FIRE & ICE Treasures from the Photographic Collection of Frederick Church at Olana Thomas

Weston Fels and Kevin J. Avery
Published by the Dahesh Museum of Art, N.Y.
and Cornel University Press, Ithica and London 2002
ISBN# 0-8014-4081-5 79 Pages $24.95

Reviewed by Chris Cobb
ldr@leonardo.org

Fire and Ice is about an important 19th century American painter who collected photographs. It is also a dramatic story about visuality in the arts and how ideas of the world changed when photography was invented. Having studied with Thomas Cole, Frederick Church was among the second generation of landscape painters from the so -called 'Hudson River School.' Along with other painters like Albert Bierstadt, Church helped create and amplify the myth of America to itself and the rest of the world. As one measure of this myth building, Church's 'Niagara' and Bierstadt's 'Rocky Mountain-Lender's Peak' won awards at the 1867 Paris Universal Exposition.

FIRE & ICE is a look at Church as a thoughtful collector of photography, which was not then considered an art form as much as a technical craft. However, this slender 79 page volume manages to include as many brilliant examples of 19th century photography as possible. Along with many anonymous images, included are Daguerrotypes of Niagra Falls by George Platt Babbitt, and a host of albumen prints by the likes of Carleton Watkins, Bourne & Shepard, and John Moran. A special treat is an anonymous albumen print showing a bay in Jamaica from the 1860’s. On the facing page is the Church painting 'Ridges in Blue Mountains, Jamaica 1865' which resembles the anonymous albumen photograph. The book makes several such comparisons, emphasizing the way Church saw, and how he, like many painters of the late 19th century, were effected by the invention of photography. This book is one of the best exhibition catalogs I have seen in a long time. The reproductions are superb and despite its historical nature it speaks to contemporary issues regarding the dialog between painting and photography.