19th Century Photographs from the Malcolmson Collection

19th Century Photographs from the Malcolmson Collection

This exhibition celebrates the 19th century photographs in the collection of Ann and Harry Malcolmson, two Toronto collectors, and provides an opportunity to appreciate the qualities of original prints while offering reflections on how photography was seen and understood during that period.

The Collection

The Malcolmsons have been immersed in both Canadian and international contemporary art since the 1960s, and have collected paintings, prints, and, over the last fifteen years, photographs. In the mid-1980s, they became aware of photo-based art, and were intrigued by not only the relationship between art and photography, but also the nature of photography’s own traditions. Attracted initially to modernist photography, they built their collection around a core of photographers practicing largely between the two wars: Manual Alvarez Bravo, Bill Brandt, André Kertész, Man Ray, Tina Modotti, Aleksandr Rodchenko, John Vanderpant, and Edward Weston, among others.

In 1999, they turned their attention to the 19th century, to the birth of the medium, and in that year acquired Édouard Baldus’ monumental Chateau of the Princess Mathilde, Enghein (1854-55), and one of J. B. Greene’s 1853-54 austere Egyptian landscape views, both redolent of “modernist” sensibilities. Over the following seven years, the Malcolmsons actively developed this part of their collection, concentrating upon the first three decades of photography, the 1840s through the 1860s, and assembling related groups of images by Édouard Baldus, Louis de Clercq, Maxime Du Camp, Gustave Le Gray, and Charles Marville in addition to striking images by Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, Charles Nègre, Auguste Salzmann, and Adrien Tounachon.

At present, the entire collection comprises over 150 images, spanning the history of photography from William Henry Fox Talbot’s 1845 magisterial image of York Minster to recent work by Vancouver artists Ian Wallace and Scott McFarlane. The collection, ever evolving, is a personal response to the medium and the achievements of its notable practitioners.

The Exhibition

The exhibition is presented in the upper gallery. Standing in the centre of the room, one can sense the exhilaration that greeted these images at the time of their creation. Photography’s richness and possibilities, its diverse uses and applications are laid out before us. In the 19th century, such images reinforced the conviction that the entire world, in all its variety, could be documented, assembled, classified and, in miniature form, brought home to one’s library. Empirical knowledge merged seamlessly with wonder and astonishment. However, through greater familiarity with the history of the medium and the politics of its practices and uses, we now see photographs as forms of cultural intervention and interpretation, revealing as much about the society that embraced them as about the world that they so faithfully appeared to describe.

The exhibition has been organized into themes that correspond to how photography was used and perceived at its inception: as a response to the urban environment, an incentive to travel, an adjunct to archaeology, ethnography, and tourism, an aid to painters, and as an art form in itself. At the same time, the exhibition highlights the vision of individual photographers by presenting clusters of their work, and emphasizes the aesthetic qualities inherent in photographic prints. The two display cases in the centre of the gallery illustrate 19th century negative and printing processes.

This exhibition has been researched and curated by Professor David Harris, School of Image Arts, Ryerson University, with the assistance of Alison Skyrme and Alana West, a recent graduate and a current student in the Photographic Preservation and Collection Management Programme, a two-year graduate programme jointly offered by Ryerson University and the George Eastman House in Rochester New York.

INTRODUCTION
	19th Century Photographs from the Malcolmson Collection This exhibition celebrates the 19th century photographs in the collection of Ann and Harry Malcolmson, two Toronto collectors, and provides an opportunity to appreciate the qualities of original prints while offering reflections on how photography was seen and understood during that period. The Collection The Malcolmsons have been immersed in both Canadian and international contemporary art since the 1960s, and have collected paintings, prints, and, over the last fifteen years, photographs. In the mid-1980s, they became aware of photo-based art, and were intrigued by not only the relationship between art and photography, but also the nature of photography’s own traditions. Attracted initially to modernist photography, they built their collection around a core of photographers practicing largely between the two wars: Manual Alvarez Bravo, Bill Brandt, André Kertész, Man Ray, Tina Modotti, Aleksandr Rodchenko, John Vanderpant, and Edward Weston, among others. In 1999, they turned their attention to the 19th century, to the birth of the medium, and in that year acquired Édouard Baldus’ monumental Chateau of the Princess Mathilde, Enghein (1854-55), and one of J. B. Greene’s 1853-54 austere Egyptian landscape views, both redolent of “modernist” sensibilities. Over the following seven years, the Malcolmsons actively developed this part of their collection, concentrating upon the first three decades of photography, the 1840s through the 1860s, and assembling related groups of images by Édouard Baldus, Louis de Clercq, Maxime Du Camp, Gustave Le Gray, and Charles Marville in addition to striking images by Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, Charles Nègre, Auguste Salzmann, and Adrien Tounachon. At present, the entire collection comprises over 150 images, spanning the history of photography from William Henry Fox Talbot’s 1845 magisterial image of York Minster to recent work by Vancouver artists Ian Wallace and Scott McFarlane. The collection, ever evolving, is a personal response to the medium and the achievements of its notable practitioners. The Exhibition The exhibition is presented in the upper gallery. Standing in the centre of the room, one can sense the exhilaration that greeted these images at the time of their creation. Photography’s richness and possibilities, its diverse uses and applications are laid out before us. In the 19th century, such images reinforced the conviction that the entire world, in all its variety, could be documented, assembled, classified and, in miniature form, brought home to one’s library. Empirical knowledge merged seamlessly with wonder and astonishment. However, through greater familiarity with the history of the medium and the politics of its practices and uses, we now see photographs as forms of cultural intervention and interpretation, revealing as much about the society that embraced them as about the world that they so faithfully appeared to describe. The exhibition has been organized into themes that correspond to how photography was used and perceived at its inception: as a response to the urban environment, an incentive to travel, an adjunct to archaeology, ethnography, and tourism, an aid to painters, and as an art form in itself. At the same time, the exhibition highlights the vision of individual photographers by presenting clusters of their work, and emphasizes the aesthetic qualities inherent in photographic prints. The two display cases in the centre of the gallery illustrate 19th century negative and printing processes. This exhibition has been researched and curated by Professor David Harris, School of Image Arts, Ryerson University, with the assistance of Alison Skyrme and Alana West, a recent graduate and a current student in the Photographic Preservation and Collection Management Programme, a two-year graduate programme jointly offered by Ryerson University and the George Eastman House in Rochester New York.

INTRODUCTION