Thursday, March 25, 2010

F. Holland Day: Suffering the Ideal.


F. Holland Day: Suffering the Ideal. Photographs by F. Holland Day. Text by James Crump. Twin Palms Publishers, Santa Fe, 1995. 144 pp., 96 four-colour illustrations, 11x14". Cover image from here.

F. Holland Day
was an American photographer and publisher living in the nineteenth century. He's considered to be the first person in the US to advocate that photography should be viewed as fine art

Day is probably best known for his self-portraits as Jesus Christ on the cross, as well as his mythological series featuring images of male nudes.


The monograph 'F. Holland Day: Suffering the Ideal' is described by the publisher as:

"The short-lived career of nineteenth-century photographer F. Holland Day is the basis for this important historical monograph.

Though he is perhaps best known for his controversial 'sacred subjects' in which he posed himself as Jesus Christ, Day quickly moved to the forefront of American photography with his portraiture and his later mythological series.

Day was probably the first great photographer of the male nude. A friend of Oscar Wilde and an early proponent of gay rights, women's rights, and racial equality, scandal surrounded him and caused his marginalization."

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