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Artist or Maker: ALVIN LANGDON COBURN (1882-1966)

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Description: Vortograph, 1917
gelatin silver print
image: 8 3/8 x 11in. (21.4 x 27.8cm.); paper: 10 x 12in. (25.2 x 30.3cm.)

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Provenance: This and the following lot were given to the grandparents of the present owner by Coburn. The owner's grandfather, Leonard Arundale, met Coburn thorugh a mutual interest in photography and membership in the Freemasons. The owner's grandparents became close friends of Coburn and his wife Edith.

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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF A DESCENDANT OF LEONARD ARUNDALE, A CLOSE FRIEND OF ALVIN LANGDON COBURN

When Coburn exhibited his 'Vortographs' at the Camera Club, London in February 1917, he created a sensation. It was the first exhibition of truly abstract photographs; images which reduced the subject to the essential elements of light and form. Controversy ensued; the pages of contemporary journals filled with spirited reviews and letters of support and criticism, including an ongoing battle of words between Coburn and his former ally, Frederick Evans, in the British Journal of Photography.

Already an internationally respected figure, Coburn had successful one-man exhibitions at the Royal Photographic Society, London in 1906 and the Photo-Secession Gallery, New York in 1907 and 1909. He had been a leading member of elite and influential Pictorialist movements, including The Linked Ring Brotherhood and the Photo-Secession. Moving away from Pictorialism, Coburn strove to involve photography in the rapidly changing artistic climate of the early 20th century, such as his 1912 series of New York views downwards from skyscrapers, which were a conscious attempt to alter perspective, an approach adopted from the Cubists.

No prints of this image are included in the major bequest of works by Coburn at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester.

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