osure

2004 The Society for Photographic Education Volume 37·1 osure

2004 Volume 37·1

l Editors Note Joel Eisinger

3 Photography and Painting: The Evolution of Modern Picture Making in France c. 1860-1880 Carl Chiarenza and Alisa Luxenberg

17 The Postcards of O.S. Leeland: South Dakota Photographer Cynthia Elyce Rubin

25 : Photograph er of the Generic City Steven Jacobs

34 Contributors

Publications Committee: Diana Gaston , Chair ; Steve Benson; Carol Flax, Mark Rice; Vagner veil, Whitehead , Carla Williams ; Joel Eisinger, Editor , exposure. Copy Editor: Jeanne C. Maki. Design and Layout: Noah Wenz. Editor's Note

Joel Eisinger

e live in an era in which , for good or painting and photography is an integral part of a Will, many of the boundaries by which long evolution, beginning in the Renaissance, of our culture had customarily oriented itself have artistic vision mediated by optical devices. They become smeared or irrelevant. A concern for this describe this vision as "camera vision ," which instability of cultural boundaries serves to unite may be understood as the assimilation by artists loosely the three essays in this issue. Steven of the visual discoveries made possible by optical Jacobs addresses the matter through a discussion devices , and eventually by photography , such that of Andreas Gursky 's photographs of the urban artists learned to see and record the world in terms (or post-urban) landscape. Jacobs explains that of these discoveries independently of photographs the shift toward and post-industrial or any optical device. In their essay , Chiarenza service economies in the dominant world cultures and Luxenberg trace camera vision from Jan has brought about dramatic changes in cities that Van Eyck through Albrecht Diirer, Jan Vermeer , are, in tum, reflected in new photographic visions. Andrea Mantegna , and others to focus finally on a The street photography of the 1950s and 1960s that discussion of the impact of photography on Manet treated the city as "a stage for spontaneous human and Degas. interactions" is no longer salient in urban areas that Ultimately, Chiarenza's and Luxenberg 's have been gentrified , mallified , and Disneyfied, topic is the concept of influence . Their foil is and where the distinctions between center and Kirk Varnedoe who , in two widely read articles of periphery , between city and countryside, have all the 1980s , rejected the claims for photography 's but disappeared . influence on Degas 's modernist inventions . Jacobs regards Gursky as a prime photographic Varnedoe operated with an idea of influence that commentator on these shifts in the urban demanded one-to-one correspondences between environment. In his enormous color prints - which a work of art and its influencing source, and he sometimes represent direct records of the urban found no photographs that fit the bill for Degas 's scene and, at other times , constructed or digitally paintings. Chiarenza and Luxenberg reject this manipulated ones-Gursky shows us such subjects notion of influence in favor of a much broader as shop windows, stock exchanges, transportation one that allows for a process of "indirect seeping infrastructures , and ambiguous peripheral spaces. and gleaning from [the] cultural environment ," an His work variously speaks of the simulated environment which, for Manet and Degas, most urbanism of contemporary downtowns, the crushing certainly included the long heritage of camera scale of urban structures , the consumption of the vision and photography itself. natural landscape , and the absorption of individuals Cynthia Rubin writes of the photo postcards of into huge networks that both connect and isolate us 0. S. Leeland , a Norwegian immigrant who set up through the abstraction of social relationships. shop in South Dakota and photographed the frontier Perhaps Jacobs's most subtle and incisive point (another boundary) and its daily life and notable about Gursky is that the artist deliberately blurs the scenes: grazing buffalo , sod houses, the Mitchell distinction between representation and reality in Com Palace. his photography as a way of mirroring that blurred With consideration of such issues as postal distinction in the design and presentation of the regulations, the vicissitudes of small-town urban landscape itself. commercial photography , and conventions for Carl Chiarenza and Alisa Luxenberg are postcard collectors , Rubin outlines the rise of the also interested in the crossing of boundaries. In nineteenth-century "postcard craze ," which made their case it is the boundary between painting this photographic format as important for its time and photography. With a point of view similar as the stereograph. to that of A. D. Colemann and David Hockney, In her analysis of Leeland , Rubin looks these authors contend that the interaction of particularly at his postcards of frontier women

1 exposure Volume 3 7: 1

and the attendant concepts of home, romance , and labor. These images are of special interest for their gentle humor. And with regard to yet another form pt, of boundary , that which circumscribed the lives of women , the images are noteworthy for their of unusually liberal, although often conflicted , point of view . Carl The articles in this issue attest to the significance of shifting and dissolving boundaries for scholars in the postmodern environment. Together writing Ever remind us that while we may wish some the essays are to become irrelevant or disappear, the boundaries this complex and problematic , loss of boundaries is scie, to destruction or alienation as to leading as often oper, . freedom or connection an phyj

Th bea1 ..• t1 theo

2 Photography and Painting: The Evolution of Modern Picture Making in Francec. 1860-1880

Carl Chiarenza and Alisa Luxenberg

Everyone has seen daguerreotype portraits that his article aims to offer a perspective on are very lifelike and others that are not . .. For Tthe ongoing debate over the relationships this reason, . . . daguerreotypy, despite being a between French painting and photography from scientific instrument of precision , requires its the 1860s to the 1880s. It seems especia lly operator to have skills of interpretation [and] timely to reconsider this long-standing issue in an understanding of effects, lighting , [and] light of the recent splash made by the ideas of physiognomy, qualities [that are] inherent to art. the artist David Hockney and physicist Charles Falco. 1 The issues raised by Hockney's Secret That daguerreotypy is capable of rendering the Knowledge. Rediscovering the Lost Techniqu es of beautiful or the ugly is an incontestable point; the Old Masters (2001) made clear that the many .. the choice is in the hands of the artist; now, a publication s of the last half century that focused theory of daguerreotype aesthetics is needed. on the visual relationships between painting and photography are being overlooked, perhap s Francis Wey (1851) becau se of increasing theoretical investigations into the cultura l and institutional structures of photography, and, therefore, its relationship to

Figure 1 Edgar Degas , Place de la Concorde, (Viscount Lepic and his Daught ers Crossing the Place de la Concorde), 1875, oil on canvas, 46 1/4 x 30 4/5 inches. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

3 exposure Volume 37:1 was occu mecl ~ ... indu ,::. -~ 'C. d .._ ::.. invei ~ i:;:-( migf .>;:i a d2 ~ ·j who ~ a sii '4 ':i wou ..- c -r:-- -w- as h ~ l::i. of ( ~ F5- the ,., phot F ~ '=+ thei1 -=- ~" ~ phot Yarn hav< use, phol Figure 2 H. Jo uvin, Gare de Strasbourg, c. 1860, stereo photograph, approx. 6 x 3 inches . The George Eastman Ho International M useum of Photography, Rochester, N.Y. mor1 uses on pamtmg as part of a longer prot systems of power.2 It i s our intent to seize the of photography something we will call "camera vision," cent opportunity that Hockney 's book has created to tradition of ing that began to emerge as early as the loo continue the di scussion of the photo graphy-paintin g a way of see through the u se of optical device s sten relationship , and to bring back vi sual sensibility fifteenth century observation of photographs . as and working practice into a balanced , less value­ and, later, through sion consists of artists ' incorporatio n of pap, charged under standing of pictures. By doing so, we Camera vi discoveries made through optical device s ste~ hope to offer an alternative to the "modernist" and the visual , such that the se di scoveries enc, "not mod ernist" camps that have generally lined and from photographs work even dim up whenever a fresh examination of the painti ng­ may be manifested in their pictorial sing those devices or referring to specific jus~ photography relationship ha s appeared, as with without u 5 In other words , as artists assimilated doe Peter Gal assi's exhibition and catalogue, Before photographs. they began to see the world in the Photography (1981).3 camera vision, second half of nim Our point of departure is the analysis made terms of it. French artists of the century inherited camera vision, not by Kirk Varnedoe in two articles pub lished in Art the nineteenth it as they re sponded to their ma1 in America in 1980. 4 There , Varnedoe criticizes but further shaped and ubiquitou s the previous scholars for giving undue credit to environment, which produced new s and experiences. tryi1 photography for the moderni st innov ation s optical device sion of Degas 's Place de la cho of painter s s uch as Dega s (Figure I) , whom In his discus is clearly looking for the the Varnedoe sees as having deve loped his innovation s Concorde, Varnedoe a photograph that offered large , int independently of photography, indeed, before they smoking gun, disjointed figures against a telescoped sou appeared in photo graphy . Varnedoe 's rejection cropped, , ju st as Degas 's painting pri1 of photography 's influence on Dega s is ba sed or flattened background features. 6 He seems to have been hist on a notion of influence as either a one-to-one offered such these features in a single image, s uch vis, correspondence between a photograph and a looking for commercial stereo photograph made painting, or a traceable tran sfer of a uniquely as a French (Figure 2). photo graphic formal quality from identifiable around 1860 are three prob lems with this method. photographs to particular painting s. There such commercia l images were not This paper takes a different point of view on One i s that was looking for . the matter of photograph/ s influence , arguing likely to reveal what Varnedoe photographer who produced such int( that its images-w hich were highly diver se, from No commercial have tried to treat space with the daguerreotypes to salt print s to stereographs­ stereo views would s as Degas . These photographer s by became thorou ghly a bsorbed into nineteenth­ same inventivenes selves artists , as photography An century Western vision . We see the influence did not con sider them

4 Society for Photographic Education

was generally considered to occupy a position between mechanically made evidence and industrial printing. And no highly inventive artist of this era, who might have conceived of such a daring spatial rendition, and who valued official rewards or a significant critical reputation, would have chosen photography as his or her primary medium of public expression, knowing the impossible status that photography was assigned in their art world. 7 In short, the photographic innovation that Varnedoe is seeking would not have come from commercial photography, but possibly from more private and experimental uses of the camera. A second problem is that nineteenth­ century viewers would not be looking at and studying such stereo views with the naked eye, as a single, two-dimensional paper print, but through a stereoscope that provided an encompassing illusion of three­ dimensional space. 8 Third, and just as important, Varnedoe doe s not seem convinced by the abundant evidence that nineteenth-century artists were Figure 3 Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Wedding, 1434, oil on panel, 22 1/2 x 33 not necessarily inspired in the inches. The National Gallery, . manner he describes, by finding the complete visual equivalent of what they were 3) is a particularly relevant pamtmg to consider 9 trying to express. On the contrary, artists could in this regard. On the back wall of the room in choose their sources of inspiration and ideas from this painting , Van Eyck depicted a convex mirror the wealth of imagery available to them , especially that reflects an image of the room from a viewing in the post-1820 media explosion in France. These position opposite the painter and the viewer. The sources could comprise paintings, sculptures, and artist took special intere st in the "distortions " and prints (including photographs) spanning the entire framing available in the mirror surface as well as history of art known to them. 10 It is in this broad in exploiting the luminosity and concentrated detail visual culture dating back as far as the fifteenth of its reflection. It is useful to note that he used oil century that one finds evidence of camera vision. paint to capture that luminosity and detail, and that And it is this camera vision that made possible this painting is one of the first known to have used Degas's Place de la Concorde, Manet 's The oils, which made possible newly subtle modeling Folkestone Boat, Boulogn e and other modernist of masses in light and shade, exquisite rendering paintings, made distinct by each artist's particular of detail , and depiction of reflected light that we interpretation and application of that vision. associate with optical imagery. The rendering of We begin our exploration of camera vision such things had been exceedingly difficult if not by considering the tools that made it possible . The impossible with fresco or tempera, the media to Arnol.fini Wedding (1434) by Jan van Eyck (Figure which artists were limited before the fifteenth-

5 exposureVolume 3 7:1

relationship of the floor to the wall and to century adoption of oils for easel pamtmg . But in the This sense of perspective anticipates the presence of the mirror is most important for the figures. lenses that cause effects our purposes because it is evidence that van Eyck extreme wide-angle to as distortions. But here, the sense of was aware of how an optical device could mediate we refer to emulate the peculiar effects the visual world. And his interest in the mirror was perspective appears mirror. apparently not confined to recording its image but of a convex sum, van Eyck's recording of the convex went so far as to prompt him to use it as a device In on the wall and his apparent use of the with which to envision the entire space of the mirror perspective show us painting. mirror to anticipate systems of mid-fifteenth century, perception Van Eyck's picture has a marked sense of that already in the being transformed by optical perspective, or evocation of three-dimensional of the world was s. This was the beginning of seeing the space. We say "sense of perspective" here because device highly selected, and this work precedes the codification of what we have physical world framed, limited, regard to space and light, come to know as geometrical or linear perspective. carefully structured with of the notion of a picture as a window In comparison to later conventions of perspective, the beginning the beginning of camera vision. van Eyck's space would be considered inaccurate or onto the world, Dtirer was interested in mechanical awkward due to its curious wide-angle effect (note Albrecht producing more "accurate" the photographic terminology) in which the space and optical aids for In one of the four woodcuts he made appears to splay out. 11 This is particularly apparent perspective. around 1525 for a series ca lled The Art of Measurement, he illustrated a device that is, fundamentally, a crude system of camera vision. 12 A framed window-like grid placed in front of the subject to be depicted replicates the squared­ off picture surface on the table in front of a seated artist. The artist replicates what he sees in each square, fixing his viewing point with the aid of a centrally placed, eye-level perpendicular post. Picture s made this way conform to the visual code of linear perspective that represents three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional surface. By the mid-seventeenth century, painters were familiar with the camera obscura, which they could read about in art manuals as a mechanical method for creating geometrical perspective. The camera obscura was initially a dark chamber and later a portable box with a hole or lens set in one side (or wall) through which a perspectivally correct representation of some aspect of the world is projected 7 1/16 x 9 onto the opposite side (or wall), Figure 4 Johannes Vermeer, Lady with the Red Hat, c. 1665-66, oil on panel, . inches. The , Washington, D.C. , Andrew W. Mellon Collection upside down, and reversed from D.C. Photo Credit: Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, left to right. The artist could

6 Society for Photographic Education d to ates ects ! of ;ects

vex the V US ion :ical the and ght, dow

ical ate" ade lied he is, tern ed in be md- 1ble he ; in ing Figure S Andrea Mantegna , The Dead Christ, after 1466, tempera on canvas, 31 7/8 x 26 3/4 inches. The Pinacoteca di Brera, ally Milan. Photo Credit: Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita Culturali. ular ay then trace the projection onto his or her material is a shallow depth of field (a consequence of the of of choice. limitations of lenses made at that time) such that !nts There is little question that the painter Jan a near object in the painting appears as if it were n a Vermeer used a portable reflex camera obscura, slightly out of focus, with blurred contours and the interior of whjch included an angled mirror that shimmering highlights made of globules of light, nth reflected the light-formed image up onto a piece all of which replicate the look on the ground glass. liar of ground glass. Vermeer's use of suc h a device It is untenable to think that Vermeer achieved ra, was confirmed in the 1960s, when the art historian these painted light effects through tracing the image ut Charles Seymour conducted a series of experiments in the camera obscura. 14 Vermeer was a highly ical at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., talented artist who did not need the camera obscura ical with a camera obsc ura, lens, and props that would to create credible pictures. Rather, the camera ura have been available to Vermeer. 13 What Seymour device must have shown Vermeer something he was and found was that some of Vermeer's paintings, such as prepared to see and understand as part of his world. ole Lady with the Red Hat (Figure 4), present a vision In other words, Vermeer had already assimilated II) that records optical effects that were characteristic enough camera vision, enough optical mediation ally of the lens-formed image on the ground glass of a of the visible world, to be ready to incorporate its me reflex camera obscura. These effects could not have effects of a shallow depth of field and soft focus ted been seen in previous art or by direct observation into his painting. II), with the naked eye until one had witnessed the Vermeer was interacting with the optical om peculiar qualities of that ground glass image. devices he used and absorbing the lessons of these uld What Vermeer rendered in Lady with the Red Hat devices into his artistic vision on his own terms.

7 exposure Volum e 37:1

This was a process that had been going on since or modify perspective even as they used it wa s an the beginning of camera vision . Skilled artists did indication that artists were assimilating it into their s not slavishly use mirrors, or lenses, or the system world view. d of perspective . Instead, they worked with these The sixteenth-century Italian painter a device s in a give-and-take process to produce their Parmigianino offers a different example of this e aesthetic expression, accepting or modifying the freedom. He viewed himself in a convex mirror, C rules of perspective or the lens view of the world in found meaning in what he saw, and then painted V ways that made camera vision complex, dynamic , that so-called distortion as representative of his G and ultimately an integral part of artistic vision. reality. 16 Parmigianino offered a depiction of a a We can see this process of give-and-take in reality important to him, one that conveyed more C the fifteenth-century painting by Mantegna , The than a mere transcription of his appearance in t Dead Christ (Figure 5). In this picture, secondary that it transformed the outer shell and stretched parts (feet) appear closer to the viewer than does the norm. Some art historians describe this as the principal form (Christ's head and bust). The emotional , or psychological, expre ssion. While feet threaten to subvert the norms of significance. Mantegna adopted an unusual point of view in his Had Mantegna adhered strict ly to the proportions Dead Christ but rejected the proportions stipulated calculated through linear perspective, he would by linear perspective because they would have have painted Christ 's feet much larger, so large in contradicted his artistic intentions (to glorify the fact that they would have blocked the view of the Son of God) , Parmigianino , by contrast, accepted more important parts of the figure. The nineteenth­ a "distorted " optical rendition of himself because century stereograph published by Underwood and that rendition suited his needs . He exploited optical Underwood (Figure 6) shows what the unmodified distortion and made it a central device in a new perspective system would have done to Mantegna's pictorial "look." So did Vermeer. He wedded the Christ. 15 But Mantegna ignored the rules of new optica l qualities he observed in the ground perspective and painted the feet small. We see from glass to a candid pose (seated , turning back toward this example that the "accuracy" of the perspective the viewer), intense color, and the striking effects formula was open to interpretation , even in an early of backlighting, to convey an intimate , arresting period . Confronted with an awkward composition, moment between sitter and viewer, that has no an artist had to choose between changing his counterpart in earlier art. Vermeer's painting shapes composition or modifying the perspectival system camera vision to respond to the personal reality of to make the finished work conform to his needs his time and place. All three artists used camera and to cultural conventions. The freedom to reject vision actively in the process of assimi lating it.

Figure 6 Underwood and Underwood, untitled stereo photograph, c. 1900, approx. 6 x 3 inches. The George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography, Rochester, N.Y.

8 Society for Photograph ic Education

Other Dutch artists of the seventeenth century were also drawn to optical peculiarities and explored new perceptual experiences. 17 Carel Fabritius created peep show cabinets, which were closed boxes painted on all four interior walls so that an optically formulated illusion of three-dimensional space would be seen from a single viewpoint, a peep hole cut into one side of the box. When the panels were taken apart and viewed head-on, they often presented strangely wide-angle views, as seen in his panel painting View of Delft with Musical Instruments, 1652. 18 The peep show box can be seen as a precursor to stereo viewing and the movie theater in the way that it fictionalizes reality in a contained space and eliminates extraneous vision. In this respect, it functioned more as visual entertainment than as objective representation . Once again, we see the synthesis of camera vision and artistic vision. Jonathan Crary has argued that the camera obscura served as the Enlightenment 's Cartesian model for human , and therefore objective, vision, and not as a flexible tool with which artists could express distinct artistic Figure 7 Jurriaan Andriessen, Self-portrait with Camera Obscura, c. 1810, pen and visions. 19 However, artists wash drawing, 7 x 10 inches. The Rijksmuseum, . are known to have employed thjs device and circumvented its objectivity. For of perspective and optical device s that form ed th e example , the eighteenth-century Italian view basis of camera vision , and sometime s assimilated painter Canaletto used the camera obscura to or modified what the per spectival system and th ese make illusionistic renderings of specific sites, devices offered to their artistic visions . Eventually, but he integrated them into fantasy views that this process of assimilation reached a point at combined actual buildings from different parts of whjch artists and their public could see the world Venice within a single picture. 20 Moreover , from in terms of a mediating optical system or devic e Algarotti, writing in 1764 of the aesthetic delights without actually having to have applied either on e. of the image on the ground glass, to the Dutch artist In his self-portrait Andrie ssen did not depict him self Jurriaan Andriessen's self-portrajt loobng into a tracing the image on the ground gl ass, but training camera obscura , a drawing dating around 1810 his vision to see the world through the camera . (Figure 7), personal responses to viewing the world Daumier provides another good example of thi s through the little dark box often overpowered any proces s. objective function. 2 1 Daumier 's lithograph Rue Transnonain, Up to this point, we have been discussing some April 15, 1834 (1834) is a powerfully naturali stic of the ways in which artists handled the system rendering of a contemporary event , as the title

9 exposure Volume 37: 1

x 23 5/8 inches. The Philadelphia Figure 8 Edouard Manet, The Folkesto11e Boat,Boulog11e, 1869, oil on canvas, 28 15/16 Museum of Art; Mr. and Mrs. Carroll S. Tyson, Jr. Collection, 1963.

were not definitive of the medium's visual and tells us.22 The picture is, in fact , a critique of optical possibilities; various "improvements " and government action. Daumier composed his picture inventions led to new formats in photography in the with fragmented or foreshortened forms, dramatic 1850s and 1860s , most notably the carte-de-visit e lighting, and oblique perspectives that create the and stereographic photographs. 24 These images not impression of a mobile, temporary view, the view only recorded camera vision as it had developed but of an eyewitness. Whether or not Daumier actually also extended that vision, particularly with regard to saw this event is not important , and he certainly did the possibilities of recording the flux of urban life. not use a camera device. What is important is that he For example, photographs could represent action composed the picture in a way that suggests he did as frozen or as blurred forms, things that were not see it and record it without personal interpretation. possible to "see " with the camera obscura before This urgency to respond to the moment- here , the invention of photography and the modifications political- is combined with bold modeling in light to its material and chemical components. It was and shade and more continuous tonal gradations in this environment of ubiquitous, expanding , that the relatively new print medium of lithography and revelatory photographs that Degas and Manet allowed .2 3 In Daumier , we see evidence that the matured, and they responded to this environment world itself, as perceived by human beings , is because their generation had assimilated the legacy changing , as what can be seen through optical of camera vision . device s-lenses and ground glass-is being Manet in fact was affected by photography in projected onto the world. multitude of ways. 25 His friend and biographer With the invention of photography in the a Theodore Duret attests to the painter 's use of 1820s and 1830s , it became possible literally to photography , as do letters in the artist's own record camera vi sion. But the earliest photographs

10 Society for Photographic Education

Figure 9 Charles Negre, , Market Scene at the Port of the Hotel de Ville, c. 1851, salt print. Paris, Musee d'Orsay. Photo Credit: Reunion des Musees Nationaux/Art Resource, New York.

hand. Other biographers and documents mention main composition of Paris and three goddesses), to photographs by Manet himself. We also know that create his principal figural arrangement. In effect, Manet employed at least two photographers on he noticed and enhanced minor elements that were a fairly regular basis. 26 That Manet would have appropriate to his own expression, an approach borrowed from photographs seems particularly that he could easily apply to other sources like likely in light of his general habit of borrowing photographs. 28 from eclectic sources. As Manet and several of Beatrice Farwell points out that no specific his contemporaries gained a critical understanding photograph necessarily impacted Manet's art, of representation as an artificial construction of but rather, characteristic effects of predominant many parts, their creative processes increasingly photographic modes seem to have informed his combined, modified, or replaced traditions and painting. 29 In 1863, Manet was a studio painter, conventions, augmented by indirect seeping and posing figures indoors with props, much as studio gleaning from their cultural environment. In photographers did, and it seems likely that he Manet's eclecticism, photography would have been responded to characteristics of contemporary studio no less significant than any other source. photographs of nudes. Manet certainly had access Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe (1863) is to such images, and he consorted with people like replete with traces of "borrowing," but in a more Baudelaire who frequented the demi-monde and unconventional manner than the established practice. collected this kind of imagery . The visual aspects The central grouping of three figures repeats that that Manet emulated from nude photographs in of three river gods in Marcantonio Raimondi's his rendering of Victorine's body in Dejeuner sur engraving, which in tum reproduces a lost painting l'herbe include the direct, conscious gaze back at of The Judgment of Paris by Raphael. 27 What is the viewer/photographer and the harsh lighting most relevant about this borrowing is that Manet that creates smudgy shadows and flattens out any looked to the margin, to a secondary motif (not the modeling in the skin. Furthermore, Manet was

11 exposure Volume 37:1

ft ,, I f ~-:::------.. -ff • -- ., \. f .n,,

, brush, and ink drawing, 17 3/8 x 10 15/16 inches . The Art Institute Figure 10 Edouard Manet, La rue Mos11ier,1878, pencil of , Gift of Mrs. Alice H. Patterson in memory of Tiffany Blake.

uniting disparate and overlapping forms to create making a point in his painting of the fact that one an effect of movement; in these examples, mass sees a contemporary woman, with a contemporary, movement. There is little in pre-nineteenth-century unidealized body, in a contemporary confrontation. Fit art that could have informed such an unfocused, In sum, the visual realism and disjunctions that ff< informal image as Manet 's.30 It i s of interest to Manet brought to his Dejeuner, including the note that Negre was seeking this effect more than tilted , telescoped land scape background, cou ld thi years before Manet , that Negre was himself a aJI have been derived from the qualities of studio ten be painter, and that he made a painting directly after a photographs of real people . a photograph , which suggests his willingness A comparison between Manet 's The similar w to accept photographic flux as a painterly sign of Folkestone Boat , Boulogne of 1869 (Figure 8) and 31 pc movement , and possibly, of modem life . photographer Charles Negre 's Paris, Market Scene ar Turning to another Baudelairean motif in 1878, at the Port of the Hotel de Ville of 1851 (Figure th Manet made three paintings and several drawings 9) suggests how the appearance of movement , in fl of an ordinary street, the rue Mosnier in Paris , "as particular as see n in crowd scenes in photographs , pl ing of if wishing, " in Theodore Reff's words, "to preserve began to infiltrate the thinking and see 32 he had seen almost daily." searching for a way to picture an image of the street painters who were from di flux. According to Reff , Manet made the images the Baudelairean concept of modem life and ai the window of the studio he was about to vacate The blurs in Negre's photograph were caused w after six years. While Manet's paintings of the by the subjects' movement s, even though Negre b rue Mo snier echo the hundreds of photographs , was using a lens that was specially constructed ir made of Parisian streets to record modem street life with shorter exposure especiaJly stereographs, n from such elevated vantage points , they are also times . Negre's blurred image re sembles the sketchy much more carefully orchestrated pictures . painted forms in The Folk estone Boat, Boulogne fi Some of Manet's rue Mosnier sketches look because his figures , despite the blur, still appear a very much like the paintings, but two drawings, solidly modeled and illuminated by light , unlike V now housed in collections in Budapest and Chicago the ghostly s hadow s in other photograph s created (Figure 10), are a very different kind of picture. Reff when forms moved much farther during longer a states that Manet made the Budapest drawing from expos ure times. In both picture s, the blur aids in

12 Society for Photographic Education

le

:ate 1ass :ury Eastman Rue Royale, Paris, c. 1860, half stereo photograph, approx. 3 x 3 inches. The George sed, Figure 11 Ferrier and Soulier, House, International Museum of Photography, Rochester, N.Y. t to .han in stereographs , and such the same window as the paintings, as it includes cropping and overlapping If a by magnifying glasses that both sidewalks, 33 but the Chicago drawing presents effects were enhanced ier a built into parlor stereo viewers for a distinct angle and, thus, implies a different were commonly ness details. 34 His drawings, window or viewpoint. Whatever Manet's vantage the purpose of studying n of subject close to the viewer, as if point was, both these drawings eliminate the sky which bring their of the street that are visible in seen through a telescopic lens, strongly suggest the 878, and other portions the paintings, thereby flattening the space. This magnified, cropped image of a stereoscope. ings striking, in both drawings the flattening or compressing of pictorial space is often Even more "as the street are more present to a lesser degree in commercial photographs foreground figures crossing erve are those walking along the whose authors sought to avoid large areas of blank, sketchily drawn than y."32 space. This changing focus dull sky through their choice of viewpoint and lens sidewalk back into from relative blur or lack thereof that one angle. Nineteenth-century photographic materials parallels the acate near the camera were particularly sensitive to blue light, so the would see in a sterograph if figures the field of view of the lens while other blue of the sky was often overexposed, resulting had traversed the aphs, walked away from the camera along the in a very light or mottled area in the print, rarely figures had Ireets (Figure 11). Manet could not have recording clouds. axis of the lens also if he had not seen Both drawings also include several partial come to this visual representation in stereo views. And having figures and forms cropped by the edges of the paper, the optical phenomenon look years of stereo production, an effect that often appears in urban photographic lived through twenty ings, have seen a goodly number of them . views. Manet rendered figures fragmented in odd Manet would icago that Manet sat down and copied ways by the overlapping of other forms, due to the This is not to claim Reff he may have projected of view. Manet could have seen such stereographs, but rather, that from overhead point 13 exposure Volume 37:1 In N that corresponds to Place de la Con corde. onto what he saw out of his window those aspects fr addition, what Degas saw in photograph s he may p of stereo views that had long since become part of seen in paintings and prints, such as ol perception. also have his intuitive visual and flattenjng of Japanese hi such blurred the spatial telescoping i1 It is important to recognize that mean that photography had subject or emphasis prints. But thjs does not ct. figures were never the main . Dega s, like Manet , , who would, no doubt , no influence on the painting 7 V of the stereo photographer of camera And inherited the pre-photographic tradition p have liked to eliminate such "imperfections." f1 vision from the tradition of Western painting, exactly the point. A commercial photographer u this is rendered him responsive to was not willing to flout and that tradition L out to earn his daily bread broad and indirect , like Manet, photographs of his own time in a pictorial conventions, whereas an artist ( yet significant, ways. who had already transformed traditional borrowings I After this period of late nineteenth-century from Old Masters , had no qualms about bringing , with the continued changes in photographjc the "mistakes" of photography to realism the marginal or the rise of modernism , art. Manet did not do technology and vision and with the front and center of hjs changed but the influence of camera vision on painting so because he thought stereographs were art, 8 radically but nevertheless continued. The cubists, because they were a paradigm of modernity. sts futurist s, constructivists, dadai sts, and surreali The photographic effects in Manet 's painting in all responded to photography in complex and and, before that, the shallow depth of field interesting ways. But that story is beyond the scope 9 Vermeer 's art are both examples of evidence of of the present essay. signjficant shifts in the perception of the world, whjch could only have been conceived through Acknowledgments: discoveries. Such optical revelations editor Joel optical The authors would like to thank exposur e's often than we will ever suggestions probably happened more Eisinger for all of his helpful and insightful artists found that new optical gman , know, because unless on the manu script , and Quentin Bajac, Mary Ber their world, their help in "look" meanjngful in understanding James Borcoman, and Christian Kempf for work, they would not seek to recreate it in their locatin g images. especially if it overturned existing conventions. For example, Manet understood the blurred figures that 10 in stereography not just as "mistakes ," figures Endnotes rather as a new had moved during exposure, but David H ockney, Secret Knowledg e: Rediscovering the movement that he could transpose Lost Techniques of the Old Masters (New York: Viking visual sign for Hockney's book have onto the world in stereo Studio , 200 I). Responses to into drawings. Projected including a two-day sympos ium of a kind been numerous, photographs and Manet 's drawings is scholars and artists organized by New York University in of reality that suggests the flux , fragmentation, December 200 I. graphy life, a reality that was 2 Several of the comparisons of painting and photo and randomness of city rces as be made and relevant images can be found in such sou not visible to the human eye, but could graph, Van Deren Coke, The Painter and the Photo devices. Manet found ; Aaron "visual" through new formal (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico , 1964) Penguin, what had previously been overlooked Scharf, Art and Photograph y (Harmond sworth: meaning in y: 12 1974); and Heinrich Schwarz, Art and Photograph as meaningless. Influences (Roche ster: Visual Studies . Much of the same Forerunners and Let us return to Degas Workshop, 1985). said may be said about him that we have Painting and the things 3 Peter Galassi , Before Photograph y: I~ about Manet. Degas acquired photographs, Invention of Photograph y, exhibiti on catalogue (New , 1981). including carte-de -visite portraits that he pasted York: ssionisim s and caricatured, and, as early 4 Kirk Varnedoe, "The Artifice of Candor: lmpre into his sketchbook 68, no. and Photography Reconsidered," Art in America sented and enhanced of Time: as the mid-1860s, he repre I (January 1980 ): 66-78 , and "The Ideology could be found , no. 6 qualitie s of flux and flattenjng that Degas and Photography," Art in Am erica 68 35 in certain kinds of photographs. Much later in his (summer 1980): 96-110. some nsciousness") career, Dega s made hjs own photographs , 5 For a different term ("le ns-image co , "Lentil Soup: A served as direct models for pajnting s. and perspective , see A.D. Coleman of whjch on Len s Culture ," Depth of Field: Essays his Place de la Concorde, Meditation e Considering once again on Photograph y, Mass Media , and Lens Cultur , 1998), one can easily recognize its relationship to the urban (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press stereo photographic view in term s of its cropping, 113- 131. 70-71 "The Impre ssionists' point of view, collapsing of space , and slightly 6 Varnedoe , "Artifice ," pictures . . do not look lik e the photographs of their day. blurred forms. There may be no single photograph

14 Society for Photographi c Education

No amount of searc hing has yet produc ed a photo graph Courbet: To Venture Independenc e (New Haven: Yale from the 1870s or befo re that look s anything like De gas's University Press, 1991), 173, fig. 89. Place de la Concorde of 1875 .... If a photo gra pher I 6 Parmigianin o's paintin g, Self-Portrait in a Convex of the time had seen th e Degas .. composition throu gh Mirror (Vienna, Gemald egalerie) is illustrated in the his lens, he would not hav e recorded it; and if h e had ex hibition cata logue Parm a, Galler ia Nazionale and inadv ertently caught somethin g like it, he would have Vienna, Kun sthistori sches Museum , Parmigianino e ii discarded the pl ate as a useless accident. " manierismo europeo (Mil an: Silv ana, 2003) , 176, no. 7 We m ake exception here for the numero us amateur 2.1.7 photo grap hers who were precluded by th eir soc ial status 17 Some other exa mple s are g iven in Carl Chiarenza, "Notes from profe ssional life , in any field, e.g. middle- and on Aesthetic Relation ships between Seventeenth-Century upper-class women , such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Dutch P aintin g and Nineteenth-Century Photo gra phy," in Lady H awar den . For instances of amateurs exhibiting Van Deren Coke , ed. , JOOY ears of Photographi c History: and selling, see the bio graphi es in Gra ce Seiberling with Essays in Honor of Beaumont Newhall (Albuqu erque: Carolyn Bloore , Amateurs , Photography, and the Mid­ University of New Mex ico Press, 1975), 19-34 . See also Victorian Imagination (Chicago: U niver sity of Chicago , Erik Bamouw , "Torrentiu s a nd Hi s Camera ," Studies in 1986). For Cam ero n's activities , see Pam Robert s, Visual Communication 10, no. 3 (summ er 1984 ): 22-29 . "Juli a Margare t Cameron: A Triumph O ver Criticism, " in Graham Clark e, ed. , The Portrait in Photograph y 18 The paintin g is illustrated in Kemp , p. 212 , no. 424. (London : Reaktion Book s, 1992), 47-70. 19 Jonathan Crary , Techniques of the Observer· On Vision 8 For a discussion of stereography with regard to Timothy and Modernity in th e Nineteenth Century (Cam brid ge : O'Sulli van's photogra ph y, see Ro salind Krau ss, MIT Press, 199 1), esp. 43-47 where he di scusses "Phot ography's Discursive Spaces: LandscapeN iew," Vermeer's The Astronomer and The Geograph er Crary Art Journal (winter 1982 ): 311-319. desc ribe s the Cartesian model of vision as based on the camera obscura and providin g a purely objective view 9 In lat er recon sidera tions of his Art in America articles, of the world , se parated from the senses. We cannot Varnedoe doe s agree that De gas 's s pati al device s a nd agree that Vermeer subscribed only to a Cartesian view disjun ction were wholly within the W estern system of the world , as Crary claims, due to th e tactility of his of linear perspective , but r emain s convinced that painted surfaces , which evoke the sense of touch, thereby photo graphy (and Japanese print s) did not in spire any implicating the senses in representation, and therefo re, of the artist's formal inventi ons. His characterization of knowled ge. Hoku sai's a nd Hiro shige 's peculiar spatial co nstruction s as Western per spective "coming home" to the post- 20 See William L. Barch am , Imaginary View S cenes of 1850 Pari s art world allows him to claim that De gas's Antonio Canaletto (New York: Garland , 1977); J.G. n artistic innovation remained purely French , unaffe cted Link s, Canaletto (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, by foreign influen ce. Kirk Varnedoe , A Fine Disregard: 1982); and , David Bomford and Gabriel e Finaldi , Venice What Makes Modern Art Modern (New York: Abrams , through Canaletto's E yes (London: National Gallery of 1989), 25-181. Art , 1998). 10 Beatri ce Farwell , The Cult of Images: Baudelaire and 21 Francesco Algarotti , "Of th e Camera Obscura ," An Essay the 19th-Century Media Explosion , exhibition catalogue on Painting (London: L. Davi s a nd C. Rey mers, 1764), (Santa Barbara: Universit y of California , 1977). Mich ael 60-66 , reprinted in Charles Harri son, Paul W ood and g Fried explores such eclectic sources in "Manet 's Sour ces : Jason Gaiger, e ds., Art in Theory , 1648- 1815 (London : e Aspects of His Art , 1859- 1865," Artforum 7 (March Blackwe ll, 2000) , 475-477 We r eco mmend Geoffrey if 1969): 21-82. Batchen 's tracing of a general desire t o photo gra ph in n his perceptiv e s tudy of the " invention " of photogra phy. Hockn ey a nd Falco propo se that Ren aissa nce artists Geoffrey Batchen , Burning wit h Desire: The Conception may hav e used a concave mirror, which co llect s light raphy (Cam brid ge : MIT Press, 1997), especially y of Photog differ ently than the convex typ e. This ide a is considered pp. 24-53. IS promi sing even by skeptic al reviewer s like Bernard Sharr att, " Darkroom of the God s," 22 Daumier 's litho graph i s widely publi shed ; see Theodore Book Review 23 (Dece mber 200 1): 11- 12. Reff, Manet and Modern Paris, exhibiti on catalogue (Washington , D.C.. National Gallery of Art, 1982) , 229, 12 For discussions of per spective device s, see Martin Kemp , no. 84. !S The Science of Art: Optical Th emes in Western Art from Brunelleschi t o Seurat (New Haven: Yale University 23 Aloi s Senefelder invented lithography between 17 95 and Press, I 990) , 167-257 1798 in Muni ch, but it was only the publication of his 1e manual in 1 8 18 that opened the pro cess to widespread w 13 Charles Seymour , Jr., "Dark Chamber and Li ght-Filled co mmerci al u se. For it s ear ly hi story, see Pat Gilmour , Room: V ermeer and the C ame ra Ob scur a," Art Bulletin "Litho graphy," in Jane Turner , ed., The Grove Dictionary 46, no . 3 (Sept ember 1964 ): 323-33 1. More recently , vol. 19 (London : Macmill an, 1996), 479-488. m of Art, Philip Ste adman reco nstructed an entire room according Lithogra phy 's development overlaps with the numerou s 0. to Vermeer's paintin gs. Philip Steadman , Vermeer 's Davy e: attempts to fix light-formed images by such men as Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces s, Jr., 6 and Wedgwood, a point mad e by William M . Ivin (Oxford: Oxford University Pre ss, 200 I ). Steadm an Prints and Visual Communication (Cambridge: MIT pro vides a review of the lit era ture on Vermeer 's use of Press, 1980) , 88. ") the camera obscura and observations of such light effects, graphy, see E. Anne McCa uley, A pp . 25-43. 24 On carte-de-visite photo Carte-de-Visite Portrait ys A.A .E Disd eri and the 14 As argued by Steadman , especially pp. 101 - 134. Press, re Photograph (New Hav en: Yale University Culp Darr ah, Cartes-de- Visite in l), I 5 In I 859 , Courbet painted a portrait of his friend Marc 1985) and William Trap adoux that was parodied by Nadar for its similar Nineteenth-Century Photography (Gettys burg: Darrah , effect of proportion ally lar ge feet in the n ear foreground 1981). On stereography , see Edward W. Earle , ed., Points ts' plane . See the illu stration of "Per spective nouvelle of View: The Stereograph in America: A Cultural History 1y. ouverte par le talent de M. Courbet" in Klau s Herdin g, (Rochester : Visual Studie s Workshop , 1979); and William 15 exposure Volume 37:1

Culp D arra h, Stereo Views. A History of S tereographs 30 Simil ar m ass blurrin g a ppears in Adolph B raun 's in America a nd Their Collection (Gettysburg: Darr ah, stereo photogra ph Marseille, le v ieux port c. 1862-63 1964). (co llection Chri stian Kempf); a half negative plate of thi s view ex ists in th e Mu see d'U nterlind en, Colmar. 25 So me of the prin cipal twentieth-ce ntury authors who have examin ed th e relationship of Manet's art to photography 3 1 Th e painted sketch after the photograph is quit e different include Nil s Sandbl ad, Manet: Three Studies in Artistic from th e larger fini shed reli gious paintin gs that Negre Conception (Lund : C.W.K . Gleerup , 1954); Scharf, pp . exhibi ted at the Pari s Salons. See S charf, 112, for 62- 75 ; Car l Chiarenza, "Manet's Use o f Ph otograph y in illustration s of the photograph and paintin g. Neg re train ed the C reation of D raw ing," Master Drawings VII (sprin g as a painter in the atelier of the well-know n Academician 1969): 38-4 5; Ge rald N eedham, "Manet, Ol ympi a, Paul D elaroche, and wa s drawn t o photography along and P ornograp hic Photogra phy," in Th omas Hess a nd with seve ral others in th at studio, includin g Henri L e Lind a Noc hlin , eds., Woman as Sex-Obj ect (New Y ork: Secq , Gu stave Le Gray, and th e E nglishman R oger News week B ooks, 1972), 8 1-89; Anne C offin H anson, Fent on. Delaroche gave a pos itive r eport on th e new Manet a nd the Modern Tr adition (New Haven: Yale medium of ph otography w hen asked t o c omm ent after University Press , 1977) , 192- 196; Beatrice Farwe ll, the invention w as a nnounced in Pari s in 1 839 , but th e Manet and the Nude. A St udy in I conography in the statement "From thi s day forward, paintin g is dead" is Second E mpire (New York: G arland, 198 1); McCa uley ; also a ttribut ed t o him. On Negre, see Scharf, 112-11 3; and L arry L. Li go , " Man et's Fronti spiece E tchings: Hi s Diane Lesko, " Charles Negre as Paint er-Photogra pher," Symbolic Self-P ortrait Acknow ledging the Influ ences of Arts 56, no. I (September 1 971): 7 3 1-35; a nd Jam es Baudelaire a nd Phot ogra phy upon Hi s Work," Gazette Borco man, Charles Negre (Ottawa: N ational G allery of des Beaux-Arts (September 1 986): 66-7 4, a nd "The Can ada , 1976). Lun cheo n in th e Studi o: Manet's Reaffirm ation of th e 32 Reff, 238 . Influences o f B audelaire a nd Ph otogra phy upon hi s strated in Manet work," Arts 6 1 (Januar y 1987): 46-5 1. 33 Ibid. The Bud apest d rawing is illu 1832- 1883, 400 , no. 159, as are the Chicago draw ing 26 Repo rted as ea rly as 1902 by Theodore Dur et, Histoire (401 , no. 1 60) a nd th e paintin g La rue Mosnier aux d ' Edouard Manet (Paris: H. Floury, 1902), 7 1, see a lso pa veurs, 1878 (39 7 n o. 158), now in a private co llection Manet, letter t o Isabelle Lemonnier, 11 or 1 8 July 1880, in S witzerland. translated in Juli et Wil son-B areau, ed., Manet by Himself ith such m agnifiers. (London: M acdonald , 199 1), 2 51. H anson d ocuments 34 V arious s tereov iewers were fitt ed w st One Hundred Manet's phot og raphs, pp . 192- 196. Several sour ces See Paul Win g, Stereoscopes: the Fir shing, c. 1996) , 46, discuss Manet's e mployment of phot ogra phers: Alain Years (Nas hua, N.H .. Transition Publi teful t o Todd de Leiris, The Drawings of Edouard Manet (Berkeley· I 05, 13 1, and 1 33, for exampl es. We are gra Collection s, George University of C alifornia, 1969), l0- 12; Manet, exhibiti on Gu stavson , Curator of T echnology eove r, nineteenth­ catalogue ( Paris: R eunion d es musees nationaux, 1983) , East man Hou se, for the reference. Mor impress ion th at th ey 60, 8 1, 114, 150, 174; and Ch arles F. Stuckey, "Manet century stereo co nsumers had the scale, as reported Rev ised: Whodunit ?" Art in America (Nove mber 1 983): were see ing places a nd form s in full The St ereosc ope a nd th e 158- 77 23 9, 241. by Oliver W endell H olmes, " Stereograph ," Atlantic Monthly (June 1859), reprint ed 27 In 1 864, the c ritic E rnest Ch esneau r ecog nized the in Vi cki G oldberg, e d., Photography in Print: Writings source in hi s rev iew of the Salon d es Refuses, in L Art fro m 1816 to the Present (New York: Simon and S chuster, et Les artistes mo dernes en Fr ance et en Angleterre 198 1), 107- 108. (Paris, 1864), 190 , cited in G eorge H ear d H amilton, scussion Manet and His C ritics (Ne w H ave n: Y ale U niversity 35 S ee McCauley, 151- 172 , for an in sightful di gra phy. Several Press , 1954), 44 n. 6 . Manet' s painting a nd Raim ondi 's of D eg as's intersection with photo are reproduced engrav ing are w idely publi shed; see Manet 1 832- 1883, photographs an d dr awings a fter them books of Edg ar D egas , 2 exhibiti on catalogue ( Galeries nationals du Grand P alais in Th eodore Reff, The Note ess , 1976). For and M etropolit an Mu seum of Art : Paris a nd Ne w York, vols. ( Oxfo rd: O xford Uni versity Pr photography, s ee M alcolm 1983) , 167 no. 62 , and 1 68, fig. c , which th e ca talogue other scholar s on D egas's pher (New York: does not indic ate is a de tail of the e ngraving. Daniel, ed., Edgar D egas, Photogra Metro politan Mu seum of Art , 1998); a nd D oroth y 28 As has been n oted, the original titl e Le Bain (Bathing), Kos inski, The Artist and the Ca mera. Degas to Picasso suggests that M anet 's borrow ing o f R aphael 's river (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art , 1999). gods is linked dir ectly to his art istic co nception for thi s paintin g. 29 Farwe ll, Manet and t he Nude, pp. 199 ff.

16 r,aun's 62-63 of this fferent The Postcards of O.S. Leeland: Negre 2, for South Dakota Photographer rained nician along Cynthia Elyce Rubin tri Le Roger new after ong before instant electronic mail to live with his brother , Oscar, he filed a Declarat ion at the guaranteed inexpensive d" is L global discourse , of Intent to become an American citizen. the postcard reigned as America's most democratic - 113; Named to honor James Jerome Hill , founder iher," and inexpensive form of mass comrnunication. 1 of the Great ames Northern Railroad , Hillsboro at that The real photo po stcard-a true, one-of-a-kind ry of time was a thriving , Wild-Western town originally photograph printed on postcard stock from a settled by Norwegian pioneer s.5 Saloons and hotel s negative-was photography 's contribution to the did a brisk bu siness in thi s environment, so when genre. Photo postcards were often a anet product of brother O scar opened the Leeland Hotel, Ole went wing the independent , small-town photographer whose to help run the establishment. Notrung is known of aux works have long gone unrecognized. Norwegian ction the hotel 's history except that it was short-lived. immigrant Ole Sigbj~msen Leeland is one such Records at the Hillsboro Re gistry of Deeds indicate photographer . His work deserves our attention for 1ers. that a few years after its openjng, Oscar sold the the way it articulates, through a populist dred vision, building and land for a mere fifty dollars profit. ,46, some of the most significant historical trends in the Shortly afterwards, according to census records, Todd West at the tum of the twentieth century. ·orge Leeland turned up living with his sister and brother­ mth­ "The frontier," declared historian Frederick in-law, Nels Sandstel, in rural Blaine Town ship, they Jackson Turner in his semjnal work about the impact Jerauld County, 6 irted South Dakota. of frontier life on a transplanted civilization, " the is the Historian Odd S . Lovell writes that although line of most rapid and effective Americanization 2 ted ." North Dakota was the most Norwegian of Leeland can all ings be said to have demonstrated Turner's states, "by 1900 .ster, , there were fifty-one thousand theory as he transformed himself from a Norwegian Norwegian s in South Dakota , 12.8 percent of the into a Norwegian American on the South Dakota 7 sion state 's population. " Most of these immigrants frontier, doing so with the unbridled optimism of a era! were tied to farming and a rural life style. As did his ced newly arrived immigrant. At the same time that he fellow South Dakotans , Leeland , too, had a rural ' 2 underwent such metamorpho sis, Leeland recorded For background, so how and where he learned the up­ that proce ss in others with both humor olm and pathos. and-coming art of photography is a mystery. Most ork: His postcards were disseminated throughout probably he was self-taught. >thy America, carrying theme s of national identity and ~sso Although there is no direct evidence, he m gender. In this respect they ay are more than simple have been introduced to the modem invention document s; they suggest issue s of broad social while living in Hill sboro. In 1882, established significance as well as attitudes regarding "many Norwegian photographer Jakob L. Skrivseth less concrete aspects of our past." 3 Of particular opened a portrait studio a few blocks from the interest are the few but sensitive images 8 in which Leeland Hotel. Skrivseth-himself such a popular, Leeland considered the subject of women's place on rugh-profile personality that he became Hill sboro's the frontier, capturing the adventure and hardship mayor as well as the region 's most noted portrait of women's vital, albeit underacknowledged , role in photographer- spoke Norwegian , as did Leeland. the homestead experience . So there i s a possibility that the two men knew each According to Norwegian parish record s, other or even worked together . Leeland was born on April 26, 1870, on the What i s clear is that by 1902 , Leeland had Norwegian farm of Liland in Sirdal , Vest-Agder , turned to photography to make a living. An early a little-populated mountainou s region of southern reference to Leeland as a photographer appeared Norway . Emigrating to America in 1887 , he lived at in the Mitchell Ga zette in 1903 : "Photog rapher first with his married sister in Frankfort 4 , Michigan. Leeland , of Mt. Vernon, took a picture of the Elliott In 1891 , having moved to Hillsboro , North Dakota , Church last Thur sday." According to the South

17 exposure Volume 37: 1

age1 Dakota census, by 1905 Leeland fille had moved from Mt. Vernon cou to Mitchell , the largest town in trad the vicinity where with some fanfares he opened a portrait don studio , the Leeland Art and acti Manufacturing Company. and Since portrait work to-c was sporadic at best , early Ace twentieth-century rural studio Mi, photographers needed more than eve one job to make ends meet-as for do many of today's rural citizens . loc: As one photographer explained mo in Abel 's Photographic Weekly, the "If I sat down in my gallery and street scene, c. 1907, photo Figure 1 O. S. Leeland, Waterlown, South Dakota, esp waited for trade, I should grow postcard, 5 3/8 x 3 7/16 inches . Published by Curt Teich & Co., Chicago, Ill. Courtesy and slim."9 Consequently , Leeland of the author. Curt Otto Teich founded Curt Teich & Co. in 1898 after emigrating from Lobenstein, Germany where he had worked in the printing business. ind turned to the postcard business oft to supplement his income. The phenomenon of the postcard was charging distances to reach a post office, receipt of mail was of onto the American scene at that time. Postcards, as irregular at best. By 1906, however , established pos we recognize them , first appeared in Europe in the mail routes provided reliable home delivery to most eve 1890s. Portraits, stately homes, serene landscapes , rural addresses on a daily basis, often more than of beautiful women - there was no end to postcards' once a day. This enabled a person to send a postcard of : colorful and diverse subjects. By 1893, American in the morning to announce an evening arrival , thus government-printed postal cards were widely promoting an atmosphere of close social interaction Le( available , and the first, privately published colored among rural neighbors and friends. infl view postcards appeared as a special souvenir of The fever for sending postcards was quickly 10 boc the World 's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. followed by a new epidemic-collecting them. 19( During the next eight years, Congress passed laws During 1899 crowds jammed international gra allowing privately printed postcards of standardized exhibitions of picture postcards in Venice gro size and weight with the same message privileges and several other European cities . Soon after, for and postage rates as government-issued cards. enthusiasts gathered in Nice, Ostend , Berlin , and wh When the postcard first appeared , postal Paris, where one million postcards were mailed rail regulations permitted nothing but an address and from the exhibition hall. There was also a popular 11 of stamp on the postcard's back. Any message had Cartophilic Congress in Prague . The continental am to be written around the margins of the illustration collecting mania, in full acceleration, soon spread tha on the front side of the postcard. The easing of to England and then to America. By the early 1900s Ex this restriction in 1907 allowed senders to write viewing postcards combined the educational and de messages on the divided backs of postcards and led travel experience that the popular stereograph had em to substantial growth in the postcard's popularity. earlier demonstrated, and made the postcard into sta Just as important for the increase of postcard a common household fixture. Americans were bo use were developments in the postal system that collecting postcards for parlor entertainment in ch: assured timely and reliable delivery even as the elaborate Victorian albums and scrapbooks, which Pa postal system spread West, following the footsteps were as ubiquitous as the family Bible. inc of eager homesteaders . Mail delivery progressed To be sure, the majority of the millions of an from foot , horseback, stagecoach, and bicycle to postcards in circulation during the heyday of "The Da the railroad 's "horseless carriage" as the volume of Postcard Craze," from about 1905 to 1918 , were mail and the numbers of communities grew. Prior to mass-produced view cards published by American the inception of the Rural Free Delivery system in companies but printed mostly in Germany, which 1898, home mail delivery had only been available until World War I was the leader in black-and-white gn in towns of ten thousand or more inhabitants. as well as four-color lithography. Large national For rural residents, who often had to travel great publishers, with the aid of a network of sales de1

18 Society for Photographic Education

agents, distributed the maJonty of postcards that the early years , and later, pictorial murals-making filled racks in tourist destinations throughout the it an outstanding agricultural showcase. Leeland country (Figure 1). 12 But there was also a sizable must have hoped to exploit the city 's success and trade in real photo postcards. its visitors' desires for photographic goods , and Commercial real photo postcards were the he formed a corporation, a venture with local domain of professional photographers who were businessmen that the Mitchell Capital of March 18 , actively encouraged to produce them by manuals 1904, announced in bold headlines: "Leeland Art and trade literature, boosting postcards as an up­ Company Takes Possession of Photograph Gallery to-date novelty item that would increase revenue . 13 as its Future Place of Business in Mitchell. " According to John A. Tennant, editor of Photo­ While owner of this establishment, Leeland Miniature, the postcard "offers possibilities of profit recorded the region 's transformation from territory even to the individual worker with limited facilities, to state. In more than 400 known postcard views, for there is always a market for cards of special or he depicted and commented on the intimate realities local interest. " 14 Since the postcard , "one of the of town and frontier homestead existence. In his most useful creations of all times ," 15 increased images, we view bustling main streets , annual Corn the burgeoning market for photographic services, Palace displays, jam-packed shop interiors , s olid especially within rural markets , their production architectural facades, events and disasters, Native and distribution complemented the activity of Americans, grazing buffalo, and cowboys working indoor portraiture and became a logical extension the range-ordinary people doing ordinary things . of the small-town photographer's business. Leeland's prolific output can be divided into As entrepreneurial Leeland took advantage the two main categories of the documentary and of this offshoot market, he produced hundreds of the narrative. Examples of the documentary form postcards that recorded ordinary people, places, and include such images as "U.S. Gov. Irregation [sic] events. His images constitute a remarkable chronicle Dam-Belle Fourche, S.D." (Figure 2) , "Farmers of homesteading life, and further , they raise issues & Merchants State Bank" in Draper , and "Catholic of identity, gender , and popular culture . Church" in Ethan. In addition, Leeland published a It is clear that in making such postcards view of the Corn Palace (Figure 3) annually from Leeland was responding to the economic and social 1907 to the late 1920s, giving us a substantial influences around him. He had initially moved to a record of the creativity applied each year to the booming Mt. Vernon sometime around 1900, but by problem of rendering interesting compositions in 1902, the boom had turned to bust when "drought, colored corn varieties, oats, rye, barley, and grasses . grass-hoppers and poor farm prices" caused Leeland's narrative images are compositions in growth to cease. 16 About this time, Leeland left which subjects conspired with the photographer for the more prosperous nearby town of Mitchell, to act out humorous situations or make insightful which was thriving as a result of successful comments on everyday life . Often Leeland railroad development. The most outward symbol enhanced these images with ambiguous captions. of Mitchell's prosperity was its annual fall agricultural festival that had begun as the Corn Belt Exposition in 1892. Originally developed as a vehicle to encourage immigration to the state by promoting its land's bounty, the event's name was changed in 1905 to the Corn Palace Festival. Highlights, including live entertainment and heaping displays of South Dakota's farm produce, attracted throngs of admirers. The exterior of the Corn Palace building was decorated with various colored grains and native grasses­ Figure 2 0. S. Leeland, U.S. Gov. lrregation Dam - Belle Fourche, S.D., 1907, photo postcard 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches. Courtesy of the author. depicting geometric designs in

19 exposure Volume 3 7 · 1 with These pithy captions , sometimes stabi whimsical, but always insightful, play, differentiate Leeland's postcards of from those of his peers. only Some of the more interesting perrr of the narrative postcards deal the v with women and their roles it. In on the frontier , specifica lly makl with regard to concepts of their home , romance , and labor. cha] Leeland clearly perceived the this changing and even contradictory aliv( expectations for women that with were brought about by life on 'I the prairie , and he responded to Virg them with some amb ivalence. He Mitchell Corn Palace, 1909, photo postcard , 5 7/16 x 3 1/2 tradi expected women to be domestic, Figure 3 0. S. Leeland, inches. Courtesy of the author. and prim, warm, and motherly and capt at the same time , he lauded the · women who did hard work. He even went so far as a filing fee ($ 18.00 in parts of Dakota Territory) a home no settl to suggest that labor equality was justification for and the expen se and effort of building that women 's suffrage , an unusual position for a man smaller than 10 by 12 feet. One was also required for I at that time. But he also expressed anxiety about to demonstrate "actual c ultivation" by breaking the land, Dak women 's growing equality and the perceived threat a few acres of ground and residing on "proving tran that posed to male dignity. referred to as the claim, for five years, the whc One of Leeland 's images of women depicts two up" period. In response to the lure of cheap land, it. ' well-dressed homesteaders sitting on the ground near homesteaders of two principal types flooded the virg their tarpaper home with sod banked against the walls South Dakota Plains: those who were committed and those of ( for insulation and protection against the buffeting to making a life in South Dakota Soi1 winds The requisite outhouse in the background is who were speculating, breaking a few acres of cultivation" before also surrounded by piled sod (Figure 4). ground to demonstrate "actua l The sod house, affectionate ly called a "soddy " securing a profit and departing. With little wood or "soddie ," was the product of the plains and for construction, homestead housing consisted of , easy the pattern of their settlement. The Homestead either tarpaper or sod. Tarpaper construction . "A Act of 1862 promised every man and woman 160 and inexpensive , was also somewhat flimsy a few acres of public land for no more than the price of settler purchased a cheap grade of lumber , rolls of tar paper, and some nails , hauled these materials to the claim , and erected a frontier home in a few days . The crudest shanty would satisfy government standards ." 17 The sod house was \ cheap to construct as well, but it was more solid, built from I the very earth , with its interior temperature well-regulated by thick walls. Although seemingly more primitive than tarpaper construct ion, it was often cooler in summer and warmer in winter Fig, than tarpaper-covered homes. stea Leeland 's postcard , for all call an11 Figure 4 0. S. Leeland, Two Wise Virgi11s, no date, photo postcard, 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 the appare nt contrast of the 7/1( inches. Courtesy of the author. women 's fashionab le clothing

20 Society for Photographic Education with the crude house, actually speaks of an effort at Land Company. In commenting on the production stability and of the concept of home, a concept that of recent wealth, the author described South played an important , often subliminal , role in many Dakota 's bounty· "Four big tons of farm products , of Leeland 's female-related postcard images . Not exclusive of hay, marketed for every human being , only does the partially sodded house represent the big, little, old, young, white , black, chinese [sic] , or permanence of home, but also the women represent Indian , residing in the good Sunshine State. This is the warmth, culture, and tenderness associated with not boom talk, but the cold hard figures." 18 it. In addition , as the presence of the women helps to Another function of Leeland's caption is to make the house a home, the house gives the women introduce a measure of ambiguity into the image. their "place" in what was often a threatening or The use of "virgin " seems unusual to us in the challenging environment. Leeland is asserting in twenty-first century , but the term probably refers this image that the traditional concept of home is to an unmarried state rather than a sexual status. alive in this rugged, largely impermanent landscape Church-going Leeland undoubtedly was aware of with its speculative and often transient culture . the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matt. The caption on the postcard, "Two Wise 25:1-13) and may have been referring to that Virgins," can be read as further emphasizing here to suggest that these women were prepared traditional values in that it suggests the simplicity for life on the prairie (as the wise virgins were and virtue of domestic Western womanhood. The prepared with their oil) and that they were therefore caption also suggests a subtle relationship between potentially desirable mates. But in the end we the women and the land because, in the eyes of the cannot be sure what Leeland had in mind . There is settlers, the land was also virginal. It mattered little further ambiguity in the visual details of the image . that America 's Native inhabitants had lived there What are the women doing? Their seemingly for thousands of years. The government took South natural movements suggest that they may have Dakota Indian lands from their original occupants, been talking. Perhaps they have been reading, since transferring communal property by lottery to settlers papers and a book are strewn about at their feet. A who showed the individual enterprise to secure man, hardly recognizable , is mysteriously lurking it. To the homesteaders' eyes, the state was rich behind the house with his arm upheld. He may be virgin territory, an attitude reaffirmed by accounts holding an object. There is a mysterious quality of promotional booklets , such as Corn ls King in about the narrative , the entire meaning of which is South Dakota (1910) distributed by the Kimball never fully revealed . This playful ambiguity is one

Figure 5 0. S. Leeland, No. I A home­ Figure 6 0 . S. Leeland, No. 2 She got Figure 7 0. S. Leeland, No. 3 If you stead claimant , a western boy, made a so busy at chopping wood. He took the will chop I will start the tea, and make call on his neighbor , who his heart did ax and did "make good." 1909, photo it to suit both you and me. 1909, photo annoy. 1909, photo postcard, 3 1/2 x 5 postcard, 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches. Courtesy postcard, 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches. Courtesy 7/16 inches. Courtesy of the author. of the author. of the author.

21 exposure Volume 37:1 Dako enga1 of as the n wom1 emot movf earlif unav often farm often a hin

wor~ by c drag con~ teeth 5 Let me Figure 10 0. S. Leeland, No. 6 (The Figure 8 0. S . Leeland, No. 4 She Figure 9 0. S. Leeland, No. to p a11d he took her Happy E11d) A bright idea struck this watched delightfull, this 111a11ly lord. It show you the trick , depi1 , I could split ha11dso111e Miss.Tear dow11 the Je11ce, wo11'ttake you lo11gto split a cord. 1909, ha11d. For the 011e I love a11d he said, Oh Bliss. 1909, photo behi photo postcard, 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches. my la11d. 1909, photo postcard, of the postcard, 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches. Courtesy worr Courtesy of the author. 3 7 /16 x 5 7 /16 inches. Courtesy author. of Robert Kolbe. or ir Leel his strength to the adju of the more engaging aspects of Leeland's work. the suitor energetically applies s. She meanwhile use s subtle mar, Leeland's tour-de-force is a dramatic six­ growing pile of cut log - hand on hip -to flirtatiously hum postcard narrative series, a tale of frontier love body language own romantic interest in his advances. pro~ rooted in the American dream (Figures 5-10). express her show you the trick, and he took sug1 Leeland narrates the story with his own doggerel. "No. 5 Let me one I love , I could split my land." tract "No . 1 A homestead claimant, a western boy, her hand. For the holds hands in the background as the on made a call on his neighbor , who his heart did The couple forlornly in the foreground. He has chili annoy." In the doorway to her tarpaper-covered stilled ax sits share of land and a fi home, a well-dressed woman is shaking hands with made his intentions clear-equal stre1 a well-dressed man wearing a hat and displaying life. All is quiet before the flood of emotion. Happy End) A bright idea struck a pair of fringed gloves hanging from his jacket "No. 6 (The Miss. Tear down the fence, and he pocket. this handsome of joy erupts "No. 2 She got so busy at chopping wood. He said, Oh Bliss." A light-bulb moment took the ax and did 'make good."' Being single, as the couple warmly embraces. The female object uiesces to the hero 's charms while he she often had to perform "men's work." We see of pursuit acq time, we her chopping wood while the male visitor has succinctly expresses pleasure. For the first 's interior, which is nicely decorated taken off his hat and offers help with a chivalrous note the house outstretched hand. with fashionable wallpaper and displays a crocheted right corner-indicative of a "No. 3 If you will chop I will start the tea, and spread in the lower . make it to suit both you and me." Holding firewood, relative prosperity s another, very different she watches as he chops logs with the ax. His hat Leeland make is back on his head although he has removed his statement about women in the postcard captioned Woman.' At home in any field of jacket and put on the leather gloves. Since the way '" The American she can't vote" (Figure 11). Here, he to a man's heart is through his stomach , she offers labor. But- "men's work" and nourishment, promising it will be ample for both takes on women's involvement in that few, except suffrage heart and stomach. women's suffrage, subjects organizers and the Women's Christian Temperance "No. 4 She watched delightfull, this manly Fig, Union, found of interest in 1910.19 In Leeland's lord. It won't take you long to split a cord." The pOSI traditional roles of male and female are apparent as world view, women played an integral role in South

22 Society for Photographic Education

Dakota's agricultural economy by engaging in what was conceived of as heavy field work , normally the male's sphere. To be sure, women were still expected to be emotional providers and prime movers in home affairs , as noted earlier. But when hired help was unavailable, a single woman was often left as the only adult on the farm, and a married woman was often obliged to take the place of a hired hand. In this image, a woman works a level, treeless field by operating a device called a Figure 11 0. S. Leeland, "The A111erica11Woma11." Athome i11 a11y field of labor. But­ drag or harrow, an apparatus she can't vote. 1910, photo postcard, 5 7/16 x 3 7/8 inches. Courtesy of the author. contammg six-inch bars of teeth, whose function was to slide into the ground directions. Certainly there was more independence to prepare a bed for seeding . The arrangement but there was also less comfort and security than the depicted here is unusual in that there is no cart life left behind provided . Similarly, the image itself behind the horses; it is doubly unusual in that a moves in two directions. On one hand, Leeland woman is riding a horse . This appears to be a casual presents this woman in terms of the male role of or impromptu photograph, but we can be sure that field worker, and on the other, he associates her Leeland either orchestrated the scene or somehow with maternity . That he does the former , however, adjusted it to suit his purpose. A foal follows the is significant because he is undermining the widely mare, suggesting maternal aspects of life, whether held prejudice that women could not responsibly human or animal. In addition, the woman wears a work such an apparatus in the fields . Leeland protective head covering , a practical fashion that asserts here that women are crucial to economic suggests traditional female values . The concept of frontier life. And he suggests that in light of this traditional womanhood is heightened by the play critical role they deserve to vote. on words, "any field of labor," suggesting both Given Leeland 's acknowledgment of women 's childbirth as well as the endeavor of breaking sod, centrality to economic life on the prairie and his a field task traditionally requiring male physical advocacy of women's suffrage, he still was not strength and stamina . completely comfortable with gender equality . In Women's life in South Dakota moved in two "The Modem Woman on the Claim," he pictures a woman riding away on her horse to attend to an errand as she gestures commandingly to her husband who is left at home scrubbing clothes in a tin wash tub (Figure 12). Here Leeland takes a humorous jab at what he perceives to be a threat to the male's status quo in the role reversals of prairie life . In sum, Leeland wanted women both to play the traditional roles of domesticity and to work like men when necessary. Women themselves felt the pressure to master both these Figure 12 0 . S. Leeland, The Modem Wo111a11011 the Claim, no date, photo postcard, 5 3/8 x 3 7 /8 inches. Courtesy of the author . roles, to respond to the societal norms that required them to

23 exposure Volume 3 7:1 provide domestic order and warmth, and to prove 7 Odd S . Lovell, The Promise of America (Minneapoli s: University of Minne sota Press , 1984), 123. their capacity for endurance and surviva l in South earlier in Fargo , North Dakota's inhospitable, harsh environment. As one 8 Skrivseth owned studios Dakota , and Moorhead , Minnesota. Information derived Dakota woman summed it up: "While a woman had from the North Dakota State University Archives An more independence here than in any other part of Web site, www.lib.ndsu .nodak.edu/ndirs/exhibitions / ). the world, she was expected to contribute as much photographers/biography (January 21, 2004 Stev~ as a man-not in the same way, it is true, but to the 9 "A Small-Town Photogr apher," Abel's Photographic Weekly (October 2, 1909): 92-93. same degree." 20 Although the heyday of Leeland's Frank Staff, The , he 10 For the hi story of the postcard, see real photo postcards was from 1908 to 1910 Picture Postcard & Its Origins (New York: Praeger , What continued to publish postcards on a limited basis 1966); and Susan Brown Nicholson, The Enc yclopedia into the late 1920s. Decline in production probably of Antique Postcards (Radnor , Pa .. Wallace-Homestead ] Book Co., I 994); and for the history of the real photo reflected the vogue for color postcards more than postcard , see Andreas Brown and Hal Mor gan, Prairie Webe anything else. As demand for black-and-white Fires and Paper Moons: The American Photographic Mum Postcard 1900-1920 (Boston: Godine , 198 I). examples waned, so did Leeland 's standard of prese living until, by the end of his life in 1939, he had 11 Cartophi lia was the popular name coined for the new when ecting. Today the word in total disintegration of both health and hobby of picture postcard co ll experienced vogue is deltiology , from the Greek logos meaning study densi finances. No longer ab le to fend for himself, the of, and deltion, meaning small picture s. Staff, 59. and a court appointed an executor to oversee Leeland's 12 Some of the mo st influential companies were the city affairs, and upon his death , he was buried in American Souvenir Card Company (1896--1898), Detroit right potter 's field. Today, this immigrant photographer Publishing Company ( I 896--19 I 7), and the Curt Teich Company ( 1898- 1978) of Chicago , which eventually modf no doubt would be amused to discover his mundane became the largest volume producer of postcards in the prese postcards are worthy to be studied as the stuff of world. For more information, visit the Curt Teich Postcard This, history. Combining word and image to interpret Archives at the Lake County Discovery Museum , Lakewood Forest Preserve, Wauconda , lllinoi s. man) a complex time and place in American history, 13 E. J. Wall and H. Snowden Ward, The Photographic style: these commonplace photographic expressions have Picture Post-Card for Personal Use and for Profit, view become cultural documents reflecting Leeland 's 1906, is one of the earliest manual s on the m aking and of th own persona and power of observation. As such, marketin g of real photo postcards. It contains chapters on "photographic equipment , darkroom technique s stage they are a conduit, leading us to an appreciation and publi shing strategies," as quoted in Jody Black ultirr of photography's contribution to the structure and and Jeannette Lasansky, Rural Delivery: Real Photo early values of the American West in a refreshing way. Postcards from Central Pennsylvania 1905- 1935 (Lewisburg, Pa: Union County Historical Society , 1996), whic 14. the v Endnotes 14 John A. Tennant , ed., "Photographic Post-C ards," Photo­ 1940 On the role of the view postcard , or street scene, in which Miniature 8 (October 1908): 424. Klei1 "issues of aesthetics and accuracy are then subsumed by 15 Staff, 81. snap larger questions about communication ," see Jay Ruby, "Image s of Rural America: View Photograph s a nd 16 Bob Karolevit z, An Historic Sampler of Davison County phot1 Picture Postcard s," History of Photography 12, (October­ (Virginia Beach, Va: Donning Publi shers, 1993), 36. pictl December 1988 ): 327-342. 17 Paula M. Nelson, After the West Was Won. Homesteaders 2 Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American and Town-Builders in Western South Dakota, 1900-1917 expe History ( 1920; reprint, New York: Dover: 1996), 3-4. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989), 28. in th 3 Martha A. Sandweiss, Photography in Nineteenth­ 18 Corn Is King in South Dakota. A Publicity Booklet for Century America (New York: Abrams, 1991 ), xv. 1910 (Pierre, S.D .. The South Dakota Business Men's moti Association , 1910), I 9. in ti 4 So far no evidence illuminate s Leeland's early years. The information on his stay in Frankfort , Michigan , is taken 19 When South Dakota achieved statehood in 1889, the Beal from History of the Sandstel (Sanstol)-Leeland Family framers of the South Dakota constitution included a phot that allowed male voters to remove the word Since 1832 compiled by Jurene Gjesdal and Oscar provision of s Thompson, November 1999. "male" from the document , thereby extending the right to vote to women. Although suffragists lobbied hard , prao 5 Hillsboro, North Dakota . The First Hundred Years male voters continually rejected women's suffrage (Hillsboro: Hill sboro Centennial , 1981) , 35. Before the cine bills. (Teddy Roo sevelt's Progressive Party was the railroad, Traill County was a wilderness area, with only first national political party to adopt a women's suffrage thes a number of small settlement s along the Goose River. plank in I 9 I 2.) Finally, in I 9 I 8, women received the of s But when Hill' s railroad arrived in 1880, he ordered a right to vote in South Dakota , but women were not new town platted by the surveying firm of Comstock and phot granted the vote nationally until the ratification of the White of Moorhead , Minnesota. Albert Potterud donated Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. spor twenty acres of land for use as the original townsite. The Paraphrased from Glenda Riley, A Place to Grow: Women city town was initially known as "Coms tock ," but it was in the American West (Arlington Height s, IL.. Harl an platted as "Hill City" and soon changed to "Hillsboro" in Davidson , Inc., 1992), 158. honor of James Hill. Urb 20 Ibid., 149. 6 Federal Census 1900, South Dakota State Archives. 24 neapolis:

o, N orth n derived Archives Andreas Gursky: Photographer of the Generic City hibitions/ tographic Steven Jacobs

,taff, The Praeger, Whatever Happened to Street Photography? largely a response to fundamental changes in the , c/opedia nature of the city itself. During the last decade omestead n se~nal theoretical studies from the early s, eal photo Itwentieth century (by Georg Simmel, Max the differences between center and periphery 1, Prairie Weber, Walter Benjamin, Louis Wirth, and Lewis and between city and countryside have become ographic Mumford in particular) , the metropolis has been increasingly indistinct. In an age of urban sprawl , presented the city is no longer a place, but rather a condition .3 the new as a spatial , social , and cultural realm word in where modem phenomena such as rationalization, This process of disurbanization is, of course, not ing study density, flux , hyperstimulation , phantasmagoria , entirely a new phenomenon. Urbanites have been 9. and alienation are clearly visible. Thi s notion of the living outside the city since the rise of suburbia ere the city has been an important subject in photography in the eighteenth century . But in contrast with the ), Detroit urt Teich right from its start around 1840 . Since then, the traditional strictly residential suburbs, contemporary ventually modem medium of photography has been able to post-suburbia is much more fragmented and hybrid. 4 ds in the present the metropoli s as the locus of modernity. Since the re structuring of industry after World War Postcard useum, This, of course, has been achieved by means of II, many people not only live outside the city but many different motifs , themes , and photographic also work there. And since the 1970s and 1980s , the ographic styles , ranging from nineteenth-century panoramic services of the post-industrial economy have taken Profit, views to avant-garde photo-montages. The idea part in the disurbanization as well. Thing s we used king and to do in the city-such chapters of the city as a kaleidoscopic spectacle and as a as shopping, going to a bank, :hniques stage for spontaneous human interactions found its watching a movie , visiting a doctor or dentist , or Black ultimate photographic expression, in the 1950 s and consulting a lawyer-many of us now do outside 11 Photo historically urban centers . 05- 1935 early 1960s , in the tradition of street photography , y, 1996), which was above all tailored to . In Within the horizontal and dispersed zones of the wake of Henri Cartier-Bresson in the 1930s and varying density, however , traditional urban center s " Photo- 1940s, photographers such as Robert Frank, William do still exist. But they have changed radically as Klein, and Garry Winogrand took to the streets well. The flight of people and activities from the snap-shooting incidents with a 35mm camera. 1 The center created ghettoes and urban voids , exposing the County photographer became a flaneur , presenting each segregation , fragmentation , and monoculturalization 36. picture as the product of a unique encounter. 2 of the contemporary city. These phenomena were steaders This photographic addressed by strategies of urban renewal , which XJ--1917 approach to the urban experience , however, disappeared almost completely did not neutralize urban fragmentation but rather iklet for in the late 1960s. When, in more recent times , the intensified it. One of the most salient characteristic s , Men's motif of urban street life cropped up again , as of these renewal strategies is that they emphasize in the work of , Philip-Lorca DiCorcia , the image quality of the city. In other words, it 89, the Beat Streuli, Nikki S . Lee, or Valerie Jouve , has become the goal, through architecture and the uded a design of urban spaces , to create desired ie word photographers questioned the basic assumptions socio­ he right of street photography as it had been previously economic and cultural images in urban centers , t hard, practiced. By means of digital manipulation , images that are not necessarily grounded in reality mffrage or have not necessarily grown was the cinematic techniques , and various kinds of staging , organically from mffrage these artists have been undermining the aesthetics the community on which they are projected . One wed the of street photography from within . For them, street example of these image-creating strategies is the ere not gentrification of inner-city neighborhood of the photography can only be a simulacrum in which the s by upper in 1920. spontaneity of the street is staged and in which the and middle classes, in many cases accompanied by Women city itself is turned into an image. the pre-industrial architectural language of the so­ Harlan called New Urbanism. In addition, there has been Urban Images and Simulations privatization of public space by means of Business The recent changes in urban photography are Improvement Districts , gated communities, and

25 exposure Volume 37:1

such as Twenty-Six Gasolin e Stations (1962) , Some shopping malls. Strangely enough, the shopping conte Apartm ents (1965) , Every Building on mall, originally imitating urban space with its layout absm the Sunset Strip (1966), Thirtyfour Parking Lots in of streets and little squares, itself became a model artisti Los Angeles (1967), and Real Estate Oppurtunities for cities in that many downtowns are remodeled reali~ (1970) . Also important are Baldessari 's half-painted as if they were shopping malls. Urban theorists Baud and half-photographic National City pictures call this the mallification of the contemporary on th (1966-69); Graham 's article Homes for America city. A third image-making strategy involves the the p of tract houses; and Robert construction of new urban centers, such as City (1966), showing pictures of parlo , in the form of theme parks and Smithson 's influential illustrated essay, A Tour Walk in Los Angeles 5 has d the Monuments of Pessaic, New Jersey (1967). the transformation of existing urban centers , such as (life­ In addition , the so-called New Topographers, such Times Square in New York, into quasi-theme parks. beco; of as Robert Adams , , and Lewis Baltz , Urban theorists speak about the Disneyfication exch the picked up large-format cameras again and began to the contemporary city. And finally , one sees com1 look at the new posturban developments noted by transformation of European historical centers into pictu artists Ruscha, Smithson, and Graham. 6 open-air museums. Such transformations stress the case In genera l, the history of urban photography historical identity of a city which, on the one hand, caret has coincided with the history of urbanism, which is proof of the fact that the European city is not hims abandoned the model of the centralized metropolis degenerating into a generic space and is maintaining beca of New York in favor of the horizontal urban its unique quality . On the other hand, stressing the paradigm of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlanta , historical identity indicates that the city is losing the s and Houston or the anonymous vastness of the its original economic functions and is restructuring to ar . Strangely enough , the attention paid itself according to the logic of mass tourism . It is generic city "in ( to the new cityscape was developed by artists and striking that all these strategies- gentrification, pher fascination for it by mallification , Disneyfication , musealization use photographers prior to the Gun the community of architects and urbanists. With images of the urban rather than urban structures stag: , in the late I 960s themselves. Furthermore, these urban simulations the exception of Robert Venturi and early 1970s periphery and urban sprawl were are sanit izing c ities, gutting them of their dangers, shri sexy topics at all in contrast with the central tensions , conflicts, subversions, perversions, and not liter architectural and contrasts . In sum, these strategies are distinctly position these themes claim in doir .7 Perhaps these artists and anti-urban . urban theory today poi, photographers taught architects and urbanists how or t Landscapes to look at this new urban environment. To a certain New by their pictures operated as instruments in a In the visual arts this rise of the city as extent, clai cognitive mapping of the contemporary image coincided with critical questioning of the necessary toe urban landscape. Greenbergian modernist idea of art as a completely ma1 self-reflexive activity . Artists such as Edward Gursky's Beauty Parlor non Ruscha, Dan Graham, John Baldessari, and ore The shift from street photography to the New Robert Smithson rejected Greenbergian doctrine pha Topography not only took place in the United States and started looking at the urban environment circ but in Germany as well. Important there is the work again. Nevertheless, in their rejection of self­ anc who participated in the reflexive formalism these artists did not embrace a of the exhibition in 1975 and who , at nostalgic reversion to figuration and evocation of New Topographies of a 0~ the traditional modem city with its kaleidoscopic the Diisseldorf Academy, were the teachers mu photographers, including spectacle and its colorful excitement. Nor did they whole new generation of , Candida "st photograph the proffered images of a gentrified and , , Axel Hiitte em , and Andreas Gursky. 8 mallified city. Instead, they showed us the generic Hofer the Of all these photographers, Gursky is the and monotonous landscape of the periphery. It is as dis of the new city. His if they discovered a kind of washed-out minimalist most relevant to the discussion of the 1980s and 1990s represent both aesthetics in an everyday world of parking lots , tract photographs ph post-urban space and the simulated urbanity houses, gasoline stations, and abandoned industrial peripheral sta downtowns . At the same time, sites. They succeeded in making fascinating art of contemporary of since the early by taking amateurish deadpan pictures of boring Gursky has used digital manipulation thi representation of architecture in boring posturban environments. The 1990s to illustrate that photographic fo1 best examples of this strategy are Ruscha's booklets, urban reality has become problematic.

26 Society for Photographic Education

C Gursky grasps the complex reality of the of the empty shop displays with the minimalist contemporary city by means of abstracted images. This sculptures of Dan Flavin, and he refers to Barnett g on digitally abstract quality in his work is the result not only of an Newman' s canvasses whjle talking about sin 12 the attempt to present a flattened pictures such as . However , ities artistic stylization but also of a Jean Gursky does not join a Greenbergian formalism , in nted reality that is in itself staged. We do not need realjty itself has taken which the artist emphasizes the essential principles ures Baudrillard to make clear that aestheticization of of his medium. Gursky , in a way, turns modernj st rica on the qualities of a picture. The formalism and its concern for the purity of the bert the photograph is only a tiny part of the huge beauty medium into a paradox : The autonomy (vis a vis r of parlor of late capitalism. Sociologist Gerhard Schulze of photography is achieved 5 has defined present-day society as Erlebnisgesellschaft reality) of the medium i7). , (life-style society), one in which aestheticization has by referring to the qualities of another medium mch photographic become so important that the illusion is created that in this case modernjst painting; his altz, . 13 In exchange value has elbowed out use value almost registrations acquire the qualities of painting .n to to that completely.9 Gursky illustrates this by taking stylized so doing, abstraction plays a similar role by s the pictures of a stylized world. This is especially the of digitization . Just as a digitized image blur distinction between a representation of a staged 1phy case in the big prints of showcases-with shoes, or nothing at all. Gursky reality and a representation of a reality that doe s hich carefully folded clothes, or Phantasiegebilde, not exist outside the image, abstraction (in a less oolis himself describes these pictures as a with the pictures of obvious way) suggests that one cannot make a clear rban because after being disappointed distinction between the representation of a staged nta, the "real staging" of shoes, he decided to photograph and reality and an image that is independent of reality. the the shoes in a specially constructed artificial space of iligital techniques paid to arrange them in rows by means dimension of this Empty Factories and Populated Stock Markets and "in order to accentuate the symbolic the fetishism ofcommoilities." 10 Hence, In addition to presenting commodities, t by phenomenon - are a form of Gursky takes pictures of places where products are With Gursky rebuilt shop ilisplays-which better as pictures. made. Especially during the early 1990s, Gursky 960s staging in themselves-to look windows into photographed interiors of big industrial plants , were Gursky transforms these display which the shining neon light showing the same geometrical simp]jcity, frontality, ntral shrines or theaters in commodities. By serial structures, frozen silence, and alienating and ljterally embodies the aura of we have come to a color as in the images of the shop displays. He and doing so, Gursky illustrates that ambition has replaced the machine s one sees in the 1920 s how point where photography no longer has the aura of unique objects photographs of the Neue Sachlichkeit, or New rtain or the ability to destroy the Vision, with the high technology of the post­ in a by reproducing them, as Walter Benjamin once claimed. 11 On the contrary, photographs have come industrial economy . The organic bond between man rary storical to embody the aura themselves by aestheticizing and and machine, which was celebrated by the hi 's maximizing the value of an original which can be avant-garde, has vanished completely. In Gursky contrast to nonexistent , constructed solely to be photographed pictures one cannot find laborers . In this homage to the the chimneys, steel bridges, and gears of the New New or created by digital means. With Gursky closes a Vision-symbols of technological and social tates phantasmagoria of the shopwindow, that involves commodities progress-Gursky 's factories present themselves as ork circle of aestheticization avant-garde-from mere abstract signs. Walter Benjamin had denounced n the and the museum . Whereas the Specific the photography of the Neue Sachlichkeit because its o, at the dadaist ready-made to the minimalist commodities into the pictures of Krupp or AEG factories did not give us of a Objects-brought trivial status of artworks , information about these institutions. Benjamin states ,ding museum and raised them to the the minimalist in hi s Kleine Geschichte der Photografie that the 1dida "stylish" shops have appropriated emptiness of the modern museum. Gursky closes reification of human relations renders these relations indiscernible . 14 The pictures of the New Vision do the the circle by bringing the aesthetics of commercial not show or explain the human relationshjps that are His displays into the exhibition rooms again. quality of Gursky 's basic to the functiorung of the factories they depict. both In addition, the abstract Gursky 's Griindig, Mercedes , Opel, Schiesser, and anity photographs not only illustrates that reality is autonomy other factory spaces belong to a world in whjch labor time, staged, but also stresses the problematic . Undeniably, relations have become even more invisible , in which early of the picture in regard to reality this autonomy refers to the tradition of modernist the opposition between capitalists and proletarians on of and formalism. Gursky himself compares the image has been blurred, and in which delocalization 27 exposure Volume 37:1 globalization have made social and economic factories. Gursky 's pictures make up an inventory we S< structures less transparent. To the outsider, these of the strange choreographic rituals of the behavior reprei in spaces seem to belong to another planet. of stockbrokers. He shows u s stockholders scree1 Both the physical and social isolation of the black suits randomly grouped around counters in Gursl laborer and the emptiness of these factories, which Tokyo (1990); an explosion of colors on computer artist are remini scent of the detached approach of Edward screens and vivid uniforms in Singapore (1997); transl Ruscha and the New Topographer s, contrast clearly a kaleido scop ic, Jackson Pollock - like , all-over ; Spac, with the swarming crowds in Gursky 's images structure of a swarmi ng ma ss in Chicago (1997) of financial market s and mass events, such as and Kafkae sque geometric rows of computer clerks I rave parties. These crowds, however, have little with market player s' numbers in Hong Kong (1994). a rat in common with the swarms of pedestrians that With his geometrical compositions of stockholders, of at have been ce lebrated in the tradition of street Gur sky evokes Siegfried Kracauer 's notion of the Sasse 15 photography. As he doe s in his factory image s, mass ornament. The way in which Gursky reduces politi , Gur sky exposes in hi s crowd scenes the logic of human bein gs to compositional elements, however illust contemporary economic reality in which services differs from Nazi rallies, Busby Berkeley musicals, Gurs and the culture industry have become paramount. or the mob scenes of Fritz Lang. In Gursky's world, Marn Made from a panoramic viewpoint, his images our world, the individual does not seem aware of no le of both stock markets and gigantic discotheque s the grander totality that absorbs him. of an show ma sses performing acts that seem completely Gursky's oeuvre illustrates that the abstraction infor incomprehensible to outsiders. They are of social relations and the aestheticization of the and inscrutable, like the shining boxes , conveyor belts, world go hand in h and with a monetary system opiru and impressive amounts of cables and cords in the increasingly based on symbolical values, a condition strati bord netw conr Wor and dilut Gur: frorr dem varn into

sho1 com Gur corn the stoc stril the of soc, are: Suu strc ban (19 riv< of der Andreas Gursky Figure 1 Andreas Gursky, Neujahrsschwimmer, 1988, wood framed chromogenic color print, 52 x 62 inches. occ Pilomene Magers, Co logne. through SABAM Belgium 2003. Courtesy: Monika Spriith/ at

28 Society for Photographic Education

>ry we see in the virtualized global financial flows is inevitably reminded of pictorial precedents­ ior represented by flickering numbers on a computer Neujahrss chwimmer for instance, with its silver in screen. Only from this viewpoint can we call water surface and urban skyline, can be considered in Gursky a kind of peintre de la vie postmoderne, an a contemporary Canaletto. In several other works , ter artist who understands how recent global economic Gursky refers to the eighteenth-century tradition 7); transformations determine our environment. of the picturesque-in itself a practice in which rer the relation between reality and representation is 7); Space of Flows inverted. On the one hand, a garden was designed 'ks If a publisher were to have the idea-I admit, as if it were a painting by Claude or Poussin or i). a rather silly idea-to publish a luxury edition because it had to look like one. On the other hand, rs, of authors such as Manuel Castells and Saskia one was invited to look at natural scenery as if it he Sassen, who studied postmodern economjc and were a painting. 17 :es political processes , he easily could find the proper Furthermore, Gursky's landscapes never show er, illustrations by rummaging in Gursky's archive. 16 us virgin nature. On the contrary, a close look reveals ls, Gursky photographs exactly the nodal points of that a snowscape contains a swarm of cross-country Id, Manuel Castells ' "space of flows ," a space which is skiers (Engadine , 1995) or a view of mountain of no longer connected to a certain place but consists scenery is full of backpackers (Klausenpass, 1984). of an endless flux of goods, persons , services , and Gursky demonstrates that nature has become fully on information. The pictures both of stockmarkets part of an urbanized world, and he is especially he and cityscapes perfectly illustrate Saskia Sassen 's interested in peripheral zones in which nature :m opinion that economic restructuring involves a new and the built environment merge. Together with on strategic role for certain cities . The old national the interplay between reality and image , this borders have been replaced by an interurban global preference for the irregular border between nature network of financial nodes and business centers and culture conforms perfectly to the aesthetic s of connected with zones of production in Third the picturesque. Not coincidentally , the concept of World countries. This concentration of financial the picturesque has recently been dusted off by and economic power goes hand in hand with the the Italian urbanist Mirko Zardini to describe and dilution of the traditional city. It is telling that analyze the elusive post-urban landscape. 18 Gursky's mass scenes are completely disconnected Quite often in Gursky 's photographs , nature has from the idea of an urban public space. He been domesticated by means of roads , highways, demonstrates that traditional public space has and all kinds of transportation infrastructures , vanished . Historic centers are being transformed which constitute an important vein in Gursky 's into open air museums. iconography. Here , the artist is not really interested At the same time , shopping malls , factories , in the screaming effects of billboards and garlands shops, clusters of houses , office parks , and cinema of commercial architecture . On the contrary , complexes are snuggling along peripheral roads. Gursky stresses the emptiness of his abstracted Gursky represents this centrifugal aspect of the compositions in which a solitary character , in a contemporary urban landscape as well. Next to manner reminding one of Caspar David Friedrich, the hyperspace of international business (such as reinforce s the vastness of the landscape and the stockmarkets or airport lobbies) , Gursky has a human interventions in it: road workers on the stroong interest in what has traditionally been called Breitscheider Kreuz (1990); a stroller under a bridge the backside of the city but which is now a symbol in the Ruhrtahl (1989) or under the Zoobriicke in of the contemporary diluted urban landscape : a (1988) . soccer field between buildings scattered about in an The sublime emptiness of Gursky 's traffic area of urban sprawl in Zurich (1985); people on a infrastructures is not only perfectly consistent with Sunday watching a runway for airplanes (1984) ; a the aseptic space of his factory interiors but also with stroller or an angler next to a concrete bridge on the his desolate cityscapes. In most of them, such as the banks of the Ruhr (1989) ; his Neujahrsschwimmer silent, mysterious grid of a huge apartment block (1988) gathering disconsolately on an empty in Montpamasse (1993) and the shining minimalist riverside facing DUsseldorf (Figure 1). Instead office blocks of La Defense (1987-1993) , there is no of displaying dazzling city centers, Gursky human presence. In other pictures, small insignificant demonstrates that all kinds of social ritual s can human figures are confronted by the vast openness of y occur in the most ordinary places. While looking modem urban planning, such as in the monumental at many of these photographs , the learned viewer axis of Brasilia (1994) (the ultimate paradigm of

29 exposure Volume 3 :7 1 modem city planning), the illuminated aquarium of Non-places the Bank in Hong Kong (1994), and the Gursky's remarkable attention to transport large race tracks and serial skyscrapers facing the infrastructures, such as highways, bridges, and masses in Sha Tin (1994). Gursky 's cityscapes are airports, illustrates the collapse of public place , as empty and mysterious as his photograph of the which now seems only to serve circulation (Figure columbarium of Ayamonte (1997), which evokes 2). He selects those public and semi-p ublic spaces both the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio De that are less and less experie nced as social spaces Chirico and the photographic stagings of Thomas and fast becoming territories occupied only Demand. In Hong Kong Island (1994), a demolition occasionally and on a strictly individual basis . site leaves a scar in the urban fabric. But here, too, in His pictures evoke what the French philosopher the middle of the unbridled building boom in one of Marc Auge called non-lieux: places that have no the most dense cities of the world, the individual is specific meaning to anybody a nd that no longer crushed. The claustrophobic congestion of swirling act as meeting places . 19 In contrast with the agora, masses, usually associated with the Asian metropolis, the forum, or the village or city square, these is completely absent. non-places are no longer capable of expressing In Gursky 's world, so it seems, only collective identities . However, according to Auge, stockmarkets are richly populated . Elsewhere in these spaces occur everywhere, and they look the city there is only rarely human congestion; everywhere the same. Gursky demonstrates that usually there is only traffic congestion, such as in the world consists increasingly of these non-places , his overhead shots of a roundabout in Cairo (1992) which are especially located in the domains of and in his picture of crammed cars in the harbor of mobility and consumption: hotels, shopping malls, Genoa (1991). stopping-places along highways , and airports .

Figu Gun

the Sch oth< arcl are pos are em! mo1 The

Of I me1 ess; star and unc rep. sho the; of are Figure 2 Andreas Gursky, Salerno, 1990, wood framed chromogenic color print, 75 3/16 x 90 3/8 inches. Andreas Gursky Gu through SABAM Belgium 2003. Courtesy: Monika Spriith/ Pilomene Magers, Cologne. to'-'

30 Society for Photographic Education ansport :s, and place, Figure spaces spaces only basis. opher ive no longer agora, these 'essing Auge, look

Figure 3 Andreas Gursky, Times Square, 1997, wood framed chromogenic color print, 74 3/8 x 100 3/16 inches. Andreas Gursky through SABAM Belgium 2003. Courtesy: Monika Spriith/ Pilomene Magers, Cologne.

Gursky's impressive series of pictures of atriums illustrate this post-urban space perfectly. the airport lobbies and runways of Dtisseldorf, Gursky does not show us historical monuments Schiphol, Paris, and Hong Kong , among conferring an identity on a place, but shows us other places, illustrates the thesis of the Dutch interchangeable structures in interchangeable architectural historian Hans Ibelings that "airports places with interchangeable skies. His locations are for the '90s what museums were for the are, in Koolhaas's words, "equally exciting-or postmodern '80s" 20 Mobility and infrastructure unexciting-everywhere. " They are "superficial ­ are central issues in these paradigm buildings, like a Hollywood studio lot"; they can produce "a embodying the logic of globalization and becoming new identity every Monday morning ." more and more economic centers in themselves . Gursky's atriums are logical components of The architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas, one this generic city as well. In his study on Atlanta and of the most ac ute observers of the contemporary the atriums designed by John Portman, Koolhaas metropolitan condition, noted in his influential states that buildings with atriums as their private essay The Generic City that cities and airports have mini-centers no longer depend on specific locations. started looking very much alike . "Becoming bigger Atriums are catalysts of the decentralization of the and bigger, equipped with more and more facilities contemporary city . Because they can be placed unconnected to travel, [airports] are on the way to everywhere, they no longer have to be built in replacing the 21 city," Koolhaas wrote . In turn, cities downtowns. 22 Furthermore , atriums contribute to show characteristics of international airports in that the dismantling not only of the city center, but of they all look like each other . With the disappearance public space in general. After all, in the atrium, of traditional concentric urban patterns, cities public space is privatized and restrained. The atrium are losing their identities and becoming generic . is a significant part of the ersatz downtown in which Gursky's airports , harbors, highways, office all disturbing urban elements , such as beggars or towers, stockmarkets, aseptic factory spaces, and political demonstrations, are banished.

31 exposure Volume 3 7:1

Gursky presents the atrium as a scrupulously cinematic by several authors. See, for example, Anke Gleber , The Art of Taking a Walk: Flanerie , Literature, controlled space. His atriums are as empty and and Film in Weimar Culture (Princeton: Princeton aseptic as his factory interiors. In his pictures of University Press, 1999). the hotels built by John Portman, such as Atlanta 3 For a general survey of contemporary urban (1996) and Times Square (1997), the panoptic transformations see GUST (Ghent Urban Studies Team), The Urban Condition. Space, Community, and Seif in the qualities of these institutions are emphasized Contemporary Metropolis (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers , (Figure 3). The lobbies look like an accumulation 1999). of an endless series of boxes and are flattened into 4 The term "postsuburbia " is used by Rob Kling , Spencer a geometrical grid, shown in the same indirect Olin, and Mark Poster, eds., Postsuburban California. War light as are his shop displays . Just as in the typical The Transformation of Orange County since World II (Berkeley: University of California Press , 1995) and by photographs in architecture magazines, no attention Jon C. Teaford, Post-Suburbia . Government and Politi cs is paid to the context or the users of the building . in the Edge Cities (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University the However, Gursky 's images differ clearly from Press , 1997). Other authors have conceptualized contemporary urban landscape using other names, such the usual architectural photography, in which the as edge city (Joel Garreau) , generic city (Rem Koolhaas) , 12 building is presented as very clean but also ready exopolis (Edward Soja), city a la carte (Robert Fishman ), (Stefano for use . Gursky, in a way, keeps the architecture middle landscape (Peter Rowe) , citta diffusa Boeri), and carpet metropolis (Willem-Jan Neutelings). at a distance. He stresses its superficial quality. Other concepts are slurb, the burbs , technoburb , exurbia , 13 He abstracts it and renders it almost illegible. disurbia , superburbia, suburban downtown , nonplace , The accumu lation of identical units becomes urban field , technocity, polynucleated city, galactic city, spread city, perimeter city, citta autostradale , overpowering. The frantic sharpness creates a NowheresviLle , and autopia. The abundance of these strange obscurity. The space, controlled by a neologisms indicates that it is difficult to describe the 14 of traditional panoptic institution, becomes inscrutable for the contemporary urban landscape by means spatial, social , and cultural concepts. individual. Perspectives collapse. By integrating 15 "Hornes for America: Early 20th , by 5 Dan Graham's article several viewpoints into one single image Century Possessable House to the Quasi-Discrete Cell means of digital techniques, Gursky disturbs spatial of 66 " was originally published in Arts Magazine 41, perception . Some of Gursky 's airport lobbies and no. 3 (December 1966/January 1967): 21-22. Robert Smithson's text was originally published in Art Forum atriums have been compared with the endless (December 1967) and is reprinted in Nancy Holt , ed., 16 baroque spaces of Piranesi. 23 And they can also The Writings of Robert Smithson (New York: New York be considered examples of what Fredric Jameson University Press , 1979), 67- 78. once called postmodern hyperspace. In his famous 6 The exhibition New Topographies: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape was organized in 1975 by the 's Westin Bonaventure 17 analysis of John Portman International Museum of Photography at George Eastman Hotel in Los Angeles, Jameson argued that such House in Rochester , New York , and included works by a space "has finally succeeded in transcending the Robert Adams, Lewis Balt z, Bernd and Hilla Becher , Joe Deal, Nicholas Nixon , John Scott, Stephen Shore , and capacities of the individual human body to locate Henry Wessl , Jr. itself, to organize its immediate surroundings 7 See Robert Venturi , Denise Scott Brown , and Steven perceptually, and cognjtively to map its position in lzenour , Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten a mappable external world." 24 Symbolism of Architectural Form (1972; reprint of this book In sum, Gursky's pictures make clear not only Cambridge: MIT Press , 1991 ). The layout and the style of its photographs is undeniably indebted to that the control of physical space is becoming Ruscha 's booklets. Ruscha was quoted in Learning from much more difficult, but also that in a world of Levittown or Remedial Housing for Architects , Studio of global electronic networks , the relation between Handouts (New Haven: Yale University , Department Architecture, Studio RHA , spring 1970). It must be stated 18 the individual and his environment must be that Venturi was more interested in the lures of vernacular reconceptualized . In addition, by miling simulated architecture than in new urban or spatial development s. 19 images of simulated spaces, Gursky demonstrates 8 For the importance of the Bechers for Gursky see Peter that the relation between image and reality must Galassi , Andreas Gursky (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001) , 10-19. 20 also be reconceived. 9 Gerhard Schulze, Erlebnisgesellschaft: Kultursoziologie Gegenwart (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1992). Endnotes der 10 Andreas Gursky, correspondence with Veit Gomer , See Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz , Bystander· quoted in Andreas Gursky: Fotografien 1994-1998 A History of Street Photography (Boston: Little, Brown (Wolfsburg: Kunstmuseurn , 1998), iv. 21 and Co. 2001), and Russell Ferguson , " Open City: The Benjamin , however , the revolutionary capacity of Possibilities of the Street ," in Kerry Brougher and Russell 11 For mechanical reproduction was not intrinsic to the medium Ferguson, Open City: Street Photography Since 1950 photography. Photography was not by itself capable 22 (Oxford: Mu seum of Modern Art, 200 I): 8-21. of of throwing the complexity of the banal and the real into 2 The gaze of the flaneur has been called photographic or the domain of art. Without an avant-garde self-reflexivity,

32 Society for Photographic Education

:e photography could not capture that small authentic scrap 23 See Annelie Li.itgens, "Der Blick in die Vitrine oder e, of everyday life which states more than paintin g. That Schrein und Ornament," in Andreas Gursky: Fotografien ,n is why Benjamin disapproved of the photography of the 1994- 1998 (Wolfsburg: Kunstmuseum , 1998), xii. Neue Sachlichkeit, such as the work of Albert Renger­ 24 Fredric Jameson, Postmodern ism or the Cultural Logic of Patzch, for instance , because it eve n succeeded in making Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991 ), 44. poverty the object of delight. See Walter Benjamin , ), "Das Kun stwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen 1e Reprodu zierbarkeit, " in Gesammelte Schriften , vol. I, bk. s, 2 (Frankfurt a.M .. Suhrkamp, 1974), 431-469; "Kleine Geschichte der Fotografie," ibid., vol. 2, bk. I, 368-385; :r and "Der Author als Produzent ," ibid. , vol. 2, bk. 2, 683- 1: 70 I. The idea that photography , instead of destroying the Ir aura of the original, became the aura itself was developed ,y by MacCannel in his brilliant book on tourism , a modern :s phenomenon connected to photography right from the y start; see Dean MacCannel, The Tourist: A New Theory 1e of the Leisure Class (Berkeley: University of California h Pres s, 1976), 47-48. ), 12 Andreas Gursky, correspondence with Veit Gomer, ), quoted in Andreas Gursky: Fotografien 1994-1998 10 (Wolfsburg: Kunstmuseum, 1998), vi. ). a, 13 See Barbara Hess , "Photographen des modernen Lebens: e, Anmerkungen zu den Bildern von Lucinda Devlin , ic Andreas Gursky und Candida Hofer," in Rdume: Lucinda e, Devlin, Andreas Gursky, Candida Hofer (Bregenz: ;e Kunsthau s, 1998), 23. 1e 14 Walter Benjamin , "Kleine Geschichte der Photografi e," al in Gesammelte Schriften , vol. 2, bk. 1, 368-385. I 5 The photograph s of Gursky have been linked to th Kracauer 's notion of the mass ornament by Annelie II Uitgen s, "Der Blick in die Vitrine oder Schrein und I, Ornament ," in Andreas Gursky: Fotografien 1994- 1998 rt (Wolfsburg: Kunstmu seum, 1998), xiii. m I., 16 See Manuel Castells, The Informational City: Information ·k Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban­ regional Process (Oxford: Blackwell , 1989) and Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo a (Princeto n: Princeton University Press , 1999). 1e m 17 For the relation between landscape and image in the ,y tradition of the picturesque , see George B. Tobey, A >e History of Landscape Architecture: The Relationship of 1d People to Environment (New York: American Elsevier Publishing Co. , I 973) , 128- 135; Clemens Steenbergen and Wouter Reh , Architecture and Landscape: The :n Design Experiment of Great European Gardens and ·n Landscapes (Miinchen: Prestel, I 996), 253; and John ~t Dixon Hunt, "Ut Pictura Poesis: The Garden and the ,k Picturesque in England 1710- 1750," in Monique to Mosser and George Teyssot , eds., The History of Garden m Design: The Western Tradition from the Renaissance to io the Present Day (London: Thames and Hudson , 1991 ), )f 231- 241. :d lr 18 Mirko Zardini , "Green is the Color," in Mutations (Barcelona: Actar, 2000), 434-439. :r 19 Marc Auge, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology 11 of Supermodernity (London: Verso, 1995). 20 Hans Ibelings , Supermodernisme: Architectuur in het ie tijdperk van de globalisering (Rotterdam: Nai Uitgevers, 1998), 79. On the cultural importance of air travel and airports, see David Pascoe, Airspaces (London: Reaktion :r, Books , 2001). )8 21 Rem Koolhaas , "The Generic City," in Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, )f 1995), 1238- 1264. m le 22 Rem Koolhaas, "At lanta," in Koolhaa s and Mau , 833- to 859. y, 33 exposure Volume 3 :7 1

Soci Contributors March

Carl Chiarenza , artist, art historian , and focused on Franco-Spanish artistic exchange between Withti casew critic, is Fanny Knapp Allen Professor Emeritus of 1700 and 1900, artistic formation and training , and North11 Art History and Artist-in-Residence at the Univer­ the photography ofDuchenne de Boulogne and of the 2005 S sity of Rochester . He taught art history at Boston ruins of the Paris Commune. She is currently working issues University from 1963 to 1986 and taught his first on a book that re-examines the Galerie Espagnole history of photography course there in 1964. Chia­ (1838- 1848). [allux @uga.edu] Panels "passa renza has lectured and taught workshops at over rites ninety institutions in thirty states since 1973. His Cynthia Elyce Rubin is a visua l culture Propos, photographs have been seen in 78 one -person and specialist and devoted deltiologist. She holds an over 240 group exhibitions since 1957 Chiarenza is A.B. from Vassar College, an Ed .M. from Boston Portlan dens, ~ the author of Aaron Siskind : Pleasures and Terrors University, and a Ph.D. from New York University in Park, n (1982), Chiarenza : Landscapes of the Mind (1988), folk art studies. She ha s curated traveling exhibitions, country and Chiarenza: Evocations (2002) . including Southern Folk Art and Swiss Folk Art, and Columt has published numerous books and exhibition cata­ Steven Jacobs is an art historian working logues, including Southern Folk Art (Oxmoor House), Phil Ha for the Ghent Urban Studies Team (GUST), an in­ Siegmund Forst: A Lifetime in Arts and Letters (Ye­ TerriW terdisciplinary research team at Ghent University, shiva University Museum), Going West: Schweizer Belgium. Jacobs studies the spatial and cultural Volkskunst in America (American Consultant, Swiss aspects of the modem city and its artistic represen­ National Museum), and ABC Americana from the Na­ tations . GUST has written and edited The Urban tional Gallery of Art (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich). soc Condition. Space, Community, and Self in the Con­ She guest-edited Swiss Folk Art (a special issue of the MEMBER temporary Metropolis (1998) and Post Ex Sub Dis. Clarion, American Folk Art Museum) , and with E. name Urban Fragmentations and Constructions (2002) . Morgan Williams she co-authored Larger than Life: [steven.jacobs @ugent.be] the American Tall-Tale Postcard, 1905-1915 (Abbev­ address ille Press). She is currently working on a manuscript city/state/2 Alisa Luxenberg is associate professor of about 0 . S. Leeland and his postcards. She has been eighteenth - and nineteenth-century European art a recipient of two South Dakota Humanities Research phone(hrr at the University of Georgia, Athens . She received Grants and a Minnesota Historical Society Research email addr her master 's degree in art history from Boston Uni­ Grant. She is currently on the New York Council for versity in 1984-thesis , "Speculations on Goya and the Humanities, Speakers in the Humanities Program. websiteaa Photography" -and her doctorate from the Institute [cynthiaelyce @earthlink .net] affiliation/u of Fine Arts, New York University in 1991-thesis , "Leon Bonnat ( 1833- 1922)." Her publications have METHODI

card no.

signature

PREFERENC

Please Please membe Please I would I would

34 Society for Photographic Education: 42nd National ConferenceWe welcome proposals from all photographers, writers, March 17-20, 2005in Portland, Oregon in Hilton Portland& Executive Tower educators, curators, histori­ ans and professionals from other fields. Topicsmay include, but are not limited Passaae to, educationalissues , fund­ ing, imagemaking, history, With the opening of the 2004 Conferencein Newport , it is time to set our sightsthe on future, and in this contemporarytheory and case westward- to Portland, Oregon. In 2005, 200 years afterLewis and Clark 's historic negotiationof the criticism, multidisciplinary , newtechnolo­ Northwest Passage, Oregonwill providethe venuefor ournational gathering . Referencing that journey, the approaches gies, effects of media and NationalConference Passage will invite reflectionon our active and complicatedrelationships with 2005 SPE culture, and presentations . issues of exploration transitionand of work in photography,, film Panels, papers, andimagemakers are invitedto respond toan expansive interpretation of the idea ofvideo , performance and installation. Download our "passage"; asmovement fromone place orcondition to another, aslimin al space, asintervals in-between, as proposal form online. sage, as personal, cultural, anthropologicalor scientific transformations through time. rites or rights of pas Deadline: June16,2004. Proposals are encouraged which utilizeconsider ortime-based mediaand/ or serial structures. gar­ Portland, theCity ofRoses , combines urbansophistication with smalltowncharm againstbackdrop a of lush SPENational Office dens, waterways andmountain vistas . An historicold town , infamousbookstores, SaturdayMarket , Water-front 110 Art Building Park, numerous museums, galleriesand theater companies also contribute to Portland's reputation as oneof th e Miami University Oxford, OH45056-2486 most desirable metropolitan areas.recreational Nearby opportunities includeto athe visitspectacular country's Phone:513/529-8328 and windsurfingin the Columbia Gorgeat Hood River. Columbia River Gorge and Multnomah, hiking Falls Mt. Hood Fax: 513/529-1532 (attention spe) Phil Harris, 2005 conference chair [email protected] Terri Warpinski,2005 conference committee chair www.spenational.org

SOCIETY FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC EDUCATION MEMBERSHIP FORM MEMBERSHIP 1 YEAR 2 YRS MEMBER INFORMATION (circle all that apply) name CorporateMember $600 $1100 address Collector's Member• $365 $430 city/state/zip Sustaining Member $100 $190

Regular Member $75 $140 phone(hm/wk) Senior Member $50 $95 email address Student Member $40 $75 website address (Pleaseinclude a copy of student ID) affiliation/university PostageContribution .. $20 $30 (Requiredoutside the.S U.) METHODOF PAYMENT D Mastercard □ Visa D check( made out to SPEJ Donationto Student ScholarshipFund $__ card no. exp. date

signature totalamount today's date TOTAL AMOUNT $__ - Pleasesend this formand yourpayment to: • Collector's Members may choose a print from PREFERENCES: the FinePrint Collectors Program . See our SPE MembershipRegistration , Attn.. Hannah Frieser, website for vaailable prints. Purchase of three withother companies. Denton, TX 76204-5484. _ Pleasedo notshare this address P.O. Box425484 , prints for$900 entitles the buyer to a compli­ do not publish my nameor address inSPE 's . _ Please Questionsabout membership status?Please contact mentary one-year membership membership directory. HannahFr ieserat 940/383-1441(phone /fax) or emailto •• Postagecontribution is required ifornterna­ all _ Please donot email meoccasional SPE updates . [email protected]. Generalinformation about tional members, including those in Canada. _ I would like to bepart of the MulticulturalCaucus . membershiplevels , as wellas applicationfonms , are Membershipdues are forthe calendaryear , part of the Women's Caucus. available atour websiteat www.spenational.org. _ I wouldlike to be January throughDecember . r mfe02-2004