I meant to write earlier about a show that closes today, though since it was showing at the US National Gallery of Art, Washington, probably few of us would have gone to see it had I posted in time. Though of course I’m sure all of my readers within easy distance of the NGA will already have seen it.
The NGA has a long history of fine big shows of photography (and another on Charles Marville coming up at the end of September 2013, followed in March 2014 by the Winogrand show from San Francisco) but A World of Bonds: Frederick Sommer’s Photography and Friendships was one of its smaller offerings, a mere “twenty-seven photographs, prints, collages, and drawings” in one room and
Frederick Sommer (1905-1999) had some interesting friends, including Edward Weston, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Charles Sheeler and Aaron Siskind and had a philosophy that very much valued the sharing of ideas, and you can see something of the influences of his friends in some of his work, and of his ideas in theirs, in particular in some works by Weston and Siskind.
The Art Blart review perhaps best gives a flavour of the show, with some comments by a photographer who visited Sommer as well as the author’s own comments, as well as some fine reproductions of images courtesy of the NGA. For something of a different opinion you can read a review of the show in the Washington City Paper. You can also see thumbnails of 59 of his works on the NGA site, though clicking to see a larger version of any seems to return an ‘image not available’ page. To see more of his work on the web the Frederick & Frances Sommer Foundation is the obvious place to go, and although the Catalogue Raisonne is still under construction it has many of his photographs already in place.
Many years ago, it was one of Sommer’s 1943 Arizona landscapes that came as a revelation to me (was it perhaps in the 1975 show at the Victoria and Albert Museum curated by Bill Brandt with Mark Haworth-Booth, ‘The Land’ – if not it surely should have been, though it was much later that Sommer gave them some images for their collection.) It made me aware of new possibilities in the photographic print and in creating a powerful image from seemingly highly detailed nothing much spread from corner to corner across the picture. It seemed to me a work that transcended conventional ideas about subject, foreground, background in favour of the whole field of view. I didn’t rush out and buy an 8×10 (or make much if any more use of the two 4×5 cameras I owned) but I think it did change the way I felt both about composition and about printing.
Later I read in Darkroom 2 (published by Lustrum Press in 1978) about Sommer’s printing method using a ‘contour printing pack‘ , with a fine example by Emmet Gowin, Siena, Italy, 1975 Dedicated to Frederick Sommer: The Hint That is a Garden.’ Fortunately it was a book that sold fairly well at the time and is still available (along with the first volume Darkroom) second-hand at a sensible price for anyone who wants to know more about what is now largely a historic practice.
Sommer’s other work perhaps interests me less, though when I see so much of the more recent constructed art photography in galleries and publications I do so often think Sommer did it so much better years ago.
