Six American Documentary Photographers, 1890-1915 Tints & Drawings Galleries June 9/Julyl2The Metropolitan Museum of Art Jacob Riis Percy Byron Charles Currier Arnold Genthe Lewis Hine Frances Johnston

Lewis Hine, "Newsboys in St. Louis," co. 1910. Lent by the National Committee (or the Employment of Youth •

Six American Documentary Photographers, 1890-1915 Prints & Drawings Galleries June 9/July 12Tne Metropolitan Museum of Art Jacob Riis Percy Efyron Charles Currier Arnold Genthe Lewis Hine Frances Johnston

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Lewis Hine, "New sboys in St. Lou s," ca. 1910. Lent by the N ational Committ se for the Employment of 1Youth

The word "documentary" is used here with some reluctance for there is general agreement that photography has too long been burdened with labels and categories into which the most gifted photographers rarely fit. In place of "documentary" others have used "commercial", "journal­ istic", or "straight," words which connote photography that communicates directly rather than through posed or artificially contrived compositions. One of the questions suggested by this exhibition is whether we in the mid-twentieth century appreciate the photographs for the same reasons as the audience for whom they were created. We sense immedi­ ately that our pleasure in seeing a bygone age rendered in its myr­ iad details, albeit two dimensionally, and in black and white, is not far from the reaction contemporaries must have had in seeing aspects of life as remote to them as the whole era is to us. The general public probably had very little first hand experience with the slums of the Lower East Side; very few people would have seen the Hampton or Tuskegee Institutes; and the chance to see Elsie de Wolfe in her "cozy corner," or the oppor­ tunity to visit the practice room of the Metropolitan Opera House would have given the same delight to people then as it does today. Photographs then and now represent the chance to participate vicariously in situations remote in time and place. However, we did not select the photographs for their value as cultural artifacts, but rather desired that they stand up as photographs first. Some of these photographs have meaning for us that they didn't have originally. We speculate that the deadpan architectural interiors by Charles Currier would have been ignored, and Byron's New York views dismissed as banal if hung in Salon Exhibitions so popular around 1900. Time allows us to appreciate what might have been taken for granted at the turn of the century. We value in Currier's or Johnston's prints the re­ markable range of grays which modulate space and volume giving reso­ nance to even the most ordinary textures. On the other hand, aspects which were very important then are of much less interest today. For example, we find that the exploitation of children by employers was foremost in the mind of Lewis Hine. But since that social problem hardly exists today, thanks to the effectiveness of groups like tha National Child Labor Committee, it is Hine's personal vision that interests us more. We can venture one step further by saying that the context within which Hine or Riis found their subjects should have little effect on our opinion of the photographs. The photographers repre­ sented here exhibit the special capacity to depict commonplace subjects in a new way and to make the most remote subjects seem very close. If the quality of personal style which emerges in the other graphic arts through the individualizing nature of drawing is lacking in photo­ graphy, it is compensated for by the powerful effect the choice of the camera's viewpoint by the photographer has on the resulting photograph. Very subtle consistencies in point-of-view — for instance Hine's love of the closeup, Bryon's use of panorama, and Currier's preference for fron- tality — make it possible to distinguish between photographs which other­ wise have little pretense to personal style. A consistent and revealing view of environment on the part of the six photographers guided our selection of works from the substantial body of preserved photographs. If the need for selectivity, in this as in all group exhibitions, eliminates some aspects of an artists' work, we hope to gain in the exchange a more panoramic understanding of an earlier time.

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We appreciate the generous assistance given us in preparing the exhibition by Phylis D. Massar and Ernst Halberstadt, who gave fully of their knowledge about photography. We are grateful to the following indi­ viduals and institutions for the loan of photographs: Albert K. Baragwanath, Senior Curator, Museum of the City of New York; Davis Pratt, Curator of Still Photography, Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Harvard University; E. I. Cohen, Executive Secretary, National Committee on the Employment for Youth; and Beaumont Newhall, Director, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York. Weston Naef Curatorial Assistant Department of Prints and Photographs SIX AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHERS

The Byron Company

Joseph Byron, the son of an English photographer, operated a studio in England before coming to the in 1887. His son Percy showed in­ terest in photography very early and worked in the New York Studio from the age of 11. There is little doubt that coverage of the newsworthy events qf the City such as parties, weddings, parades, and funerals must have been a combined effort with little concern to distinguish between the work of father, son, and other assistants. While the firm existed until 1942, our selection is drawn from the studio's output before the First World War.

Bibliography: Grace M. Mayer, Once Upon a City, New York, 1958.

Lent by the Museum of the City of New York:

1. Hot Chestnut Vendor, 1903

2. Lamp Department of the George Borgfeldt Wholesale Store, 1909 3. Class in Drawing at the Studio of William M. Chase, 1896 4. The Dewey Parade, 1899 5. Elsie de Wolfe at home on 11th Street, 1896 6. Miss Huntington's Cooking School, 1903 7. Ballet Rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera House, 1900 8. Street Vendors on Hester Street, 1898 9- Room Decorated in Oriental Taste, ca. 1896 CHARLES H. CURRIER (1851-1938)

Currier was born into a family of artisans, the son of a marble and soap- stone worker, and the brother of the painter, J. Frank Currier. Charles Currier turned to photography at least by the mid-1880's as a middle aged man when he illustrated with photographs a book on the homes of Brookline, Massachusetts. Until 1889 he was proprietor of a jewelry shop and so must have practiced photo­ graphy on the side rather than as a full time pursuit. However for about twenty years after 1889, he operated a professional studio in Boston, where he specialized in architectural views and other commercial and industrial photography. About 300 negatives given by Ernst Halberstadt are preserved in the .

Bibliography: Thomas H. Garver, Charles H, Currier: A Boston Photographer, Exhibition with catalog, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, March 15 - April 12, 1964

Lent by Ernst Halberstadt; numbers 10-18 are prints by Ernst Halberstadt from the original negatives made around 1900:

10. 421 Newbury Street, Boston 11. Four Hunters and their cabin 12. Institutional Kitchen

13- View from the cab of locomotive 1064 14. Teller's Cage

15- Lecture Room, Boston Dispensary 16. Men's Bath, possibly at Wayfarer's Lodge, Boston 17. The Bicycle Messengers 18. Laundry Room at Wayfarer's Lodge, Boston 19- /. G. Small & Co., Boston Original print by Charles Currier ARNOLD GENTHE (1869-1942)

The son of a professor of Latin and Greek, Genthe emigrated from to about 1896 as a tutor. In 1897 he opened a portrait studio and soon became the most popular society photographer in the city. He eschewed formal poses and sought rather to capture the sitter in natural attitudes. His urge towards candidness carried Genthe into the streets of San Francisco's Chinatown which he recorded with great empathy. Perhaps Genthe's most spectacular a- chievement is his series of photographs on the earthquake and fire of 1906 which he took with a borrowed Kodak Brownie camera. Shortly after 1916 Genthe moved to where he specialized in portraiture of actors, dancers and other celebrities. Many negatives of the portraits are preserved in the Library of Con­ gress.

Bibliography: Arnold Genthe, As I Remember, New York, 1936; Will Irwin and Arnold Genthe, Old Chinatown, New York, 1923

20-22. Chinatown in San Francisco, ca. 1906 Gift of Mrs. Eustace Seligman 53.680.3,5,6 23. San Francisco after the Earthquake, 1906 Alfred Stieglitz Collection 33.43.223 24. The First Lights, San Francisco after the Earthquake, 1906 Alfred Stieglitz Collection 33-43.225 25. Tower of the Ages at the San Francisco Pan-Pacific International Exposition, 1915 Gift of Mrs. Robert Aitken 57.634.13 LEWIS HINE (1874-1940)

Lewis Hine was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1874, educated there and at the . He came to New York City in 1901 to teach Botany and Nature Studies at the Ethical Culture School, where in 1903 he began to use a camera as a teaching aid. Hine received a Master's Degree in Sociology from in 1905, and continued to photograph, teach, and write until 1908 when he resigned his teaching post to photograph for the National Child Labor Committee, under whose auspices he executed many of the photographs exhibited here.

In the 1920's he turned his camera on the industrial working man; how­ ever, by the 1930's his photography seemed old-fashioned, and his jobs were few, though he did some significant work for the Tennessee Valley Authority. He died in poverty and obscurity in 1940. Many negatives are preserved at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York.

Bibliography: Judith M. Gutman, Lewis W. Hine and the American Social Con­ science, New York, 1967

Lent by National Committee on the Employment of Youth:

26. Polish Millworker in Doffer Box at Quidnick Mill, 1909 27. Doffer in Richmond Spinning Mills, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1910

28. Boy Carrying Hatboxes, ca. 1910 29. Children of the Rural Poor, ca. 1910 30. Pieceworker Sewing at Home, ca. 1910 31. Newsboys in St. Louis, 1910 32. Berry Picker's House, ca. 1910 33- Children Working in the Garment District, New York, ca. 1910 34. Young Cigarmakers, Tampa, Florida

35. The Newsboy Tony Casali (called "Bologna"), Hartford, Conn. March, 1909

-4 36. Mother and Daughter Working in Mill, ca. 1910

Modern prints from the original negatives, courtesy of George Eastman House:

37. Aged Negro No. 1

38. Old-time Printer, New York, 1905

FRANCES B. JOHNSTON (1864-1952)

Frances Benjamin Johnston was born in Grafton, , in 1864. She studied drawing and painting in Paris and at the Art Student's League, Washington, D.C., then decided to become a professional photographer. After preliminary work as an architectural photographer, and an apprenticeship at the Smithsonian Institution, in 1890 she opened a lavish studio in the capital. Miss Johnston combined a successful portrait business with photo-journalism. Her varied assignments included several educational institutions, Barye animal bronzes, Mammoth Cave, and President Roosevelt's children. She was the only American woman photographer invited to attend the Third International Photo­ graphic Congress at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1900.

Miss Johnston's later work in the field of architectural photography provided records of millionaire's mansions by Carr^re and Hastings, and by McKim, Mead and White, and invaluable coverages of Colonial and Federal Archi­ tecture. In 1945 she was made an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects. She died in 1952, at the age of 88. Many negatives are preserved in the Library of Congress.

Bibliography: Lincoln Kirstein, The Hampton Album, New York, 1966

Lent by Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Harvard University:

39- Mechanical Drawing at Hampton Institute, 1900 40. The School in Church at Hampton Institute, 1900 41. East Water Front of Hampton Institute , 1900 42. A Meal in an Old Cabin, 1900 43- The Wbittier Primary School of Hampton Institute, 1900

44. Washing Day at the Wbittier Primary School of the Hampton Institute, 1900

45. Student Nurses, Tuskegee Institute, ca. 1900 46. Class in Millinery, Tuskegee Institute, ca. 1900

47. Class in Printing, Tuskegee Institute, ca. 1900 48. Alabama Hall, Tuskegee Institute, ca. 1900 49- Feeding Geese, Tuskegee Institute, ca. 1900

JACOB RIIS (1849-1914)

Jacob Riis was an active social reformer and sociologist who wrote prolifically and convincingly on the deprivation of the poor in books such as How the Other Half Lives. Riis executed his photographs of the Lower East Side knowing that words alone could barely convey the full extent of the squalor there. Compared with the other photographers represented here, Riis' output of some 300 photographs is relatively small and reflects the need to have ready illustra­ tion to accompany his writing; it is not a body of work produced by a man whose only living came through the camera. About 300 negatives are preserved in the Museum of the City of New York.

Bibliography: Jacob Riis, Children of the Poor, New York, 1892; Battle with the Slum, New York, 1902; How the Other Half Lives, New York, 1902.

Lent by the Museum of the City of New York; modern prints by Alexander Alland made about 1947 with titles as given by Riis:

50. One of four pedlars who slept in cellar of 11 Ludlow Street rear, ca. 1890 51. Shoemaker working in bouse in rear of 219 Broome St....rent $12 a month, ca. 1890

-6- 52. Class in the condemned Essex Market School, ca. 1890 53- Under the dump at Rivington Street, ca. 1890 54. Nibsey's Christmas, 47-1/2 Crosby Street, ca. 1890 55. Blind man(beggar)—the father of the Notorious Blanche Douglas, ca. 1890

56. Night School in the Seventh Ave. Lodging House, ca. 1890 57. Saluting the Flag in the Mott Street Industrial School, ca. 1890

58. Indians (Iroquois) at 511 Broome Street, ca. 1890

59- Italian Mother and her Baby in jersey Street, ca. 1890 60. The Short Tail Gang under pier at the foot of Jackson Street, ca. 1890 61. Street Arabs, ca. 1890 62. Bandit's Roost, 1888 (print by Ansel Adams from the original negative)

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SOME REMARKS ON DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY

In every other art which draws directly on the actual world, the actual is transformed by the artist's creative intelligence into a new and different kind of reality: aesthetic reality. In the kind of photography we are talking about here; the actual is not at all transformed; it is reflected and recorded, within the limits of the camera, with all possible accuracy. The artist's task is not to alter the world as the eye sees it into a world of aesthetic reality, but to perceive the aesthetic reality within the actual world, and to make an undisturbed and faithful record of the instant in which this movement of creativeness achieves its most expressive crystal­ lization. Through his eye and through his instrument the artist has, thus, a leverage upon the materials of existence which is unique, opening to him a universe which has never before been so directly or so purely available to artists, and requiring of his creative intelligence and of his skill per­ ceptions and disciplines no less deep than those required in any other act of aesthetic creation, though very differently derived, and enriched.

James Agee A Way of Seeing: on the photographs of Helen Levitt Viking Press, 1965

9- Documentary photography cannot be exempted from the intimate relationship of history and style. The tragedy which had befallen us today is that the remanents of the immediate past most conveniently saved are old photographs. An image no thicker than a sheet of paper has come to represent the enormity of any object or event, and this miraculous advance in sophistication has allowed the photograph to be seen in terms of two dimensions standing for three, a variety of grays standing for colors and picture size representing life size. Thus there is the urge so often found with publications of this kind to view these documents of an external world with a respect altogether undeserving in such critical appraisal. It is a pity because it is an indication that what has happened is a separation of nineteenth century documentary photography from the interrelationship of history and style in favor of the exclusive and sentimental province of history alone.

Peter C. Bunnell On Timothy 0'Sullivan Aperture, 13:2 (1967)

10- Documentary is an approach, not a technic; an affirmation not a negation... The documentary attitude is not a denial of the plastic elements which must remain essential criteria in any work. It merely gives these elements limitation and direction. Thus composition becomes emphasis, and line sharpness, forms, filtering, mood—all these components included in the dreamy vagueness "quality"--are made to serve an end: to speak, as eloquently as possible, of the thing to be said in the language of pic­ tures,...The question is not what to picture nor what camera to use. Every phase of our time and our surroundings has vital significance and any camera in good repair is an adequate instrument. The job is to know enough about the subject-matter to find its significance in itself and in relation to its surroundings, its time and its function.

Roy E. Stryker Head of the Farm Security Administration Photographic Project, 1942 Quoted in Creative Camera, January, 1969

11 The photographer must have and keep in him something of the re- ceptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time We are most of us too busy, too worried, too intent on proving ourselves right, too obsessed with ideas, to stand and stare. We look at a thing and think we have seen it. And yet what we see is often only what our prejudices tell us to expect to see, or what our past experiences tell us should be seen, or what our desires want to see. Very rarely are we able to free our minds of thought and emotions and just see for the simple pleasure of seeing. And so long as we fail to do this, so long will the essance of things be hidden from us.

Bill Brandt The Camera in London Focal Press, 1948

12 Compared with this so-called pictorial photography, which is nothing but an evasion of everything truly photographic, all done in the name of art and God knows what, a simple record in the National Geographic Magazine, a Druet reporduction of a painting, or an aerial photographic record is an unmixed relief.

Paul Strand "The Art Motive in Photography" British Journal of Photography, 1923

The thing that makes Charles Currier acute is that for some un­ known reason, even when he exhibited in a Boston Camera Club Salon of 1897, when he had one sheep-in-a-meadow-picture, and other photographers were doing imitation painting, he also listed three architectural interiors which were straightforward.

Ernst Halberstadt

- 13 Photographic pictures may have one merit which no other pictures can ever have, they can be relied upon as historical records.

P. H. Emerson, 1889

Let us hope that categories will be less rigid in the future; there has been too much of placing photography in little niches--eommercial, pictorial, documentary, and creative (a dismal term). Definitions of this kind are inessential and stupid; good photography remains good photography no matter what we name it. I would like to think of just "photography"; of each and every photograph containing the best qualities in proper degree to achieve its purpose.

Ansel Adams "A Personal Credo, 1943" American Annual of Photography, 1944

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