This is a rather lovely photograph, isn't it? I love the ethereal feel to it. Which seems like a quality that most of Miss Alice
Boughton's photographs hold dearly. In a few other of her photos (especially the ones containing nude women) the subjects are presented to me as nearly sprite or fairy like figures...consequently, I absolutely adore them. Her photographs have this endearing softness about them. It's no wonder that she is credited with having a part in the movement of making photography a fine art form. I think that some of this may be attributed to her study of photography in Rome and Paris. I'd say that her photos have a romantic essence about them that is awfully reminiscent of those citites. In fact, she actually worked with Alfred Stieglitz in his Photo-Secession- this was apparently some circle of insanely artistic, creative and driven photographers who were set on changing society's view of photography. Alice also worked with Kasebier as an assistant in her studio for some amount of time. She mainly became known as an amazing portrait photographer though. Two of her portraits caught the eye of Stieglitz and ended up at "The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession" in NYC. Through this, she had also been maintaining her own portrait studio and doing studies on children.
Boughton passed away in 1931; her studio and tons of prints dying along with her. You can still see her work in several prominent museums across the US and Europe.
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Anyways! I wanted to show you guys one of my all time favorite photographers. Her name's Rosie Hardy...last time I checked she was still in the UK but I think she may have made a move with her beau. The really amazing thing about this girl is 1. She's only in her early 20's 2. Almost all of her work is self portraits and 3. Rosie creates absolutely astonishing images by mixing digital photography with extreme photo manipulations with Adobe Photoshop! My favorite collection of photo's she's ever had was called Behind the Scenes: Fairytales, in which she sort of told this story of the truth behind all of our favorite childhood stories. I'm including a link to the collection here. It's pretty morbid stuff that includes a bulimic Goldie Locks, an alcholic Belle, Sleeping Beauty as a heroine addict, and Dorothy as an illegal immigrant!
A link to her entire photostream is here: Rosie Hardy
I've never seen Boughton's work before - it is amazing. You are dead-on about the photo-secession - it was a group of photographers trying to establish photography as a legitimate art form in the same context as painting. Actually, there is something a little photo-secessiony about Rosie Hardys images - sure they are made with photoshop, but there is an effort to manipulate the color palette so the images look old, and that kind of overt manipulation of the image is something the photo-secessionists might have embraced. Nice post.
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