essences

while photo- graphers in the west struggled to define them- selves, to them- selves and to the world, as artists, many japanese printmakers were going through a similar process. ironically, it was due to the popularization of the camera that interest began to falter in woodblock prints in japan, as one impor- tant function they had ful- filled was to document.


artists in france were going through a related process, breaking free of the documentarian, glorified, idealized portrait of life that was still what was considered appropriate as real art in france. impressionists and printmakers were hotheads; this would all blow over. documentation was no longer a goal of




many of the fine arts, and thus artists were freed to explore the sensations, impressions, of a particular place, rather than its precise dimensions.

The Quiet Landscapes of William B. Post

William B. Post (1857-1921) of Fryeburg, Maine, was an influential member of the Photo- Secession, the group that first championed art photography in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. A colleague of Alfred Stieglitz, Post was active from the mid-1880s through the 1910s, producing platinum prints.

Post frequently captured the seasonal changes to the Maine landscape in his sensitively printed photographs such as Intervale, Winter of 1899. The most widely exhibited photograph during his lifetime, this image also appeared as a photogravure in Stieglitz's famous magazine Camera Work. The high horizon line, the expanse of snow in the foreground, and the limited tonal ranges of the trees suggest his creative ability to invent new compositions and poetic harmonies influenced by Japanese art. His use of a narrow, vertical format and choice of floral subjects in other pictures also relates to Asian scroll paintings.

Like many painters, photographers, and designers of his day, Post absorbed the craze for Japonisme after a trip to Japan in 1891. He began showing his photographic work in New York the following year, and in 1893 he showed the young Stieglitz how to use a hand-held camera.

[yes, this article, reviewing a show that has been making the rounds for a year or so, is about post, but, as clearly seen in the last paragraph, it could be about ivan bilibin, in his little vertical print. it could be about coburn or white, whose photographic histories resemble that of post in many ways. and of course riviere's 36 views of the eiffel tower fits right in.]