Friday, September 9, 2011

James Ravilious

James Ravilious





Archie Parkhouse with Ivy for Sheep, Millhams, Dolton, Devon, England, 1975

Jean Pickard Leading Her Flock, Woolridge, Dolton, Devon, England, 1975

Farrier Shoing a Horse, Bradstone, Devon, England, 1999

Dr Paul Bangay Visiting a Patient, Langtree, Devon, England, 1981

Gatehouse and Garden, Lanhydrock House, Cornwall, England, 1990

Dovecote, Abbaye de Mortemer, Normandy, France, 1985

View towards Iddesleigh and Dartmoor, Iddesleigh, Devon, England, c1985


Many thanks for Robin Ravilious for her cooperation and kind permission to reproduce James' work here on Masters of Photography.


A Biography from James Ravilious: A Photographer of Rural Life:

James Ravilious was born at Eastbourne, England, the second son of Eric Ravilious, the war artist, wood-engraver and designer. James studied art at St Martin's School of Art, London, and then taught painting and drawing in London for some years. He married Robin Ravilious (daughter of the glass-engraver Laurence Whistler) in 1970, and in 1972 they moved to Devon to live in a cottage near her family home in Dolton. They had two children: Ben and Ella.

In the early 1970's James took up photography (self-taught), having seen its potential in the work of the great French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Now John Lane, director of the arts centre in the neighbouring village of Beaford, invited James to contribute some work to the newly set up Beaford Archive, intended as a photographic record of life in a largely unspoilt, but vulnerable, country area. What started as a short-term project grew into a seventeen year obsession. In that time James took over 80,000 black and white images of all aspects of local life: landscape, farming, everyday life in the local towns and villages, and their special occasions. He also borrowed and copied over 5,000 early photographs of the same area.

The resulting historical span, and detail, he gave to the Archive makes it probably the most intensive record of any rural area in England. But it is more than that. Though never posed, James's pictures are composed with the eye of an artist, and they capture subtle qualities of light - the result of years of experiment with pre-war Leica cameras and uncoated lenses. Above all, they are warmed by his affection and admiration for the people whose lives he recorded. His pictures reveal real life as it was being lived in late 20th century rural England when the country traditions that have been handed down for hundreds, if not thousands, of years were still part of everyday existence.

In addition to his work for the Beaford Archive, James undertook many private commissions, such as the arts and environment body Common Ground's influential Save Our Orchards campaign, Somerset County Council's Mendip Project, and recording work for Devon County Council. He also photographed in France (especially in Normandy and the Cevennes), as well as in Italy, Greece and Ireland, and other parts of the British Isles. Privately, he took a number of colour images in Devon that parallel his work for the Beaford Archive.

James's work has been exhibited in England, France and America; and can be seen in several collections. He published a number of books of his photographs, and contributed to many others. In 1997 he was given Honorary Membership of the Royal Photographic Society in recognition of his contribution to photography. He died of lymphoma in 1999.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Ben Shahn




"I became interested in photography when I found my own sketching was inadequate."

"I was primarily interested in people, and people in action, so that I did nothing photographically in the sense of doing buildings for their own sake or a still life or anything like that."

"When you talk about war on poverty it doesn't mean very much; but if you can show to some degree this sort of thing then you can show a great deal more of how people are living and a very great percentage of our people today."

"Whatever I get involved in, I'm totally involved, you see."

"An amateur is someone who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint."





"Say Cheesburger," Columbus, Ohil, 1938

"Amity City," Louisiana, 1935

"American Gothic," 1935

"Players," Scotts Run, West Virginia, 1935

"Red House Kids," Red House, West Virginia, 1935

"The Pantitorium," 1938

"The Signpost Up Ahead," Crossville, Tennessee, 1935

"Blind Street Musician," 1935

"Dr. Davidage," Amity City, Louisiana, 1935

"Boone County," Arkansas, 1935



Ben Shahn was born in Kaunus, Lithuania in 1898. He emigrated to New York with his family in 1906. He became a lithographer's apprentice after completing his schooling. He later attended both New York University and the National Academy of Design from 1917 to 1921.

In the 1920s Shahn became part of the social realism movement. Social Realism is a term used to describe the works of American artists during the Depression era who were devoted to depicting the social troubles of the suffering urban lower class: urban decay, labor strikes, and poverty. His early work was concerned with political issues of the time, while his later work portrayed the loneliness of the city dweller. Text and lettering formed an integral part of his designs and his work was often inspired by news reports.

After working in lithography until 1930, his style crystallized in a series of 23 paintings concerning the Sacco-Vanzetti trial. Shahn came to prominence in the 1930s as with "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti". Shahn dealt consistently with social and political themes. He developed a strong and brilliant sense of graphic design revealed in numerous posters. His painting Vacant Lot (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Conn.) exhibits a poetic realism, whereas his more abstract works are characterized by terse, incisive lines and a lyric ic intensity of color. The Blind Botanist (Wichita Art Mus.) is characteristic of his abstractions. Shahn's murals include series for the Bronx Central Annex Post Office, New York City.

From 1933 to 1938 he worked as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, producing masterful images of impoverished rural areas and their inhabitants. Shahn used photographs throughout his career for both composition and content. The photographer position at the FSA was a dream job for Shahn because it provided him the opportunity to travel though Depression-era America taking pictures. He later used those photographs for his paintings years later. Critics in his time felt that using photographs for paintings diminished the value of a painting. However, Shahn's work became the most popular artist of his age. His work was on the cover of Time and well as the Museum of Modern Art.

Shahn has been described as a man of uncompromising beliefs and an artist who spoke to the world. Shahn continuously adopted new themes and mediums to define the human condition of his time. Active until the end of his career, Shahn was also a distinguished lecturer, teacher, and writer.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Adolph de Meyer


"Adolph de Meyer" by Frederick Hollyer





"Gertrude Vanderbilt," American Vogue, 1917

"Josephine Baker," 1925

"Mary Pickford"

"Ann Pennington"

"Still Life, Hydrangea," 1907

"Dolores," (ca) 1919

"Glass and Shadows," 1912

Untitled

"Dorothy Smoller," American Vogue, 1919


Biography from Wikipedia:

Adolph de Meyer (September 1, 1868 - January 6, 1949) was a photographer famed for his elegant photographic portraits in the early 20th century, many of which depicted celebrities such as Mary Pickford, Rita Lydig, Luisa Casati, Billie Burke, Irene Castle, John Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Ruth St. Denis, King George V of the United Kingdom, and Queen Mary. He was also the first official fashion photographer for the American magazine Vogue, appointed to that position in 1913.

Reportedly born in Paris and educated in Dresden, Adolphus Meyer was the son of a German Jewish father and Scottish mother -- Adolphus Louis Meyer and his wife, the former Adele Watson.

In 1893 he joined the Royal Photographic Society and moved to London in 1895.

He used the surnames Meyer, von Meyer, de Meyer, de Meyer-Watson, and Meyer-Watson at various times in his life. From 1897 he was known as Baron Adolph Edward Sigismond de Meyer, though some contemporary sources list him as Baron Adolph von Meyer and Baron Adolph de Meyer-Watson.

In editions dating from 1898 until 1913, Whitaker's Peerage stated that de Meyer's title had been granted in 1897 by Frederick Augustus III of Saxony, though another source states "the photographer inherited it from his grandfather in the 1890s". Some sources state that no evidence of this nobiliary creation, however, has been found.

On 25 July 1899, at Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, Cadogan Square, in London, England, de Meyer married Donna Olga Caracciolo, an Italian noblewoman who had been divorced earlier that year from Nobile Marino Brancaccio; she was a goddaughter of Edward VII. The couple reportedly met in 1897, at the home of a member of the Sassoon banking family, and Olga would be the subject of many of her husband's photographs.

From 1898 to 1913 de Meyer lived in fashionable Cadogan Gardens, London, and between 1903 and 1907 his work was published in Alfred Stieglitz's quarterly Camera Work. Cecil Beaton dubbed him "the Debussy of photography". In 1912 he photographed Nijinsky in Paris.

On the outbreak of World War I, the de Meyers, who in 1916 took the new names of Mahrah and Gayne, on the advice of an astrologer, moved to New York City, where he became a photographer for Vogue from 1913–21, and for Vanity Fair. In 1922 de Meyer accepted an offer to become the Harper's Bazaar chief photographer in Paris, spending the next 16 years there.

On the eve of World War II in 1938, de Meyer returned to the United States, and found that he was a relic in the face of the rising modernism of his art.

He died in Los Angeles in 1946, his death being registered as 'Gayne Adolphus Demeyer, writer (retired)'. Today, few of his prints survive, most having been destroyed during World War II.

Friday, August 19, 2011

John Vachon


John Vachon





"Downtown Street Scene, Chicago," 1941

"Big Cop, Lincoln, Nebraska," 1938

"Boy Near Cincinnati, Ohio," 1942

"Drinking Fountain, Halifax, North Carolina," 1938

"Fountain, Union Station, St. Louis, Missouri," 1940

"The Old Ball Game, Briggs Stadium, Detroit, Michigan," 1942

"Three Women, Iowa," 1940

"God Bless America, Ambridge, Pennsylvania," 1941
 
"Marilyn Monroe," 1953

"Old Cathedral, Vincennes, Indiana," 1941


John Vachon biography from Wikipedia:

John F. Vachon (May 19, 1914 – April 20, 1975) was an American Photographer. He worked as a filing clerk for the Farm Security Administration before Roy Stryker recruited him to join a small group of photographers, including Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Mary Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, Charlotte Brooks, Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn, who were employed to publicize the conditions of the rural poor in America.

Vachon was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He graduated from Cretin High School (now Cretin-Derham Hall High School). He received a bachelors degree in 1934 from the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, then named St. Thomas College. In about 1938 he married Millicent Leeper who was known as Penny. She died in 1960. Vachon married Françoise Fourestier in 1961. Vachon served in the United States Army in 1945.

John Vachon's first job at the Farm Security Administration carried the title "assistant messenger." He was twenty-one, and had come to Washington from his native Minnesota to attend The Catholic University of America. Vachon had no intention of becoming a photographer when he took the position in 1936, but as his responsibilities increased for maintaining the FSA photographic file, his interest in photography grew.

By 1937 Vachon had looked enough to want to make photographs himself, and with advice from Ben Shahn he tried out a Leica in and around Washington. His weekend photographs of "everything in the Potomac River valley" were clearly the work of a beginner, but Stryker lent him equipment and encouraged him to keep at it. Vachon received help as well from Walker Evans, who insisted that he master the view camera, and Arthur Rothstein, who took him along on a photographic assignment to the mountains of Virginia. In October and November 1938, Vachon traveled to Nebraska on his first extensive solo trip. He photographed agricultural programs on behalf of the FSA's regional office and pursued an extra assignment from Stryker: the city of Omaha.

The hallmark of this style of photography is the portrayal of people and places encountered on the street, unembellished by the beautifying contrivances used by calendar and public relations photographers.

He was a photographer for the Office of War Information in Washington, D.C. from 1942 to 1943, and then staff photographer for Standard Oil Company of New Jersey between 1943 and 1944. Between 1945 and 1947 he photographed New Jersey and Venezuela for Standard, and Poland for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

Vachon became a staff photographer for Life magazine, where he worked between 1947 and 1949, and for over twenty five years beginning in 1947 at Look magazine. In 1953 Vachon took the first pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio when Monroe cured a sprained ancle near Banff, Canada. When Look closed in 1971 he became a freelance photographer. In 1975 he was a visiting lecturer at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

He died in 1975 in New York at age 60.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Louise Dahl-Wolfe

Louise Dahl-Wolfe at Work in her Studio




"Mary Jane Russell in a Dress by Dior"


"Carson McCullers," 1940

"Cecil Beaton"

"Crostobal Balenciaga," 1950



"Lauren Bacall," 1942


"Night Bathing"

"Twins at the Beach"


Louise Dahl-Wolfe biography from the Museum of Contemporary Photography at
Columbia College in Chicago:

Louise Emma Augusta Dahl was born to Norwegian parents in San Francisco, California on November 19, 1895. In 1914 she began her studies at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) where she stayed for six years, studying design with Rudolph Schaeffer. She became interested in photography in 1921 upon meeting and seeing the pictorial work of Anne Brigman. Dahl worked as a sign designer for the Federal Electric Co., San Francisco from 1920 to 1922. She studied design and decoration, and architecture at Columbia University, New York in 1923. In 1924 she was employed as an assistant to decorator Beth Armstrong in San Francisco, and from 1925 to 1927 she worked for Armstrong, Carter and Kenyon, a fashion wholesale company. In 1928 she met the sculptor Meyer Wolfe in Tunisia and married him in San Francisco. She wanted to take the last name Wolfe, but later, lest she be mistaken for a particular commercial photographer by the same name, she adopted the hyphenated “Dahl-Wolfe.”

Dahl-Wolfe began to concentrate on making photographs while in San Francisco and Tennessee in the early 1930s. She spent the summer of 1932 in Gatlinburg, Tennessee photographing the people of the Smoky Mountains. One of those portraits became her first published work, appearing in Vanity Fair in 1933, and Edward Steichen included her Tennessee pictures in a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1937. From 1933 to 1960, Dahl-Wolfe operated a New York photographic studio that at first was home to the freelance advertising and fashion work she made for stores including Bonwit Teller and Saks Fifth Avenue, but soon was in use for Harper’s Bazaar projects (including such photographs as the carefully staged Japanese Bath from 1954 and Isamu Noguchi, New York, the 1955 portrait of a designer and his lamps).

From 1936 to 1958 Dahl-Wolfe was a staff fashion photographer at Harper’s Bazaar. During that tenure, Dahl-Wolfe’s photographs featured in the magazine included 86 covers, another 600 published in color, and thousands in black-and-white. A cover image of Betty Bacall sent the model for a Hollywood screen test where she soon changed her name to Lauren. While working for Harper’s Dahl-Wolfe pioneered the use of natural lighting in fashion photography and shooting on location. She photographed in locations all over the northern hemisphere: from Laguna Beach, California (Rubber bathingsuit, January 1940), to the winter quarters of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota Florida (Two models with elephants, May 1947) to Granada, Spain (Jean Patchett, 1953). Her innovations and modernist touches kept her widely celebrated in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and she is remembered as an influence on a generation of photographers including Horst, Richard Avedon, and Irving Penn.

Dahl-Wolfe preferred portraiture to fashion work, and while at Harper’s she photographed cultural icons and celebrities including film-maker Orson Wells (1938), writer Carson McCullers (1940) designer Christian Dior (1946), photographer Cecil Beaton (1950), writer Colette (1951), and broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow (1953). In addition to her Harper’s responsibilities, Dahl-Wolfe was able to pursue her own vision in the studio and sometimes even while on assignment. For example, she asked a model to pose for the unpublished Nude in the Desert while on location in California’s Mojave Desert shooting swimsuits that would appear in the May 1948 edition of Harper’s.

From 1958 until her retirement in 1960, Dahl-Wolfe worked as a freelance photographer for Vogue, Sports Illustrated, and other periodicals. Major exhibitions of her work include Women of Photography: An Historical Survey at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1975); The History of Fashion Photography (1977) and Recollections: Ten Women of Photography (1979) at International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; and Portraits at the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson (1986). Retrospectives include shows at Grey Art Gallery, New York University (1983); Cheekwood Fine Arts Center, Nashville, Tennessee (1984); and Louise Dahl-Wolfe: A Ninetieth Birthday Salute at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (1985). Louise Dalhl-Wolfe lived many of her later years in Nashville, Tennessee, though she died in New Jersey of pneumonia in 1989.