Alvin Langdon Coburn
Vortograph

Artist Alvin Langdon Coburn British, born United States, 1882–1966

CultureBritish

Titles

Vortograph

Date1917

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 10 5/8 × 8 1/16 in. (27 × 20.5 cm)
Sheet: 10 5/8 × 8 1/16 in. (27 × 20.5 cm)
Mount: 11 × 8 1/2 in. (28 × 21.6 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Alexandra Marshall, the S. I. Morris Photography Endowment, Louisa Stude Sarofim, The Brown Foundation, Inc. courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. M.S. Stude, the Director's Accessions Endowment, and friends of the Museum of Fine Arts in honor of the 16th Anniversary of the Photography Department

Object number93.266

Not on view

Explore Further

Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionAt the beginning of the 20th century, about the same time that painters were creating the first abstract canvases, photographers took up the challenge of making abstract photographs. The American artist Alvin Langdon Coburn attached prisms and mirrors to his camera and then photographed bits of crystal and wood. The results were pictures of reflected and refracted light. When Coburn exhibited the photographs in London in 1917, his friend, the poet Ezra Pound, dubbed them “Vortographs,” after a Cubist-influenced English art movement called Vorticism.
Provenance[Christie’s, London, October 29, 1992, Lot 103]; purchased by MFAH, 1993.
Exhibition History"Abstract Photographs and Drawings," at The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, from Mar. 22 - June 25, 1995 (LN:95.13).

"A Love Affair with Pictures: 25 Years of Collecting Photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," MFAH, Lower Jones and Masterson Galleries, October 14 - December 30, 2001.

"Utopia/ Dystopia: Construction and Destruction in Photography and Collage," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 11 March - 10 June, 2012.

“History of Photography I: Selections from the Museum's Collection,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 1, 2014–February 22, 2015.

Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

no apparent inscriptions

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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