Timothy H. O'Sullivan show at National Gallery of American Art, Washington DC

Another terrific photography exhibit at the American Art museum in Washington DC. If you have the chance, go see this show. This is a first in a long time showing of a significant body of the O'Sullivan works from his survey expeditions in the 1860s and 70s. The American Art museum is becoming a first-class photography exhibition center. I can't sing their praises enough. Another great thing about them is they stay open until 7pm, whereas the National Gallery and many of the other Smithsonian museums close at 5.

http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2010/osullivan/

Scott,

Thanks for the heads-up

Awesome! Thanks for the info. I'm gonna try and check it out.

Thanks for the info and the link. It looks interesting.

If you can't make it to the show, think about ordering the exhibition catalog. Another reason to sing the praises of the NGAA - they're producing some outstanding catalogs which really go above and beyond to discuss the works, their context, and the thinking behind the show, not just a bunch of pretty pictures.

TheFlyingCamera said:

Another terrific photography exhibit at the American Art museum in Washington DC. If you have the chance, go see this show. This is a first in a long time showing of a significant body of the O'Sullivan works from his survey expeditions in the 1860s and 70s. The American Art museum is becoming a first-class photography exhibition center. I can't sing their praises enough. Another great thing about them is they stay open until 7pm, whereas the National Gallery and many of the other Smithsonian museums close at 5.

http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2010/osullivan/

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Both the NGAA and the National Portrait Gallery seem to be putting the NGA to shame recently. Both galleries had blockbuster shows the last time we were there. (For those of you not from around here, both museums are in the same building.)

I agree--both are well-run, beautifully curated museums. I'm putting the O'Sullivan show on my list. Are they all albumen prints from collodion negatives?

The O'Sullivan works are all albumen prints, I would assume from collodion negatives (theoretically possible the last ones could have been dry plates I suppose, but I don't think so). There's a nice collection of vintage stereoviews as well. There are some more modern prints by living and/or recently deceased photographers who have shot in the same landscapes that O'Sullivan did, to provide a bit of contrast and context for his work, and those are mostly silver-gelatin prints, but perhaps only a dozen or less of the more than a hundred images on the wall.

Cool, thanks. I see they're having an interesting free symposium in April; sounds like a good day to take off from work.

Saw it this weekend. Quite a nice exhibit, and well attended. A little too well, but then again it was a weekend. :rolleyes:

Interesting to me was the nearly uniform quality he was able to get from both the wet plate collodion negatives and the albumen prints. The print surfaces are nearly identical -- where there machine coated albumen print papers available in the 1870s? Still difficult to believe that he could get such consistency while coating and processing those glass plates in the field.

I was less impressed by the book. I can't figure out why they wanted to shrink the images (the glass plates are 10 x 12 inches apparently) and leave such large boarders around the images. Each plate in the book is nearly as much white space as it is image, and the images looked to be about 2/3 full size.

Bruce Watson said:

...Interesting to me was the nearly uniform quality he was able to get from both the wet plate collodion negatives and the albumen prints. The print surfaces are nearly identical -- where there machine coated albumen print papers available in the 1870s? Still difficult to believe that he could get such consistency while coating and processing those glass plates in the field.

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I found an ad for a commercial albumenized paper that had been introduced in 1858, so at the very least, they had the process down by the 70's. My bet is that cheap labor was used, but there may have been some early coating machine. I'm just as amazed at the sterling quality of those massive collodion negatives.

From, "THE ALBUMEN & SALTED PAPER BOOK" pages 29-34

Many small companies in Western Europe undertook to produce albumen paper, but for various reasons Germany emerged as the center of world production by the year 1870. In the United States during the 1850's the tendency was to import rawstock from Europe for individual photographers to albumenize themselves,but during the Civil War a change took place, and from then on most photographers bought the paper already factory-coated with albumen. American photographers could choose among four major American brands or from an assortment of German products. American and English producers were at the immediate disadvantage of having to import the rawstock from France and Germany, where the paper mills which produced it were located. In the United States the centers for albumen paper manufacturing were Philadelphia, and Rochester, New York. After 1880 the importance of the German producers grew, and they took control of an even larger share of the American market than they had enjoyed in the 1870's. In 1890 the editors of Anthony's Photographic Bulletin complained loudly about an increase in the tariff on albumen paper, declaring that American photographers use German paper "in a proportion of four to one of domestic paper, and this in spite of its higher price on the market."

However, other European and American producers made good quality albumen paper using aged but not actually fermented albumen.
Some idea of the scale of the Dresden production may be gained by considering that one company (there were two major ones and several smaller ones in the city), called the Dresdener Albuminfabriken A.G., in 1888 produced 18,674 reams of albumen paper. Each ream consisted of 480 sheets 46 x 58 cm in size. To coat a ream of paper required 9 liters of albumen solution, obtained from 27 dozen eggs. Thus total production for that one year in this one factory consumed over six million eggs.

As seen in the accompanying illustrations, the procedures in the manufacture of albumen paper are manual ones, and it is really a handicraft product, quite different from the machine-made photographic articles of the present day. Each sheet of albumen paper was floated by hand, and in some cases floated twice on the albumen in order to obtain a glossier coating. The illustrations show that nearly all the tasks in albumen paper factories were performed by women, and this was the case in both European and American factories.

Thanks for that. Very interesting indeed.

Bruce Watson said:

I was less impressed by the book. I can't figure out why they wanted to shrink the images (the glass plates are 10 x 12 inches apparently) and leave such large boarders around the images. Each plate in the book is nearly as much white space as it is image, and the images looked to be about 2/3 full size.

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To reproduce those plates full size would have made the book monstrous and inordinately expensive (probably double the cost). I was quite happy with the quality of the printing, layout, and the accompanying essays.

TheFlyingCamera said:

To reproduce those plates full size would have made the book monstrous and inordinately expensive (probably double the cost). I was quite happy with the quality of the printing, layout, and the accompanying essays.

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Monstrous? The glass plates themselves are only 10 x 12 inches. I've got a number of photographic books larger than that. Yosemite and the Range of Light measures 12 1/4 x 15 3/8 inches for example. It's not what I'd call a monstrous book.

If they had given the book a horizontal layout instead of vertical (to match the images, all of which are horizontal IIRC), they would have been able to print the plates nearly full size without changing the size of the book at all.

What it comes down to though, at least for me, is the book isn't about the photographs. If it were, the photographs would be the primary focus of the book. Instead, the book is about the essays and writings. The images are there just to catalog their presence and to support the writings.

I found it disappointing because I'm a fan of O'Sullivan and drove twelve hours (round trip) to see the photographs. I wanted a book of the photographs, was willing to pay for the book, and walked away without the book.

I'll admit that this is probably just a personal problem of mine. Other than the layout the book is a fine high quality production. And the exhibit was first rate, very well curated. It was an excellent experience and well worth the trip. O'Sullivan has a reputation as one of the first great landscape photographers. The photographs at the exhibit do an excellent job of supporting that well earned reputation.

They are a mix of vertical and horizontal, but most are horizontal. IIRC, some of the images in the exhibition were bigger than 10x12, and then of course there were the stereoviews and the handful of cartes de visite. I THINK some of the civil war images taken by O'Sullivan were whole plate, or maybe 8x10-ish, not 10x12. If they were printed life size, they would need a lot more wasted space on either side of the image to make it not feel cramped on the page, much the way a good mat works for a framed photograph. For a 10x12, I'd want the page size to be at least 14x16, maybe 15x17 for a vertical only, and a 16x18 size for a vertical/horizontal mix. I'm not saying it can't be done, but the cost of printing such a book is exponentially larger than the cost of the extant catalog. I too would have been happier with a bigger catalog, but my wallet is thankful they invested their efforts into reproduction quality rather than size.