Issue No. 4 — selectedpictures

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A Light Snow Falling

Untitled (Textile Mill Workers)

Dickie Simon, Star in Radio, 1938

Untitled (Factory Engine)

Untitled (Snuffbox Collection of the Duke of Windsor)

Untitled (Round Foyer)

Untitled (Pottery, China and Glassware Display)

“Crest of the Wave” (Gorham’s Sterling Silver)

Untitled (Wartime Aircraft Target Practice)

Untitled (Manhattan Penthouse)

Untitled (Hyacinths)

Untitled (House with Tulips)

Untitled (Tomato Vine)

Steamship “Rex”

Untitled (WWII Aircraft Assembly Plant)

Untitled (Ford Super Deluxe Grille)

` (Self-Portrait)

Maude (Mrs. Harold Haliday Costain)

Untitled (Portrait of U.S. Military Officer)

“The Estate of Donald Black, Mianus River”

Untitled (Orchids)

Harold Haliday Costain's signature

Issue No. 4: Harold Haliday Costain

The most successful commercial photographers of the 1930’s and 40’s brought an artistic "modern" approach to their work. Anton Bruehl, Martin Bruehl, Grancel Fitz, Victor Keppler, Gordon Coster, Nikolas Muray, and Harold Haliday Costain (1897–1994) created images that were graphic and stylish. Perhaps the most consistently glamorous images of that era can be attributed to Costain. He was able to make documentary photographs of laborers in a salt mine look posh. Yet today these pictures have the depth and substance associated with fine art photography.

The subject of much of Costain’s work was residential architecture and interior design. His clients were wealthy and their homes were often showcases for a lavish and sometimes eccentric style in stark contrast to the austerity imposed by the Great Depression. These images, reproduced in magazines such as Town and Country, are sometimes referred to as “aspirational” – calculated to stimulate a craving for products most readers could not afford.

Not only did Costain photograph expensive places with expensive merchandise, he was at home with the people who owned them. He leveraged connections made with wealthy clients to become a member of their social class on his own. Once he made the acquaintance of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, photographing their winter home in the Bahamas, he had a lock on high society.

Aside from his social life however, it’s important to remember that Costain was a photographer’s photographer with great technical expertise. He was his own art director with a gift for lighting who processed his negatives and prints with little or no assistance. An independent pioneer in early color photography, he developed his own formulae for processing tri-color carbon bromide prints, a complicated, expensive and time-consuming enterprise.

The pictures shown here in issue #4 are not meant to present an overview of Costain’s body of work. They were purchased from various lots auctioned by the photographer’s estate and were selected for the strength of their imagery and Costain’s distinctive, sometimes quirky approach to a surprisingly broad range of subject matter.

Click on any image to enlarge