#holland day
I may have waxed lyrical on the hazy, dreamlike qualities of F. Holland Day’s beautiful outdoor nudes before, and I know many of you must prefer clarity over atmosphere, yet I cannot help once more admiring the grainy, glowing softness in these turn of the century pictures which gives them such enduring charm.
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Another of F. Holland Day’s dreamily beautiful Orpheus photographs, featuring (the also dreamily beautiful!) Nicola Giancola. At first I thought this a cropped detail of a photograph I had seen and shared before, but the angle changes between exposures.
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A difficulty in curating this collection into its third year is remembering all that I have featured before - just this afternoon I almost posted a photograph I had shown a long time ago (this, if you wonder what was so pretty I was enamoured all over again). I did catch my error in time, and instead have found a different yet no less lovely photograph by F. Holland Day, to fulfil the intended amount of dreamy delicate images he so perfectly supplies.
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Nude, 1896
by F. Holland Day
A sublime subtle nude by one of the greats, a restful scene of quiet contemplation in a gorgeous sun-dappled outdoor setting, simply perfect composition, a beautifully easy and relaxed model, and a tangible sense of peace and calm as by cool still water he gazes away into the leafy woods. Oh to feel grass beneath my toes again, I do so miss summer and soft green!
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A platinum print by F. Holland Day, 1898 - up close the grainy nature of the image obscures all detail, but viewed at a distance the figure becomes clear.
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A small portrait of soft-focus sweetness, the ever lovely Nicola Giancola photographed by F. Holland Day in 1907.
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Torso, by F. Holland Day, 1906, a photograph I’ve shared before but never such a large and beautiful copy as this here, all the better to appreciate the noble model and sheer perfection of lighting!
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The sublimely beautiful Nicola Giancola, a favourite model of F. Holland Day in the first decade of the 20th century - it is not difficult to see why this boy in his early 20s was so frequently photographed by the man who plucked him from obscurity - not only his sensual, timeless beauty but the emotion in his poses; he acts his parts with feeling, whether the exquisite suffering of Saint Sebastian, a vision of sweet innocence as he floats through the hazy forest in a dream, or the heroic nobility of this mythological character, described simply as ‘Youth with Feathered Hat and Robe’.
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A perfectly entrancing photograph by F. Holland Day, again the simple setting of a charmed woodland glade provides the timeless, otherworldly backdrop to a beautiful young man of rare grace, acting his part wonderfully well - a soul so transported by the sweetness of his music that nothing in the world can draw him from his dreamy reverie.
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What a beautiful scene from F. Holland Day, none seem as exquisitely adept at capturing the heavenly, otherworldly atmosphere as he, with his hazy, ghostly scenes of lovely young men adrift in timeless woodland glades and secret places among the rocks. We can also, perhaps, see this same model cradling a lyre, here.
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Fred Holland Day - Boy in unbuttoned shirt
We have enjoyed a selection of striking solo portraits by those working in Italy at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, the likes of von Gloeden, Plüschow and Galdi; now let us take a moment to look upon a wonderful portrait by an American turn-of-the-century photographer : F. Holland Day.
Like his unworldly scenes of melancholy beauty and solitary contemplation in the quiet wild places, this captivating closeup with simply breathtaking lighting has the same hazy soft focus - a deliberate artistic choice, not merely ‘cameras weren’t very good then’ as I’ve been told before when enthusing about this sublime style of photography!
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F. Holland Day,Saint Sebastian, 1906, platinum print
Saint Sebastian has taken on such iconic status in our era, it is fascinating to look back to what must surely be one of his first photographic depictions. An exquisitely beautiful young model, the expected saintly acceptance of his fate leaving his fine features unsullied by obvious pain or distress, indeed the upper half of the picture could be mistaken for glorious gorgeous erotica if we were not aware of the binding ropes and arrow wounds below.
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