Of Bricks & Light: Details and Glimpses

 Baldwin Coolidge [Boston, Massachusetts]: Untitled. Albumen print cabinet card (image size: 4″ x 5-1/4″), circa 1890

 

The cabinet card format dates back to 1868, and was used primarily for portraits. The “shock of the new” implicit in this proto-modernist work is only increased by presenting the image as a decidedly old-fashioned albumen print on a cabinet card mount. At first glance, it appears to be some sort of mistake, a chronological impossibility. Yet, here it is–an austere study of wires and rooftops and shapes and angles–a photograph that seems decades ahead of its time.