Hi all,
If anyone of you is planning to visit the Netherlands and Amsterdam in the coming months (autumn break / Christmas holiday ?), I recommend you to take a short ride with the train to Haarlem as well (just 15min. from Amsterdam).
In the Teylersmuseum (http://www.teylersmuseum.nl/) in Haarlem currently runs an exhibition of historic travel photographers / pioneers with pictures dating back to as early as the 1850's, so more or less the dawn of photography. The exhibition runs until 4th of January 2009. It contains many very beautiful pictures out of the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
There are pictures by the likes of Robert MacPherson, Gustave Le Gray, Francis Frith and others... It includes many unique and beautiful pictures, for example the worlds last known print of a panorama of Roman ruins at Baalbek, Lebanon, by Gustave Le Gray, in the form of a salt print made by stitching together two (paper?) negatives. Other beautiful prints from Rome and Italy, for example a stunning print of the gardens of the Villa d'Este in Tivoli. And of course pictures of Rome, Egypt, India and Indonesia, as that was a Dutch colony.
There is also a nice collection of 3D stereo photos, including a working example of a 3 meter radius photo exhibition merry-go-round / roundabout that rotates a whole collection of stereo photos for the pleasure of 20 people or so at a time. It's made up of beautiful pictures of the United States. Just make sure you sit on the right site of this thing, as the rotating cylinder is not properly aligned, and only one half or so displays the stereo photos correctly.
Most of the pictures are albumen, some salt or photogravure. Most of them in surprisingly good condition.
The thing that most struck me was the actual size of some of the prints! Many of the albumen prints are A3 size or even bigger. Considering they must have been contact printed, the photographers must have had huge camera's with them on their pioneering trips. Well, one camel or more, probably did not make much difference with such an expedition
... Read this quote by Francis Frith on one of his trips to the Middle East:
"The difficulties which I had to overcome in working collodion, in those hot and dry climates, were also very serious. When (at the Second Cataract, one thousand miles from the mouth of the Nile, with the thermometer at 110° in my tent) the collodion actually boiled
when pouring upon the glass plate, I almost despaired of success. By degrees, however, I overcame this and other difficulties; but suffered a good deal throughout the journey from the severe labour rendered necessary by the rapidity with which every stage of the process must be accomplished in climates such as these; and from excessive perspiration, consequent on the suffocating heat of a small tent, from which every ray of light, and consequently every breath of air, was necessarily excluded"
As a bonus: The Teylersmuseum is the oldest museum in the Netherlands, and one of the oldest in the world, dating back to 1780. It has pretty much retained it's historic interior, including a nice collection of fossils, historic scientific instruments, oil paintings and a nice library. It is almost like stepping back in time... something we seem to enjoy here on APUG
As I guess, due to the fragility of these prints, that this may be a once-in-a-century display of some of these photos, go there if you can!
Unfortunately, the exhibition is only in Dutch, but with pictures like these and the names of the photographers and places, I figure you don't actually need much more.
Marco
If anyone of you is planning to visit the Netherlands and Amsterdam in the coming months (autumn break / Christmas holiday ?), I recommend you to take a short ride with the train to Haarlem as well (just 15min. from Amsterdam).
In the Teylersmuseum (http://www.teylersmuseum.nl/) in Haarlem currently runs an exhibition of historic travel photographers / pioneers with pictures dating back to as early as the 1850's, so more or less the dawn of photography. The exhibition runs until 4th of January 2009. It contains many very beautiful pictures out of the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
There are pictures by the likes of Robert MacPherson, Gustave Le Gray, Francis Frith and others... It includes many unique and beautiful pictures, for example the worlds last known print of a panorama of Roman ruins at Baalbek, Lebanon, by Gustave Le Gray, in the form of a salt print made by stitching together two (paper?) negatives. Other beautiful prints from Rome and Italy, for example a stunning print of the gardens of the Villa d'Este in Tivoli. And of course pictures of Rome, Egypt, India and Indonesia, as that was a Dutch colony.
There is also a nice collection of 3D stereo photos, including a working example of a 3 meter radius photo exhibition merry-go-round / roundabout that rotates a whole collection of stereo photos for the pleasure of 20 people or so at a time. It's made up of beautiful pictures of the United States. Just make sure you sit on the right site of this thing, as the rotating cylinder is not properly aligned, and only one half or so displays the stereo photos correctly.
Most of the pictures are albumen, some salt or photogravure. Most of them in surprisingly good condition.
The thing that most struck me was the actual size of some of the prints! Many of the albumen prints are A3 size or even bigger. Considering they must have been contact printed, the photographers must have had huge camera's with them on their pioneering trips. Well, one camel or more, probably did not make much difference with such an expedition
... Read this quote by Francis Frith on one of his trips to the Middle East:"The difficulties which I had to overcome in working collodion, in those hot and dry climates, were also very serious. When (at the Second Cataract, one thousand miles from the mouth of the Nile, with the thermometer at 110° in my tent) the collodion actually boiled
when pouring upon the glass plate, I almost despaired of success. By degrees, however, I overcame this and other difficulties; but suffered a good deal throughout the journey from the severe labour rendered necessary by the rapidity with which every stage of the process must be accomplished in climates such as these; and from excessive perspiration, consequent on the suffocating heat of a small tent, from which every ray of light, and consequently every breath of air, was necessarily excluded"As a bonus: The Teylersmuseum is the oldest museum in the Netherlands, and one of the oldest in the world, dating back to 1780. It has pretty much retained it's historic interior, including a nice collection of fossils, historic scientific instruments, oil paintings and a nice library. It is almost like stepping back in time... something we seem to enjoy here on APUG
As I guess, due to the fragility of these prints, that this may be a once-in-a-century display of some of these photos, go there if you can!
Unfortunately, the exhibition is only in Dutch, but with pictures like these and the names of the photographers and places, I figure you don't actually need much more.
Marco
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