Hidden amongst all the high-tech razzamatazz of the Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria was a small collection of black and white photos from the early 1900’s which are part of the NGV’s permanent collection. For some reason, they really grabbed my attention. Perhaps they represented such a sobering contrast to the “gee whizz” digital extravaganza that constituted so much of the Triennial.
Don’t get me wrong, the Triennial is certainly worth seeing for entertainment value quite apart from anything else. But I enjoyed this little pocket of ‘sobriety’. After viewing these photos by Stieglitz, Kauffmann and Haviland, I decided to hop online and see what else they had to offer.
John Kauffmann The Street Corner c1914 (NGV)
John Kauffmann was born in Truro, South Australia in 1864. Initially he was articled to an architect before leaving for England in 1887 and abandoned architecture for chemistry. In Switzerland he became fascinated by new photographic reproduction processes such as photogravure, worked in a Viennese portrait studio and studied zinc etching and the collotype process (a dichromate-based photographic process to print images in a wide variety of tones without the need for halftone screens) in Bavaria.
John Kauffmann The National Bank c1920 (NGV)
He returned to Adelaide in 1897 and appeared to have brought back the ideals of a European pictorial style of art photography with him. His soft focus, romantic style where inessential details were diffused won much praise and he won awards both locally and internationally. His work is said to have inspired Harold Cazneau. He moved to Melbourne in 1909 and in later years his romantic style began to fall out of favour as photographers preferred a more direct representation of the Australian sunlight.
Paul Haviland was born in Paris in 1880 of French/American origin.He became part of a movement in the early twentieth century in the USA called pictorial photography, where artists sought to move away from the direct point and shoot method of photography and use skills and processes that presented photography as an art form.
Paul Haviland New York By Night 1914 (NGV)
Alfred Steiglitz was the leader of this movement in New York which became known as the Photo-Secession. Artists experimented with processes such as platinum prints, which produce rich and varied grey tones, and gum bichromate prints, where manipulation of the print during processing achieves effects such as brush strokes, and pigmented colour.
Another process developed was the photogravure, a photomechanical process, produced in ink, and therefore the final image can be any colour. They look remarkably like a photograph, but under magnification a fine irregular image grain similar to an aquatint grain can be seen.
Paul Haviland New York At Night 1914
From 1903 to 1917 Stieglitz was the editor of Camera Work, a journal promoting the cause of photography and avant-garde art. In 1908, he opened his Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York which became known simply as 291. Initially this gallery was a venue showing the work of photographers committed to the ideal of photography as a medium for artistic expression.
Alfred Stieglitz The City Of Ambition 1910 (National Gallery of Art USA)
These photographers were pioneering the concept of photography as an art form. With photography like this, objectivity diminishes and the imaginings take over – so perhaps this is a case of less equals more. Some have described this as impressionist photography. The NGV held an exhibition called 291 in 2008 and I wished I had seen it.
New Zealand born Australian pictorialist photographer Harold Cazneau is famous for his award winning picturing of a tree in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia in 1937, commonly known as Cazneau’s Tree. But in the context of this blog, I thought the image below was more appropriate.
Harold Cazneau Cabbies Bridge St Sydney 1904 (Art Gallery of NSW)
The composition is superb and there is an almost timeless quality to this image. Men idling away the time, waiting for the next fare just as they do today. Only the mode of transport is different.
References;
National Gallery Of Victoria