Bombshell at the Tea Party

8/3/2019 Bombshell at the Tea Party

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Bombshell at the Tea Partywritten by Robert Goethalsphotography by Peter Henry Emerson

Cantley Wherries Waiting for the Turn of the Tide (Plate XXIV) 1886 JGS

His mother was a dreamy British doyenne. Father, an American, his

wallet beautiful and fat. His cousin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, star poet,

Transcendentalist, and waterlord of Walden Pond. An aristo born in

Cuba in 1856, Peter Henry Emerson shuttled back and forth between


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Cuba and New England during his early school daze, until the

underestimated Sugar Mill Patriots took up arms to fight for Cubas

independence from Spain. The teenage brainiac promptly shipped off

to England to complete his studies. Somewhere, between shooting

billiards and meteorological theorizing, authoring detective novels and

hobnobbing among his birding Fellows at the Royal College of

Surgeons, the young dude picked up a camera to probe the mysteriesof the Golden-winged Warbler. Right then and there, in the pomp of

sunshine and verdure, Emerson made the lightening-bolt decision to

devote his life to photography.

Ricking the Reed (Plate XXVII) 1886 JGS

Emersons early photographs of life in rural East Anglia are among the

earliest meditations on photography as an art form. In his writings,

Emerson advocated a radical break with 19th century artistic tradition.

Through the ground glass, Emerson believed, a photographer created

an image that both represented the world and its difference from that


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world. In his 1889 book, Naturalistic Photography for Students of Art,

Emerson wrote furiously about the subject. Nothing in nature has a

hard outline, but everything is seen against something else, and its

outlines fade gently into something else, often so subtly that you

cannot quite distinguish where one ends and the other begins. In this

mingled decision and indecision, this lost and found, lays all the charm

and mystery of nature.

The Fowler's Return (Plate XX) 1886 JGS

In the late 19th century, among the orthodox, tuxedo-slabbed old-

school pimps of Art Land, a mushroom cloud of bad attitude hovered

over photography. Emersons fresh take on the subject hit the

Victorian tea party like a bombshell. His arch-nemesis, a commercialphotographer named Henry Peach Robinson, staged scenes with

actors, costumes, and props before painting over them in post-

production. Just as Emerson sanctified everything natural, real, and

scientific, Robinson saw photography as a minor art that emulated

painting in its capacity for subjective expression and capturing an

artists ideal. This was all twaddle to Emerson, a man who conducted

himself like an effing capaz, inclined too towards sarcasm and vitriole.

Photographs need not endure the abject humiliation of


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imitating other art forms. Truth was the sole criterion of creative

success.

The Haunt of the Pike (Plate XV) 1886 JGS

When the crusty Old Guard didnt get down with Emersons edgy

technique and realistic approach, opinions began shooting back and

forth across the cultural landscape like zigzagging bats. For irascible

Emerson objectivity ruled supreme. But bone-dry Victorian critics,

anticipating Susan Sontags kvetching by 100 years, countered

Emersons photographs only made them want to see East Anglia and

when you see East Anglia poof! the art is gone. Emersons

photographs struck them as visual quotations rather than expressions

of creative intention. In rebuttal, Emerson launched into tirades so

vociferous, teacups rattled and grand dames feared the cracking of

skulls.


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An Eel-Catcher's Home (Plate VI) JGS

In the end, Emerson succumbed to the Old Guard, to whom, of course,

he belonged. Like a boxer going down on his last legs, the aristo

renounced all his early belief, bawling like a brat. Yes, photography wasa process of mechanical reproduction. No, photographs could never be

art. Yet the young Emersons views through the ground glass with

their modern emphasis on seeing as the primary creative activity

would river through the ages like the history of photography itself.

~ Robert Goethals, January 2010

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Bombshell at the Tea Party