Arthur Grace

Last updated

Arthur Grace
Born (1947-05-07) May 7, 1947 (age 77)
Massachusetts, United States
Occupation(s) Photojournalist, photographer
Years active1972–present

Arthur Grace (born May 7, 1947) is an American photojournalist, documentary photographer, and author whose work spanning fifty years in photography is noted for its in-depth focus on Americana. The author of six books featuring his images, Grace is perhaps best known for his seminal book of black and white photographs of the 1988 U.S. Presidential election, Choose Me: Portraits of a Presidential Race. [1] [2] Grace's interest in quintessentially American subjects has resulted in four additional books: Comedians, State Fair, America 101, and Robin Williams: A Singular Portrait. Grace also worked extensively covering life under communism while on assignment for Time and Newsweek behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War from 1977 to 1989. [3] His most recent book Communism(s): A Cold War Album is a collection of his photographs from that period. [4] During his career in photojournalism, Grace's photographs appeared on the covers of numerous periodicals including Life , Time , Newsweek , Paris Match , and Stern . Grace continues to pursue documentary and personal projects from his home in California.

Contents

Career

Arthur Grace began his photography career in 1972 as a freelance photographer for United Press International in Boston. [5] In 1973, he was hired as a staff photographer working out of UPI's Europe, Africa, and Middle East headquarters in Brussels, where he covered elections in Northern Ireland and the Yom Kippur War in addition to the West African drought of the 1970s. [6] Grace returned to Boston in 1974 to freelance as the New England photo correspondent for The New York Times . Among the stories he covered were the protests and violence in Boston following court-ordered busing and desegregation efforts in 1974 and 1975.

Moving to Washington, DC in 1977, he became a contract photographer for Time assigned to the Carter White House. Throughout the next decade, he covered stories in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China, and Mongolia. He also covered the Solidarity movement and martial law in Poland, the U.S. invasion of Grenada, Geraldine Ferraro's vice-presidential campaign, and the 1984 Summer Olympics.

Grace joined Newsweek in 1986 as a staff photographer where he photographed cover stories on Mario Cuomo, Robin Williams, Judge Robert Bork, Michael Dukakis, Pope John Paul II, and drug czar William Bennett. In 1995, he moved to Los Angeles where he concentrated on advertising photography shooting ad campaigns for General Motors and PhRMA, as well as shooting movie posters for major motion picture studios, including Universal Studios, Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures, Warner Brothers, and 20th Century Fox.

During his career, he taught at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, the Maine Photography Workshops, and also guest lectured at the National Geographic Society and the International Center of Photography. He was also a photography judge for the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards.

Published work and collections

Grace published his first book Choose Me: Portraits of a Presidential Race in 1989, which detailed the 1988 Presidential election cycle through a series of photographs collected while he worked at Newsweek . [1] His second book, Comedians, profiled prominent comedians through a series of intimate photographs and interviews, which was released to positive reviews in 1991. [3] His next work was a profile of state fairs aptly titled State Fairs, which was published in 2006 and featured images culled from his travels around the country. [7] Following advice from Elliott Erwitt who encouraged him to revisit his early work, Grace published America 101 in 2012, which provided "a visual crash course on what Americans are like" according to one critic [3] and was praised by reviewers. [8] [9] His 2016 book Robin Williams: A Singular Portrait, 1986–2002 received positive reviews from critics. [10] [11] [12] It focused singularly on the late Robin Williams, with whom Grace shared a decades-long friendship and working relationship. [13] In 2022, Grace released his most recent book, Communism(s): A Cold War Album. [14] It received positive coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Times of London. [15] [16] [17]

In addition to his published work, Grace's photography has appeared in exhibits in Europe and the United States, including solo shows at the International Center of Photography in 1992 and the High Museum of Art in 2012. The National Portrait Gallery has displayed his photographs of comedian George Carlin on its Recognize Wall and Senator Bob Dole in its exhibition The Struggle for Justice. [18] [19] His work is in the permanent collections at the J. Paul Getty Museum, [20] the National Portrait Gallery, [21] [22] the International Center of Photography, [23] the High Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art [24] and the National Museum of American History, [25] among others. In 2006, he donated his color photojournalism archives to the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. [6]

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herb Ritts</span> American photographer

Herbert Ritts Jr. was an American fashion photographer and director known for his photographs of celebrities, models, and other cultural figures throughout the 1980s and 1990s. His work concentrated on black and white photography and portraits, often in the style of classical Greek sculpture, which emphasized the human shape.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc Riboud</span> French photographer

Marc Riboud was a French photographer, best known for his extensive reports on the Far East: The Three Banners of China, Face of North Vietnam, Visions of China, and In China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Steichen</span> American photographer, artist, and curator

Edward Jean Steichen was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Photographers of the American Civil War</span>

The American Civil War was the most widely covered conflict of the 19th century. The images would provide posterity with a comprehensive visual record of the war and its leading figures, and make a powerful impression on the populace. Something not generally known by the public is the fact that roughly 70% of the war's documentary photography was captured by the twin lenses of a stereo camera. The American Civil War was the first war in history whose intimate reality would be brought home to the public, not only in newspaper depictions, album cards and cartes-de-visite, but in a popular new 3D format called a "stereograph," "stereocard" or "stereoview." Millions of these cards were produced and purchased by a public eager to experience the nature of warfare in a whole new way.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philippe Halsman</span> American photographer

Philippe Halsman was an American portrait photographer. He was born in Riga in the part of the Russian Empire which later became Latvia, and died in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Avedon</span> American photographer (1923–2004)

Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer. He worked for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and Elle specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and dance. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tintype</span> Photographic process; direct positive image on metal

A tintype, also known as a melanotype or ferrotype, is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal, colloquially called 'tin', coated with a dark lacquer or enamel and used as the support for the photographic emulsion. It was introduced in 1853 by Adolphe Alexandre Martin in Paris, like the daguerreotype was fourteen years before by Daguerre. The daguerreotype was established and most popular by now, though the primary competition for the tintype would have been the ambrotype, that shared the same collodion process, but on a glass support instead of metal. Both found unequivocal, if not exclusive, acceptance in North America. Tintypes enjoyed their widest use during the 1860s and 1870s, but lesser use of the medium persisted into 1930s and it has been revived as a novelty and fine art form in the 21st century. It has been described as the first "truly democratic" medium for mass portraiture.

Joseph Szabo is an American photographer whose work is about adolescence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Hume Kennerly</span> American photographer

David Hume Kennerly is an American photographer. He won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his portfolio of photographs of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden. He has photographed every American president since Lyndon B Johnson. He is the first presidential scholar at the University of Arizona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Benson</span> Scottish photographer

Harry James Benson CBE is a Scottish photographer. His photographs of celebrities have been published in magazines. He has published several books and won a number of prominent awards.

Grace Robertson was a British photographer who worked as a photojournalist, and published in Picture Post and Life. Her photographic series, including "Mother's Day Off" (1954) and "Childbirth" (1955), mainly recorded ordinary women in postwar Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gertrude Käsebier</span> American photographer (1852–1934)

Gertrude Käsebier was an American photographer. She was known for her images of motherhood, her portraits of Native Americans, and her promotion of photography as a career for women.

Mark Alan Seliger is an American photographer noted for his portraiture. From 1992 to 2002, he was Chief Photographer for Rolling Stone, during which time he shot over 188 covers for the magazine. From 2002 to 2012 he was under contract with Condé Nast Publications for GQ and Vanity Fair and has shot for numerous other magazines. Seliger has published a number of books, including When They Came to Take My Father: Voices of the Holocaust, Physiognomy, and On Christopher Street: Transgender Stories, and his photographs are included in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the National Portrait Gallery in London. He has done advertising work for Adidas, Amazon, Anheuser-Busch, Apple, Dom Pérignon, Fila, Gap, HBO, Hourglass Cosmetics, Hulu, KITH, Lee Jeans, Levi's, McDonald's, Netflix, Ralph Lauren, Ray-Ban, Rolex, Showtime, Sony, Universal and Viacom, among others. He is also the lead singer of the country band Rusty Truck.

Dan Wynn (1920–1995) was an American editorial, portrait, and advertising photographer and film director. During his career, his work was published in many American magazines, including Esquire, New York, Travel + Leisure, Seventeen, Time, Newsweek, Harper's Bazaar, McCall's and Woman's Day. He also provided covers for books, record albums, and international magazines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annie Leibovitz</span> American photographer (born 1949)

Anna-Lou Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer best known for her portraits, particularly of celebrities, which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses. Leibovitz's Polaroid photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, taken five hours before Lennon's murder, is considered one of Rolling Stone magazine's most famous cover photographs. The Library of Congress declared her a Living Legend, and she is the first woman to have a feature exhibition at Washington's National Portrait Gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Derek Ridgers</span> British photographer

Derek Ridgers is a British photographer known for his photography of music, film and club/street culture. He has photographed people including James Brown, the Spice Girls, Clint Eastwood and Johnny Depp, as well as politicians, gangsters, artists, writers, fashion designers and sports people. Ridgers has also photographed British social scenes such as skinhead, fetish, club, punk and New Romantic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lawrence Fried</span>

Lawrence Fried was an American photo-journalist. He was born to first-generation Jewish Hungarian and Russian parents in New York, N. Y. Fried's work appeared in Newsweek, The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times, Vogue, Collier's, and Parade Magazine.[1] with over 70 covers for Newsweek [2]. He was the recipient of the Photographer of the Year award by the Overseas Press Club, the Outstanding Service to ASMP award and the Benjamin Franklin Award [3].

Richard Corman is an American photographer, best known for his work as a portrait photographer. His subjects include musicians, actors, athletes, artists, writers and humanitarians. His 2013 book, Madonna NYC 83, is a collection of photos he took of a pre-fame Madonna in 1983.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Lavine</span> American photographer, photojournalist

Arthur Lavine was an American mid-century photojournalist and magazine photographer who, among other achievements, produced significant documentation of New Caledonia during World War 2.

References

  1. 1 2 "Washington Post review".
  2. ↑ "CSPAN Interview/Transcript".
  3. 1 2 3 "NYT Lens".
  4. ↑ "Communism(s): A Cold War History". Damiani. Damiani.
  5. ↑ "Arthur Grace – about the author".
  6. 1 2 "Collections: Arthur Grace".
  7. ↑ "NPR transcript".
  8. ↑ "Deutsche Welle Review".
  9. ↑ "America 101 by PhotoEye".
  10. ↑ "Vanity Fair review".
  11. ↑ "CBS News".
  12. ↑ "NYJoB Review".
  13. ↑ "On and Off Stage With Robin Williams".
  14. ↑ "Communism(s): A Cold War Album". Damiani. Damiani.
  15. ↑ "'You Will Stay Silent': Photographs From Behind the Iron Curtain". The New York Times. May 14, 2022.
  16. ↑ "A penetrating look behind the Iron Curtain". Washington Post. April 1, 2022.
  17. ↑ "Life Behind The Iron Curtain in Pictures". The Times of London. March 27, 2022.
  18. ↑ "George Carlin at National Portrait Gallery". National Portrait Gallery. National Portrait Gallery.
  19. ↑ "The Struggle for Justice". National Portrait Gallery.
  20. ↑ "Getty Collection".
  21. ↑ "Arthur Grace".
  22. ↑ "National Portrait Gallery".
  23. ↑ "International Center of Photography".
  24. ↑ "About the artist".
  25. ↑ "American History Collections".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.