Untitled - Issues of Image Magazine - George Eastman House

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Image Vol. 19, No. 2 June, 1976 Journal of Photography and Motion Pictures of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House TABLE OF CONTENTS Anton Bruehl 1 Stieglitz, 291, and Paul Strand's Early Photography 10 Rediscovering Gertrude Kasebier 20 Review 32 IMAGE STAFF Robert J. Doherty, Director George C. Pratt, Director of Publications W. Paul Rayner, Guest Editor Contributing Editors: James Card, Director, Department of Film Andrew Eskind, Assistant to the Director of the Museum Robert A. Sobieszek, Associate Curator, 19th Century Photography Philip L. Condax, Assistant Curator, Equipment Archive William Jenkins, Assistant Curator, 20th Century Photography Marshall Deutelbaum, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Film Ann McCabe, Registrar Walter Clark, Consultant on Conservation Rudolf Kingslake, Consultant on Lenses and Shutters Eaton S. Lothrop, Jr., Consultant on Cameras Martin L. Scott, Consultant on Technology Martha Jenks, Director of Archives Joe Deal, Exhibitions Corporate Members Berkey Marketing Companies, Inc. Braun of North America, Inc. Eastman Kodak Company Flanigans Furniture Gannett Newspapers Hollinger Corporation Polaroid Corporation Spectrum Office Products Spiratone, Inc. 3M Company Image is published four times a year for the International Museum of Photography Associate Members and libraries by International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House Inc., 900 East Avenue, Rochester, New York 14607 Single copies are available at $2.25 each. Subscriptions are available to libraries at $10.00 per year (4 issues). For oversea! libraries add $1.00. Copyright 1976 by International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. BOARD OF TRUSTEES Chairman, Vincent S. Jones First Vice Chairman, Wesley T. Hanson Second Vice Chairman, Alexander D. Hargrave Treasurer, Robert Sherman Secretary, Mrs. Arthur L. Stern III Robert Doherty Walter A. Fallon Sherman Farnham Frank M. Hutchins Mrs. Daniel G. Kennedy William E. Lee David L. Strout W. Allen Wallis Frederic S. Welsh Andrew D. Wolfe About the Contributors Joe Deal is on the staff of IMP/GEH. William Innes Homer is Chairman of the Art History Department at the University of Delaware. Barbara L. Michaels teaches History of Photography at New York University. She has also been Assistant Curator of the Atget Collection at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Front Cover: Anton Bruehl. Untitled and undated. From a dye transfer print. Back Cover: Bruehl. Charles Laughton, 1933. Unless otherwise attributed, photographs are from the IMP/GEH Collections. Negative numbers refer to the IMP/GEH Print Service files.
Anton Joe Deal Bruehl During the height of his career, which extended from the late '20s through the '30s, Anton Bruehl enjoyed a reputation among other photographers and the public which few photographers have been able to achieve. His photographs appeared regularly in the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair and numerous other publications. His efforts to raise the standards of photography in advertising earned him two Harvard Awards and eight Gold Medals from the Art Director's Club. In 1929 his photographs were included in the "Film und Foto" exhibition in Stuttgart; again almost a decade later they appeared in the History of Photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and "Trois Siecles d'Art aux Etats-Unis" in Paris where he was one of fortytwo photographers selected by Beaumont Newhall to represent almost 100 years of American photography. Articles were written about Bruehl; his name was frequently cited in discussions of modern photography as one of America's leaders, comparing his work in America to that of Rodschenko in Russia and Hoyningen-Huene in Paris. 1 His photographs are exemplary of an internationally spirited phase in the history of photography which has since been largely ignored. Anton Bruehl was born in Australia in 1900 to German parents. In Australia he studied engineering and later came to America where he worked in New York for Western Electric Company. In 1924 after visiting an exhibition of photographs by students of the Clarence White School he gave up his career in engineering to study photography with White. After only six months of private lessons with White, during which time he also worked in the portrait studio of Jessie Tarbox Beals, Bruehl was asked to help teach at the White School. 2 The warm relationship which developed between Bruehl and Clarence White ended in the summer of 1925 when, on a trip to Mexico with some of his students, White died of a heart attack. Bruehl ran the summer school that year, and in 1926 entered the profession of advertising photography. He maintained his membership in the Pictorial Photographers of America, an organization made up mostly of former students of the White School, and eventually became a member of its executive committee and jury for the annual exhibitions held at the New York Art Center. By 1929, along with photographers such as Paul Outerbridge and Ralph Steiner, Bruehl contributed to the transformation of the content and appearance of the annual exhibitions to the extent that Frank Crowninshield, editor of Vanity Fair, was moved to comment in the foreword to the 1929 Annual of the Pictorial Photographers of America: 3 And the inevitable result of this encroachment of modernism has been that the old-time quality of "sentimentality" is very much on the decline in our photographic art. The once popular "storytelling" pictures, the tender landscapes with sheep, the bowls of flowers, the portraits of little children, have had to make way for prints in which a new and almost disordered spirit is evident. The gospel of mass and the age of machinery have certainly been making converts among the American photographers. If, as is generally agreed, the twentieth century was accepted late by the Pictorialists who held closely to pre-war sentiments, it is seldom acknowledged that Clarence White and the Pictorialist movement provided a new generation with the leaders of a widespread phenomenon in American photography commonly referred to as "Modern photography." Anton Bruehl's background in engineering and love of machine forms in combination with his training under Clarence White resulted in still life photographs which give the satisfaction of well-resolved formal problems and portraits choreographed with the rhythm and movement characteristic of the age. During the '30s Bruehl's studio expanded, eventually becoming one of the most successful in New York. In 1933 he made a trip to Mexico where he shot a series of photographs similar in many ways to Paul Strand's Mexican photographs made the same year but not published until 1940 as The Mexican Portfolio. Bruehl's 1
Page 4: Mexican photographs had in the mean
Page 15: en's imagery. Strand, however, did
Page 18 and 19: By thoughtfully planning his camera
Page 21 and 22: eform when he was photographing the
Page 23: As art historians we are spoiled, i
Page 27: her subject, always emphasizing the
Page 32 and 33: chose to exhibit in her retrospecti
Page 34 and 35: concerning the Special Exhibition o

Untitled - Issues of Image Magazine - George Eastman House

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