Since 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. For most pictures, neither special skills nor equipment are required; such pictures are quite suitable for momentary information exchange on a global network.
There are a lot of professionals among photographers, there are several special techniques to take a high-quality picture, mastering which, you can take great photos. However, there are world-famous masterpieces of art photography by recognized masters, one of which I would like to mention in more detail.
Regalia Masters
Arnold Abner Newman is one of those people for whom photography has become not just a professional career for life, but a way of creative self-realization. During his lifetime, Newman was internationally recognized as a portrait master, the creator of his own style of shooting an object in a suitable setting. In 1996, a film was made on the basis of the CBS channel about the contribution of Arnold Newman to world culture.
The photographer has been awarded numerous awards and titles, including nine honorary doctorates in the field of art and humanities. Various large communities of photographers and journalists, as well as art museums have repeatedly celebrated Newman's merits with prizes and awards. Arnold Newman, whose works still impress 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: start
Newman was born on March 3, 1918 in New York, and later moved with his parents to New Jersey and then to Philadelphia. From childhood, he showed artistic abilities and after school went to study painting at the University of Miami. The Great Depression left its mark on many fates of that time, and Newman was unable to complete his studies.
In 1938, he had to get a job in a portrait studio, which determined his career for life. Filming, he said, was more like an assembly line, but she trained him to work with people. Passion for painting in his youth was not in vain, and by 1941 Arnold Newman was able to shoot enough interesting photographs to impress the curator of the Newhall Museum of Modern Art and the photographer Stieglitz. Participation in the exhibition with the filing of these people brought Arnold Newman first fame.
The key to the image of Stravinsky
In 1945, Arnold Newman organized his own exhibition, entitled “That is how artists look” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. For more than a dozen years, he experimented with portraits of people in their respective inner world environment, and his vision of the images of contemporary famous artists enjoyed considerable success with the public. The works of the photographer began to buy well-known publications, the covers of leading magazines were decorated with 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 the display of 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 claiming that it was Newman who owed his popularity. Later, in 1967, Arnold Newman released the book-photo album Bravo, Stravinsky, which became one of his first major publications.
Games 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 had already made his name, began to shoot famous politicians and artists. Among them were actors, musicians, industrialists and public figures. They agreed to pose precisely in the concept that Newman had conceived. Arnold, brought up in painting, always considered the environment of the portrait object no less important in the overall picture of the picture than 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, the features of his activity and nature. At the same time, Newman rarely intervened in the environment surrounding the subject, preferred to work with natural light. In this regard, he most often used 35-mm SLR cameras with a single lens, which made it possible to maximize the use of lighting on the spot, 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 brought them two sons in 1950 and 1952. The photographer died on June 6, 2006 from cardiac arrest. By then, Newman was already a recognized master of photography. For 7 years before his death, the photographer collected his best works in a large exhibition and exhibited them under the general title “A Gift from Arnold Newman: 60 Years of Photography”.
The exhibition is still being exhibited in the United States of America to the delight of art photography enthusiasts. 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, embodied new ideas, engaged in new experiments as if he was not going to stop at all.
Enviromental portraiture
Newman is considered the creator of a special direction in portrait photography, the so-called portrait in a natural environment. He combined the features of a documentary photo with the artistic style of photography in a studio. The photographer himself was always against big names, considering the main thing in his work to take photos of people in such a way that good pictures were obtained.
That is, the main thing for Newman was not the creation of an external surroundings for a beautiful background or the special training of the sitter, his facial expressions and the correct pose. The photographer must work here and now, guessing the moment for shooting in a familiar setting. That is how he worked with Marilyn Monroe, filming an actress during a meeting with Carl Sandberg. The right moment was chosen when creating the sensational portrait of Alfred Krupp, an industrial German 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 human aspirations. Newman always insisted that a portrait no worse than a biography could tell about people.