{
"data": {
"id": 162319,
"accession_number": "2002.51",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Grand Canyon, 1911. Alvin Langdon Coburn (British, 1882\u20131966). Platinum print; image: 41 x 31.4 cm (16 1/8 x 12 3/8 in.); mounted: 42.1 x 32.1 cm (16 9/16 x 12 5/8 in.); matted: 71.1 x 55.9 cm (28 x 22 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 2002.51",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Grand Canyon",
"creation_date": "1911",
"creation_date_earliest": 1911,
"creation_date_latest": 1911,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"America and England, 20th century"
],
"technique": "platinum print",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "PH - British 20th Century",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 41 x 31.4 cm (16 1/8 x 12 3/8 in.); Mounted: 42.1 x 32.1 cm (16 9/16 x 12 5/8 in.); Matted: 71.1 x 55.9 cm (28 x 22 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.41,
"height_inch": 16,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.125,
"width": 0.314,
"width_inch": 12,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.375
},
"mounted": {
"height": 0.421,
"height_inch": 16,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.5625,
"width": 0.321,
"width_inch": 12,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.625
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.711,
"height_inch": 28,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.559,
"width_inch": 22,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "written in pencil on verso: \"Acc 67: /57:29 (COPY A) C658\"; (?) 29 copy A \"23.74\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 184646,
"title": "Charles Isaacs and Carol Nigro Collection of American Photography",
"description": "Charles Isaacs and Carol Nigro Collection of American Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 26-September 10, 2003).",
"opening_date": "2003-04-26T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 194095,
"title": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 24-September 16, 2007); Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, PA (October 3, 2009-January 3, 2010).",
"opening_date": "2007-06-24T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 202729,
"title": "Shadows and Dreams: Pictorialist Photography in America",
"description": "Shadows and Dreams: Pictorialist Photography in America. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (September 5, 2015-January 17, 2016).",
"opening_date": "2015-09-05T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Alvin Langdon Coburn's innovative spirit, breadth of subject matter, and technical mastery of complex printing processes established him as one of the most important photographers active in the early 20th century. In September 1911, he took the first of two journeys to the Grand Canyon, which for him was \"one of the most impressive natural wonders of the world.\" In this composition, Coburn eliminated the horizon line and created a flattened, abstracted view by pointing his camera straight down and by using a long lens that foreshortened the depicted space. He skillfully captured the exact moment when clouds silhouetted the foreground rock formation while the distant canyon remained sun bleached, thus establishing a brilliant contrast of overlapping forms. The print, with its gradation of tones, remains one of the most poetic and artistic renderings of this natural monument in the history of photography.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79986341"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Tannenbaum, Barbara and Rager, Andrea Wolk. \u201cShadows and Dreams: American Pictorialists elevated photography to a fine art.\u201d Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 55, no. 5 (September/October 2015): 8-9.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 9",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAMM2015-05"
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2002.51",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 162319,
"creators": [
{
"id": 319,
"description": "Alvin Langdon Coburn (British, 1882\u20131966)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Alvin Langdon Coburn British and American, b. United States, 1882-1966\r\n\r\nBorn in Boston and later naturalized a British citizen, Alvin Langdon Coburn received his first camera at age eight. Ten years later, encouraged by his cousin -- the idiosyncratic, yet highly talented photographer F. Holland Day-Coburn showed his work in a major London exhibition. In 1902-3 he was a founding member of the Photo-Secession and the Linked Ring, two of the most important photographic organizations of their time. His work in the medium continued at a high level for the next quarter century.\r\n\tCoburn was influenced not only by Day, but also by painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, the impressionists, and Japanese woodblock prints, championed by his teacher Arthur Wesley Dow and Boston scholar Ernest Fenellosa. His artistic background allowed him to accept modernism as well. Although a founding member of the Pictorial Photographers of America in 1916 with Gertrude K\u00e4sebier and Clarence H. White, the following year Coburn made some of the first abstract photographs as a part of the vorticist movement, through which he became associated with Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound.\r\n\tCoburn produced a wide range of work, both in subject and style. Technically proficient, he excelled at the gravure process, producing large editions of original prints for portfolios and books. Among his collaborators were Henry James and H. G. Wells. Although Coburn abandoned photography from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s, his work continued to be influential, and he took up the medium again near the end of his life. T.W.F.\r\n\r\nNote: Coburn emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1912 and became a naturalized British citizen in 1932. Coburn was a founding member of the Photo Secession, New York City, in 1902, and of the Pictorial Photographers of America in 1916. Coburn was associated with the Linked Ring in 1903, and the Royal Photographic Society in the United Kingdom. American photographer, became a naturalized British citizen. -Barbara Tannenbaum",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1882",
"death_year": "1966",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2002-06-03T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1911,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1911",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:52:24.031000"
}
}