Pictures for Texts

James's collaboration with the experimental photographer, Alvin Langdon Coburn, on the production of photographic frontispieces for the New York Edition has figured prominently in discussions of James's views on illustration. Photography's status as a new and controversial medium has been suggested as the chief factor in James's preference for photographic plates, while the possibility of hand-rendered illustrations has been dismissed without reflection. In my view, James recognized the interimplication of the graphic and photomechanical arts within the milieu of Impressionism, nascent modernism, and the popular culture, resisting the tendencies he found outdated and played out in each. Through a hypothesized competition between Coburn and the black and-white artist, Joseph Pennell for the chance to illustrate James's work, I aim to concretize James's modernist leanings.