The Malcolmson photography collection is anomalous. It celebrates photography at a time of unprecedented prominence for photography, yet it does not focus on the photo-based art that has received so much recent attention.
Essentially, the collection is archaic and backward looking. It focuses on the pre photo based art period in which photography existed as a discrete and segmented medium, with its separate history and character. The photographs are the images illustrated in books on the history of photography. The time frame is from William Fox Talbot, the 1839 inventor of the positive negative process, to the 1970s late works of Harry Callahan. We refer to the collection as “historic and vintage.” Historic in the sense of encompassing the history of photography and vintage in the sense we gravitate to pictures printed at about the same time as the photographer took the picture.
The collection represents 20 years of acquisitions and comprises about 150 images, about two thirds 20th century and one third 19th century. This exhibition is devoted to 19th century photographs with the qualification that the great French documentary photographer, Atget, is allocated to the 20th century. A second exhibition to include the 20th century images will follow this presentation.
Our collecting photography is also anomalous in that the time frame of our non-photography visual arts participation far exceeds our photography focus. We acquired Borduas in the 1950s, Harry wrote art criticism for Art Forum, Canadian Art and Toronto newspapers in the 1960s. Despite the depth of these involvements, in the 1980s we exited the remaining paintings from our walls and determined to pursue photography seriously. Each of us offers reasons for this; the problem is the explanations are not identical.
In any event, logically, we should have climbed on board the 1990s photo-based art bandwagon. But that didn't happen. Instead, the phenomenon made us more determined than ever to explore historic photography. Initially, as David Harris notes, we were absorbed by the rich and diverse photographic innovations in the period between the two World Wars. Subsequently, rather than move forward in time, we determined that if we wanted to understand photography we needed to understand its beginnings,
We thought that if we secured firm footing in the roots of photography, it would help us understand the medium to a degree otherwise not possible.
It is disappointing - at least to us -- that as photo-based art has evolved there is relatively little interest in its “photographic” roots as opposed to its “art” roots. For example, Jeff Wall allegories illustrate their meanings by drawing on art precedents. A couple of years ago in an attempt to achieve a better balance between the two art and photographic streams merged in photo-based art, we proposed an exhibition which would explore the photographic as opposed to art antecedents of photo based art. Such an exhibition would have been interesting but it didn't happen.
Photography Collecting
Time Frame
An element in our 1980's change of course was curiosity concerning an area of the visual arts that has received too little attention. It is only about 35 years ago that photography collecting achieved a critical mass of dealers, auctions, academics and private and institutional collectors. Photography existed for over a 100 years before the first history of photography was published. It is disappointing for us that collecting historic photography in a systematic manner has attracted little interest in Canada.
Photography as Art
From its beginnings, photography has been bedeviled by the debate whether photography is art. One of several problems with the “photography as art” issue is that it frames the debate as if photography was a subset of art in the way drawing and print making are linked to painting and sculpture. But historic photography is not a subset of art. It has a life of its own, separate from “art.” It is a diverse, democratic, sprawling activity, appearing in various guises. In a sense there is no photography as such; there is fashion photography, documentary photography, portrait photography, vernacular photography, ethnological photography, war photography, scientific photography and so on.
In view of our life long interest in the visual arts, it is probably not surprising that having determined to explore historic photography we would gravitate to images that display the aesthetic attributes of light and shade, volume and mass and texture common to great art. The excitement of our voyage of discovery is to have found these attributes in a body of work we didn't know existed.
It follows that our decision about which images to acquire is not driven by subject matter considerations. The collection includes views of Egypt and the Holy Land not from an interest in Egyptology but because we follow the photographers to the destinations they take us. The collection is not about subject matter and the content of the images but celebrates the vision and accomplishment of photographers.
A second theme underlies our collecting: an effort to delineate the history of photography - perhaps not a surprising interest of two long ago university graduates in Modern History. This ambition is by definition not possible of accomplishment; nonetheless we are attempting to assemble a group of photographs that are representative of each of significant developments and phases of the history of photography. At core the collection is about these two intertwined aesthetic and historical predispositions - the first represented by acquiring great photographs by great photographers and the second by works representative of the evolution of photography. In other words, in unique photographs and photography.
The Rational for the Exhibition
A word on the motivation for the mounting of an exhibition presented by the collectors themselves, perhaps a surprising circumstance given the experience that exhibitions of “not for sale” art typically occurs in public institutions, not in “for rent” galleries such as the Lennox Contemporary.- an ironic site given the non-contemporary content of the exhibition. The explanation is that Toronto viewers have had little opportunity to experience the extraordinary accomplishment of historic photography. The work of Stieglitz, Weston and Adams have achieved a degree of recognition but the masterworks of Baldus, Fenton, Le Gray, Salzmann and Negre are not all well known. The exhibition is offered to whoever is interested as an opportunity to experience art work that otherwise would not be available to the art audience. If viewers do not come away exhilarated by a sense of discovery we will be disappointed.
The Golden Age
In terms of individual works in the exhibition, the aesthetic impulse is represented by works produced during the golden age between the invention of photograph and the mid 1860s, a period in which photography was taken up, particularly in France, by individuals trained as artists and in England by gentlemen of leisure.
The early photographers were inventors in the sense that their role as first practitioners was to “invent” a vocabulary and context for the deployment of the extraordinary device. The aesthetic accomplishment was not the objective of picture taking but a byproduct flowing instinctively from the training and skills of the individual picture takers. The “golden age” photographers include Le Gray, Baldus, Salzmann, De Clercq, Du Camp, Teynard and Le Secq.
There is an intriguing link to photo based art in that several of the most accomplished photographers, initially trained as artists, turned to photography, produced work that might in to-day's terminology be referred to as “photo based art”. In 1856 a respected contemporary commentator remarked: “All the most able photographers are painters, people for whom a feeling for beauty is inculcated by special study or education.”
A second aspect reinforcing the parallels between contemporary photo based art and 19th century artist/photographers is the employment by 19th century photographers of a digital-like means of constructing photographs. One of the Le Gray images is composed of two negatives, one of which records the foreground and the second, the sky. Baldus utilized up to eight negatives to construct an image. The principles of “combination printing,” as the process of joining multiple negatives to create a print was known in the 19th century, and to-day's digital enhancements are conceptually linked.
Emphasizing the aesthetic accomplishment, however, does not suggest that the artistic aspirations were accepted and recognized. Photography as a machine made product was dismissed by many as incapable of achieving artistic effects. Seeking recognition as artists, the photographers aggressively sought entry to art salons and exhibitions of the period, only to be rebuffed. At the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, photographs were allocated to a class of “Philosophical Instruments” in the “Machines” section. In the face of insistent demands for equality, the organizers of a late 1850s exhibition in France agreed to present photographers in an area adjacent to painting but subject to the requirement of separate visitor entrances.
The relationship between artists and photographers of the period is an organic and ongoing dialogue. A case in point is the acclaimed Courbet retrospective exhibition currently at the Grand Palais in Paris. Photographs by Le Secq, Marville, Le Gray and others are presented as integral components of the exhibition. There is an uncanny relationship between Courbet paintings of waves breaking on shore and Le Gray's earlier great seascape studies, represented in this exhibition by The Great Wave, Sete.
It is reasonable to anticipate that the photographic accomplishments on the Gallery walls would track to public acclaim for the photographers. This is far from what occurred at the time. Photographic accomplishment occurred in fits and starts, in arbitrary pockets. All too frequently, a body of work of great accomplishment is not followed up by work of equivalent quality, or even additional photographic work whatever.
In the 1850s photography rode a crest of popularity fuelled by its novelty and the exclusivity enjoyed by individuals capable of overcoming the challenges of producing an attractive finished print. The commercialization and popularization of photographic production undercut the prestige and status of the product of serious photographers. Merely two years after Le Gray produced his masterful seascapes, hounded by creditors he fled France for Egypt where he died in obscurity. In the early 1860s, Roger Fenton, the greatest English practitioner terminated his photographic activities and returned to the practice of law.
Thereafter, we are blessed with the remarkable accomplishments of the self-taught Julia Margaret Cameron in the 1860s and 1870s and P.H. Emerson in the 1880s. That these manifestations were isolated flare ups rather than leaders of active movements is a telltale sign of the declining photographic environment.
A fog of obscurity descended on 19th century photography until the revival of interest in our lifetime, In our view the masterworks of the period are too little known and appreciated in Canada; hence this exhibition.
We extend thanks to the Ryerson School of Image Arts, Exhibition Curator, Professor David Harris, and to Alana West, Alison Skyrme and Alan Grogan for their diligent efforts in support of the exhibition. The original thought was that the two of us would undertake the exhibition on our own. Ryerson's participation has endowed the exhibition with a professionalism that otherwise would not be possible and we are indeed grateful.
Ann Malcolmson
Harry Malcolmson