images that haunt us
On left page: “Despair” contact print from original negative (neutral background)
On right page: the ‘manipulated’ image: “Highlights on shoulder and on background introduced on paper negative” (Transparency-paper-negative-method)
Vintage toned matte gelatin silver print. 20,5 x 13,5 cm. Mounted to board, signed by Bucovich in pencil below image on right, annotated Atelier Schenker below image on left, number label in lower left corner; Atelier Karl Schenker, Berlin W. 62, Budapesterstraße 6 stamp and Swedish exhibition label 1926 on mount verso.
Born in the Arizona territory, Arthur Kales received a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1903. While living in the Bay Area, he became interested in the burgeoning Pictorialist movement in photography that flourished there, and his images met with immediate success. Kales moved to Los Angeles to work in advertising but returned to San Francisco in 1917. In the following year, he nevertheless joined the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles. For fourteen years beginning in 1922, Kales wrote about Pictorialist photography in western America for the journal Photograms of the Year. [quoted from Getty museum]
Heinz von Perckhammer was born in Merano, Austria-Hungary (now Italy) in 1895. During the First World War he served aboard the SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth during the Siege of Tsingtao and between 1917 and 1919 was held as a prisoner of war. It was during this time when he was held captive that his interest in photography began. He apparently remained in China for much of the 1920s, and took these soft-focused and stylized photographs of women from Macao brothels.
In the introduction to Edle Nacktheit in China he writes: ‘Pictures of nude women, setting aside the ugly caricatures of the “Spring pictures” of erotic scenes, simply do not exist in China. Therefore I believe, I have created something entirely new and of value.’ Edle Nacktheit in China was later banned by the Nazis as Degenerate art (Entartete Kunst) and appeared on the Liste des schädlichen und unerwünschten Schrifttums [List of harmful and undesirable writing].
Czech Avant-Garde (2023) at Gitterman Gallery (NY)
Gitterman gallery presents a selection of avant-garde Czech photography with a focus on rare vintage works by two seminal figures, František Drtikol and Josef Sudek. Each created exquisite prints that added dimension to their innovative visions.
František Drtikol’s (1883-1961) photographs are distinctly emblematic of the Art Deco period (1920s and 30s) by merging styles of Symbolism, Pictorialism, and Modernism. These two photos are an example of his best known works: Pictorial images of nudes in Modernist (Art decó) stagings.
un regard oblique 