Nickel, Douglas Robert
Ausstellungskatalog, San Francisco, CA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2002 et al.
New Haven, London
Yale University Press
2002
168 p.
hb.
96 ill. in duotone and titone
Katalog
0300091699; 978-0300091694
Text engl. - „Nickel's introduction to this splendid album of Lewis Carroll's photographs sports one factual howler (he identifies the king, James V, in Scott's Lady of the Lake, as English) and some poor and illogical wordings. But his persuasive explication of Carroll's photography and revisionist assessment of Carroll's character make up for such shortcomings. He says Carroll's Victorian circle saw more than met the eye in his pictures, filling in cultural resonance and even physical detail from their knowledge of philosophy, literature, and history. Performing a kind of visual Platonism, they recognized in a child in a makeshift costume before a backdrop that doesn't cover the wall behind it an emblem of a great person, incident, sentiment, or all three at once. Appreciation today suffers from the modernist assumption that a photograph represents material reality only. Besides reading the pictures incorrectly, modern eyes misconstrue Carroll's personality. Carroll was fond of little girls, Nickel says, but the photos and his diaries demonstrate equal liking, equally nonsexual, for boys and other adults. A breath-of-fresh-air of a book.“ (Ray Olson, © American Library Association).
Lewis Carroll, Autor des Kinderbuchklassikers »Alice im Wunderland«, wurde als Fotograf erst nach seinem Tod entdeckt. Seine erotisch aufgeladenen Mädchenporträts tragen durchaus fetischistische Züge. Die Publikation würdigt den Künstler als Pionier der Porträtkunst und ehrt seinen Tribut zu Geschichte und Entwicklung des Mediums der Fotografie. Darüber hinaus leistet der fundierte Text einen Beitrag zum Verständnis der Darstellung im Viktorianischen Zeitalter Englands. (Frölich und Kaufmann, Berlin, 07.2007). - Nur Kurztitelaufnahme 07.2007.