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John Beasley Greene

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Born in 1832 in Le Havre, France, to American parents, the enigmatic photographer John Beasley Greene was a student of the noted photographer Gustave Le Gray in Paris, who, as author and historian Eugenia Parry writes, was “a magician of change who inspired and shaped the genius of John Beasley Greene.” Greene’s unusual still lives made on a rooftop in Paris, probably during his studies with Le Gray, show the beginnings of his enchanted eye. This exhibition at Hans P. Kraus Photographs features a rare group of more than 25 waxed paper negatives and salt prints exhibited for the first time.

In 1853, the 21-year old Greene made the first of two voyages to Egypt as a photographer and archaeologist. At that time, he documented Egyptologist Auguste Mariette’s excavations around the Great Sphinx of Giza. But he may have been drawn to the monuments and landscape as much as the dry desert air. As Parry notes, “France was killing him. Not the culture. The climate. The ocean fog in Le Havre and the Paris rains added further torment to his congenitally infected lungs…Perhaps he began to think of Egypt as a kind of safe-house where he would have to live in order to live at all.”

Mid-19th century mania for life on the Nile may have also drawn Greene to Egypt, but once there he took in the endless expanse of sky and the wonder of the newly decipherable hieroglyphics and created majestic views. Among his photographs are images of Cleopatra’s Needle, the obelisk now situated in New York’s Central Park, and Pompey’s Pillar, a landmark to this day in Alexandria.

From 1855-1856, Greene made his last series in Constantine, an ancient city dramatically perched on a mountaintop in Algeria. Quoting Parry: “in the light of North Africa, he doesn’t exactly represent places, even when he records houses, ruined aqueducts, roads, bridges or burial sites…This late work is about feeling. At Constantine, dwellings on a stone mountain seem to be outcroppings of the rocks themselves. Encroaching shadows on disgorgements of stone near a Christian tomb fill the frame. It’s suffocating, even monstrous at times…Young Greene was close to dying. He wanted his pictures to look like how he felt.”

John Beasley Greene
Through December 2, 2016
Hans P. Kraus Photographs
962 Park Ave
New York, NY 10028
USA

http://www.sunpictures.com/

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