William Carrick

William Carrick in his Studio

The Daily Mail

Environmental Graffiti

Luminous Lint

The Museum Syndicate

National Galleries of Scotland

The Scottish Field Magazine

"The Beggar"

"Village Children"

"Horse and Carriage"

"Policeman"

"Chimney Sweep"

"Peasant Women"

"Potato Boy"

"Woodsman"

"Boatman, Volga River"

"Mother and Daughter"

"Peasant"

"Young Woman"

Biography from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia:

William Carrick (1827 - 1878) was a Scottish-Russian artist and photographer. The son of a timber merchant, Andrew Carrick (died 1860), and Jessie née Lauder, he was born in Edinburgh on December 23, 1827. Only a few weeks old, the Carrick family took William with them to the port of Kronstadt Gulf of Finland. Andrew had been trading with this port for some time, and the family would stay there for 16 years.

In 1844, the family moved to St Petersburg, where William became a student at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, studying architecture under the renowned Alexander Brullov. By 1853, he had completed his studies there and moved to Rome to undertake further studies. Although his family's business collapsed during the Crimean War, in 1856, William Carrick returned to St Petersburg to become a photographer. However, in the summer of the following year he departed for Edinburgh to gain more experience of photography. There he met the photographic technician John MacGregor.

In October, he returned to Russia, taking MacGregor with him in the aim of establishing a business and career. He opened a studio (or atelier) at 19 Malaya Morskaya Street, St Petersburg, making MacGregor his assistant. Carrick quickly made a name for himself capturing pictures of Russian life and pioneering Russian ethnographic photography, obtaining the patronage of Grand Duke Konstantine Nicholaievich of Russia, who presented him with a diamond ring in 1862. In 1865, Count Mihaly Zichy hired Carrick to take pictures of his watercolors, in order to resell them as prints. Carrick did similar business with other artists, Ivan Kramskoi, Viktor Vasnetsov, and Nikolai Ge; after his death in 1879 many of these were published in his Album of Russian Artists.

Carrick and MacGregor made several rural expeditions, including in 1871 a month long trip to Simbirsk province. He amassed a large collection of photographs depicting the lives of Russian and Mordovian peasants. In 1872 his colleague MacGregor died, leaving Carrick in despair. Despite this, Carrick continued his work. In 1876, he became photographer of the Academy of Arts, obtaining a studio in the Academy for his photography. An exhibition of his works was held in the Russian capital in 1869, followed by exhibitions at London (1876) and Paris (1878), all to great acclaim.

Carrick died of pneumonia, at St Petersburg, on November 11, 1878. William Carrick was noted in Russia for his height, which was 6 foot and 4 inches. He had married once, to one Aleksandra Grigorievna Markelova (1832–1916), fathering by her two sons, Dmitry and Valery, whilst adopting her son Grigory from an earlier marriage. He trained Grigory as a photographer, while Valery went on to become a famous caricaturist. His wife Aleksandra, nicknamed Sashura, was a liberal and a nihilist, and for a time the only female journalist at the Peterburskie Vedomosti ("St Petersburg Times").

Jack Welpott

"Jack Welpott at the Arles Railway Station, France",
by Bill Jay, 1981

"Photography is a holding together of opposites: Light and dark, beautiful and ugly, sublime and banal, concious and unconcious. I am still struck by the power of photography to strip away the bark of the mind and reveal the visceral workings underneath."

"Portrait photography is an experience between two human beings, an experience shared with the viewer through the resulting photograph. If the moment was charged with feeling the image can be personal and revealing.":  Women & Other Visions by Judy Dater, Jack Welpott , ISBN: 0871001020

"Part of the fascination that photography holds is its ability to unlock secrets kept even from ourselves. Like dreams, the photograph can uncork a heady bouquet of recognition which can escape into the cognitive world. Sometimes the aroma is sharp; sometimes dry. This "shock of recognition" can be, at times, unsettling – it can also be sublime. The expressive portrait can do these things.":  Women & Other Visions by Judy Dater, Jack Welpott , ISBN: 0871001020

"...to make a photograph as honestly as one can generates an artifact that bears witness to one’s personal truth."

Jack Welpott Photography

Barry Singer Gallery Portfolio

Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona Libraries:  Collection

Center for Photographic Arts:  Interview

Luminous Lint Portfolio

Pix Channel "What Makes Photographys Click" Interview

Smith Anderson North Gallery Portfolio

"To Jack Welpott, Whats's Outside is a Clue to Inside" by Abigail Foerstner for the Chicago Tribune

University of Virgina Collection

Books by Jack Welpott:

Driving to Stony Lonesome: Jack Welpott's Indiana Photographs, 1936-1959

The Halide Conversion

Women and Other Visions

I am most grateful to Jan Welpott and the Jack Welpott Legacy Trust for allowing me to
feature Mr. Welpott's work here on my blog





"Carnival Woman":
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"Imogene Cunningham":
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"Kathleen Kelly", 1972:
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"Geneviev", 1961:
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"The Rag Picker", ca. 1950:
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"Aaron Siskind", 1973:
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"Theresa Chua":
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"Near Sacramento":
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"Convent Wall":
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"Lincoln Park, San Francisco":
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"White Sands":
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"Voo Doo Doll":
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"Woman of the 50's":
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"Old Roses", 2002:
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

"Farmer Twins, Stineville, Indiana":
Copyright, Jack Welpott Legacy Trust

Biography from Jack Welpott Photography by Darwin Marable*:

Internationally known photographer and educator, Jack Welpott was born in Kansas City, Kansas on April 27, 1923, but grew up in Bloomington, Indiana. After high school he enrolled in Indiana University, but was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Force in 1943. He served in the South Pacific as a radio intercept operator until 1946. After WW II, he returned to Indiana University on the G.I. Bill where he earned an M.F.A degree studying with Henry Holmes Smith. Jack and Jerry Uelsmann were the first M.F.A. graduates while Van Deren Coke was also a graduate student. During these years, he became acquainted with Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Minor White all of whom were established photographers and pioneers in American photographic education.

Jack was hired in 1959 by John Gutmann, to teach photography within the Art Department at San Francisco State College, now San Francisco State University. He taught there for the next thirty-three years. When he arrived in San Francisco the Beat Generation was winding down in North Beach, however, he took advantage of the local poetry, jazz, art and culture. He also played jazz piano, which became a lifelong avocation. Years later he said, “When I’m working behind a camera, I feel like I’m trying to achieve something like a jazz musician does.” He also soon became associated with the local photographic community which included Ansel Adams, Ruth Bernard, Oliver Gagliani and Dorothea Lange.

At that time there were almost no photography courses or graduate programs offered at the university level anywhere in the United States. Jack pioneered in creating both photography courses and a graduate program. He also taught one of the first history of photography courses at the college/university level. While providing a solid basis in photographic technique, Jack always encouraged an appreciation of the master photographers. Also, he integrated the ideas of Carl G. Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst, into the reading of photographs, especially dreams, symbolism and the unconscious mind. Jack’s educational goal was to determine the needs of the student, provide constructive criticism and help them develop their own vision. A number of his students have become major contributors to photography: Judy Dater, Leland Rice, John Spence Weir, Michael Bishop, Harvey Himelfarb, and Catherine Wagner among numerous others.

In 1968, with Jack’s support, a number of his students formed the Visual Dialogue Foundation to promote their photographs by producing a portfolio, creating exhibitions, and, in general, publicizing their photographs as fine art. The Museum and Fine Arts Galleries in American had not yet accepted photography as a fine art. Although mindful of Group f64, a number of the members continued to work in the tradition of Group f64, while others began to experiment with photography. VDF became the vortex of San Francisco’s photographic community and established a bridge with Robert Heinecken, another pioneer at the University of California at Los Angeles, who was pushing the parameters of traditional American photography.

In a time of increasing specialization in photography, Jack was unique in that his work was both diverse and unexpected. Formal problems were always of major concern to him. His nudes were erotic and sensual interpretations of the female figure and his best known work. They can also easily mislead the viewer, because he was also interested in integrating subject and technique. Sensitivity to light and composition, especially spatial relations, were always major concerns. His interest in 19th century French painting, especially Henri Matisse, affected his vision. He was also an outstanding portrait photographer and his fragmented landscapes are visual poems which parallel some of the best in landscape photography.

Jack also liked to create new challenges for himself. During 1980 and 1981, he began exploring San Francisco’s cityscape when he photographed the financial district resulting in some unique, and, at times, critical views of the world of business. Known for his black and white photographs, during the 1980′s he photographed in fragments and in color, but always with restraint. And in the 1990′s, Jack combined a photogram of a projected seed pod with pen and ink drawing and hand coloring. In graduate school he studied painting and photography and also taught drawing. With an interest in Abstract Expressionism, he wanted to create a photograph in that genre.

Regarding the creation of a photograph, Jack revealed a mystical side when he stated, “There is the physical sensation of light penetrating everything. The world becomes luminous. Sometimes, one can see a wider, more brilliant, more significant, more detailed world than is apparent to others.”

Jack was a member of the Friends of Photography, Carmel, California and served on the Board of Trustees from 1973-1976. He was also a member of the Society for Photographic Education. In 1973 he was a recipient of the Medal of Arles, France, and in 1979 received a National Endowment for the Arts Grant.

His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Getty Museum, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum, New York; International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson; University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris and the Australian National Gallery among others.



*Darwin Marable was graduated from the University of New Mexico with a Ph.D. in the history of photography. He lectures at the University of California Berkeley Extension and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. His writings have been published in Afterimage, Artweek, Black & White Magazine, Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography, History of Photography, Lenswork, Photo Metro and The World & I (Washington, D.C. Times).

Louise Rosskam

Louise Rosskam and her husband, Edwin, by Charles
E. Rokin, late 1945 or early 1946

Image Sampler from The Library of Congress Women Photojournalists Project

Interview with Louise Rosskam under the auspices of the

Monmouth County Library Headquarters

Louise Rosskam on Shorpy

"Peaks and Valleys on a Small Island" by David Gonzales for the New York Times

Promotion for "Re-viewing Documentary:  The Photographic Life of Louise Rosskam" exhibition hosted by the American University Museum

"General Store, Lincoln, VT", 1940

"Sunbathing on the Commons, Vergennes, VT", 1940

"Canning Beans in Farm Kitchen near
Briston, VT", 1940

"Step Children, Washington, D.C.", 1942
(early Kodachrome)

"Air Raid Warden"
(early Kodachrome)

"Children's Army, Washington, D.C.", 1942
(early Kodachrome)

"On the Home Front"

"Children in Doorway at the Barney
Neighborhood Settlement"

From Rosskam's book
"Picturing Puerto Rico under the American Flag"



From Rosskam's book
"Picturing Puerto Rico under the American Flag"

  

From Rosskam's book
"Picturing Puerto Rico under the American Flag"

Biography from The Library of Congress Women Photojournalists Project:

Louise Rosskam (1910-2003) is one of the elusive pioneers of what has been called the golden age of documentary photography. Louise's story provides rare insight into the delicate balance women of her generation had to maintain between the domestic roles for which they were trained and the working world in which they labored. She produced meaningful images but opted to define her professional life largely in terms of her husband, Edwin (1903-1985). Working with him for nearly four decades, Louise photographed for newspapers, magazines, government agencies, corporations, political parties and service projects.

The Library of Congress has more than 150 photographs by Louise Rosskam in the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, in sets of photographs sponsored by the Standard Oil Company, and in a small group of images acquired from the photographer herself in 1999. See the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=louise+rosskam&sp=1&st=gallery


Early Life:

Leah Louise Rosenbaum was born in 1910 to a prosperous, assimilated Hungarian Jewish family in Philadelphia, but she herself never participated in organized religion. She worked her way through the University of Pennsylvania after her family lost its money during the Great Depression. She majored in science, one of the few courses then open to women. She encountered difficulty obtaining work as a microbiologist because of her gender and her religious background. A self-described rebel, Louise joined leftist circles in Greenwich Village and the burgeoning practice of socially concerned photography to which Edwin Rosskam introduced her. Louise adopted the documentary impulse of the era but recognized its limitations to bring about social change.

The Rosskams married in 1936 and began their life in photography in the rotogravure section of the Philadelphia Record. The newspaper would hire only Edwin so he listed Louise's wages as "gas and oil" in his expense account. Restless after a year, in November 1937 the Rosskams tried an assignment for the one-year old Life magazine. They went to the unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico to cover the trial of a Puerto Rican nationalist who had led an independence movement that erupted into The Ponce Massacre. Their story was dropped but on their short visit, they committed themselves to return to address humanitarian situations they observed there.

In 1938 the Rosskams began creating documentary picture books, a popular New Deal phenomenon, which coincided with the shift from modernist art photography to socially concerned photography. The Rosskams produced San Francisco: West Coast Metropolis (1939). Although Edwin acknowledged Louise for doing "all of the dirty work," only his name appears on the title pages of that and their next book. For Washington Nerve Center (1939), they relied heavily on images from the Farm Security Administration (FSA). During their research, they came to know Roy Stryker, director of the project.


New Deal Work:

In 1939 when Stryker asked Edwin to reorganize the FSA file, the Rosskams welcomed the steady income. Hearing Stryker brief his staff photographers enabled Louise to see the "unseeable" and to confront harsh realities in her own backyard near N Street S.W. in Washington, D.C. For instance, her photographs of a mock wedding sponsored by a settlement house document that only white children could participate in the cultural events designed to teach etiquette and proper behavior to the lower classes and recent immigrants.

Edwin's job security allowed Louise to freelance. She made custom photo books about the children of wealthy families and portraits of business and government leaders, some of which appeared in The New York Times. Her portrayal of notable figures for the "Interesting People" section of American Magazine stands out. She recalled, "I developed a technique of using three flash bulbs for a portrait, which froze the faces. They were horrible. But [the magazine editors] loved them."

Seeking to balance her uniquely urban experience, Rosskam ventured to New England in July 1940 to record Vermont's towns and countryside. Stryker commandeered these and subsequent photos for the FSA file. Photos of her Washington neighborhood (in color, using film provided to FSA/OWI photographers by Kodak) include Shulman's corner store, one of the few places where races could mix.

Rosskam deepened her racial education by participating in creating Richard Wright's and Edwin Rosskam's 1941 photo book Twelve Million Black Voices, a history of black experience in the United States. Louise helped search the FSA file for relevant photographs, and, like Edwin, defied the racial prejudices of the day by working with a black professional man in the segregated southern city Washington, D.C.

After the United States entered World War II in December 1942, Louise and Edwin prepared a Victory Garden series in May 1943, showing Americans growing their own vegetables because farmers had gone off to war.


Corporate Work:

In autumn 1943, the Rosskams joined Stryker at Standard Oil Company of New Jersey to tell the human story of oil in America. They felt uncomfortable working for a corporation but the opportunity to travel, the freedom on their assignments, and the generous salaries they earned seduced them. An added incentive was that Louise was on the payroll with the status of photographer, equal to her husband.

The Rosskams' most memorable experience on the Standard Oil project was documenting life on towboats and barges along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. They produced Towboat River (1948), an ambitious photo book that was greeted with rave reviews.


Picturing Puerto Rico:
Even before Towboat River was published, the couple departed for Puerto Rico where Edwin headed a photographic survey of the island along the lines of the FSA study of the mainland and Louise worked as a photographer for the project. Although they signed their pictures "The Rosskams," Louise was aware of what each of them contributed. Her microbiology training reinforced her emphasis on the crucial small moments in life. She noted that Edwin had big cameras and big ideas. In a 1979 interview, Louise said her smaller Rolleiflex enabled her to make eye contact with her subjects because a photographer can hold that type of camera at waist-level.

For the Puerto Rico Office of Information, Louise photographed laborers on coffee plantations, on tobacco farms, and in sugar cane fields. She documented the political activities of Luis Muñoz Marín, whose progressive Popular Democratic Party platform for "land reform, literacy, and the amelioration of poverty" was one she and Edwin agreed with. They developed close professional bonds with Muñoz Marín. With enormous regret, they left Puerto Rico in 1953 because their ties with him as governor drew criticism from political opponents.


Photography and Education:

Like many women photographers, Louise specialized in photographs of children. To support her family in the 1950s and 1960s, Louise taught science at the local school and provided photographs for the catalog of a company that made creative toys from natural products.

In 1967-68 the Rosskams immersed themselves in the New Jersey Migrant Program. Their photographs for the Cranbury Migrant School focus on efforts to break the migrant cycle for the southern black and Puerto Rican children who attended the schools.


Last Images:

Louise Rosskam's projects ceased temporarily in the late 1970s when Edwin began his struggle with lung cancer. After his death in 1985, she felt drawn to nature studies: waterscapes, a lone bird, an abandoned farm house--images that helped her grieve.

Her last major project--photographs from 1986 to 1990 showing dilapidated barns on abandoned farms in central New Jersey--marked another turning point in her artistic development. She approached the pictures as metaphors for her own profound loss, as well passionate eulogies to open spaces, farming as a way of life, and fields converted to housing developments and shopping malls.

Even after she was housebound, she continued to tell her story through photographs. She produced a photographically illustrated cookbook for her children that showed which bowls and pots she used for each recipe so they could relive the family's nurturing experiences after her death.


Final Thoughts:

In her last years, Louise began to value the uniqueness of her life's work. She started writing to institutions like the Library of Congress to correct misattributions. She wished to be written into the history of women photojournalists--women who, despite their increased opportunities brought on by the New Deal and the War, had to break from society's deeply engrained gender biases in order to produce some of the most eloquent pictures of the classic documentary tradition. And, when acknowledgment for her work came, Louise still felt ambivalent about changing public perception of her husband's photographic prowess at the expense of her own ego.

George Burke

George Burke and Lou Warneke

Pat Malone, Hack Wilson, Dan Taylor, "Gabby" Hartnett,, ca. 1930

Lou Gehrig, ca 1930

Ray Pepper, ca. 1932

Lefty Gomez

"Honus" Wagner, 1940

Bill Dickey, 1939

Jimmy Fox

Joe Dimagio, 1936

Babe Ruth, 1935

George Burke Biography from Cycleback.com -- The Center for Artifact Studies:

The Chicago photographer was active from the turn of the 20th century through the 1940s. He shot many of the images used to make the 1933-19355 Goudey baseball cards and was an official photographer for the Chicago Cubs, White Sox and NFL’s Bears. Most of his single player photographs on the market were made in the 1930s and have the distinct Goudey-style posed images. His photographs from this era are easy to authenticate. The backs will have his name and 807 Belmont Ave/Chicago address stamped in ink. The backs usually have typed information at the top, typically the player’s name and a cataloging number. They usually measure about 8" x 10” or postcard size and often have silvering. A few of these circa 1930s photos are reprints of earlier images, often made from his own turn of the century negatives or those of others photographers like Charles Conlon. These reprints are often of good quality and, as made in the 1930s, can fetch good prices if depicting someone like Ty Cobb or Walter Johnson.

Burke’s photographs are relatively plentiful and inexpensive compared to those of Charles Conlon. His photographs are of consistently high quality, with sharp focus and lush sepia-tinged tones. Burke is a case where even the collector with an average budget can buy a quality original photograph by a great photographer.

For years after his Burke’s death, his longtime business partner George Brace reprinted Burke photographs. These reprints usually have Brace’s stamp. The reprinted images are typically light in tone, on bright white paper and without the typically lush, sepia tinged tones of Burke’s originals. As Brace himself was a prominent baseball photographer and owned the exclusive rights to Burke’s negatives, these reprints are collectable, just not worth the same as Burke’s originals.

Original 8” x 10” photos shot by George Brace are also on the market, usually of 1950s - 60s baseball players and with his stamp on back. His originals are relatively plentiful but collectable.