|
Struss, Karl |
| Birth Place |
New York, New York |
| Death Place |
Los Angeles, California |
| Born |
Nov. 30, 1886 |
| Died |
Dec. 16, 1981 |
| General Notes |
Karl Struss was a native of New York. He studied photography with Clarence White at Columbia University while working for his father's manufacturing firm. In 1913 Struss rented studio space from Gertrude Kasebier and from 1914 to 1917 took over White's studio operation. During this period he specialized in portraits and advertising material for publicatons like Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper's Bazaar. Struss also made many photographs of the streets, bridges, and pier areas around New York. He worked in the soft-focus pictorial style and developed the ''Struss Pictorial lens,'' which was used by many major pictorial photographers. In 1919 he moved to Hollywood, where he worked with Cecil B. DeMille as a still photographer. Within a few months he became DeMille's main cinematographer, working on classic films such as Ben Hur, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. Struss received the first Academy Award given for cinematography for his work on the 1927 film Sunrise. Although Struss continued to make a few still photographs during this period, he was known mainly for his motion picture work. In 1983 the Amon Carter Museum purchased Karl Struss' photographic estate of masterprints, autochromes, contract prints, negatives, and artifacts. Karl Struss studied photography with Clarence H. White (1871-1925) at Teachers College, Columbia University, from 1908 to 1912. So impressed was Alfred Stieglitz by the richness of Struss' hand-coated platinum prints that he included twelve of his images in the landmark International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo in 1910. In 1912 Struss became the last artist invited to join the Photo-Secession; eight photogravures of his work were featured in Stieglitz's journal Camera Work that same year. Although Struss favored the soft-focus pictorial style, his work prior to World War I anticipated the modernist aesthetic later championed by Stieglitz and Paul Strand. His images of New York, most of them made from 1908 to 1916, are considered groundbreaking. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1917 to 1919, Struss went west to Hollywood, where he was first hired by Cecil B. DeMille. His pictorial talents placed him at the forefront of motion-picture cinematography. He and Charles Rosher shared the first Academy Award for cinematography for their work on the film Sunrise (1927). In 1983 the Amon Carter Museum acquired his photographic archives. |
|
|
