Do you know what is the first landscape photograph conceived as art?

[Darin Boville]

It's a question I've never asked myself--which I find quite strange now that I think about it--and which I've never heard or read mention of until I was at the wonderful "Impressionist France" exhibit at the St Louis Museum of Art.

The exhibit seemed like it was to be another dreary show of Impressionist paintings but, to my astonishment and delight, it turned out to be a show of early photography. I think the photographs were there to offer context for the paintings but I barely glanced at the paintings.

The question? What is the first landscape photograph intended as fine art?

It's a good question and I'm stumped for an answer. Seems like this is something we should all know.

The exhibit (which I think came from the Nelsen-Atkins in St. Louis) offers this answer in the caption of Le Gary's "Brig on the water" (as transcribed in my journal--no photographs allowed):



This strong seascape is often considered (along with Camille Silvy's "River Scene...) to be the first landscape photograph conceived as fine art.

Here is a link to La Gray's "Brig":http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=68537

And a link to Silvy's River Scene": http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=69960

Early French photography is not an area I claim any special knowledge over. Is it a fair claim? Challenges?

--Darin

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[koh303]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_%26_Adamson
From the wiki page:
Hill & Adamson produced "the first substantial body of self-consciously artistic work using the newly invented medium of photography."

[Darin Boville]

O.K., so I've opened up the show's catalogue now and I'm looking through it--and find this slightly different version of the claim on page 178, last paragraph:

Silvy's River Scene is thus considered, along with Gustave La Gray's Brig upon the Water and The Breaking Wave--Mediterranean Sea, among the earliest examples of ambitious landscape photographs conceived and critically recieved as high art, and not as simple recordings of natural phenomenon.

(Written by April M. Watson (http://www.nelson-atkins.org/welcome/PressRoom_CuratorBio.cfm)) The proceeding text highlighted the lavish praise the photograph had received.

So now the claim is that the work was among the first conceived as fine art and critically received as such, as well.

--Darin

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

Thanks, Darin for starting this stimulating discussion which makes me realize that the only chronology I know regarding XIX-st century photography is purely technical and 100% process-oriented: the first bitumen image, the first daguerréotype, the fist calotype, the first wet plate image, etc ... which does not take into account the artistic contents.

I know that le Gray was a member of the Mission héliographique (1851)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missions_H%C3%A9liographiques
but this was a government assignment with precise scientific and documentary goals, an inventory of historical buildings in France from Roman times to present.


I have seen in France an exhibition corresponding to this book that I duly recommend
Courbet And The Modern Landscape (Getty Trust Publications: J. Paul Getty Museum)
ISBN-13: 9780892368365
http://www.getty.edu/publications/virtuallibrary/0892368365.html?imprint=jpgt&pg=5&res=20
From the table of contents:
Reproducing Reality: Landscape Photography of the 1850s and 1860s in Relation to the Paintings of Gustave Courbet
Dominique de Font-Réaulx, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan

From memory I would have quoted Le Grays "marine" images as being anmong the first artistic landscape photographs.
And being French, I would have, of course, ignored Hill & Adamson! Thanks to koh303 and shame on me! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_%26_Adamson)

I do not know if commercial photography is the opposite of artistic photography, but for sure Daguerre was a commercial photographer, and regarding the first commercial photograph, it is probably a daguerréotype featuring a portrait for a client!

And back to technique: this series by Le Gray shows that the Father Founders of photography did not need any digital image post-processing in order to get skies with visible details: many images were composite and made by combining various negatives on a single final print.
"HDR" in the sense of the XIX-st century with photo-sensitive materials blind to many colors except blue :)

[paulr]

As an aside, a curator at a historical museum once advised me to snap up any landscape daguerrotypes I stumbled onto, because they're so rare (and no, he's not talking about contemporary ones).

Sure enough, every time I've scoured old photo bins at antique stores and flea markets, I've found nuthin'.

[Mark Sawyer]

I'd go with William Henry Fox Talbot as the first to consciously call his work (which often included landscapes) "art". He studied art and art history, and his photographic discoveries grew from his frustrations in using camera obscura's and camera lucida's in drawing. He called photography "the art of photogenic drawing", and said that his smaller images, "without great stretch of the imagination might be supposed to be the work of some Lilliputian artist."

[Darin Boville]

A correction. "which I think came from the Nelsen-Atkins in St. Louis" The Nelsen-Atkins is in Kansas City and jointly produced the exhibit with St Louis.

The catalogue looks to be a good one. If you can't see the show (which would be too bad, the prints are very nice) then check out: http://www.amazon.com/Impressionist-France-Visions-Nation-Museum/ (http://www.amazon.com/Impressionist-France-Visions-Nation-Museum/dp/0300196954/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406921313&sr=8-1&keywords=impressionist+france)

We live in a Eden of photography books.

--Darin

[Greg Miller]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_%26_Adamson
From the wiki page:
Hill & Adamson produced "the first substantial body of self-consciously artistic work using the newly invented medium of photography."

Such an odd concept. A person who believes photography is not art, quoting a source about the first landscape photographers producing photographs conceived as art...

[koh303]

Such an odd concept. A person who believes photography is not art, quoting a source about the first landscape photographers producing photographs conceived as art...
Nothing there about landscape.
Self consciously artistic anything does not necessarily make it art per se.

[Greg Miller]

Nothing there about landscape.
Self consciously artistic anything does not necessarily make it art per se.

Not sure I understand. In another thread you declared photography is not art. Landscape Photography is a subset of photography, and therefore would not be art if one uses logic. Wouldn't a more logical response in this thread be"never" (since photography is not art and cites a link that supports that position?