In 1913 Ida and Henry Goodwin spent their third summer in Theberton, and in 1914 Goodwin met with the famous American photographer, Alvin Langdon Coburn. Coburn, who was born in Boston, U.S.A., in 1882 had settled in England in 1912. Goodwin was influenced by Coburn and there is a striking resemblance to the way Coburn acted and the way Goodwin developed a couple of years later. For instance: Coburn arranged a one-man show in London in 1913, called 'Camera Pictures by Alvin Langdon Coburn'. Goodwin accomplished his one-man show, named 'Kamerabilder av Henry Buergel Goodwin', in Stockholm two years later. 'Kamerabilder' means 'Camera Pictures' and Goodwin introduced the conception in Scandinavia as a name of his works of art and of his studio. Coburn published his books, 'London' in 1909, 'New York' in 1910, and 'Men of Mark' in 1913, with hand-pulled photogravures, and the same did Goodwin in 1917 with 'Konstnärsporträtt', a magnificent volume reminding of 'Men of Mark'. In 1921 Goodwin published his book about Stockholm, similar to Coburn´s books of London and New York.

In the summer of 1914 Coburn made a portrait of Goodwin and later that year he wrote a letter to Goodwin:

"My dear brother Goodwin... Isn´t this war a gruesome affair?... How this is going to end, only God knows. My fate may be, not very enviable, to photograph the ruins of London. But at present, everything is still and peaceful in this city. It sounds incredible to us that some fight has started. It seems quite incredible that there can be such maniacs in this world, who can enthusiastically rejoice at such a barbarious state of affairs."

In the summer of 1923, when Goodwin was working as a commissioner for a great international exhibition at Liljewalchs Konsthall in Stockholm in 1924, he payed a visit to by Alvin Langdon Coburn and his wife Edith in Harlech, Wales, where they settled in 1919. At the time of Goodwin´s visit Coburn dedicated himself more to religious studies and mysticism than to photography. One of Goodwin´s purposes with the visit was to persuade Coburn to send a collection of pictures to the exhibition. Goodwin wrote afterwards: "Mrs. Coburn was surprised and happy because I succeeded in awakening the spark that had been hidden for so long behind other activities. If her and my treacherous plans go without a hitch, we shall expect Coburn´s visit before and during the exhibition."

Goodwin wrote a series of articles, 'Camera Artists', for the Swedish newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, at the time of the exhibition. In the first article, he introduced Alvin Langdon Coburn, and in next the brothers Hofmeister from Hamburg. In the last two articles he dealt with some American photographers from the American West Coast, and three British camera men, J. Dudley Johnston, Bertram Cox and Alexander Keighley. Later that year and in 1925 he wrote articles about other known photographers such as Emil Otto Hoppé from London and Clarence H. White from New York.

Unfortunately, Coburn could not attend at the exhibition as planned, because his mother had met with a serious traffic accident at the time of departure. Coburn sent a very representative selection of pictures to the exhibition, 24 landscape pictures from the U.S.A. and Europe and 26 portraits of leading personalities in the world of culture.

During his student years in Leipzig around 1900 he made friends with a fellow student, Chester Nathan Gould, who also spent a couple of periods in Uppsala, Sweden, and later became a professor of German and Scandinavian literature at the university of Chicago. In 1924 professor Gould helped Henry Goodwin to publish an article, 'A Gallery of Swedish Portraits' in the periodical, The American-Scandinavian Review. The article contained six portraits of known Swedes and the text was written by professor Gould. Other articles in the A.S.R. during the next seven years were: 'Saltsjobaden - Seven photographs by Henry Buergel Goodwin', 'Gardens and Gardening in Sweden' and 'Five Photographs of Visby'.

Henry Goodwin also took a great interest in plants, flowers and horticulture. Although a beginner in 1917, he wrote two books on the subject in 1925 and 1928, illustrating them with his camera pictures. His wife, Ida Goodwin, published two books in 1924-25, one about their Airedale terriers, and one about their journey to New York four years earlier, called 'Her Highness of New York'. In 1929 Goodwin published a book that has been called Henry B. Goodwin´s testimony, 'Kamerabilden', which means 'The Camera Picture'. In this book Goodwin introduces a method of making pictures by 'previsualization', which is later developed by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer in their zone system method in the 1940-ies.

Pictures on this page (in turn)
Click on the links to get full size views

'Henry B. Goodwin' - Photo: Alvin Langdon Coburn 1914; 'Jacob i tö' - Stockholm, 1913; 'Lumpboden' - Stockholm, c. 1918; 'Kamerabilden' - 'The Camera Picture', 1929