One of my first and still most treasured books is ‘Photography As Fine Art’ it should be (in my opinion) a permanent fixture in any photographers collection, of reference material. It has plates from an incredible amount of unique photographers dating back to the early 1800′s fast forwarding to the 1980′s. It contains extraordinary images and unique photographers that were now looking back completely ahead of their time and really pushed the boundaries of what photography could become creating a multitude of master pieces. Experimenting with techniques, adapting from their past teachings and creating works of magnificent art. Which above all, is what photography should be about!
So when I discovered Val Telberg, I was in the thick of my Textile studies and actually incorporated his influence within my own textile projects…..Sounds weird but surprisingly it worked I have a few old pieces i completed in the basement – I may take a few shots and blog them later. : -)
I have always admired people with a strong imagination, that strong, story telling ability whether in written form or as an art form, is fascinating! Val Telberg has an imagination to die for!!
Val Telberg.(1910-1995) was born in Moscow of Finnish-Russian parents, raised in China, and came to the United States when the war with Japan was at hand. He studied painting at the Art Students League, New York, in 1942, where he was exposed to the Surrealism movement and experimental filmmaking. To support his painting, Telberg traveled from Florida to Massachusetts, printing photographs of nightclub patrons and working at photographic concession stands where people posed with cutouts of celebrities. In 1945, he returned to New York and produced narrative, surrealist photographs using sandwiched, bleached or burned negatives and double exposure within the camera. His later work evolved to large scale, scroll-like multiple images. He was given a one-man show at the Brooklyn Museum in 1948, and a retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1983. His work was also included in several of Edward Steichen’s important group shows at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950’s, and his photographs are in the collections of MOMA, the Getty, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Though hardly the first to double-expose photographs, Telberg was one of the first photographers to experiment with multiple imagery in depth, and in the early 1940’s was one of a minority of highly creative photographers who sought to use conventional photographic techniques in pursuit of a higher, more imaginative goal. By combining human forms from models in this studio with random external elements from the outside world, Val Telberg created a world of dreams, fantasy, hyper reality and the subconscious in his photographs. When asked about his work on the occasion of his Brooklyn Museum show, Val said, “the pictures should be felt rather than pronounced, and an effort to translate them into words may only bring on frustration.”
http://poundstreetcreations.com/blog/?p=39
Text From:
http://www.laurencemillergallery.com/artist_telberg.html
Photography as a fine art – Thames and Hudson Publisher – 1982
All Images Copyright laurencemillergallery
