George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923)
George Hendrik Breitner, a friend of Vincent van Gogh, painted primarily in Amsterdam, depicting the lives of the working class. He took photographs from 1889 to around 1915 with several cameras. Breitner took most of his snapshots while walking around Amsterdam, Paris, and London, and is considered a pioneer of street photography. About 3,000 of his photographs exist today.
Tag Archives: Snapshot
Meet Snapshot: Félix Vallotton
Félix Vallotton (1865–1925)
Félix Vallotton was a painter, engraver, draftsman, art critic, and writer who began taking photographs in 1899 with a Kodak and developed his own film. Only 20 photographs by Vallotton have survived; he may have destroyed others after being criticized for making a painting based on a photograph. Vallotton exchanged photographs with his Nabis friends; his family archive contains photographs by Vuillard, and Vuillard owned photographs by Vallotton.
Meet Snapshot: Henri Rivière
Henri Rivière (1864–1951)
Henri Rivière was a painter, stage designer, watercolorist, collector, and author who also directed the shadow theater plays at the Parisian cabaret Le Chat Noir. He made woodblock prints using Japanese methods, influenced by the wave of Japonisme sweeping Paris. Granted access to the Eiffel Tower during its construction, Rivière produced photographs with dramatic silhouettes. In the 1880s and ’90s, he took more than 300 snapshots using a lightweight box camera with glass plates.