Page 47 - Expanded-Photography

Expanded Photography Bob Cotton 47/145
- the emerging photo-celebrities of the Belle Epoque - and combining ornate art-nouveau style graphics with photo-montage, swirling calligraphic lettering and colour tinting (hand-coloured portraits, tinted graphics). Reutlinger appears to be one of the signature commercial photograph- er/designers of this period, a time in photographic history that marked the beginning of ‘painterly’ or pictorialist photography..The ‘beginnings’ of modern graphic design are complex. Philip Meggs’ has carefully plotted the origins of modernist graphics in his excellent Megg’s History of Graphic Design (2005), and includes the ‘private press’ work of Morris and Emery Walker in the UK in the 1880s and 1890s, the work of the Wiener Werkstatte in Vienna, the origins of corporate identity in the work of Peter Behrens, and of course later the invention of what we recognise as 20th century graphic design in the work of the De Stijl group, the Russian (USSR) constructivists (including El Lizzitsky, Alexander Rodchenko, Gustav Klucis and others), and the numerous ex-
perimental graphics made at the Bauhaus from 1919.
https://wonderings.net/vintage-postcards/atelier-reutlinger/
The intricacy of these mass-produced portrait post-cards – each one featuring a popular actress or performer as a photographic portrait embodied in a lavish art nouveau design: “He invited women from opera, theatres and the varieties like the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergères to get portrayed by him, mostly in gorgeous robes, which often served as leading patterns in fash- ion style. Numerous series of portraits of stars, starlets and anonymous beauties were produced. Léopold created the famous Reutlinger-signature and used it from 1895 on all of his photographic work. His commercial success was also based on the creation of extensively reproduced post- cards, selling all over the world by different publishers.” (from "Les Reutlingers" by Jean Pierre
Bourgeron (1979)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9opold-%C3%89mile_Reutlinger
By combining Art Nouveau graphics, hand-coloured portrait photography, the new celebrity of theatre and ‘society’ (ruling class culture) - a new celebrity largely created by photography, and newly widespread graphic media - newspapers, magazines, advertising, post-cards (etc), Reut- linger plays a role in the beginnings of Modernist design.