Ipswich Days: Arthur Wesley Dow and His Hometown

by Trevor J. Fairbrother

Boston photographer Fred Holland Day (1864–1933) first distinguished himself in literary circles—as a critic, bibliophile, and co-founder of the progressive publishing firm Copeland and Day—before turning to photography in the 1880s. By the turn of the century, he had established an international reputation as a leader in the Pictorialist movement, striving to gain acceptance for photography as a fine art.

Day's work ranged from intimate portraits of friends and fellow artists, to elaborate, costume-driven self-portraiture, including his Jesus Christ series, photographed in rural settings near his home in Norwood, Massachusetts. Especially illuminating of Day's dual role as artist and advocate are the 50 plus images, reprised here, from a 1902 exhibition, in which Day posed for "leaders in the newer photographic methods" to demonstrate that the camera could be as expressive and sensitive an artistic tool as the brush or the etcher's needle.

Making a Presence offers a dynamic composite portrait of an iconoclastic, independent artist, and of a man exquisitely expressive of his fin-de-siècle milieu.

Genres: Photography

146 pages, Hardcover

First published January 3, 2007

Reviews

[T P Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nicely presented little volume. The presentation shows off the cyanotypes very well. Interesting biographical essay also included. Great introduction to a seminal character in American art.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an lover of earlier photography and as a groupie to the ghosts of those eccentric, yet exceedingly generous, group of late nineteenth-early twentieth Bostonian connoisseurs, collectors and donors who established Boston as a Temple to the Arts, I find it hard to be objective about this catalog, written by the impeccable Trevor Fairbrother to accompany the eponymous exhibition organized last year by the Addison Gallery of American Art. With an elegant and informative forward by Brian Allen, The Mary Stripp and R. Crosby Kemper Director of the Addison, and by Allison Kemmerer, Curator of Photographer and of Art After 1950, this slim but beautifully designed catalog, with its pristine reproductions of the highly artistic photographs by F. Holland Day, is all that a devotee, or scholar, might wish to hold in her hands. New information for me included the practice of Grangerism, a pastime in which serious readers of poets and other writers might deconstruct a volume and reassemble it with their own intimate sketches, drawings, homages and margin notes; and I learned about the relationship between Stieglitz and Day, at first collegial and supportive, and then, as was seemingly inevitable with Stieglitz, one of fierce competition and jealously. Oh, Alfred. From a historic preservation perspective, I am also interested, and impressed, that other, larger Boston institutions are collaborating with the Norwood Historical Society, once the family home of F. Holland Day, to do their best to preserve this historically significant building. The catalog, faces head-on, and must be given credit for, the murkier issues of Day's fascination the exotic, with homoeroticism and with his gorgeous, but scandalizing depictions of himself as the Christ figure. "The Seven Words" with Day's tortured facial expressions and his crown of thorns simulating those of Jesus on the Cross, and his "Cruxificion", also designed and taken in 1898, were scandalous, but in fact, were following similarly inspired musical settings by Beethoven and Hayden, and emulating friezes by John Singer Sargent on this very subject. Can you tell that, every count, I was smitten?