Ruth Bernhard ~ Nudes and Light

Two days ago I was immersed in Ruth Bernhard and her capturing of light, quite phenomenal. In addition to Doorknob, the Portland Art Museum also holds in its collection, Nude in Box. The power of her work was still with me when I visited the Galleria dell'Accademia to see amongst other works of art Michelangelo's David. Lucky for me the Accademia has extended "Perfection in Form", an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe's work. Mapplethorpe's photographs are hung in the same gallery as the David as well as other rooms. Bernhard and Mapplethorpe's light became entwined in my vision. As I walked among the nudes and still life images I kept wondering what Mapplethorpe and Bernhard would have said to each other if they had met. That same question applies to Mapplethorpe and Michelangelo. The spokeswoman for the Accademia had this to say about Mapplethorpe and Michelangelo, two controversial artists of their times.



For those of you interested in some of the photographs from the Accademia exhibit, click here. And last but not least, I'm including a few of Bernhard's nudes (on the left) next to a few of Mapplethorpes' nudes (on the right). I think Ruth and Robert would have had a good time talking about photography and life. ...

Ruth Bernhard ~ Relationships

Here in Firenze it's almost 9:00 am on 11 Octobre 2009. A quick check of the internet before we go out for our walk netted me the weather (mostly cloudy with a few sprinkles) and some Facebook time. Just for fun I typed in Ruth Bernhard and found that she has a page on Facebook.

Bernhard was a complex person and that complexity was exhibited in her relationships with people as well as her art. Lifting from the Facebook content is this summary of her life. Marriage early on with her women partners would have been impossible. Why she and Price Rice never married is open for discussion.

By the late-1920s, while living in Manhattan, Bernhard was heavily involved in the lesbian sub-culture of the artistic community, becoming friends with photographer Berenice Abbott and her lover, critic Elizabeth McCausland. By 1934 Bernhard was almost exclusively photographing women in the nude.[citation needed] It would be this art form for which she would eventually become best known. ... By 1944 she had met and became involved with artist and designer Eveline (Evelyn) Phimister. The two moved in together, and remained together for the next ten years. They first moved to Carmel, California, where Bernhard worked with Group f/64. Soon, finding Carmel a difficult place in which to earn a living, they moved to Hollywood where she fashioned a career as a commercial photographer. In 1953, they moved to San Francisco.

Ruth Bernhard was full of life and continued to have relationships until her death in 2006. These included Price Rice, an African-American Air Force colonel 10 years her junior, whom she had met when he took one of her classes in the seventies. Price accompanied Bernhard while she taught, lectured and traveled. Bernhard had stopped producing new work because of impaired concentration due to carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty household heater. When Price died in 1999, she began a relationship with the woman photographer Chris Mende. They were together until Bernhard’s death in 2006.

Look carefully at Bernhard's work and you can see the interweaving of those relationships in the fabric of her art. I'm out the door now to catch the light here in Firenze. Ciao.

Ruth Bernhard, Doorknob

The piece of the week is Ruth Bernhard's Doorknob of 1975. The museum acquired this gelatin silver print in 2005 by the work of the late great Terry Toedtemeier. Dan Wark recalls Terry talking about this image, excitedly explaining how Bernhardt had seen the light hit the knob that way, how she hadn't managed to capture the shot with the sun moving as it tends to do. She watched that spot for an entire year until the day came when the sun hit the doorknob again, producing the shot just as she'd remembered.
Bernhardt was born in 1905, ten years after Dorothea Lange and 22 years after Imogen Cunningham- all were members of group f.64 a modernist group of photographers in california in the 1930's. I mention these other women because I have had the great pleasure of seeing their work recently. On a trip I took to Seattle a few weekends ago I saw the photography of Cunningham. Sometimes, for me, the measure of a good museum is how long I am in it before I shed a tear. At SAM it took until I was face to face with Frida Kahlo, shot by Imogen Cunningham in 1931.
Today I had the good fortune of hearing Linda Gordon speak on the PSU campus about the show that opens tonight at the Littman Gallery presenting over 30 of Dorothea Lange's WPA prints from Oregon shot during the depression. I didn't even have to get beyond the slideshow before the tears hit.
I'm looking forward to a week of feeling blessed to be a woman.