Artist Biographies
Umbo
(Otto Umbehr) German, 1902-1980
Born Otto Umbehr in Düsseldorf, Umbo was a pioneering photojournalist also known for his compelling portraiture. Following studies in painting and design
at the Bauhaus (1921-23), Umbo moved to Berlin where he undertook various jobs, including camera assistant to Walter Ruttmann on the documentary film
Berlin, Die Sinfonie einer Grosstadt (Berlin, Symphony of a Great
City, completed 1927). In 1926 he began a career as a professional photographer, opening a
portrait studio with the assistance of Paul Citroën, a former Bauhaus colleague. He soon became known for his striking portraits produced using extreme closeups
and dramatic lighting.
In 1928 Umbo joined Simon Guttmann's recently established Dephot (Deutsche Photodienst), the first cooperative photojournalist agency, managing
the studio and contributing photographs until the agency was dissolved in 1933. During this time his work appeared in magazines such as the
Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, the Münchner Illustrierte Presse, Die
Dame, and Die Koralle. He also experimented with multiple exposure, unusual camera angles, photomontage,
collage, and x-ray film, and in 1929 took part in
Film und Foto, the important international exhibition of avant-garde photography and film held in Stuttgart.
Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, Umbo worked as a freelance photojournalist, traveling to North Africa and Italy on assignment. During
World War II he served in the German army (1943-45), losing all his prints and negatives when his studio was destroyed. After the war Umbo moved to Hanover,
where he continued freelance work. From 1957 until the early 1970s he also taught photography in Bad Pyrmont, Hildesheim, and Hanover. M.M.
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve
French, 1795-1866
A painter who exhibited at the Paris Salons from 1814-40, Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (born in Boissy-Saint-Léger) was later known as a lithographer. He
became interested in photography in 1842, shortly after the new medium's invention, as an aid to his graphic work. His subjects included fashion, costume,
and daily life, as well as light erotica, sometimes published in conjunction with other artists.
By 1850 Vallou de Villeneuve had begun to practice photography in his studio, primarily female nudes and portraits of actors. In 1853-54 he published
a series of nude studies, Études d'après
nature, which were sold as artists models and to the general public. Several were used for well-known works by
Gustave Courbet. Vallou de Villeneuve's works are admired for their emotional restraint, as well as for their masterful orchestration of form. A member of the
Société héliographique in 1851, he helped found the Société française de photographie in 1854. T.W.F.
James VanDerZee
American, 1886-1983
Famous for his images of Harlem and its inhabitants, James VanDerZee was born in Lenox, Massachusetts. During his youth, he took portraits of family
members and friends, and after various jobs in Lenox and New York City began work in 1911 as a photographic assistant in the portrait studio run by Charles Gertz
in Hahne's department store in Newark, New Jersey. From 1912-15 VanDerZee operated a portrait studio in the Toussaint Conservatory of Art and Music,
established by his sister Jennie.
Two years later VanDerZee opened a studio in Harlem and began making his memorable portraits. During the period of his greatest success, from
the years of the Harlem Renaissance (1919-29) until World War II, he photographed the area's large African-American middle class, producing formal portraits
of individuals, families, church and school groups, athletic organizations, women's clubs, fraternal organizations, weddings, funerals, and street scenes. He
also photographed Harlem's celebrated artists, writers, singers, religious leaders, and politicians.
In 1924 VanDerZee became official photographer for Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, documenting their
conventions, rallies, and parades. He retired in the 1960s, but resumed photography for a brief period before his death. M.M.
Carleton E. Watkins
American, 1829-1916
Born in Oneonta, New York, Carleton Watkins traveled west to California in the early 1850s, shortly after the gold rush. He learned photography in 1854
from Robert Vance, one of the earliest and best of San Francisco's daguerreotypists. Vance's landscape photography, unusually skilled for the time, may have
influenced Watkins's work.
Watkins was among the first photographers in the Yosemite valley, shooting there in 1861, and his mammoth-plate landscape photographs of the
area are believed to have contributed to Yosemite's early designation as a national park. His Yosemite Art Gallery opened in San Francisco in 1867, but unlike
most photographers of the time, Watkins is not known to have done much portrait work. His subjects included topographical, scenic, survey, agricultural, and
urban views of California and surrounding states, including Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. Through his friendship with railroad magnate Collis
Huntington, Watkins photographed along railway lines and was able to reach distant sites. Huntington later bought him the farm where he retired. Watkins's landscapes
were well received; he was awarded an international medal at the Paris Exposition (1867) and a medal of progress at the Vienna International Exposition (1873).
The numerous commissions and the work produced for the public market by Watkins combine clarity of vision with technical expertise. His work set
the standard for subsequent photographers of western views, such as William Henry Jackson, Timothy O'Sullivan, and John K. Hillers. Although his life was
difficult and his business sense lacking, his photographic efforts were protracted and indefatigable. Watkins's negatives were destroyed in the San Francisco
earthquake and fire of 1906. He died several years later blind and insane. T.W.F.
Charles Leander Weed
American, 1824-1903
Born in New York state, Charles Leander Weed moved to Sacramento, where he became a camera operator in the daguerreotype portrait studio of George
J. Watson in 1854. Four years later he was named the junior partner of Robert Vance, the leading daguerreotypist in California during the 1850s.
Weed is recognized for his early views of Yosemite. In June 1859 he was the first known photographer to venture into the valleytaken there by the
publisher, developer, and entrepreneur James Hutchings, who printed woodcuts after Weed's wet plate photographs later that year in his
Hutchings' California Magazine. Like other photographers, Weed switched from daguerreotypes to the wet collodion technique soon after its local introduction at the 1855 California
State Fair. His views of early mining and settlement in California have been much admired.
In 1860 Weed left his partnership to make the first of several visits to Asia, briefly establishing a studio in Hong Kong before returning to California
the following year. He photographed Yosemite in 1864, then traveled to produce views of Hawaii in 1865 and of the Far East in 1867. That same year he showed
his photographs at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, winning an international award for landscape photography. Weed made another trip to Yosemite in 1872,
probably with Eadweard Muybridge, and later worked as a photoengraver. T.W.F.
William Wegman
American, 1942-
William Wegman (born Holyoke, Massachusetts) wears many hats: artist, director, clown, cultural critic. He is, at heart, a conceptualista photographer
who began as a painter and who retains a surrealist's sense of irony. He moves easily among photography, video, painting, drawing, and printmaking,
incorporating as few or as many techniques from each medium as needed.
Wegman's most faithful models have been his Weimaraner dogs, Man Ray and Fay Ray, and the latter's many offspring. Dressing the dogs in
various costumes, then situating them with artifacts extracted from consumer culture, Wegman makes sarcastic, often hilariously goofy commentary on
contemporary American society.
Educated at the Massachusetts College of Art (B.F.A., 1965) and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (M.F.A., 1967), Wegman has
achieved worldwide recognition through his numerous publications and exhibitions. In 1990 the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne organized an extensive survey of
Wegman's paintings, drawings, photographs, and videotapes that traveled throughout Europe and the United States to venues that included the Institute of
Contemporary Arts, Boston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Foundation
(1975, 1986) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1975-77, 1982), and a New York Creative Artists Public Service Grant (1979). Wegman lives in New York. A.W.
Edward Weston
American, 1886-1958
Edward Weston was one of the most influential proponents of straight photography in America. Born in Highland Park, Illinois, he made his first photographs
in 1902 with a Kodak camera given to him by his father. Four years later he settled in California, supporting himself as a portrait photographer. After attending
the Illinois College of Photography, he opened a studio in Tropico (now Glendale), California, in 1911.
Initially, Weston made photographs in the soft-focus pictorial style. In the early 1920s, however, his work began to become more sharply focused, with
a greater emphasis on form and composition. Among the earliest examples of this new approach are his 1922 photographs of the Armco steel mill in
Middletown, Ohio. Over the next few years he continued to experiment with this new style, working in Mexico and then San Francisco.
A master of lighting and composition, Weston began a series of closeup studies of shells and vegetables in 1927, creating the clearly focused,
detailed images for which he became famous. In 1932 Weston joined Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham, and others in founding Group f/64,
which advocated straight, unmanipulated photography. Five years later he received the first fellowship awarded to a photographer by the John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation. The fellowship was renewed in 1938 and allowed Weston to travel and photograph throughout California and the western United States.
Working slowly and methodically with large-format cameras, Weston continued to produce sharply focused contact prints until 1948, when
Parkinson's disease forced him to give up photography. In subsequent years Weston's sons, Brett and Cole, worked under his supervision to make prints from his negatives.
M.M.
Clarence H. White
American, 1871-1925
Born in Carlisle, Ohio, Clarence Hudson White moved to the town of Newark in 1887. He began to photograph as a hobby in 1893, quickly becoming
quite skilled, and by 1896 his works were recognized by the Ohio Photographers Association. Entirely self-taught, his mastery of the medium was based on his
ability to create balanced compositions and to render the subtle effects of natural light. He explored various materials for their aesthetic possibilities, including
platinum and gum bichromate prints, and, after 1906, palladium prints.
In 1898 White showed his work in Philadelphia, where it came to the attention of Alfred Stieglitz and Joseph Keiley. His images were included in
the 1899 Photographic Salon in London, which had been organized by the Linked Ring. From 1900-10 White exhibited in every national and international
photographic show in London, Paris, Glasgow, Berlin, and Vienna. Moving to New York City in 1906, he began a career as an educator, lecturing on photography
at
Columbia University Teachers College (1907-25) and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (1908-21).
In 1910 White began teaching summer classes in Seguinland, Maine, which led him to open the Clarence H. White School of Photography in New
York in 1914. During summer he continued to teach workshops in New York, Connecticut, and Maine. Among his accomplished students were Margaret
Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, Paul J. Outerbridge, Ralph Steiner, and Karl F. Struss. Named a member of the Linked Ring in 1900, White was nominated to the
Photo-Secession in 1902. He was the first president of the Pictorial Photographers of America, helping to found it with Gertrude Käsebier and others in 1916.
Influenced by Japanese art, the work of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and other progressive sources, White's style is imaginative and gentle, often
underscored by his use of platinum papers. He believed that the photograph was a work of fine art in its own right. Although deeply involved and influential in
New York's competitive world of photography, White produced his best work from 1893-1906, photographing simple, open scenes of his family and friends in their
domestic, midwestern environment. T.W.F.
Henry White
British, 1819-1903
An amateur photographer, Henry White was a London lawyer who in 1841 joined his father in their firm, White and Son, continuing the practice after his
father's death in 1857. Active during the 1850s-60s, White produced picturesque landscapes of England and North Wales. Common subjects were cottages, mills,
and fields, as well as closeup views of foliage and other images of nature.
White joined the Photographic Society of London in 1855 and was active in the group, serving as treasurer for many years and contributing
photographs to their albums in 1855 and 1857. He also belonged to the Photographic Society of Great Britain. His exhibited work met with considerable praise; he won
the highest medal at the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris, and his landscape photographs were honored at the International Exhibition in Brussels in 1856.
That same year, White published a series of views of London. T.W.F.
Minor White
American, 1908-1976
Minor Martin White (born in Minneapolis) was a photographer, poet, and teacher who worked in photographic sequences to achieve greater expressive
power. Several years after graduating from the University of Minnesota with a major in botany and a minor in English, White moved to Portland where he joined the
Oregon Camera Club. Interested in photography since his youth, he worked as an assistant in a photography studio at night and in 1938 served as a creative
photographer for the Works Progress Administration.
Following service in the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps (1942-45), White moved to New York where he studied art history with Meyer Shapiro at
Columbia University (1945-46). In 1946 he met Alfred Stieglitz, whose ideas about photographic equivalents had a deep impact on his work. Like Stieglitz, White sought
to express inner feelings and beliefs through his work. Around this time he began producing sequences of images that were arranged for their allusive or
metaphorical meaning rather than for narrative content, a practice he continued throughout his career.
In 1952 White helped found Aperture magazine, serving as its editor until l975. He took a position as curator of exhibitions at George Eastman House
in Rochester in the early 1950s, working there until 1957. While at Eastman House he also served as editor for the museum's publication,
Image. In 1955 White began teaching at the Rochester Institute of Technology, leaving in 1965 to join the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over the years he
became a well-respected and influential teacher, and continued to teach at mit until 1974. During the 1950s White became interested in mysticism, Eastern
philosophy, and Gestalt psychology, all of which had an impact on his work and teaching. In 1962 he was a founding member of the Society for Photographic
Education and in 1970 was awarded a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. M.M.
Garry Winogrand
American, 1928-1984
Of the many figures to emerge during the 1960s boom in 35mm street photography and social documentation, Garry Winogrand was a frontrunner. He was
certainly one of the most prolific and, in the view of some critics, most frustrating of that era's artists, notoriously avoiding self-explanation. He stated simply that
his reason for taking pictures was to "see what things look like when photographed."
From the zoos of New York, to the Coney Island Aquarium, to people walking in Manhattan, London, Austin, or Los Angeles, Winogrand
photographed anything and everything that to him seemed ironic, intriguing, or arresting. Although it has been said that Winogrand's ability to edit his tens of thousands of
images superseded his talents as a photographer, his eye captured the comic, grotesque, and sometimes disturbing side of day-to-day human relations with
a lightning speed and a voracious voyeurism that few photographers have matched.
Winogrand (born in New York City) studied painting at the City College of New York (1947-48) and Columbia University (1948-51). He began to
make photographs in 1948, and in 1951 studied with Alexy Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research. He worked commercially in New York and was
associated with several agencies, his work appearing in magazines such as
Collier's and Pageant. In 1960 Winogrand became fervently absorbed in photography,
supported by fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1964, 1969, 1978) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1975).
Winogrand's unique vision caught the attention of John Szarkowski, director of the Museum of Modern Art's department of photography, who in
1977 organized a one-person exhibition of his work. Winogrand later supported himself with teaching stints at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of
Technology (1971-72) and the University of Texas at Austin (1973-78). He died in Mexico after a prolonged bout with cancer.
Winogrand's published projects include The
Animals (1969), Women Are Beautiful (1975),
Public Relations (1977), and Stock Photographs: Fort
Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo (1980). His extensive archives, including several thousand unprocessed images, are housed at the Center for Creative
Photography, Tucson. A.W.
Joel-Peter Witkin
American, 1939-
According to Joel-Peter Witkin, his provocative, often horrific imagery "reflects the insanity of life." Drawing from his Catholic upbringing, paragons of Western
art, the history of photography, and his own life experience, Witkin uses iconographyincluding physically abnormal persons, those with nonstandard sexual
persuasions, and remains of corpses posed in disturbing tableauxthat is at once beautiful and demonic, perverse and profound. While many of his subjects
represent the deepest, and often ugliest, aspects of human nature, he realizes "a form of beauty" in everything. Beneath their sumptuous surfaces, printed to technical
perfection, Witkin's photographs touch on taboos that are at times little more than curiosities; at others, unavoidably seductive. "Art to me," he says of the
process, "is a condition of being, of spirit, that is presented so strongly and convincingly that it's held together by an ethos of physicality."
Witkin (born in New York City) served as a combat photographer for the U.S. Army from 1961-64. He attended Cooper Union in New York (B.F.A.
in sculpture, 1974) and the University of New Mexico (M.F.A. in photography, 1986). He has received grants from the New York Creative Artists Public
Service (1974), the Ford Foundation (1977), the National Endowment for the Arts (1981, 1986, 1992), Art Matters (1986), and the Chevalier des arts et des
lettres (1990). His work has been shown in one-person exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1985), the Museum of Contemporary
Photography, Chicago (1986), the Kunstverein, Frankfurt (1988), the Museum of Modern Art, Haifa (1991), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1996).
He lives in Albuquerque. A.W.
David B. Woodbury
American, d. 1866
David Woodbury was one of the many lesser known photographers of the American Civil War. Employed by Mathew Brady, he is known to have photographed
in Virginia. Woodbury later worked for Alexander Gardner, and one of his views appears in Gardner's famous volume
Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War (1866). T.W.F.
Shikanosuke Yagaki
Japanese, 1897-1966
Born in Kyoto, Shikanosuke Yagaki was a banker who became interested in photography as a teenager. After graduating in 1920 from Doshisha University,
where he studied English literature, Yagaki joined the Konoike banking establishment that would later become the Sanwa Bank. In the 1930s he was active in several
of the many amateur photography clubs then flourishing in Japan: the Sanwa Bank Photo Club, the Karashishi-kai Photo Group, and the Kyoto Leica Club.
He showed his work widely throughout Japan, including the International Photo Salons and the All Japan Association of Photographic Societies exhibitions. His
work was published in Asahi Camera Magazine (1933) and
Leica Gashu (1938), Japan's first photography book. Yagaki was known for his masterful rendering of
light and shadow, and his use of high contrast, angles, and common subject matter aligned him with the modernists of Europe and the United States. M.M.
The biograhies were written by Karen L. Churchill, Thomas Weston Fels, Maureen A. McKenna, and April Watson.
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