Photographs by: Arnold Newman

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), Physician, Poet and Novelist played a key role in ushering in the age of photography.
In 1859 he said: “What is to come of …photography we are almost afraid to guess. Form is henceforth divorced from matter.
In fact, matter as a visible object is of no great use any longer, except as a mold on which form is shaped.”
Arnold Newman, known as a master of environmental portraiture, applied this notion from his early work forward.

The Early Work, photographs by Arnold Newman

This exhibition features his early work, shown for the first time outside of New York. The opening was coordinated with release of Steidl’s book (2008), The Early Work. The exhibition displays early images from the 1930-40’s, seen here are the seeds of what would evolve into Newman’s career as a master of environmental portraiture.

“Newman’s early work – the studies of light and shadow, texture and form, city streets and people in their own homes or neighborhoods – was formative for him in many ways. . . He learned to experiment with composition and form, and to be mindful of both the history he documented and that which had come before.” (Philip Brookman, Arnold Newman, The Early Work) Newman explains his method in his biography, A Life In Photography, “We do not take pictures with our cameras, but with our hearts and minds. Good art cannot be defined. There is only great art that creates new ideas.”

Arnold Newman (1918 – 2006) has work in numerous major private and museum collections. His photographs have been the subject of many books and articles and has received worldwide recognition.

Featured in this exhibition is the work of Arnold Newman.

Select this link to view his complete artist page.

Arnold Newman (1918 – 2006)
Arnold Abner Newman was an American photographer, noted for his environmental portraits of artists and politicians. He was also known for his carefully composed abstract still life images. Arnold Newman found his vision in the empathy he felt for artists and their work. Although he photographed many personalities, Marlene Dietrich, John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan, Mickey Mantle, and Audrey Hepburn he maintained that even if the subject is not known, or is already forgotten, the photograph itself must still excite and interest the viewer.

Newman is often credited with being the first photographer to use so-called environmental portraiture, in which the photographer places the subject in a carefully controlled setting to capture the essence of the individual’s life and work. Newman normally captured his subjects in their most familiar surroundings with representative visual elements showing their professions and personalities. A musician for instance might be photographed in their recording studio or on stage, a Senator or other politician in their office or a representative building. Using a large-format camera and tripod, he worked to record every detail of a scene.

“I didn’t just want to make a photograph with some things in the background,” Newman told American Photo magazine in an interview. “The surroundings had to add to the composition and the understanding of the person. No matter who the subject was, it had to be an interesting photograph. Just to simply do a portrait of a famous person doesn’t mean a thing.”

Newman’s best-known images were in black and white, although he often photographed in color. His black and white portrait of Igor Stravinsky seated at a grand piano became his signature image, even though it was rejected by the magazine that gave the assignment to Newman. He was one of the few photographers allowed to make a portrait of the famously camera-shy Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Below is an excerpt of a review from the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.
To read the entire review please access the AJC web site.

DATE: May 23, 2008
PUBLICATION: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
BYLINE: Lisa Kurzner
TITLE: Portrait Photographer Remembered For His Street Work

EXHIBITION : “Arnold Newman: The Early Work”

BOTTOM LINE: A fine opportunity to view vintage and modern prints of little-known work — street still lifes — by the portrait photographer Arnold Newman.

Known primarily as a portrait photographer famous for his “environmental portraits” of artists and society luminaries, in his early years Arnold Newman (1918-2006) also created a large body of photography of a more private nature.

These are mostly outdoor still-life images, formalist studies of light, shadow and textures, many devoid of people. They demonstrate Newman’s understanding of the most advanced European and American techniques as he trained his eye outside the studio.

Recently, “Arnold Newman: The Early Work” (Steidl), which features these images, was published. To celebrate, Lumiere Gallery has mounted a show, the first dedicated to Newman’s early work outside New York.

Forced to find employment after high school during the Depression, Newman took a job in a photography studio, learning the trade he would make his life’s work. Later, moving between Baltimore, Philadelphia and West Palm Beach, he took his medium-format camera and tripod into forgotten neighborhoods.

The results, collected in this exhibition, suggest that Newman had more on his mind than social documentation, a resonant theme of much urban photography of the era. He had absorbed lessons from avant garde painting as well as photography.

“Violin Maker’s Patterns” (Philadelphia, 1941) takes up one of the French modernists’ favorite subjects. For both Cubists and the Surrealists, the sinuous forms of the violin invoked the female form, and here Newman plays with positive and negative, collage and texture in a beautifully printed, sophisticated composition.

In another image, “Chairs on Porch” (West Palm Beach, 1941), Newman harnesses the sunlight and shadows into a meditation on form and structure as only photography can. Shadows cast from the vertical porch balustrade onto the clapboard wall of the house establish a relationship between the solid wooden posts and elusive shadows, bringing the two in equal balance.

To put Newman’s work in context, the show pulls in portrait and street work by other photographers working at the same time, including John Gutmann, Paul Strand and Helen Levitt. While Newman made social pictures too, these are his most derivative works.

The final gallery includes some of his wonderful portraits, including those of Frank Stella and Marilyn Monroe.