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What do Harry Houdini, bats,
Duke Kahanamoku, teddy bears, and the Masters of American Photography
have in common? All will be honored this year with special philatelic
releases by the United States Postal Service (USPS). The photo masters
release, first in a new USPS series called the Classic Collection, became
available June 13. This is the first honor of this magnitude bestowed
on photography by the USPS. There was a 15-cent "Photography" stamp issued
in 1978. And George Eastman was honored in 1954 with a three-center.
The 20-stamp "pane" honors
22 photographers--some of them icons whose names are known even to those
marginally familiar with the history of photography. Others are less well-known,
but are photographic masters nonetheless.
The photos are presented chronologically.
Dates and titles of the photos and some information about the photographers
are provided on the back of the sheet.
Selecting The Masters
According to the USPS, the process for selecting stamp subjects is an
arduous one. A 15-member Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC) winnows
thousands of suggestions from the public each year. There is a long list
of selection criteria--including one that honorees must have been deceased
at least 10 years before the stamp or stamp series is issued. Generally,
CSAC tries to come up with annual stamp programs that are varied, educational,
and appeal to non-collectors and collectors alike. It apparently takes
about three years from the time a subject is selected until it goes on
sale.
One of the numerous suggestions
received by CSAC several years ago was to honor Ansel Adams in 2002 on
the 100th anniversary of his birthday. The committee decided, instead,
to honor photography and American photographers more broadly.
The USPS says that photos for
the Masters of American Photography series offer a visual sampling of
the history and development of photography and illustrate the changes
in American culture and society.
Photographic historian Peter
C. Bunnell, Princeton University, assisted CSAC in the selection process.
"It is an extremely difficult task to bring the whole history of American
photography down to 20 photographs. In most cases where there were comparisons
to make, it was a personal choice as to the better or more significant
photographer. Selection of specific photographs from a photographer's
work that I felt was outstanding was based, in part, on how the image
would relate to others on the pane. Also, we were interested in a mix
of subjects--portrait, landscape, architecture, still life, etc.," Bunnell
said.
For those not well versed in
the history of American photography, here are snapshots of the photographers
and their contributions.
Albert Sands Southworth
(1811-1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808-1901) were Boston
daguerrotypists whose partnership lasted from 1843-1862. They are widely
considered to be the first great masters of American photography. In 1999,
240 previously unknown Southworth and Hawes plates sold at Sotheby's in
New York for more than $3 million. Photo: A portrait of Senator Daniel
Webster, c.1850.
Timothy H. O'Sullivan (1840-1882)
learned photography in Mathew Brady's Washington daguerrotype studio in
the late 1850s. Brady then recruited him to join the Civil War photography
effort he funded and organized. O'Sullivan and another of Brady's photographers,
however, soon went off on their own following a bitter disagreement over
who would get credit for photos taken while in Brady's employ. After the
war, he went on to work for several government-sponsored surveys of the
American West, producing the superb landscapes of the often bleak and
awe-inspiring country they traversed. Photo: General Ulysses S. Grant
and his officers on May 21, 1864.
Carleton E. Watkins (1829-1916)
was an early California photographer who went West with the Gold Rush.
In 1857 Watkins set up a studio for portrait and landscape work in San
Francisco. Each summer he traveled throughout California and the Far West,
making some of the first photos of Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Franciscan
missions. Much of his later work also included stereoscopic views. Watkins'
entire collection of negatives was destroyed in the fire following the
San Francisco earthquake in 1906. He never fully recovered from this shock
and died in a state hospital in 1916. Photo: "Cape Horn," Columbia River,
1867.
William Henry Jackson(1843-1942),
or one of his assistants, made the selvage photo on the pane. Jackson
photographed remote western areas and was one of the first to document
what is now Yellowstone Park. In fact, his photos of the area are credited
with moving Congress, without a dissenting vote, to establish the park
in 1872. Photo: "Glacier Point," Yosemite Valley, c.1888, made by Jackson
or one of his assistants.
Gertrude Käsebier (1852-1934)
was an early member of "Photo-Secession," the movement founded by Alfred
Stieglitz in 1902. Her work was exhibited and published by Stieglitz and
is in the prevailing soft-focus pictorialist mode of the time. Her best-known
images show mothers and daughters in interior and garden settings, often
illustrating their relationships. Photo: "Blessed Art Among Women," a
portrait of author Agnes Rand Lee and her daughter Peggy, 1899.
Lewis Wickes Hine (1874-1940)
was a social reformer who started making photographs at age 37 to support
his campaigns. In 1904, he photographed the treatment of immigrants arriving
at Ellis Island and their terrible living conditions. He then became a
staff photographer for the National Child Labor Committee and documented
children working in mills, mines, and on the streets as part of a campaign
that eventually led to strict child labor and workers' safety laws. Photo:
"Looking for Baggage," Ellis Island, 1905.
Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966)
was another member of the Photo-Secessionist movement. Coburn utilized
soft-focus techniques, unusual perspectives, and abstract compositions.
He took up photography as a boy in Boston and had his first exhibition
at age 15. In 1900, he went to England and is actually best known for
his work there. He later experimented with new approaches, including the
development of the Cubist-inspired "Vorticism" movement--photos using
mirrors producing kaleidoscopic images. Photo: "The Octopus," 1912, made
by looking down on Madison Square Park from atop a Manhattan skyscraper.
Edward (Edouard) Steichen
(1879-1973) originally trained as a lithographer and later studied painting
in Paris. He started making photographs in 1896, attracted the attention
of Alfred Stieglitz, and became involved in the Photo-Secessionist movement.
He helped Stieglitz with his gallery and Camera Work magazine. Steichen
went on to become chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines.
After World War II, he became director of the photography department of
New York's Museum of Modern Art where he organized the popular and influential
"Family of Man" exhibit. Photo: "Lotus," Mt. Kisco, New York, 1915.
Alfred Stieglitz was
born in America, but sent to Germany to complete his education. There
he took up photography. On his return, Stieglitz promoted the new photography
he had seen in Europe, and, in particular, the work of some of his American
colleagues--Käsebier, Coburn, Steichen, and Strand, for example. He called
the movement "Photo-Secession." The group's stated goal was to "hold together
those Americans devoted to pictorial photography…to exhibit the best that
has been accomplished by its members or other photographers, and, above
all, to dignify that profession until recently looked upon as a trade."
From 1903-1917, Photo-Secession published the influential magazine, Camera
Work. In 1905 Stieglitz founded Gallery 291 on New York's Fifth Avenue,
for years a hotbed of photographic innovation. The gallery also helped
promote modern art in America, offering the first exhibitions aof Cezanne
and Picasso. Photo: "Hands and Thimble," 1920, one of over 300 images
Stieglitz made of his wife, Georgia O'Keeffe.
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitsky
or Rudnitsky) (1890-1976) was an artist who worked in all media and
expanded the limits of photography with innovations such as camera-less
images he called "rayographs" (photograms) made by placing objects on
photographic paper and exposing the arrangement to light. Photo: "Rayograph,"
1921.
Edward Weston (1886-1958)
was an early proponent of the unmanipulated, sharp-focused realism of
"straight" photography. His photographic legacy includes several thousand
carefully composed, superbly printed images--natural-form close-ups, nudes,
and landscapes--that have influenced photographers around the world. In
1934, Weston, along with Ansel Adams, was a founding member of the f/64
Group of purist photographers. Photo: "Two Shells," 1927.
James VanDerZee (1886-1983)
was the pre-eminent African-American photographer in New York City between
the two World Wars. Commissioned by celebrities, ordinary citizens, and
organizations, his formal portraits and group pictures captured the vitality
of the Harlem Renaissance. Photo: "My Corsage," 1931.
Dorthea Lange (1895-1965)
was a deeply compassionate photographer best known for her compelling
pictures of the unemployed and uprooted victims of the Great Depression.
With an empathetic eye, she recorded not only their impoverished circumstances,
but also their fortitude and spirit. Her photo, "Migrant Mother," made
while working as a photographer for the Farm Service Administration (FSA),
stands as the best-known visual icon of the era. Photo: "Ditched, Stalled
and Stranded, San Joaquin Valley, California," 1935.
Walker Evans (1903-1975)
found beauty in the commonplace and turned documentary photography into
an art form. Evans had wanted to be a writer and, following in the footsteps
of many aspiring writers of the period, went to Paris to try to master
the trade. While in Paris, he picked up a camera and quickly decided that
photography was his calling. Like Lange, Evans is best known for his work
for the FSA during the Depression. Photo: From the book, Let Us Now Praise
Famous Men, 1936.
W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978)
is highly respected for his compassionate photo essays. As a free-lancer
and Life staff photographer, Smith photographed the Depression, was seriously
wounded covering World War II, and, after the war, went on to produce
great photo essays for Life that were to define the meaning of the term.
Among these essays were "Country Doctor," "Spanish Village," and "Man
of Mercy" (about Albert Schweitzer). Photo: "Frontline Soldier with Canteen,
Saipan," 1944.
Paul Strand (1890-1976)
was a student of reformer-photographer Lewis Wickes Hine. Hine took his
students to see the work at Stieglitz's Gallery 291 and this had an overwhelming
effect on the young Strand. He and Stieglitz became friends, but Strand
was the first photographer to make a decisive break with pictorialism
and apply some of the lessons of the new modern art to photography. His
modernist compositional style emphasized form, light, and space. Photo:
"Steeple," 1946.
Ansel Adams (1902-1984)
is probably the best-known photographer in the world. He applied
a clean and unmanipulated "precisionist" approach to the photography of
the wilder and more beautiful aspects of the American West. With Edward
Weston, he was a founder of Group f/64. Adams felt deeply about the need
to conserve our natural heritage and used photography to campaign for
it. In photographic circles, he is almost as well-known for his technical
contributions as his images. Adams systematized the processes of exposure
and development--the Zone System--enabling him to predict and control
the appearance of a print before making the exposure, a technique he called
"previsualization." Photo: "Sand Dunes, Sunrise," 1944.
Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976)
departed from her early romantic pictorial style when, in the 1920s, she
began making sharply focused, realistic images. The California photographer
was a charter member, along with Weston and Adams, of Group f/64. She
is best known for plant studies and portraits. Photo: "Age and Its Symbols,"1958,
a portrait of Ida C. Pabst.
André Kertész (1894-1985)
was born in Hungary and went to Paris in 1925 to try to earn a living
with his camera. There he "discovered" the Leica and, with this new "miniature"
camera, photographed small happenings and events on the streets, producing
balanced yet spontaneous compositions that often gave subjects new meaning.
His work became well-known and was an inspiration for French photographers
Cartier-Bresson and Brassai. Immigrating to the US in 1936, he settled
in New York where he earned his living photographing architecture and
interiors for magazines such as House and Garden. Kertész's earlier work,
not well received at the time, enjoyed a revival in the 1960s with the
increasing interest in photography as art. Photo: "New York," 1963.
Garry Winogrand (1928-1984),
like André Kertész, did most of his best work on the streets with a Leica.
His work exemplified the "street photography" genre, shooting quickly
but precisely and displaying a genuine interest in his subjects. Winogrand
wrote: "I like to think of photography as a two-way act of respect. Respect
for the medium, by letting it do what it does best--describe. And respect
for the subject, by describing it." Photo: "Untitled," 1965.
Minor White (1908-1976)
was an innovative photographer intent on conveying deep personal feelings
through his work. He excelled in using symbolic representation and was
committed to the spiritual as well as the sacred in art. White taught
photography at the California School of Fine Arts, headed by Ansel Adams.
He co-founded Aperture magazine in 1952 and edited the publication until
1975. Photo: "Bristol, Vermont," 1971.
The Masters of American Photography
collection was officially issued at a public observance, called the First
Day of Issuance Ceremony, held June 13 at the Museum of Photographic Arts,
San Diego. According to a USPS spokesperson, one reason this site was
chosen was to tie the ceremony into an exhibition at MOPA, June 9-August
25, of 110 images by Alfred Stieglitz, work given to George Eastman House
by his wife, Georgia O'Keeffe.
And What Happened To Mathew
Brady?
Perhaps conspicuous by his absence in the stamp release is Mathew Brady.
Not only was Brady the best known daguerrotypist of the period, he went
on to bankroll and organize the first major effort at photo documentation
on a grand scale--"coverage" of the Civil War.
From the Battle of Bull Run
to war's end in 1865, Brady and his photographers produced many thousands
of images under the most difficult conditions. Brady's enterprise, however,
was not without controversy. Several photographers--including Timothy
H. O'Sullivan--left his employ because Brady apparently would not allow
them to take credit for images they were making. At the end of the war,
the public was so traumatized by the national cataclysm that few wanted
to view the images and Brady was unable to recover his investment, estimated
at $100,000. The War Department refused to buy his plates and they were
put into storage where they slowly deteriorated. Put up for auction in
1871 to pay the storage expenses, the government purchased them and gave
Brady $25,000 for his work.
Brady survived his battlefield
experiences, but was seriously injured later by a horse-drawn streetcar
in Washington. He died in poverty in 1896, unrecognized at the time for
his contribution.
Photography historian Peter
C. Bunnell, consultant to the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, said
he recommended Boston daguerrotypists Southworth and Hawes because he
felt they were better photographers. And he selected the O'Sullivan image
because "there is no way to know which Civil War photographs were actually
made by Brady."
What do you think of the Postal
Service's selections? Who would you have picked? Drop us a line at editorial@shutterbug.net
and we'll publish "Shutterbug" readers' Top 20 in a later issue.
--Editor
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