I just had a thought the other night.
You know how Dorothea Lange and Edward Weston, and loads of other Famous Photographers started out/supported themselves by running commercial portraiture operations?
Where the hell are all those portraits? I mean, we see portraits, but only the ones from their artistic ventures, never the grind-em-out commercial work. I cannot recall ever seeing any such thing, nor any collections of them, nor any shows containing these objects. Surely there must be a bunch of these things out there, and surely someone has (could? might?) collect some of them together.
Where the hell are all the portraits?
A Evans and Lange contemporary, lesser light depression-era photographer Russell Lee also did a lot of work for Standard Oil of New Jersey (Esso), included in a monograph I saw. I don't think he did commercial portraits though. Making the Best of It (Texas Monthly article)
ReplyDeleteYou know Kirk Tuck's blog, "Visual Science Lab," right? A fine portrait photographer.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you're making a joke here? But on the chance that you're not, I meant Weston's portraits, and Lange's!
DeleteOn a related note, I've got a not very good, Kodak sponsored or produced book including some colour panoramas by Ansel Adams. They're awful.
ReplyDeleteAnsel Adams also did portraits to support his extended photo journeys into the backcountry.
ReplyDeleteThere’s a story somewhere detailing his early portrait work, which included commissions of cats and other socialites’ pets.
Surely people have tried to track down such stuff, but it isn't surprising that it has been lost. You have noted that we should respect the editing that artists do of their work.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine it's *all* been lost? Surely there are prints, if only a few.
DeleteBut you're quite right, we ought not to treat this things as co-equal with their "serious output," I am just surprised that no busy-body seems to have made a hobby of dredging this material up.
There are scholarly uses for this sort of thing (as well as archives and contact sheets and whatnot) that make sense and don't infringe on the artist's right to stay dead with an established body of work.
I could not find anything on Imogene Cunningham's commercial work except that she destroyed some of it. The families must have those images somewhere.
ReplyDeleteIt's very possible for an artist to apply artistic values to commercial work, e.g. Josef Sudek's photographs of glassware. Recall also Warhol's beginnings as a windows dresser, and Francis Bacon's as an interior decorator. All of the great Renaissance portraits were commissions...
ReplyDelete...OTOH, I consider the outputs of the likes of David LaChapelle and Annie Leibovitz as little more than deranged abominations.
ReplyDeleteMy wife had a book published a few years ago. One of the images she wanted to include was a photo by A Very Famous Photographer, done on commercial assignment. She was able to obtain permission from the Very Famous Photographer’s heirs to use the photo, for free. With the one stipulation being that she did not use the Very Famous Photographer’s name in connection with the photo.
ReplyDelete