Beaumont Newhall and a Machine

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Date

13 mai 2014

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OpenEdition

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Sophie Hackett, « Beaumont Newhall and a Machine », Études photographiques, ID : 10670/1.mbfw1i


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In discussions of Beaumont Newhall, his landmark 1937 exhibition, and the history of photography that he lays out in the exhibition’s catalogue, a key source remains overlooked: ideas about the machine aesthetic prevalent in the 1930s. These ideas made their way to Newhall through two key figures – photographer Paul Strand and his museum director Alfred Barr. Not only did the machine aesthetic give Newhall a language through which he could claim photography as an art form with a distinct set of visual characteristics, it also enabled Newhall, in some cases, to dissociate the photographer from the photograph –  artist from art – and thereby count a broader range of works as significant, even as they did not cleave to ‘straight’ photography’s aesthetic ideals, the ideals he espouses in the catalogue essay. Indeed, in evaluating the objects as a whole, and measuring them against the essay, it becomes clear that the essay does not adequately account for everything.

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