(Ed.'s Note: Just recently we came upon a framed Edward Streichen print which indicates it was originally acquired from the Department of Photographs of the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). Its name is the Flatiron Building, in New York.
The print is approximately 21" X 25" and a label in the back indicates it was framed and sold at a place called the Shoestring Gallery with a Coria Street address in Brownsville, Texas. We looked it up and found that the owner/curator was one Betty Garnett.
We tried, without success, to contact Ms. Garnett. It's really a singular work by a famous artist/photographer. Does anyone know whether Ms. Garnett, or any of her descendants, are still living in the city? If you do, send us a phone number where we mighgt reach them or give them our email address. rrunrrun@gmail.com )
2 comments:
The Flatiron
Artist: Edward J. Steichen (American (born Luxembourg), Bivange 1879–1973 West Redding, Connecticut)
Date: 1904, printed 1909
Medium: Gum bichromate over platinum print
Dimensions: 47.8 x 38.4 cm (18 13/16 x 15 1/8 in.)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933
Accession Number: 33.43.39
Rights and Reproduction: © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Steichen added color to the platinum print that forms the foundation of this photograph by using layers of pigment suspended in a light-sensitive solution of gum arabic and potassium bichromate. Together with two variant prints in other colors, also in the Museum's collection, "The Flatiron" is the quintessential chromatic study of twilight. Clearly indebted in its composition to the Japanese woodcuts that were in vogue at the turn of the century and in its coloristic effect to the "Nocturnes" of Whistler, this picture is a prime example of the conscious effort of photographers in the circle of Alfred Stieglitz to assert the artistic potential of their medium.
Steichen and Stieglitz selected this photograph for inclusion in the "International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography" held at the Albright Art Gallery (now the Albright-Knox Art Gallery) in Buffalo, New York, in 1910. The exhibition of six hundred photographs represented the capstone of Stieglitz's efforts to promote Pictorialist photography as a fine art.
My mother was Betty Garnett and she owned Shoestring Gallery in Brownsville, my email is nejones82549@att.net
Post a Comment