I
have finally begun to edit the work I shot this last year. It’s
slowly coming together. Besides the pics I’ve put on the blog,
there are new photographs on the Index and the About page on my main
website (www.alexandrahuddleston.com).
If all goes as planned, I will spend the rest of the summer working
in Santa Fe and then return to West Africa in the fall – you will
be hearing more about that in the coming months…
This last month in New York I’ve had a chance to reconnect with
friends and expose myself to the high and low culture a big city offers:
from the new Pirates of the Caribbean to an excellent exhibit at the
Dahesh museum titled: “Napoleon on the Nile:
Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt.” The Dahesh museum
show exhibits both work produced during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign
as well as later 19th century work it influenced. My favorites included
a few British cartoons mocking Napoleon’s oriental adventure and
some phenomenal etchings of the architecture and invertebrates of Egypt.
I’ve been happy to note that my own growing interest in 18th and
19th century art and history has been matched by a growing number of
exhibits and publications: especially on early photography. This month
I picked up the Getty Museum’s beautiful book “Antiquity
and Photography: Early Views of Ancient Mediterranean Sites,”
and I have subsequently spent many hours pouring over the prints and
text. As a result I’ve become a great fan of the work of Maxime
Du Camp, Francis Frith and William James Stillman’s series on
the Athens Acropolis.
