Curated by Micheline Nilsen, assistant professor of art history at Indiana University South Bend, Nineteenth-Century Photographs explores how this so-called architecture without architects was once part of the everyday environment.
The strongest photographs of the 19 pieces on display were culled from the museums Janos Scholz Collection of 19th-century European photography.
Of particular note are the works of British photographer John Wheely Gough Gutch and his French contemporaries Gustave De Beaucorps, Jen-Jacques Heilmann and Charles Ngre.
Gutch, a practicing physician, mostly photographed picturesque locales in southwest England. Of the three works at the Snite, the most compelling is Residence and Garden, England taken in 1852.
The salt print shows an old manor-style house built in at least three stages. Theres a two-story symmetrical facade on the left, a side elevation and tower with a pointed motif on the sash windows, while the back one-story extension features a rounded window crown. Still, the structure is both functional and elegant with its winding garden path.
Beaucorps, a French aristocrat and amateur photographer, expertly captured the vernacular architecture around the Mediterranean rim. His 1860 photograph titled Street Scene in Beicos (Anatolia), taken near Istanbul, Turkey, features shopkeepers on a street flanked by wooden structures with clay tile roofs and a corbelling second level. The construction not only is an example of a regional characteristic but may also indicate the Armenian ethnicity of its inhabitants.
Other stunningly preserved works include Heilmanns Chateau and Town of Pau, France, taken in 1854; Ngres Olive Presses, Cypresses and House at Grasse, France, taken in 1862; and St. Philibert a Tournus (Saone et Loire), taken by an unidentified photographer in 1860.
In fact, many of the photographers in this grouping are unidentified because these images were likely taken by amateurs as keepsakes of a home or a church or other structure of emotional attachment.
Even in the few instances where people are present, they are clearly secondary or coincidental objects in the composition.
Such instances only add to the wonderment surrounding an exhibition that invites viewers to ponder the lives and aspirations of those behind the camerathose who dwelled in these everyday places.
Staff writer Jeremy D. Bonfiglio: jbonfigliosbtinfo.com (574) 235-6244
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