For Arnold Newman, photography was an expression of himself, his way of thinking and feeling. The American photographic artist looked directly into the soul of his models and thus became one of the most influential portrait photographers of the 20th century.
(...) Continue readingArnold Newman – First steps as a photographer under difficult conditions
Arnold Newman was born in New York on 3 March 1918. The second of two brothers, he experienced changeable times as a child as his father was forced to move jobs several times due to difficult economic circumstances. He showed a strong interest in the fine arts from an early age and fostered the wish to become a painter. Having started an art course at the University of Miami in Coral Gables with the help of a scholarship, he was forced to give it up for financial reasons, and found a position as portrait photographer in a shopping centre through a family friend. It was an artistically undemanding assembly-line job, but one which allowed him to earn a living while pursuing his photographic ambitions. Alongside his daily work, in 1938 he started photographing his friends and in doing so, developed his own style. His friend, the photographer Ben Rose, introduced him to the work of Walker Evans which had a great influence on him and inspired him to leave the studio and to go out into the streets to photograph.
The breakthrough as photographer ended the dream of painting
In 1941, Arnold Newman went back to New York where he presented his pictures to the curator of the photographic department of the Museum of Modern Art, Beaumont Hall. Hall’s wife mediated Newman contact with the famous photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and that same year, he was able to show his early works in a group exhibition with his friend Ben Rose in the New York A. D. Gallery – a first small success for the young photographer. The breakthrough brought Newman a solo exhibition in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the museum went on to buy all of the exhibits, and leading journals such as Fortune, Harper’s Bazaar, Life and Newsweek subsequently awarded him numerous prestigious commissions. Having established himself as a successful photographer, he discarded his original dream of becoming a painter and dedicated himself completely to photography. But that which had fascinated him so much about painting, the effort to capture and express everything he had to say in a single picture, now became the core and trademark of his photographic work.
Newman’s camera revealed what was hidden from the eye
Arnold Newman is known above all for his portrait photography which often focused not on the sitter but on their surroundings and intellectual background. In his portrait of Anne Frank’s father, it seems as if the sitter is being crushed by the shadows in his room, whilst the composer Igor Stravinsky almost becomes a bystander at his grand piano. Newman consciously used a large-format camera for his pictures, as the cumbersome handling forced him to approach the work with calm and clarity. Despite his unhurried way of working, some days he portrayed over 50 people. Newman particularly enjoyed and frequently portrayed other artists, including painters such as Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso, actors such as Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich and Audrey Hepburn, musicians, for example Leonard Bernstein and George Harrison, and fellow photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray. Politicians such as John F. Kennedy, Konrad Adenauer and Harry S. Truman and figures of industry, for example Alfred Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach, also stood as models for Arnold Newman.
Arnold Newman died in New York City on 6 June 2006.
Arnold Newman - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
