[Leica] Eastman House Visit

[Luc Bourgeois <luc@forcemajeure.qc.ca>]

As I mentioned last week, Friday I visited the Eastman House in 
Rochester.

It was actually a very worthwhile visit for anyone interested in 
photography. I saw and learned so much in the few hours I was there.

Their website does not do justice to the shows, or the Eastman House. 
With over 400,000 photographic works, there were a few meaty 
expositions happening in 4 different galleries. Nice stuff on the walls.

Hopping to mind:

Creamy B&W Kertesz print 'Chez Mondrian' where the composition (you've 
probably seen this picture) is so sweet and the tones so buttery you 
almost feel you could scrape the light right off the print.

Candid photography roots from 1856. Casual hand-held style compositions 
where subject and time were slowed down enough, were comfortable 
enough, to yield Leica-style casualness to a heavy technical medium 
with extremely long setup time; in the Roger Fenton salted paper print 
'A quiet day in the mortar battery'. This made me reflect that the 
'casualness' of a shot is not just in the 'lightweight' approach, but 
mostly in the time opening up between subject and photographer...

Mary Ellen Mark's 'The Damm family in their car'. She's a photographer 
that I don't know much about. There's two of her photographs at the 
show, but this posed medium format shot is simply beyond description. 
The print is also wonderful, 20 x 24 I think.

Also there was Henry Peach Robinson's 'Fading Away', a highly 
manipulated composite from three negatives, an albumen print from 1850. 
(The show also offered many albumen prints I enjoyed sinking my eyes 
into)

Speaking of printing, Inge Morath's really great 'Mrs Evelyn Nash' 
(1953) was not as strong as it can be. I saw this photograph somewhere 
else, and the effect was much stronger because the print was better. 
The blacks were lacking here, and this completely weakened the visual 
anchor points of the strong horizontal and triangular lines of the top 
half of the frame. The lacking blacks also diminished the mysterious 
ambiance. So, just reconfirming here folks, printing is half of it.

Also on show: Julia Margeret Cameron, Timothy O'Sullivan, Gustave Le 
Gray, Capa's Omaha Beach shot, Rutherford's amazing 'Moon' another 
albumen print from 1865, huge and glorious, in itself worth the visit, 
some small Hine prints from Empire State Building (1931), Ellis Island 
(1905), Child Labor (1908), Man Ray's Solarization (1929), Imogen 
Cunningham's Magnolia Blossom (I just want to walk into this print) 
1925, Weston's 1936 nude, and 1930 Pepper, a few Atgets, some Strand, 
Modotti, Bravo, Karsh, Egderton, Frank, Cartier-Bresson, Smith, Adams, 
Siskind, Winogrand, Friedlander, Nick Ut, Arbus, Davidson, Dater, 
Steidhen, Model, Callahan... and that's just one of the four shows 
going on (the other ones are smaller, tho).

A room upstairs in the actual Eastman residence hosts the last 100 
years of photography, another few hours are required for that, but I 
ran out of time. It includes lots of prints, and some historical 
cameras on display.

Also seen was the Lunar orbiter satellite camera used from 1967. It 
used and processed unperforated 70mm film and scanned it for 
transmission back to earth. As well the first known Daguerrotype outfit 
to arrive in America, purchased by a dentist named Bemis in 1840 for 
$76.

And there's a lot more to see. I quite enjoyed my time there, and want 
to return soon. In the meantime I'm perusing the book 1000 photo icons, 
from the George Eastman House, Taschen, that I picked up for $20US

LB

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