Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Backward-Looking European Photography 1840-1860

Sir James Dunlop
Temple of Neptune, Paestum
ca. 1847-48
salt print
National Galleries of Scotland

Sir James Dunlop
Trevi Fountain, Rome
ca. 1847-48
salt print
National Galleries of Scotland

Parable at a Roman Fountain

How can the statues not touch each other,
Hands, breasts, thighs, slickened by water,
Flesh perfected from the flesh that dies as grass?
Change here is only eternal, like white
Noise, stone trance guarded in a cage of glass
Parabolas, barring the Roman night;
It seems light in a watery medium
Has baptised them free of motion and time.

We stand at the rim in rapt attitudes,
Admiring the secular prisoners
From the vantage point assigned to lovers;
And think we detect old glimmers of grief
And envy in a marble eye – the cold nudes
Tempted, for love, to dress themselves in life.

– Alfred Corn (1975)

Robert Macpherson and Sir James Dunlop
Arch of Titus, Rome
before 1849
salt print
National Galleries of Scotland

Robert Macpherson and Sir James Dunlop
Interior of the Colosseum, Rome
before 1849
salt print
National Galleries of Scotland

Robert Macpherson and Sir James Dunlop
Temple of Venus, Rome
before 1849
salt print
National Galleries of Scotland

Robert Macpherson
Roman Forum
ca. 1850-60
albumen print
National Galleries of Scotland

Robert Macpherson
Temple of Mars Ultor, Rome
ca. 1850-60
albumen print
National Galleries of Scotland

Anonymous photographer
Sculpture of Achilles by Innocenzo Fraccaroli
on display at the Great Exhibition, London

1851
salted paper print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous photographer
Sculpture of Dancing Faun by Eugène Louis Lequesne
on display at the Great Exhibition, London
1851
salted paper print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

A Giraudon Éditeur (Paris)
Carved capital from Laon Cathedral
ca. 1860-80
albumen print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson
Abbey Wall, St Andrews
ca. 1843-47
calotype print
National Galleries of Scotland

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson
Sculpted bust of Charlotte, Duchess of Buccleuch
ca. 1843-47
calotype print
National Galleries of Scotland

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson
Mr Mitchel
ca. 1843-47
calotype print
National Galleries of Scotland

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson
Mrs Kinloch
ca, 1843-47
calotype print
National Galleries of Scotland

"The real victim of photography, however, was not landscape painting but the portrait miniature.  Things developed so rapidly that by 1840 most of the innumerable miniaturists had already become professional photographers, at first only as a sideline, but before long exclusively.  Here the experience of their original livelihood stood them in good stead, and it is not their artistic background so much as their training as craftsmen that we have to thank for the high level of their photographic achievement.  This transitional generation disappeared very gradually; indeed, there seems to have been a kind of biblical blessing on those first photographers: the Nadars, Stelzners, Piersons, Bayards all lived well into their eighties and nineties.  In the end, though, businessmen invaded professional photography from every side; and when, later on, the retouched negative, which was the bad painter's revenge on photography, became ubiquitous, a sharp decline in taste set in."

– Walter Benjamin, from Little History of Photography (1931), translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (1999)