Masters Of Photography: Edward Steichen, Andre Kertesz, Diane Arbus (XVIII week with AFG film club)

Masters Of Photography: Edward Steichen, Andre Kertesz, Diane Arbus2006, USA, 90 min, Documentary, DVD
Masters Of Photography: Edward Steichen (1879–1973)
Widely regarded as the most influential photographer of the 20th century, he was born Eduard Jean Steichen in Luxembourg in 1879. He worked in every aspect of the art -- fashion, industrial, nature, combat, portrait, table-top. As a leading museum curator created the famous "Family of Man" photo exhibition. He died in Connecticut in 1973. This film was made in 1964. In every branch of photography to which he set his hand Steichen became a master. His portraits of Gershwin, Garbo, Eugene O'Neill, Marlene Dietrich, Chaplin and George M. Cohan are the definitive images by which we remember those celebrated artists. His photomurals of dams, bridges and huge buildings astonished audiences when they were first shown. In the 20’s and 30’s he was the best known and most expensive commercial advertising photographer in New York. A pioneer in aerial photography, during World War Two he was in charge of naval combat camera crews. This half-hour documentary was shot when Steichen, at 86, reflected on his long life and many achievements. "Photography," he says, "is both ridiculously easy and impossibly difficult."
Masters Of Photography: André Kertész (1894 – 1985)
The father of 35 millimeter photography was born Andor Kertesz in Hungary in 1894. He made his reputation in the Paris of the 20s and 30s before emigrating to the United States. He was a constant experimenter. Cartier-Bresson once said of him: "Whatever we have done, Kertész did first." He died in New York City in 1985.
This film was made in 1978. Ranging over much of his work, this half-hour documentary presents Kertesz in his own words, explaining many of his pictures and sharing his memories -- provincial life in Hungary, central Europe in the First World War, Paris in the glorious "time between the wars", and famous friends like Colette, Eisenstein, Chagall and Mondrian. Kertesz takes us through his archive and out into the streets of New York City to watch him shoot in his beloved Washington Square and in the medieval environment of The Cloisters. "I was born for photography," he said. "I changed everything in my life for it. You only have one life. No hurry for me... I have the time. Everything is photograph."
Masters Of Photography: Diane Arbus (1923 – 1971)
In 1967, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York City presented New Documents -- a major exhibition of the personal visions of several photographers -- the surprise of the show was the work of Diane Arbus. On her own, against the advice of many friends, she had pursued her documentation of people on the fringes of society, and the astonishing in the commonplace. Suddenly she was famous, with students and imitators. By 1972 her work was everywhere, and was featured at the Venice Biennale, where it became, as New York Times critic Hilton Kramer said, the overwhelming sensation of the American Pavilion. But by then Diane Arbus was dead, by her own hand. "Nothing about her life, her photographs or her death was accidental or ordinary," wrote Richard Avedon. "They were mysterious and decisive and unimaginable except to her. Which is the way it is with genius."
This half-hour documentary was made that same year. It explores her work and ideas, often in her own words as spoken by a close friend. It includes reflections by some of the people who knew her best; daughter Doon, teacher Lisette Model, colleague Marvin Israel, and John Szarkowski, at that time the director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art.
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