Alvin Langdon Coburn

I had a splendid photographic day yesterday. Geoff Wittig and I (Geoff wrote yesterday's book reviews) journeyed to the George Eastman Museum (GEM, formerly known as George Eastman House or GEH) in Rochester, former epicenter of the photographic world. We went to see the Alvin Langdon Coburn exhibit before it closes; it was Geoff's second visit to the show, my first.

Here's Geoff next to Alvin at the entry to the show. He looks a bit punk and insolent, doesn't he? (Alvin, not Geoff.) All of my pictures are blurred by camera shake; I couldn't hold the camera steady in the low light.

Alvin Langdon Coburn, if you don't know the name, born 1882, was a pictorialist enfant terrible (nevertheless dominated by his strong-willed mother) who did his best work before the First World War—he gained substantial fame and reputation while still in his teens and twenties. But speaking of sharpness, it was pretty amusing to see Coburn's strongly pictorialist photographic style in light of today's torrid discussions of resolution and sharpness. Everyone who was anyone in his day considered an impressionistic unsharpness to be the mark of artistic interpretation, and photographers across the Western world prized "diffusion." The public now, not knowing any better, thinks that old lenses from around the turn of the 20th century were not sharp because the technology simply hadn't progressed far enough. Not so. Lensmakers vied with each other to make lenses deliberately designed to be unsharp, first for portraits, then for everything. Photographers went to great lengths to seek out lenses with just the proper degree and type of blurriness. And, at clubs and salons and in photographic journals, they argued about just which lenses were the most perfectly unsharp. (I know it appears that I'm kidding, but I am not.) I recall reading about one photographer who kept the identity of his prized portrait lens a secret so his competitors would find it harder to mimic him.

A non-pictorialist pictorialist picture by Alvin Langdon Coburn

Virtually all of Coburn's prints in the GEM show are floridly, extravagantly unsharp. As you might expect, it works for some subject matter and not for others. Coburn was visually adventuresome (credited as the first to master high viewpoints, for instance), but his Western landscapes simply fail in comparison to the work of Group ƒ/64 photographers and later practitioners; blurry, dark waterfalls with no detail just kinda fall down. The other main aspect of the pictorialist aesthetic is a relentless, unreal darkness, rendering even bright sunlight tepid and murky; whole pictures take place in the lower tones. Compare that to the demotic style of great swaths of the Digital Tsunami, dictated not by intention but by the natural look of early and bad digital, which is to cheerfully lose the whole top part of the tonal scale to featureless white. However, also as you might expect of a great photographer, Coburn more often makes his technical aesthetic work. The best of the many prints on display are profoundly lovely. And in many cases still original.

Alfred Stieglitz by Alvin Langdon Coburn

I have a bit of a thing for pictures of photographers, so as you might guess I loved this fine portrait of Alfred Stieglitz, the most important American figure in the early history of photography as art. I didn't see another of my favorite Coburn portraits, an autochrome color picture of Mark Twain in a red silk robe, in bed, reading. I think that one's in England(?).

Coburn's later experiments with Vorticism might have seemed edgy at the time, and are dutifully remarked as early "pure abstract" photography (the very term a bit of an oxymoron in my view), but they seem like empty pretension (again, to me) now. His famous Vorticist portrait of Ezra Pound would have been better straight, in my view. To each his own taste. Coburn reached the end of his life (quite late—he didn't die until 1966) growing increasingly eccentric. Eventually he put aside photographic pursuits in favor of an increasingly heavy involvement in spiritualism, mysticism, and the occult.

Coburn's opium pipes. Opium was legal until 1905, when the
photographer would have been 23.

The George Eastman Museum did an over-the-top great job with the show. Seldom will the world see a greater number of exceedingly fine original Coburn prints exhibited all together in adjacent rooms. The supporting material added just the right level of richness. The wall placards were in English, not artspeak. Curator Pamela G. Roberts, former curator of the Royal Photographic Society, drew mainly from the GEM's own collection (the GEM's being the largest Coburn holding extant—he willed his estate to them), but, crucially, filled key gaps with loans from other museums.

I wasn't at all surprised to learn that the museum store was sold out of the show catalog. Seeing so many exquisitely crafted prints—not for nothing did Coburn have a reputation as a maestro in the darkroom—unexpectedly lit a fire under my own enthusiasm for Coburn, and I felt a certain urgency to try to preserve the experience by buying the catalog. Turns out even Amazon is almost out of them. And GEM won't be getting more—I asked. Amazon UK is almost out too. It's possible the publisher has more, of course.

Applause from here. Very nice job*.

That ain't all
Amazingly, my day with Geoff got better from there...we were allowed down into the Museum's vast underground treasure vault—the one where they keep what is arguably the world's most important and extensive collection of cameras. I'll tell you all about that in a little bit—I need to go have my breakfast first. But here's a tiny taste (of our visit to the vaults, not my breakfast!):

It's Alvin Langdon Coburn's Pinkham & Smith lens. Cool, huh? And yes, they really did spell his name wrong in the engraving! Oh well.

More soon**. And many thanks to Geoff for suggesting the outing, and getting me to unchain my ankle from the leg of the TOP Command Post, a.k.a. my desk.

Mike

*Except for the low lighting, following the current dumb fashion in alleged conservation at many museums, which appear to be trying to ruin their own reputations with the public and get people to stop coming to museums. In this case, however, the muddy lighting didn't hurt all that much, because the prints themselves are pretty dark and murky! It actually seemed to suit them. Well, almost.

**Might be tomorrow, to be honest.

ADDENDUM #1: An earlier version of the post had a picture of the wrong lens! Sorry about that. Fixed now.

ADDENDUM #2: Lest you doubt my comments about our photographic forebears' preference in lenses, here's a marvelous little sampling of Alvin Langdon Coburn's thoughts about his lenses. In case you don't make it down that far, he writes:

I now have about a dozen P. & S. (Semi-Achromatic) lenses of various focal lengths, most of which have been especially made for me. When I am in Boston, I always make my way to 288 Boylston Street, to enjoy a chat with a tall, kindly man who thinks in glass. I tell him my troubles and my needs, and not long afterward, I receive a package which, after burrowing through the excelsior packing, gives up a small glistening object. This is the lens—nothing like it has been made before—nothing just like it is apt to be made again, for Mr. Smith is a revolutionary in photographic optics, and he gets lots of fun out of life.

Is that a very early version of an unboxing video, or what?!

Click on the image to make it larger and easier to read. Many thanks to Todd Gustavson for providing this and the picture of Alvin's lens.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kevin Purcell: "Semi-Achromatic lens? Isn't that like being a bit pregnant? I had to look it up: the semi-achromatic lens has all the 'pictoriality' of a pinhole but faster exposure times."

Chap Achen: "I had the opportunity to attend a church auction and there was a beautiful wonderful 8x10 studio camera with film holders, reducing backs for 5x7 and 4x5 film, several film holders, but no lens. I asked the photographer's widow as to the location of the missing lens. She replied that her husband asked her to bury the lens with him when he died. He did not want anyone else to use what he considered was his 'trademark' look."

Chris Wentz: "When I was in high school in the '70s I did a work study term at the local portrait studio. The photographer did posed portraits in a classical style. I remember the man raving about his favorite lens being needle sharp. But then, and I’m sure I remember this correctly, while printing, he waved a piece of lens tissue under the enlarger for a moment to soften the image. I think we are currently experiences an orgy of sharpness. Why? Because we can. It's a kind of stunt: sharpness for the sake of it. It certainly has little to do with whether a photo is worth looking at."

Steven Willard: "I had grown increasingly frustrated by the fact that all of my images shared the antiseptic look of unrelenting sharpness and no 'romance,' for want of a better term. I kept looking at one of my prints from a negative made on 4x5 by an old Turner Reich triple convertible probably made before WWI. It is sharp enough, but has a glow I had been missing in my images. Modern lenses are a treat to use, but the results can sometimes (for me) be like sitting too close to the stage at the ballet. I don't want to hear the grunts and groans or see the sweat! I want romance."

Comments

[Hugh Smith]

On the subject of lenses, Mike.
When I took my first job as a photographer's assistant, I dutifully did some much needed cleaning in the studio.
In particular, one of the Dagor lenses on an 8x10 view camera was horribly dusty.
I carefully cleaned the lens until it was nice and bright and shiny.
Imagine how I felt when my photographer boss discovered that I had cleaned the lens and castigated me because it was how he got his beautifully soft images.
(I haven't cleaned a lens since...kidding)
Just mi dos pesos.

[Sal Santamaura]

"...Except for the low lighting, following the current dumb fashion in alleged conservation at many museums..."

Not just a ridiculously low lighting level on exhibited prints, which is incompatible with our eyes' working range, but uncoated glazing and general lighting of sufficient intensity to ensure that visitors predominantly see reflections of themselves rather than the photographs.

"...which appear to be trying to ruin their own reputation with the public and get people to stop coming to museums."

They have for the most part succeeded with me. Once a particular museum has done this several times and ignores my rational pleas to stop, I stop. Going there and supporting it. If everyone does the same, perhaps we can reverse this trend.

[Phil Stiles]

A very interesting article about a photographer who was completely unknown to me.
"All of my pictures are blurred by camera shake; I couldn't hold the camera steady in the low light." As one who recently switched from Fuji to Olympus, that's one of the great improvements I've noted.

[Bill Poole]

Wonderful post, Mike. Would have loved to see this show.

Among the large format crowd, there is still a great deal of love of, and demand for, those older "impressionistic" lenses, especially for portraits. And today's plastic camera aficionados seem also to be going for that look.

For those interested in the F.64 school and their back-and-forth battle with the pictorialists over what makes a good photograph, I would recommend Mary Street Alinder's "Group f.64" (2014), which I just finished reading. Very informative and well-documented.

Thanks again for a history post. Great stiff.

[Andrew Molitor]

Pictorialism gets a bad rap, in my opinion!

The word itself means, today, "that muddy dark crud with the scratches" but that seems to be a very modern usage. In the 1800s it meant a ton of different things, mainly "photography". Newhall actually uses "Art Photography" and "Pictorial Photography" in precisely opposite senses, switching them between (I think) editions 4 and 5 of his history.

The muddy stuff, what we think of as pictorialism today, was a relatively brief interval, and I like it quite a bit more than is fashionable.

I think it works quite well for landscapes, but then, I live in a chill and foggy land not unlike England. For the American West I guess than an argument can be made that it constitutes an unfair interpretation of the scene.

[Manuel]

Mike, I'm speechless. This must be one of the very best, most thought-provoking entries you've written.
Alvin Langdon Coburn came to my attention about one year ago, after I bought a pocket-sized Taschen album of photographs from Ludwigsmuseum of Cologne's permanent exhibition. It prompted me to delve a little deeper into the photography of those days: Coburn, Stieglitz, Steichen. They were poets as much as they were photographers. Yes, it's all too easy to perceive their aesthetics as flawed because of the lack of sharpness, but it was part of their language. I'm pretty sure they'd make sharper pictures should they want to, but that 'unsharpness' served their photographs the best. Would a picture like Stieglitz's 'Georgia's Hands' be any better if it were sharper? I don't think so.
We live in a culture of sharpness. One of the implications of this - besides the sterile and endless arguments on DPReview's forums, that is - is that the eye responds to blurriness by rejecting it. It would be wise to look beyond sharpness and try to understand the photographer's choices. The fact that a picture is blurry doesn't always mean it is flawed, or that the photographer lacked skills.

[Vytas Narusevicius]

Dear Mike:

The obvious solution for your low light woes would be an IBIS camera like an Olympus or a Sony A7ii, instead of those Fuji things you keep going on about.

Cheers,

Vytas

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Good field trip! I've seen little of Coburn's work -- it kinda melts into the somewhat mushy pool of pictorialism -- but I think I do recognize the non-pictorial example above. Looks like an excellent show!

Geoff looks like he could be standing in front of a portrait from his youth!

[Stephen Gillette]

"All of my pictures are blurred by camera shake; I couldn't hold the camera steady in the low light."

Hmmm. Mike, I know that you have a Fuji X kit (along with others). Good ISO 3200 quality (at least for online repro), fast primes and stabilized zooms (not all, but the f/2.8-f/4.0 is, very effective).

Personally, I am not steady-handed enough for the sharp 1/10th second hand-held exposures of my youth, but current camera tech has made that irrelevant. So: what happened? Just curious! No worries!

[John Krill]

One of the leaders of the Pictorialists in the 30s was William Mortensen and Ansel Adams was in constant battle with him. They even had a debate via the magazine Camera Craft. One issue was Mortensen and the next month would be Adams.

Mortensen had a successful photo school here in Laguna Beach, Ca for many years.

The book about the f64 group goes into the battle between the pictorialists and the f64 group. Chapter 9 is titled: The Enemy Mortensen.

As a kid growing up in southern California the big names in photography were Weston and Adams. So reading the book was great fun.

The book is: Group f.64 by Mary Street Alinder.

[This issue is much beloved of photo historians and theorists because there is, as you note, such a big fat 'n' juicy paper trail for them to sink their textual-analytical teeth into, but I'm not sure this is relevant here. Mortensen wasn't really a pictorialist. He came later than the high point of pictorialist style; he added manipulation to the point that his pictures were mixed media, only half photography if that much; and he often aimed at allegory (to which photography is singularly ill-suited) and did things like writing labels right on his pictures. Really, he has a lot more in common with pop illustration of later years, like comic book art or heavy metal posters, things like that. His real sin to Newhall and his friends was that his stuff was full-bore, V-8 powered, turn-it-up-to-11 kitsch. We're very used to anything-goes in art nowadays, but it's easy to see how, back then, with Mortensen-like style firmly ensconced as the preferred, "safe" style of hobbyists, reactionaries, and old fogeys, he could be both a thorn in the side of, and a fat target to, people who were trying hard to move photography away from old, played-out modes. Mortensen did a lot more harm to pictorialists than he ever did to modernism, by embodying to such an alarming degree everything that was ever wrong with that style. Pictorialism never really recovered from him, unless you think it has in this millennium.

For those who might be curious, here's a typical Mortensen "photograph":

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/06/william-mortensen-photography-master-macabre#img-1

You can like him if you want to, though. I'm happy to explain my taste, but I have no brief to dictate anyone else's.

But Coburn was a real pictorialist, from when it was current, vibrant and viable, and really has almost nothing at all in common with Mortensen.

--Mike]

[Gordon Lewis]

Mike, did you not see the irony of apologizing for the unsharpness of your photo of Geoff and Alvin, especially given your explanation that photographers of Alvin's era prized "diffusion" over sharpness? This was no mistake to apologize for; you were simply emulating the style of the times!

[Ed]

Rochester still is the epicenter.

Soft focus lenses are back in vogue by the way. Check the prices on anything by Pinkham and Smith , Cooke, Darlot, or any of the other multiple soft focus manufacturers. The large-format crowd loves them. Most are priced well into the thousands of dollars.

[Sarge]

Imagine being able to go to Lomography, telling them what you need, and receiving a DHL box a month or two later, containing your made-to-order lens buried in excelsior peanut foam and bubble wrap, with your name engraved on the lens barrel! If I can do that now, I wouldn't mind if my bespoke lens were as sharp as Alvin Langdon Coburn's.

[GJM Geradts]

I always read your blogs with much pleasure.

[Thanks! --Mike]

[Peter]

In the same vein, an exhibition in London.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/photography/what-to-see/saul-leiter-the-photographers-gallery-review-mesmerising/

[Earl Dunbar]

Thanks for this, Mike. I am heading over to GEM in a couple of hours to catch this before it closes. Living in Rochester, I nearly always delay my visit to nearly the last minute. The exceptions have been Adams and Towell. I'm trying to do better.

[Dennis Mook]

Now, if you just had the E-M1 with IBIS and that 17mm f/1.8 lens, there wouldn't have been a camera movement problem. Just sayin'.....

[Bill Mitchell]

With few exceptions, his landscapes are far more successful than his portraits.

[Bruce McL]

“… at clubs and salons and in photographic journals, they argued about just which lenses were the most perfectly unsharp. (I know it appears that I'm kidding, but I am not.)”

I believe every word of it. I have been spending time in adapted lens forums lately. The quality of out of focus areas of images is discussed constantly, with words like creamy, swirly, busy, dreamy, (Sneezy, Dopey, and Doc).

One adapted lens video I watched mentioned that with focus peaking he could “walk the focus down the eyelashes to the eyeball.” And the rest of the head and shoulders portrait would have that dreamy background look.

Why not just “walk the focus” back up and off of the eyelashes, and have the whole image look dreamy? That's what a Pictorialist would want. Somehow having that one eye, that one pistil in the flower, that one curlicue of hair in focus is very, very important today. That's different than the Pictorialists, but not any more sensible.

[MikeR]

Hmmm ... maybe my path to fame lies in not deleting those fuzzy images in Lightroom.

[Andrew Molitor]

It's really a shame that "pictorialism" has come to mean "Victorian era pictures I don't like". Not only is it ahistoric, it's not a very useful term at that point.

We have Robinson, who wanted everything pretty much sharp, we have Emerson who thought that only the thing you were supposed to look at should be sharp and everything else a bit soft. We have a bunch of other people who wanted things slightly soft, but not too soft. You have nobody whatsoever who thinks that photographs should be uniformly blurry.

But the popular understanding is that Pictorialists, en masse, simply wanted everything to be a blurry mess.

Here's a small bomb I like to toss from time to time: If you spend, as I have done, some years doing the reading and thinking about things and so on, you come to conclude that Ansel Adams was as much a Pictorialist as he was anything else. His compatriots were not, but he was.

It's all there. The sentimental landscapes, the heavy manipulation to bring out "the sublime", trope after trope lifted straight out of painting. There is hardly a well-known Adams picture that JMW Turner couldn't have painted, had he only used grey paints. HP Robinson would have approved of the lot.

[IAndrew...no. This is very confused. Pictorialism is a style not an era. The term was coined in 1869 with Pictorialism proper centered on 1890-1920 or so. Victorian photography (1840-1900) overlaps with it a bit but they're not synonymous. I think of Victorian photography more as it is represented in Helmut Gernsheim's 1951 book "Masterpieces of Victorian Photography."

Adams wasn't a Pictorialist by any stretch of the definition, except very briefly in the very earliest days of his career before he'd found his way. And you can't be thinking of JMW Turner. His work looks nothing at all like Adams's, in color or no.

Alison Nordstrom's "Truth Beauty" is back in print. Recommended on the subject. --Mike]

[Jon Leatherwood]

What a wonderful portraitist he was. His image of Mark Twain in the window light is masterful - hope it's in the show.

[Rob L.]

Oh man. I like this guy. Thanks for the introduction!

[Jon Leatherwood]

This one

http://www.photogravure.com/collection/searchResults.php?page=5&artist=Coburn,%20Alvin%20Langdon&view=medium&file=Coburn_19_30

[Ade]

Thanks for pointing out the catalog (duly ordered), and to Bill Poole for mentioning the Group f.64 book, which sounds right up my street.