Alvin Coburn was elected as an Associate of The Linked Ring in 1903; it made him one of the youngest members of that group and one of only a few Americans to receive such an honour.
Alvin Coburn was elected as an Associate of The Linked Ring in 1903; it made him one of the youngest members of that group and one of only a few Americans to receive such an honour.
Alvin Coburn was an American-born British photographer, who produced what are considered by some to be the first purely abstract photographs. In his oeuvre, he was associated with the art movement of Pictorialism.
Background
Coburn was born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, on June 11, 1882, to a middle-class family. His father had established the successful company of Coburn & Whitman Shirts. However, he died when Alvin Coburn was only seven. After that, Coburn was brought up solely by his mother, Fannie, who remained the primary influence in his early life. She got married for the second time when Alvin Coburn was a teenager. In his autobiography, Coburn wrote, "My mother was a remarkable woman of very strong character who tried to dominate my life... It was a battle royal all the days of our life together."
Education
Alvin Langdon Coburn and his family visited his maternal uncles in Los Angeles in 1890. There he was given a 4 x 5 Kodak camera. Coburn immediately fell in love with the camera, and within a few years, he had developed remarkable skills for both visual composition and technical proficiency in the darkroom.
In 1898, when Coburn was sixteen years old, he met his cousin F. Holland Day, who was already a world known photographer with considerable influence. At the end of 1899, his mother and he moved to London. Alvin Coburn came under the tutelage of his cousin; Coburn, in turn, taught Day how to print his own images and assisted him in hanging the landmark exhibition, "The New School of American Pictorial Photography."
F. Holland Day was invited by the Royal Photographic Society to select prints from the best American photographers for an exhibition in London. He brought more than a hundred photos with him, including nine by his cousin, who at this time was only 17. So with the help of his cousin, Coburn's career took an enormous first step.
Career
Coburn's early works were created in the pictorialist style, which had dominated photography since the mid-1880s. In 1900, his prints attracted the attention of Frederick Evans, an important English photographer, who invited him to exhibit with fellow members of the Linked Ring. This was an important photographic society with prominent photographers considered at that time to be the highest authority for photographic aesthetics. Among its members were Frank Sutcliffe and Alfred Horsley Hinton.
In 1901 Coburn lived in Paris for a few months. He then toured France, Switzerland and Germany for the remainder of the year. He returned to America in 1902 and opened a photography studio on Fifth Avenue. In May 1903, he was given his first solo show at the Camera Club of New York, and in July Stieglitz published one of his gravures in Camera Work, No. 3.
In 1904 Alvin Coburn returned to London where he had his first major commission when The Metropolitan Magazine asked him to photograph England's leading artists and writers, including George Meredith, G. K. Chesterton, and H. G. Wells. During his trip, Coburn visited famous pictorialist J. Craig Annan in Edinburgh and made studies of motifs photographed by pioneering photographers Hill and Adamson. In April 1904 six more of his images were published in Camera Work, No. 6. In 1905 he photographed American artist Leon Dabo.
Coburn stayed in London throughout 1905 and much of 1906. He created both portraits and landscapes around England. He took a picture of Henry James for The Century magazine and returned to Edinburgh for a series he intended to be visualizations of Robert Louis Stevenson's Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes.
The years 1906-1907 were of great importance for Coburn. He began 1906 by holding solo shows at the Royal Photographic Society and at the Liverpool Amateur Photographic Association. It was during this time that Coburn produced one of his most famous portraits, that of George Bernard Shaw posing nude as Rodin's The Thinker. The two became quite good friends and Shaw’s friendship led to further introductions to famous people of the era.
In summer 1906 the photographer cruised around the Mediterranean and travelled to Paris, Rome and Venice in the fall. Concurrently, he worked on frontispieces for an American edition of Henry James' novels. While in Paris he saw Steichen's Autochrome colour photographs and learned the process.
Alvin Coburn continued his success by having a personal show at Stieglitz's prestigious Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession in New York and by organizing an international exhibition of photography at the New English Art Galleries in London. Coburn briefly returned to the United States so he could take pictures of Freer's large collection of oriental art and Whistler prints. He became captivated with the "exotic" style of the oriental artists, and it influenced both his thinking and his photography. In January 1908, twelve more of Alvin Coburn's photos were published in Camera Work (No. 21).
In addition to portraiture, the photographer was also exploring cityscapes and photographed famous London landmarks such as Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, and Tower Bridge in a romantic and impressionistic style. These works were published in his book London (1909), followed by a book of New York scenes a year later.
Alvin Coburn returned to America in 1910, exhibiting 26 prints at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. He began travelling extensively in the United States for the next year, going to Arizona to photograph the Grand Canyon and to California to take photos in Yosemite National Park. He returned to New York in 1912 and executed a series of new photographs which he published in his book New York. It was during this period that he made some of his most famous pictures from elevated viewpoints, including his best-known work entitled The Octopus.
Coburn left the United States permanently in 1912. He relocated to London and later settled in North Wales. In 1913 he published what would become his most famous book, Men of Mark. The book comprised of 33 gravure prints of important European and American artists, authors, and statesmen, including Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, Henri Matisse, Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt and Yeats.
In 1915 the photographer organized the exhibition "Old Masters of Photography", which took place at the Royal Photographic Society in London and at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in the United States. The show included many historical prints from Coburn's own collection.
In England, Alvin Coburn became attracted to Vorticism, an offshoot of Cubism, which used bold lines and angular shapes to create abstract representations of subjects. This style was radically different from that of his previous works. However, he believed photographers had become entrenched in familiar styles and should try something brand-new.
In 1917 he experimented with still-life photographs shot through a home-made device incorporating three mirrors clamped together and creating an effect similar to a kaleidoscope. This instrument was called a "Vortoscope" and the resulting photographs "Vortographs". The resulting Vortographs are considered the first consciously created abstract pictures ever produced and were widely discussed at the time. The same year he organized a show of Vortographs and paintings at the Camera Club in London.
By the 1920s Alvin Coburn's interest in photography was clearly beginning to wane. But in 1922 Coburn briefly returned to his roots, publishing his second book of portraits he had taken more than ten years earlier, More Men of Mark. This volume included previously unpublished photographs that included Ezra Pound, Frank Harris, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, Israel Zangwill and Edmund Dulac.
By 1930 Coburn had lost almost all interest in photography. He destroyed around 15,000 of his negatives and donated his personal collection of historical photographs to the Royal Photographic Society. From then on, apart from some rare occasions during his travels to Madeira in the 1950s, Alvin Coburn lived a quiet and contemplative life and seldom picked up a camera.
Ironically, the largest exhibition of his work, which took place at Reading University in Berkshire in 1962, came more than 40 years after his last major work was published. In his autobiography, published in 1966, the photographer explained why he had given up his early dedication, "I think I can justify this change of occupation on the ground of ultimate values. If you compare photography and religious mysticism as alternatives to which one should devote one’s life, can there be any doubt as to their respective importance?"
He spent the last year of his life in North Wales.
(An autobiography edited by Helmut and Alison Gernsheim.)
1966
photography
The Cloud
The Bridge at Ipswich
Wapping
Broadway at Night
The Octopus
Vortograph of Ezra Pound
The Coal Cart, New York
Vortograph
St. Paul's and Cogs
Portrait of Michio Itow
Williamsburg Bridge
Saltram's seat
The monoplane
The aeroplane
View of the Thames
St. Paul's from Ludgate Circus
Profile portrait of a woman
The temple of Ohm, Grand Canyon
Illustration for the Blue Grass Cookbook
A canal in Rotterdam
London and New York
Row houses
Camera Work
London
New York
George Bernard Shaw in the Pose of "The Thinker"
Japanese dancer Michio Ito wearing fox mask designed by Edmund Dulac
Marius de Zayas
Landscape
Gertrude Stein
Fifth Avenue from the St Regis
Station Roofs
Clouds in the Canyon
The Amphitheatre, Grand Canyon
Views
George Davison, a fellow photographer and a philanthropist involved in Theosophy and Freemasonry, started Coburn on a path of studying mysticism, metaphysical ideas and Druidism. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Alvin Coburn became entirely committed to the beliefs of the Universal Order.
As for his passion for photography, Davison believed that photography makes one conscious of beauty everywhere, even in the simplest things, even in what is often viewed as commonplace or ugly. He made no doubt, that nothing is really "ordinary," for every fragment of the world is crowned with wonder and mystery, and a great and surprising beauty. In addition, the photographer didn's believe in any sort of handwork or manipulation on a photographic negative or print.
Quotations:
"Why should not the camera throw off the shackles of conventional representation and attempt something fresh and untried?… Why, I ask you earnestly, need we go on making commonplace little exposures of subjects that may be sorted into groups of landscapes, portraits and figure studies? Think of the joy of doing something which it would be impossible to classify, or to tell which was the top and which the bottom."
"Why should not the camera artist break away from the worn out conventions... and claim the freedom of expression which any art must have to be alive."
"If you compare photography and religious mysticism as alternatives to which one should devote one’s life, can there be any doubt as to their respective importance?"
"A photographic portrait needs more collaboration between sitter and artist than a painted portrait."
"I affirm that any sort of photograph is superior to any sort of painting aiming at the same result."
"Photography is the most modern of the arts, its development and practical usefulness extends back only into the memory of living men; in fact it is more suited to the art requirements of this age of scientific achievement than any other."
"My aim in photography is always to convey a mood and not to impart local information. This is not an easy matter, for the camera if left to its own devices will simply impart local information to the exclusiveness of everything else."
"What we need in photography is more sincerity, more respect for our medium and less respect for its decayed conventions."
"It is my hope that photography may fall in line with all the other arts and with her infinite possibilities, do things strange and more fascinating than the most fantastic dreams."
"I have not attempted to do anything eccentric in the way of portrayals, but I have studied my men and their works with enthusiasm, and in each instance I have tried to catch and reveal the elusive something that differentiates a man of talent from his fellows, and makes life worth while, worth struggling with towards ever great understanding."
"Photography is too easy in a superficial way, and in consequence is treated slightingly by people who ought to know better. One does not consider Music an inferior art simply because little Mary can play a scale."
Membership
Alvin Coburn was elected as an Associate of The Linked Ring in 1903; it made him one of the youngest members of that group and one of only a few Americans to receive such an honour.
On June 18, 1919, Coburn was initiated into Mawddach Masonic Lodge No.1988 in Barmouth. He was its member until September 28, 1961. The photographer became increasingly involved with the Freemasons, gaining the title of Royal Arch Mason. He also joined the Societas Rosicruciana.
Later on, Coburn was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.
The Linked Ring
,
United Kingdom
1903
Mawddach Masonic Lodge No.1988
,
United Kingdom
June 18, 1919 - September 28, 1961
Personality
Coburn's deep interest in mysticism, and particularly Freemasonry, occupied the greatest part of his life. He did a lot of research into the history of Freemasonry, and on aspects of the occult and mysticism as well. He presented numerous lectures based on his findings to Masonic gatherings, travelling extensively throughout England and Wales. Coburn was also particularly interested in the ceremonial rituals and rites performed, as well as in their origins and symbolism.
In 1927 Alvin Coburn was made an honourary Ovate of the Welsh Gorsedd, or Council of Druids. He took the Welsh name "Maby-y-Trioedd" (Son of the Triads).
After the death of his mother in 1928, Coburn decided that it was one more sign that his new devotion to religious interests was the right course for him.
Alvin Coburn became a British subject in 1932, after living in England for more than twenty years.
Quotes from others about the person
George Bernard Shaw: "Mr Alvin Langdon Coburn is one of the most accomplished and sensitive art-photographers now living."
George Bernard Shaw: "[Coburn is] the greatest photographer in the world."
Alfred Stieglitz: "Fannie Coburn [Coburn's mother] devoted much energy trying to convince both Day and me that Alvin was a greater photographer than Steichen."
Interests
mysticism, symbolism, ceremonial rituals and rites
Artists
Charles Lang Freer
Connections
Alvin Coburn met his future wife, Edith Wightman Clement, in Boston, New York. They married on October 11, 1912. His wife died on October 11, 1957, their forty-fifth wedding anniversary.
Mother:
Fannie Coburn
Spouse:
Edith Wightman Clement
Friend:
George Bernard Shaw
References
Alvin Langdon Coburn
This volume, published to accompany a show at George Eastman House and drawing on a wide range of public and private collections, reveals Alvin Langdon Coburn's work and legacy for a new generation.
The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography
A lengthy introduction traces the history of art photographs in the United States; the catalogue then describes (with illustrations) the work of 50 seminal photo-artists represented in Stieglitz' collection (including a short bio-chronology of each).
Children of the New Age: A History of Spiritual Practices
The first true social history of the phenomenon known as New Age culture, Children of the New Age presents an overview of the diverse varieties of New Age belief and practice from the 1930s to the present day.