Arnold (Abner) Newman - Early life and career, Success as photographer

Photographer, born in New York City, New York, USA. He studied painting at the University of Miami but decided to pursue his interest in photography, and later met Alfred Stieglitz, who encouraged him in his chosen career. Following exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1945), he gained the first of many commissions for Life magazine. He remained a prolific freelance throughout his career, accepting assignments around the world. His style of capturing prominent figures in their work environment became known as ‘environmental portraiture’. Famous examples from his preferred fields of politics, business and the arts included Lyndon B Johnson (1963), Alfried Krupp (1963), and Igor Stravinsky (1946).

Arnold Abner Newman (3 March 1918, New York, NY —6 June 2006, New York, NY) was an American photographer noted for his "environmental portraits" of artists and politicians.

Early life and career

Newman graduated high school in Miami Beach and attended the University of Miami studying painting and drawing with an introduction to Modernism.

Success as photographer

Newman returned to Florida in 1939 to manage a portrait studio in West Palm Beach. In 1946, Newman relocated to New York, opened Arnold Newman Studios and worked as a freelance photographer for Fortune, Life, and Newsweek.

Newman found his vision in the empathy he felt for artists and their work.

Newman's is often credited with being the first photographer to use so-called environmental portraiture in which the photographer places the subject in a carefully controlled setting to capture the essence of the invididual's surroundings with representative visual elements showing their professions and personalities.

"I didn't just want to make a photograph with some things in the background," Newman told American Photo magazine in an interview.

Newman's best-known images were in black and white, although he often photographed in color. His black and white portrait of Igor Stravinsky seated at a grand piano became his signature image, even though it was rejected by the magazine that gave the assignment to Newman.

As for color images, among his best-known is an eerie portrait that shows convicted former Nazi slave labor boss Alfried Krupp in one of Krupp's factories.

Newman taught photography at Cooper Union for many years.