Louise Dahl-Wolfe (1895-1989) Photograph of Carson McCullers

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By Myers Antiques

Apr 30, 2023

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• Lot Description

  Louise Dahl-Wolfe (American, 1895-1989) Photograph. Portrait of American novelist Carson McCullers (1917-1967). Original circa 1940 gelatin silver print photograph of Carson McCullers. Dahl-Wolfe is known for taking several photographs of McCullers in the 1940s. A photo of McCullers with Dahl-Wolfe is on page 132 of the book - Louise Dahl-Wolfe - A Photographer's Scrapbook and included in the images provided. Photograph is guaranteed to be original and not a later reprint or reproduction. Photo comes from the estate of NY fashion photographer Gene Fenn (1911-2001) who prior to becoming a noted photographer, was an assistant to Louise Dahl-Wolfe. The last image below shows the original box the photograph was stored in along with a photograph of Louise Dahl-Wolfe (most likely taken by Gene Fenn) and books on the artist. The photograph is in good condition and not laid down. The photograph is secured in place by four archival corner pockets and is archivally matted and framed. Image size measures 8” x 7 ½”. Frame measures 20” x 16”.
  
  Louise Dahl-Wolfe (1895-1989) From National Museum of Women Arts: As a staff photographer for Harper's Bazaar, Louise Dahl-Wolfe introduced a witty naturalism to the staid conventions of fashion photography and helped pioneer the use of color film. After studying painting, figure drawing, and design at the San Francisco Institute of Art, Dahl-Wolfe began experimenting with photography in 1921, inspired by Anne Brigman's photographs. In 1928, Dahl-Wolfe married American sculptor Meyer (Mike) Wolfe and soon established herself as a professional photographer. The couple moved to New York City in 1933, where Dahl-Wolfe worked as a freelance photographer before accepting a position at Harper's Bazaar in 1936. At the magazine, she enjoyed considerable creative freedom as part of a formidable creative team including fashion editor Diana Vreeland. Dahl-Wolfe often juxtaposed her models with famous works of art, resulting in surprising and irreverent compositions. Fashion assignments led her to locations around the world, where she posed her models outdoors, in natural light. Throughout this period, Dahl-Wolfe also created striking portrait photographs of society figures and art world celebrities, including authors Carson McCullers and Colette, designer Christian Dior, and sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Following her departure from Harper's Bazaar in 1958 until her retirement in 1960, Dahl-Wolfe did freelance work for publications including Vogue and Sports Illustrated. Dahl-Wolfe's photographs are often cited as an influence on later photographers, notably Richard Avedon and Irving Penn.
  
  From International Center of Photography: Born in Alameda, California, Dahl-Wolfe studied at the San Francisco Institute of Art. In 1921, while working as a sign painter, she discovered the photographs of Anne Brigman, a Pictorialist based in California and associated with the Stieglitz circle in New York. Although greatly impressed by Brigman's work, Dahl-Wolfe did not take up photography herself until the early 1930s. Travel with the photographer Consuelo Kanaga in Europe in 1927-28 piqued her interested in photography once again. In 1932, when she was living with her husband near the Great Smoky Mountains, she made her first published photograph, Tennessee Mountain Woman. After it was published in Vanity Fair in 1933, she moved to New York City and opened a photography studio, which she maintained until 1960. After a few years producing advertising and fashion photographs for Woman's Home Companion, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bonwit Teller, she was hired by Carmel Snow as a staff fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar in 1936. Dahl-Wolfe remained with the magazine until 1958, after which time she accepted freelance assignments from Vogue and Sports Illustrated until her retirement in 1960.Dahl-Wolfe was especially well-known during the infancy of color fashion photography for her exacting standards in reproducing her images. Her insistence on precision in the color transparencies made from her negatives resulted in stunning prints whose subtle hues and unusual gradations in color set the standard for elegance in the 1940s and 1950s. In addition, she pioneered the active yet sophisticated image of the "New Woman" through her incorporation of art historical themes and concepts into her photographs.
  
  From CreativePhotography: Louise Dahl-Wolfe (United States, 1895-1989) is best known as a fashion photographer. Her tenure at Harper's Bazaar from 1936 until 1958, a period when the journal was at the vanguard of dramatic changes to the style and content of women's magazines, provided her with particular prestige. Although she is generally recognized for her astute and early use of color photography to illustrate fashion, a closer examination of Dahl-Wolfe's body of work reveals a much more complex photographer. Through masterful combination of artistic skill, art historical knowledge, cultural consciousness, and aesthetic refinement, Dahl-Wolfe created images that constitute important contributions to the history of photography. Dahl-Wolfe enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1914, studying design, composition, art history, and color theory, among other topics. By 1919, she began to focus on photography, working in the Bay Area and traveling to Europe and North Africa. She met and married Meyer Wolfe, and the two returned to his home state of Tennessee in 1932. There, Dahl-Wolfe photographed rural life during the Great Depression. These images launched her career: a selection of them was published in Vanity Fair, and four were included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Joining the staff of Harper's Bazaar in 1936, Dahl-Wolfe arrived at an ideal time: major changes in magazine publishing and fashion photography were underway, and there was ample room for creative innovations. Throughout Dahl-Wolfe's tenure at Harper's, she benefited from successful collaboration with the staff there, including Carmel Snow, editor-in-chief; art director Alexey Brodovitch; and fashion editor Diana Vreeland. Dahl-Wolfe was remarkably prolific, contributing 86 covers during her 22-year tenure, as well as hundreds of color and many more black-and-white images. As she perfected her signature aesthetic style-straightforward and clear in focus with strong elements of composition and design-she received extensive editorial feedback and guidance. Her style characterized the look of the magazine for two decades. Similarly, Dahl-Wolfe herself displayed fortitude in her professional decisions: she left Harper's Bazaar when a new art director tried to exert influence on her work, choosing to give up her career rather than relinquish her creative freedom. The Louise Dahl-Wolfe Archive at the Center for Creative Photography includes about 450 prints, along with papers, photographic materials, and memorabilia. It holds contact prints and negatives of fashion illustrations for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and Sports Illustrated, as well as family and personal photographs, portraits and correspondence with other photographers, artists, and fashion personalities such as Irving Penn, Cecil Beaton, Carmel Snow, Diana Vreeland, Carson McCullers, and Edith Sitwell.
  
  ART SCHOOL In 1914, Louise became a student at the San Fransisco Institute of Art. While there, her days were spent doing cast and life drawings, painting and composition, anatomy, color, and design. She drew with charcoal in life classes and erased mistakes with the rolled up inside of sourdough bread. The first course taught in color at art schools was taught by Rudolph Schaeffer, whom she had the privilege of studying under. Louise had always wanted to be a painter and if painting didn't work out she wanted to go to New York after art school to study interior decorating. However, because of the death of her father in 1919, she stayed in San Fransisco and took up a job designing electric signs. Then, a "wonderful accident": a friend of the photographer Anne Brigman introduced the two, after meeting, Brigman invited Louise to her studio (Brigman was part of the Stieglitz group, which was a group devoted to getting photography recognized). After looking at some of Brigman's photographs of nudes in ice caves and in cypress trees, she fell in love with the possibilities of the camera. It was at this moment she decided that she must get a camera.
  
  CAREER In 1923, Louise left San Fransisco for New York to study interior decorating and architecture. After a year in New York City, Louise became an assistant to one of the top decorators in San Fransisco, Beth Armstrong. In 1926, after her mother was killed in a car accident, she moved to Europe with some friends. While traveling to meet a friend in Africa, she came across an American Artist named Meyer (Mike) Wolfe. They hit it off instantly and married in San Fransisco shortly after. She began taking photography very seriously and after the wedding she purchased a 5 x 7 view camera with a wide-angle lens. Not too long after, her and her husband were traveling back to New York where she was hired by Woman's Home Companion magazine to do food photographs. Around the same time, a friend of hers, Anne Wille, was working for Women's Wear Daily and suggested that Louise take her photographs to Vanity Fair. The editor, Frank Crowninshield decided to publish her photos in the November 1933 issue. After reviewing her photos he asked to meet Louise in person. She agreed, and in their meeting he told her that she had something great, and asked her to become apart of their team at Vanity Fair doing portraits of prominent people in the Conde Nast Studio. She turned down his offer, saying that "I could never work in someone else's studio. I am of an independent nature and need my own surroundings". Shortly after, under the direction of George Green she started working for Saks Fifth Avenue taking photos for catalogs and advertisements. She enjoyed working with Green, because he gave her freedom and allowed her to choose her own backgrounds. Around this same time, a friend of hers suggested that she try fashion photography. She admitted to knowing nothing about it, but figured no one else did either. Her friend let her use her showroom models and the clothes, under the conditions that she could use the photographs in the women's pages of her newspaper. This was a great experience for Louise. She got to practice lighting on them and figure out ways to get the women in her photos to look chic, elegant, beautiful, and most important, natural. Her first true advertising account was Crown Rayon, a division of the Viscose Corporation, in 1934. The dresses used were black crepe with white collars, cuffs, and accessories. Shooting indoors was easier because she could control the lighting and exposures better. Then to her good fortunes the Weston exposure meter surfaced which took away these mishaps, making it easier for her to shoot outdoors, which Louise became widely known for.
  
  HARPER'S BAZAAR In 1936, Louise started her long career of 22 years at Harper's Bazaar fashion magazine. Her job as a fashion photographer was to create beautiful photographs that spoke out about a designers' new clothing item in a natural way. Throughout her time there, the magazine published more than 600 photographs of hers, including 86 covers and thousands of black and white pictures. In the beginning of her career at Harper's she was doing the average color photography with the still lifes and accessories as main subjects. However, she longed to work with people. After a year of work she got her wish as she started doing portraits and fashion. At Harper's Bazaar, during this time, Louise worked under one of the best magazine editor's of all time, Carmel Snow. She worked under many other great people as well, including the fashion editor, Diana Vreeland, art director Alexey Brodovitch, managing editor Frances McFadden, and others. In her autobiography, Louise states that "her time at Harper's Bazaar would not have been as wonderful if it weren't for her determined and intelligent staff". Her career at Harper's Bazaar ended in 1958, when her colleagues Carmel Snow and Alexey Brodovitch resigned from their positions. The new art director visited her at her studio and this took Louise by surprise and took away her enthusiasm. She had never been told how to photograph or do her job hardly once since her time with the magazine and now it was happening. She enjoyed her freedom too much to put up with this so she herself resigned from Harper's Bazaar.
  
  ON PHOTOGRAPHY Throughout her years as a photographer, Louise went through many cameras as they advanced in their technology. One in particular, caused three worn-down vertebrae, a trip to the hospital and a traction; the seven pound Rolleiflex and 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 Graflex. After these incidents the doctors ordered her to balance her cameras on a tripod, which to her caused restrictions that just wouldn't fly. In her autobiography, A Photographer's Scrapbook, Louise makes a point of telling her readers that she would not have been such a success in her work if it weren't for her schooling at the San Fransisco Institute of Art. The classes that she took and her experiences with her teachers opened her mind up to the world and her surroundings. These experiences made it easier for her to see beyond just a photo. It allowed her to create beauty and in many people's eyes, art.
  
  Gene Fenn: NY Times Obituary : Gene Fenn, 90 Photographer - Published: November 21, 2001 PARIS
  
  Gene Fenn, 90, a fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar and other popular women's magazines, died Nov. 14 in Paris. He studied photography and painting at Cooper Union in New York, and in 1930 assisted Louise Dahl-Wolfe, a rising fashion photographer for "Harper's Bazaar." In 1949, he went to Paris and studied painting under Fernand Leger and Andre Lhote and became part of the artistic milieu of the era. He knew Marcel Duchamp in New York, and in France he met Braque, Chagall, Leger, Miro, Picasso, Van Dongen and Zadkine, whom he photographed. He also came to know Man Ray in whose studio he compiled an unpublished documentary. He produced photographs for Newsweek and, in the 1970s, advertising campaigns for the International Herald Tribune.
  
  From Wikipedia: Eugene Fenn, aka Gene Fenn, (April 16, 1911, in New York - 2001, Paris) is a fashion photographer and American painter.
  
  First assistant of the greatest fashion photographers, he was hired by Alexei Brodovitch (in) in Harper's Bazaar, which he made such coverage in July 1944. He was well known for his stories and photos to the 8x10 room 'in Kodachrome of works Dior, Givenchy, Schiaparelli, etc. He reported US first electronic flash pro then copied by Balcar. Based in France in 1953, he met Fernand Léger will do switch to painting and photo-painting collages. His fashion photos typed 40-50 years were rediscovered by Laurent Wiame and specialized journalists.
  
  Gene Fenn is responsible for recognition of copyright in France for photographers, illustrators and reporters.
  
  The last major exhibition of Gene Fenn was organized by the photographer Jo Duchene, owner in 1985 of D'Anvers Gallery in the 9th arrondissement in Paris. This for the Month of Photography in November 1986 and held in the premises of BRED Banque, boulevard des Capucines in Paris over 800 m 2. As documentation, we can consult the catalog of the Photography Month in November 1986, a report in Jours de France of the same period, and above the magazine Zoom number 131 of 1985, entitled cover: The margins of fashion, dedicated to five fashion photographers, cover with a photo of Gene Fenn (reproduction of a Kodachrome 20x25). La Galerie D'Anvers had also exposed black and white vintage prints, devoted to artists and writers from Hollywood to the same date of November 1986. The exhibition of BRED, was able to show the public the paintings of Gene Fenn, including a remarkable large canvas of a painted stage curtain for Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, and a series of photos, taken by the gallery, the workshop Man Ray. Light boxes 20x25 Kodachrome slides were also exposed. Gene Fenn regular contributor to the French edition of the International Herald tribune, and was considered an artist photographer (he really was) as saying.

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