Arnold Newman: biography and creativity

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:46

Starting from the 19th century, photography has gradually and firmly entered our lives. The cameras of modern devices are so compact that they are built into ordinary mobile phones, and anyone can join the art to one degree or another. Most of the pictures do not require any special skills or equipment, such pictures are quite suitable for a momentary exchange of information on the global network.

There are a lot of professional photographers, there are several special techniques to take a high-quality picture, having mastered which, you can take great photos. However, there are world-famous masterpieces of artistic photography by recognized masters, one of which I would like to mention in more detail.

Master Regalia

Arnold Abner Newman is one of those people for whom photography has become not just a professional field for life, but a way of creative self-realization. Even during his lifetime, Newman was internationally recognized as a master of portraiture, the creator of his own style of shooting a subject in a suitable setting. In 1996, a film about the contribution of Arnold Newman to world culture was made on the basis of the CBS channel.

The photographer has received numerous awards and titles, including nine honorary doctorates in the arts and humanities. Various large communities of photographers and journalists, as well as art museums, have repeatedly recognized Newman's merits with prizes and awards. Arnold Newman, whose work still impresses many people, left behind a great legacy, among which portraits of famous people are especially famous. Thanks to his photographs, today we can plunge into the atmosphere of the last century.

Arnold Newman, biography: beginning

Newman was born on March 3, 1918 in New York, later moved with his parents to New Jersey and then to Philadelphia. He showed artistic abilities from childhood and after school went to study painting at the University of Miami. The Great Depression left its mark on many destinies of that time, and Newman was unable to complete his studies.

In 1938, he had to get a job in a portrait photography studio, which determined his career for life. Shooting, he said, was more like an assembly line, but she taught him how to work with people. The passion for painting in his youth was not in vain, and by 1941 Arnold Newman was able to take enough interesting photographs to impress the curator of the Newhall Museum of Modern Art and the photographer Stieglitz. Participation in the exhibition at the suggestion of these people brought Arnold Newman the first fame.

The key to the image of Stravinsky

In 1945, Arnold Newman organizes his own exhibition en titled "This is what artists look like" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. For more than a dozen years, he experimented with portraits of people in the appropriateworld environment, and his vision of the images of contemporary famous artists enjoyed considerable success with the public. The photographer's works began to be bought by well-known publications, the covers of leading magazines adorned the works of the hands of a novice portrait painter.

The following year, 1946, Newman received an order for one of his most significant works - a portrait of Stravinsky, a famous composer of that time. In his work with Igor Stravinsky, he relied on the simplicity and accuracy of displaying all elements of the composition, thus creating a kind of symbolic portrait of the composer. Stravinsky was fascinated by the work of the photographer, sometimes declaring that it was Newman who owed his popularity. Later, in 1967, Arnold Newman released a book-photo album Bravo, Stravinsky, which became one of his first serious publications.

Playing with light

At the same time, in 1946, the photographer moved to New York and created his own studio, his business went uphill. Arnold Newman, whose photographs have already made him a name, began to photograph famous politicians and artists. Among them were actors, musicians, industrialists and public figures. They agreed to pose exactly in the concept that Newman had in mind. Arnold, who was brought up in painting, always considered the environment of the subject of a portrait as important in the overall picture of the picture as facial expression or posture.

It was with the help of background details and additional objects that Newman tried to reflect the place of the person portrayed in the world, his featuresactivity and nature. At the same time, Newman rarely intervened in the environment surrounding the subject, preferring to work with natural light. Because of this, he most often used 35mm single-lens reflex cameras, which allowed him to make the most of the lighting on site, without the use of studio equipment.

Family and work, together for life

Arnold Newman in 1949 married Augusta Rubenstein, a girl of his circle. Their marriage produced two sons in 1950 and 1952. The photographer died on June 6, 2006 from cardiac arrest. By that time, Newman was already a recognized master of photography. 7 years before his death, the photographer collected his best works in a large exhibition and exhibited them under the general title “The Gift of Arnold Newman: 60 Years of Photographs.”

The exhibition is still on display in the United States of America to the delight of connoisseurs of artistic photography. Newman did not stop working until his death, as he himself claimed in 2002, he and his wife were "very busy." He worked on new books, implemented new ideas, experimented with new things as if he had no intention of stopping.

Environmental portraiture

Newman is considered the creator of a special direction in portrait photography, the so-called portrait in a natural environment. He combined the characteristics of documentary photography with the artistic style of photography in the studio. The photographer himself has always been against high-profile names, considering the main thing in his work to take photographs of people in such a way thattook good pictures.

That is, the main thing for Newman was not the creation of an external entourage for a beautiful background or special training of the sitter, his facial expressions and the correct posture. The photographer must work here and now, guessing the moment for shooting in the familiar environment of the object. This is how he worked with Marilyn Monroe, shooting the actress during a meeting with Carl Sandberg. The right moment was also chosen for the creation of the sensational portrait of Alfred Krupp, the German industrial magnate.

In each work of the master, the feelings and experiences of the object are visible, and the environment, as it were, emphasizes, directs the general thought, speaks of the material applications of a person's aspirations. Newman always said that a portrait can tell about people as well as a biography.