Wednesday - September 08, 2010

photography and George Bernard Shaw

OK, before anyone flames me for a limited subject let me say at once.

This is for those who read books and have some feeling for same, if not for this particular person. What really caught my attention today was his intense interest in photography.  I never associated him with that art form. Of course, way back when I didn’t have a computer to expand my knowledge of him.
I didn’t find him that easy a read, only based on the admitted very little I was exposed to.  But I became a fan of Man and Superman which certainly showed his sense of humor.

Thousands of photographs from a collection that belonged to him, are going to be made available online. This is a project of England’s National Trust, and there are somewhere between 20 and 24 thousand pictures they are going through.  Many are in need of cleaning and restoration and so not everything is on display.  According to a short article in the paper this morning, there are supposed to be “several hundred” already online.  But I couldn’t find even a hundred. So far.  Must dig for more I guess.

The trust hopes to have it all available by next summer. 

In addition to prints are approx. 4000 cellulose and glass plate negatives.

There are also albums collated by Shaw which are still in their original housing and covering topics such as Shaw’s family and travels, including his visit to Auguste Rodin.

This should also interest those who enjoy early photography and history etc.

I’m so used to seeing Shaw as an old man with that white beard.  Never thought about him as young.

At this point in time, there aren’t many on show, but there are links to some very interesting things and much reading.
I suppose if you have the patience and the time, you could spend a lot of it with the Natl. Trust.  There’s also a link for those so inclined to be updated as the trust adds to the collection.

Man and Cameraman - revealing the photographic legacy of George Bernard Shaw

“If Velasquez were born today, he would be a photographer and not a painter.” George Bernard Shaw, quoted in The Best of Popular Photography, p276.

George Bernard Shaw bought his first camera in 1898 and was an active amateur photographer until his death in 1950. Shaw was a pioneer of photography as a serious art form: reviewing exhibitions and writing widely on the topic.

His photographs document a prolific literary and political life offering glimpses into Shaw’s inner world. Shaw’s images are almost endless in their subject coverage, from changes in fashions to portraits of the 1860s from architecture to education, and their personas, from Vivien Leigh and Mrs Patrick Campbell to Sidney and Beatrice Webb. They also record his experiments with photography and for the photographic historian the collection provides a record of the development of photographic and processing techniques available from the 1890s. In total the archive comprises approximately 24,000 photographs and negatives and 15 photograph albums compiled by Shaw.

MAN AND CAMERAMAN

‘Bernard Shaw’

The dawn of colour
August 31st, 2010 by Karyn Stuckey, Man and Cameraman Project Archivist

Every picture tells a story: this one signals a new age when the dream of colour became a reality. Early photographers experimented with how to reproduce colour but it wasn’t until 1903 that a device for doing so, the autochrome, was patented (commercial available from 1907). Prior to this hand tinting was the only guaranteed way of providing colour images, although many other techniques were tried. GB Shaw’s photographs and negatives show him as a keen experimenter and forays into colour are no exception. Early colour images allow us to see a world we are used to seeing in black and white in colour, though of course the quality of that colour was not always true to life.

THE DAWN OF COLOR

Posted by peiper     on 09/08/2010 at 08:26 AM   
Filed Under: • Art-Photography • UK •  
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