Vintage Ann Stautberg Hand-Colored Photography Titled Van, Dallas, 1979 - American Modern Art

Description

A rare and important early work by the iconic American artist/photographer Ann Stautberg (United States, b.1949) Van, Dallas, 1979

Signed, … more A rare and important early work by the iconic American artist/photographer Ann Stautberg (United States, b.1949) Van, Dallas, 1979

Signed, titled, and dated in pencil, lower margin recto.
Inscribed in pencil, lower margin recto: Donated to Mary Kay Remer "Art About Town", 1986

PROVENANCE:
The artist;
Sale: Art About Town, donated by the above, 1986;
Acquired by the previous owner from the above, 1986.

ACQUISITION:
Heritage Auction, Dallas, Texas. Fine and Decorative Art Showcase Auction Catalog, 2021

Early work from Houston artist Ann Stautberg. Overall excellent condition with no visible defects. Variations in surface sheen, inherent to production. Hand-coloring visible in the margins, and extending onto the interior mat, also inherent to production.

DIMENSIONS:
Framed under glass to 24 1/4 by 20 1/4 inches

Hand-colored gelatin silver print
14-1/2 x 14-1/2 inches (36.8 x 36.8 cm)

Sheet measures 19 3/4 by 15 7/8 inches.

Sheet is dry mounted to mat measuring 24 by 20 inches.

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
From Public Art University of Houston
By Cammie Tipton, Assistant Curator, Public Art UHS

Throughout her long career, the photographer Ann Stautberg has maintained a close connection with the Texas landscape—from gulf waters to rough terrains and local botanicals—her work is informed by a long history of traditional documentary photography. However, despite this adherence to documentary, Stautberg lends her own personal style to her photographs by hand-manipulating each work so as to embed each image with an individual touch. Early in her career Stautberg studied painting and printmaking and these arts find their place in her photographs today, connecting her photographs to a long history of craft tradition. This combining technique includes Stautberg hand-coloring her black and white images with photographic oils and sometimes printing photographs on canvas and hand-painting them, allowing the artist to combine her interests in documentary photography with her love of painting. The results make for intriguing collage-like images that ultimately complicate any straightforward categorization of her work as well as extend the traditional definitions of these techniques.

The practice of hand-coloring black and white photographs reaches back to the nineteenth century and the beginnings of photography itself, before color film was invented, when viewers craved a sense of the “real.” Today, the technique results in photographs that emit a romantic haze of a much earlier time, and Stautberg’s images look as if she is creating distant memories from contemporary moments. Additionally, hand-painting photographs allows an agency to the artist because we cannot know the original colors, thereby allowing the artist to create her own color field. Stautberg’s choice to hand-paint photographs is not only reminiscent of the beginnings of the photographic process but her technique incorporates both practices of photography and painting, fusing the two in a collaging that remains contemporary while also containing an air of mystery and a strong sense of the past.

In many ways Stautberg continues the traditions of classic documentary photography. Of her photographic process, she explains , “I always shoot full frame and never manipulate anything,” letting the landscape tell the story. This lack of production-manipulation is a hallmark of traditional documentary as a trusted site of “realism.” Additionally, in true documentary style, Stautberg chooses titles that contain simply the date the image was taken, and sometimes, as in her earlier pieces, they may include the location or the print number. This practice of titling by date or location originated in the earliest practices of nineteenth century photography when society widely viewed the camera as an instrument for capturing “reality” and used it primarily as an evidential tool. As a machine, the camera innately captures a precise moment, and this temporal precision makes photography unique from other artforms. Early in her career, Stautberg would frequently make only one print of her photographs. In a perceived dedication to the single art object, this decision speaks more to her early training in painting than in her use of the camera. The camera, as an instrument, was developed to make rapid and endless image reproductions, therefore the single photograph is a rarity in the field. However, in the 1980s, as trends in photography art grew and museums began to collect more widely, photography slowly began to be accepted as an art form. It was around this same time that major developments in photographic technologies gave room for dramatic shifts in scale and styles. What was once considered a commonplace scale for a photograph–a portrait layout a few inches high and wide–was soon replaced, thanks to digital technologies, with much larger images that were easier to reproduce. With these advances, Stautberg began producing editions of her work in large-scale form, enjoying the strong sense of presence that larger sizes allow. The photograph 6–12–17 stands at a stunning sixty inches high and forty-five inches wide, allowing the viewer to access the smallest of details when standing closely, while also creating the feel of a total environment when stepping back and viewing in full. Today, Stautberg leans into the natural reproducibility of the camera, however, always enchanted with the art object, she creates mostly limited-edition collections. less