The Portfolios

When The Janus Foundation first attempted to organize the surviving photographs of Allan Janus, it seemed a daunting, if not an impossible task. Images were stored haphazardly in enlarging paper boxes, shoe, cigar and ammunition boxes, inside the leaves of books - whatever seems to have come to hand. There seemed to be no organizational paradigm at all. Initial efforts to decipher the collection by contacting Janus via a Ouija board yielded ambiguous results. After several years of close study, made more difficult by the lack of generous grants from arts funding organizations, staff members of The Foundation's archives have developed a working hypothesis of Janus' methodology:

When Allan Janus returned from photographic sessions or trips, he would, after processing the negatives, print those images that most strongly interested him. These images would then be stored together in the order in which they were made. Often, he would return after some years to print negatives grouped along simple-minded themes or subjects that occured to him: rivers and streams, gardens, animals, etc. These images would also be stored together and constituted what he described as "portfolios". From time to time, Janus would assemble a grouping from one or several of these portfolios, or a selection of what he conceived would be "popular" images; he would send these selections, along with a wheedling letter, to galleries, museums, or collectors. On their invariable rejection and return, Janus would return the pictures to storage, usually keeping them in their new order. We see then, that, images in the Janus Collection were organized in the following groupings:

1. Images arranged chronologically.
2. Portfolios arranged thematically.
3. Selections drawn from the portfolios.
4. Selections drawn from selections from the portfolios.
5. Portfolios derived from selections of selections from the portfolios.

And so on.

We have reassembled several Janus portfolios according to fragmentary notes made by the photographer. Close study of the whiney, vaguely threatening letters he would send with the portfolios have also yielded valuable information. The images presented in these pages were formerly included in our popular Picture of the Week series; that series will continue, and as Janus Scholarship developes, further images will be added to these portfolios.

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