The great American painter and photographer Thomas Eakins was dedicated to the scientific study of the human form and committed to its truthful representation. While he and his students at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts were surrounded by casts of classical sculpture, Eakins declared that he did not like "a long study of casts... At best, they are mere imitations, and an imitation of imitations cannot have as much life as an imitation of life itself."Photography offered an obvious solution.
This photograph, showing Eakins and a student influencing the elegant contraposto postures of classical sculpture, was probably taken during an excursion with students to Manasquan Inlet in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, in the summer of 1883. Not only did he consider his photographs to be studies for paintings, but also for their own sake, Eakins carefully printed the best images on platinum paper. In this case, he went to the extra trouble of enlarging the original, horizontally formatted image and cropping it vertically to better contain the perfectly balanced figures.
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