Consuelo Kanaga
Encyclopedia
Consuelo Delesseps Kanaga (1894–1978) was an American photographer and writer who became well known for her photographs of African-Americans.
, the second child of Amos Ream Kanaga and Mathilda Carolina Hartwig. Her father was a successful lawyer and judge in Ohio. After moving to Astoria he became the district attorney for the city, and he also traveled widely, often leaving his family behind with little notice. After they moved to California in 1915 her mother became a real estate broker, a highly unusual occupation for a woman at that time. The last name "Kanaga" is of Swiss origin, and a family genealogy traces its roots back at least 250 years. The source of her first name is not known, although the spelling is unusual for a woman's name. Her middle name "Delesseps" is a said to have come from her mother's admiration for Ferdinand de Lesseps
, the builder of the Suez and Panama canals.
In 1911 the family moved moved from Oregon to Larkspur in Marin County, California. Four years later 1915 Kanaga got a job as a reporter, feature writer and part-time photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle
. Dorothea Lange
later said that Kanaga was the first female newspaper photographer she had ever encountered. It was there that she discovered Alfred Stieglitz
's journal Camera Work
and decided to become a photographer. Soon after she met Dorothea Lange
, who encouraged her to take up photography as a career. Lange introduced her to the growing San Francisco Bay Area community of artistic photographers, notably Anne Brigman
, Edward Weston
, Francis Bruguière
, and Louise Dahl-Wolf.
In 1919 she married mining engineer Evans Davidson, but they separated within two years. In 1922 she moved to New York in order to work as a photojournalist for the newspaper New York American. While in New York a co-worker at the newspaper, Donald Litchfield, introduced her to Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz worked with Kanaga to help transform her vision from photojournalism to a more artistic photographic style. By March 1923 she was living with Litchfield, although at the time she had not yet divorced Davidson. In 1924 she and Litchfield moved to California, living at times near Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Los Angeles. By the end of the year she had finalized divorce proceedings against Davidson, and she became engaged to Litchfield. The engagement last only six months, however, and by the end of the year they were no longer a couple.
In 1926 she met Tina Modotti
, who was visiting San Francisco, and she put together a small exhibition of Modotti's photographs at the Kanaga Studio on Post Street. Aided by art patron Albert Bender, she began planning a prolonged "tour" of Europe, and in 1927 she spent the latter part of the year traveling and photographing in France, Germany, Hungary and Italy. While there she met up with Dahl, and the two of them spent many weeks traveling together.
While traveling to Tunisia in January, 1928, she met James Barry McCarthy, an Irish writer and ex-pilot, and by March they were married. In May they returned to New York City and took up residence there. Kanaga initially found work as a photographic retoucher, but within a few months she had her own darkroom and was printing the first of her many photos from Europe. In 1930 she and McCarthy moved to San Francisco, and soon she was re-established in the photographic community there.
In 1931 she met and began to employ African-American Eluard Luchell McDonald, a "man-of-all-trades" who worked for her as a handyman and chauffeur. She began to photograph him around her home, and as they talked she became captivated by the plight of African-Americans and their continuing fight against racism. Soon she was devoting much of her photography to images of African-Americans, their homes and their culture.
in 1932 she was invited by Weston and Ansel Adams
to participate in the famous Group f/64
show at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, and she showed four prints. There is some confusion about whether Kanaga should actually be called a "member" of Group f/64. The announcement for the show at the de Young Museum listed seven photographers in Group f/64 and said "From time to time various other photographers will be asked to display their work with Group f/64. Those invited for the first showing are: Preston Holder
, Consuela [sic] Kanaga, Alma Lavenson
, Brett Weston
." However, in 1934 the group posted a notice in Camera Craft magazine that said "The F:64 group includes in its membership such well known names as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke
, John Paul Edwards
, Imogene [sic] Cunningham
, Consuela [sic] Kanaga and several others." In an interview later in her life, Kanaga herself said "I was in that f/64 show with Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke and Ansel Adams, but I wasn't in a group, nor did I belong to anything ever. I wasn't a belonger."
In 1935 she moved back to New York without McCarthy, and the two apparently were divorced sometime that year. She began plans for a portfolio of African Americans and interviewed several families in Harlem with whom she hoped to live while documenting their lives. While there she remet painter Wallace Putnam, whom she had met the last time she lived in New York. Within three months they were married. They spent part of their honeymoon visiting Alfred Stieglitz at his home at Lake George
.
In 1938 she began lecturing at the Photo League, where she influenced a new generation of artistic photographers, including Aaron Siskind
. By 1940 she found teaching too restrictive, and she returned to taking photographs full time. She was actively photographing and exhibiting throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s. In the latter decade she became very active in civil rights, and she took part in and photographed many demonstrations and marches. In 1963 she was arrested in Albany, Georgia
during the Walk for Peace.
She finally seemed to have found the right romantic and creative partner in Putnam, and the two of them remained together for the rest of her life. They traveled frequently and spent the last half of the 1960s going back and forth to France.
Kanaga died on 28 February 1978, in Yorktown Heights, New York. Her entire estate amounted to $1,345 in photographic equipment, almost 2,500 negatives and 375 prints. Everything else she had given away to friends.
Her portraiture included many well-known artists and writers of the 1930s and 40s, including Milton Avery
, Morris Kantor
, Wharton Esherick
, Mark Rothko
and W. Eugene Smith
.
Kanaga, who was white, was one of the few photographers in the 1930s to produce artistic portraits of black people. Significantly, the four prints she contributed to the first Group f/64 exhibition were all portraits of blacks, including two of Eluard Luchell McDaniel, whom she would photograph repeatedly in ensuing years. Kanaga also photographed black writers and intellectuals, among them Langston Hughes
and Countee Cullen
.
In 1949 she was included in the very important show 50 Photographs by 50 Photographers: Landmarks in Photographic History at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Kanaga's best-known image, "She Is a Tree of Life to Them," was given its title by Edward Steichen
when he selected it for the landmark Family of Man exhibition in 1955. The picture, from a study of migrant workers in Florida, portrays a slender black woman, framed against a white wall, who gathers her children to her with a tender gesture.
She continued photographing through the 1960s, including a series of photographs of civil rights demonstrations
in Albany, Georgia
in 1963. In 1976 the Brooklyn Museum
gave her a one-woman retrospective exhibition.
About her work, she said:
Life
Kanaga was born on 15 May 1894 in Astoria, OregonAstoria, Oregon
Astoria is the county seat of Clatsop County, Oregon, United States. Situated near the mouth of the Columbia River, the city was named after the American investor John Jacob Astor. His American Fur Company founded Fort Astoria at the site in 1811...
, the second child of Amos Ream Kanaga and Mathilda Carolina Hartwig. Her father was a successful lawyer and judge in Ohio. After moving to Astoria he became the district attorney for the city, and he also traveled widely, often leaving his family behind with little notice. After they moved to California in 1915 her mother became a real estate broker, a highly unusual occupation for a woman at that time. The last name "Kanaga" is of Swiss origin, and a family genealogy traces its roots back at least 250 years. The source of her first name is not known, although the spelling is unusual for a woman's name. Her middle name "Delesseps" is a said to have come from her mother's admiration for Ferdinand de Lesseps
Ferdinand de Lesseps
Ferdinand Marie, Vicomte de Lesseps, GCSI was the French developer of the Suez Canal, which joined the Mediterranean and Red Seas in 1869, and substantially reduced sailing distances and times between the West and the East.He attempted to repeat this success with an effort to build a sea-level...
, the builder of the Suez and Panama canals.
In 1911 the family moved moved from Oregon to Larkspur in Marin County, California. Four years later 1915 Kanaga got a job as a reporter, feature writer and part-time photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
. Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration...
later said that Kanaga was the first female newspaper photographer she had ever encountered. It was there that she discovered Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
's journal Camera Work
Camera Work
Camera Work was a quarterly photographic journal published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. It is known for its many high-quality photogravures by some of the most important photographers in the world and its editorial purpose to establish photography as a fine art...
and decided to become a photographer. Soon after she met Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration...
, who encouraged her to take up photography as a career. Lange introduced her to the growing San Francisco Bay Area community of artistic photographers, notably Anne Brigman
Anne Brigman
Anne Wardrope Brigman was an American photographer and one of the original members of the Photo-Secession movement in America. Her most famous images were taken between 1900 and 1920, and depict nude women in primordial, naturalistic contexts.-Life:Brigman was born in the Nuuanu Valley above...
, Edward Weston
Edward Weston
Edward Henry Weston was a 20th century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course of his forty-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of...
, Francis Bruguière
Francis Bruguière
Francis Joseph Bruguière was an American-born photographer. Friends with Alfred Stieglitz, Bruguière worked in San Francisco , New York, and London....
, and Louise Dahl-Wolf.
In 1919 she married mining engineer Evans Davidson, but they separated within two years. In 1922 she moved to New York in order to work as a photojournalist for the newspaper New York American. While in New York a co-worker at the newspaper, Donald Litchfield, introduced her to Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz worked with Kanaga to help transform her vision from photojournalism to a more artistic photographic style. By March 1923 she was living with Litchfield, although at the time she had not yet divorced Davidson. In 1924 she and Litchfield moved to California, living at times near Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Los Angeles. By the end of the year she had finalized divorce proceedings against Davidson, and she became engaged to Litchfield. The engagement last only six months, however, and by the end of the year they were no longer a couple.
In 1926 she met Tina Modotti
Tina Modotti
Tina Modotti was an Italian photographer, model, actress, and revolutionary political activist.- Early life :Modotti was born Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini in Udine, Friuli, Italy...
, who was visiting San Francisco, and she put together a small exhibition of Modotti's photographs at the Kanaga Studio on Post Street. Aided by art patron Albert Bender, she began planning a prolonged "tour" of Europe, and in 1927 she spent the latter part of the year traveling and photographing in France, Germany, Hungary and Italy. While there she met up with Dahl, and the two of them spent many weeks traveling together.
While traveling to Tunisia in January, 1928, she met James Barry McCarthy, an Irish writer and ex-pilot, and by March they were married. In May they returned to New York City and took up residence there. Kanaga initially found work as a photographic retoucher, but within a few months she had her own darkroom and was printing the first of her many photos from Europe. In 1930 she and McCarthy moved to San Francisco, and soon she was re-established in the photographic community there.
In 1931 she met and began to employ African-American Eluard Luchell McDonald, a "man-of-all-trades" who worked for her as a handyman and chauffeur. She began to photograph him around her home, and as they talked she became captivated by the plight of African-Americans and their continuing fight against racism. Soon she was devoting much of her photography to images of African-Americans, their homes and their culture.
in 1932 she was invited by Weston and Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park....
to participate in the famous Group f/64
Group f/64
Group f/64 was a group of seven 20th century San Francisco photographers who shared a common photographic style characterized by sharp-focused and carefully framed images seen through a particularly Western viewpoint...
show at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, and she showed four prints. There is some confusion about whether Kanaga should actually be called a "member" of Group f/64. The announcement for the show at the de Young Museum listed seven photographers in Group f/64 and said "From time to time various other photographers will be asked to display their work with Group f/64. Those invited for the first showing are: Preston Holder
Preston Holder
Preston Holder was an American archaeologist and photographer.In 1930 he entered the University of California, Berkeley, to study anthropology. While there he met photographer Willard Van Dyke after writing an assignment about his photographs...
, Consuela [sic] Kanaga, Alma Lavenson
Alma Lavenson
Alma Ruth Lavenson was a leading American photographer of the first half of the 20th century...
, Brett Weston
Brett Weston
Brett Weston was an American photographer and grew up in LA. He was the second son of photographer Edward Weston. Van Deren Coke, former curator of the San Francisco Museum of Art referred to Brett Weston as the "child genius of American photography." Brett began taking photographs in 1925 and...
." However, in 1934 the group posted a notice in Camera Craft magazine that said "The F:64 group includes in its membership such well known names as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke
Willard Van Dyke
Willard Van Dyke was an American filmmaker and photographer who believed that photography could have a major influence on the world....
, John Paul Edwards
John Paul Edwards
John Paul Edwards was an American photographer and a member of the famous Group f/64.He was born in Minnesota on June 5, 1884, and moved to California in 1902. It is not known how he became interested in photography, but by the early 1920s he was a member of the Oakland Camera Club, the San...
, Imogene [sic] Cunningham
Imogen Cunningham
Imogen Cunningham was an American photographer known for her photography of botanicals, nudes and industry.-Life and career:...
, Consuela [sic] Kanaga and several others." In an interview later in her life, Kanaga herself said "I was in that f/64 show with Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke and Ansel Adams, but I wasn't in a group, nor did I belong to anything ever. I wasn't a belonger."
In 1935 she moved back to New York without McCarthy, and the two apparently were divorced sometime that year. She began plans for a portfolio of African Americans and interviewed several families in Harlem with whom she hoped to live while documenting their lives. While there she remet painter Wallace Putnam, whom she had met the last time she lived in New York. Within three months they were married. They spent part of their honeymoon visiting Alfred Stieglitz at his home at Lake George
Lake George (town), New York
Lake George is a town in Warren County, New York, USA. The population was 3,578 at the 2000 census. The town is named after the lake, Lake George. Within the town is a village also named Lake George. The town is part of the Glens Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area.- History :The lake was...
.
In 1938 she began lecturing at the Photo League, where she influenced a new generation of artistic photographers, including Aaron Siskind
Aaron Siskind
Aaron Siskind was an American abstract expressionist photographer. In his biography he wrote that he began his foray into photography when he received a camera for a wedding gift and began taking pictures on his honeymoon. He quickly realized the artistic potential this offered...
. By 1940 she found teaching too restrictive, and she returned to taking photographs full time. She was actively photographing and exhibiting throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s. In the latter decade she became very active in civil rights, and she took part in and photographed many demonstrations and marches. In 1963 she was arrested in Albany, Georgia
Albany, Georgia
Albany is a city in and the county seat of Dougherty County, Georgia, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. It is the principal city of the Albany, Georgia metropolitan area and the southwest part of the state. The population was 77,434 at the 2010 U.S. Census, making it the...
during the Walk for Peace.
She finally seemed to have found the right romantic and creative partner in Putnam, and the two of them remained together for the rest of her life. They traveled frequently and spent the last half of the 1960s going back and forth to France.
Kanaga died on 28 February 1978, in Yorktown Heights, New York. Her entire estate amounted to $1,345 in photographic equipment, almost 2,500 negatives and 375 prints. Everything else she had given away to friends.
Photography
Consuelo Kanaga has been called "one of America's most transcendent yet, surprisingly, least-known photographers." She had a wide range of visual interests, from pictorialism to photojournalistic to portraiture to cityscape to still lifes. It's been said that the dominant theme in her work is an "abiding interest in, and engagement with, the American scene." She celebrated the human in every photo she took, whether it was images of sharecroppers and their homes in the South or found still lifes of flowers and curtains. She was also noted as a technician of the highest skills in the darkroom.Her portraiture included many well-known artists and writers of the 1930s and 40s, including Milton Avery
Milton Avery
Milton Avery was an American modern painter. Born in Altmar, New York, he moved to Connecticut in 1898 and later to New York City.-Biography:...
, Morris Kantor
Morris Kantor
Morris Kantor was a Russian-born American painter based in the New York City area. Born in Minsk in 1896, Kantor was brought to the United States as a child in 1906. He made his home in West Nyack, New York for much of his life, and died there in 1974...
, Wharton Esherick
Wharton Esherick
Wharton Esherick was a sculptor who worked primarily in wood. He reveled in applying the principles of sculpture to common utilitarian objects. Consequently he is best known for his sculptural furniture and furnishings...
, Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian...
and W. Eugene Smith
W. Eugene Smith
William Eugene Smith was an American photojournalist known for his refusal to compromise professional standards and his brutally vivid World War II photographs.- Life and work :...
.
Kanaga, who was white, was one of the few photographers in the 1930s to produce artistic portraits of black people. Significantly, the four prints she contributed to the first Group f/64 exhibition were all portraits of blacks, including two of Eluard Luchell McDaniel, whom she would photograph repeatedly in ensuing years. Kanaga also photographed black writers and intellectuals, among them Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
and Countee Cullen
Countee Cullen
Countee Cullen was an American poet who was popular during the Harlem Renaissance.- Biography :Cullen was an American poet and a leading figure with Langston Hughes in the Harlem Renaissance. This 1920s artistic movement produced the first large body of work in the United States written by African...
.
In 1949 she was included in the very important show 50 Photographs by 50 Photographers: Landmarks in Photographic History at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Kanaga's best-known image, "She Is a Tree of Life to Them," was given its title by Edward Steichen
Edward Steichen
Edward J. Steichen was an American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator. He was the most frequently featured photographer in Alfred Stieglitz' groundbreaking magazine Camera Work during its run from 1903 to 1917. Steichen also contributed the logo design and a custom typeface...
when he selected it for the landmark Family of Man exhibition in 1955. The picture, from a study of migrant workers in Florida, portrays a slender black woman, framed against a white wall, who gathers her children to her with a tender gesture.
She continued photographing through the 1960s, including a series of photographs of civil rights demonstrations
Photographers of the American Civil Rights Movement
Beginning with the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, photography and photographers played an important role in advancing the American Civil Rights Movement by documenting the public and private acts of racial discrimination against African Americans...
in Albany, Georgia
Albany, Georgia
Albany is a city in and the county seat of Dougherty County, Georgia, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. It is the principal city of the Albany, Georgia metropolitan area and the southwest part of the state. The population was 77,434 at the 2010 U.S. Census, making it the...
in 1963. In 1976 the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
gave her a one-woman retrospective exhibition.
About her work, she said:
I could have done lots more, put in much more work and developed more pictures, but I had also a desire to say what I felt about life. Simple things like a little picture in the window or the corner of the studio or an old stove in the kitchen have always been fascinating to me. They are very much alive, these flowers and grasses with the dew on them. Stieglitz always said, "What have you got to say?" I think in a few small cases I've said a few things, expressed how I felt, trying to show the horror of poverty or the beauty of black people. I think that in photography what you've done is what you've had to say. In everything this has been the message of my life. A simple supper, being with someone you love, seeing a deer come around to eat or drink at the barn - I like things like that. If I could make one true, quiet photograph, I would much prefer it to having a lot of answers.
External links
- Berger, Maurice. "Subjective Documentarian: Photographer Conseulo Kanaga." Art in America, January 1994.