1935 (Gontcharova, Larionow, Exter, Popova, Malevich, Rodchenko) also came to the museum. In 1986 the Museum Ludwig, together with the Wallraf Richartz Museum, obtained a building of its own situated between Cologne Cathedral, the Rhine river and the central train station. Cologne architects Peter Bussmann and Godfrid Haberer designed the building, which also houses the Philharmonic Hall.

The collection of Cologne lawyer Dr. Josef Haubrich (1889-1961) became part of the Museum Ludwig as well. Immediately after World War II Haubrich had presented the City of Cologne with his collection of Expressionist paintings (Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Otto Mueller) and other exponents of Classical Modernism (Marc Chagall, Otto Dix).

In 1994 Peter and Irene Ludwig donated a significant part of their Picasso collection (90 works) to the City of Cologne which made it necessary for the Wallraff Richartz Museum to move to a building of its own. On 31 October 2001, on the occasion of its re-opening, Irene Ludwig donated a further 774 works by Picasso to the Museum Ludwig. Consequently the Museum Ludwig now owns the third largest Picasso collection worldwide, after Barcelona and Paris. It comprises a representative cross-section of all of the artist’s creative periods, covering all genres, materials, and techniques.

1977 saw the start of the photographic collection, very early on for a contemporary art museum. The museum managed to purchase around 1000 photographs from L.Fritz Gruber, the initiator of the photokina fairs. As a result, several icons of 20th century photography became part of the museum’s collection. In addition, important loans and donations were received, among them industrial photography by A. Renger-Patzsch and photographic works by Russian avant-garde artists. With the Agfa Collection the Museum Ludwig owns an internationally renowned collection on the history of 19th century photography.

Also in the 1970s, the Museum Ludwig began to collect video and film works. As early as 1974 the first 16mm films, among others by Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, Joan Jonas, and ten further artists were purchased. Since then the museum has continuously expanded its collection. Since 2000 the Museum Ludwig has made a special point of collecting and presenting works representing the technical media in the context of contemporary art. The substantial acquisitions, e.g. of works by Aernout Mik, Renee Green, and Mike Kelley can be seen in this context.

www.museum-ludwig.de

Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
November 10, 2010 - April 10, 2011

Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand, three masters of photography, will be featured at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from November 10, 2010, through April 10, 2011, in the exhibition Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand.

The diverse and groundbreaking work of these artists will be revealed through a presentation of more than 100 photographs, drawn entirely from the Museum's collection. On view will be several of the Metropolitan's greatest photographic treasures from the 1900s to 1920s, including Stieglitz's famous portraits of Georgia O'Keeffe, Steichen's large colored photographs of the Flatiron building, and Strand's pioneering abstractions.

ALFRED STIEGLITZ (1864–1946) was a photographer of supreme accomplishment as well as a passionate advocate for photography and modern art through his gallery "291" and his sumptuous journal Camera Work. Stieglitz also laid the foundation for the Museum's collection of photographs. In 1928, he donated 22 of his own works to the Metropolitan; these were the first photographs to enter the Museum's collection as works of art. In later decades he gave the Museum more than 600 photographs by his contemporaries, including Edward Steichen and Paul Strand.

Among Stieglitz's works to be featured in this exhibition are portraits, views of New York City from the beginning and end of his career, and the 1920s cloud studies he titled Equivalents, through which he meant to demonstrate how "to hold a moment, how to record something so completely, that all who see [the picture of it] will relive an equivalent of what has been expressed."

The exhibition will also include numerous photographs from Stieglitz's extraordinary composite portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986), part of a group of works selected for the Museum's collection by O'Keeffe herself. Stieglitz made more than 300 images of O'Keeffe between 1917 and 1937—some of them candid shots, some focusing on her face, hands, or feet alone, and many of them showing her nude. Through these photographs Stieglitz revealed O'Keeffe's strengths and vulnerabilities, and almost single-handedly defined her public persona for generations to come.

Stieglitz's protégé and gallery collaborator, EDWARD STEICHEN (1879–1973), was the most talented exemplar of the Photo-Secession, the group founded by Stieglitz in 1902, seceding, in his words, "from the accepted idea of what constitutes a photograph," but also from the camera clubs and other institutions dominated by a more retrograde establishment. In works such as The Pond—Moonrise (1904), made using a painstaking technique of multiple printing, Steichen rivaled the scale, color, and individuality of painting.

Steichen's three large variant prints of The Flatiron (1904) are prime examples of the conscious effort of Photo-Secession photographers to assert the artistic potential of their medium. Steichen achieved coloristic effects reminiscent of Whistler's Nocturne paintings by brushing layers of pigment suspended in light-sensitive gum solution onto a platinum photograph. Although he used only one negative to create all three photographs, the variable coloring enabled him to create three significantly different images that convey the chromatic progression of twilight. The Metropolitan's three prints, all donated by Stieglitz in 1933, are the only known exhibition prints of Steichen's iconic image.

In 1908 Steichen photographed the plaster of Rodin's sculpture of Honoré de Balzac in the open air, by the light of the moon, making several exposures as long as an hour each. In Balzac, The Silhouette—4 A.M., the moonlight has transformed the plaster into a monumental phantom rising above the brooding nocturnal landscape. Steichen recalled that when he presented his finished prints to Rodin, the elated sculptor exclaimed, "You will make the world understand my Balzac through your pictures."

Stieglitz's and Steichen's younger contemporary, PAUL STRAND (1890-1976), pioneered a shift from the soft-focus aesthetic and painterly prints of the Photo-Secession to the straight approach and graphic power of an emerging modernism. Strand was introduced to Stieglitz by his teacher, Lewis Hine, the social reformer and photographer, and quickly became part of the coterie of artists that gathered at "291," where he was exposed to the latest trends in European art through groundbreaking exhibitions of works by Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, and Brancusi.

Strand incorporated the new language of geometric abstraction into his interest in photographing street life and machine culture. His photographs from 1915-1917 treated three principal themes: movement in the city, abstractions, and street portraits. The final double issue of Stieglitz's Camera Work (1917) was devoted to this young photographer's work, marking a pivotal moment in the course of photography.

In From the El (1915), Strand juxtaposed the ironwork and shadows of the elevated train with the tiny form of a lone pedestrian. In 1916, he experimented with radical camera angles and photographing at close range. Strand's Abstraction, Twin Lakes, Connecticut is among the first photographic abstractions to be made intentionally. When Stieglitz published a variant of this image in Camera Work, he praised Strand's results as "the direct expression of today."

In the same year, Strand made a series of candid street portraits with a hand-held camera fitted with a special lens that allowed him to point the camera in one direction while taking the photograph at a 90-degree angle. Blind, his seminal image of a street beggar, was published in Camera Work and immediately became an icon of the new American photography, which integrated the objectivity of social documentation with the boldly simplified forms of Modernism. As is true for most of the large platinum prints by Strand in the exhibition, the Metropolitan's Blind, a gift of Stieglitz, is the only exhibition print of this image from the period.

Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand is organized by Malcolm Daniel, Curator in Charge of the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Photographs.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication, Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand: Masterworks from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The 160-page volume, by Malcolm Daniel, will feature 125 illustrations, including reproductions of many of the crown jewels from the Museum's collection of photographs. It is published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press ($35).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028

www.metmuseum.org

Related Posts in this blog

The Metropolitan Museum's Department of Photographs [Wanafoto, October 2010]

"Our Future Is In The Air": Photographs from the 1910s, also on view at the Met from November 9, 2010 through April 10, 2011 [Wanafoto, October 2010]

Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction at the Whitney Museum of American Art – This exhibition featured famous photographs of Georgia O’Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz.[Wanafoto, December 2009]

This post has been updated in October 2010.

New Topographics: Photography Exhibition at SFMOMA - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape
SFMOMA - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
July 17 - October 3, 2010

Comprised of close to 150 photographs, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape is a restaging of a historically significant exhibition held in 1975 at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York.

This reprisal brings together the work of all ten photographers included in the original New Topographics: Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel. Widely considered one of the seminal exhibitions in the history of photography, New Topographics signaled the emergence of a radically new approach to landscape and demonstrated the influence of Conceptualism and Minimalism on photography in the 1970s.

New Topographics is significant to the history of photography primarily because it marked a dramatic shift in attitude towards landscape as a photographic subject. Unlike their predecessors, such as Ansel Adams or Minor White, the photographers featured in New Topographics did not use their work to express transcendent personal experiences of untrammeled nature. Rather, they used a more seemingly neutral approach to depict the ordinary landscapes that surround us, including aspects of the built environment that are often overlooked and considered eyesores: cheap motels, gas stations, tract homes, trailer parks, and parking lots. Included in the exhibition are: Buena Vista, Colorado (1973) by Henry Wessel; South Corner, Riccar America Company, 3184 Pullman, Costa Mesa (1974) from the series New Industrial Parks by Lewis Baltz; and Irrigation Canal, Albuquerque, New Mexico (1974) and Untitled View, (Boulder City) (1974) by Joe Deal, which all evince this radical reconceptualization of landscape.

Although they might lack conventional aesthetic hooks of expression, narrative, and beauty, these photographs are powerful aesthetic statements that reflect the complex and ambiguous relationship between humans and the environment—a relationship of particular importance in the West of the USA. As open to the work of conceptual artists such as Ed Ruscha as they were to the history of their chosen medium, the photographers in New Topographics represent a crucial bridge between the once-insular photography world and the larger field of contemporary art. This restaging offers an opportunity to consider the photographs both in the context of the newly central role photography was playing in 1970s contemporary art as well as in relation to the period's prevailing cultural concerns, such as land use, national identity, environmentalism, and nostalgia.

The exhibition was coorganized by Dr. Britt Salvesen, department head and curator of photography, prints and drawings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Dr. Alison Nordström, curator of photographs at George Eastman House International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York. The San Francisco presentation is organized by Erin O'Toole, assistant curator of photography at SFMOMA.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, New Topographics, published by Steidl, George Eastman House, and CCP. In the lead essay, Salvesen traces the prevailing cultural and aesthetic ideas that gave rise to the show, as well as the interconnections between the participants. Also featured is an essay by Nordström outlining the significance of New Topographics in Eastman House's history and its influence on photographic history as a whole.

Following the presentation at SFMOMA, the exhibition will travel to several international locales, including: Landesgalerie in Linz, Austria (November 10, 2010, through January 9, 2011); Die Photographische Sammlung Stiftung Kultur in Cologne, Germany (January 20 through March 28, 2011); The Netherlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands (June 25 through September 11, 2011); and Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao, Spain (October 17, 2011 through January 8, 2012).

The new presentation and international tour of New Topographics is made possible by a grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape
July 17 - October 3, 2010

SFMOMA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Related Posts

Heiner Meyer Paintings Exhibition at Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco

Greg Miller: Recent Paintings Exhibition at Caldwell Snyder Gallery, Saint Helena, California

Congress of Photography in Vienna - 30th jubilee celebrations of the ESHPh

Jubilee – 30 Years ESHPh

6 – 8 November 2008

Austrian Academy of Sciences

Sonnenfelsgasse 19, A-1010 Vienna

The European Society for the History of Photography (ESHPh) is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary with a congress and festschrift and will make Vienna the capital of international photographic research for three days.

The ESHPh was founded in 1978 and regards itself as an independent, scientific forum devoted to the investigation of the historical developments of photography, from its beginnings up to the present day, in a European context. Today, the ESHPh is engaged in a close international exchange of information with renowned photographers, historians, art historians, media theoreticians, visual scientists, philosophers, sociologists and private collectors and is also able to count numerous important institutions in Europe andabroad among its members.

The ESHPh is taking its 30th jubilee celebrations as an opportunity to deal with fundamental aspects of contemporary photographic research and stimulate new, forward looking,impulses in the form of a comprehensive festschrift and a three-day congress. Twenty-five prominent scientists will be participating in the high-calibre Congress ofPhotography in Vienna. Jubilee – 30 Years ESHPh – the theoretical highlight of the European Month of Photography Vienna 2008.

The numerous lectures, roundtable talks, discussions and a supplementary programme will cover a wide range of subjects ranging from the historic photography of the 19th century to aspects of modern-day photography. The congress “30 Years ESHPh” is devoted to a critical investigation of the photographic understanding of the picture from a modern, trans-disciplinary, perspective. Within the context of the flood of pictures in our globalized society, the concepts and effects of photographic images will be analysed and possible interpretive models discussed. With its timely examination, the ESHPh Jubilee Congress will not only interest an expert audience but anyone concerned with photography.

The Congress Publication - The jubilee event is accompanied by a festschrift edited by Anna Auer and Uwe Schögl and published by the Fotohof edition, Salzburg. The publication will be issued in English and is devoted to three major subject areas: Photographic History and the Variable Image. Use and Manipulation of the Picture as an Aspect of our Visual Culture // Models, Concepts and Strategies for Private and Public Photographic Collections // Photography and its Interaction with the Fine Arts and the Sciences.

Congress of Photography in Vienna

Jubilee – 30 Years ESHPh

Anna Auer, Uwe Schögl (eds.)

Fotohof edition, Salzburg, 2008

528 pages, soft cover, € 33

The lavishly illustrated publication presents 44 written contributions, essays and interviews by, and with, internationally famous experts, important private collectors and representatives of such distinguished institutions as the MOMA, New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Authors of the Festschrift : Anna Auer (A), Tamara Berghmans (B), Vladimir Birgus (CZ), Ben Baruch Blich (Israel), Katalin Bognar (H), Xavier Canonne (B), Alistair Crawford (UK), Luc Deneulin (B), Willem Elias (B), Ulla Fischer-Westhauser (A), Thomas Freiler (A), Thomas Friedrich (G), Luke Gartlan (UK), Michael Gray (UK), Rosina Herrera (USA), Gabriele Hofer (A), Katherine Hoffman (USA), Anton Holzer (A), Adrian-Silvan Ionescu (RO), André Jammes (F), Steven Franklin Joseph (B), Dainius Junevicius (Lithuania), Rolf H. Krauss (G), Carmen Pérez González (NL), Mark B. Pohlad (USA), Michael Ponstingl (A), Michael Pritchard(UK), Laurent Roosens (B), Tim Otto Roth (G), Rolf Sachsse (G), Christoph Schaden (G), Uwe Schögl (A), Monika Schwärzler (A), Giuliana Scimé (I), Fritz Simak (A), Andreas Spiegl (A), Johan Swinnen (B), Emöke Tomsics (H), Simon-Weber Unger (A), Liz Wells(UK), Matthew Witkovsky (USA), R. Derek Wood (UK), Italo Zannier (I), Margit Zuckriegl (A)

The History of the ESHPh - The European Society for the History of Photography was established at the firstfoundation meeting held on 19 November 1978 in Leverkusen. The decision to found the Society had been made one year previously in Antwerp. Vienna has been the seat of the presidium since 2001, following Antwerp, where the Society was headquartered from 1978 to 1989, and Croydon, UK (1989–2001). The goal of the ESHPh is to promote an international network of research into the developments of photography taking its many societal, artistic and technical dimensions into account.

European Society for the History of Photography
www.eshph.org

Book: Camera Lenses: From Box Camera to Digital, By Gregory Hallock Smith

Book about photography equipment: Camera Lenses history and technique  

Camera Lenses: From Box Camera to Digital, By Gregory Hallock Smith

SPIE Press, Bellingham WA, The International Society of Optical Engineering, 320 pages

Publishing date: April 2006 - Photo Courtesy SPIE Press

This book is an exploration and appreciation of cameras and their optics, covering all major lens types from the earliest to the most recent--including those roving the surface of Mars. A recurrent theme of this book is that lens types invented in the 19th century are just as useful in the 21st century. Another continuing theme is the impact of the digital revolution and the use of imaging in radically new circumstances. This book should be of interest to any who are curious and want to know more about the glass on the front of their cameras. (Publisher text)

Contents:
Part A : Concepts and Techniques
Part B:  Lenses for Large-Format 4x5 Film Cameras
Part C:  Lenses for Small-Format 35 mm Film and Digital Cameras
Part D:  Special-Purpose Optics
Part E:  Timeline of Advances and Milestones

SPIE - Bellingham, Washington, USA
Publisher's website: www.spie.org where you can download free sample pdf pages

100th birthday of Minox Founder

On Sunday 4 September 2005 MINOX commemorated the 100th birthday of the company founder Walter Zapp

For over 60 years Minox cameras have been manufactured by this traditional company based in Mittelhessen, Germany

In memory and in celebration of the MINOX inventor Walter Zapp: On Sunday 4 September 2005 the company management, employees and former friends, as well as the son of Mr Zapp and the managing committee of the 1st German MINOX Club met in Wetzlar, Germany to commemorate Walter Zapp´s 100th birthday and the 60th anniversary of MINOX GmbH.

Sadly, two years ago the company´s founder died at his home in Switzerland, but Lotar Zapp, his son, gave a lively account of his memories and said what a special person his father was. Hubert Heckmann, president of the 1st German MINOX Club, Zapp-biographer and book-author reviewed the different stages of Zapp´s life which was marked not only by hard and difficult times but also by chances and new perspectives. Its for sure that Zapp knew how to take advantage of the new opportunities that came his way with his unique pioneering spirit.

Finally, MINOX director Thorsten Kortemeier, presented a silver commemorative coin showing a portrait of Walter Zapp. This coin has been released together with a hand-built chromium plated LX 8x11 camera as a special Minox birthday edition.

Photo (c) Minox - All rights reserved - www.minox-web.de

Alison Devine Nordström

A historian of photography, Alison Devine Nordström, Ph.D., is Curator of Photographs at Georges Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film.

Prior to joining the Eastman House in January 2004, she served as Executive Director of the New Hampshire Humanities Council and the Senior Curator/Founding Director of the Southeast Museum of Photography. At SMP, she was noted for the contemporary biennial Fresh Work and the NEA-funded project Voyages (per)Formed, which commissioned new work from contemporary artists to interpret historical photographic collections.

Widely published, Nordström has received the Ansel Adams and NEH Fellowships at the University of Arizona and City University of New York, respectively, and the William Darrah Award for excellence in writing on historical photography. For the exhibition Picturing Paradise: Colonial Photography of Samoa, which she curated and which traveled to Europe and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nordström earned the UNESCO Decade Label for Cultural Significance. She has curated exhibitions throughout North America and in Germany, England, and Japan.

Related Post : 2005 PRC Members' Exhibition