It was also a standard way of framing square or round Chinese and Japanese paintings and prints. And fans.Originally Posted by Mark Sawyer
It was also a standard way of framing square or round Chinese and Japanese paintings and prints. And fans.
On Shorpy.
They are great. And I admire their persistence and curiosity.
But once you've found an image you like, it can be worth searching for it in the Library of Congress catalogue. LOC has the original large scans without the Shorpy watermark. They also often have photographer's alternative takes on the same scene. Even more useful for the student of pictorialism, for some photographers they have the original negative and a copy of the final print. The differences can be large.
need to look up the name of this photographer, but I find the images rather amazing.. (platinum prints as far as I remember)
Baron Adolf de Meyer. I've seen the Hydrangea print and it's beautiful.
Betty Boyd Hartsook Studios
Larger
Garrett
flickr galleries
Charles Keough
Simply one of the most elegant portraits I've ever encountered. I own this negative now, but the original photographer was a Tonopah Nevada Studio portraitist and general photographer named Mac MacGowan.
I recently bought a collection of his negatives from his granddaughter.
Charles Keough was at one time the controller of the largest ranch in US history. 4,000,000 acres in central Nevada. Does he not look the part? This portrait was done probably 10 - ish years after that outfit unraveled. The real estate was vast, but part of it was where I work every day out on the Tonopah test range.
The image is done on half frame 5X7 which was common after WWII. I would guess this image at 1949. I would guess the lens as perhaps a Heliar or Tessar. Maybe even a Cooke.
When I got to look at what remained of the estate, there were just a few dusty cameras that were probably never even part of the enterprise. No studio camera and stand. No lenses. I'd guess this lens at about 16" focus. If I were going to try to duplicate this, I'd probably grab my Ross 16" f4.5 Tessar.
Weird. There is a lot of great soft-focus work from the past. Yet, I have never seen a good soft-focus photograph made after about 1950 - not even with the same lenses. Amateurs and soft-focus do not make a good combination.
You meant, except for all the lovely work on my website, right?? Just wanted to clear that up.
I always liked this one.
Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and Margrethe Mather, 1922.
I recently bought this book on Ebay:
Truthbeauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945
by Alison Nordstrom, Vancouver Art Gallery Staff (Contribution by), Alison Nordstrom (Contribution by)
It's a beautiful book with 121 fine images from all over the world and stories about/from photographers and other people from that time period.
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9781553659815
Publisher: D & M Publishers
Publication date: 11/22/2011
Edition description: Second Edition
Pages: 160
Product dimensions: 9.30 (w) x 11.10 (h) x 0.80 (d)
Overview: "The hauntingly beautiful works of the Pictorialist movement are among the most spectacular photographs ever created. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Pictorialist artists sought to elevate photography— until then seen largely as a scientific tool for documentation—to an art form equal to painting. Adopting a soft-focus approach and utilizing dramatic effects of light, richly coloured tones and bold technical experimentation, they opened up a new world of vision expression in photography. More than a hundred years later, their aesthetic remains highly influential.
TruthBeauty contains 121 stunning works by the form’s renowned artists, including Julia Margaret Cameron, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Robert Demachy, Peter Henry Emerson, Gertrude Käsebier, Heinrich Kühn, Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz. Together, the collected works trace the evolution of Pictorialism over the three decades in which it predominated.
This is the only collection of Pictorialist photographs by artists from North America, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, Japan and Australia in a single publication. Scholarly essays, and a selection of historic texts by Pictoralist artists, complete this rich overview of the first truly international art movement."
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