On View
Not on viewObject number1995/6.2
Setting Up the Bow Net
Maker
Peter Henry Emerson
(British, 1856-1936)
Date1886
Mediumplatinum print
Dimensionsimage (flush): 6 3/8 × 11 3/8 in. (16.2 × 28.9 cm)
mount: 10 3/4 × 15 1/8 in. (27.3 × 38.4 cm)
mat: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
mount: 10 3/4 × 15 1/8 in. (27.3 × 38.4 cm)
mat: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
Credit LinePermanent Collection Fund
Exhibition History"Selections from the Permanent Collection," KIA (Mar. - Apr. 1997).
"Photo Affinities," KIA Long Gallery (June 2000 - Jan. 2001)(cf 1961/2.84).
"Photo Affinities," Art Center of Battle Creek (Jan. 6 - Mar. 4, 2003).
"The Thing Itself: Daguerreotype to Digital," Dennos Museum Center (Dec. 6, 2003 - Mar. 7, 2004).
"At Work and Play," KIA Long Gallery (Apr. 1 - July 22, 2005).
"Masterworks on Paper," KIA Long Gallery (Sept. 2005- Jan. 2006).
"Highlights of the KIA Permanent Collection (purchased with Auction funds)," KIA Gallery 5 (Sept 9 - Oct. 14, 2006).
Label TextPhotographer Peter Henry Emerson purchased his first camera in 1882 as a tool to be used while birding, and his long subsequent career as a photographer and photography theorist was, unsurprisingly, frequently inspired by his passionate love for the natural world. Setting Up the Bow Net was included in Emerson’s first album, Life and Landscape of the Norfolk Broads, a collaboration with painter Thomas Frederick Goodall that chronicled the natural beauty and everyday life of the scenic rivers and marshes of far eastern England. In part because of improved train links with London and other cities, at the time of Emerson’s photographs the Broads were a growing tourist destination, drawing urbanites through the promise of experiencing an idyllic premodern world. Though his stated intention was to chronicle life in this picturesque rural region as it was, Emerson’s photographs were very carefully orchestrated. Goodall’s fiancée Edith and her father, who were from the area, posed for this fishing scene, which also served as a study for one of Goodall’s paintings.
Emerson is remembered today as an influential advocate for the artistic merits of unmanipulated “straight” photography at a time when most of those seeking to establish the medium’s reputation as an art form were Pictorialists who sought to create impossible images through photomontages or retouch their photographs to achieve misty effects reminiscent of the loose brushwork en vogue among painters of the era.
