Peter Henry Emerson
dal 19/11/2002 al 20/2/2003
Segnalato da
19/11/2002
Peter Henry Emerson
Artandphotographs gallery, London
Emerson's genius is that he believed photography could be an art independent from others. His pictures are a conscious realisation of this idea.
Anticipating Modernism
If Alfred Stieglitz is the embodiment of modern photography then Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936) might be considered its' father . He produced a series of photographic essays, beginning auspiciously with Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads in 1886, and ending less than ten years later with Marsh Leaves, considered to show the first influence of Japanese art on photography. While there is evidence he continued to photograph for another 30 years, the later work has been lost .
The exhibition will include a selection of the beautiful and scarce Platinum Prints from Life and Landscape, and a selection of exquisite photogravures from his albums including Wild Life on a Tidal Water, On English Lagoons, Pictures of East Anglian Life, Pictures from Life in Field and Fen, Idyls of the Norfolk Broads, as well as a rare illustrated edition of Isaac Walton's The Compleat Angler. While these titles suggest a traditional view of landscape, a reading of many images offers a distinct vision of centuries of interdependence between the people and their fragile environment.
Emerson's lectures and essays were as influential as his pictures. In 1886 he delivered a lecture entitled "Photography, A Pictorial Art" concerned with photography's representation of perception. Emerson struggled with the paradoxical relationship in photography of accuracy to naturalism, truth to perception. But, in spite of the contradictions inherent to his analysis he was emphatic in his pronouncements. His work Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art, published in 1889, brought the debate on the relationship of photography and art up-to-date.
Anticipating the misinterpretation of his ideas Emerson dramatically announced the Death of Naturalistic Photography the following year. This has been interpreted as a renunciation of photography as art - with the elimination of any reference to this in further Editions. Perhaps Emerson feared that "Naturalism" taken to its populist extreme would see the death of this idea, and he did not want to be held responsible.
Indeed, as photography evolved over the turn of the century from Naturalism into Impressionism and Symbolism, it came almost full circle back to HP Robinson's allegorical images of high Victoriana (which Emerson had reacted against twenty years before). Much of the work in Camera Work, Steiglitz's encyclopedic survey of photography would have been rejected by Emerson as sentimental and romantic.
The great Modern photographs of Paul Strand, Edward Weston and August Sander, dating from the first thirty years of the Twentieth Century, rather than the Pictorialism he is credited with having inspired, are much more in line with Emerson's conception of photography as an independent art. We cannot imagine these acknowledged modern masterpieces having been made any other way, least of all through painting. Emerson's genius is that he believed photography could be an art that exists by its difference to other art forms. His pictures are a conscious realisation of this idea.
"He argued forcefully for the establishment of photography as an art equal to, but independent of painting…His aim was to represent the beauty and truth in nature by manipulation of the equipment and scientific knowledge at his disposal, not by manipulation of the resultant image. The image was a pure impression of the sentiment of nature and was therefore art."
For more information and images please contact Sophie Wright or Daniel Newburg at artandphotographs on 020 7321 0495 or at artandphotographspress@btinternet.com
artandphotographs
13 Mason's Yard
London SW1Y 6BU
t: 020 7839 9300