| Names: | Born: Paul Everard Outerbridge Jr.
Other: Paul Outerbridge Jr.
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| | Dates: | 1896, 15 August - 1958, 17 October | | Born: | US, NY, New York | | Active: | US | | Gender: | Male |
American photographer. He experimented with early color processes (tri-color carbro) and later gained reputation as a fashion and portrait photographer frequently using nudes.Preparing biographies
Biography provided by Focal Press
Trained in sculpture, illustration, and theater design, Outerbridge quickly switched allegiance to photography after service in the Canadian Royal Air Corps and a job photographing airplane parts in Oregon. In 1921 he enrolled in the Clarence White School in New York. Within a few years he was teaching aesthetics and composition there. By 1924 he did commissions for Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue. While in Paris (1925–1929) as art director of Paris Vogue, he was embraced by the group of avant-garde artists that included Duchamp, Dali, Picabia, and Man Ray. He returned to the United States in 1929 and continued as a popular commercial photographer for his usual magazine clients now including House Beautiful. During the 1920s and 1930s his platinum prints were mostly done in the studio and were characterized by bold composition, a concern for volume, line, and abstraction that were, as he stated, "devoid of sentimental association." His technical skill was unrivaled in the unique production of tri-color carbro prints; this process and his philosophy were described in his book, Photography In Color (1940). Later in his life he moved to Laguna Beach, California, and traveled extensively. After WWII his more provocative 1930s color work with the female nude gradually became known. This work, held in his private collection, revealed more Freudian preoccupations with sexual fetishism, decadence, and erotic surrealism.
(Author: Ken White - Rochester Institute of Technology)
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409]
(Used with permission)
Further reading
Dines-Cox, Elaine (ed.), 1981, A Singular Aesthetic; Photographs and Drawings, 1921–1941. A Catalogue Raisonné, (Santa Barbara, CA: Arabesque)
Howe, Graham & Hawkins, G Ray (eds), 1980, Paul Outerbridge, Jr.: Photographs, (New York: Rizzoli)
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Family history
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alan@luminous-lint.com |
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The following books are useful starting points to obtain brief biographies but they are not substitutes for the monographs on individual photographers. |
If there is an analysis of a single photograph or a useful self portrait I will highlight it here. |
| "Art is life seen through man‘s inner craving for perfection and beauty—his escape from the sordid realities of life into a world of his imagining. Art accounts for at least a third of our civilization, and it is one of the artist‘s principal duties to do more than merely record life or nature. To the artist is given the privilege of pointing the way and inspiring towards a better life." | | "I had a growing feeling that most of the best art of the world in painting and sculpture had been done, and that this newest form was more related to the progress and tempo of modern science of the eye." |
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