Arnold Newman

I found a book titled “Arnold Newman At Work” by Roy Flukinger

Arnold Newman is considered one of the greatest photographers to explore the realm of portraiture. He is famous for his many environmental portraits(his most famous being the one he made of Igor Stravinsky).

Newman’s style of portraiture has been an influence on many artists and one which thrust him into fame. One particular thing of interest to me as I look through this book is the author’s examination from a different angle than we as the viewer often see Newman. For the most part, the only instance we only see the very best or most famous of an artists work, and do not have an opportunity to see its conceptual process.

This page of the book shows multiple negatives from the photoshoot that Newman did with Stravinsky. The bottom right red rectangle is what Newman used as the final image. I think it’s an awesome example of iteration and how it often takes multiple attempts to really nail the shot. This particular example is also a good instance of finding frames within frames. The negative as a whole works as an image, but Newman pushed it even further with finding another frame within that.

 

Another work that was striking to me was Newman’s portraits of Andy Warhol. The first image here shows a contact sheet with negatives of Warhol. However the final piece ended up being a collage of all of these photographs, which ended up creating something totally different. This collage was a perfect testament to who Warhol was a s person and artist. I thought this particular work was a great example of working with the materiality of photography.