Maria Morris Hambourg

Earthly Bodies

Mitra Abbaspour

Lee Ann Daffner

OBJECT:PHOTO shifts the dialogue about modernist photography from an emphasis on the subject and the image to the actual photographic object, created by a certain artist at a particular time and present today in its unique physicality. This shift is especially significant for a study of the period during which photography developed a distinctive formal language. A growing awareness of the rarity of images made between the two world wars has altered historians' considerations, encouraging new approaches privileging the originality of each work and the density of references each contains. This richly illustrated publication culminates a four-year collaborative research endeavor between The Museum of Modern Art's Departments of Photography and Conservation, and nearly 30 visiting scholars, on the material and aesthetic evolution of avant-garde photography in the early twentieth century. The 341 modernist photographs known as The Thomas Walther Collection, a major museum acquisition made in 2001, is presented in its entirety, establishing a new standard of depth for the medium. Essays by curators, researchers, and conservators consider the history of collecting from this era to the present and how deepening knowledge has shifted the perspective on the medium; the material facts of the Walther pictures as a baseline for understanding the development of photographic materials in this era; and how the intellectual formation of the writers of critical photographic publications of the era and the societal and cultural pressures of that historical moment inflected the photography's sense of its own history. Together with thematic, object-based case studies of groups of pictures that demonstrate new approaches in specific, divergent examples, these contributions reanimate the dialogue on this formative era in photography.

Modern Photographs, the Thomas Walther Collection 1909-1949

Object:photo

John Szarkowski

Eugène Atget

The Work of Atget

Jeff Rosenheim

Alexandra Dennett

Carnet de cartes postales

Irving Penn

Essays by Maria Morris Hambourg and Pierre Apraxine after critical overviews of each of the six chapters, and carefully researched texts by members of the staff of the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum, enlivened by often surprising and entertaining vignettes, clarify the historical context of the photographs. Unusual attention has been given to the production of the plates, which were executed under the supervision of the innovative and highly regarded photographer and master printer Richard Benson.

Photography's First Century : Selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collection

The Waking Dream

Christopher Phillips

A broad historical study of the provocative innovations of European and American photography between the World Wars. Presents more than 160 images from the Ford Motor Company Collection of photographs.

Photography Between the World Wars : Ford Motor Company Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The New Vision

"The Work of Atget: The Art of Old Paris will be published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same title, on view in the West Wing Galleries of The Museum of Modern Art from October 14, 1982 through January 4, 1983. The book is the second of four exploring the art of the French photographer Eugene Atget. Support for The Work of Atget volumes has been generously provided by Springs Industries, Inc. During his lifetime, Atget was best known as a photographer of Old Paris, the subject of this volume. To create his portrait of Paris as it had appeared prior to the French Revolution, he photographed not only the famous sites and monuments--Notre Dame, the Pantheon, and the Luxembourg Palace--but also the little-noticed corners and artifacts that had escaped the urban renewal projects of the 19th century--the quiet courtyards, private town houses, and unexpected passageways. Perhaps no more intimate portrait of Old Paris exists than the one Atget painstakingly fashioned." "A biography of Atget by Mrs. Hambourg forms the text of the 192-page The Art of Old Paris. Drawing on new research, Mrs. Hambourg reveals more fully the life of this hitherto elusive and shadowy artist and offers new insights into his intellectual pursuits and his political and artistic associations. The 117 photographs in the exhibition are reproduced as full-page plates, printed in three color offset to insure the utmost fidelity to the original prints. The plates are fully annotated and accompanied by 95 reference illustrations."--Excerpt from the MoMA press release No. 31 (see link to PDF).

Félix Nadar

Françoise Heilbrun

Philippe Néagu

Paul Neagu

Nadar, whose real name was Felix Tournachon (1820-1910), was a conspicuous, even astonishing presence in nineteenth-century France. Engaging and quick-witted, he invented himself over and over as a bohemian writer, a journalist, a romantic utopian, a caricaturist, a portrait photographer, a balloonist, an entrepreneur, a prophet of aeronautics. The name "Nadar" was on everyone's lips. Today, it is Nadar's photography that is remembered. His sitters, who were often his friends, included the great men and women of his time: Dumas, Rossini, Baudelaire, Sarah Bernhardt, Daumier, Berlioz, George Sand, Delacroix.

Nadar

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)

Paul Strand

Published to accompany an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from February 1998, this is a study of the achievements of the early career of the American photographer, Paul Strand (1890-1976). After studying photography in New York with the social reformer Lewis Hine, Strand began to absorb the ideas of the European avant-garde, and fellow-photographer and art entrepreneur Alfred Stieglitz heralded Strand's pictures as the first images of an incisive modern vision.

Paul Strand, Circa 1916

Adam Kirsch

Philippe Garner

Jeff L. Rosenheim

Harald E.L. Prins

Vasilios Zatse

Irving Penn (1917-2009) was among the most esteemed and influential photographers of the twentieth century. Over the course of a nearly seventy-year career, he mastered a pared-down aesthetic of studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to composition, nuance, and detail. This indispensable book features one of the largest selections of Penn's photographers ever compiled–nearly 300 in all–including famous and beloved images as well as works that have never been published. Celebrating the centennial of Penn's birth, this lavish volume spans the entirety of his groundbreaking career. An enlightening introduction situates his work in the context of the various artistic, social, and political environments and events that affected the content of his photographs. Lively essays acquaint readers with Penn's primary subjects and campaigns, including early documentary scenes and imagery; portraits of cultural figures and celebrities; fashion; female nudes; peoples of Peru, Dahomey (Benin), New Guinea, and Morocco; and still lifes. Rounding out the book are discussions of Penn's advertising pictures and his painstaking printing processes, as well as an illustrated chronology. Irving Penn: Centennialis essential for any fan of this artist's work or of the history of twentieth-century photography.

Centennial

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Walker Evans

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Shares selected images from the American photographer's life's work, and analyzes a career that spanned more than four decades

Maria Morris Hambourg

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