Untitled

Front / Recto

Title Untitled
Negative Date 1923–24
Print Date 1923–35
Medium Gelatin silver print
Dimensions Image 8 5/8 × 11 5/16" (21.9 × 28.8 cm)
Place Taken Kolín
Credit Line Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Shirley C. Burden, by exchange
MoMA Accession Number 1673.2001
Copyright © 2015 Miloslava Rupešová
Description
This image of very thick folded paper—perhaps blotter paper or packing material from the artist’s studio—was carefully lit in a controlled setting. The negative was so fastidiously cleaned of stray dust and debris before printing that there are only a few spots of corrective Retouching on the print. The photographic paper is the second thickest in the Thomas Walther Collection, at 0.5888 millimeters, but it is a type well represented in Jaromír Funke’s work. Composed of a single layer of a complex fiber mix (including rag, grass, softwood, and hardwood), it was likely manufactured around 1925. More striking is the lack of a Baryta layer. Baryta-less gelatin silver prints have a similar texture to Platinum and Palladium prints made on plain, uncoated paper, and they often have similar warm tones. Baryta-Less Paper may originally have been produced for document copying—without a brittle baryta layer the paper was more suitable for folding and mailing—but manufacturers eventually exploited the aesthetic qualities of the papers as well.

—Lee Ann Daffner

Mount Type No mount - evidence previous mounting
Marks and Inscriptions Inscribed in pencil on sheet verso, top left: 21 [circled]. Inscribed in pencil on sheet verso, top center: ↑.
Provenance The artist, Prague; by inheritance to the artist’s wife, Anna Funkova, Prague, 1945 [1]; to Wilhelm Schürmann, Cologne, 1975–77 [2]; purchased by Thomas Walther; purchased by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2001.
[1] Wilhelm Schürmann, telephone conversation with Simon Bieling, April 1, 2005.
[2] MacGill/Walther 2000, p. 11; and Schürmann, telephone conversation with Bieling.

Surface Sheen Matte
Techniques Retouching (additive)
Retouching (reductive)
PTM

View of the recto of the artwork made using reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) software, which exaggerates subtle surface details and renders the features of the artwork plainly visible. Department of Conservation, MoMA
Micro-raking

Raking-light close-up image, as shot. Area of detail is 6.7 x 6.7 mm. Department of Conservation, MoMA

Raking-light close-up image, processed. Processing included removal of color, equalization of the histogram, and sharpening, all designed to enhance visual comparison. Department of Conservation, MoMA