Sunday, June 11, 2017

Old Surviving Photographs Now Conscientously Preserved

Anonymous photographer
Family of Jane Lathrop Stanford
1840s
daguerreotype
Cantor Center, Stanford University

Ancient self-glory is accustomed
To bear to light in the evil sort of men
A new self-glory and madness,
Which sometime or sometime finds
The appointed hour for its birth,
And born therewith is the Spirit, intractable, unholy, irresistible,
The reckless lust that brings black Doom upon the house,
A child that is like the parents.

Anonymous photographer
Group of Children
ca. 1850
daguerreotype
Nordiska Museet, Stockholm

Félix Nadar
Pierrot the Photographer
1854
photographic print
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Anonymous photographer
Baby with Hiding Mother
ca. 1855
daguerreotype
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

C. Bernieri Caldesi & Co.
Nike fragment from the Parthenon
ca. 1857-59
photographic print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous photographer
Portrait of George Armstrong Custer
ca. 1860
ambrotype
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

I only, apart from the others,
Hold that the unrighteous action
Breeds true to its kind,
Leaves its own children behind it.
But the lot of a righteous house
Is a fair offspring always.

George Washington Wilson
Queen Victoria on Fyvie
with John Brown at Balmoral

1863
carte de visite photograph
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

Peter Henry Emerson
The Lone Lagoon
1895
photogravure
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Edvard Munch
Rosa Meissner at the Hotel Rohn in Warnemünde
1907
photographic print
Munch Museum, Oslo

Edward Steichen
On the Houseboat The Log Cabin
1908
color halftone
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Edward Steichen
Isadora Duncan at the Parthenon
1921
gelatin silver print
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

So I would say there came
To the city of Troy
A notion of windless calm
Delicate adornment of riches,
Soft shooting of the eye and flower
Of desire that stings the fancy.
But swerving aside she achieved
A bitter end to her marriage,
Ill guest and ill companion,
Hurled upon Priam's sons, convoyed
By Zeus, patron of guest and host,
Dark angel dowered with tears.

Arthur F. Kales
Pierrot Forlorn - Ted Shawn
1921
gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Anonymous photographer
Children at outdoor puppet show in Berlin
ca. 1950
photographic print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

David Moore
Battersea Fun Fair, London
1951
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Long current among men an old saying
Runs that a man's prosperity
When grown to greatness
Comes to the birth, does not die childless 
His good luck breeds for his house
Distress that shall not be appeased.

 quoted verses are from the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, translated in 1936 by Louis MacNeice