John Beasley Greene

Greene's landscape photographs are often characterized by a particular simplicity, as in this photograph of the Nile in front of the Theban Mountains ( salt print from a paper negative, 1853-1854)

John Beasley Greene (* 1832 in Le Havre , † 1856 in Cairo ) was an American Egyptologist and photography pioneer of the 19th century, who is best known today for his photographs from Egypt and Algeria . He was a student of the photographer Gustave Le Gray and a founding member of the Société Française de Photographie . Greene's work was long forgotten because of his untimely death and has only been increasingly noticed again since the late 1970s. Because of his “characteristic and unique proto-modern perspective”, he is now counted among the “masters” of 19th century photography.

life and work

Greene was born in 1832 as the son of the American banker John Bulkley Greene (1780-1850) in Le Havre, France. His father had lived in France since 1814 and, at the time of his death in 1850, ran the Parisian bank Greene & Co. , which at the time was one of the leading banks on the European continent. As his father's only son, John Beasley Greene benefited from his financial independence, which enabled him to study Egyptology with Emmanuel de Rougé , who was then head of the Egyptian collections at the Louvre in Paris . Greene learned photography from Gustave Le Gray , one of the leading photographers of his time and co-inventor of the negative process with the collodion wet plate .

As a 21-year-old Greene toured Upper Egypt and Nubia on an extensive excursion in 1853/54 . From this trip he brought back numerous paper negatives, of which Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard had over 90 pictures under the title Le Nil: Monuments; paysages; explorations photographiques published. In 1854/55 he returned to Egypt and published his photos of the excavations at Medinet Habu in Thebes the following year . In 1855 he was a member of an official French expedition in Algeria. In late 1856, Greene began his third and final trip to Egypt. He arrived in Cairo seriously ill and died a few days later of an “unknown disease”, but probably not, as is often claimed, of tuberculosis .

Greene's work can be divided into two areas: the documentary photos and the artistic landscape photos. His pictures differ significantly from those of his contemporaries in their preference for graphic form, their unusual composition and their melancholy expression. The pictures from Egypt in particular show the emptiness of the landscape, which dominates the composition of numerous pictures.

Works

Le Nil: Monuments; paysages; explorations photographiques
Fouilles exécutées à Thebes dans l'année 1855, texts hièroglyphiques et documents inédits , Paris 1855

literature

Corey Keller: Signs and Wonders: The Photographs of John Beasley Greene , [p. l.] 2019, ISBN 978-3-7913-5846-8 .
Will Stapp: Greene, John Beasly , in: Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, ed. by John Hannavy, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-415-97235-2 , pp. 619-622.
Danièle Méaux: Monuments et Paysages de John B. Greene , in: History of Photography 33, 3 (2009), pp. 262-277.

Web links

Commons : John Beasley Greene - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Recordings by John Beasley Greene at the J. Paul Getty Museum , Los Angeles
Francis Hodgson, Writing about Photographs: John Beasley Greene (1832–1856) (Hodgson is Professor in the Culture of Photography at the University of Brighton, England)

Remarks

↑ Will Stapp points out the fact that the family grave in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris only spells the middle name with an "e", ie "Beasly" (Will Stapp, article Greene, John Beasly , in: Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, edited by John Hannavy, New York 2008, pp. 619–622, here p. 621). On the other hand, Stapp also suspects that John was named after Reuben Beasley, the American consul in Le Havre in the year of his birth (ibid., P. 621f.) The present article follows the spelling established in the literature as "Beasley".

^ "John Beasly Greene is now recognized as one of great masters of 19th century photography, admired for his distinctive and unique proto-modernist vision", Will Stapp, Greene, John Beasly , in: Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, p. 619 .

^ ^A ^b Will Stapp, Greene, John Beasly , in: Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, p. 620.

personal data
SURNAME	Greene, John Beasley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Greene, John Beasly
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Archaeologist and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH	1832
PLACE OF BIRTH	Le Havre
DATE OF DEATH	1856
Place of death	Cairo

[1] Will Stapp points out the fact that the family grave in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris only spells the middle name with an "e", ie "Beasly" (Will Stapp, article Greene, John Beasly , in: Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, edited by John Hannavy, New York 2008, pp. 619–622, here p. 621). On the other hand, Stapp also suspects that John was named after Reuben Beasley, the American consul in Le Havre in the year of his birth (ibid., P. 621f.) The present article follows the spelling established in the literature as "Beasley".

[2] "John Beasly Greene is now recognized as one of great masters of 19th century photography, admired for his distinctive and unique proto-modernist vision", Will Stapp, Greene, John Beasly , in: Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, p. 619 .

[Stapp620-3] A ^b Will Stapp, Greene, John Beasly , in: Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, p. 620.