Oliver Gagliani

When asked why art is important, he said, "Because it's the only thing that teaches you how to feel. Without that, you haven't got anything."

Oliver Gagliani at Michael Dawson Gallery/Dawson's Book Shop

Oliver Gagliani at The Weston Gallery

"Attic, Nevada," 1972

"Piano, Austin, Nevada," 1972

"Brick Wall with Snow, Gold Hill, Nevada," 1973

"Diamond, Bodega Bay, California," 1968

"House, Plumas Eureka S.P., California," 1962

"White Door," 1973

All  photographs posted with kind permission of The Oliver Gagliani Estate 

Gallery 1855 to Host Latest Exhibition of Oliver Gagliani’s Photography:

Gallery 1855
Davis Cemetery
820 Pole Line Road
Davis, CA, 95618

Dates:  May 1 to May 31, 2011
Opening Reception - Sunday May 8 (Mother’s Day), 2011 from 1PM to 4 PM.

Oliver Gagliani is a well known artist amongst artists, so far ahead of his time that it will be up to another generation to place him within the continuum of art history. We here at Gallery 1855 are grateful for the special opportunity to exhibit some of Gagliani’s work during the month of May. Rather than a full retrospective, we have chosen to exhibit a collection of his pieces with one consistent vision, one overarching characteristic: the artist’s demand that the viewer participate. Oliver Gagliani believed that art was not art until the viewer made it so. We at Gallery 1855 invite you to come be the bridge between the artist’s vision and art itself.

You are warmly invited to the free open house and reception on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 8th from 1 P.M. to 4 P.M. The work may also be viewed Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 4 PM, between May 1st and May 31st. Please take advantage of this special opportunity.


Oliver Gagliani Biography reposted with permission from The Weston Gallery:

Oliver Gagliani (1917-2002) was an American photographer, a master of large format photography, darkroom technique, and the Zone System.

Upon seeing a retrospective of Paul Strand's work in 1945 at the San Francisco Museum of Art, he was convinced that photography could be considered fine art. Mostly self-taught, he is best known for his beautiful and haunting black and white photographs of ghost towns of the southwest.

Born in Placerville, California, Oliver studied under and worked with some of the greatest photographers of the 20th century including, Ansel Adams, Minor White, Paul Caponigro, the Westons, Paul Strand, and many others. He loved sharing his knowledge and in his later years conducted photographic workshops in Virginia City, Nevada.



“Oliver Gagliani: Scores of Abstraction at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art,” Thursday, October 25, 2007, Santa Barbara Independent by Heather Jeno reposted with permission:

Before Photoshop and other digital media programs opened up the world of synthesized enhancement, photographers relied on framing, composition, and riveting subject matter to deliver the desired image. Among the many master photographers of the pre-digital age, Oliver Gagliani possessed a particularly preternatural ability to produce complex, imaginary landscapes that to the modern eye appear as if they must be digitally enhanced. In fact, Gagliani was a purist of the straight photography he learned as a journalistic and commercial photographer, and he achieved his abstract effects through simple methods of exposure and printing.

Gagliani’s work is demanding because he requires us to reverse our typical methods of observation, forcing us first to “see” his compositions as a series of shapes, textures, and tones rather than as identifiable subjects. Through his imaginative lens, objects appear in new ways, and we are forced to reconsider and reevaluate the world around us as a landscape of unclaimed possibility.

Alvin Langdon Coburn

"My aim in photography is always to convey a mood and not to impart local information. This is not an easy matter, for the camera if left to its own devices will simply impart local information to the exclusiveness of everything else."

"Photography makes one conscious of beauty everywhere, even in the simplest things, even in what is often considered commonplace or ugly. Yet nothing is really 'ordinary’, for every fragment of the world is crowned with wonder and mystery, and a great and surprising beauty."

"I wish to state emphatically that I do not believe in any sort of handwork or manipulation on a photographic negative or print."

Alvin Langdon Coburn at The George Eastman House Still Photograph Archive
Alvin Langdon Coburn at The George Eastman House Store
Alvin Langdon Coburn at The Joseph Bellows Gallery
Alvin Langdon Coburn at The Lee Gallery
Alvin Langdon Coburn at Luminous Lint for Collectors and Connoisseurs of Fine Photography
Alvin Langdon Coburn Collection at The Masters of Photography Gallery
Alvin Langdon Coburn Collection at The National Portrait Gallery
Alvin Langdon Coburn Yosemite Series at The George Eastman House Still Photograph Archive

"The Octopus," 1912

"Theodore Roosevelt," 1907

"Grand Canyon," 1911

"House of a Thousand Windows," 1912

"Pittsburg Smoke Stacks," 1910

"Vortograph," ca. 1917

Alvin Langdon Coburn Biography from Akron Art Museum Exhibit in 1999:

Alvin Langdon Coburn: Photographs 1900 - 1924 features 147 photographs spanning Alvin Langdon Coburn's entire career, presenting an unprecedented opportunity to view the development of a child prodigy who was one of the most brilliant turn-of-the-century photographers. This exhibition runs through November 28, 1999.

"Although Coburn's name is not a household word, it should be," declared Barbara Tannenbaum, Akron Art Museum's chief curator and head of public programs. "Coburn made exquisitely beautiful photographs which represent several important firsts in art photography. He helped initiate the change in photography from pictorialism, a style which imitated painting, to modernism, a style that consciously emphasized the unique visual qualities of the camera lens. Coburn freed photography from the shackles of representation when he made some of the first abstract photographs. And, he was the first photographer to exploit the expressive potential of the aerial view."

Well traveled, schooled and read, Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966) was the product of a world that inspired, promoted and cherished his talent. He was born in Boston to a family, successful in business, which encouraged him to follow his talents for the arts. Starting in photography at eight years old, Coburn was exhibiting by age 18 at London's Royal Photographic Society alongside the giants of the time including Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. When he was 22 years old, Coburn became a member of the prestigious Photo Secession founded by Alfred Stieglitz.

The Photo Secession strived to have photography accepted as an art in its own right: each image would not be seen as a document or snapshot but as a singular object to be contemplated for the personal expression of the artist. Coburn's work was a perfect fit with the Photo Secessionists, famous for their landscapes, figure studies and portraits.

Part of the Photo Secession, a subgroup of the pictorialist movement that emphasized artificial, often romanticized pictorial qualities, Coburn was extremely adventuresome in applying pictorialism to themes as varied as portraits, cityscapes and industrial scenes. Coburn, a superb portraitist, photographed many of the notable figures of his time including Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, Ezra Pound, Henri Matisse, George Bernard Shaw and Rodin.

Around 1912 Coburn's interest in pictorialism waned as he helped develop a more modern photographic style. Focused on the modern city, Coburn exchanged the soft focus of pictorialism for sharp, clear images and experiments with abstract compositional geometry. One of only a handful of turn-of-the-century photographers who concentrated on the metropolis, he helped shape the way the urban experience was depicted for almost half of the 20th century. His aerial views of New York City, which were inspired by his experience photographing the Grand Canyon in 1911, were made at least six years before the German and Russian photographers usually credited with this innovation.

In 1916, Coburn employed a kaleidoscope-like device to make some of the earliest abstract photographs. He dubbed these Vortographs after a contemporary British movement in painting and literature. These revolutionary images emphasize the pure form on the flat picture surface, discarding altogether the representational side of photography.

Coburn was also a master printer. He employed several difficult and unusual printing practices, including the rare gum-platinum process and the exacting photogravure. Photogravure is a photomechanical process for reproducing the appearance of a continuous range of tones in a photograph. Since he wanted as many people as possible to see his work, Coburn considered the photogravure as important as an original print.

Co-existing with his interest in modernity, however, Coburn had always had a strong interest in the spiritual. In 1924, he became involved with a British comparative religious group called the Universal Order, which combined Rosicrucianism, Druidism and Freemasonry. By 1931, he had virtually abandoned photography for the study of religion and the performance of good works. Coburn remained devoted to these activities until his death in 1966.

This exhibition was organized by George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film with support from Kodak Kulturprogram, Kodak A. G. Its presentation in Akron is made possible by a generous gift from the Akron Community Foundation.

Ralph Steiner

"These days I think the composers of music influence me more than any photographers or visual creators. I see something exciting or lovely and think to myself: 'If Papa Haydn or Wolfgang Amadeus or the red-headed Vivaldi were here with a camera, they'd snap a picture of what's in front of me.' So I take the picture for them."

Ralph Steiner at the Addison Gallery of American Art

Ralph Steiner on the Haggerty Museum Flickr Page

Ralph Steiner at I Photo Central

Ralph Steiner at Luminous Lint for Collectors and Connoisseurs of Fine Photography

Ralph Steiner at Scheinbaum & Russek, Ltd.

"The Bridge," 1929

"Ham and Eggs," 1929

"The Village," 1922

"American Rual Baroque," 1929

Ralph Steiner Biography from Scheinbaum & Russek, Ltd:

Ralph Steiner, while studying chemical engineering at Dartmouth, discovered photography. Steiner has a scientific bent as well as a lyric visual one, and has used his knowledge of chemistry and physics with great enthusiasm to solve photographic problems.

After Dartmouth, Steiner studied at the Clarence H. White School of Photography in l921 and l922, although he was not in agreement with the painting-oriented design instruction that dominated the curriculum.

In the late l920's he met Paul Strand in New York. Strands's prints were a revelation that left Steiner deeply dissatisfied with the commercial work he was then doing. He began teaching himself better craftsmanship, working with an 8 x l0" camera format, photographing "objects with texture," producing such well-known images as his Nehi sign pictures, his Ford car series, and his photograph of a rocking chair.

Steiner's career has alternated between periods doing advertising, public relations (Gypsy Rose Lee was one of his subjects), and editorial photography to accumulate funds, and periods spent making still photographs and films for himself. His second effort as a cinematographer, "H2O," is often cited as the second earliest American art film (after Manhatta by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler). Steiner also made "Cafe Universal," an improvised, semi-dramatic anti-war film based on drawings by George Grosz, cast with leading members of the Group Theater. His film on a New York City dump starred Elia Kazan in a largely improvised role.

Steiner and Paul Strand were hired by Pare Lorentz as the cameramen on "The Plow That Broke the Plains;" they directed much of that landmark documentary as well. With Willard Van Dyke, and Paul Strand, Steiner shot and directed the documentary "The City," which ran for a year at the New York World's Fair of 1939. In the late 1930's he worked as a picture editor on "PM," and in advertising and public relations work. His opting of the film rights to the biography of H.S. Maxim, an eccentric 19th century inventor, led him to Hollywood where he spent four years as a writer/executive. On his glad return to New York, with an out-of-date portfolio, Walker Evans gave him photographic assignments for Fortune.

In the 1960's Steiner finally began to be able to devote most of his time to his personal photography and cinematography. He moved to rural Vermont in 1963, spending summers on a Maine island, and his work since then includes many lyrical images from those landscapes, including trees, coastline hills, and wash on rural clotheslines.

Many of Steiner's lyrical, sometimes gently satirical photographs can be seen as conveying, along with sophistication and concern, a sense of wonder about the 20th century which he entered at the age of one, and yet has been so much a part of.

Steiner's autobiography, "A Point of View," was published in 1978. Among exhibitions of his work were a one-man show in 1949 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and exhibitions in 1981 at the Milwaukee Art Center (with Walker Evans) and at the Northlight Gallery in Tempe, Arizona (with Wright Morris).

Selected Publications:
"A Point of View," Wesleyan University Press, Middleton, CT, 1978
"In Pursuit of Clouds - Images and Metaphors - Photography by Ralph Steiner," introduction by Willard Van Dyke, University of New Mexico Press, 1985

Laura Gilpin

Laura Gilpin at the Andrew Smith Gallery

Laura Gilpin's book, "Enduring Grace"

Laura Gilpin on I Photo Central

Laura Gilpin at Luminous-Lint.com

Laura Gilpin at The Scheinbaum & Russek Gallery

Laura Gilpin at The Soul Catcher Studio

"Door Ranchos de Taos Church," 1947

"Mrs. Francis Nakai and Son," 1932

"The Rio Grande Yields its Surplus to the Sea," 1948

"Navaho Portrait (Ethel Kellywood)," 1934

Laura Gilpin Biography from the Encyclopedia of World Biography on bookrags.com:

Laura Gilpin (1891-1979) was an American photographer best known for her southwestern landscapes and for her photographic studies of the Pueblo and Navajo Indians.

Laura Gilpin was born in Austin Bluffs, Colorado, on April 22, 1891. Although she briefly attended eastern boarding schools, she grew up in Colorado Springs and always thought of herself as a westerner. Even as a child she enjoyed exploring the mountains around her home. In 1903 Gilpin got a Brownie camera, which she used the following year to photograph the St. Louis World's Fair, and about 1909 she began experimenting with autochromes, a new color photographic process developed in France. Living on her family's ranch on the western slope of the Rockies from 1911 to 1915, Gilpin raised poultry and continued making pictures. By the time she went to New York in 1916 to study at the Clarence H. White School of Photography (with money saved from her poultry business) she was an accomplished amateur photographer.

Gilpin studied with White for two years, then returned home to Colorado to set up a commercial photography studio. While earning her living doing portraits and advertising work, she began exploring the Southwest and making pictures of the Pueblo Indians and the ruins of their Anasazi ancestors. These early, atmospheric pictures showed the influence of her training with White, a leading pictorial photographer who emphasized mood rather than detail in his photographs. Gilpin later moved away from this soft-focus approach and adopted a more straightforward, hard-edged style for photographing the Southwest.

Gilpin's long-term involvement with the Navajo began in 1930 when she ran out of gas on their reservation while on a camping trip with her companion Elizabeth Forster.

Deeply impressed by the Navajo people who came to their aid, Forster became a field nurse on the reservation. She lived in Red Rock, Arizona, for two years. Gilpin later became a frequent visitor to the reservation and, through the contacts made by her friend, began to photograph the Navajo people. Her pictures of families, trading posts, hogans, and ceremonies form a compassionate record of traditional Navajo life.

After Forster lost her job in 1933 financial difficulties and a number of photographic projects kept Gilpin away from the reservation for 16 years. In 1941 she published her first major book, The Pueblos: A Camera Chronicle, based on a series of lantern slides she had made of archaeological sites. During World War II (1942-1944) she worked as a public relations photographer for the Boeing Company in Wichita, Kansas, and then moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she resumed making photographic books. "Temples in Yucatan: A Camera Chronicle of Chichen Itza" appeared in 1948 and "The Rio Grande: River of Destiny," her monumental study of the Rio Grande and the people along its banks, came out the following year.

In 1950 Gilpin returned to the Navajo reservation to gather more pictures for a book. Although she initially thought it would be a quick and easy job, her work on the project took 18 years. She travelled all over the reservation, as she could spare time away from her commercial business, gathering information and pictures that would help her tell the story of the Navajo peoples' adaptation to modern American life. Eventually, she came to realize the great importance of traditional beliefs to the Navajo people, and her project began to focus on how traditions could be maintained in a rapidly changing world. "The Enduring Navaho," which finally appeared in 1968, was widely hailed by anthropologists and by the Navajo people themselves as a truthful and compassionate record of Navajo life.

During the 1970s, Gilpin regained much of the recognition in national photographic circles that she had enjoyed in the 1920s. She was at work on a photographic book about the Canyon de Chelly and its Navajo inhabitants when she died in Santa Fe on November 30, 1979.

Weegee (Arthur Fellig)

"My name is Weegee. I’m the world’s greatest photographer. . ."

"When you find yourself beginning to feel a bond between yourself and the people you photograph, when you laugh and cry with their laughter and tears, you will know you are on the right track."

"To me, pictures are like blintzes – ya gotta get ‘em while they’re hot."

Weegee Collection at Amber Online

Weegee's World at the International Center of Photography

Weegee Collection at The J. Paul Getty Museum

Weegee Collection at The Lee Gallelry

Weegee Tells How on You Tube

"Simply Add Water"

"Easter Sunday in Harlem"

"U.S. Hotel"

"The Critic/The Fashionable People"

Weegee Biography from The Chrysler Museum of Art:

He captured tenement infernos, car crashes, and gangland executions. He found washed-up lounge singers and teenage murder suspects in paddy wagons and photographed them at their most vulnerable — or, as he put it, their most human. He caught couples kissing on their beach blankets on Coney Island and the late-night voyeurs on lifeguard stands watching them. And everywhere he went, he snatched images of people sleeping: drunks on park benches, whole families on Lower East Side fire escapes, men and women snoring in movie theaters. He was the supreme chronicler of the city at night. He was the only shutterbug that would make it to a murder scene before the cops. Weegee loved New York and New York eventually loved Weegee.

Weegee was born June 12, 1899, in Austria, under the name Usher Fellig. Shortly after he was born his father left for America, where he was a Rabbi while saving enough money to send for the rest of his family. At the age of ten, Weegee with his mother and three brothers, finally arrived to America. At Ellis Island, Weegee's name was changed from Usher to Arthur. (Aperture 5-9)

Early Life:

As far as education, Weegee made it through the eighth grade. However, the family needed money and Weegee was needed to help work. He worked a lot of odd jobs: he helped his father with a push cart business, he even worked at a candy store for a while. It was when he had his picture taken by a street tintype photographer that he decided that this was what he was meant to do. Weegee often said that he was, "A natural-born photographer, with hypo in my blood." He quickly ordered a tintype outfit from a Chicago mail-order house, and after a few months he got his first job as a commercial photographer. After a few years he left the studio, due to a disagreement on what he should be paid. He then bought a second-hand 5x7 view camera and rented a pony from a local stable. He named the pony "Hypo," and on the weekends when the kids were in their best clothes, he would walk around town putting kids on his pony and taking their picture. He would then develop the negatives, make prints, and go back to the families of the kids to try to sell them the photos.

Acme Newspictures:

At the age of twenty-four, Weegee got his big break working for Acme Newspictures. Acme was the source for stock photos for their own paper and other papers around the country. Weegee started off working in the darkroom, developing other photographers' work for the paper. Occasionally, when all the other Acme photographers were busy or sleeping, he would get to go out at night and take pictures of emergencies. After a few years of working for Acme, Weegee started to get called to do assignments and cover stories. This was what he always wanted; the only problem was that he worked for Acme, and thus, he never got credit for the photos he turned in. In 1935 he got tired of doing other peoples' work and left Acme to go out and try to free-lance his own work. The girls around Acme gave him the name "Weegee" after the board game. They said he always seemed to know where to be when a story broke.

Free-lance Photographer:

Weegee worked on his own as a free-lance photographer for the next ten years. He started to work out of Manhattan Police Headquarters; he would arrive around midnight and check the Teletype machine to see if any stories had broke. After a few years he decided he didn't want to wait for the news to come over the Teletype. He bought himself a 1938 Chevy Coupe and a press card, and he was allowed to have a police radio in the car (the only press photographer ever allowed to have a police radio in their car). Weegee's car was his home away from home, his office on the road. In the trunk he kept everything he would need including a portable dark-room, extra cameras, flash bulbs, extra loaded holders, a typewriter, cigars, salami and a change of clothes. (Weegee by Weegee 52)

"I was no longer glued to the Teletype machine at police headquarters. I had my wings. I no longer had to wait for crime to come to me; I could go after it. The police radio was my life line. My camera... my life and my love... was my Aladdin's lamp." (Weegee by Weegee 52)

After ten years he published his first book, The Naked City, which was inspired by the city he loved. It was during these ten years that Weegee produced some of his most expressive and beautiful photos.

Photographic Training:

Weegee never had any formal photographic training. He never heard of Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, or even the Museum of Modern Art. The work Weegee did came strictly from his heart. None of his photos were planned; his 4x5 speed graphic camera was preset at f/16 @ 1/200 of a second, with a focal distance of ten feet. All of his photos were taken at this setting with a flash. What photographic training Weegee may have needed to be a great photographer, he learned as he worked for Acme, or he just taught himself. Style, texture, or even quality of the photography did not matter much to Weegee. He was more concerned with capturing a moment of time on film. He recorded history as it happened. He had only a split second to capture the emotions of an event as they unfolded. A good example of this is the photograph of the Mother and Daughter crying as they watch another daughter and young baby burning to death inside a tenement fire. All that Weegee could really say about this photograph was, "I cried when I took this picture."

In 1939, Weegee took a portrait of a mother and her son in Harlem. Even a photograph that Weegee would consider to be a portrait showed an incredible amount of emotion. With a snap of the shutter he told the story of this poor woman. The way he positioned her and her son behind the broken glass is representative of the shattered life she lived. Yet even with despair all around her, she still has a look of hope in her eyes, as if she were saying that she cannot give up. She has a sense of pride as she holds her son. This is the power and gift that Weegee had with a camera.

It is impossible to look at a work by Weegee and not get emotionally involved. That was the whole point to his photographs — he wanted the viewer to get involved. On one of the first stories Weegee had to cover, he was asked to get photos of a kid that was abandoned by its mother. In his autobiography Weegee stated, "They (the cops) wanted pictures of the kid, so that the mother, seeing the picture in the papers, might become remorseful and come to claim the child." Weegee was ready to take a smiling picture when the nurse stopped him. The nurse stuck the baby with a pin, the kid started to cry and the nurse said "Now take a shot...This will bring the mother back." Luckily for the baby, this did bring the mother back. (Weegee by Weegee 56) Weegee had a job to do — this was the way he made a living. He had to make pictures that the newspapers would want to buy, and the newspapers wanted drama.

Being a free-lance photographer was not an easy job during this point in history. Not a lot of people could make it as long as Weegee had. Even when things were going bad, Weegee had good spirits about it. He was always able to find happiness in whatever he was doing. He loved people, he loved photographing people, and he loved being with people. In his work he confronted murder, brutality, children in need, brawls, the homeless, fires and victims. He also confronted people who were happy, lovers, celebrations and the end of the War. Weegee's work stands on its own — it's meant to be viewed one at a time, not as a group. With each shot, Weegee captured a truth that can never be recreated.

Weegee died of a brain tumor on December 26, 1968. Today Weegee is credited with ushering in the age of tabloid culture, while at the same time being revered for elevating the sordid side of human life to that of high art.

Bibliography:

1. Weegee's People, Arthur Fellig, 1900-1968, DA CAPO PRESS, New York, 1975.
2. Naked City, Arthur Fellig, Essential Books, 1945.
3. Weegee, Aperture History of Photography Series, Aperture, Inc. 1978.
4. Weegee, Louis Stettner, Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher, New York, 1977.
5. Weegee, Andre Laude, Pantheon Books, New York, 1986.
6. Weegee by Weegee, An Autobiography, Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, New York, 1961.