F. Holland Day

de Verna Posever Curtis, Jane Van Nimmen, Patricia J. Fanning

F. Holland Day (1864-1933) was a leading figure in turn-of-the-century American photography. By the mid-1890s he was distinguished in both fine book publishing (as a partner in the Copeland & Day published firm, Boston) and in pictorial photography through his participation in the major American and European photography salons. Like Alfred Stieglitz he was highly respected in the movement to win acceptance of photography as a fine art. In 1900 Day was the first to export the New American School in a landmark exhibition sponsored by the Royal Photographic Society in London. Day's photographs caused a sensation. While colleagues and critics lauded his expressive portraiture, his allegorical subjects confounded them. Controversy surrounded his forthright defence of the nude in photography and his exhibition of sacred subjects and self-portraits as Christ. Day was less publicly visible after 1900. He concentrated on his own symbolic expression in photography and interests in poetry, literature, the arts and crafts, and helping others, including photographer friends Clarence H. White and Gertrude Kasebier.