Hans Namuth

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Hans Namuth (born March 17, 1915 in Essen , † October 13, 1990 in East Hampton , New York ) was an American photographer and filmmaker of German origin. He portrayed many artists and other personalities. His photo series by Jackson Pollock , a painter of Abstract Expressionism , became particularly well known .

life and work

Hans Heinz Oskar Adolf Rudolf Namuth was born as the son of Adolf Namuth and his wife Anna (née Weisskirch). From 1925 to 1931 he attended the Humboldt-Oberrealschule in his hometown, which he left with the lower secondary school because he was not transferred . He worked as a bookseller and registered with Alt-Wandervogel . Back then, his big dream was to become a theater director. When he was in prison in 1933 for distributing leaflets directed against Adolf Hitler during National Socialism , his father, who was a member of the SA , intervened and, after his release, got him a passport and a ticket to Paris.

In Paris he earned his living from low-paid jobs. There he made friends with the German photographer Georg Reisner, who invited him to work in his photo studio in the Mallorcan Port de Pollença in the summer of 1935 . This introduction to photography was to rule his life. In November of that year they both returned to Paris. In July 1936 they worked for the French magazine Vu in Barcelona and during the Spanish Civil War created dramatic recordings over the next nine months, which were published in leading European newspapers and magazines.

From spring 1937 to autumn 1939, Namuth and Reisner continued their photographic work in Paris until they were interned by the Vichy regime after the German occupation of France . After a short time in the Foreign Legion , he was released in October 1940, fled to Marseille and emigrated to New York in April 1941 with the help of Varian Fry , head of the Emergency Rescue Committee . His friend Reisner had committed suicide in December 1940. In 1943 Namuth joined the US Army and was used as a translator in Western Europe. In the same year he married Carmen Herrera, a Guatemalan born in France. Through courses with the German photographer Josef Breitenbach, who also emigrated, and later, in 1949, with Alexei Brodowitsch . Head of The New School , he completed his photography training. During this time, Namuth traveled many times to Todos Santos Cuchumatán in Guatemala to portray the inhabitants - descendants of the Mayas.

Jackson Pollock painting in his studio
Hans Namuth , summer 1950
photography

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

In the summer of 1950, Namuth asked Jackson Pollock , who had become known through exhibitions in Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery , if he could photograph the artist while he was painting. Pollock agreed. Around 200 photos were taken in July and August of that year, they show Pollock working on One: Number 31 and Autumn Rhythm, Number 30 . Hans Namuth was the photographer who further promoted Jackson Pollock's reputation as an artist through his photographs and two films. In return, Jackson Pollock was the artist who made Hans Namuth known. The photos, which show the artist in various positions on the canvas, made the concept of action painting, coined by Harold Rosenberg for Pollock's work, visible in the photo document.

Namuth's sponsor Brodowitsch, who was also the art director of Harper's Bazaar and had drawn his attention to Pollock, was the first to publish Namuth's photographs of Pollock in the spring of 1951. Until the early 1960s, Namuth photographed other Abstract Expressionism artists, the New York School , the Pop Art or Minimal Art, such as Willem de Kooning , Helen Frankenthaler , Robert Motherwell , Barnett Newman , Mark Rothko , Clyfford Still , Josef Albers , Robert Rauschenberg , Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol , Roy Lichtenstein or John Cage and Louise Bourgeois . Photo portraits of personalities such as Walter Gropius , Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , Frank Lloyd Wright , John O'Hara , Edward Albee and others have also appeared in well-known magazines . Between 1979 and March 1983 Namuth created 19 cover titles for Art News , including portraits of Jasper Johns , Louise Nevelson and Jim Dine . This was followed by more than 100 works for the French publication Connaissance des Arts up to his death , including photographs by Philip Johnson , Isamu Noguchi and George Segal .

Namuth not only created portraits of well-known personalities for magazines such as Life , Harper's Bazaar and Time , but also made several trips to Guatemala over the course of many years to take photographs of the population. They were published in the book Los Todos Santeros in 1989.

Together with Paul Falkenberg, Namuth made 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 a result of a traffic accident when his car collided with another vehicle while driving back from a screening of his last film, Jasper Johns : Take an Object at the Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton.

literature

Web links and sources

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carolyn children Carr: Hans Namuth: portraits. Photography Series , National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution), 1999, ISBN 978-1-56098-809-0 , p. 3
  2. ↑ Quoted from weblink zeit.de
  3. ↑ Quoted from the web link National Portrait Gallery
  4. ↑ Quoted from weblink zeit.de
  5. ↑ Quoted from the web link National Portrait Gallery
  6. ^ Hans Namuth: Photographer, Is Dead at 75 , nytimes.com, October 15, 1990, accessed October 4, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Namuth, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Essen , Germany
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1990
Place of death East Hampton , United States