The Photography Show presented by AIPAD

Illustrated: Hosoe, Eikoh. Man and Woman. Camer Art, 1961.

Eikoh Hosoe’s relationships with avant-garde artists Tatsumi Hijikata (the dancer and choreographer and founder of Butoh) and Yukio Mishima (author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, nationalist, and founder of the Tatenokai) are seminal to much of his work. All three were creating work in postwar Japan that rejected convention and inspired a greater freedom of expression.

Man and Woman, 1959-60, pictures Tatsumi Hijikata, his students, fellow dancers, and fashion model Masako Ishida. The images are provocative and express a visceral and psychological exploration of human touch and interaction through the movement of dance.

Hosoe initially met Hijikata in 1959 at his first Butoh performance, KinjikiI (Forbidden Colors), which was based on a novel by Yukio Mishima. Mishima was so enamored by Hosoe’s images of Hijikata, that Mishima asked Hosoe to photograph him for his 1961 book of critical essays, The Attack on Beauty and later they created Hosoe’s other famous series Barakei (Killed by Roses/Ordeal by Roses).

LINK to full set

Illustrated: Hosoe, Eikoh. Kamaitachi. Gendai Shicho Sha, 1969.

Eikoh Hosoe’s relationships with avant-garde artists Tatsumi Hijikata (the dancer and choreographer and founder of Butoh) and Yukio Mishima (author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, nationalist, and founder of the Tatenokai) are seminal to much of his work. All three were creating work in postwar Japan that rejected convention and inspired a greater freedom of expression.

In Hosoe’s 1965-68 series Kamaitachi, each image is a “happening” visualizing a supernatural weasel-like being from Japanese folklore rampaging through the countryside. The Kamaitachi is played by Tatsumi Hijikata and the other people are friends acting, collaborators in the happenings. Both Hosoe and Hijikata are from Northern Japan where the images were made.

Hosoe initially met Hijikata in 1959 at his first Butoh performance, Kinjiki (Forbidden Colors), which was based on a novel by Yukio Mishima. Mishima was so enamored by Hosoe’s images of Hijikata, that Mishima asked Hosoe to photograph him for his 1961 book of critical essays, The Attack on Beauty and later they created Hosoe’s other famous series Barakei (Killed by Roses/Ordeal by Roses).

LINK to full set

Nan Goldin and Siobhan Liddell

Illustrated: Nan Goldin The Other Side. Scalo Publishers, 1993, p. 14. Nan Goldin: I'll Be Your Mirror. Whitney Museum of American Art, 1996, p. 29.

Illustrated: Bouqueret, Christian. Raoul Ubac: Photographie. Editions Léo Scheer, 2000, cat. 79, p. 89 and p. 241. Paris Capitale Photographique 1920-1040, Coll. Christian Bouqueret. Jeau de Paume/Éditions de La Martinière, 2009, p. 161.

Provenance: Artist; Gunther Gerzso (artist), Mexico City; by descent to his family.

Exhibited: Ralph Eugene Meatyard: Dolls and Masks, Art Institute of Chicago: June 30–September 25, 2011. De Young Museum, San Francisco October 8–February 26, 2012, Philadelphia Museum of Art May 19–August 5, 2012.

Illustrated: Ralph Eugene Meatyard: Dolls and Masks. Radius Books, 2011, p. 24. Variant illustrated: Hall, James Baker with Guy Davenport. Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Aperture, p. 46 and Rhem, James. Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Nathan (Collection Photo Poche), 2000, pl. 33.

Illustrated: Hine, Lewis W. Men at Work, Photographic Studies of Modern Men and Machines. The Macmillan Company, 1932, n.p.

Exhibited: Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Feb 15–Apr 27, 1986; Cleveland Museum of Art, Jul 22–Aug 31, 1986; Museum Folkwang, Essen, West Germany, Jan 18–Mar 22, 1987; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jul 16–Sept 6, 1987; University Art Museum, University of California at Berkeley, Oct 7–Dec 13, 1987.

Illustrated: Rotzler, Willy. 'Robert Frank,' Du, vol. 22, no. 1, January 1962, p. 32; Frank, Robert. The Lines of My Hand. Lustrum Press, 1972, n.p. Frank, Robert. The Lines of My Hand. Yugensha, 1972, p. 56 [dated 1959].

Illustrated: Micrographie Décorative. Paris: Draeger Frères, 1931, variant of Plate VII [blue not brown]. Bouqueret, Christian. Laure Albin Guillot ou La volonté d'art. Marval, 1996, p. 68.

Illustrated: Adams, Robert. Prairie. Denver Art Museum, 1978 & Denver Art Museum/Fraenkel Gallery, 2011, frontispiece. Adams, Robert. What Can We Believe Where? Photographs of the American West. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2010, pl. 10.

Provenance: Major Alexander Mackenzie (1844–1921), U.S. Army Chief of Engineers.

Prussian born, Henry Peter Bosse (1844–1903), emigrated to the United State in 1870 and settled in Chicago. The United States Army Corps of Engineers hired Bosse as a draughtsman and cartographer to map the upper portion of the Mississippi River between Minneapolis and St. Louis. From 1882 to 1892, he photographed the river and its shores with a large format camera making glass plate negatives which he printed using an oval mask as cyanotypes.

Though it was economical and the same process used by architects to duplicate their line drawings, the captivating blue was one of the many aesthetic choices Bosse made in creating such a distinctive and important body of work of the American landscape.

The cyanotype process is based on the light sensitivity of iron salts, specifically the interaction between iron(III) salts and potassium ferricyanide to form the pigment Prussian blue (ferric ferrocyanide). Prussian blue is responsible for the cyanotype’s characteristic cyan/blue tone.

The cyanotype process was first officially recorded by Sir John Herschel on April 23, 1842.

Read more about the process at graphicsatlas.org.

Illustrated: Adams, Robert. The New West: Landscapes Along the Colorado Front Range. The Colorado Associated University Press, 1974. p. 27.

Illustrated: Baltz, Lewis. The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California. Castelli Graphics, 1974, pl. 44.
Provenance: artist to Robert von Sternberg, photographer.

Provenance: Sommer to Dieter Weiss, 1949.

Sommer and Weston

Many of us typically think of death as the end of life; something to be buried, hidden, and observed with solemn reverence. There are plenty of cultures however, that view death as a part of life, a transitional moment to be celebrated, visually represented, and marked by gracious, even grateful reflection. This is, perhaps, a helpful reminder when looking at these two photographs of dead animals by two very different photographers who were both giants in the field.

Sommer’s approach to photography and indeed all art-making was provocative and spiritual, interested in teasing out meaning from everything around us. Weston’s approach was almost clinical, elevating the everyday to monumental status through careful, technical visual description. While the subjects of these two photographs is in name at least, the same (animal remains) the difference between the photographers suggests separate motivations for making each picture; motivations that the pictures themselves bear out.

Weston, for example, has taken great care to isolate the skeletal remains of a bird on a field of tightly speckled sand, which forms a ready-made greyscale against which the sun-bleached bones and dry feathers are silhouetted. The dark shadows beneath the remains emphasize the sculptural qualities of the remains, declaring their status as something that is, not something that was. By contrast, Sommer’s image is as inquisitive as Weston’s is declarative. Instead of a clear division of surface and object, Sommer’s rabbit dissolves into its surroundings as if in the process of transitioning back to the land. True to form, Sommer seems interested here in the ongoing nature of things, forcing us to think about the thin lines between life, death, and earth.

See the Weston

Illustrated: Conger, Amy. Edward Weston: The Form of the Nude. Phaidon Press, New York 2005, fig.959. Mora, Gilles [Ed.]. Edward Weston: The Forms of Passion. Abrams Press, New York 1995, p.224.
Provenance: Weston traded to Frederic Sommer for drawing by Sommer; gift from Sommer to previous owner.


Sommer and Weston

Many of us typically think of death as the end of life; something to be buried, hidden, and observed with solemn reverence. There are plenty of cultures however, that view death as a part of life, a transitional moment to be celebrated, visually represented, and marked by gracious, even grateful reflection. This is, perhaps, a helpful reminder when looking at these two photographs of dead animals by two very different photographers who were both giants in the field.

Sommer’s approach to photography and indeed all art-making was provocative and spiritual, interested in teasing out meaning from everything around us. Weston’s approach was almost clinical, elevating the everyday to monumental status through careful, technical visual description. While the subjects of these two photographs is in name at least, the same (animal remains) the difference between the photographers suggests separate motivations for making each picture; motivations that the pictures themselves bear out.

Weston, for example, has taken great care to isolate the skeletal remains of a bird on a field of tightly speckled sand, which forms a ready-made greyscale against which the sun-bleached bones and dry feathers are silhouetted. The dark shadows beneath the remains emphasize the sculptural qualities of the remains, declaring their status as something that is, not something that was. By contrast, Sommer’s image is as inquisitive as Weston’s is declarative. Instead of a clear division of surface and object, Sommer’s rabbit dissolves into its surroundings as if in the process of transitioning back to the land. True to form, Sommer seems interested here in the ongoing nature of things, forcing us to think about the thin lines between life, death, and earth.

See the Sommer

Arco Station at Night, plate 9 of 15 from "Troubled Waters" portfolio published by Caldecott Chubb, 1980.

Illustrated; Penn, Irving. Passage. Alfred A. Knopf, p. 205. Penn, Irving. Still Life. Bulfinch, 2001, p. 53;