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Frederick
Sommer: A Brief & Incomplete Chronology
Based on: Frederick
Sommer, by Luiz Carlos Felizardo Note: I have noted a few discrepancies throughout this chronology. Although Fred might have said something to me that was different from what is in the VJM, that is no reason to assume that the VJM is inaccurate. Fred loved to tell stories, and he was a great story teller, often it seemed that hints of an accent would reappear. I’ve tried to add a few throughout the chronology. If you have any Fred stories, note mistakes or missing information, please contact Sommer.
1905 On September 7, in Angre, Italy, Frederick Sommer is born. Called Fritz Sommer, he is the first child born to Carlos and Julia Bertold Sommer while they are living in Italy. Carlos Sommer is German, ca. 1875-1938. Julia Sommer was born in the Uster, Switzerland, 1868 -1962. It is through his mother that he is related to Paracelsus. 1913 The family move to São Paulo, Brasil, because of Carlos’ interest in tropical plants. Under the name of Frederico Sommer, he begins his formal education in “Deutsche Schule zu Vila Mariana.” 1916 The family moves to Rio de Janeiro, where Carlos opens a flower store and an office where he contracts landscaping projects for gardens. His greenhouse is in Sit, Mines Gears, then a district of Barbican. Frederico works with his father, and assists him in doing architectural renderings. 1920 Transfers to Ginásiode São Bento; their registers still show the name of Frederico Carlos Sommer, enrolled for 1920 through 1922. He does not graduate. In his first year at Ginásiode São Bento, he receives honorable mention for drawing.. 1921 During summer vacation, Frederico apprentices at Escritório Técnico Heitor de Mello, the office of the architects Archimedes Memória and Francisco Cuchet. He receives second place in a national architectural contest to design a park and recreation area in Rio de Janeiro. 1923 Sommer begins to take private commissions for landscape projects; and publishes an essay in a literary magazine. 1924 William Gratwick, an American businessman, who knows of Carlos’s greenhouse, meets Frederico. Impressed with him, he invites Frederico to the United States to learn what is happening in the States with landscape architecture. 1925 Travels to the United States where me meets Edward Gorton Davis, architect and Director of the Landscape Architecture Department of Cornell University. He works in Davis’ office, and begin to audit classes at Cornell. 1926 Enrolls at Cornell University as a graduate student. Because he hadn’t graduated from Ginásiode São Bento, he obtains a letter of certification in architecture and fine arts from Brazilian Ministry of Education. His Master’s thesis is done under guidance of Professors Gorton Davis, Edward Lawson and W. H. Suchardt. He meets his future wife, Frances Watson, at a party at Davis’ house. She is a Cornell student doing graduate work in education. 1927 Receives a Master in Landscape Architecture degree with his thesis “Villa Alba, a Residential Property.” Marries Frances on August 23. Frederico and Francis moves to Rio to work with his father. 1928 - 1930 As a consultant, he works on various projects in the towns of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In Rio, he collaborates in the organization of the IV Pan-American Congress of Architects—by whom he is awarded a gold medal 1930 On May 23, while talking with some friends in a cafe, Frederico has a coughing fit. He is diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis. With Frances, he leaves Brasil in June to recuperate in Arosa, Switzerland. He never returns to Brazil, or to the practice of architecture. He takes pictures in and around Arosa. These very small prints are put in a photograph album which he keeps throughout his life, and is currently in the archives of the Frederick & Frances Sommer Foundation. Frances had several photograph albums of pictures she had taken with here family at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, around her family home in Aledo, Illinois, and Knox Collage, Galesburg, Illinois, where Frances received her undergraduate degree. Fred used to joke that because Frances took photographs first and, early in their marriage, did the cooking, she had taught him photography and cooking. Her nightscapes around the lake were quite elegant. 1931 He and Frances travel through France and Italy, before returning to the United States. They go to Aeldo; but the winter is harsh and they decide to move west. In VJM, it says that they decided to go to California and, while visiting friends in Tucson, decided to stay there. The story that Fred told me many times, however, was that the doctors in Arosa advised him to move to someplace dry and hot, like Tucson. He mentioned this once when his close friend Dr. Lloyd Owen was visiting, and it led to a long discussion about the actual irrelevance of such advice for someone recovering from tuberculosis. He meets Lucy Marlow, a painter, and together they set up a studio for private art classes. Fred teaches design, watercolor, and drawing 1933 Fred goes to Chicago and meets Increase Robinson, who agrees to show his work. She shows him Edward Weston’s first book of photographs, published by Merle Armitage. 1934 Fred has a show of his watercolors at Increase Robinson Gallery. He spends half a year with Frances in Los Angeles. There he discovers musical notation, leading to his making musical scores. VJM says that he saw the scores at the Los Angeles Fine Arts Library. When Fred used to tell the story, he merely said that he had seen them at an art museum; and when Fred reviewed my text for the CD and said that it was accurate. He seeks out and became friends with Merle Armitage. 1935 Fred and Frances move to Prescott, Arizona. He sends Alfred Steiglitz, at An American Place, watercolors. Steiglitz encourages him. Towards the end of the year, Fred went to New York. For a week, he visits Steiglitz and meets Georgia O’Keefe. O’Keefe thinks that Steiglitz should show Fred, but Steiglitz says that he can’t take on any new artists. 1936 Fred goes to California for two weeks. He visits Merle Armitage, and through him, meets Edward Weston. They exchange drawings for prints. Weston encourages Fred’s budding interest in photography as art. Weston introduces Fred to Howard Putzel, a gallery owner. 1937 Has a one-person show of watercolors at Howard Putzel Gallery, Hollywood, CA. Most of these works are in the archives of the Frederick & Frances Sommer Foundation, still wrapped in the package as it was returned from the show. Howard Putzel later moves to New York, where he meets Jackson Pollock in 1942. As Guggenheim’s gallery director, he encourages showing Pollack’s work. I mention this because many of Fred’s drawings from the late 1930’s-early 1940’s are quite similar to Pollock’s from this period. Later Fred’s distemper and oil paintings, ca. 1946-1949, also look remarkably like Pollock’s from the same period. I have no idea whether Fred had seen Pollack’s work, or whether Pollack had seen Fred’s: however the nexus with Putzel is intriguing. Fred never mentioned anything about Pollack’s work that would have suggested any connection. That Fred never mentioned someone is significant, but as to whether that meant he knew or did not know someone it was not a reliable indicator. If Fred mentioned his brother to me more than three times in thirty years I would be surprised, in fact might never have mentioned him to me. Frances talked about him, as did Luiz Felizardo, who met him in the early 1990’s. Begins to explore glue-color: powdered color pigment mixed with rabbit-hide glue, which he most often applied to black paper. 1938 Encouraged by Weston, Fred buys a 8 X 10 Century Universal camera. 1939 A doctor friend brings him, also a photographer, brings Fred an amputated foot. While Fred still has the foot, he keeps it wrapped up, in the ice box. He invites a local poet to lunch. The poet is someone who boasts a bit too much for Fred’s tastes about being avant-garde and shocking. After lunch, Fred says he has a special treat, and brings to the table the wrapped foot. He unwraps it, and, apparently the poet was not beyond being shocked. Photographs chicken heads and entrails, including one of his classic images from this time, Eight Young Roosters. Fred visited his doctor friend as his office, to show him Eight Young Roosters. The nurse, who is a little prim and proper, is shown the print, which she finds repulsive. A few days later, Fred sees her approaching on the side walk. As she passes him, she pulls her hips forward. This loses something in the telling, but Fred loved to demonstrate how she walked as she passed him. VJM says that Fred draws his first musical score this year; however, as noted above, he said often that it was in 1934, and confirmed that when he reviewed the text I had written Fred becomes a naturalized US citizen. 1940 Visits Charles Sheeler in Connecticut. 1941 Begins a series of horizonless landscapes. Fred’s
prints made from 8 X 10 negatives are all contact prints—if
you imagine a picture frame with the art removed: the negative is
placed on the glass, with the emulsion facing up, away from the
glass, a sheet of photographic paper is placed over the negative,
it’s emulsion against the film’s, and a folding wood
back is inserted over the paper and inside the frame; usually a
spring clip holds everything tightly together. He had troubles with
the sky, as he told the story, with one negative: it appears wavy.
He sent the film back to Kodak and was later informed that this
was due to unevenness in the emulsion. The emulsion is applied to
large sheets of film which go through a series of calendars. Sometimes
thin areas or even voids occur in the emulsion. Kodak suggested
cutting off the top of the negative, removing the sky altogether.
Fred says that after that he avoided including sky in his landscapes.
I had a similar experience with on sheet of 8 X 10 film, which,
no matter where it was placed in the print frame nor how much clamping
pressure was applied, one small area always prints out of focus.
When shimmed in the print frame, or projected in an 8 X 10 enlarger
or looked at through a loupe, it is absolutely in focus. This is
not a common problem; and because most people enlarge, the problem
of being out of focus is greatly reduced. During his visit, Fred said that while they were all chatting, Breton, left the room. On the table was Breton’s address book. Ernst picked it up, and thumbing through is it, says “Girls, girls, girls, nothing but girls.” Faurest Davis, a musician friend, tries playing the scores. “The results confirm his [Sommer’s] contention that the relative position of something is more important that its assigned value. This intensifies his developing awareness of the relationship between distribution and content—‘position’ and ‘occupier’” (VJM, pg 61). 1943 While visiting Fred in Prescott, Ernst selects work for the Surrealist magazine, VVV. 1946 Fred has his a solo show of photographs at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Fred told the story that at his first show (this one?) everyone said to him that he should photograph more like Weston. But at a show of the ‘same prints to the same people’ ten years later, after he had begun to develop a reputation, ‘these same people’ said that his work was too derivative of Weston’s, and that he should find his own style. 1947 Meets Charles Egan, a New York art dealer, who becomes Fred’s dealer. Sends prints to Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art. 1949 Has a solo show of photographs and drawings at Eagan Gallery. Eagan recommends that Aaron Siskind meet Fred on a visit west. Siskind rents a cabin near Fred’s and stays three months. Fred has sixteen photographs shown at the Museum of Modern Art. MoMa buys a photograph. 1951 Meets
Yves Tanguy. Tanguy is staying with Ernst and Dorothea Tanning in
Sedona, Arizona. Several of Fred’s pen and ink drawings from around this time resemble pen and ink drawings of Tanguy’s, also from around this time. I have no idea who influenced whom, if, in fact, either did. Ernst and Tanning lived in a small house in Sedona. A few years later, Vladimir Nabokov was in Sedona, butterfly hunting and writing. In a letter to his wife, he remarks that he is renting a cabin that apparently had been lived in by the Surrealist Max Ernst. Fred told the story about going with Ernst to judge an art competition. Ernst kept nudging Fred, saying that that particular artist was very good. It happened enough for Fred to realize that it might have more to do with how attractive she was. When they finally met, she was introduced as Dorothea tanning. Participates in the first Aspen Conference on photography. (See photo for a small photograph of the participants taken at the Hotel Jerome, Aspen, Co., or Original Sources: Art and Archives at the Center for Creative Photography, page 16) Fred said that he was a very popular speaker with the younger people attending the conference, he suggested, perhaps too popular. Between that and some of his images of chicken parts, etc., he apparently earned the disdain of not a few of his fellow participants. There are very few references Fred in books on photography written from approximately 1955-1980. He claimed that it was because of Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, who, he said, did not like him at all. Perhaps his reputation for being “Difficult, obscure, reclusive, arrogant, and hard to get along with,” started there. 1952 Has a show at the Museum of Modern Art. 1953 Has work shown at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. 1956 Has work shown at the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris. 1957 Lectures at the Institute of Design, in Chicago, replacing Harry Callahan. Lives with Siskind. Fred and Siskind were very good friends, and Fred stayed there a number of times. Not unlike Fred’s house, Siskind’s apartment had lots of “photo gray” walls. Fred liked Siskinds work, but once, while visiting, he took me by the hand and led me to the bathroom. Pointing at the bathtub, he said, still somewhat horrified, “He washes his prints in his tub.” 1960 Travels to Europe. Makes his first photographs of Lee Nevin. 1961 Starts a series of smoke on cellophane prints. These are similar to cliché verre, however, soot from glass is transferred to greased cellophane, which is used as a negative. 1962 Aperture 10:4, Frederick Sommer, 1939-1962 is published. Makes his first cut paper image. Begins a series of smoke on glass, cliché verre, images. 1963 Has a solo show at the Art Institute of Chicago. Lectures at the Institute of Design. 1964 Represented in a show at George Eastman House. Has thirty-two prints in a show at the Cleveland Museum of Art. A few weeks before I met Fred, he received a check for $500, from the Cleveland Museum of Art. He had just developed an 8 X 10 negative of the check, which he proudly showed me. He said he had photographed the first, but I never saw it. The Center for Creative Photography has Fred’s correspondence and papers regarding this incident: When
the thirty-two prints were returned, the top two were out-of-focus
nudes of Lee Nevin. Someone had scribbled with ballpoint pen over
the pubic areas. The Cleveland Museum suggested that he check with
his insurance agent. The agent said that his company would certainly
pay to have prints made, and all he had to do was submit the bill
from the ‘drugstore.’ Back to the Museum, and they denied
that this could have happened, Fred must have done it himself. Fred
insisted that someone in the curatorial or shipping department must
have done it. The Museum insisted that it was done by someone walking
through the show. But, they were framed and behind glass. The argument
raged. He got a check for $500, the price he was selling at then,
but they said that should cover both. He kept fighting, and the
second check arrived in the fall of 1967. In the early 1970’s, with Frances, we went several times to the Museum. He always seemed to tiptoe when we walked past the offices. 1965 Has a show at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, D.C. 1966 Becomes Coordinator of Fine Art Studies at Prescott College, Prescott, Arizona. 1967 Teaches a workshop at San Francisco Art Institute. Lectures at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island. Meets Emmet Gowin. 1968 Show of 125 photographs at Philadelphia College of Art, which travels to San Francisco Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and the Institute of Design, Chicago. Has a major catalogue. 1969 Spend six months in Japan with Frances. 1971 Is represented by Light Gallery, New York, Harold Jones, director. 1972 Publishes The Poetic Logic of Art and Aesthetics. Lectures at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Teaches at Apeiron, Millerton, New York. 1973 Alex Jamison works with Fred, as darkroom assistant, printer, etc. 1974 Receives a Guggenheim Fellowship for photography. Travels to England, Italy, Morocco, Greece, and Yugoslavia. 1976 Is interviewed for George Eastman House “Oral History Project.” 1977 Has a two-person show at The Arizona Bank Galleria, with Ansel Adams. Fred swore that after this show, he would not permit his work to be shown with any other photographer’s work. They had hung Adams’ prints on one side of the room, and his on the other. He said that he watched people come in and move ‘like moths to a flame’ to Adams’ work and then leave. We were part of a three-person show in 1991 at Turner-Krull Gallery in Los Angeles. I asked him later about his oath, “We’ll I like your work.” Goes to New Zealand. 1978 Tom Carabasi replaces Alex Jamison, working with Fred. 1980 Has a large show, curated by Leland Rice, at California State University, Long Beach, California. Has a major catalogue. 1984 Supervises
Luiz Carlos Felizardo, recipient of a Fulbright Commission. Has a show at the Denver Art Museum. Has a major catalogue. 1991 Has a show of his collages at Turner-Krull Gallery in Los Angeles, CA Has a show of collages and photographs at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York. 1992 Nazraeli Press publishes All Children are Ambassadors. Lumiere Press publishes The Constellations That Surround Us, surveyed and edited by Michael Torosaian 1993 Keven Begos Publishing publishes The Birth of Venus, a portfolio of five dust grain gravures of five collages; the project is dated 1991-1993. When I first met Fred, he talked about how beautiful platinum prints were, and he thought that if someone were to do a portfolio of his photographs they should be printed as platinum prints. One thing that these gravure in The Birth of Venus have in common with platinum prints is the dull and soft sheen of the image, that seems to both float on the paper and be a part of it. He made several prints on paper that had a reticulation in the gelatin surfice, giving it a matte finish (some people have thought that this finish was from Fred waxing his prints, something platinum printers sometimes did: it was not). He loved the finish, and he loved telling about how it was mistake by Kodak. But by this time in his life, he was devoted to the glossy, gelatin silver surface. It was a difficult time for Kevin, because Fred often seemed disappointed in the prints as the project developed. Also, the entire process of proofing, position proofs, etc. were things that confused Fred, who had been used to press proofs. 1994 Nazraeli Press publishes The Box. The Getty acquires 107 Sommer photographs. 1995 The Getty acquires an additional 17 photographs, 30 graphic art objects and 10 collages. 1996 Nazraeli Press publishes Son of the Box.
On
January 23, Frederick Sommer dies, at his home in Prescott, Arizona.
New
York Times, © 1996-2003 Walton Mendelson
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