Louis
Faurer Retrospective
May 4—July 28, 2002
The powerful,
often haunting, photographs of Louis Faurer will be on view from May
4 to July 28 at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts.
Faurer, who died in March 2001 at age 84, is highly regarded among critics,
scholars and artists as a seminal member of the New York school of postwar
street photography, but is not widely known by the general public. Organized
by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Louis Faurer Retrospective is the
first survey of his work in the United States since 1981.Both the exhibition
and the accompanying catalogue thoroughly examine Faurer’s significance
within the history of photography.
The exhibition includes 137 photographs from throughout Faurer’s
career from 1937 to 1983, with particular emphasis on his highly productive
years at mid-century. Some of Faurer’s most innovative and influential
photographs were taken between 1947 and 1951. During those years, in
an extraordinary burst of creative energy, Faurer photographed New York
City street life with great clarity, tenderness, and wit. Also on view
is a selection of his color photographs – most never previously
exhibited or published – and his best works for magazines, both
fashion and editorial.
Louise Faurer, 14th Street, New York [man with goggles],
1947-48, chromogenic photograph, printed 1980, Caldecot Chubb,
Santa Monica, © Mark Faurer
"Louis
Faurer didn’t produce a large body of work, in part because he
devoted himself for two decades to fashion and editorial photography,
but the personal work he did produce was remarkable," said the
exhibition curator, Ann Tucker. "He had a great capacity for empathy.
He made gritty, edgy pictures, but they were always sympathetic. And
he was a creative master in the darkroom. It’s impossible to view
his photographs and not be moved by them."
Born in Philadelphia to Polish immigrant parents,
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Louis
Faurer, The Accident, Lexington Avenue, New York City, 1952, gelatin
silver print, courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Faurer was
artistic from a young age. As a boy, he liked to draw. After high school,
he studied commercial lettering and worked freelance, painting advertising
signs and lettering posters. He bought his first camera from a photographer
friend in 1937. Within a few months, he won a photography prize in a weekly
newspaper contest. Winning the award convinced him to pursue a career
in photography. He was largely self-taught, though he took a brief military
course in basic photography and worked as a technician in two portrait
studios. He was influenced and encouraged by photographer friends who
were students of Alexey Brodovitch at the Philadelphia Museum School of
Industrial Art. Brodovitch started the Design Laboratory at the museum
school and was art director at Harper’s Bazaar.
From the late 1940s to the late 1960s, Faurer worked as a fashion photographer
for such publications as Harper’s Bazaar, Flair, Vogue, Mademoiselle,
Glamour, and Seventeen. What he became known for, though, was his offhand
style of street photography. Using a small camera that allowed him to
work quickly, he developed a radical new aesthetic style that reflected
the energy of New York City street life and simultaneously isolated distinctive
individuals or small groups. The photographs captured the grittiness,
irony, and humanity of urban life. The power of his tender touch is evident
in Eddie on Third Avenue, New York City, a portrait of a seemingly hapless
man who gazes intently downward, one hand holding a sprig of flowers and
the other a cloth tote.
Louis
Faurer Retrospective continued...
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