Episode 7: Diane Arbus and the Monster Club

In this episode, I tell the story of how I got to research a very rare photograph by Diane Arbus that she took while on assignment for a magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland. The photograph features 5 youngsters on the stoop of their rowhouse in Queens, sporting monster masks. It was was sold at Sotheby’s on 3 October 2019.

It sold for $50,000 against a pre-sale estimate of $15,000-25,000!

Jim Warren and editor Forrest Ackerman started publication of Famous Monsters of Filmland in 1958 and it was still in production until 1983. Here are some of my favorite covers:

Episode 6: Devil’s Paradise: The Problem with Rubber

In this episode, I tell the story of a photographer named Albert Frisch, a German photographer who was on assignment to photograph the landscape and people of the Upper Amazon. Coincidentally, another adventurer had followed his route only a few years before by the name of Henry Bates, who wrote a book about his adventures when he returned to England.

All images are from Albert Frisch’s portfolio, Résultat d’une expédition photographique sur le Solimões ou Alto Amazonas et Rio Negro, 1867-68, printed in 1869

Frontispiece illustration for Henry Walter Bates’ The Naturalist on the River Amazons: A Record of the Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature under the Equator, during Eleven Years of Travel (London, 1863)

I used Henry Bates’ journal as a way to understand what it was like to travel on the Amazon.

Albert Frisch, Résultat d’une expédition photographique sur le Solimões ou Alto Amazonas et Rio Negro, No. 68 – Alto Amazonas ou Solimões (Brésil). Fabrication de Caoutchouc, 1867-68, printed in 1869

A rubber shoe, 1830s, Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Ontario

I made a map of Bates and Frisch’s journey and it is shown below. Frisch’s trip is in blue, while Bates is in red. A the majority of prints that were sold by Frisch when he returned were to tourists, but it is not too far of a stretch to imagine that his photographs may have also been of interest to naturalists like Bates.

Unfortunately, the quest for rubber was a bloody pursuit, affecting not only the Brazilian rainforest but also the so-called Belgian Congo.

Photographs by Alice Seely Harris illuminated what was happening to the people being oppressed by this bloody system.

Sources used for this episode:

Henry Walter Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons: A Record of the Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature under the Equator, during Eleven Years of Travel (London, 1863)

Walter Hardenburg, The Putumayo, The Devil's Paradise: Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians Therein (London, 1912)

T.J. Thompson, "Light on the Dark Continent: The Photography of Alice Seely Harris and the Congo Atrocities of the Early Twentieth Century,” International Bulletin of International Research, 1 October, 2002, Vol. 26, Issue 4, pp. 146-149

Manuela Fischer and Michael Kraus, eds.., Exploring the Archive: Historical Photograph[s] from Latin America, The Collection of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, 2015

Mark Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade: Dutch-indigenous Alliances in the Atlantic World, 1595-1674 (Leiden, 2012)

Episode 5: The Monkey on Her Back

The photograph discussed in Episode 5  is Hansel Mieth’s iconic shot of a Rhesus Macaque monkey sitting off the waters of Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico. This particular print- a rare vintage image- was featured in an auction called 50 Masterworks to Celebrate 50 Years of Sotheby’s Photographs, on 21 April 2021.

Hansel Mieth, Rhesus Monkey, 1939. Copyright Hansel Mieth- The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images.

This is the back of the photo. You can see the photographer’s credit stamp, signature, and date.

In the 16 January 1939 issue, LIFE magazine published this image as ‘The Picture of the Week.’ Mieth later recounted the making of the portrait:

“One afternoon all the doctors were away, and a little kid came running to me and said, ‘A monkey’s in the water.’ I came down, and that monkey was really going hell-bent for something. ‘He is not coming back,’ I said. ‘I better go in and get him’. . . I threw my Rolleiflex on my back and swam out. . .Finally, I was facing the monkey. I don’t think he liked me, but he sat on that coral reef there, and I took about a dozen shots.”

(as quoted in Unfinished Stories, pp 38 and 40)

LIFE Magazine, 16 January 1939 issue.

Hermione Sharp, my colleague in the Photographs department at Sotheby’s, was the key researcher on this photograph for the auction, and in her essay she wrote:

“LIFE editors captioned this image ‘A misogynist seeks solitude in the Caribbean off Puerto Rico,’ immediately imbuing it with humor and lightheartedness. One of the writers had decided that publishing magnate Henry Luce resembled the monkey when angry – which quickly became an inside joke among staff. The narrative printed alongside the image was also problematic and somewhat misleading. It explained that the male macaque ran from the jungle into the water, which rhesus monkeys typically avoided, in order to escape the raucous chatter of the female monkeys. This not only played into the blithe ‘misogynist’ label, but also oversimplified the complex research being conducted on the island. Mieth cared deeply for the animals and had immense admiration for the scientists’ work. Mieth often referred to this photograph as ‘the monkey on my back.’ Despite its popularity after its initial publication, Mieth felt ambivalent, if not downright negative, about it because of the way it was appropriated.”

Mieth and Hagel were tireless in their photographic endeavors, documenting the “Hoovervilles” around Sacramento and San Francisco, as well as the plight of migrant workers, longshoremen, and dockworkers. On assignment for LIFE, Mieth also documented life in the Heart Mountain Japanese-American internment camp. Together, Hagel and Mieth worked on a series documenting the lives of the Pomo Indians, an American Indian tribe indigenous to Sonoma County, California.

You can learn more about Hansel Mieth and her husband, Otto Hagel, by visiting the website for the Center for Creative Photography. They hold the couple’s archives and many images are online.

The Hansel Mieth Prize is awarded every year to a photojournalist who has defied pressures or threats from prominent lobbying groups.

Episode 4: Frozen in Time

Photos by Nils Strindberg, 1897

In this episode, I tell the story of three intrepid Swedish explorers who set out to find the geographic North Pole at the height of Polar Mania. Many years after they disappeared, their camp was found. Exposed photographic negatives were taken back to Sweden, developed, retouched, and printed. What they revel is a remarkable visual diary of the survival of the three men, who struggled to survive in a harsh environment.

14th of July 1897: Our long guide-line has now broken off. Constant fog. No land and no birds, seals nor walruses. Another touch. 6:20 the balloon rose to a great height but we opened both valves and were down again at 6:29.

8:11pm we jumped out of the balloon.

"Large even ice floes with pools of sweet drinking water and here and there a tender-fleshed young polar bear!"

Map and timeline of the Andrée expedition (courtesy history.net)

In what seems like the beginning of a bad joke, the first passengers ever on a hot air balloon were a sheep, a duck, and a rooster, and they flew for about 15 minutes before crashing to the ground. I have no information about whether the passengers survived but would totally watch if this story was made into a Netflix show.

I highly recommend The Ice Balloon, a fascinating book that recounts the Andrée expedition as well as weaving tales of some other Arctic explorations.

Episode 3: The New Woman

In this episode, I told about an intriguing exhibition I went to at The Met called The New Woman Behind the Camera. According to The Met:

The New Woman of the 1920s was a powerful expression of modernity, a global phenomenon that embodied an ideal of female empowerment based on real women making revolutionary changes in life and art. Featuring more than 120 photographers from over 20 countries, this groundbreaking exhibition explores the work of the diverse "new" women who embraced photography as a mode of professional and artistic expression from the 1920s through the 1950s. During this tumultuous period shaped by two world wars, women stood at the forefront of experimentation with the camera and produced invaluable visual testimony that reflects both their personal experiences and the extraordinary social and political transformations of the era.

In this episode, I discussed Florence Henri, and while I don’t get too deep into her painting and works on paper, I think pretty clear lines can be drawn between that body of work and her photographic compositions.

Black-White-Silver No. 11, 1931, Cut-and-pasted metallic foil and paper, pencil and gouache on gray paper, Collection of the Museum of Modern Art

Abstract Composition, 1929, Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The photograph I was tasked with cataloguing is a nude portrait of Line Viala, a French accordionist, singer, and actress who was gaining popularity when she was photographed by Florence Henri in 1934.

Henri fit the definition of The New Woman Behind the Camera, and Line Viala, the singer and actress, was a New Woman herself.

Florence Henri, Line Viala, Paris, 1934. This photograph will be offered in the Sotheby’s Photographs auction Bette Davis Eyes and Other Natural Phenomena: Photographs at No Reserve, which closes on July 28.

Episode 2: Print Class/Bill Brandt

The print examined in this episode is offered in an online auction at Sotheby’s: Bette Davis Eyes and Other Natural Phenomena: Photographs at No Reserve, 21-28 July. Buy it and own a piece of photographic history!

Bill Brandt, Rainswept Rooftops, 1933

In this quite episode, I explain my personal method for print examination, which is based on the anagram LTTL.

Look. Touch. Think, Look (again).

LOOK

Take a few minutes to just look at the object. Assess the quality, exposure, paper, and any technical details you can pick up visually.

TOUCH

Look at the image in different kinds of light. With clean hands or nitrile gloves, carefully turn it over and inspect the reverse. Feel the surface of the paper on the front and back.

THINK

Look closely at the surface to find evidence of retouching, masking, or other post-camera work. Use the clues to determine how and when the print was made.

LOOK (AGAIN)

Slow down. Take another moment to just review the clues you have and to make sure you aren’t missing anything.

Looking at other examples of this print shows me that the print in our auction is only a small portion of the original composition:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection

The cropped, trimmed version in our auction

“Our” print is only a portion of the original negative.

Retouching can be seen by holding a print at an angle in bright light. Deposits of ink wash will appear somewhat matte.

Faint scratches and surface printing can be evidence of ferrotyping. In this case, I am not 100% certain whether it has been lightly ferrotyped.

It takes a long time to develop these skills and to gain confidence in your ability to use them. Just ask anyone who works in this field and they will tell you that it takes years to develop an eye for these details.

Additionally, every photographer has their own methodology for making prints. These unique working styles means I have to keep reading and learning from colleagues at archives, museums, estates, and galleries so my cataloguing is accurate.

Is using a blacklight for print dating useful or misleading?

. . . It depends on who is using it.

In this episode I discussed using an ultraviolet light to see if my print fluoresces when exposed to u. v. rays. This test can help me determine if my print was made before the 1950s, when paper companies started adding chemicals (“Optical Brightening Agents” or OBAs) to photographic paper that would enhance the brightness of the whites.

This is a really clear example of a different Bill Brandt print that fluoresces readily under ultraviolet light. The margins glow brightly, as do the strips of modern tape on the mount. The highlights are blue-purple. This print was likely made in the 1960s or 1970s.

I placed a piece of 8 1/2 x 11 in. paper under “our” Brandt photograph for comparison. It is clear that while the printer paper (shown at the very bottom of the image at left) glows very brightly. So does the modern mount to a lesser degree. However, the print itself is fairly flat. The sky appears to be fluorescing, but I believe it is merely bounce from the lightbulb because I was holding it too close. Make sure that you don’t hold your ultraviolet light too close to the print while you are looking; this could give you misleading results.

Discovering out that a print does not fluoresce under ultraviolet light does not definitively mean that it is a print made before 1950. Photographers did not take all of our photographic papers and dump them in the trash at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1949. Be careful with assumptions! Use all of the clues for a reasonable conclusion.

Paper choice can vary a lot from photographer to photographer, and Bill Brandt used some papers that don’t have brighteners in them for a lot of his career- even into the 1970s, so this test isn’t infallible!!

Finally, a note about whether to use gloves or not when handling prints… I prefer not to with gelatin silver prints as I like to get a read on the print texture and wearing gloves reduces dexterity. If your hands are freshly washed and dried then handling gelatin silver prints should not be a problem, especially if you are careful to handle prints on the edges and only otherwise if necessary. I do, however, use nitrile gloves when handling Cibachrome prints, daguerreotypes, tintypes, front-mounted photographs, and other works with delicate surfaces or prints that are otherwise susceptible to fingerprints.

Finally, I love what Brandt wrote in his introduction to his book Camera in London in 1948, and I think it fully explains his working method and attitude to making prints. Too often I’m guilty of this- becoming so overanalytical about the printed object that I don’t just enjoy the image itself. . .

  “We are most of us too busy, too worried, too intent on proving ourselves right, too obsessed with ideas, to stand and stare.   We look at a thing and believe we have seen it.  And yet what we see is often only what our prejudices tell us to expect to see, or what our past experiences tell us should be seen, or what our desires want to see.  Very rarely are we able to free our minds of thoughts and emotions and just see for the simple pleasure of seeing.” 

Episode 1: Inferno Crisis

In Episode 1, we discovered that August Strindberg’s celestographs were not, as he thought, photographs of the night sky. They are chemigrams, or images that are a result of chemicals mixing with the photographic emulsion on the surface of the metal plate or paper as well as other environmental influences, like dust or whatever else is floating through the air. The weather has something to do with it as well. Although not what Strindberg believed them to be, they are mysterious and beautiful.

Many artists have experimented with chemigrams since then, using the unique properties of various chemicals to create abstractions, including Chargesheimer, Henry Holmes Smith, and Pierre Cordier. Gallerist Tom Gitterman has done a great deal of work to promote these photographers. (All images below courtesy Gitterman Gallery)

In this episode, I mentioned the first photo of the star Vega, which was taken on July 17, 1850 with an exposure time of 20 minutes. It was taken by astronomer William Bond and John Adams Whipple at the Harvard Observatory.

Bond and Whipple, Vega, daguerreotype, 1850. Image courtesy Harvard University.

Sir John Herschel, the mathematician, astronomer, botanist, chemist, and inventor of the cyanotype process, was photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron several times. I had the pleasure of handling her captivating portrait of him in 1867 at Sotheby’s in 2019. It is signed by Herschel himself in the lower center of the mount.

Julia Margaret Cameron, J. M. W. Herschel, albumen print, 1867. Image courtesy Sotheby’s.

Herschel’s primary, monumental gift to the history of photography was the invention of the cyanotype, and his own cyanotypes can be found in the renowned Gernsheim Collection at the Harry Ransom Center.

The Honourable Mrs. Leicester Stanhope, cyanotype, 1836. Image courtesy the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

August Strindberg was was a complicated person, and it sounds like he was, in many ways, flawed. Despite the human shortcomings, his contributions to theater, literature, and photography are many.

August Strindberg, Self-Portrait, undated (likely before 1900)

Certainly it is easy enough to disregard Strindberg’s more outlandish claims and conclusions. It is less easy to dismiss the complex forces that directed his thinking. Rational and irrational, mad and tame, they emerge from the profound questions that are within photography itself: What is the relation between appearance and meaning? Does photography offer impartial knowledge or a surface for imaginary projection? Does it have any value outside of conventional uses? These are questions that neither art nor science have entirely contained. Strindberg may well have grasped over a hundred years ago that they never would.- David Campany, August Strindberg: Painter, Photographer, Writer, 2006

and finally…

I highly recommend the short films featuring the animated duo of morose August Strindberg and his floating pink pal, Helium.