Beaumont Newhall

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Beaumont Newhall (born June 22, 1908 in Lynn , Massachusetts , † February 26, 1993 in Santa Fe , New Mexico ) was an American author , photographer , art and photo historian and curator . He was instrumental in setting up the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and was its first director from 1940 to 1947. Together with his wife, Nancy Wynne Newhall (1908–1974), the photo historian published numerous works on the history and development of photography . Newhall's first work, Geschichte der Photographie ( History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present ), published in 1937, became a highly regarded standard work.

Live and act

Beaumont Newhall originally wanted to study film and photography , but had to switch to art history because these courses did not exist at Harvard University . He studied at Harvard, the Sorbonne in Paris and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London . At Harvard, the art theorist Paul J. Sachs had a significant influence on Newhall. After graduating in 1931, Newhall worked for a brief period at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as an assistant in the decorative arts department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and was appointed librarian of MoMA in 1935. Under Newhall, the library of the young museum grew considerably. In 1936 Newhall married the art student Nancy Wynne. Nancy had studied at the Art Students League of New York and, like Beaumont, had a particular interest in photography. Both should deal intensively throughout their lives with the aesthetic , creative and socially critical aspects of photography, its history and interpretation.

In 1937, Newhall accepted an invitation from the then director of MoMA, Alfred Barr Jr. , to curate Retrospective Photography 1839–1937 . Accompanying designed Newhall extensive exhibition catalog History of Photography ( History of Photography was) the first time the technical and artistic aspects of photography chronologically summarizing and by critics and audiences alike praised and much respected. The successful catalog was published in book form that same year and soon became a regularly updated standard work. The retrospective was followed in 1938 by the exhibitions American Photographs by Walker Evans and in 1940 War Comes over the People, a story written with the lens of Therese Bonney , which was created under the impact of World War II . Meanwhile, Newhall was building up the museum's photography department, whose first directorate was in 1940. Together with the photographer friend Ansel Adams , the exhibition Sixty Photographs was created at the end of 1940 , the first show of the new photographic department at MoMA.

When the USA entered the war, Newhall reported to Europe for aerial reconnaissance and so the photographer Edward Steichen, who was commissioned by the US Navy to carry out war propagandistic exhibitions, gained the upper hand at MoMA. There were discrepancies between Steichen and Newhall, finally Newhall resigned in 1947 and Steichen took over the successor (until 1962).

In 1948 Beaumont Newhall became the first curator of the George Eastman House in Rochester , New York . He held the office until 1958 and was eventually appointed director. In the following two decades he expanded the International Museum of Photography in the George Eastman House into what was then the largest collection of creative photography. In 1971 he resigned from his position and, together with his wife Nancy, devoted himself primarily to art historical and art critical considerations of photography. Over the years, the Newhall together contributed a profound private collection, they attach to the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico donated and to the heart of where Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Library was.

Newhall died at the age of 84 at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico; from his marriage to Nancy had a son, Theo Christopher Newhall.

In 1972 Newhall was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1984 he was a MacArthur Fellow .

Works (selection)

  • Photography, 1839-1937. Museum of Modern Art, New York 1937.
  • Photography. A Short Critical History . Museum of Modern Art, New York 1938.
  • (with Lincoln Kirsten): The Photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Museum of Modern Art, New York 1947.
  • The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day . Museum of Modern Art, New York 1949. Revised editions 1964, 1971, 1978 and 1982.
    • L'histore de la photographie depuis 1839 et jusqu'à nos jours. Bézier prism, Paris 1967.
    • The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day . Wecker & Warburg, London 1982.
    • Historia de la fotografia. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 1984.
    • History of Photography. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1984 (as well as licensed edition for the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft , Darmstadt 1984). New editions 1989 and 1998.
  • (Ed., with Nancy Newhall): Masters of Photography . George Braziller, New York 1958.
  • The Daguerreotype in America . Duell, Sloan & Pearce, New York 1961. Revised edition: New York Graphic Society, Greenwich 1968. Reprinted in Dover, New York 1976.
  • Latent image. The Discovery of Photography. Doubleday, New York 1967.
    • L'immagine latente . Zanichelli, Bologna 1969.
    • The fathers of photography. Anatomy of an invention. Heering, Seebruck am Chiemsee 1985.
  • Airborne Camera. The World from the Air and Outer Space. Hastings House, New York 1969.
  • (as ed.): Photography: Essays & Images. Illustrated Readings in the History of Photography. Museum of Modern Art, New York 1980.
  • In plain sight. The Photographs of Beaumont Newhall. GM Smith, Salt Lake City 1983.
  • Focus. Memoirs of a Life in Photography. Bulfinch, Boston, Toronto, London 1993.

Commemorative publication for Beaumont Newhall

  • Van Deren Coke (Ed.): One Hundred Years of Photographic History. Essays in Honor of Beaumont Newhall. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque (New Mexico) 1975.

Web links

Individual references and sources

  1. Ansel Adams: Autobiography . Christian Verlag, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-88472-141-0 , p. 174 ff .
  2. ^ Adams: Autobiography , p. 185
  3. ^ Adams: Autobiography , p. 190
  4. Charles Hagen: Beaumont Newhall, a Historian Of Photography, Is Dead at 84. The New York Times , February 27, 1993, accessed June 18, 2008 .