It would be an exaggeration to say that walking through the gallery is like time travel, but the wallpaper and period matting do a great deal to contextualize Day's photographs. What might seem nave, blasphemous, or offensive if it were produced today comes off as eccentric, or perhaps quaint. Day's oeuvre becomes a historical artifact. His style peaked with the relatively modernist Hampstead series, but it reached its apotheosis in the much later "Orpheus" series, which portrays a young boy in the woods holding a lyre. "Nude Youth with Lyre," from 1907, is "Marble Faun" redone at a much higher level of technical mastery, and, more importantly, it is the work of an artist committed to his tastes. Day's love of classical subject matter was surely more than a symptom of his desire to prove that photography was a fine art. He seems to have been genuinely fascinated with the exotic and the mystical. The wallpapered gallery reminds us that we are essentially in Day's home, viewing works that were personal and self-expressive.
Art and the Camera: The Photographs of F. Holland Day is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts through March 18, 2001. For more information, call 267-9300.