NEW YORK — Hans P. Kraus Jr. Inc. presents Pairings, a selection of 19th century photographs by Charles Nègre, William Henry Fox Talbot, B. B. Turner, Roger Fenton, Bisson Frères, Dr. John Murray, Henry Stevens and others. The installation features work whose juxtapositions reveal their inherent or extrinsic affinities, be they similar images made by different processes, contrasting images in negative/positive pairs, or images of kindred subject matter.
Patroclus was Talbot's first and favorite sitter. The plaster cast at Lacock Abbey is a copy of the marble in the British Museum. Talbot's chemistry required lengthy exposures, and a stationary sitter, such as this bust, was the ideal subject. The brush strokes around the border of this exceptional print show that Talbot coated the sheet of paper by hand. The subject of B. B. Turner’s calotype negative is a cast after the head of Dionysus in the Capitoline Museum, Rome. This negative/positive pairing, although different images, makes for an instructive comparison.
Flower studies and animals are Henry Stevens’s chief subjects. At his home at Addlestone in Surrey, Stevens was an enthusiastic grower of rare flowers. Stevens skillfully made his carbon enlargements from dry plates varying in size. Resistant to fading, carbon prints are comparatively permanent. Both large carbon prints on display exhibit the medium’s characteristic dense, glossy dark tones and in the darkest areas of the petals the prints show slight relief contours where more pigmented gelatin remains. Stevens was a member of the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring, a British invitation-only photographic society founded in May 1892. The Linked Ring aimed to promote photography as an art form. Other members of the Brotherhood included Frederick H. Evans, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Frederick Hollyer, Alfred Stieglitz and Clarence H. White.
Dr. John Murray was a Scottish-born physician who entered the service of the East India Company in 1832. By 1848 he had become the Civil Surgeon to Agra, where his specialty was the fight against cholera. For the next two decades, Murray was almost as active in photography as he was in medicine. While on leave in London in 1857, he arranged with the print seller, Joseph Hogarth, to distribute prints from his negatives; Hogarth chose from a selection of more than six hundred. A laudatory review appeared in the Morning Post in November 1857 after which Murray returned to India and received a commission from the Governor General of India to take photographs of specific sites. Among the sites Murray selected was the Mosque of Taj Mahal. On display is an albumen print and its paper negative, the left part of his majestic three-part panorama.
ABOUT HANS P. KRAUS JR. FINE PHOTOGRAPHS
Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs, established in New York in 1984, is a dealer in 19th and early 20th century photographs. The gallery participates in Paris Photo and The Photography Show presented by AIPAD and publishes monographs and catalogues on early photographers under the series title Sun Pictures. The gallery is located at 962 Park Avenue at 82nd Street in New York City. For more information, please contact (212) 794-2064 or info@sunpictures.com or visit www.sunpictures.com.