Title
A slippery path, winter scene, Norfolk
1886-1887
printed 1888
Artist
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Details
- Dates
- 1886-1887
printed 1888 - Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- photogravure
- Dimensions
- 23.0 x 20.5 cm image; 41.0 x 34.3 cm sheet
- Signature & date
Signed l.r image, ink "P.H. Emerson". Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased 1977
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 236.1977
- Copyright
- Artist information
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Peter Henry Emerson
Works in the collection
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About
Through both his photographs and theoretical writings, Peter Henry Emerson became one of the most significant figures of early modern photography in England. From the time he joined and exhibited with the Photographic Society of Great Britain in 1882, he became deeply involved in the polemical aesthetic debates for an artistically relevant form of photography. Dismissing what he saw as the overriding sentimental concerns which dominated pictorial practices of the day, Emerson instead introduced a scientifically-based vision for artistic photography which was closely aligned to schools of naturalism in painting. His 1889 publication ‘Naturalistic photography’ espoused his belief in a practice based on the close and ‘honest’ observation of nature. To achieve this Emerson proposed a theory of selective focus where the camera’s lens should mimic optical vision, avoiding extreme sharpness and rendering its subject with degrees of a softening focus emanating from the composition’s chief point of interest. While Emerson warned against the fuzzy extremes of this model, the soft-focus aesthetic would become a hallmark of pictorial photography.
Emerson’s principal works are a series of photographs studying life and labour in the East Anglian landscapes of England. The images were originally published in book form and accompanied by descriptive text. Given this format, there is a strong emphasis in ‘Pictures of East Anglian life’ on utilising the camera’s potential for social commentary by portraying, as the text states, the ‘terrible struggle for the bare necessities in life’ of the East Anglian rural workers. For example, the caption to ‘A slippery path, winter scene, Norfolk’ tells of ‘the young mother crossing a slippery ice-glazed plank which bridges the frozen dyke’ to call her sick working husband in for dinner, with her children also ill and suffering from the freezing weather. The picturesque qualities of the snow-blanketed scene are thus transformed by an understanding of the perilous existence of a working community whose lives are commanded and consumed by the conditions of their landscape.
‘A stiff pull’ 1886-87 (AGNSW collection) was regarded by Emerson as one of the best plates in ‘Pictures of East Anglian life’, and it too is indicative of the unromanticised picture of the struggles of everyday life of this series, making them early forerunners of modern documentary photography. With its tight composition of receding diagonals, the brooding tone of the sky and the shift from the sharp focus of the soil, which almost engulfs the blurred movement of the worker, ‘A still pull’ successfully conveys the intense efforts of a rural labourer.
© Art Gallery of New South Wales Photography Collection Handbook, 2007
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Exhibition history
Shown in 4 exhibitions
Ten years on, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Jan 1986–Jan 1986
International Photographs from the Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 12 Jan 1991–14 Apr 1991
Dreams and realities: Victorian works on paper, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 07 Aug 1993–24 Oct 1993
Bridled Passions, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 23 Nov 1996–02 Feb 1997
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Bibliography
Referenced in 4 publications
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Peter Henry Emerson, Pictures of East Anglian life, 1888, (illus.). Limited edition of 75 deluxe and 500 ordinary copies
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Renée Free and Rose Peel, Dreams and realities: Victorian works on paper, Sydney, 1993, 8. no catalogue numbers
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Denise Mimmocchi, Photography: Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection, 'International pictorialism', pg.53-69, Sydney, 2007, 60 (illus.).
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Wayne Tunnicliffe, Bridled Passions, Sydney, 1996. no catalogue numbers
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