Alvin Langdon Coburn

Alvin Langdon Coburn was an early 20th-century photographer who became a key figure in the development of American Pictorialism. He became the first major photographer to emphasize the visual potential of elevated viewpoints and later made some of the first completely abstract photographs. Coburn emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1912 and became a naturalized British

citizen in 1932.

Coburn was a meticulous printer, mastering many varied processes. His continuous searching for techniques to convey his unique vision led him to be one of the firsts to successfully combine the rich tonalities of the platinum process with the subtle colour of gum bichromate. He applied his mastery of these processes to a diverse range of subject matter, enabling the distinct attributes of a particular media to inform and support the poetic intent of his subjects.

Along with American contemporaries Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, Coburn turned his camera to the changing skyline of the cityscape, in notable works such as The Flat Iron Building (1911), called “a new Parthenon”, and the architectural dynamism of the bird’s eye view found in The Octopus (1912). Portraiture was also a mainstay of Coburn’s career. In the publications Men of Mark and More Men of Mark, he created a virtual “who’s who” of the personalities of his age, including the principal lights of the literary, visual and theatrical scene, such as Auguste Rodin and George Bernard Shaw.