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Louis Stettner 1922 - 2016
Représenté par:
Bildhalle
LOUIS STETTNER (1922-2016)
“My way of life, my very being is based on images capable of engraving themselves indelibly in our inner soul’s eye.” With these words Louis Stettner, celebrated photographer of the twentieth century, described a passion for photography spanning seventy years.
Stettner (1922-2016) was thirteen when the gift of a box camera from his parents planted the seeds of his long career. Soon after, an article by Paul Outerbridge Jr. in a camera magazine helped the young artist appreciate the great potential of photography for interpreting the world around us.
Throughout his teenage years, he made regular Saturday visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he persistently worked his way through the complete history of American photography by studying original prints and back issues of Camera Work. During this exploration, he was particularly moved by the works of Alfred Stieglitz, Clarence H. White and Paul Strand. Visits to Stieglitz’s gallery American Place also informed his early development. Later in his teens, Stettner contacted Paul Strand to ask him to critique his work and thus began a relationship that was to resume and deepen in 1951 in Paris.
In his late teens Stettner took his first and only classes in photography, given by the Photo League, a cooperative of photographers devoted to newly developing socially conscious photography. Through the Photo League’s exhibits, Stettner was further exposed to the work of Weegee, Edward Weston, and Lewis Hine.
In 1941, at the age of eighteen, Stettner enlisted in the U.S. army in the Signal Corp, having requested to be trained as a combat photographer. Stettner was initially sent as a military student engineer to Princeton University before eventually being posted as a combat photographer to the Pacific and finally to Hiroshima. The experience of participating in World War II was to profoundly permeate Stettner’s life-long development as a photographer: “It is hard to assess what taking battle pictures has meant to me as a photographer. I do know that I lived and fought together with my fellow countrymen and fishermen, industrial workers, storekeepers– whom I had only brushed up against in Times Square […] farmer boys from Kentucky hills […]. How they successfully fought against fascism has given me a faith in human beings that has never left me.”
After his discharge from the army in December of 1945, Stettner returned to New York and resumed his association with the Photo League. Sid Grossman, a teacher and photographer whose deep faith in the creative potential of people and in their ability to solve critical problems, befriended Stettner and was to become a decisive influence. He went on to appoint Stettner, twenty-two years old, as the youngest teacher at the League.
In 1947 Stettner left on a three-week trip to Paris, which extended into five years. In Paris Stettner received a commission from the Photo League to gather prints from significant French photographers and organized the first exhibition on post-war French photography in the United States at the Photo League gallery. Stettner became an active member of the post-war photography scene in Paris.
Stettner returned to New York in the early 50s and worked as a freelance photographer for Life, Time, Fortune, Paris-Match, etc. This resulted in his traveling frequently across the Atlantic. Early on he also photographed for the Marshall Plan but was to lose his job for his association with the Photo League and for resisting to reveal the political ideas of his fellow Photo League members to the FBI during the height of McCarthyism. In the later eighties, Stettner continued to push his personal creative photography in Paris. He completed his iconic series, including Penn Station, Nancy, the Beat Generation, and Pepe and Tony, Spanish Fishermen.
It was also during this time Stettner—possessing a sense of social and economic justice, a keen eye, and a vast self-taught knowledge of both the technique and history of photography—began to write about the subject. This was a something he continued periodically over the next forty years beginning with 35mm Photography, History of the Nude in American Photography and later his noteworthy column, Speaking Out, published in Camera 35. Stettner became one of the rare photographers of the twentieth century who wrote about photography and went on to critique its historical development during his times from the perspective of a working photographer.
At the end of 1960s Stettner began teaching and lecturing at Cooper Union, Brooklyn College, and then at Long Island University. Having been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant, Stettner photographed his Worker Series. In 1975 he was awarded First Prize in the Pravda World Contest for Photography and spent six weeks photographing the Soviet Union.
By the early 1980s Stettner had ceased teaching and writing his “Speaking Out” column, devoting the next several decades to furthering the development and expression of his own creative vision. Stettner returned to France permanently in 1990 where his photographs garnered ever-larger audiences throughout Europe. He also began to paint, draw and sculpt. He was awarded the Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2001. During these last years, Stettner began his Manhattan Pastoral color series during summer trips to New York and a three years project using a large format camera then photographing the countryside of the Alpilles region of Provence, continuing as ever to personally print his photographs.
Stettner died in Paris on October 13, 2016 a month after the closing of his widely acclaimed exhibition, Ici Ailleurs, at the Centre Pompidou.
“My way of life, my very being is based on images capable of engraving themselves indelibly in our inner soul’s eye.” With these words Louis Stettner, celebrated photographer of the twentieth century, described a passion for photography spanning seventy years.
Stettner (1922-2016) was thirteen when the gift of a box camera from his parents planted the seeds of his long career. Soon after, an article by Paul Outerbridge Jr. in a camera magazine helped the young artist appreciate the great potential of photography for interpreting the world around us.
Throughout his teenage years, he made regular Saturday visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he persistently worked his way through the complete history of American photography by studying original prints and back issues of Camera Work. During this exploration, he was particularly moved by the works of Alfred Stieglitz, Clarence H. White and Paul Strand. Visits to Stieglitz’s gallery American Place also informed his early development. Later in his teens, Stettner contacted Paul Strand to ask him to critique his work and thus began a relationship that was to resume and deepen in 1951 in Paris.
In his late teens Stettner took his first and only classes in photography, given by the Photo League, a cooperative of photographers devoted to newly developing socially conscious photography. Through the Photo League’s exhibits, Stettner was further exposed to the work of Weegee, Edward Weston, and Lewis Hine.
In 1941, at the age of eighteen, Stettner enlisted in the U.S. army in the Signal Corp, having requested to be trained as a combat photographer. Stettner was initially sent as a military student engineer to Princeton University before eventually being posted as a combat photographer to the Pacific and finally to Hiroshima. The experience of participating in World War II was to profoundly permeate Stettner’s life-long development as a photographer: “It is hard to assess what taking battle pictures has meant to me as a photographer. I do know that I lived and fought together with my fellow countrymen and fishermen, industrial workers, storekeepers– whom I had only brushed up against in Times Square […] farmer boys from Kentucky hills […]. How they successfully fought against fascism has given me a faith in human beings that has never left me.”
After his discharge from the army in December of 1945, Stettner returned to New York and resumed his association with the Photo League. Sid Grossman, a teacher and photographer whose deep faith in the creative potential of people and in their ability to solve critical problems, befriended Stettner and was to become a decisive influence. He went on to appoint Stettner, twenty-two years old, as the youngest teacher at the League.
In 1947 Stettner left on a three-week trip to Paris, which extended into five years. In Paris Stettner received a commission from the Photo League to gather prints from significant French photographers and organized the first exhibition on post-war French photography in the United States at the Photo League gallery. Stettner became an active member of the post-war photography scene in Paris.
Stettner returned to New York in the early 50s and worked as a freelance photographer for Life, Time, Fortune, Paris-Match, etc. This resulted in his traveling frequently across the Atlantic. Early on he also photographed for the Marshall Plan but was to lose his job for his association with the Photo League and for resisting to reveal the political ideas of his fellow Photo League members to the FBI during the height of McCarthyism. In the later eighties, Stettner continued to push his personal creative photography in Paris. He completed his iconic series, including Penn Station, Nancy, the Beat Generation, and Pepe and Tony, Spanish Fishermen.
It was also during this time Stettner—possessing a sense of social and economic justice, a keen eye, and a vast self-taught knowledge of both the technique and history of photography—began to write about the subject. This was a something he continued periodically over the next forty years beginning with 35mm Photography, History of the Nude in American Photography and later his noteworthy column, Speaking Out, published in Camera 35. Stettner became one of the rare photographers of the twentieth century who wrote about photography and went on to critique its historical development during his times from the perspective of a working photographer.
At the end of 1960s Stettner began teaching and lecturing at Cooper Union, Brooklyn College, and then at Long Island University. Having been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant, Stettner photographed his Worker Series. In 1975 he was awarded First Prize in the Pravda World Contest for Photography and spent six weeks photographing the Soviet Union.
By the early 1980s Stettner had ceased teaching and writing his “Speaking Out” column, devoting the next several decades to furthering the development and expression of his own creative vision. Stettner returned to France permanently in 1990 where his photographs garnered ever-larger audiences throughout Europe. He also began to paint, draw and sculpt. He was awarded the Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2001. During these last years, Stettner began his Manhattan Pastoral color series during summer trips to New York and a three years project using a large format camera then photographing the countryside of the Alpilles region of Provence, continuing as ever to personally print his photographs.
Stettner died in Paris on October 13, 2016 a month after the closing of his widely acclaimed exhibition, Ici Ailleurs, at the Centre Pompidou.
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Exhibitions (selection):
2025
• American Job 1940-2011, International Center of Photography, New York, New York
• 409 Dance Index, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
• Louis Stettner, Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto, Gijón-Spain
• Street Magic, Ernst Leitz Museum, Wetzlar-Germany
2024
• Louis Stettner, KBr Photography Center, Barcelona-Spain
• Louis Stettner, Centro Andaluz de la Fotografía, Almería-Spain
• Time Capsules, Boogie Woogie Photography, Hong Kong
2023
• Louis Stettner, Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid-Spain
2022
• Cruel Radiance: Photography, 1940s-1960s, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
• 100 Centennial, Gallery Fifty One, Antwerp-Belgium
• Fall Into Paris, The Hulett Collection, Tulsa, Oklahoma *
• The Last Word, The Hulett Collection, Tulsa, Oklahoma *
2019
• Traveling Light, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA *
• Louis Stettner: Photographs, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA *
• A Day To Remember, Gallery Fifty One, Antwerp-Belgium *
2018
• Color Photography, Tibor de Nagy, NY *
2016
• Ici Ailleurs, Retrospective, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France *
2012
• Retrospective, Bibliothèque National de France, Paris, France *
• The First Ninety Years, Johanne Breede Gallery, Berlin, Germany *
2009
• Paris // New York, Base sous-marine, Bordeaux, France *
• Louis Stettner: Trésor des Rue, Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, NY *
2025
• American Job 1940-2011, International Center of Photography, New York, New York
• 409 Dance Index, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
• Louis Stettner, Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto, Gijón-Spain
• Street Magic, Ernst Leitz Museum, Wetzlar-Germany
2024
• Louis Stettner, KBr Photography Center, Barcelona-Spain
• Louis Stettner, Centro Andaluz de la Fotografía, Almería-Spain
• Time Capsules, Boogie Woogie Photography, Hong Kong
2023
• Louis Stettner, Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid-Spain
2022
• Cruel Radiance: Photography, 1940s-1960s, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
• 100 Centennial, Gallery Fifty One, Antwerp-Belgium
• Fall Into Paris, The Hulett Collection, Tulsa, Oklahoma *
• The Last Word, The Hulett Collection, Tulsa, Oklahoma *
2019
• Traveling Light, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA *
• Louis Stettner: Photographs, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA *
• A Day To Remember, Gallery Fifty One, Antwerp-Belgium *
2018
• Color Photography, Tibor de Nagy, NY *
2016
• Ici Ailleurs, Retrospective, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France *
2012
• Retrospective, Bibliothèque National de France, Paris, France *
• The First Ninety Years, Johanne Breede Gallery, Berlin, Germany *
2009
• Paris // New York, Base sous-marine, Bordeaux, France *
• Louis Stettner: Trésor des Rue, Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, NY *
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