This touches on a couple to themes. But please visit the Musee d’Orsay before Aug 29 to look at the P. H. Emerson prints on display. One room filled with platinums lifted from Life and Landscapes of the Norfolk Broads. The other room filled with photogravures from the book Marsh Leaves. Breathtakingly beautiful prints from books. True pure platinums and heliogravures. You can debate which is more beautiful, I won’t. These works from the 1890’s simply set the standard for the physical presence of beauty, photographic and artistic intent. I am not sure that standard has been surpassed since. The room lights are low and the prints glow. They are meant to be looked at closely, nose to frame. They are precisely sharp platinums which were created in enough volume to be tipped in books. No one can do this quality or quantity today. The razor sharpness of a "Rushy Shore" remains a significant achievement even today. The rendition of still water and the relections on it are masterful throughout. The photogravures bring to mind the sensibility of Japanese drawing. A hazy fine line representing the essence of a landscape. All of this in the simplest of a black and white. After Emerson I am not sure photography did not lose its way. Certainly the art of photographic book printing did. Seeing these books shows how the possibilities spelled out in Walter Benjamin’s “Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction” were missed. The ironic title of the show “Photography not Art” is a combative, heroic quote from Emerson. Emerson was a theorist as well as a master technical photographer, and his ideas remain interesting today but what truly lives are his prints. Don’t be fooled by the web images posted by the Musee, the prints on the walls are much better. A web search will only reveal pictures of the prints of dubious accuracy. These images pale beside the physical glow of the precious prints. The beauty lies in the thing itself not in the image of the thing. The light of a computer screen completey corrupts the light reflected from his prints. The presentation is everything to Emerson. It is unbelievable he made such wonderful platinums but then he duplicated the magnificent achievement using photogravures. We lost something when he quit 120 years ago and we continue to loose with the degradation of the materials available to us. I don’t believe anyone making photographs today can rival these for the realization of self expression and showing us what a landscape filtered through the soul of a true artist can be. And to imagine he made them into books and people bought them. I suppose somewhere they are even for sale. Fine concentrates of jewel tone platinum and the fruit of carefully etched printing plates.
Jim
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