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CAPTURING TIME
A Teachers’ Guide to the Exhibition:
AN AMERICAN CENTURY OF
PHOTOGRAPHY:
FROM DRY-PLATE TO DIGITAL
THE HALLMARK PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION
Page 2
This Teachers’ Guide was written by Rebecca Allan.
CAPTURING TIME
A Teachers’ Guide to the Exhibition:
AN AMERICAN CENTURY OF
PHOTOGRAPHY:
FROM DRY-PLATE TO DIGITAL
THE HALLMARK PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION
September 30, 1999 through January 9, 2000
The exhibition is organized by and drawn from the holdings of The Hallmark
Photographic Collection, Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, Missouri.
Presenting Sponsor:
Funding in Seattle generously provided by:
Corporate Council for the Arts/ARTSFUND™
King County Arts Commission
Rainier Photographic Supply
Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Dean and Mary Thornton Exhibition Endowment
Contributors to the Annual Fund
Eastman Kodak
Page 3
I N T R O D U C T I O N
This guide accompanies the special exhibition An American Century of Photography: From Dry-Plate to
Digital: The Hallmark Photographic Collection. It is intended primarily (but not exclusively) for middle
and high school teachers who wish to introduce their students to the rich and varied art form of
photography as a link to history, art, science, and literature. It contains transparencies of ten
photographs; background information for each photograph; and ideas and questions to stimulate
discussion, writing, and other activities for students. Words in bold type and photographic terms are
defined in the glossary. Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALR’s) corresponding to the
activities are cited. The Essential Academic Learning Requirements for Washington State can be
found in complete form on the Web at http://csl.wednet.edu.
Photographs have the power to illuminate, puzzle, inform, and enlighten us. They can
document an important historical event or a candid moment, or express an idea that cannot easily be
put into words. Although photographs are an ordinary part of our lives, we still look forward to the
thrill of picking up snapshots from our local one-hour photo developer.
Does a photograph replicate reality? A photograph is compelling because it appears to be an
exact record of what was seen. While we might think that the camera never lies, photographers
prove that “visual truth” can be altered through manipulation and experimentation in the
photographic process. This exhibition reveals that there are many kinds of “truth” found in
photographs. It prompts us to think about the very nature of truth.
The photographs discussed in this guide were selected because you can use them to discuss
artistic choices as well as the significance of the subject matter represented. Our hope is that
CAPTURING TIME will inspire you to investigate photographs through new eyes and to explore
history, art, science, and literature with your students through the language of the camera.
T H E E X H I B I T I O N
An American Century of Photography: From Dry-plate to Digital surveys the medium’s history from the
mid-1880s to the present, from one great era of technical and social change to another. By about
1890, the practice and impact of photography in American culture had been transformed by several
important developments: the replacement of the earlier wet-collodion process with the dry-plate
and roll-film technologies, the introduction of the hand camera, the rise of amateur photography,
and the widespread reproduction of photographs in the form of newspaper half tones. Now, at the
turn of the twenty-first century, the camera-generated image is again undergoing fundamental
transformation through the impact of electronic imaging systems and computers. This exhibition
explores the thematic and artistic riches of this art form during its most inventive and influential
century.
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T H E P H O T O G R A P H S
Eadweard Muybridge, High Jump, 1885, collotype, and
Louis Faurer, Homage to Muybridge, Philadelphia, 1937
MOTION STOPPED
When we watch a horse gallop or a rollerblader reverse directions, it is impossible to see each
individual movement of the horse or skater with the naked eye. A figure in motion makes countless
imperceptible movements, occurring in a matter of split seconds. Artists since Leonardo have been
fascinated with movement and with the possibility of seeing its distinct parts.
Increments of movement were finally made visible through the work of Eadweard Muybridge, a
British-born photographer who had a studio in San Francisco in the late 1800s. Muybridge made his
first studies of animal motion in 1872 when he took sequential photographs of a running horse.
These photographs provided visual proof that, while running, all four of a horse’s legs are off the
ground at a certain point. His experiments led Muybridge to Philadelphia where he was employed by
the University of Pennsylvania to expand upon this work.
In Philadelphia, Muybridge met the painter Thomas Eakins, who had been studying the
movements of rowers and swimmers along the Schuylkill River. Inspired by Eakin’s work, and by
his own desire to create a visual atlas for artists, Muybridge began photographing a range of moving
subjects including people walking, running, vaulting, laying bricks, fencing, and picking up a
handkerchief.
Muybridge’s working method required three sets of twelve cameras each. The cameras were
positioned to record movement at the front, side, and rear of each subject. In High Jump, we
simultaneously see a front and side view of an athlete in action. In the first five frames the runner
moves forward and begins to contract his body. His limbs fold and his body becomes a focused
bullet of energy that thrusts up and over the high bar.
Muybridge’s photographs have a clear and crisp focus due to the rapid shutter speed of his
cameras (1/2000th of a second). His use of the recently invented dry-plate technique freed him
from having to spend time preparing all of his own negatives before photographing.
Louis Faurer began taking photographs in Philadelphia in the 1930s. He eventually moved to
New York where he met the Swiss photographer Robert Frank, with whom he later shared a studio.
Homage to Muybridge, Philadelphia, one of Faurer’s earliest photographs, demonstrates his awareness of
his artistic predecessor and fellow Philadelphian.
Looking closely, you can see that this photograph differs in an important way from
Muybridge’s High Jump. Muybridge’s image is actually a series of individual and sequential moments
in time, recording the athlete’s movement over a few seconds. Faurer’s photograph captures
pedestrians on the street reflected at various angles at a single moment. Two women wearing small
white hats create a visual pattern echoing seven white light bulbs at the bottom of the mirror.
Page 5
I D E A S & Q U E S T I O N S
1. You are watching a basketball player preparing for a free throw. Write a three-paragraph essay
describing each and every part of the athlete’s movement during the free throw, from stepping
up to the line to sinking the ball.
EALRs
Science 1.1: Describe the relative position and motion of objects.
Writing 2.2: Write for different purposes, using sequenced paragraphs and effective transitions.
2. Eadweard Muybridge’s work combined scientific and artistic advancements of the late 19th
century. Which aspects of his work depended on scientific knowledge, and which aspects were
artistic? Artistic Example: Muybridge constructed an entire outdoor “set” as a backdrop for his
subjects, using curtains and screens in order to focus completely on his moving subjects. Scientific
Example: His decision to show more than one “view” of his subjects allows for a better
anatomical understanding of each movement. Using the dry-plate technique freed him from
having to individually prepare his negatives before photographing.
EALRs
Science 3.2: Know that science (and art) are human endeavors interrelated to each other and to society.
Page 6
Alvin Langdon Coburn, The House of a Thousand Windows,
1912, platinum print
IMAGES OF WORK AND THE CITY
Alvin Langdon Coburn was born in Boston and began taking photographs at age eight. He later
became associated with the Photo-Secessionist group in New York under the leadership of Alfred
Stieglitz. The drama of Coburn’s New York photographs stems from the influences of Cubist
painting, Japanese art, and Pictorialism.
Coburn traveled to the Grand Canyon and Yosemite Valley in 1911, one year before
photographing The House of a Thousand Windows. His photographs of the canyon, with its steep drops
and high walls, were to have a transforming influence on his city work. Describing his series of New
York photographs, Coburn wrote:
How romantic, how exhilarating it is in the altitudes, few of the denizens of the city
realize; they crawl about in the abyss intent upon their own small concerns...Only the
birds and a foreign tourist or two penetrate to the top of the Singer Tower from
which some of these vistas were exposed.
(from Steinroth, Karl, ed., Alvin Langdon Coburn: Photographs 1900-1924, 1999)
The House of a Thousand Windows documents the city during a crucial period of urban development.
Taken from atop the Singer Tower, the photograph is a dizzying image of diagonal, vertical, and
horizontal movement. Rather than hiking up a canyon with his equipment, Coburn zoomed up the
city’s heights in an elevator. Photographed from high above the horizon, Coburn’s buildings appear
to lean and sway. The left edge of the foreground building and the sidewalk on the lower left form a
triangle, while the dark shapes of the windows create a staccato rhythm moving up, back, and across
the space. Alternating geometric patterns of dark and light are a visual metaphor for the city’s
vibrating, chugging energy.
Platinum prints are photographs printed on papers sensitized with salts of platinum. They
are characterized by a warm, burnished, brownish/black color, and a wide range of tones (areas of
light and dark). In this photograph, Coburn seems to be interested in the contrast of dark and light
geometric shapes with the soft, white, billowy forms of smoke rising from the tops of the buildings.
Page 7
I D E A S & Q U E S T I O N S
1. How do people appear in Coburn’s photograph? What does their size, relative to the buildings,
tell us about their experience of the city? Discuss the changes in social customs and living
conditions in the United States in response to industrialization (the invention of the automobile,
telephone, methods of mass production). What were the benefits and dangers of
Industrialization to society? Does Coburn celebrate or critique these conditions in his work in
any way?
EALRs
Social Studies 3.3: Understand how ideas and technological developments influence people and culture.
2. Look at photographs of the Grand Canyon and Yosemite Valley. Compare these images to
Coburn’s photograph. What do you think Coburn saw in these western landscapes which later
influenced his work in New York?
EALRs
Art 1.1: Understand and apply arts concepts and vocabulary to communicate ideas.
3. During the early 1900s, composers such as George Gershwin and Scott Joplin wrote music that
introduced new rhythmic and harmonic forms. Certain passages in their music reflect the
sudden, irregular, and random sounds of the city. Listen to a piece of music (Gershwin’s
Rhapsody in Blue or Joplin’s The School of Ragtime) by one of these composers and concentrate on
the element of rhythm. If musical rhythm is the pattern of accented and unaccented notes, how
would you define visual rhythm (a repeating pattern of shapes, tones, light and dark areas,
contrasts)? Write a short essay describing the element of rhythm in both music and
photography.
EALRs
Art 4.1: Understand how the arts connect to (each other, and) other subjects areas.
Writing 2.3: Write in essay form.
Page 8
William E. Dassonville, Ship Deck, ca. 1925, and
Lewis Hine, Powerhouse Mechanic, 1921
Many American photographers of this century were inspired by new developments and
experiments in abstract art from Europe, including Cubism and Futurism. Dassonville’s choice of
viewpoint, from atop the deck and close to the exhaust stacks, emphasizes the abstract and formal
qualities of this subject. By moving in close and cropping his image, Dassonville concentrates on
the visual aspects of line, shadow, light, and space, as opposed to the people who work aboard this
ship, or its destination.
Looking across the deck, we see a series of chimneys that provide fresh air to the boiler room
below and that expel exhaust from the coal-burning furnaces. In the distance are three vessels, one
of which looks like a ferry. Intersecting diagonal wires, which stabilize the tall stacks, lead our eyes
through and beyond the edges of the photograph. In Picasso’s Cubist paintings, space and objects
are often similarly split or cut off, as a way of exploring new ideas about perspective in art.
If we were to crawl below, we would find a sweltering room where workers shovel coal into
boilers to produce steam power for the ship’s engines. The photographer’s refined composition
reveals nothing about the action happening just below deck. Rather than dwell on this human
dimension, Dassonville focuses on the order, efficiency, and rational beauty of modern industrial
equipment.
In contrast to Dassonville’s depiction of modern industrial forms, Lewis Hine portrays the
human toiling required to efficiently run machines. Hine’s Powerhouse Mechanic portrays the
relationship between humans and machines, which became more complex with the growth of
technology and industry in the early century. Although Hine directed and consciously posed his
subject, the mechanic is clearly affected by his demanding and exhausting work. Looking closely, you
can see rugged, grease-stained hands, severely muscled arms and well-worn dungarees. The
backbreaking work of tending to heavy machinery is reinforced by the giant metal wheel, which
encircles and encloses the mechanic’s bent-over body.
Hine believed strongly in the ultimate intelligence and courage of skilled workers (many of
whom were immigrants), whose decisions and energy made it possible for machines and industry to
function productively and safely.
Page 9
I D E A S & Q U E S T I O N S
1. In his photographs of laborers, Hine represents his belief that the worker and machine were,
symbolically, one entity. How does he use the elements of photography to convey this idea?
What might Hine have asked the mechanic to do as he got ready to take this photograph?
EALRs
Art 2.3 Use arts criteria to consider the effectiveness of personal word and that of others work.
2. Find photographs of workers from magazines or the newspaper (or take some yourself). Write
two captions for each photograph in the “words” of the person in the photograph and in the
“words” of the photographer.
EALRs
Writing 1.2 Using writing style appropriate to audience and purpose.
3. Compare and contrast these two photographs in a one-page essay. What does each
photographer reveal (or disguise) about work? If Dassonville and Hine were taking photographs
aboard a car ferry (or at your school, at Microsoft, the University of Washington, Pike Place
Market), what would each photographer choose to photograph? How could a photographer
make meaningful pictures of the “mental” labor associated with such occupations as designing
computers, writing, doing research, etc.?
EALRs
History 3.3 Analyze how technological developments influence people.
Page 10
Edward Weston, Pepper No. 30, 193
MAGNIFYING VISION: WESTON’S STILL LIFE
Visual artists share a deep interest in the forms, variations, and sequences of the natural world. Like
scientists, they observe things closely in order to fully understand their characteristics.
During the 1930’s Edward Weston’s studies of simple, organic forms (including cabbages, kelp,
shells, onions, and rocks) brought new meaning and content to a traditional subject of painting, the
still life. Weston photographed natural objects at extremely close range. His pepper fills the entire
frame and appears to be magnified. The pepper’s undulating forms may remind us of figures
embracing or roots intertwining beneath the soil. Its shiny surface is interrupted slightly by a few
dark, freckled spots of decay. Weston kept journals (the Daybooks) of his daily working life. On
August 3rd, 1930, he wrote:
Sonya (Noskowiak, a fellow photographer) kept tempting me with new peppers!
While experimenting with one of these, which was so small that I used my 21 cm.
Zeiss (lens) to fill the 8x10 size, I tried putting it in a tin funnel for background. It
was a bright idea, a perfect relief for the pepper and adding reflected light to
important contours. I still had the pepper which caused me a week’s work, I had
decided I could go no further with it, yet something kept me from taking it to the
kitchen, the end of all good peppers. (from Newhall, Nancy, ed., The Daybooks of
Edward Weston, Volume II, 1971)
Since the time of the Transcendentalist writers Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, American artists
have explored the notion that divinity was present in all forms of nature. Contemplation of nature
was seen as a path to spiritual wisdom. Weston’s work, one hundred years after the
Transcendentalists, was echoed by other American artists (think of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of
skulls), who began to magnify the simplest of forms in order to reveal their mysteries.
Page 11
I D E A S & Q U E S T I O N S
1. Make a drawing of a vegetable, shell, or other natural object. Draw it 100 percent larger so that
each detail on the surface is magnified. Spend at least four minutes looking at your object before
you begin drawing.
EALRs
Art 1.4 Use skills of craftsmanship to produce quality work.
Art 2.1 Use the senses to gather and process information.
2. Find a book on the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe. Look at her paintings of bones and flowers.
How is O’Keeffe’s work different from or similar to Weston’s? Are O’Keeffe’s paintings
scientifically accurate? What would make them so? If they are not, what has she changed or
exaggerated in her subjects in the process of painting? Consider the same questions in
comparing Weston’s photograph of the pepper to a Dutch still-life painting.
EALRs
Art 2.3 Use arts criteria to consider the effectiveness of others’ work.
Page 12
Lewis Hine, Albanian Woman with Folded head cloth,
Ellis Island, 1905
APPEARANCE AND PRESENCE:
VARIATIONS ON THE PORTRAIT
The photographs of Lewis Hine are some of the most compelling images of the human condition
in early twentieth-century America. Born in Wisconsin in 1874, Hine worked at a series of difficult
jobs after the death of his father in 1892. Working as a laborer in a furniture factory, thirteen hours a
day, four days a week, Hine acquired firsthand knowledge of the dangers faced by working children
before the advent of child labor laws.
Hine first used the camera as a documentary medium when he taught at the New York Ethical
Culture School, which promoted the appreciation of photography as both an art form and historical
record. In 1904 Hine began photographing immigrants arriving at Ellis Island. Between 1903 and
1913, over ten million people from eastern and southern Europe disembarked there.
Hine chose to make portraits of individuals and small groups rather than scenes of mass
processing and inspection. He sought to portray the dignity, humanity, and self-reliance of
immigrants. His intention in photographing immigrants was to counteract the suspicions and
prejudices of some Americans who believed that immigration would only have negative affects on
American society.
The Albanian Woman looks directly at the camera (and at us) with an expression of calm
strength and endurance. Her torso and head, framed by a woven cloth, form a strong, solid triangle
against the cavernous room behind her. We see her at a moment of transition from one life to the
next, filled with uncertainty, hope, vulnerability, and ambition. Her complex emotions are held
within a body, which is self-contained and upright. Is there anything in her pose or facial expression
that reveals her thoughts and emotions?
In order to take these photographs, Hine had to persuade his subjects, without speaking their
language, to pose for him. They had to sit still while he adjusted his camera on a tripod, ignited his
flash powder, then opened his shutter at just the right moment.
Through Hine’s artistic choices the photograph becomes a vehicle for understanding and
empathy for those who we might see as different from ourselves. Rather than evoking pity, they call
upon our sense of identification with fellow human beings who possess strength, intelligence and
self-respect.
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I D E A S & Q U E S T I O N S
1. Looking at Hine’s photograph, discuss the visual decisions the photographer made in order to
express the Albanian woman’s dignity and humanity (how close to place his camera, how much
of her figure should fill the frame, how long to wait for the right facial expression).
EALRs
Art 2.3: Use arts criteria to consider the effectiveness of others’ work.
2. After studying the history of Ellis Island and its role in the lives of immigrants, write about or
discuss the experiences of immigrants as they arrived and were processed into this country. How
does an artist like Hine help us to understand these experiences more deeply?
EALRs
History 1.3: Examine the influence of culture on U.S. history.
3. Look for a newspaper or magazine photograph of someone who has experienced misfortune.
What can you tell about the photographer’s (and the subject’s) feelings or attitudes based upon
how he or she is portrayed?
EALRs
Art 4.4: Recognize the influence of the arts in reflecting culture and history. (Art 4.4)
Page 14
Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait, 193
The intriguing subject of artistic companionship— of the lives of two working artists who are both
colleagues and companions— is played out in Alfred Stieglitz’ photographs of the painter Georgia
O’Keeffe. Stieglitz and O’Keeffe met in 1916 when he hung some of her drawings in his gallery (291
in New York) without her permission. O’Keeffe and Stieglitz began a relationship, that lasted until
his death in 1946.
Stieglitz photographed O’Keeffe for eighteen years, from 1917 to 1935, during both joyful and
difficult periods of their marriage. This majestic portrait of O’Keeffe was taken when she was 41
years old, several years after she had established a separate home in Abiquiu, New Mexico. For
O’Keeffe, New Mexico was a place to find artistic inspiration and independence from her life with
Stieglitz in New York. Stieglitz never visited New Mexico.
In this photograph O’Keeffe leans against her newly purchased deluxe Ford V-8, which she
learned to drive in Taos, New Mexico. Her receding gesture and outward gaze (past the
photographer) suggest a sense of distance and separation from her husband. A Navaho Indian
blanket, draped across her shoulders, contains rows of dark and light lines that are echoed in the
patterns of chrome and steel on the car. A delicate white loop of ribbon at her neck repeats the
shape of the glinting chrome.
Alfred Stieglitz was a central figure in the exhibition and promotion of modern European
and American art in this country. In addition to publishing a magazine dedicated to modern
photography (Camera Work), he also enabled American artists to see the works of Picasso, Braque,
Dali, and Cezanne at his galleries, An American Place and 291.
Page 15
I D E A S & Q U E S T I O N S
1. Think about the elements and techniques a photographer works with in order to convey a mood
(proud, self-absorbed, defiant, melancholy, contemplative, fearful...) in a portrait (shadow, light,
framing, composition, gesture, texture). How does Stieglitz use these elements to create a
mood and to convey the personality of Georgia O’Keeffe?
EALRs
Art 1.1 Understand and apply arts concepts and vocabulary to communicate ideas.
Art 2.3 Use arts criteria to consider the effectiveness of personal work and that of others.
2. It is the first day (last day) of school. You have been asked to take candid and formal portraits
for the school yearbook. How would you go about taking the candid photographs? How would
you ask someone (a friend or someone you don’t know) to pose for the formal portraits?
EALRs
Art 1.1 Understand and apply arts concepts and vocabulary to communicate ideas.
3. While O’Keeffe is the apparent subject of this portrait, it is also a symbol of the relationship
between the photographer and the painter. In what way can a powerful portrait be a self-portrait
of the artist?
Page 16
Val Telberg, Untitled, ca. 1948
It is tempting to find a title for this mysterious photograph, since the photographer did not provide
one. A few possibilities come to mind: “The Shelter of Sleep,” “Waking Child’s Dream,” “Shadow
Lullaby.” Perhaps Val Telberg did not chose a title in order to leave the interpretation of his work
up to the viewer.
Born in Russia in 1910, Telberg attended the Art Students League in New York in 1938, where
he first encountered the prevailing artistic experiments of the Surrealists. Dreams, nightmares and
the subconscious mind were the sources of ideas for these painters, poets and filmmakers, and
Talberg began to look there for his own images. Telberg recalled that as a child, his sister often told
him frightening tales, which also may have influenced his work. A special fascination with
experimental films led Talberg to work with layering and manipulating his negatives.
His unconventional technique involved working on a light table to work out his ideas. With
light coming through, he arranged and layered his negatives until he was satisfied. He then
sandwiched them between sheets of glass and placed them in his enlarger. Each individual
photograph is therefore a combination of many superimposed photographs. Untitled is made from
several separate negatives. Telberg liked the effects he could achieve with ambiguous space and
meaning by splicing and layering. He often superimposed eyes and breasts, and created blended
forms, similar to the dissolve technique used in Surrealist films.
Beginning with the child’s face in the upper-central area, you can see that the child’s right eye
actually belongs to the head of an adult. The child’s torso merges into a woman’s body and several
pairs of hands float loosely. The hands form a kind of wreath around the central figure.
Coming up with a single meaning or message in this kind of work was never the intention of
the artist. Telberg's photograph reflects a quality present in much abstract art of the early century— a
quality of subjectiveness— which encouraged individual, personal reflection and response. This
approach to artmaking also reflected developments in psychology, including Freud’s studies of
dreams and the unconscious mind.
Page 17
I D E A S & Q U E S T I O N S
1. Come up with three titles for Telberg's photograph. Write a two-page story based upon one of
your titles.
EALRs
Writing 2.3 Write in story form.
2. Create a photomontage portrait. To make a photomontage, carefully cut photographs of
people’s faces, hands, arms, legs, etc., from magazines. The way you cut your photographs will
affect the overall feeling and believability of your work. Splice, layer, and glue together parts of
your photographs to form a whole image, similar to Telberg's.
EALRs
Art 3.3 Use combinations of art forms to communicate in multimedia formats.
Art 1.2 Organize art elements into artistic compositions
