PHOTOGRAPHY 1839 – 1937
Beaumont Newhall [Editor]
Beaumont Newhall [Editor]: PHOTOGRAPHY 1839 – 1937. New York: Museum of Modern Art, March 1937. First edition [3,000 copies]. Quarto. Black cloth titled in silver. 131 pp. followed by 95 black and white plates. Cloth faintly rubbed to lower edge. Endpapers lightly toned. Few random spots throughout. Plates clean and bright. Out-of-print. A very good copy.
8 x 10.25 hardcover book with 131 pages followed by 95 black and white photographic illustrations. Classic text on the development of the art of photography in light of the technological and scientific advancements of the medium, written by the founder of the department of photography at the Museum of Modern Art. An accomplished working photographer, Beaumont Newhall's real genius lay in his teaching and curatorial skills, for which he received numerous awards, including Guggenheim and MacArthur grants.
In his foreward Mr. Newhall discusses the question so often raised: "Is photography art?" "The question," he says, "cannot be ignored. Ever since its inception, photography has been confused with all other graphic processes. From time immemorial, pictures had been made only by human hands. Suddenly, a mechanical method of producing them was presented to an astonished world. Confusion and comparison "between the two methods was natural and inevitable.
Contains beautiful images by Edmé Quenedy, Joseph-Nicéphore Niepce, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, N. P. Lerebours, Meade Brothers, William & Frederick Langenheim, Josiah Johnson Hawes, William Henry Fox Talbot, Hill & Adamson, Maxime Du Camp, H. Le Secq, Hippolyte Bayard, Roger Fenton, Charles Marville, Matthew Brady, Wood & Gibson, Alexander Gardner, Paul Nadar, Etienne Carjat, O. G. Rejlander, Henry Peach Robinson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Victor Hugo, Eadweard Muybridge, Eugene Atget, Alfred Stieglitz, Minor White, Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Cecil Beaton, Ilsa Bing, Thomas Bouchard, Margaret Bourke-White, Brassaï, Anton Bruehl, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Nora Dumas, Hugo Erfurth, Walker Evans, E. Feher, Gertrude Fuld, François Kollar, Charles Krutch, Remie Lohse, George Platt Lynes, Lázsló Moholy-Nagy [X2], Man Ray [X2], Charles Sheeler, Edward Steichen, Ralph Steiner, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Paul Wolff, Ylla, Charles Roth, William Warnecke, Henry Olen, Laure Albin-Guillot, Edward Tissé, and others.
“Photography was brought into being by a desire to make pictures. Without exception, those men who were instrumental in making it practical were impelled by an artistic urge. When a practical photographic process was announced, artists looked forward to the help It would give them in observing nature. But just as photography had been fostered by would-be artists who lacked skill and training, so it enabled countless followers who had little training to produce pictures. The public found that it could purchase portraits and other records more cheaply than ever before. An economic crisis was precipitated; the Industrial revolution had penetrated the artist's studio. Minor artists who earned their daily bread largely through the subject-matter of their art rather than through their mastery of form and color probably suffered most.
"The early criticism of photography was almost entirely in terms of painting and drawing. But we are seeking standards of criticism generic to photography. In order that such criticism be valid, photography should be examined in terms of the optical, and chemical laws which govern its production. Primitive photography enables us to isolate two fundamental factors which have always characterized photography--whatever the period. One has to do with the amount of detail which can be recorded, the other is concerned with the rendition of values. The first is largely dependent on optical laws, the second on chemical properties. The camera is able to focus many details simultaneously, and so we are able to comprehend them more readily than in nature. Thus the photographer is capable, under certain precise circumstances, of offering the essence of the natural world." — Museum of Modern Art Press Release, March l3, 1937