Nouvelle Cuisine. The Calotype Aesthetic and Gustave le Gray

A radical critique of Eugenia Parry Janis's monograph ""The
Photographs of Gustave Le Gray'', which accompanied the
exhibition of the same title in the Art Institute of Chicago,
Sept. 1987. Citing an earlier essay by Abigail Solomon-Godeau
(1983) ""Calotypomania: A Gourmet Guide to Nineteenth Century
Photography'', the collaboration of writer and scholar Parry
Janis with André Jammes, a photography collector, is described
as ""symptomatic of an area of scholarship that collaborates
with commerce and ultimately serves to validate the collector's
sensibiblity and investment''. In this case ""propelling the
calotype into the museum'', inventing the ""Golden Age of French
Photography, where genius-practitioners shared an acute and
specific aesthetic sensibiblity''. Salmon claims that this new
show ""canonizes Gustave Le Gray as a French Primitive Master
constructed within the exegeses of the alleged calotype
aesthetic'', and concludes ""The history Parry feels compelled
to write is not a scholar's examination but a salesman's
pitch''.


Citaten:
Scharf, A.: Art and Photography (1968)
Janis, E. P.: Photographs of Gustave Le Gray (1987)
Solomon-Godeau, A.: Calotypomania (Afterimage,1983/v.11/nr.1)
Jammes, A./ Janis, E. P.: The Art of the French Calotype,1845-1870 (1983)
Brettell, R.: Paper and Light: the Calotype, 1839-1870 (1984)
Crawford, W.: The Keepers of Light (1979)
Jensen, J.: Historic Photographs, Historic Collection (Af 1978(5)/7/p 6)
Varnedoe, S.: Of Surface Similarities, Photography and Painting after 1839 (Arts Magazine 56(sep.1981)/p 112)