The Performance of Pictorialist Dance Photography

Authors

  • Karen Arnfred Vedel Theatre and Performance Studies, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v29i1.103314

Keywords:

Dance pictorialism, modern ballet, material practices, Vera Fokina, Jenny Hasselquist, Mikhail Fokine, Waldemar Eide, Henry B. Goodwin, Harald Giersing

Abstract

Looking to the widely disseminated pictorialist photos of Waldemar Eide (Norway) and Henry B. Goodwin (Sweden) featuring the Russian ballerina Vera Fokina and the Swedish ballerina Jenny Hasselquist, the article is an enquiry into the role of the dancer in the pictorialist studio and the contribution of pictorialist photography to the turning point when the aesthetics of dance was being re-considered, the dancing body reconfigured, and photography emerged into an art form in its own right. Taking inspiration from the socio-material approach of photography historian Elizabeth Edwards, the analysis downplays the question of content in favor of a focus on the material practices in the photographic studio at the level of the photographer as well as the dancer-model posing before the camera. Placed within a discourse of new materialism, performance and performativity, it moreover considers the resulting photos as material objects that perform in continuing processes of meaning production. An example of the latter discussed at the end of the text is Harald Giersing’s abstract painting ’The Dancer’ based on a photo of Jenny Hasselquist as The Dying Swan.

Author Biography

Karen Arnfred Vedel, Theatre and Performance Studies, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

Karen Vedel, Associate Professor, PhD, Theatre and Performance Studies, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. Research areas include dance and theatre historiography, site specificity and cultural memory. Has since 1998 collaborated extensively in projects involving dance artists and scholars in the Nordic countries and South Africa. Author of among other titles “Corporeal Aesthetics and the Reception of African American Performing Arts around 1930” in Tania Ørum et al. (eds): A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925 - 1950. (Harrassovitz, in press). “Nordic Dance Spaces. Imagining and Practicing a Region” (editor and contributing author) (Ashgate, 2014). “Clothing the Suomussalmi Silent People. From Site Specific Performance to Ritually Informed Performative Event” in Christiane Brosius et al. (eds): Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual. Reflexivity, Media, and Visuality (Harrassovitz, 2009). Project manager of the network “Knowledge Production, Archives and Artistic Research” (2016 - ).

References

Aftonbladet 18.09.1918. ”Dansfantasi av M Fokin 800 medverkande”.

Alter, Judith B. 1994. Dancing and Mixed Media. Early Twentieth-Century Modern Dance Theory in Text and Photography. New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Armstrong, Nancy. 1998. “Modernism’s Iconophobia and What it Did to Gender.” Modernism/modernity, vol. 5 no. 2, 1998, 47-75.

Barthes, Roland. 2000. Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography. London: Vintage Books.

Beaumont, Cyril W. 1996 (1935). Michel Fokine and his Ballets. London: Dance Books.

Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter. A political ecology of things. Durham: Duke University Press.

Carbonneau, Suzanne. 1998. “Michel Fokine”. In Selma Jeanne Cohen (ed.): International Encyclopedia of Dance. Vol 3. New York: Oxford University Press. 14-28.

Deranty, Jean-Philippe. 2013. ”The Symbolic and the Material: A Review of Jacques Rancière’s Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art” (Verso 2013). In Parrhesia. No. 18. 2013. 139-144.

Edwards, Elizabeth. 2009. “Photography and the Material Performance of the Past”. History and Theory. Theme Issue 48. (December 2009). 130-150.

Edwards, Elizabeth. 2002. ”Material beings: objecthood and ethnographic photographs”. In Visual Studies, 17:1. 67-75.

Ewing, William A. 1987. The fugitive gesture: Masterpieces of dance photography. New York: Peter Lang.

Garafola, Lynn. 1989. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. New York. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goodwin, Henry B. 1919. ”Kolleger världen rundt. XIV. Waldemar Eide. Stavanger”. Nordisk Tidskrift för fotografi. No. 30-31 June-July 1919. 81-84.

Goodwin, Ida and Henry B. Goodwin. 1918. Jenny Hasselqvist. Publikens Gunstlingar III. Stockholm: Lars Hökerbergs Förlag.

Gottlieb, Lennart. 1981. Portrætter og figurbilleder af Harald Giersing 1881-1927. København: Statens Museum for Kunst.

Holm-Johnsen, Hanne. 2016. “Waldemar Eide and Pictorialism”. In Vibece Salthe (ed.). Waldemar Eide. Kamerakunst. Stavanger: Stavanger Kunstmuseum. 87-92.

Jul, Ole. 2003. Månedens billede. April 2003. Webpage of Museum Sønderjylland. (15 September 2017)

Lien, Sigrid. 2016. ”Ballerinaen i fotografens studio. Waldemar Eides fotografier av Vera Fokina”. In Vibece Salthe (ed.). Waldemar Eide. Kamerakunst. Stavanger: Stavanger Kunstmuseum. 93-99.

Rancière, Jacques. 2013. Aiesthesis. Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art. Verso.

Risa, Lisabet. 2016. “Waldemar Eide 1886 -1963”. In Vibece Salthe (ed.). Waldemar Eide. Kamerakunst. Stavanger: Stavanger Kunstmuseum. 73-80.

Rootzén, Kajsa. 1945. Den svenska baletten: Från Stiernhielm till Brita Appelgren.

Salthe, Vibece (ed.). 2016a. Waldemar Eide. Kamerakunst. Stavanger: Stavanger Kunstmuseum.

Salthe, Vibece. 2016b. “Waldemar Eide – Photography as Art”. In Vibece Salthe (ed.). Waldemar Eide. Kamerakunst. Stavanger: Stavanger Kunstmuseum. 81-86.

Swedlund, Charles. 1974. Photography. A Handbook of History, Materials, and Processes. Tennessee: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

Söderberg, Rolf and Pär Rittsel. 1983. Den svenska fotografins historia, 1840-1940. Stockholm: Bonnier Fakta.

Söderberg, Rolf. 1988. “Pictorialist and Portraitist. Introduction”. Henry B. Goodwin. Pictorialist och porträttör. Pictorialist and Portraitist. Scandinavian Photographers Classic and Contemporary. Laholm: Alfabeta Bokförlag.

Toepfer, Karl. 1997. Empire of Ecstasy, Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture 1910 – 1935. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Vedel, Karen. 2008. En anden dans. Moderne scenisk dans i Danmark 1900 – 1975. København: Multivers.

ARCHIVAL MATERIAL

Contract signed by Mikhail Fokine and Fr. Brockenhuus Schack, Director, The Royal Danish Theater, 25 April, 1918, Theatre Journal 71/1918, The Danish National Archives.

Det Kongelige Teater. Letter (s.n.) addressed to Mikhail Fokine. Theatre Journal 71/1918, The Danish National Archives.

Balabanov, Eugene E. 1919. Three letters to Michel Fokine, 1919. In Fokine, Michel, 1880-1942. Michel Fokine Papers. Series: II. Correspondence (9). Houghton Library, Harvard Library, Harvard University. http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/ oasis/deliver/~hou00221 (15 September 2017).

Michel Fokine and Vera Fokina. List of performances. Tss, 1918-1928. 1 folder. Series: III. Biographical material (40). Fokine, Michel, 1880-1942. Michel Fokine Papers. Houghton Library, Harvard Library, Harvard University. http://oasis.lib. harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hou00221 (15 September 2017).

Stureson (on behalf of Mikhail Fokine). 1918. Telegram addressed to The Royal Danish Theatre. The National Archive. The Royal Theatre. Incoming documents nr. 55. 1918. PHOTOGRAPHS AND

ART WORKS

En Nat i Ægypten. 1918. Anon. The photo archives of the Royal Theatre Archives and Library.

Giersing, Harald. 1918. Danserinde. Colour postcard. Original in Museum Sønderjylland. Oil on compoboard; 122 x 91 cm. http://www.museumsonder- jylland.dk/SIDERNE/Museerne/Kunst-Tonder/04c09-April2003.html (15 September 2017).

Giersing, Harald. 1918. Fokin og Fokina. Oil on compoboard; 150 x 115 cm. In Lennart Gottlieb. 1981. Portrætter og gurbilleder af Harald Giersing 1881-1927. København: Statens Museum for Kunst.

Goodwin, Henry B. 1918. Jenny Hasselquist as The Dying Swan. In Vore Damer, April 2018.

Goodwin, Henry B. 1918a. Salome. Plate XI. Perseus. Plate XII. In Ida Goodwin and Henry B. Goodwin. Jenny Hasselqvist. Publikens Gunstlingar III. Stockholm: Lars Hökerbergs Förlag.

ONLINE RESOURCES

Royal Swedish Opera Archives https://www.operan.se/arkivet/ (15 September 2017).

DIGI, Nationabibliotekets Digitala Samlingar. https://digi.kansalliskirjasto. (15 September 2017).

Svenska Dagstidningar online. http://tidningar.kb.se (15 September 2017).

Turning Points and Continuity

Downloads

Published

2018-01-27

How to Cite

Vedel, K. A. (2018). The Performance of Pictorialist Dance Photography. Nordic Theatre Studies, 29(1), 138–161. https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v29i1.103314

Issue

Vol. 29 No. 1 (2017): Turning Points and Continuity. Reformulating Questions to the Archives

Section

Articles thematic section

License

The copyright belongs to the authors and Nordic Theatre Studies. Users can use, reuse and build upon the material published in the journal but only for non-commercial purposes. Users are allowed to link to the files, download the files, distribute the files on a local network (preferably by links), upload the files to local repositories if their institutions require them to do so, but not republish the files without proper agreements with the journal and the author.