Hans Namuth
Hans Namuth ( born March 17, 1915 in Essen, † October 13, 1990 in East Hampton, New York) was an American photographer and filmmaker German origin. He portrayed many artists and other personalities. Particularly well-known was his series of photographs of Jackson Pollock, a painter of abstract expressionism.
Life and work
Hans Heinz Oskar Adolf Rudolf Namuth was the son of Adolf Namuth and his wife Anna (nee Weisskirch ) born. He attended from 1925 to 1931, the Humboldt - secondary school of his native city, which he, because he was not moved to the left Untersekunda. He worked as a bookseller and enrolled at Old migrant bird. His big dream was time to become a theater director. As he sat in 1933 at the time of National Socialism because of the distribution of leaflets, which were directed against Adolf Hitler in prison, his father, a member of the SA was intervened and got him after the release of a passport and a ticket to Paris.
In Paris, he earned his livelihood by low -paid jobs. There he became friends with the German photographer Georg Reisner, who invited him in the summer of 1935 to work in his photo studio in the Majorcan Port de Pollença. This introduction to photography was to change his life. In November they returned to Paris. In July 1936, she worked for the French magazine Vu in Barcelona and created during the Spanish Civil War in the next nine months, dramatic images that have been published in leading European newspapers and magazines.
From spring 1937 until the fall of 1939 and continued Namuth Reisner continued her photographic work in Paris until they were interned after the German occupation of France by the Vichy regime. After a short time in the Foreign Legion, he was released in October 1940, fled to Marseille and emigrated in April 1941 with the help of Varian Fry, director of the Emergency Rescue Committee in New York. His friend Reisner had taken his own life in December 1940. 1943 closed Namuth the U.S. Army and was used in Western Europe as a translator. In the same year he married Carmen Herrera, a French-born Guatemalan. Through courses in which likewise emigrated German photographer Josef Breitenbach and later, in 1949, when Alexei Brodowitsch. Director of The New School, he completed his photographic training.
Link to image ( Please note copyrights )
In the summer of 1950 Namuth Jackson Pollock asked, who had become known through exhibitions at Peggy Guggenheim 's Art of This Century, if he could photograph the artist while painting. Pollock agreed. About 200 photos were taken in July and August of the year they show Pollock at work on One: Number 31, and Autumn Rhythm, Number 30 Hans Namuth was the photographer who promoted his photographs as well as two films Jackson Pollock's reputation as an artist continues. In return, Jackson Pollock was the artist who made known Hans Namuth. The photos show the artist in various positions to the screen, coined by Harold Rosenberg for Pollock's work term action painting made in the photo document visible.
Namuth conveyor Brodowitsch, who was also the art director of Harper 's Bazaar, and had made him aware of Pollock, published Namuth photographs of Pollock as the first in the spring of 1951. Until the early 1960s, photographed Namuth other artists of Abstract Expressionism and the New York School such as Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. In popular magazines also published photo portraits of personalities such as Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, John O'Hara, Edward Albee, and others. Between 1979 to March 1983 Namuth created 19 Cover Title for Art News, among others, portraits of Jasper Johns, Louise Nevelson and Jim Dine. This was followed until his death more than 100 works for the French publication Connaissance des Arts, which showed, for example, photographs of Philip Johnson, Isamu Noguchi and George Segal.
Namuth not only created portraits of celebrities for magazines such as Life, Harper 's Bazaar and Time but took over many years several trips to Guatemala for photographic recordings of the population. They were published in 1989 in the book Los Todos Santero.
Together with Paul Falkenberg turned Namuth the films Jackson Pollock (1951 ), Willem de Kooning, the Painter (1964 ), Josef Albers: Homage to the Square (1969 ), Louis H. Kahn, Architect (1974) and Alfred Stieglitz, Photographer ( 1982).
Hans Namuth died in 1990 as the result of a traffic accident, he on the way back from a screening of his latest film, Jasper Johns: Take an Object in the Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, suffered when his car collided with another vehicle.