Artist Biographies
Maurice Tabard
French, 1897-1984
Avant-garde photographer Maurice Tabard (born in Lyon) experimented with a number of techniques, including solarization, double exposure, and
photomontage. Tabard's father, a silk manufacturer and amateur photographer, left France with his son in 1914 to work in the silk mills of Paterson, New Jersey. The
young Tabard worked as a silk designer during the day and studied painting at night. A few years later the Tabards moved to New York City, where Maurice
studied briefly at the New York Institute of Photography.
In 1922 Tabard joined the staff of the Bachrach Studio as a portrait photographer and worked in a number of cities, including Baltimore,
Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati. Six years later he returned to France, establishing himself in Paris as a freelance portrait, fashion, and advertising photographer.
During these years he became associated with Man Ray and René Magritte and began experimenting with solarization and double exposure. In 1929 his
photographs were included in the Film und
Foto exhibition of avant-garde photography and film in Stuttgart; four years later, his article "Notes on Solarization" appeared
in Arts et Métiers Graphiques.
Throughout the 1930s-50s Tabard continued to produce his own experimental work while pursuing various commercial jobsfor Deberny-Peignot
publishers, Pathó Films, Gaumont Films, the French government,
Harper's Bazaar in Europe and the United States, and Paul Linwood Gittings Studio, New
Yorkand worked as a freelance photographer from 1948-65. In the mid-1960s he retired from photography and in 1980 moved to Nice.
Over the years Tabard's work was included in numerous exhibitions, including
Modern European Photography at the Julian Levy Gallery, New
York (1932), Photographic Surrealism at the New Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (1979), and
L'Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism at the Corcoran
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1985). M.M.
William Henry Fox Talbot
British, 1800-1877
Born in Melbury, Dorset, Fox Talbot was a gentleman of the 19th century who, like many others of his class, pursued leisure activities in the arts and
sciences. He experimented with means for capturing permanently the elusive images formed on paper by the camera obscura, an instrument used as a drawing aid.
After several years of varying results, Talbot successfully devised a process that chemically recorded the image made by light on a piece of paper. On February
21, 1839, one month after the announcement of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre's photographic process, Talbot presented his experiments to the Royal Society
in London.
Talbot's process differed greatly from that of Daguerre. Unlike the daguerreotype's sharply detailed image, the calotype, or Talbotype, was softly
blurred; yet because the positive image was made from a negative, it had the advantage of multiple reproduction. This formed the basis of conventional photography.
A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, Talbot was a man of scholarly and scientific bent whose interests included optics and botany. Before his
work in photography, he also had published on mathematics and linguistics. He later played an important role in the deciphering of Assyrian and other cuneiform
inscriptions of interest to biblical scholars.
Talbot was made a Fellow of the Royal Society at age 32. He is credited with the first photographic negative, which still exists, a view of a set of
windows at his home, Lacock Abbey. He invented a form of engraving that was a forerunner of photogravure, as well as other innovations in the quickly growing art
form for which he was largely responsible.
Talbot's The Pencil of Nature (1844-46) and
Sun Pictures in Scotland (1845) are two of the earliest photographically
illustrated books. T.W.F.
Félix Teynard
French, 1817-1892
Félix Teynard, believed to have been born in Grenoble, was a civil engineer who traveled and photographed in Egypt in 1851-52. Of the resulting plates,
160 were published in Paris by Goupil et Cie. and printed by H. de Fonteny in 32 installments of five each between 1853-54 under the title
Egypte et Nubie. Sites et Monument les plus intéressantes pour l'étude de l'art et de l'histoire. . .
. The collection later was published in 1857 by Goupil et Cie. for the extraordinary
purchase price of nearly 1,000 francs.
Although Teynard is not known to have photographed again, his calotypes of Egypt are prized for their strong personal sensibility. Light and shadow
play a strong role, and complex scenes are reduced to broad and simple forms. Teynard returned to Egypt in 1869 from his home in Saint-Martin as an official
guest at the opening of the Suez Canal. No evidence of photographic activity on this later journey has been found. T.W.F.
Ruth Thorne-Thomsen
American, 1943-
Ruth Thorne-Thomsen (born in New York City) has described her work as "environmental collage." Since 1976 she has worked extensively with the pinhole
camera and paper negatives to achieve soft-focus effects. She often incorporates into her images handmade miniature props (cardboard silhouettes, cones,
pyramids, and ships), constructing mythic tableaux that recall forms and fragments from antiquity, as well as 20th-century surrealism. Such series include
Expeditions (1976-84), Door (1981-83),
Prima Materia (1985-87), Views from the
Shoreline (1986-87), and Songs of the
Sea (begun 1991). For her series titled
Messengers (1989-90)portraits of statues blurred as if in motionThorne-Thomsen increased her scale from 4 x 5 inches to 4 x 5 feet, giving her
subjects Pygmalion life. Drawing references from philosophy, literature, myth, and dreams, she configures a psychic territory where archetype and reality playfully
coalesce.
Before devoting herself to photography and teaching, Thorne-Thomsen was a dancer, earning an F.A. in dance from Columbia College (1963) and
touring with the Sybil Shearer Dance Company (1964-65), based in Northbrook, Illinois. After earning a B.F.A. in painting from Southern Illinois University and
a B.F.A. in photography from Columbia College, she studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (M.F.A., 1975), then worked as staff photographer for
the Chicago Sun-Times (1978). She has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts (1982, 1989) and La Napoule Foundation, France (1989).
She taught photography at Columbia College (1974-83) and in the department of fine arts and theater at the University of Colorado (1983-89). Thorne-Thomsen
lives in Philadelphia and Moab, Utah. A.W.
Captain Linnaeus Tripe
British, 1822-1902
Born in Davenport, Linnaeus Tripe was an officer in the 12th Regiment Native Infantry at Bangalore who learned photography while on furlough in England
between 1851-54. In 1855 he was appointed photographer to a British mission in Burma, where he produced more than 120 views subsequently published by
the Madras Photographic Society in Bangalore (1857). For four years, beginning in 1856, he was government photographer to the Madras presidency. Six
volumes with more than 100 images of various cities in Madras (now Tamil Nadu) were later published.
Like other expeditionary photographers, Tripe documented the landscape, culture, and architecture he encountered. His particular views are valued
not only for their factual content, but also for Tripe's soft, almost romantic interpretation of his subjects. Rising through the military ranks during his career, Tripe
retired to England as an honorary major general in 1875. He continued to photograph for his own pleasure. T.W.F.
Benjamin Brecknell Turner
British, 1815-1894
Benjamin Turner was considered one of Britain's finest calotypists. His principal subjects were architecture and landscape, but he also produced portraits.
Turner took up photography in 1849, learning the new art form directly from William Henry Fox Talbot, inventor of the calotype process. He also worked with Sir
Charles Wheatstone, an early experimenter in optics and photography.
Turner practiced photography both in the field and in a glazed studio he had built above the family tallow chandling business, which he managed
for more than 50 years after the death of his father in 1841. Like his photographs, his candles were said to be the best of their kind. He enjoyed photographing
the countryside and would often transport his enormous camera and portable darkroom on a wheeled cart. Turner's work is distinguished by an interest in detail
derived from earlier painting, as well as by conveyance of the strong feelings objectified in his images of buildings and land. His wife, Agnes Chamberlain, was
a member of the Worcester china family, and many of his images are of the Worcester-Hereford area.
Turner belonged to the Calotype Club and was a founder of both the Photographic Exchange Club (serving as treasurer and honorary secretary) and
the Photographic Society of London (later serving as vice president). One of his works in the Great Exhibition in London (1851) was admired by and presented
to Prince Albert. Turner's works were also included in the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where he won a bronze medal, and the 1862 International
Exhibition in London. T.W.F.
The biograhies were written by Karen L. Churchill, Thomas Weston Fels, Maureen A. McKenna, and April Watson.
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