Mariana Bittencourt, Class of 2023, Architecture

‘Fragments of Frieze’ is part of a series of photographs taken by William J. Stillman in 1869. Stillman first picked up amateur photography during his stint as American consul to Crete in 1865, though he was already a well-known diplomat, artist, and journalist by that point. When Stillman fled to Athens due to civil unrest in 1868, he became determined to document the Acropolis, which, he writes in his autobiography, had “never been treated intelligently by…local photographers.” Stillman’s Athenian series accrued great interest—including from A.D. White, who bought copies of it for the Cornell Architectural Photographs Collection—due to his keen attention to detail. His series is seen today as his most distinguished accomplishment.

This particular photograph depicts ruins from the Frieze of the Temple of Athena Nike, which he arranged and photographed on-site. Its calculated composition, which highlights the fractured figure of Nike at the centre, demonstrates his herculean effort to give us a more holistic understanding of the Acropolis. This photograph also raises important questions about the preservation of historical artefacts. For years leading up to the controversial 1803 extraction of the Elgin Marbles—now exhibited at the British Museum—Western travellers had been allowed to steal treasures from the Acropolis for their personal collections. The remains portrayed by Stillman were left untouched by foreigners, likely due to their fragmentary nature. This portion of the Frieze thus fell into partial obscurity, deemed too irrelevant to be exhibited abroad but relevant enough to be photographed by classical-enthusiasts such as Stillman.

Source

Fragments of Frieze, William James Stillman, 1869. Andrew Dickson WhiteArchitectural Photographs Collection, #15-5-3090, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, ID# 10046097. https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3874422

Bibliography

Bohrer, Frederick N. “Fixing the Acropolis: William J. Stillman and the Restoration of Athenian Antiquity.” History of Photography 40, no. 3 (September 2016): 232-249.

Sánchez, Juan Pablo. “How the Parthenon Lost Its Marbles.” National Geographic History 3 no.1 (March/April 2017): 36-47.

Stillman, William J. The Autobiography of a Journalist. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1901. Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew. “Athens — Photographed byW.J. Stillman.” The Princeton University Library Chronicle 70, no. 3 (Spring 2009): 399-432.