Photograph by Paul Juley
Emily Moazami, one of American Art's photograph archivists, recently found this gem in our Peter A. Juley & Son Collection.
We recently unearthed an interesting example of a pre-Photoshoped holiday card as part of American Art's Peter A. Juley & Son Collection. And even though the holidays are over we'd like to prolong the good tidings for just a little while longer by showing the younger generation how it was done before we had Photoshop.
Before the days of digital photo editing software, a holiday card like this one took many steps to accomplish. This card is made up of four elements. The base photograph is of a woman standing with her arms stretched between two redwood trees. The image of the man behind the camera is superimposed on top of that. Next, Juley painted snow into the foreground and around the trees for a wintery effect. Finally, the greeting text was painted on top of the snow.
Based on the woman’s clothing and the redwood forest, I believe the original photograph was created in the 1930s. It’s probable that Juley photographed it during his trip to Northern California between 1930–31. During this excursion west, Juley photographed Mexican artist Diego Rivera painting a mural at the San Francisco Stock Exchange Luncheon Club. He also captured images of Rivera and fellow artist and wife, Frida Kahlo in their downtime.
Peter A. Juley (1862–1937) and his son Paul P. Juley (1890–1975) headed the largest and most respected fine arts photography firm in New York from 1907 to 1975. The collection of 127,000 black & white photographic negatives documents the work of more than 11,000 American artists and includes more than 4,700 photo portraits of artists and artists at work. These images capture some of the most well-known artists of the twentieth century, including Thomas Hart Benton, Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Barnett Newman, and Grant Wood.
In addition to being a talented photographer, Paul Juley clearly had a creative mind. And he knew how to use it in the darkroom (you remember what a darkroom was, right?).
