Portrait Photography by Arnold Newman

Arnold Newman describes his private world as one born of instinct, in which a lifetime of learning, knowledge, and intuition are brought together harmoniously through a single moment of inspiration. This instinct for visual expression is a way of seeing life as an artful interlude between waste and fulfillment, and a means of harnessing the output of human emotions that drive interior engines of poetry, song, and visual pleasure. Newman’s own visual instinct was honed and tempered by his friendships with many of the world’s leading artists, writers, poets, politicians, and other personages of great accomplishment.
From the 1940s to the present he photographed leaders of world culture and society in what has been called "environmental portraiture"; his subjects are photographed in the physical milieu of their particular profession or personal creations. But it is Newman’s selection and imaginative portrayal of his subjects’ environments in conjunction with the subjects themselves that sets his work at the pinnacle of the long tradition of portrait photography. From the haunting portraits by Julia Margaret Cameron in the 19th century to Newman’s prolific achievement today, the aesthetic aim of portraiture has been to evoke a sense of the inner being of individuals.

Arnold Newman has lived and worked in New York City for most of his career as a freelance photographer for magazines like Fortune, Life, Newsweek, and Esquire, among others. His professional work began, however, in Miami and West Palm Beach in 1938, where he also developed a mature vision for making socially conscious photographs of urban poor. By the mid-1940s, after a short tenure in Philadelphia, he had found his own vision in the strong empathy he had for artists and their world. Both Alfred Stieglitz and Beaumont Newhall encouraged and supported his work in this direction, and by 1945 Newman moved to New York to stay.

Today Newman continues to photograph leading international figures for the publishing world and for himself. The distinction between works commissioned and self-generated by Newman has little meaning. His professional work and his aesthetic ideas spring from the same well and remain irrevocably driven by a desire to release symbolic visions of the human spirit.

Through a special grant, Eastman Kodak Company has made it possible for Newman to present a gift of 176 prints to George Eastman House. This exhibition is drawn from that collection, and is organized by James L. Enyeart and Marianne Fulton of George Eastman House. Special to this gift is Newman’s inclusion of rare, vintage prints, making the exhibition a unique opportunity for viewers to study and enjoy the finest prints that exist from throughout his sixty years of image making. In addition, ICP has supplemented the George Eastman House exhibition with examples of recent work, specially selected by Newman.