Arnold Newman, the environmental portrait
« American photographer (1918-2006), inventor of the portrait set in the subject's working environment. »
Born in 1918, Arnold Newman opened a studio in Miami in 1942, then in New York in 1946. His trademark: photographing the artist, scientist, politician in their workplace, integrating tools, works, architecture into the frame. The portrait became "environmental."
Igor Stravinsky beneath the open lid of a piano (1946): the diagonal of the lid, the composer bottom left. The image became a canonical example. Picasso before his canvases, Mondrian in his studio, Truman at the White House, Krupp in his factory — Newman composed every frame like a Constructivist painter.
The 1963 portrait of German industrialist Alfried Krupp scandalised: Newman, who was Jewish, posed him between two machines of his former slave-labour factory. Newman said he wanted to signify inhumanity. Krupp hated the picture. In the interview that closed his career, Newman said: "The portrait is my way of saying what I think."