Since PhotoSeed launched a month ago, I have been putting together material on a run of the important German photographic journal known as Photographische Mitteilungen. (Photographic Reports) Several hundred photographs, almost all of them hand-pulled photogravures, are now searchable in our archive database. As a working photographer myself, it is an honor to be able to give new light to this material and introduce fresh eyes to it over a century later.

 The challenge for me has been trying to get things right the first time. The language barrier in assessing this material has often been difficult in some cases to overcome. But fear not. If I’m not comfortable about something regarding a translation, I will probably not include it unless I  spell it out verbatim on the site-which I have done in a few cases already. I wish I could say I spoke five languages but since four years of high school French is my reality, Google as well as other online translation software has taken up the slack in this department. I have been translating titles of the work where appropriate (found in the misc. tags area) in order to give our English-speaking audience an idea what the photographer’s intent was as well. “Unidentified” seems to be my new favorite word on some days but consistency will always be my mantra while adding material to the site.

 In researching the history of the journal, I discovered early examples of color plates reproduced  from 1893.  Twenty years earlier, journal founder and photochemist H.W. Vogel had first figured out how color sensitizing agents could be added to photographic plates in order for objects to delineate themselves into their proper shades of gray.

Later, his son Ernst Vogel- (who had joined his father as co-editor at an undetermined date but at least since 1893) took up the challenge of printing three-color photographs in halftone as well as collotype. He first teamed up with William Kurtz in New York in 1892 (who was a good friend of his father’s) and a year later with Berlin engraver Georg Büxenstein.

The three-color halftone below showing a still life of fruit reproduced in the January, 1893 issue of the journal is believed to be one of the very first three-color halftones ever done on a large scale. In Berlin, Ernst Vogel’s subsequent business relationship with Büxenstein bore additional fruit in the form of this firm’s exquisite gravure plates now available for your examination on our site.

By all accounts, pioneering German photochemist Hermann Wilhelm Vogel (1834-1898):

“was always a follower and lively defender of artistic photography.” 1.

The irony is that the photographic journal he founded in 1864, Photographische Mitteilungen, (Photographic Reports) would not fully realize this ideal until after his death in late 1898.

By design a technical photographic journal, Photographische Mitteilungen was intended to advance ongoing scientific research occurring in Germany and Europe pertaining to Photography.

The same year, Vogel founded and oversaw a photographic laboratory at the Royal Trade Institute in Berlin (which merged with the Berlin Technical College in 1879).  2.

Scientific networking relating to Photography spurred advancements made in Germany, and Vogel’s importance in this area cannot be underestimated.  In this regard, Vogel founded the Photographic Society in Berlin in 1863 which in turn gave birth in 1869 to the Society for the Promotion of Photography. These in turn launched the German Society of Friends of Photography in 1887 and shortly thereafter the Free Photographic Union in Berlin in 1889. 3.  

Today, Vogel is mostly known as having taught a young Alfred Stieglitz while Stieglitz was an impressionable college student in Berlin in the early 1880’s; however, Vogel had been recognized the world over a full decade earlier in 1873 for his “discovery of color sensitizing with the so-called “optical sensitizers.” 4.

Before there was even a true color photographic process, (Lumière’s 1907 Autochrome process) photographic practitioners after the mid 19th century were most concerned with delineating shades of gray into their respective true likeness based on their true color. Before Vogel’s groundbreaking research, Photography’s bugaboo was that objects photographed would be rendered on the photographic plates of the day in similar shades of gray. (For example-a blue sky, green leaves and red apple would all appear alike in tone.)

“From Vogel’s discoveries developed the new color-sensitive processes which permit photography with correct tone values and called forth an essential change in the photography of colored objects.” 5.  

Published twice monthly, Photographische Mitteilungen had always included a variety of photographic illustrations, similar to other technical photographic journals of the day.  Early in its life, these took the form of original photographs. Later, beginning in the early 1890’s, hand-pulled photogravures began appearing in the journal. By this time, Dr. Ernst Vogel, the son of H.W. Vogel, was co-editing the journal with him and carrying on his father’s interest in color photography by doing extensive research in the three-color halftone reproduction process. In 1893, Ernst Vogel entered the photo-engraving business in partnership  with Georg Büxenstein in Berlin. (6) Earlier, hand-pulled photogravures had appeared in the journal done by the Berlin atelier Meisenbach Riffarth. (7) After the formation of the Büxenstein partnership however, more and more photogravure plates appeared in its pages, with almost all after 1900 being done by them.

Ernst Vogel was only 35 years old when he died a short two years after his father in 1901. Sole editorship of the journal then became the job of photochemist Paul Hanneke, who possessed additional skills as an author and writer and had previously worked with H.W. Vogel as an assistant in his photochemical laboratory at the Berlin Technical College. (Technischen Hochschule zu Berlin)

To be sure, with Hanneke’s background as a chemist, Photographische Mitteilungen would be technical in nature until it no longer existed under its own imprint after 1911. (It then merged with Photographische Rundschau  to become Photographische Rundschau und Mitteilungen beginning in 1912.) But perhaps because of Ernst Vogel’s previous relationship with Büxenstein already established, hand-pulled photogravure plates by them as well as other speciality plates by the firm appeared consistently in its’ pages a full decade after his death, making it then and today a valuable and important historical document of German, Continental and artistic photography the world over.

PhotoSeed presents nearly all of these specialty plates appearing in the journal from the final year of H.W. Vogel’s involvement in 1898 until the final year of imprint in 1911. 8.

NOTES:

1.  SENSITIZING EMULSIONS: IN: HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOSEF MARIA EDER: TRANSLATED BY EDWARD EPSTEAN: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS: NEW YORK: 1945: P. 463
2. IBID: P. 463
3. IBID: P. 462
4. IBID: P. 458
5. IBID: P. 459
6. IBID: P. 464
7. PHOTOSEED ARCHIVE
8. H.W. VOGEL WAS IN VERY ILL HEALTH AT THE END OF HIS LIFE BUT REMAINED A “SHADOW EDITOR” TO THE PUBLICATION. IN THIS RESPECT, HIS SON ERNST VOGEL IS LISTED AS SOLE EDITOR ON THE YEAR-END TITLE PAGE FOR 1898. 

 I tend to get obsessed with detail oriented things and the lead-up to our official PhotoSeed launch party on Saturday, July 16th, 2011 was no exception. First off were the invitations. With my goal of making each invite a kind of keepsake for recipients attending or not attending the party, I first tried running thick-stock watercolor paper through an ink-jet printer and got results which were not consistent, with roller lines from the printer making more of an impression than Jay David’s outstanding PhotoSeed logo and custom typography did, and with the printer rejecting the thick paper stock on the second run through.

 Plan B entailed going to a well-known and fully capable print shop in our fair city. They were gracious and ran a comp on a high-end color laser copier but the color wasn’t even close, with the ink resembling an elastic skin on the paper surface.

 With my mind made up that the look of the invitations had to resemble a fine print, I revisited the idea of watercolor paper as Plan C, which involved part of a Saturday in St. Louis yakking to a very patient salesperson at a large art-supply store. I settled on some large sheets of French Arches watercolor-very thin- that would not pose a problem with the inkjet printer. I commenced in trimming them down to size in the store and later feeding them one by one into the printer, twice, in order to print the verso party particulars. Success at last. My wife Shannon came up with the groovy idea of incorporating a Haiku into the invite as well:

 On launch day, beer, procured from 14 of the 17 countries currently represented in the PhotoSeed archive, was on hand for party tasting. An unexpected gesture from site developer Tyler Craft, who could not attend, seemed appropriate. A bottle of wine which he had ordered on the internet arrived in the morning and I used it later to raise a glass with thanks to everyone who has made PhotoSeed a reality. Thank You!

Between 1897-1908, 356 individual large format, hand-pulled photogravures and 318 tipped autotypes (halftones) were issued as part of 66 individual art folios in the German photographic art journal: Die Kunst in der Photographie.” (translated to The Art in Photography)

Franz Goerke (1856-1931), the editor and publisher  of this publication, was an important exponent of German art photography.  Dr. Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, who taught the young Alfred Stieglitz photographic chemistry in Germany in his formative years, commented in a photographic review during its’ first year of publication (1897): Die Kunst in der Photographie is a  …”totally new and original undertaking.  Many waffle about art in photography, but what nonsense.  Here (speaking of Goerke)  we are dealing with the work of a sensitive expert.” 1.

And a modern view,  in the publication History of Photography:

“This publication may well be the most important and valuable documentation of art photography in the German language but, because of its rarity, has remained virtually unknown.” 2.

Please visit here to continue with our overview of Die Kunst in der Photographie.

1. ROLF H. KRAUSS: DIE KUNST IN DER PHOTOGRAPHIE, THE GERMAN CAMERA WORK: PART 1: THE PUBLICATION AND ITS IMAGES: HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY, VOLUME 10, NUMBER 4, OCTOBER-DECEMBER 1986: P. 267
2. IBID: P. 265

Limited-edition subscription portfolios of large-plate photogravures were issued by the Photo-Club de Paris commemorating their annual photographic salons held between 1894-1897.

The Photo-Club de Paris was created by members who seceded from the Société de Francaise de Photographie.  Contemporary author Janet Buerger writes of the organization:

“The Photo Club de Paris was formed as an idea at the International Congress of Photography in 1889. In 1891 it published its first Bulletin. Its initial salon album, published in 1894, was the first of at least four that set the standards for fine gravure folios in the period.” 1.

Continuing, Buerger states:

“These gravures are valued as original prints, because of their superior quality and because they are often all we have left of the extremely rare images of this period.” 2.

1894 was the first year the club hosted one of the most lavish and international of the artistic photographic salons of the late nineteenth century. Precedents to this had been set by the first 1888 Vienna salon, followed by their salons of 1891 and 1892 and the first London (Linked Ring) salon of 1893. These secessionist clubs broke away from the older established photographic societies inclusive but frequently interested in technical rather than artistic achievement.

“The series constitutes a highpoint of pictorialism in print, the permanent visual record of an influential event that brought together work by most of the international masters in the medium”… 3.

Please visit here to continue with our overview of The Photo-Club de Paris and the first year portfolio.

1. FRANCE: JANET E. BUERGER, THE LAST DECADE: THE EMERGENCE OF ART PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE 1890’S: ROCHESTER: INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY AT GEORGE EASTMAN HOUSE: 1984: P. 24
2. IBID
3. EXPOSITION D’ART PHOTOGRAPHIQUE: SHELIA J. FOSTER:IMAGINING PARADISE-THE RICHARD AND RONAY MENSCHEL LIBRARY AT GEORGE EASTMAN HOUSE, ROCHESTER: STEIDL: GÖTTINGEN: P. 201

Beginning in 1894 and continuing through 1898, the Vienna Camera Club in Austria published a monthly journal known as the Wiener Photographische Blätter (Viennese Photographic Sheets). Edited by Professor Franz Schiffner of Vienna, the publication was a showcase for the club’s views on artistic photography, (it also featured technical articles) publishing beautiful hand-pulled photogravure plates by talented Austrian photographers as well as others from around the world. Contemporary author Manon Hübscher writes:

“The Wiener Camera-Klub was also intent upon establishing itself as the leader of a growing movement in Eastern Europe.  To this end, it provided a showcase for its work by issuing a magazine entitled the Wiener Photographische Blätter.” 1.

Ten years after it was first published, photographic historian Josef Maria Eder wrote this  journal:

 “devoted itself especially to the artistic side of photography and was notable for its beautiful illustrations.” 2.

1. MANON HÜBSCHER: THE VIENNA CAMERA CLUB-CATALYST AND CRUCIBLE: IN: IMPRESSIONIST CAMERA: PICTORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY IN EUROPE, 1888-1918 : MERRELL PUBLISHERS : 2006 : P.126 2. JOSEF MARIA EDER: HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TRANSLATED BY EDWARD EPSTEAN: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS: NEW YORK: 1945: P. 685