Léonard Misonne

CasioCassette · Dec 1, 2023

I was surprised to find there wasn't already a thread about Misonne. To me his photography represents everything I find wonderful about Pictorialist landscapes. I could stare at his photographs for hours and just be immersed in the painterly beauty that emanates from them.

Is anyone else here a fan of his work or shares this sentiment?

I'll likely be visiting Belgium next year and really hope to see some of his work on display in his home country.

Attaching some of my favorite images of his below.

revdoc · Dec 1, 2023

I agree, they are quite beautiful. I particularly like the way they seem to shift between looking like photographs and paintings.

The process he used most often (mediobrome) isn't all that well documented, but it seems to be bromoil with the original silver image partly redeveloped. The rest is his skill with adding and removing pigment.

There's a photographic museum in his home town of Charlerois that I believe has a collection of his work, but I don't know how much of it is on permanent display.

(Unrelated: Charlerois is also famous for its metro, especially the architecture of some of its stations.)

koraks · Dec 2, 2023

Wonderful, thanks for highlighting this artist! I suppose he got lost in history due to the pictorialist style falling out of fashion, but the example images shown here suggest work that's at the level of photographers like Stieglitz.

CasioCassette · Dec 3, 2023

revdoc said:
There's a photographic museum in his home town of Charlerois that I believe has a collection of his work, but I don't know how much of it is on permanent display.

Thank you for letting me know, that's perfect because it is exactly that part of the country I'll be visiting. I'll be sure to visit the museum!

runswithsizzers · Dec 3, 2023

Thanks for sharing.

Arthurwg · Dec 3, 2023

Thanks for posting. Never understood the endless disparagement of Pictorialism. Wonderful stuff.

Andrew O'Neill · Dec 3, 2023

Gorgeous work! Thank you for bringing his work to my attention.

Philippe-Georges · Dec 3, 2023

This is a good book about the oeuvre of this Belgian photographer:

Léonard Misonne was a wealthy industrialist from Liège, an avid photographer experimenting a lot and one of the first continental European photographers to be published in the famous Camera Works.

BTW, it is Charleroi, no 's' at the end.

Léonard Misonne

CasioCassette

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