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The Eagle (Vortograph)

The Eagle (Vortograph)

1917

Alvin Langdon Coburn

American, 1882-1966

The work of Alvin Langdon Coburn and Gyorgy Kepes explored abstraction through the medium of photography. Coburn started his career as a portrait photographer, but in the early 1910s, he had begun to photograph both in the wilderness of the west and in New York City, work that demonstrated his increased abstraction and the manipulation of perspective. Coburn settled in Britain in 1912, and in 1914 became involved with Vorticism, an avant-garde movement celebrating the dynamism of modern life; it attracted visual artists as well as writers such as Ezra Pound, who saw the vortex as "the maximum point of energy." By 1916 Coburn had built a Vortograph, a lens with prismatic mirrors attached that enabled him to make abstract photographs like the one shown here.
Gelatin Silver Print
11 7/8 x 9 in. (30.16 x 22.86 cm)
Sheet h.: 13 7/8 in.
Sheet w.: 11 in.
Mary Arrington Small Estate Acquisition Fund
85.339.10
location
Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, "International Abstraction: Making Painting Real", May 2, 2003 - February 29, 2004

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