images that haunt us
Ergy Landau (1896-1967) :: Unknown title, female nude view from back, nd. | src madivinecomedie
In 1920 Edward Weston began a series of pictures of Betty Katz (later Brandner, 1865-1982), who was introduced to Weston by his colleague Margrethe Mather (1886-1952). Weston and Brandner engaged in a brief affair in October 1920, when he made this and several other images of her in her attic and out on a balcony. With its soft focus, these particular portraits are Pictorialist in style compared to the more experimental images Weston made of Katz (Brandner) that are Modernist in their self-conscious handling of space and form.
Text adapted from Brett Abbott. Edward Weston, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), 20. (quoted from Getty Museum)
(*) Note: not orchids but irises; vase with irises. Unless they were a variety of orchids that look very much like irises. If anybody happen to have the knowledge to disambiguate, please drop a line below. Thank you!
“Le sujet le plus banal, quelques fleurs dans un vase par exemple, devient nouveau par la façon dont les lumières y sont groupées et par l’extrème variété des valeurs. (…) Pour donner plus de richesse à ses compositions, l’auteur [Laure Albin Guillot] les a tirées sur fond or selon un procédé dont elle a le brevet.”
Jean Gallotti, ‘La photographie est-elle un art? Laure Albin-Guyot [sic!]’, dans L’art vivant, No. 99, 1er février 1929, p. 138. [Quoted from Sotheby’s]
un regard oblique 