Alvin Langdon Coburn

Alvin Langdon Coburn ( born June 11, 1882 in Boston, USA, † November 23, 1966, Rhos-on -Sea ( Colwyn Bay ) North Wales, United Kingdom ) was an American- British photographer.

Life and work

Alvin Langdon Coburn created in a relatively short period from the early 20th century until the early 1920s, an extensive work, which made ​​an important contribution to the development of artistic photography.

At the age of eight he began to photograph in 1890 and introduced in 1898 for the first time out. In 1902 he became a member of the initiated by Alfred Stieglitz New York Photo-Secession. In Stieglitz's magazine Camera Work was first published in 1904 photographs by Coburn. While many travel cities and landscape photographs were taken. Above all, he photographed people in public life, in particular writers (including a series of portraits of George Bernard Shaw).

In 1912 he moved to England, joined - apparently under the influence of his personal friend Ezra Pound - the vorticist to, an avant-garde flow of Fine Arts in England. Alvin Langdon Coburn In this phase, creating abstract photographs that he " Vortographien " called. Technically remained for him the method of determining photogravure, a technique that was characteristic of the flow of pictorialism in photography.

In the 1960s, AL Coburn over appropriated his portfolio of around 20,000 photographs and negatives to the George Eastman House, New York.

Books (selection)

Literature (selection )

• Alvin Langdon Coburn: A Portfolio of Sixteen Photographs, 1962
• Alvin Langdon Coburn, 1882 - 1966, P. Blatchford, London, 1978
• Alvin Langdon Coburn, Photographs 1900 - 1924, Zurich, 1999