Alvin Langdon Coburn

[poliphilo]

Most of the available portraits of Andrew Lang show him sporting fierce Victorian whiskers of the kind that put the fear of God into the Russians at Sebastopol, but there's one image taken late in life which shows him shaven and shorn, almost boyish- and really quite approachable. Who took it? Why, Alvin Langdon Coburn, of course.

Coburn was responsible for many of the defining- and certainly the best- portraits of Edwardian writers and artists, British, American and French. His Yeats is unforgettable, likewise his Rodin. His Gertrude Stein is so like the famous portrait by Picasso that I think Pablo must have nicked the pose. He was also a great landscape photographer- creator of many familiar images of hazy, magical London and thrusting, vertiginous New York. He experimented with colour and- under the influence of Ezra Pound- that great enabler of greatness in others- produced some of the first purely abstract photographs. Then, having done all he could with the medium, he more or less abandoned photography to spend the rest of his life as a hermetic philosopher. Born in Boston, USA, he eventually took British citizenship, became a Freemason and a Druid and died in Wales.

Remarkable man. Remarkable artist. Images here

Comments

[sovay]

there's one image taken late in life which shows him shaven and shorn, almost boyish- and really quite approachable.

The mustache is still a bad idea, but you can see it's an interesting face. I am reminded of John Deakin, who took my favorite photos of Dylan Thomas and Donald Swann.

[edit] I can only find the Thomas at very small scale and the Swann not at all online. The point is that it's classic Deakin, off-kilter, up-close, and nearly every other photo I've seen of Swann from the period (it was taken in 1952) emphasizes what's often as his slightly manic curate look, round-rimmed glasses and all; here he's still got the glasses, but he's also got a five o'clock shadow and cheekbones and he could be a Soho poet. And Dylan Thomas is standing in a graveyard, to his waist in ivy. How could I not have liked these pictures?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've looked for the Swan and can't find it either- but Deakin's stuff is pungent- Bacon, Lucian Freud, John Osborne- all those raffish, not entirely pleasant 50s Soho people. Freud, in particular, Freud looks evil....

[sovay]

Deakin's stuff is pungent- Bacon, Lucian Freud, John Osborne- all those raffish, not entirely pleasant 50s Soho people.

I really, really like him. He looks at people sharply, but there are also some naked photos he took with models like Henrietta Moraes and they are some of the least leering pictures of women I've seen from their time. This one (ignore museum watermark) I have always really liked. She can see him. It wouldn't be any different if she were clothed.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, there's a connection between photographer and model.
You feel they're friends. It's like she's saying, "Get on with it, you silly old fool".