Alvin Langdon Coburn
English, born United States, 1882–1966
Kingsway
INV-4461
Alvin Langdon Coburn
English, born United States, 1882–19661906
Pictorialismphotogravurephotomechanical process
Date
1906
Medium
Photogravure, Plate IV from the portfolio "London" (1909)
Dimensions
Image: 22 × 10.9 cm (8 11/16 × 4 5/16 in.); Paper: 23.1 × 11.8 cm (9 1/8 × 4 11/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Purchased with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. Gaylord Donnelley
Success came quickly for Alvin Langdon Coburn: he received his first camera at the age of eight and by eighteen was exhibiting with some of the greatest photographers of the day. A member of the Photo-Secession in the United States as well as the pictorialist Brotherhood of the Linked Ring in England, Coburn embraced handcrafted prints and the elevation of photography to an art. He often took the city as subject, achieving a painterly effect through the use of blurring, as in this plate from his portfolio London. Coburn produced photogravures—a method of printing a photograph in ink that registers a rich variety of tones—for a limited-edition portfolio and, because of the care he took with each reproduction, considered them fine art prints in their own right. Coburn’s photographs were meant to accompany an essay by Arthur Symons, but the images and text were ultimately published separately.
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