A Tree in Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh
<p>Coburn made this photograph as part of a project illustrating Robert Louis Stevenson’s <em>Edinburgh Picturesque Notes</em>. He wrote of this image: “This vision of a mouldering churchyard full of tombs is not in the least gloomy or depressing. It has a kind of charm, a serene beauty of its own which lifts it out of the commonplace, and gives it a stability and character which some ancient localities seem to acquire with time and association, as difficult to explain as the mysteries of love and death and the great human emotions, but there to be discovered by the visionaries of future generations who follow in the footsteps of discerning Stevenson.”</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1905
- Dimensions
- Image/paper: 39 × 32 cm (15 3/8 × 12 5/8 in.); Mount: 52.4 × 39.3 cm (20 11/16 × 15 1/2 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Alvin Langdon Coburn
Artist
Photography
Alvin Langdon Coburn was an American photographer and pioneer of modernist photographic abstraction who worked from the 1900s until his death in 1966. He is known for his early experiments with close-up photography, soft focus portraiture, and abstract compositions created through multiple exposures and unconventional framing. His vortographs, geometric photographic abstractions produced in collaboration with Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis around 1917, anticipated non-representational photography by decades. Coburn's technical innovations and formal investigations positioned photography as a medium capable of genuine artistic and conceptual innovation rather than mere documentation.
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More by Alvin Langdon Coburn
Vortograph of Ezra Pound
1916 · Gelatin silver print
Vortograph
1916 · Gelatin silver print
Portrait of John Masefield
1915 · Photogravure
Portrait of Augustus John
1914 · Gelatin silver print
Gezicht op Custom House aan de Theems met boten
1914 · photoaquatint on cardboard
Gezicht op de Tower of London aan de Theems met boten
1914 · photoaquatint on cardboard
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Alvin Langdon Coburn
- Year
- 1905
- Dimensions
- Image/paper: 39 × 32 cm (15 3/8 × 12 5/8 in.); Mount: 52.4 × 39.3 cm (20 11/16 × 15 1/2 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1905-107078
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified