Book Description

Ernst Haas is unquestionably one of the best-known, most prolific and most published photographers of the twentieth-century. He is most associated with a vibrant colour photography which, for decades, was much in demand by the illustrated press. This colour work, published in the most influential magazines in Europe and America, also fed a constant stream of books, and these too enjoyed great popularity. But although his colour work earned him fame around the world, in recent decades it has often been derided by critics and curators as overly commercial, and too easily accessible or in the language of curators, not sufficiently serious. As a result, his reputation has suffered in comparison with a younger generation of colour photographers, notably Eggleston, Shore and Meyerowitz. Paradoxically, however, there was also a side of his work that was almost entirely hidden from view. Parallel to his commissioned work Haas constantly made images for his own interest, and these pictures show an entirely different aspect of Haass sensibility: they are far more edgy, loose, complex and ambiguous in short, far more radical than the work which earned him fame. Haas never printed these pictures in his lifetime, nor did he exhibit them, probably believing that they would not be understood or appreciated. Nonetheless, these works are of great complexity, and rival (and sometimes surpass) anything done at the time by his fellow photographers. This book is intended to correct the record. Ernst Haas was born in Vienna in 1921, and took up photography after the war. His early Austrian work on returning prisoners of war brought him to the attention of Life Magazine, but he courageously declined a job as staff photographer in order to keep his independence. At the invitation of Robert Capa, Haas joined Magnum in 1949, developing close associations with Capa, Bishof and Cartier-Bresson. He began experimenting with colour, and went on to become the premier colour photographer of the 1950s. In 1962 New Yorks Museum of Modern Art mounted its first solo exhibition of his colour photography. Haass books were legion, and one, The Creation (1971), sold 350.000 copies. Ernst Haas received the Hasselblad award in 1986, the year of his death.