Wednesday, May 6, 2009

NANCY NEWHALL: Photography Review

"Hands of Ann and Ansel Adams". Photograph (c) Nancy Newhall
Courtesy of Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd

"Buckminster Fuller". Photograph (c) Nancy Newhall
Courtesy of Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd

"When I married Beaumont, I married photography"

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NANCY NEWHALL played a major role in legitimizing photography as a fine art. She worked closely with her husband Beaumont Newhall and well known photographers Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Weston and Minor White. It was only after her death in 1974, her own photographs were revealed.

Beaumont Newhall founded the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in 1935, and was curator and director of George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, from 1948 to 1971. Nancy assisted her husband (she assumed the role of MoMA's curator of photography during Beaumont's wartime service), was a founding member of Aperture magazine, wrote extensively about photography and curated independantly.

Newhall's photographs were recently shown in the exhibition "Nancy & Beaumont Newhall: A Centennial Celebration" presented by Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In his current review in Art News, Tom Collins writes, "Beaumont Newhall's part in bringing photography to prominence in America is well known. This show, titled "A Centennial Celebration," convincingly places the contributions of Beaumont's wife, Nancy, on the same level as his. Born in 1908 and married in 1936, they both devoted their lives, in tandum and individually, to curating shows, charting and commenting on the evolution of photography, and making pictures themselves." Read the entire Art News Review

View
"Nancy & Beaumont Newhall" Exhibition On-line
Nancy Newhall Bio
Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd

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