Laszlo Layton | American, 1959 -
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This series of photographs evolved from my combined interests in Art and in Zoology. After many years spent painting I decided to explore the use of photography as a fine art medium after researching and learning about its origins in the 19th century. Further research regarding the old methods of print making and the new practitioners of "alternative" photography convinced me that photography could be a medium that involved much hand craft, which is one of the aspects of art making that I love most.
My Cabinet of Curiosities series borrows most heavily from the old illuminated books on nature from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Those scientific tomes were illustrated mostly with engravings and lithographs of drawings-usually taken, not from nature, but from mounted specimens or written accounts of the animal species as interpreted by the artist. What these illustrations may have lacked in scientific accuracy they more than made up for in artistic expression. In later years, with the widespread use of photography to document, the illustrated nature book was able to reveal living creatures, often photographed in their natural surroundings. While our 20th century natural history books were much more scientifically accurate, there is a certain romantic charm that I admire in the earlier illustrations that is lacking in the photographic representations.
With this series I am attempting to recapture and distill the essence of those old natural history illustrations, but through the photographic medium. Add to this mix my own artistic interpretations through use of light, composition, and sometimes, color.
In homage to my favorite photography movement, pictorialism, I have chosen to photograph this series exclusively with vintage soft-focus lenses hand-ground in Boston, Massachusetts by the Pinkham & Smith Company. Pinkham & Smith were opticians who had an interest in photography and designed and manufactured their own lenses made to order for clients including Alfred Stieglitz, F. Holland Day, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Kasebier and George Seeley.
I plan to pursue this series for a number of years so that I can include a great many animal species that are extinct, rare, forgotten, or mostly unfamiliar. Many of the species I have chosen to photograph are species, which, for personal reasons, somehow have related to my own life experience, giving the series an autobiographical aspect as well.
Layton's work is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and the International Wildlife Museum, Tucson, Arizona. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This series of photographs evolved from my combined interests in Art and in Zoology. After many years spent painting I decided to explore the use of photography as a fine art medium after researching and learning about its origins in the 19th century. Further research regarding the old methods of print making and the new practitioners of "alternative" photography convinced me that photography could be a medium that involved much hand craft, which is one of the aspects of art making that I love most.
My Cabinet of Curiosities series borrows most heavily from the old illuminated books on nature from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Those scientific tomes were illustrated mostly with engravings and lithographs of drawings-usually taken, not from nature, but from mounted specimens or written accounts of the animal species as interpreted by the artist. What these illustrations may have lacked in scientific accuracy they more than made up for in artistic expression. In later years, with the widespread use of photography to document, the illustrated nature book was able to reveal living creatures, often photographed in their natural surroundings. While our 20th century natural history books were much more scientifically accurate, there is a certain romantic charm that I admire in the earlier illustrations that is lacking in the photographic representations.
With this series I am attempting to recapture and distill the essence of those old natural history illustrations, but through the photographic medium. Add to this mix my own artistic interpretations through use of light, composition, and sometimes, color.
In homage to my favorite photography movement, pictorialism, I have chosen to photograph this series exclusively with vintage soft-focus lenses hand-ground in Boston, Massachusetts by the Pinkham & Smith Company. Pinkham & Smith were opticians who had an interest in photography and designed and manufactured their own lenses made to order for clients including Alfred Stieglitz, F. Holland Day, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Kasebier and George Seeley.
I plan to pursue this series for a number of years so that I can include a great many animal species that are extinct, rare, forgotten, or mostly unfamiliar. Many of the species I have chosen to photograph are species, which, for personal reasons, somehow have related to my own life experience, giving the series an autobiographical aspect as well.
Layton's work is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and the International Wildlife Museum, Tucson, Arizona. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California.