Figure 1 – Frank Eugene, “Minuet, 1900.” In the public domain because of its age.

In doing this past year’s Favorite and Noteworthy Photographs, I discovered and was quite taken by an image by Frank Eugene (1865 – 1936) entitled “Minuet, 1900.” It is shown in Figure 1. Frank Eugene was an American-born photographer, a founding member of the Photo-Secession, and one of the world’s first professors of photography. So marched photography ever so slowly from craft to fine art, which was, of course, a significant goal of the Photo-Secession.

What one sees in “Minuet” is typical of Eugene’s heavily worked negatives.  There is the very fine photographic detail of the dancer’s beautiful dress, the delicate precision of the lace and the setting of her hair, and at the same time scratches scribed with an etcher’s pen in the background to create the ambiguity: photograph or etching?  The faces of the audience are obscured in an impressionist fog and not seen at first.  To me, what is truly amazing about this image is that the subject’s back is turned to us.  We are barely thought of viewers. It is so antithetical to what we normally see as the “rules” of composition. And yet, the beauty of the woman is revealed to us by her slender, alluring neck with its alluring Ingresesque curve and by the mystery of her hair.  In these elements it is truly a genius work.