The Tao of Dow

Lambertville’s Pedersen Gallery celebrates the work of one of the most influential photographers at the dawn of the medium.

By: Susan Van Dongen
   The history of American photography may have been influenced not by artistry, but by who was the better self-promoter — who gave the best "spin."
   The story goes that it was the artistry and organizing skills of Alfred Stieglitz that launched American photography at the turn of the 20th century. Roy Pedersen, curator, collector and owner of the Pedersen Gallery in Lambertville, disagrees.
   "Although Stieglitz was an important photographer and the force behind the structure of the American school, he was not the source of artistic leadership," he says. "In looking at the history of the development of the American school of photography, it is clear that the most prominent American photographers grew under the example and guidance of Arthur Wesley Dow."
   Mr. Pedersen says Mr. Dow visualized the future of American art moving away from Europe and even New York, expressing the conviction that the breakthrough would come from the West — painting and making pictures out there.
   Mr. Dow even influenced Georgia O’Keeffe to head west, which infuriated Stieglitz, who felt his disciple and amour would disappear if she moved away from New York. But off she went. Perhaps that was another reason Stieglitz buried the reputation of the elder photographer.
   "Everyone who was doing design, pottery, painting, photography and printmaking in the early 20th century was impacted by Dow," Mr. Pedersen says. "It’s just that no one ever went to (books about) Dow to look for it. If one person didn’t mention him, then the next person wouldn’t be inclined to mention Dow in their history of the topic. So you’d find him in the footnotes of things.
   "It wasn’t until about 15 years ago that this began to change, when George and Barbara Wright made their collection available for exhibition and people began to write about his work and see the importance of Dow," he continues. "Then all these articles and books began to appear."
   After decades of being underappreciated as a pioneer in the history of American photography, there is a resurgence of interest in Mr. Dow. Mr. Pedersen is presenting Arthur Wesley Dow: Important Works of Photography, 1895-1912, at his gallery in Lambertville Nov. 11 through Dec. 3.
   "Dow played an enormous role in photography and American art in the development at the turn of the century, the beginnings of modernism, the choice of the American West as subject matter," Mr. Pedersen says. "Dow’s impact was enormous but it was missed for all those years. By and large there are two reasons for this — he wasn’t an Ashcan painter, he wanted to create things of great beauty instead. And Stieglitz wouldn’t mention him.
   "Dow has been described as the artistic inspiration for photographers at the turn of the (20th) century," he continues. "That was something that Stieglitz was not going to share. What photography history has told us is that Stieglitz was the artistic inspiration for photographers and he really wasn’t. In fact, most photographers thought what he was doing was rather conservative. But Stieglitz has emerged as this great lion of American photography, mostly from his ability to promote himself. Dow, who was not at all a self-promoter, actually was the more important figure."
   The painter, pedagogue and photographer did get some acknowledgement from Sadakichi Hartmann, the main critic for the seminal photography magazine Camera Work. He wrote, "Light and shade composition is rarely accomplished in photography. The distinction between light and shade in photography always lacks vigor and what is more, the proportional value. The first shortcoming is a mechanical one, the second is due to the ignorance of art. Line composition is still rarer. Joseph Keiley is the only exception: he was wise enough to study A.W. Dow’s book on composition, and whenever he fails he at least knows why."
   Mr. Dow’s influence on the most talented of the artists drawn to photography was through his teaching and art. The early American pictorial photographers and their advocates were trying to establish that photography was an art independent of painting and also that it was not a simple mechanical technique for reproduction.
   Young photographers were also the most aware of the advances in aesthetics of the symbolist and other movements in Europe, wishing to break away from the naturalist traditions promoted by Stieglitz among others.
   It wasn’t easy for the early lensmen and women to gain respect. Not surprisingly, in the first exhibitions of photography, the judges were painters who didn’t take photography seriously and often gave the camera works negative commentary.
   "The breakthrough, which removed photography from the domain of painting and mechanical print making to a means of exquisite personal expression, arose with the awareness and the use of symbolism and Japanese composition," Mr. Pedersen says. "Dow was the person who promoted the importance and understanding of these advanced principles."
   Writing in The New York Times about a 2002 Dow exhibit at the Hirschl and Adler Galleries, Grace Glueck remarks that, while studying in France, Mr. Dow became interested in the flat, decorative qualities of Japanese art.
   "On his return to the United States, he pursued his developing view — that art should be both pictorial and decorative — in a variety of printmaking mediums," she writes.
   "The Japanese influence (can be seen) in ‘New Rochelle’ (1904), a wonderfully composed depiction of a twisted, gnarled conifer growing out of a boulder before a placid waterway, the whole resembling a landscape screen," she continues. "Most effective are his almost abstract views of the Grand Canyon, done less for pictorial effect than as explorations of the camera’s own vocabulary of space and geometry."
   "Dow had been writing and speaking on issues of composition since at least 1893," Mr. Pedersen says. "His ideas regarding the making of art were summed up in the 1899 publication of ‘Composition,’ which became the most important book of its kind."
   Of the six major Photo Secessionist photographers, all are acknowledged to have been influenced by Mr. Dow — Gertrude Kasebier, Clarence White, Joseph Keiley, Frank Eugene, Alvin Langdon Coburn and Edward Steichen.
   "Dow was out there, but no one ever added it up quite right," Mr. Pedersen says. "(Critics) miscategorized him. They wrote about what he wasn’t and missed what Dow was — a man who was teaching advanced ideas of composition.
   "Even as late as the mid-’80s, there was very little awareness of who he was," he continues. "If you look at older history of photography books, there probably won’t be any mention of Dow’s name. But if you go to the Internet and type in ‘Arthur Wesley Dow and photography,’ you’ll find hundreds of sites. Dow had such an impact in California at the turn of the 20th century that after he died, they formed the Dow Society, continued studying his work and writing. He was such a great inspiration."
Arthur Wesley Dow: Important Works of Photography 1895-1912, is on view at the Pedersen Gallery, 17 N. Union St., Lambertville, Nov. 11-Dec. 3. Opening reception: Nov. 11, noon-5 p.m. Gallery hours: Sat.-Sun. noon-5 p.m. and by appointment. For information, call (609) 397-1332.