William Mortensen
Johan the Mad

Johan the Mad
Johan the Mad
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Johan the Mad
Datec. 1930
PlaceUnited States
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage/Sheet: 6 1/2 × 5 13/16 in. (16.5 × 14.7 cm)
Mount (primary support): 7 1/8 × 6 1/8 in. (18 × 15.5 cm)
Mount (secondary support): 12 1/4 × 8 7/8 in. (31.1 × 22.6 cm)
Credit LineThe Sonia and Kaye Marvins Portrait Collection, museum purchase funded by Sonia and Kaye Marvins
Object number84.279
Not on view

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Special Collections
Object Type
Description

William Mortensen began his career
more than a decade after Alfred Stieglitz and his circle of American avant-garde
photographers began to turn from Pictorialist manipulations to the straightforward
and pure, extremely detailed and finely crafted print. Rejected by the
avant-garde as being anachronistic, Mortensen was nevertheless extremely popular
with and had much influence over commercial photography produced at the time.
His photographs have unabashedly manipulated objectives and overtly symbolic
intent. By altering or texturizing either the negative or the print,
introducing hand lettering, and staging the scene, he generated images that
illustrated higher truths and universal themes.



 



Johan the Mad exemplifies this
technique. A straight print using a texturizing filter and penciled lettering,
the photograph represents Johan of Castile, whose epic journey across Europe
carrying the corpse of her husband on her back symbolized "the tortured
quest for something irrevocably lost."




Provenance[Paul M. Hertzmann, Inc., San Francisco]; purchased by MFAH, 1984.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Recto primary mount below image in pencil: Mortensen
In the negative: JOHAN the Mad
printed below the image "JOHAN / the Mad"

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

If you have questions about this work of art or the MFAH Online Collection please contact us.

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