John Moran (February 1831 – February 19, 1902) was a pioneering American photographer and artist. Moran was a prominent landscape, architectural, astronomical and expedition photographer whose career began in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area during the 1860s.
A brother of the painters Thomas, Edward and Peter Moran, Moran was a member of a network of Philadelphia-based artists, historians, and scientists who recognized photography as a fine art in the years before the American Civil War.
Biography
John Moran was born during February 1831 at Bolton le Moors, Lancashire, England, the third of Mary (née Higson) and Thomas Moran's eight children.
At the age of 13, he arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on the passenger ship Thomas on May 31, 1844, having traveled with his mother and then six siblings.
Moran was the one photographer among his accomplished siblings. Brothers Thomas, Edward and Peter trained as lithographers and became painters. Moran's sister Elizabeth married an artist and her two sons became painters.
By the early 1890s, Moran resumed painting, joining his brothers Edward and Thomas in New York City where he wrote about art and exhibited his paintings. A widower, living with his son Thomas Sidney Moran, he died there in 1902.
Moran's 1902 obituary in The New York Times mentioned Moran's role as "one of the pioneer photographers of this country".
Advocate of photography as an artistic medium
In the 1850s, Moran was a pioneer in advancing photography as a medium of artistic expression. Moran said, "In photography, as in any work of art, the merit lies, in the power of seeing and deciding what shall be done...It is this knowledge, or art of seeing which gives value and importance to the works of certain photographers over others. There are hundreds who make, chemically, faultless photographs, but few make pictures..."
Moran understood photography could achieve more than merely recording a moment, saying in 1865 "She (photography) can present imagery with a reality and force nearly rivaling the painter, and in some respects, superior." “But it is the power of seeing and deciding what shall be done, on which will depend the value and importance of any work, whether canvas or negative.”
Moran said "Art in all its forms is the form of thought, and the photographic work which rises to this plane is the expression of the ideas of the photographer. Nature... becomes plastic to his touch, and he moulds her to his judgment through (the photographer's) power to see the beautiful."
Pioneer artistic photographer
Moran is listed in local Philadelphia directories as a lithographer in 1856, occasionally listing his profession as artist. He appears as a photographer from 1860 through 1885.
Moran was an early advocate of photography as art. His albumen silver print landscape photographs often appeared as frontispieces in Wilson's Philadelphia Photographer from 1864 to 1866.
Moran often created photographic images working alongside his brother Thomas as his brother painted the same subject view. Moran's photographs were images that balanced meticulous attention to detail with general atmospheric effects — techniques mirrored in his brother's paintings. Moran often included a human subject in his images, providing the viewer an easily relatable sense of scale.
It is felt Moran was a humanistic, Arcadian photographer, employing his photographs of nature in a metaphorical way. The National Gallery of Art (US) said in 2016: "It is thought John Moran photographed "Wissahickon Creek near Philadelphia" (c. 1863) as an antidote to Civil War."
Moran was mentioned often in the photographic press in America and Europe for both the aesthetic and technical quality of his photographs, and his theories on the medium.
In addition to single photographic views, Moran also photographed many stereoscope photographs. Moran's images were printed on stereographic cards that were widely distributed and viewed using the newly developed stereograph.
Mower General Hospital
Moran created a photographic catalog of Mower General Hospital also known as Chestnut Hill Hospital for a series that he published for sale. Moran's photos were issued as both mounted photographs and stereographs soon after the facility was completed.