History & Criticism - General & Miscellaneous Photography, Forestry & Paper Industries, Photography Collections & Catalogs
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Overview
An "evanescent shadow, a delicate, just perceptible image, the trace of a small plant on a field of periwinkle blue." With this description of one of the very earliest photographic experiments, Maria Morris Hambourg begins the riveting story of photography's first century, a story that concludes on the eve of World War II with the dramatic photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and Walker Evans, images imprinted indelibly into the consciousness of the modern era. The 253 works in the exhibition, many of them rare or unique and all of exceptional print quality, have been culled from the more than five thousand that comprise the legendary but seldom exhibited Gilman Paper Company Collection, the most important private collection of photographs in the world. Assembled over the past two decades, the collection is composed of images both ravishing and historically significant, setting the standard of connoisseurship in the field and illuminating the aesthetics of the medium. The first three chapters cover the period from the birth of photography in 1839 through its early maturation in the 1860s, in the locales where it first and most magnificently flourished, in Victorian England and France of the Second Empire and on tours of the Mediterranean basin and beyond, in India and Asia. Chapter Four examines photography in America during the nineteenth century and vividly charts the Civil War and the exploration of the majestic terrains of the American West. Investigations of the self and society are explored in Chapter Five, in the psychologically penetrating portraits and dreamlike landscape studies of the fin de siecle in Europe and America. And in Chapter Six, the modern era rushes into view with the provocative new vision of the twentieth century. The artists represented include such renowned British and French masters as Roger Fenton, Lewis Carroll, Julia Margaret Cameron, Nadar, Edouard Baldus, and Gustave Le Gray. The American chapter highlights the woEditorials
Booknews
This extraordinary volume, which accompanies an exhibition originating at the Metropolitan Museum, documents the fascinating first century of photography, from its experimental beginnings in England and France in the 1830s up to the eve of WWII. Each of the 253 works in the exhibition, selected from the Gilman Paper Company Collection (the finest private collection of photographs in the US), are reproduced in the catalogue. The volume focuses first on the development and early maturation of photography in England and France and on tours of the Mediterranean basin and beyond, in India and Asia. An entire chapter is devoted to the photography of 19th-century America, the devastation of the Civil War, and the majesty of the American West. The final chapters look to the sensuous portraits and landscapes of fin-de- siecle Europe and America and the new vision of the 20th century. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Book Details
Published
March 1, 1993
Publisher
New York : Metropolitan Museum of Art : 1993.
Pages
384
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780870996627