V&A
October 2018 Page 4
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Cohen Collection
This is my third pick from the show, after Neusüss' Latticed Window and Meier's 29 pictures …. The label gives the background,
In the 1990s the American collector Peter Cohen began combing flea markets and auctions for snapshot photographs. Since then he has assembled a substantial collection that he carefully organises into categories. The photographs displayed here are from the category 'Shadows'. V&A
There is a clear read-across here to the work of Lee Friedlander.
Link - Collector's web site
John Somerset Murray
b: 1904 / d: 1992 Norfolk
These images were taken on the 'Glass Train' which toured the country in 1937 promoting glass products. The National Portrait Gallery says of Murray,
A grandson of John Murray, calotypist of India, and cousin of the portraitist Olive Edis, he opened his own portrait studio in Chelsea in 1933. Shortly afterwards he turned to commercial photography including working for Pilkington Glass. With Winifred Casson he executed solarised and surrealist photographs, which were shown at the Chelsea Studio Club in the 1950s. He later took up electronic engineering. npg.org.uk



The Glass Train: Table
1937
© the estate of John Somerset Murray
Link - Independent obituary
Bill Brandt
b: 1904 Hamburg / d: 1983 London
Bill Brandt is the best and most versatile photographer Britain has produced, although his mother was German.
Note that the first eye, Dubuffet's, could be mistaken for a photograph of an elephant.






Alberto Giacometti's Left Eye
Louise Nevelson's Eye
Max Ernst's Left Eye
1960-63
© the estate of Bill Brandt
Link - this site, Wikipedia, Archive
Bernard Eilers
b: 1878 Amsterdam / d: 1951 Amsterdam
This remarkable colour image was produced using a process Eilers invented in the 1930s. Quote from Memory of the Netherlands,
Bernard F. Eilers (1878-1951) was active in many photographic fields. Besides practicing the traditional genres such as townscapes, portraits and still lifes he also applied himself to architecture, art reproduction and ad photography.
In his lifetime, Eilers was held in high regard as an art photographer both in and outside the Netherlands. He owed his greatest successes to his photographs of Amsterdam, that exude much atmosphere and make one think of a painting by Breitner or Witsen. His free work is pictorial and seems to belong in the nineteenth rather than the twentieth century. In his photographs, Eilers achieved exceptionally high quality by his practically unequalled mastery of the means offered by modern photographic techniques. His photographs paint a nostalgic picture of the Netherlands in years gone by.
As a professional photographer, Eilers had many customers, including companies like Philips, Verkade and the Dutch car manufacturer Spijker, as well as architects such as Van der Mey, Kramer and De Klerk. His Golden Age as a photographer of architectural subjects coincided with that of the so-called Amsterdam School and its monthly publication Wendingen. Aside from what he described as his sixth sense, “the feeling in space”, Eilers considered a feeling for tone to be of the utmost importance when photographing a building in order to properly reproduce its size and proportions.
Eilers was a gifted technician. This emerges most of all from his pioneering work in the field of colour photography. He excelled in the application of new techniques such as the Lumière sheet and the multi-colour bromine colour printing. Eilers even developed a colour technique of his own: the foto-chroma eilers. geheugenvannederland.nl


© the estate of Bernard Eilers
Link - Memory of the Netherlands
Rudolf Koppitz
b: 1884 Austrian Silesia / d: 1936 Austria
Koppitz is described in Wikipedia as,
a Photo-Secessionist whose work includes straight photography and modernist images. He was one of the leading representatives of art photography in Vienna between the world wars. Koppitz is best known for his works of the human figure including his iconic Bewegungsstudie, Motion Study and his use of the nude in natural settings. Wikipedia


Link - Wikipedia
Oscar Gustaf Rejlander
b: 1813 Stockholm / d: 1875 London
Rejlander has been described as "the father of art photography". Wikipedia ventures,
a pioneering Victorian art photographer and an expert in photomontage. His collaboration with Charles Darwin on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals has assured him a position in the history of behavioural science and psychiatry. wikipedia


Link - scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk, Wikipedia
Anna Atkins
b: 1797 Tunbridge / d: 1871 Sevenoaks
Wikipedia states,
Anna Atkins was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Some sources claim that she was the first woman to create a photograph…
John George Children and John Pelly Atkins were friends of William Henry Fox Talbot. Anna Atkins learned directly from Talbot about two of his inventions related to photography: the "photogenic drawing" technique (in which an object is placed on light-sensitized paper which is exposed to the sun to produce an image) and calotypes.
Atkins was known to have had access to a camera by 1841. Some sources claim that Atkins was the first female photographer. Other sources name Constance Fox Talbot as the first female photographer. As no camera-based photographs by Anna Atkins nor any photographs by Constance Talbot survive, the issue may never be resolved. wikipedia


Link - wikipedia
Noël-Marie-Paymal Lerebours
b: 1807 Paris / d: 1873 Neuilly-sur-Seine
This is a remarkable image, though difficult to photograph, due to reflections. It predates the Sgt. Pepper cover by around 130 years. According to Wikipedia,
a French optician and daguerreotypist. He is best known today for his Excursions Daguerriennes, books of views of the world's monuments, based on early photographs redrawn by hand as Aquatint engravings. wikipedia


Link - wikipedia