W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #jaynehindsbidaut, #tintype, #americanflag

As an art dealer specializing in photography, I had early success with Jayne Hinds Bidaut, who seems to have left the art world after her private and deeply felt experience of September 11th.  That is a great loss to us.

In his book “Antiquarian Avant-Garde”, write and critic Lyle Rexer described her work as “the product of a range of artists working in early photographic processes, seeking to reengage with the basic physical element of photography, its materials and processes and turning to the history of photography for metaphors, technical information, and visual inspiration”. *1

Specifically Bidaut worked with the tintype process while sustaining a successful conventional analogue practice.

Tintypes had wide use in the 1860-70s.  They were made as direct positive on to a thin sheet of metal — originally tin — coated with a dark lacquer or enamel and used as the support for photographic emulsion.

Bidaut worked extensively with nudes — often self-portraits — and her collection of mounted insects; both genres were appropriate to a Victorian sensibility.  The nine part flag study is atypical.

Using the sequence of folding the flag is formal and respectful; the seeming movement on the surface relaxes it as if to say “At Ease”.  The work is imaginative and original.

Happy Fourth of July.

*1 Lyle Rexer, “The Antiquarian Avant-Garde: The New Wave in Old Processes”, Harry N. Abrams, (2021)

©2021

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