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| William Mortensen, untitled, 1928 |
Francky Knapp has
a post on Hollywood's spookiest photographer, William Mortensen (1897-1965), whose art "provoked disgust, jealousy and above all confusion amongst his contemporaries." Mortensen's art—a witches' brew of Pictorialism, Hollywood glamour, cheesecake, and f/x—mortified Group f/64's rigorous modernists. For Ansel Adams Mortensen was simply the "anti-Christ" of the photographic medium.
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| William Mortensen, Ho Ho Off to Sabbath, 1928 |
Comments
For more serious freak-a-rama, see Franz von Stuck (German). His "Inferno," 1908, cringes.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/749639
> jealousy and above all confusion
> amongst his contemporaries."
The culture and political scene in the early 1900s were both very similar to yet very different from today's times. I can see Mortensen in 2024 either appealing to the enablers of a P Diddy, Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein or outraging the opponents of those types.
Personally, I find Mortensen's stretching the boundaries of reality and fiction interesting. However, that's in the context of other people knowing where to draw the line. Or being daring-creative when everyone else is very daring-creative too is not the same thing as being daring-creative when that's still a novelty.