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| Lionel Stevenson, "Buck" (1972) |
Prince Edward Island photographer Lionel F. Stevenson, who
died April 3, 2017, at age 77, worked in the classic tradition of the great
Parisian street photographer Eugène Atget, producing images of people, places,
and things that are at once elegant and plainspoken. Lionel was closer to Atget
than most photographers. In 1969, he worked with the legendary Berenice Abbott,
helping print her photographs for New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Abbott
met the hermitic Atget when she was in Paris in the 1920s. She did much to
spread the news of his genius. When he died in 1927, she salvaged his prints
and negatives. The connective chain that runs from Atget to Abbott to Stevenson
is evident in their work. All three are meticulous artists. All three are
masters of line and light. Anthony Lane says of Atget, he “stopped to absorb
the detail that others failed to notice” (“A Balzac of the Camera,” The New Yorker, April 15, 1994), an observation that applies to Abbott and Stevenson, too.
Like Atget and Abbott, Lionel had a democratic eye,
photographing everything from farm gates, fishing boats, barns, sheds, and
street scenes to sand dunes, pig races, rocks, trees, and flowers. He was a
superb portraitist, showing his subjects at ease in their home and work
environments. My favorite Stevenson portrait is of New Glasgow blacksmith
Elbert Nelson Hill, who lived from 1891 to 1984. It’s called “Buck.” It shows Hill sitting in his forge, in his work clothes,
arms folded across his chest, shirtsleeves rolled up, legs crossed, two
horseshoes balanced on his left knee. His lips are pursed. His glasses catch
the light. His cap sits high on his forehead. His belt buckle glints. Behind
him, over his left shoulder, light throngs a window.
The portrait bears the unmistakable stamp of individuality –
not a blacksmith, but this blacksmith, at this moment, at ease amidst the tools and furniture of his
workplace, so absolutely and immutably there,
down to the safety pin that holds his shirt closed and the shining belt buckle
with its prong precariously stuck in a hole that Hill himself must’ve punched
in the very tip of the leather.
I first encountered “Buck” in the summer of 2014, when I was
a patient at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown. It hangs on the wall in
the sitting room at the junction of Units 1, 2, 3, and 4. I was immediately
drawn to it. I relished its subject – not a celebrity or a politician or a
tycoon, but a blacksmith, a man who works with his hands, a vanishing breed of
craftsmen. And I loved its look. It had an air of artistic seriousness. It
reminded me of the work of master photographers such as August Sander, Walker
Evans, and Paul Strand, work that I’d seen only in reproduction. But here, in a
hospital of all places, was the real thing. My eyes devoured it.
During my hospital stay, I made a point of visiting “Buck”
everyday. I’d stand in front of it, loops of heart monitor wire dangling
beneath my T-shirt, looking and looking, soaking up its calmness. Sitting there
in his forge, gazing into the camera, Hill seems so relaxed and natural. He
doesn’t appear to be posing; he’s just being himself. Calmness in art is an
elusive quality. Not every artwork has it. Vermeer’s paintings have it. Atget’s
photographs have it. Stevenson’s “Buck” has it in abundance. As an anxious
heart patient, I found it consoling.
Last spring, I had the opportunity to talk to Lionel about
the genesis of “Buck.” “I was just photographing around the forge,” he said. “I
asked Buck if I could take his picture. He took a seat on the stool. He had two
horseshoes on his knee. He’d just finished welding the corks on them. I was
using a Kodak 8x10 view camera. He was illuminated by the light coming in the
garage door. I could visualize the print – him sitting on the stool. I knew my
exposure and my camera and what I would do. There were two negatives – each
slightly different. I chose the stronger one, the one I thought best expressed
Buck’s personality. It’s probably my best portrait.”
I said to Lionel that I thought “Buck” showed an avid realism.
He laughed and said, “That photograph is as abstract as hell – it’s black and
white.” He went on to say, “Every photo is abstract.” He asked me if I was
familiar with Magritte’s “This is not a pipe.” I nodded yes. “Well,” he said,
“when you look at ‘Buck’ – it is not Elbert Hill. It’s a photograph of Elbert
Hill.”
Lionel’s passing removes from our midst one of our finest photographers. Our only solace is the knowledge that his wonderful pictures will live on, instances of flux forever held.
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