Tag Archives: early photography

Marubi Studio: Early Albanian Photography at FOAM in Amsterdam

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Imagine my surprise: last month while visiting FOAM, a photography center in Amsterdam, I caught the last days of Dynasty Marubi: A Hundred Years of Albanian Studio Photography–an exhibition based on an archive in northern Albania that I happened to have visited in the summer of 2013. Curated by Kim Knoppers in collaboration with Luçjan Bedeni, Director of the Marubi National Museum of Photography in Shkoder, Albania, this exhibition is one of the first times the images have been shown so far from their hometown and the only time that the original glass negatives have left Albania. The incredible collection of over 150,000 glass plate negatives from three generations of the Marubi studio documents the social life of northern Albania from the decline of the Ottoman Empire, to independence, to the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha.

Self-portrait of Kel Marubi with his Wife in the Studio, no date, Silver gelatin dry process on glass.

Self-portrait of Kel Marubi with his wife in the studio, undated. Silver gelatin dry process on glass

Photography provided a modern form of self-fashioning that citizens of Shkoder took to with seeming abandon, perhaps surprisingly given the partially Muslim population and Islam’s prohibition on figurative images. Kel Marubi uses the photograph above to tell us about his respectable profession (the background replete with the latest technology in cameras), his marriage (his wife prominently sharing the space and mirroring his posture), and his national pride (the traditional clothing identifies them as Albanian). The couple sits in front of the painted backdrop that appears again and again in these images.

Kel Marubi, Catholic veiled women, Shkoder, c. 1890-1918

Consider the strangeness of the portrait of two women pictured above. Perhaps it would be more apt to call it a cipher of a portrait, for the women in their traditional modest dress are fully covered from head to toe, even their faces. If a portrait is usually made to capture the likeness of an individual, here all distinguishing attributes are covered. The doubling of their postures also suggests something uncanny to the modern eye. Curiosity about this lesser known part of the world among Europeans created a secondary market for the images to be reused in postcards, and a portrait like this one gained a second function documenting the traditional costume of the region. The postcard above, stamped with Kel Marubi’s name, reads “Memory of Shkoder” across the bottom.

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Three generations of technically advanced photography took place in Shkoder because Pietro Marubi fled there because of political trouble in Italy. He opened a commercial photography studio in Shkoder in 1856. Pietro originally used the collodion wet plate process that had been invented only five years before. He created commercial portraits for cartes de visites, views of the town and countryside, studies of people, and technically inventive collages. Pietro took on a local youth named Kel  as an apprentice. Kel took the surname Marubi and continued the business, and later Kel’s son Gegë would took over the business from him. On the cutting edge of photography, all three members trained in centers such as Trieste and Paris and were keen to experiment, as evidenced by the early examples of collage, stereoscopic techniques, and, later, infrared photography.

Installation view of early collages, above, and glass plate negatives in the vitrine at FOAM

Although an enormous archive of over 150,000 glass plate negatives remain, almost no original prints do–they were all sold, either to the commissioner or to a newspaper (e.g. The London Illustrated News and L’Illustration) or as a postcard. If Pietro Marubi began taking photographs in and around Shkoder during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire, which ended in 1912, first Kel and later Gegë Marubi continued his legacy into the Communist period beginning in 1946. Gegë eventually donated the archives to the state and worked on their preservation until the end of his life. The world changed dramatically during this time, but the photographs attest to continuity as well as rupture; throughout one sees the traditional regional clothing, rocky landscapes, and painted backdrops that accommodated all kinds of sitters.

Sociability & Surveillance Across Photography at the New York Public Library

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The exhibition “Public Eye: 175 Years of Sharing” pulls out an impressive fraction of the New York Public Library’s collection of almost five million (!) photographs. Predicated on the notion that photography “has always been social,” the exhibition justifies itself from the second you walk in the door.

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As you enter the room, you see yourself in a tilted mirror hanging from the ceiling and become aware of the text on the floor in front of you, arranged to be read as a caption for the inevitable selfie you take from this vantage point. (See more willing participants in self-surveillance here.) This gimmick effectively highlights the idea of surveillance–as do the photographs of Google street views by Doug Rickard on view–but also our social willingness to implicate ourselves: to report on our own movements and put ourselves in the public eye.

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Taking a long view of photography as a social element in culture, the exhibition has a fantastic display of international carte de visite among its many thematic vitrines. These small portraits, popularized in the 1850s, became a fashionable form of calling card, intended to left at the host’s home by a visitor. The black-and-white scenes are not always straightforward portraits; they are full of character and sometimes feature people posing together, small children, or people in costume. The back of the card is marked by the photography studio that produced it.

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A popular pastime in the latter half of the 19th c. was viewing twinned images, as seen below, through a stereoscope. A stereoscope is a viewing device that holds the images just enough removed from your face that your eyes naturally blend the two side-by-side images to create the illusion of depth. Although this might seem like a solitary pursuit, it was common for families and visitors to gather together to view stereoscopic images. Stereoscopic cards might portray landscapes, street scenes, or people, and they were often sold in themed sets.

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While there is a slew of notable images on view–iconic WPA photos, works by Ansel Adams, more recent projects like Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip–the art history nerd in me was most excited to see images from the origin of photography, when people were still discovering how to make images from light. One of the first vitrines in the exhibition contains an example of the beautifully deep blue cyanotypes that Anna Atkins created of algae and other plants in the early 1840s (the image below is representative of this body of work). Atkins used a new technique to create these images in order to serve a scientific purpose: as botanical specimens.

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Next to her cyanotype lies an original bound volume of “The Pencil of Nature.” William Henry Fox Talbot published this book of photography in 1844-6, featuring scenes of china cabinets that showed how photography could be used to take inventory as well as studies of cottage doorways with a carefully askew broom. With images like the latter, Talbot made the case that photography was an art as much as a science. So unfamiliar was the public with photography, Talbot felt the need to explain to the reader that these images were “photogenic drawings” made by light rather than the human hand–thus the title.

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The debate over photography as art or science has continued, as the topographical studies of the American West, ethnographic documentation, and Google street views in this exhibition attest. Often today we look back at such images through an aesthetic lens: seeing artistic expression rather than documentary veracity. People have approached photography with many attitudes and purposes in the medium’s relatively short history, and I couldn’t help feeling that “The Public Eye”‘s dense, loosely organized viewing experience reflects that diversity and messiness rather than attempting to streamline it into a more coherent exhibition.

This treasure trove of seminal photographs is on view at the iconic Schwarzman Building on 42nd street through January 3, 2016, so plenty of time to visit and revisit. Check online for the schedule of free docent-led tours.