Oscar Gustav Rejlander

Oscar Gustav Rejlander (Sweden, 1813 - Clapham, January 18, 1875) was a Swedish photographer and painter living in England. He is considered one of the pioneers of artistic photography at the time. victorian.

Biography

His exact date of birth is uncertain, although it is very likely that it occurred in the year 1813. He studied art in Rome, later settling in Lincoln, England. He abandoned his initial profession as a miniature painter and portraitist, after seeing how photography, recently invented (1839), achieved the achievements that were denied to him. It is also said that his decision was prompted by advice received from one of William Fox Talbot's assistants.

Probably around 1846 he settled as a portrait painter in the industrial city of Wolverhampton. Later, in 1850, he learned the process of wet collodion at high speed, exchanging his activity for a photography studio. In these first moments he dedicated himself to photographic portraiture and nude photography, for which he used girls from Madame Wharton's circus, street boys and young prostitutes as models: his series with Charlotte Baker achieved some success. Academic photography was used at that time, mainly to support the study of the human figure for painters. However, the boundary between these photographs and those considered "pornographic" (illegal although very profitable for their authors, in those years) was widespread and always questioned.

Photographic work

His photographic work, made in a studio with the use of a lot of props, focuses on the themes of allegory, myth, history. To obtain the final work, he makes preliminary sketches and then retouches the negatives (mounting, coloring, etc.) with such mastery that the retouching is not noticeable. This technique would be used by some artists who experimented with photography in the avant-garde of the 20th century, although their objectives were radically different.

He undertook various experiments to improve his photographs, including a photographic printing process of which he appears to be the inventor. He was a friend and teacher of Lewis Carroll, who compiled Rejlander's early work and helped solve his technical problems. Rejlander is responsible for one of the best-known portraits of Lewis Carroll.

The two ways of life

He participated in the Paris Exposition of 1855, producing his best-known work two years later, the allegorical work entitled The Two Paths of Life 1857. The work was made by combining 32 negatives. Exhibited for the first time in Manchester, for the realization of the work he used painted backgrounds and took photographs of the characters separately, in pairs, in trios, etc. Although there is some inconsistency in the arrangement of the characters, it turns out to be a very successful photograph. It presents a geometric composition divided by the figure of the Patriarch, whose objective is to offer a moral message: it places personifications of evil (lust, gluttony and other Christian sins) to the left of the composition and those of good to the right, worked in a brighter way and where you can see allegories of virtue, work, good customs, etc. The work presents a strong compositional reference to the Renaissance painting "The School of Athens" of Rafael, beyond their thematic differences.

Because the image shows partial nudity, it caused a certain social scandal, which earned him accusations about the use of young prostitutes as models. The scandal was silenced when Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom herself commissioned a copy to give to Prince Albert. This fact led to his commercial success and his qualification as the photographer of power.

He moved his studio to London in 1862 where he would later experiment with double exposure, photomontage, photo manipulation and retouching. He became an expert in photographic technique, becoming a teacher for other photographers and making various publications, which earned him being considered one of the fathers of fine art photography.

Infanta photography giving extra brush to paint

His works are framed within the academic Photography where a realistic goal is not pursued but an ideal recomposition according to predetermined, ideal and moral norms established by the conservative social class. His allegorical work & # 34; The Infanta Photography giving an additional brush to the painting & # 34; It fully represents the proposal of this precursor of artistic photography, whose initiatives would later become an aesthetic program in the pictorialist movement: to legitimize photography as an artistic form, by homologating it to the procedures and canons of the plastic arts, especially of the painting.

Another of Rejlander's well-known works, especially due to the criticism received from his detractors, is Rejlander the painter presenting Rejlander the volunteer, 1871. The author seeks to show the trick in it so that the spectator admires his technique. The intention of the work is to show the disposition of the artist towards power.