Nature's Temple

PhotographerSigismund Blumann

CountryUnited States

MediumGelatin Silver

Year1926

View Additional Information & Tags

California, Landscape, Forest, Paths, Supports

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 (image) | 9.8 x 6.8 cm (screen) | 14.9 x 9.8 cm rough, high-contrast, gelatin silver print
Support Dimensions: none


Associated Blog Posts:

California Pipe Dreamer


Nature’s Temple, showing a pathway leading through a dense stand of sun-dappled trees, was published as a full-page halftone “from a bromoil” print in the November, 1926 issue of Camera Craft magazine. (p. 526)

 

Presented here in what is believed to be a contact print due to its’ small size from the original negative, the 1926 issue also published an original poem by the photographer:

 

Nature’s Temple

PILLARED by graven trunks of trees
And groined and arched in green,
A gorgeous panoply of sunlight gold,
A tapestry of leafy of shadows flecked.
Ah!  Wondrous edifice bedecked
As Solomon the great, of old,
Had never in his temple seen.
Nature Herself upon Her knees
Here worships on the loamy sod,
And owns Her greatness, in a prayer
That animates the fragrant air,
Subservient to a greater God. (1.)

 

 

1. Nature’s TempleCamera Craft: San Francisco, November, 1926: p. 527. The poem’s last line: “Subservient to a greater God”, was omitted in the November, 1926 issue but included and republished in full in the December, 1926 issue as the main subject of Blumann’s editorial column: Under the Editor’s Lamp: “In last month’s issue the printer lost a perfectly good line from the masterpiece entitled as above. I know it is a masterpiece for I made it myself. But I did not end it with a commas, and as I wrote it there was some sense to it. At least, it is to be hoped so.” (p. 578)

Nature's Temple