NEW YORK — Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs is pleased to present Mountains and Streams from Paper and Glass Negatives September 17th through November 27th, 2024. The exhibition includes striking views of the Alps by the Bisson Frères, of the Pyrenees by Joseph vicomte Vigier, and of Yosemite by Carleton Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, and Alvin Langdon Coburn. Also on display are works by William Henry Fox Talbot, Édouard Baldus, Dr. John Murray, and John Payne Jennings. Andrew Joseph Russell’s spectacular album, The Great West Illustrated in a Series of Photographic Views Across the Continent; Taken Along the Line of the Union Pacific Railroad…, is on view as well.
In the beautifully composed and picturesque salt print, Rustic bridge across a gorge, Talbot (1800-1877) exploited the relatively long exposure time of the calotype, the fast-running stream partially blurs into a silky ribbon animating the photograph. The rustic bridge contrasts with the rugged surroundings, promising a quick if thrilling passage over the current. Based on the distinctive character of the landscape, this was almost certainly taken in the Trossachs of Scotland, most likely in the vicinity of Loch Katrine.
One of several views by Vigier (1821-1894) of the Pyrenees in the exhibition, “Saint-Sauveur. Cirque de Gavarnie,” a particularly fine salt print from a waxed paper negative, features the physical splendor and vast expanse of the mountain range. Vigier even managed to capture the white cloud bank, a pervasive weather pattern in the natural amphitheater known as the Cirque de Gavarnie, here recorded in a photograph for the first time.
Among their contemporaries, the Bisson Frères (1814-1876 & 1826-1900) were known by the range of their photographic activity. Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie commissioned the Bisson Frères to accompany them and make photographs of a trip to Switzerland’s Savoy Alps in 1860. Today the brothers are most recognized for their achievement documenting the architecture of Paris and for their pioneering images of the Alps made on glass negatives in the 1850s and 1860s, among which is the striking albumen print “Le Col du Géant.”
Taken in the High Sierras, Carleton Watkins's mammoth plate views of Yosemite established his reputation as the greatest landscape photographer of his time. A meticulous craftsman, Watkins (1829-1916) chose his vantage points and quality of light carefully, rendering his subjects in the most evocative light and with perfect sharpness. Watkins's Yosemite albumen prints are at once bold and subtle, as seen in Up Yosemite Valley from the Foot of El Capitan; their graphic strength is matched by a richness of tone and a delicacy of detail.
From mid-1868 until the driving of the golden spike on May 10, 1869, A. J. Russell (1830-1902) photographed the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. The Great West Illustrated… is a rare complete volume of 50 albumen prints in superb condition. At Echo City, Utah, Russell made this dramatic view, “Hanging Rock, Foot of Echo Canon,” of the frontiersman's precarious hold on a terrain that had until then been shaped only by millennia of geological forces.
Mountains and Streams from Paper and Glass Negatives is on view at the gallery from September 17 through November 27, 2024