- Ruth Bernhard
Ruth Bernhard (
October 14 1905 –December 18 2006 ) was an Americanphotographer .Early life
Bernhard was born in Berlin and studied at the Berlin Academy of Art from 1925–27. [More fully, the Academie der Mahler-, Bildhauer- und Architectur-Kunst, the precursor of both the
Berlin University of the Arts and theAkademie der Künste . The dates are from Rosenblum, p. 294.] Bernhard's father,Lucian Bernhard , was known for his poster and typeface design.Photography career
In 1927 Bernhard moved to
New York , where her father was already living. She worked as an assistant toRalph Steiner in "Delineator " magazine, but he terminated her employment for indifferent performance. She used her severance pay to finance her own photographic equipment. [Move, working for Steiner, purchase of equipment: Lavender, "Ruth Bernhard"; Rosenblum, p. 294] In 1935, she chanced to meetEdward Weston on the beach inSanta Monica . [Chance meeting with Weston: Lavender, "Ruth Bernhard."] She would later say;:"I was unprepared for the experience of seeing his pictures for the first time. It was overwhelming. It was lightning in the darkness...here before me was indisputable evidence of what I had thought possible—an intensely vital artist whose medium was photography."Fact|date=February 2007
By the late-1920s, while living in
Manhattan , Bernhard was heavily involved in thelesbian sub-culture of the artistic community, becoming friends with photographerBernice Abbott and her lover, critic Elizabeth McCausland. By 1934 Bernhard was almost exclusively photographing women in the nude.Fact|date=February 2007 It would be this art form for which she would eventually become best known. [Corinne, "Ruth Bernhard".]Though many people were unaware of this, Bernhard produced the photography for the first catalog published by the
Museum of Modern Art inNew York City . The name of this exhibition was "The Art of The Machine." Her fatherLucian Bernhard set up the meeting with MoMA for her. Fact|date=May 2007By 1944 she had met and became involved with artist and designer Eveline (Evelyn) Phimister. The two moved in together, and remained together for the next ten years. They first moved to
Carmel, California , where Bernhard worked withGroup f/64 . Soon, finding Carmel a difficult place in which to earn a living, they moved toHollywood where she fashioned a career as a commercial photographer. In 1953, they moved toSan Francisco . [Corinne, "Ruth Bernhard".]Most of Bernhard's work is studio-based, ranging from simple still lives to complex
nude s. In the 1940s she worked with the conchologistJean Schwengel . [Work on shells: Rosenblum, p. 294.] She works almost exclusively inblack and white , though there are rumours that she has done some color work as well. She also is known for her lesbian themed works, most notably "Two Forms" (1962). In that work, a black woman and a white woman who were real-life lovers are featured with their nude bodies pressed against one another. [Corinne, "Ruth Bernhard".]A departure was a collaboration with
Melvin Van Peebles (as "Melvin Van"), then a young cable car gripman (driver) in San Francisco. Van Peebles wrote the text and Bernhard took the unposed photographs for "The Big Heart", a book about life on the cable cars.In the 1960s Bernhard started to work with Joe Folberg who owned Vision Gallery in San Francisco. Folberg single-handedlyFact|date=February 2007 introduced the idea of limited edition photography prints to help photographers get a fair return and to build value into their work. Bernhard and Folberg worked together until Folberg's death, when the gallery split with Debra Heimerdinger taking over operations in North America and Folberg's son Neil moving the "Vision Gallery" to Jerusalem. Heimerdinger has worked with Bernhard to introduce platinum prints to her portfolio. Heimerdinger sells Bernhard's prints even today. [See [http://www.artnet.com/Galleries/Artists_detail.asp?G=&gid=3275198&which=&aid=2377&ViewArtistBy=online&rta=http://www.artnet.com this page] .]
In 1967, Bernhard met
United States Air Force Colonel Price Rice, anAfrican American man ten years younger than her, and the two became lovers. They would remain together until his death in 1999. In her 90s, Bernhard cooperated with biographer Margaretta K. Mitchell in the book "Ruth Bernhard, Between Art and Life", publicly revealing her many affairs with women and men throughout her lifetime. [Apogee mini-review of "Between Art and Life"; Corinne, "Ruth Bernhard."]Bernhard was inducted into the National Women's Caucus for Art in 1981. Bernhard was hailed by
Ansel Adams as "the greatest photographer of the nude". [Quoted by Lavender, "Ruth Bernhard."]Bernhard died in
San Francisco at age 101. [Sabin Russell, " [http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/19/BAG8JN28GN1.DTL Ruth Bernhard: Photographer of nudes and still lifes] " (obituary), "San Francisco Chronicle," December 19, 2006.]Quotes
* Her standard of printing was so much higher than anything I’d come across in England. She had complete technical skill, but it was her total disregard for accepted norms of printing that opened my eyes. She used the negative as absolute raw material and would do anything she wanted with it. She just refused to believe that because she had a particular negative, then this is what the print should look like. She’d print until it looked like what she wanted it to look like. -Michael Kenna [ [http://www.michaelkenna.net/html/iviews/ivlens.html Michael Kenna] ]
* "Remember God likes us best when we are flying by the seats of our pants," usually said at the close of telephone conversations with close friends.Fact|date=February 2007
* "You would make me the happiest person in all the world if you would do this one little thing for me," always said with a twinkle in her eye when she needed something.Fact|date=February 2007
* “I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help." [From "The Quote Garden", which does not provide a source. Fact|date=March 2007]
* “If you can't make the image bigger or more important than what you see, then don't push the button.” Fact|date=February 2007
* "Never ever say the word shoot when you are taking a picture with a camera because a camera is not a violent weapon." Fact|date=February 2007
* "Now, If you say shoot one more time, I will have to make you give me a quarter for the [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000213/bio American Indian College Fund] ."Fact|date=February 2007
* “The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations - each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony.”Fact|date=February 2007
* "If I have chosen the female form in particular, it is because beauty has been debased and exploited in our sensual twentieth century. We seem to have a need to turn innocent nature into evil ugliness by the twist of the mind. Woman has been the target of much that is sordid and cheap, especially in photography. To raise, to elevate, to endorse with timeless reverence the image of woman, has been my mission - the reason for my work which you see here."Fact|date=February 2007Books of works by Bernhard
* Bernhard, Ruth. "Collecting Light: The Photographs of Ruth Bernhard." Edited by James Alinder. Carmel, Calif.: Friends of Photography, 1979
* Bernhard, Ruth. "Gift of the Commonplace." Carmel Valley, Calif.: Woodrose Publications / Center for Photographic Art, 1996. ISBN 0-9630393-5-0
* Bernhard, Ruth. "The Eternal Body: A Collection of Fifty Nudes." Carmel, Calif.: Photography West Graphics, 1986. San Francisco: Chronicle, 1994. Essay by Margaretta K. Mitchell. ISBN 0-8118-0801-7 ISBN 0-8118-0826-2
* Van, Melvin, and Ruth Bernhard. "The Big Heart." San Francisco: Fearon, 1957.Notes
ources
* [http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/200209/02_kerre_bernhard Ruth Bernhard] Minnesota Public Radio (audio)
*Samples of Bernhard's works
** [http://www.hartmanfineart.net/artist/gallery/47/2/ Female nudes] at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art
** [http://www.hartmanfineart.net/artist/gallery/47/1/53/ Female nudes] at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art
** [http://www.artnet.com/galleries/Inventory.asp?gid=3275198&cid=53388 Female nudes] at Debra Heimerdinger/Fine Art Photographs
* [http://www.collegefund.org/donate/howtodonate.html American Indian College Fund donation, Denver, Colorado] (NB says nothing about Bernhard)
* [http://apogeephoto.com/oct2005/bookreviews1005.shtml Apogee mini-review of "Between Art and Life"]
*Lavender, Lisa Ann. "Ruth Bernhard." In "The Oxford Companion to the Photograph," ed. Robin Lenman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0198662718
*Rosenblum, Naomi. "A History of Women Photographers." New York: Abbeville, 1994. ISBN 1-55859-761-1
*Bernhard, Ruth, and Margaretta K. Mitchell. "Ruth Bernhard: Between Art and Life." San Francisco: Chronicle, 2000. ISBN 0-8118-2191-9
*Corinne, Tee A. " [http://www.glbtq.com/arts/bernhard_r.html Ruth Bernhard] ." In "An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture". 2002.
*" [http://www.womeninphotography.org/ruthbernhardAA.html Ruth Bernhard] " at "Women in Photography": an unsigned article, with photographs by Bernhard
* [http://www.iphotocentral.com/news/issue_view.php/16/18 Ruth Bernhard, Joe Folberg] of meeting Bernhard
* [http://www.njn.net/about/pressrelease/06archive/06aug-exposed.html A single short paragraph about Bernhard] (New Jersey Public Radio)
* [http://www.quotegarden.com/photography.html The Quote Garden] provides one quotation by Bernhard (but doesn't say where it comes from)
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