Saturday, December 8, 2018

Clarence H. White and F. Holland Day (platinum prints)

Clarence H. White
Baby Monsarrat
1905
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Clarence H. White
Portrait of Mrs. H.
1898
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Clarence H. White
The Bubble
1898, printed 1905
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"A self-taught photographer from rural Ohio, Clarence H. White (1871-1925) first became famous for his delicate, idealized images of rural family life.  A charter member of the Photo-Secession in 1902, he was a frequent contributor to Camera Work and, after 1906, when he moved to New York, a member of Alfred Stieglitz's inner circle.  Appointed the first photography instructor at Columbia University Teachers College in 1907, White also taught photography at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Science (now the Brooklyn Museum) for thirteen years.  Purchasing a small cabin in Maine in 1910, he founded the Seguinland School of Photography, a summer school where well-known photographers such as F. Holland Day and Gertrude Käsebier supplemented White's gentle instruction with informal critiques.  White continued to promote Pictorialism even after falling out with Stieglitz in 1910 over the latter's abandonment of the style in favor of a more modern direction." 

– Maria Morris Hambourg and Audrey Sands, writing for the Museum of Modern Art, New York

Clarence H. White
Coming through the door
1898
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Clarence H. White
Morning - The Coverlet
1906
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Clarence H. White
Torso
1907
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Clarence H. White
Portrait of F, Holland Day with Male Nude
1902
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

F. Holland Day
The Vigil
1899
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Fred Holland Day (1864-1933) was a wealthy eccentric and philanthropist from Massachusetts.  As partner in the publishing firm Copeland and Day, which he founded in 1884, Day indulged his passion for English literature, publishing exquisite small-edition, hand-bound volumes by the likes of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Day's friend Oscar Wilde.  Although Copeland and Day published ninety-eight books and periodicals, the firm was never financially successful.  Day began to photograph in 1886; he wrote extensively about photography's position as a fine art and organized international photography exhibitions to further his claim.  . . .  Day's photographs were controversial for the unconventional depiction of religious subject matter and for the male nudity he employed.  His style was Pictorialist, and he favored platinum prints, which are distinguished by their fine detail and ability to render a full range of soft tones.  He lost interest in photography when a shortage of platinum during World War I made printing prohibitively expensive and eventually impossible.  He died twenty years later, in relative obscurity."

– biographical notes from the Getty Museum

F. Holland Day
The Entombment
1898
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

F. Holland Day
Boy piping
ca. 1896
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

F. Holland Day
Draped nude lounging in the grass
ca. 1897
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

F. Holland Day
The Honey Gatherer
ca. 1898
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

F. Holland Day
An Ethiopian Chief
ca. 1897
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

F. Holland Day
Ebony and Ivory
ca. 1897
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

F. Holland Day
Zaida Ben Yusuf
1898
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York