Since the early nineties a growing number of theoreticians have become more sensible to the diffe... more Since the early nineties a growing number of theoreticians have become more sensible to the different material, cultural, social and aesthetic contexts in which photographic images appear and which help constitute their meanings. As a result several new fields of investigation have come into being. One such field of inquiry looks at the way photographic images are employed within the concrete context of the photographic book and the illustrated magazine. In the last two decades studies on this topic have flourished — some more ambitious than oth- ers—,1 various international colloquia and symposia2 have been organized and impressive exhibitions3 staged to capture the far-reaching implications for the production, distribution and interpretation of photographic images by this new material support.
One of the consequences of being a component of a book or illustrated mag- azine is that the photographic image becomes part of a complex system in which different actors play a part. The photographic image immediately loses its auton- omy: set out in a particular way, it is brought into contact with other images (not necessarily photographic) and different kinds of text (introductory remarks, cap- tions, comments, descriptions,...). More than any other book, the photobook is of a heterogeneous nature.
Rather than formulating a general theory of the photographic book, the authors of this volume aim to describe the complex relationships that evolve out of this concerted effort of photographer, publisher, author and book designer. In their analysis of specific photobooks, several topics are addressed: how typographers and typography in general influenced the development of the photographic book as a modern medium and consequently photography itself, how editors, photog- raphers and writers used the photobook as an experimental space where words and images were welded together in ever new constellations, how the illustrated
magazine as a new channel of distribution changed the formal language of at least one modern photographer, how broader societal changes are prefigured by means of the interplay of text and image, etc. Taken together these texts present myriad ways of dealing with the complex construction that is the photographic book and as such testify to the vitality of this field of photographic studies.
Although the combination of the two media, one old (the printing press) and one new (photography), has a long history — even dating back to William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the early inventors of photography — the real merger took place in the late twenties and early thirties of the twentieth century when the develop- ment of new and better printing techniques (the introduction of the heliogravure for instance) and the establishment of massive press conglomerates churning out newspapers and magazines on an industrial scale, laid the foundation for a symbiotic relationship between the printing press and photography. Together they created a whole new environment where the photographic image could prosper. It seems appropriate, therefore, to devote this volume to a study of the defining moment in the coming of age of the photobook during the interwar years.
The Indian photographer Dayanita Singh (°1961) began her photographic career in the 1980's, mostl... more The Indian photographer Dayanita Singh (°1961) began her photographic career in the 1980's, mostly working on assignment as a photojournalist. Next to these more professional jobs she also developed several personal projects. One of these resulted in 1986 in the publication of Zakir Hussain: A Photo Essay, her first photobook. The book (also shown in the exhibition) focuses on the Indian musician Zakir Hussain, a tabla maestro she met while studying at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. Already two defining aspects of her work shine through in this publication: her fascination for a specific topic (music and the dancing body that goes with it) and her preference for the book as the privileged form for public dissemination.
This is a review of one of the 20th century's most important and influential artist, Laszlo Mohol... more This is a review of one of the 20th century's most important and influential artist, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy - an artist who conceived the various forms of art as a whole. Moholy-Nagy wanted to be a "total artist", simultaneously theoretical and practical, creating in various media and trying to overcome the separation between art and life. His was a radical, experimental art, without sacrificing any artistic practice and wandering from painting, to photography, to films. He also gave great importance to education and believed that man is the only builder of his existence. He was convinced of the importance of art and its ideological and educational functions. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: The Art of Light; presents Moholy-Nagy's work in all of its glorious unity and diversity. Including more than 200 works, from painting, and photographs to collages, films and graphic design, it emphasizes his greatest years of productivity, from 1922 to the end of his life.
Since the early nineties a growing number of theoreticians have become more sensible to the diffe... more Since the early nineties a growing number of theoreticians have become more sensible to the different material, cultural, social and aesthetic contexts in which photographic images appear and which help constitute their meanings. As a result several new fields of investigation have come into being. One such field of inquiry looks at the way photographic images are employed within the concrete context of the photographic book and the illustrated magazine. In the last two decades studies on this topic have flourished — some more ambitious than oth- ers—,1 various international colloquia and symposia2 have been organized and impressive exhibitions3 staged to capture the far-reaching implications for the production, distribution and interpretation of photographic images by this new material support.
One of the consequences of being a component of a book or illustrated mag- azine is that the photographic image becomes part of a complex system in which different actors play a part. The photographic image immediately loses its auton- omy: set out in a particular way, it is brought into contact with other images (not necessarily photographic) and different kinds of text (introductory remarks, cap- tions, comments, descriptions,...). More than any other book, the photobook is of a heterogeneous nature.
Rather than formulating a general theory of the photographic book, the authors of this volume aim to describe the complex relationships that evolve out of this concerted effort of photographer, publisher, author and book designer. In their analysis of specific photobooks, several topics are addressed: how typographers and typography in general influenced the development of the photographic book as a modern medium and consequently photography itself, how editors, photog- raphers and writers used the photobook as an experimental space where words and images were welded together in ever new constellations, how the illustrated
magazine as a new channel of distribution changed the formal language of at least one modern photographer, how broader societal changes are prefigured by means of the interplay of text and image, etc. Taken together these texts present myriad ways of dealing with the complex construction that is the photographic book and as such testify to the vitality of this field of photographic studies.
Although the combination of the two media, one old (the printing press) and one new (photography), has a long history — even dating back to William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the early inventors of photography — the real merger took place in the late twenties and early thirties of the twentieth century when the develop- ment of new and better printing techniques (the introduction of the heliogravure for instance) and the establishment of massive press conglomerates churning out newspapers and magazines on an industrial scale, laid the foundation for a symbiotic relationship between the printing press and photography. Together they created a whole new environment where the photographic image could prosper. It seems appropriate, therefore, to devote this volume to a study of the defining moment in the coming of age of the photobook during the interwar years.
The Indian photographer Dayanita Singh (°1961) began her photographic career in the 1980's, mostl... more The Indian photographer Dayanita Singh (°1961) began her photographic career in the 1980's, mostly working on assignment as a photojournalist. Next to these more professional jobs she also developed several personal projects. One of these resulted in 1986 in the publication of Zakir Hussain: A Photo Essay, her first photobook. The book (also shown in the exhibition) focuses on the Indian musician Zakir Hussain, a tabla maestro she met while studying at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. Already two defining aspects of her work shine through in this publication: her fascination for a specific topic (music and the dancing body that goes with it) and her preference for the book as the privileged form for public dissemination.
This is a review of one of the 20th century's most important and influential artist, Laszlo Mohol... more This is a review of one of the 20th century's most important and influential artist, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy - an artist who conceived the various forms of art as a whole. Moholy-Nagy wanted to be a "total artist", simultaneously theoretical and practical, creating in various media and trying to overcome the separation between art and life. His was a radical, experimental art, without sacrificing any artistic practice and wandering from painting, to photography, to films. He also gave great importance to education and believed that man is the only builder of his existence. He was convinced of the importance of art and its ideological and educational functions. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: The Art of Light; presents Moholy-Nagy's work in all of its glorious unity and diversity. Including more than 200 works, from painting, and photographs to collages, films and graphic design, it emphasizes his greatest years of productivity, from 1922 to the end of his life.
Paper Cities. Urban Portraits in Photographic Books
The experience of reading a photobook is always a rich sensorial one: the weight of the book, it... more The experience of reading a photobook is always a rich sensorial one: the weight of the book, its format, the tactility of the paper, the design of the page, the orienta- tion of the pictures on the double spread, they all in uence the understanding of the images the book contains. In the regular analysis of the photobook these material aspects are normally suppressed. The book itself, so it seems, is nothing more than a vessel that contains images and organizes them in such a way that a ‘story’, a ‘his- tory’, a ‘viewpoint’ unfolds. In my experience as a researcher of several photobooks on the city, however, I noticed that the material and formal conditions of the books were able to express an experience of the city that goes far beyond a mere visual description of it. As I will demonstrate in my analysis of two particular photobooks of avenues in New York the alliance between book (printing culture) and image (visual culture) made it possible for the photographic image to translate in visual terms the experience one has when strolling, walking, running through a street.
A conversation with Markus Kramer within the framework of the publication 'Off Camera' which deal... more A conversation with Markus Kramer within the framework of the publication 'Off Camera' which deals with the influence of photography on the field of the visual arts in general.
A conversation with Belgian photographer Marc De Blieck within the framework of the publication '... more A conversation with Belgian photographer Marc De Blieck within the framework of the publication 'Off Camera' which deals with the influence of photography on the field of visual arts in general.
The central subject of my Ph.D. is the photo book Changing New York. This in 1939 by E.P. Dutton ... more The central subject of my Ph.D. is the photo book Changing New York. This in 1939 by E.P. Dutton published book contains 97 images made by the American photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991). The images were part of a much larger project, also titled Changing New York, initiated and executed by Berenice Abbott and funded from 1935 onwards (until 1939) by the Federal Art Project, which resulted in the production of 305 images. For a long time the book was the only public available source for (some of) the images that were produced within the framework of this project. Only in 1997, six years after Abbott died, the complete project (all 305 images) would finally be published. This publication was based on the thorough research of Bonnie Yochelson, curator of the Prints and Photographs Department at the Museum of the City of New York. In her introduction she describes the Dutton-book of 1939 as a failure, largely due to the awkward book design and the non-involvement of Abbott in the editing of her own book. This rather stern judgment seems to conflict somewhat with the inclusion of Changing New York in two recent anthologies of photographic books (Andrew Roth’s The Book of 101 Books. The Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century and Martin Parr & Gerry Badger’s The Photobook. A History, Volume 1). But even in these anthologies one cannot help but notice a certain lack of interest in the book: the editors of these anthologies were still impressed by Abbott’s images but not so much with the book itself.
Instead of relegating the book to the fringes of Abbott’s photographic oeuvre, I take it serious. First I will argue that the book exudes a similar complexity as the project itself. To shed to some light on the multifaceted nature of the project, I will approach it from four different angles. First I will take a look at the scrapbook that Abbott put together between 1929 and 1930 and which can be seen as a first attempt to visualize the changing city. This scrapbook consisted solely of 35mm images. As I will put forward in my analysis of this scrapbook, these small images, clearly marked by the avant-garde sensibility of European photographers as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Aleksandr Rodchenko, ought to be regarded as a first, superficial exploration of a possible subject. They are quick snapshots, showing the rising skyscrapers and the thriving city life as indications of a rapidly changing city, but they do not intend to reveal the (political, architectural, socio-economic) systems that lie behind this change. Secondly I will explore the influence of the city images of the French photographer Eugène Atget. Abbott first saw his images while living abroad in Paris. Eventually she would even, after Atget’s death, acquire his archive and champion it selflessly for the coming decades. She was impressed by his documentation of the old city of Paris. His pictures incited her to switch to a large format camera (a view camera). As I will argue, it’s not as much the topic of his pictures, but his working method and his acute sense of knowing where to put the camera, that became very important for the further development of Abbott’s photographic sensibility. Thirdly I will focus more on the meaning of the word ‘changing’ in the title of het project. How do we have to understand this word (why ‘changing’ and not ‘changed’, for instance) and how could photography address this process of change? Finally I will discuss Abbott’s relationship to the FAP, a government agency, and how it forced her to clarify her definition of the project as ‘documentary’. This first part not only shows how these different encounters shape the project, but also how Abbott resists to a simple absorption and mechanical application of these influences.
This first part of my Ph.D. ends with a thorough analysis of the 1939 publication. In contrast to the aforementioned authors (and also other scholars as Terri Weissman for instance who only recently published a study on Abbott’s oeuvre in which she repeats Yochelsons disapproval of Changing New York), my thesis is that the book is a much more layered object that gives everybody involved (the photographer Berenice Abbott, the author Elisabeth McCausland, the publisher E.P. Dutton, the FAP as producer) his due. Using the methodological concept of the ‘paratexte’ as coined by the French literary theorist Gérard Genette, it became possible to read it as an outcome in which no one could claim to be the sole purveyor of the meaning of the book. The book does not only (as Yochelson and Weissman would maintain) speak of the commercial intentions of the publisher and political motives of the producer, but has the nature of a collective enterprise where different voices come together. As my analysis will show, the sequencing of the pictures in six different chapters reveal the complexity of Abbott’s approach of the city. As such, and contrary to the prevailing view, the book actually gives a rather complete picture of what Abbott herself tried to address in her Changing New York-project.
My analysis of the book made me not only aware of the intricateness of the project, but also of that of each of the images. The second part of my Ph.D. aims at getting a clearer view of what is at stake in some of these images. Based on the marked preponderance of images of two avenues in the Changing New York-project, Broadway and Fifth Avenue, I decided to focus my attention on these two avenues. Further research however revealed that Fifth Avenue was also a recurrent topic in other photographic books, more so than Broadway. Between 1910 and 1948 five books were published that had Fifth Avenue as their central theme, whereas during that same period there was only one book published on Broadway. Furthermore, as Max Page made clear in his outstanding analysis of the architectural development of interwar New York, Fifth Avenue was at the heart of a fierce debate on the future growth of the city. For these reasons I finally decided to focus my attention on Fifth Avenue. I start with an introduction to the Fifth Avenue Association, an association of homeowners, merchants and residents of Fifth Avenue that became a crucial force in the debate on the future shape of the Fifth Avenue-section (and ultimately of the whole city surrounding it). In the following chapter I analyze different photographically illustrated books that deal, at least partially, with Fifth Avenue: two late nineteenth century city guides published by Moses King (King’s Handbook of New York and King’s Views of New York) and one city book published in 1899 (E. Idell Zeisloft’s The New Metropolis). The next chapter looks at five photo books that are exclusively devoted to Fifth Avenue. The aim is to establish a visual and textual context for the understanding of Abbott’s images of the same avenue: how do these books describe the avenue, what images (textual and visual) do they use and how do they organize their visual material? The last chapter focuses on some of the images Abbott took of Fifth Avenue. In this chapter I present two case studies, one relates to an image of Washington Square Park and another one to the Flatiron Building. The image of Washington Square Park has a tall building in the background, One Fifth Avenue, a luxury apartment building. This large, looming building can also be seen in five of the other images that Abbott took in the neighborhood of Washington Square Park. In confronting these images of One Fifth Avenue with each other, I examine the way in which Abbott tries to articulate the different meanings attached to this (relatively) new high-rise. In the second case study, concerning the Flatiron Building, I pore over Abbott’s image after scrutinizing postcards of the same building and the carefully constructed images by three renowned pictorialist photographers (Edweard Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, and Alvin Langdon Coburn). In comparing Abbott’s photograph with popular and elitist representations of the Flatiron Building, I argue that her image can be read as a succinct dialogue with these older representations. And with these two case studies the Ph.D. ends. It presents a trajectory that starts with a rather broad approach to the project as a whole to get finally as close as possible to the images. As such it tries to give the image its rightful place again: ultimately, that’s where ‘it’ happens.
Uploads
Books (as editor) by Steven Humblet
One of the consequences of being a component of a book or illustrated mag- azine is that the photographic image becomes part of a complex system in which different actors play a part. The photographic image immediately loses its auton- omy: set out in a particular way, it is brought into contact with other images (not necessarily photographic) and different kinds of text (introductory remarks, cap- tions, comments, descriptions,...). More than any other book, the photobook is of a heterogeneous nature.
Rather than formulating a general theory of the photographic book, the authors of this volume aim to describe the complex relationships that evolve out of this concerted effort of photographer, publisher, author and book designer. In their analysis of specific photobooks, several topics are addressed: how typographers and typography in general influenced the development of the photographic book as a modern medium and consequently photography itself, how editors, photog- raphers and writers used the photobook as an experimental space where words and images were welded together in ever new constellations, how the illustrated
magazine as a new channel of distribution changed the formal language of at least one modern photographer, how broader societal changes are prefigured by means of the interplay of text and image, etc. Taken together these texts present myriad ways of dealing with the complex construction that is the photographic book and as such testify to the vitality of this field of photographic studies.
Although the combination of the two media, one old (the printing press) and one new (photography), has a long history — even dating back to William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the early inventors of photography — the real merger took place in the late twenties and early thirties of the twentieth century when the develop- ment of new and better printing techniques (the introduction of the heliogravure for instance) and the establishment of massive press conglomerates churning out newspapers and magazines on an industrial scale, laid the foundation for a symbiotic relationship between the printing press and photography. Together they created a whole new environment where the photographic image could prosper. It seems appropriate, therefore, to devote this volume to a study of the defining moment in the coming of age of the photobook during the interwar years.
Exhibition Reviews by Steven Humblet
Papers by Steven Humblet
One of the consequences of being a component of a book or illustrated mag- azine is that the photographic image becomes part of a complex system in which different actors play a part. The photographic image immediately loses its auton- omy: set out in a particular way, it is brought into contact with other images (not necessarily photographic) and different kinds of text (introductory remarks, cap- tions, comments, descriptions,...). More than any other book, the photobook is of a heterogeneous nature.
Rather than formulating a general theory of the photographic book, the authors of this volume aim to describe the complex relationships that evolve out of this concerted effort of photographer, publisher, author and book designer. In their analysis of specific photobooks, several topics are addressed: how typographers and typography in general influenced the development of the photographic book as a modern medium and consequently photography itself, how editors, photog- raphers and writers used the photobook as an experimental space where words and images were welded together in ever new constellations, how the illustrated
magazine as a new channel of distribution changed the formal language of at least one modern photographer, how broader societal changes are prefigured by means of the interplay of text and image, etc. Taken together these texts present myriad ways of dealing with the complex construction that is the photographic book and as such testify to the vitality of this field of photographic studies.
Although the combination of the two media, one old (the printing press) and one new (photography), has a long history — even dating back to William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the early inventors of photography — the real merger took place in the late twenties and early thirties of the twentieth century when the develop- ment of new and better printing techniques (the introduction of the heliogravure for instance) and the establishment of massive press conglomerates churning out newspapers and magazines on an industrial scale, laid the foundation for a symbiotic relationship between the printing press and photography. Together they created a whole new environment where the photographic image could prosper. It seems appropriate, therefore, to devote this volume to a study of the defining moment in the coming of age of the photobook during the interwar years.
Instead of relegating the book to the fringes of Abbott’s photographic oeuvre, I take it serious. First I will argue that the book exudes a similar complexity as the project itself. To shed to some light on the multifaceted nature of the project, I will approach it from four different angles. First I will take a look at the scrapbook that Abbott put together between 1929 and 1930 and which can be seen as a first attempt to visualize the changing city. This scrapbook consisted solely of 35mm images. As I will put forward in my analysis of this scrapbook, these small images, clearly marked by the avant-garde sensibility of European photographers as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Aleksandr Rodchenko, ought to be regarded as a first, superficial exploration of a possible subject. They are quick snapshots, showing the rising skyscrapers and the thriving city life as indications of a rapidly changing city, but they do not intend to reveal the (political, architectural, socio-economic) systems that lie behind this change. Secondly I will explore the influence of the city images of the French photographer Eugène Atget. Abbott first saw his images while living abroad in Paris. Eventually she would even, after Atget’s death, acquire his archive and champion it selflessly for the coming decades. She was impressed by his documentation of the old city of Paris. His pictures incited her to switch to a large format camera (a view camera). As I will argue, it’s not as much the topic of his pictures, but his working method and his acute sense of knowing where to put the camera, that became very important for the further development of Abbott’s photographic sensibility. Thirdly I will focus more on the meaning of the word ‘changing’ in the title of het project. How do we have to understand this word (why ‘changing’ and not ‘changed’, for instance) and how could photography address this process of change? Finally I will discuss Abbott’s relationship to the FAP, a government agency, and how it forced her to clarify her definition of the project as ‘documentary’. This first part not only shows how these different encounters shape the project, but also how Abbott resists to a simple absorption and mechanical application of these influences.
This first part of my Ph.D. ends with a thorough analysis of the 1939 publication. In contrast to the aforementioned authors (and also other scholars as Terri Weissman for instance who only recently published a study on Abbott’s oeuvre in which she repeats Yochelsons disapproval of Changing New York), my thesis is that the book is a much more layered object that gives everybody involved (the photographer Berenice Abbott, the author Elisabeth McCausland, the publisher E.P. Dutton, the FAP as producer) his due. Using the methodological concept of the ‘paratexte’ as coined by the French literary theorist Gérard Genette, it became possible to read it as an outcome in which no one could claim to be the sole purveyor of the meaning of the book. The book does not only (as Yochelson and Weissman would maintain) speak of the commercial intentions of the publisher and political motives of the producer, but has the nature of a collective enterprise where different voices come together. As my analysis will show, the sequencing of the pictures in six different chapters reveal the complexity of Abbott’s approach of the city. As such, and contrary to the prevailing view, the book actually gives a rather complete picture of what Abbott herself tried to address in her Changing New York-project.
My analysis of the book made me not only aware of the intricateness of the project, but also of that of each of the images. The second part of my Ph.D. aims at getting a clearer view of what is at stake in some of these images. Based on the marked preponderance of images of two avenues in the Changing New York-project, Broadway and Fifth Avenue, I decided to focus my attention on these two avenues. Further research however revealed that Fifth Avenue was also a recurrent topic in other photographic books, more so than Broadway. Between 1910 and 1948 five books were published that had Fifth Avenue as their central theme, whereas during that same period there was only one book published on Broadway. Furthermore, as Max Page made clear in his outstanding analysis of the architectural development of interwar New York, Fifth Avenue was at the heart of a fierce debate on the future growth of the city. For these reasons I finally decided to focus my attention on Fifth Avenue. I start with an introduction to the Fifth Avenue Association, an association of homeowners, merchants and residents of Fifth Avenue that became a crucial force in the debate on the future shape of the Fifth Avenue-section (and ultimately of the whole city surrounding it). In the following chapter I analyze different photographically illustrated books that deal, at least partially, with Fifth Avenue: two late nineteenth century city guides published by Moses King (King’s Handbook of New York and King’s Views of New York) and one city book published in 1899 (E. Idell Zeisloft’s The New Metropolis). The next chapter looks at five photo books that are exclusively devoted to Fifth Avenue. The aim is to establish a visual and textual context for the understanding of Abbott’s images of the same avenue: how do these books describe the avenue, what images (textual and visual) do they use and how do they organize their visual material? The last chapter focuses on some of the images Abbott took of Fifth Avenue. In this chapter I present two case studies, one relates to an image of Washington Square Park and another one to the Flatiron Building. The image of Washington Square Park has a tall building in the background, One Fifth Avenue, a luxury apartment building. This large, looming building can also be seen in five of the other images that Abbott took in the neighborhood of Washington Square Park. In confronting these images of One Fifth Avenue with each other, I examine the way in which Abbott tries to articulate the different meanings attached to this (relatively) new high-rise. In the second case study, concerning the Flatiron Building, I pore over Abbott’s image after scrutinizing postcards of the same building and the carefully constructed images by three renowned pictorialist photographers (Edweard Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, and Alvin Langdon Coburn). In comparing Abbott’s photograph with popular and elitist representations of the Flatiron Building, I argue that her image can be read as a succinct dialogue with these older representations. And with these two case studies the Ph.D. ends. It presents a trajectory that starts with a rather broad approach to the project as a whole to get finally as close as possible to the images. As such it tries to give the image its rightful place again: ultimately, that’s where ‘it’ happens.