By Andrea Lynn
Prints made 87 years ago by a revolutionary American photographer for a
famous British writer, and recently serendipitously found by two professors
at the UI in the dark recesses of a locked library storage area, will bask
in the limelight of a special exhibition.
The exhibition, "Alvin Langdon Coburn and H.G. Wells: The Photographer
and the Novelist," will run from Jan. 24 to March 23 in the Krannert
Art Museum at the UI. The centerpiece of the free public exhibition is the
prints Coburn made to accompany Wells' book of short stories, "The
Door in the Wall." Coburn sent the prints to Wells as a gift after
the two had collaborated on that book and one other.
The exhibition also will include a copy of the original "Door in the
Wall" book, published in 1911 by the American publisher Mitchell Kennerley,
and 28 unpublished letters from Coburn to Wells, chronicling their relationship
and their slow-moving joint project. In a letter dated Dec. 3, 1907, Coburn
invites Wells to stop by his studio so that he can make a color autochrome
of the writer. "I have always thought that your air ships would come
before real colour photography, but here it is as large as life and twice
as natural." Also in the exhibition is a black and white print photo
that Coburn, often labeled a pictorialist or symbolist photographer, made
of Wells.
According to Maarten van de Guchte, director of the Krannert Art Museum
and contributor to the Coburn exhibition catalog, Coburn "was an eminently
capable photographer who knew most luminaries of his time and who crisscrossed
the boundaries between literature and artistic photography."
"He's a prime example of pioneering work, artistic sensibility and
a great sense of artistic vision," van de Guchte said, adding that
Coburn's photos are "small jewels of photographic nuance and subtly."
Coburn, also an art collector of note, called himself "the [James McNeill]
Whistler of photography." In 1911, Coburn wrote that photography "is
the most modern of the arts ... more suited to the art requirements of this
age of scientific achievements than any other." Later in life, he abandoned
photography and publishing, said George Hendrick, the co-curator of the
Coburn exhibition, and "his name would be forgotten for quite some
time. Since his death in 1966, however, Coburn has been rediscovered."
The "Door in the Wall" collaboration between Coburn and Wells
and Frederic W. Goudy, a typographer, has been described by more than one
authority as "a landmark in the history of the photographically illustrated
book, representing the first true collaboration of author, photo-illustrator
and typographer." According to van de Guchte, Coburn's large luminous
plates for "The Door" are "memorable images, haunting and
mysterious."
At least one photograph, the one for the story "The Lord of the Dynamos,"
was a photomontage, with huge industrial cogwheels in the background, a
North African worker in the foreground.
The "Door" book collaboration was the second time the photographer
and writer worked together on a publication. In 1910, Coburn produced a
volume of soft focus photographs of the rapidly changing New York City.
Titled "New York," the book included shots of many city landmarks,
such as the Flatiron Building, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Battery, and
an enthusiastic introduction by Wells. Coburn's urban photographs are distinguished
by architectural and technological themes and high-angle views of the city.
Like Steiglitz, Coburn cut off buildings and smokestacks, emphasizing "the
fragmentary nature of their photographs," van de Guchte writes, noting
that in this way, Coburn "disintegrated" the city. Prints from
the "New York" book, also found in the cubbyhole, will be on display
in the Krannert special exhibition.
It was through George Bernard Shaw that Coburn met Wells in 1905. The three
lunched together at Wells' new house, Sandgate. "Still very shy and
awkward," Coburn wrote in his autobiography, "I managed to spill
a cup of tea in my lap and had to put on a pair of Wells's trousers while
my own were being dried." Coburn had photographed Shaw the previous
year; the famous writer called Coburn "one of the most accomplished
and sensitive artist-photographers now living." Coburn then spent two
years, from 1905 to 1907, on photographic frontispieces for Henry James'
24-volume set of "Novels and Tales."
The photographs for "The Door" and "New York" were found
by chance by Hendrick, a professor of English at the UI, and Nancy Romero,
a professor of library administration, librarian in the university's Rare
Book and Special Collections Library and co-curator of the Coburn exhibition.
Rummaging around in a dark cubbyhole in the stacks of the Rare Book and
Special Collections Library, in pursuit of Coburn's prints of Mark Twain,
they came upon the portfolio of 29 prints Coburn sent Wells. Nearly a half-century
after they had been given to Wells, the prints were given to the UI Library
from Wells' son George ("Gip") Wells, when he was visiting the
UI campus in 1958.
The university Library made its first acquisition of Wells' personal papers
in 1954. Additions to the Wells Archive have continued throughout the years,
including a major acquisition in late 1992. The UI Wells Archive is generally
considered the world's premier Wells collection.
A corollary exhibition of Coburn's Twain prints will run concurrently in
the library's Rare Book and Special Collections Library.
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