Helmut Gernsheim (1913–1995)
Author of A concise history of photography
About the Author
Series
Works by Helmut Gernsheim
The history of photography from the camera obscura to the beginning of the modern era (1969) 33 copies
The Rise of Photography 1850-1880: The Age of Collodion (The History of Photography, Vol 2) (1987) 23 copies
Roger Fenton: Photographer of the Crimean War, his photographs and his letters from the Crimea (1954) 6 copies
Incunabula of British photographic literature : a bibliography of British photographic literature, 1839-75, and British… (1984) 5 copies
Creative Photography, 1826 to the Present; an exhibition from the Gernsheim Collection (1963) 4 copies
Focus on architecture and sculpture : an original approach to the photography of architecture and sculpture. (1949) 2 copies
Those Impossible English 1 copy
Architecture and Sculpture 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Gernsheim, Helmut
- Birthdate
- 1913-03-01
- Date of death
- 1995-07-20
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Germany (birth)
Switzerland
UK - Birthplace
- Munich, Germany
- Place of death
- Switzerland
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
Lugano, Swizterland - Education
- Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
State School of Photography, Munich - Occupations
- photography historian
photographer
photography collector - Relationships
- Gernsheim, Alison (spouse)
Irene Guenin (spouse) - Awards and honors
- Honorary Fellow of the Club Daguerre, Frankfurt
Honorary Fellow of the Photographic Historical Society of New York
Distinguished Visiting Professor at University of Arizona (1981)
Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Texas (1979)
trustee of the Swiss Foundation of Photography
German Cultural Prize for Photography (1959) - Short biography
- Helmut Erich Robert Kuno Gernsheim (1 March 1913 – 20 July 1995) was a renowned historian of photography, collector, and photographer. He and his wife Alison amassed a huge collection of photography containing work by such luminaries as Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Hill & Adamson, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Louis Daguerre. They wrote dozens of books, including the influential "The History of Photography", hundreds of articles, and mounted several exhibitions. They sold their collection to the University of Texas at Austin.
Members
Reviews
Julia Margaret Cameron: Her life and photographic work by Helmut Gernsheim
When you want the in-depth book on everything that happened with JMC and her family, this is the source. I wish it had a correspondingly thorough section of plates, but at least the author lists every photo that currently exists in any of the collections he went to. Very well done. This was the book I was looking for.
I chose this book (for a class assignment) because it is about a female photographer, and, even more interestingly, about one of the earliest female photographers. After reading the book, however, I like neither its subject nor the style of the author.
Julia Margeret Cameron was a photographer from 1864 to 1878 in England and Ceylon. Her photographs include portraits and "compositions" illustrating religious, symbolic, allegorical, literary, or historical subjects.
Very few of her pictures are outstanding. Nearly all of them are blurred, due to her use of a lens with chromatic aberration and her careless developing and printing techniques. Even after she obtains a lens with no aberration, it seems as though she either deliberately or carelessly continues to take pictures that are out of focus.
Her portraits show good composition in posing her subjects, and good artistry in the use of lighting and capturing the moods and personalities of the people. It is too bad that many are ruined by blurriness. Her "composition" pictures, however, are awful. They are too artificially posed and look like cheap imitations of paintings, which many of them were.
I suppose what really turned me off was Cameron herself, as described in the biography. She was extremely eccentric and had a very domineering personality. She also had a very (too!) high opinion of herself. Excerpts from her letters (so gushing - yuck!) show her to be quite vain about her work, assuming it to be better than all others. She listened to the opinions of friends (none of them photographers) too much, and to those of others in her field too little.
The author, in his enthusiasm for Cameron's work, is just barely objective in his biography. He seems to be defending her much of the time. In the plates of her photography which he puts at the end of the book, he only uses her better photographs (nearly all portraits) and few of her poor ones.
All in all, I did not particularly care for this book (isn't it obvious?).… (more)
Julia Margeret Cameron was a photographer from 1864 to 1878 in England and Ceylon. Her photographs include portraits and "compositions" illustrating religious, symbolic, allegorical, literary, or historical subjects.
Very few of her pictures are outstanding. Nearly all of them are blurred, due to her use of a lens with chromatic aberration and her careless developing and printing techniques. Even after she obtains a lens with no aberration, it seems as though she either deliberately or carelessly continues to take pictures that are out of focus.
Her portraits show good composition in posing her subjects, and good artistry in the use of lighting and capturing the moods and personalities of the people. It is too bad that many are ruined by blurriness. Her "composition" pictures, however, are awful. They are too artificially posed and look like cheap imitations of paintings, which many of them were.
I suppose what really turned me off was Cameron herself, as described in the biography. She was extremely eccentric and had a very domineering personality. She also had a very (too!) high opinion of herself. Excerpts from her letters (so gushing - yuck!) show her to be quite vain about her work, assuming it to be better than all others. She listened to the opinions of friends (none of them photographers) too much, and to those of others in her field too little.
The author, in his enthusiasm for Cameron's work, is just barely objective in his biography. He seems to be defending her much of the time. In the plates of her photography which he puts at the end of the book, he only uses her better photographs (nearly all portraits) and few of her poor ones.
All in all, I did not particularly care for this book (isn't it obvious?).… (more)
1 
riofriotex | 1 other review | Jul 26, 2021 |
riofriotex | 1 other review | Jul 26, 2021 | 
Historic events in the 100 years 1839-1939 as recorded by the camera. The photographs come to a large part from the authors collection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Gernsheim ). Each photograph is accompanied by an informative text with a Foreword by the authors and an Index.
The first image reproduced here is the first ever permanent photograph in the history of photography created 1826 or 1827 by Nicéphore Niépce: a view from his work-room at his country house Le Gras at Saint-Loup-de-Varennes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:View_from_the_Window_at_Le_Gras,_Joseph_Nic%C3... (The reproduced copy has been enhanced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_from_the_Window_at_Le_Gras,) The first practicable photographic process dates from 1839, the year Daguerre introduced to the public the daguerreotype. The last photograph in this book was taken on the 3rd September 1939, the day Britain entered World War II: An air-raid warden cycling through London a large sign TAKE COVER on his front and back.
All in all it is a fascinating book, even if there are, perhaps inevitably, many photographs of processions of one kind or other and rather a lot of royalty in their fancy dresses. The text to each photograph puts the images into necessary context. Occasionally the authors’ views shine through: I like that as the choice of images can’t have any claim of be objective anyway. This book may well inspire you to find out more about certain historical events and give you a taste for history. (I-14)
A thought: Many of these photographs would have probably been lost had the Gernsheims not collected them.… (more)
The first image reproduced here is the first ever permanent photograph in the history of photography created 1826 or 1827 by Nicéphore Niépce: a view from his work-room at his country house Le Gras at Saint-Loup-de-Varennes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:View_from_the_Window_at_Le_Gras,_Joseph_Nic%C3... (The reproduced copy has been enhanced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_from_the_Window_at_Le_Gras,) The first practicable photographic process dates from 1839, the year Daguerre introduced to the public the daguerreotype. The last photograph in this book was taken on the 3rd September 1939, the day Britain entered World War II: An air-raid warden cycling through London a large sign TAKE COVER on his front and back.
All in all it is a fascinating book, even if there are, perhaps inevitably, many photographs of processions of one kind or other and rather a lot of royalty in their fancy dresses. The text to each photograph puts the images into necessary context. Occasionally the authors’ views shine through: I like that as the choice of images can’t have any claim of be objective anyway. This book may well inspire you to find out more about certain historical events and give you a taste for history. (I-14)
A thought: Many of these photographs would have probably been lost had the Gernsheims not collected them.… (more)
Best known as a collector and historian, Helmut Gernsheim was also a talented photographer, working in the tradition of "the New Objectivity," Europe's counterpart to American straight photography. He used large format cameras and carefully applied lighting (when in dark interiors) to capture the spirit of architecture and sculpture. The results here are elegant images beautifully reproduced with gravure.
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Statistics
- Works
- 32
- Also by
- 4
- Members
- 567
- Popularity
- #44,118
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 9
- ISBNs
- 30
- Languages
- 2