Ryszard Horowitz | |
---|---|
Born | Kraków, Poland | May 5, 1939
Nationality | Polish, American |
Known for | Photography |
Style | Surrealism, Photo composition |
Spouse | Anna Bogusz (m. 1974) |
Children | 2 |
Website | www |
Ryszard Horowitz (born May 5, 1939) is a Polish-born American photographer recognized as a pioneer of special effects photography that predates digital imaging. [1]
Horowitz was born in Kraków, Poland on May 5, 1939. Four months later, because they were Jewish, Ryszard's entire family was forced into concentration camps following the German invasion of Poland. [1] [2] From September 1944, he was imprisoned at the Auschwitz concentration camp and later became known as one of the youngest known people to survive Auschwitz and be included on Schindler's list. At war's end, five-year old Ryszard was found in an orphanage by his mother and reunited with his family. [3] His was among the few Jewish families to re-establish themselves in Krakow. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Horowitz began taking pictures at the age of fourteen. For a brief period, he grew up alongside Roman Polański, with whom he created his first photographic enlarger from cardboard. [9]
In 1956, the Polish government began awarding subsidies to encourage new and original art forms; Kraków suddenly emerged as a center of avant-garde jazz, painting, theater and filmmaking. For two years, beginning in 1959, Ryszard studied art at the High School of Fine Arts in Kraków and then went on to major in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. It was at this time that he became interested in photography, particularly the work of American photographers. [2]
Jazz was of particular interest to Horowitz as a photography student. He photo-documented the birth of Polish Jazz, [9] and in 1958, photographed jazz legends such as Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Sonny Rollins at the Newport Jazz Festival in the U.S. [10]
Horowitz immigrated to the United States in 1959 and enrolled at New York's Pratt Institute in its commercial and advertising graphic design department. There he worked with his mentors, Richard Avedon and Alexey Brodovitch. Horowitz took part in weekly seminars led by Brodovitch and worked as an assistant for Avedon in 1963, including at his famous portrait session with Salvador Dalí. After graduating from Pratt in 1962, Horowitz began working in film and television and graphic design companies, including a stint as Art Director for Grey Advertising. [1] [2] [9]
In 1967, Horowitz opened his own photography studio in New York City. He has developed a successful career in both fine art and commercial photography, but is most well-known for creating complex photographic composites, which have been compared to the surrealist artworks of Magritte and Dalí. Early in his career, to obtain such effects, Horowitz used a multitude of photographic techniques such as darkroom retouching, multiple film exposures and manipulation of his camera. [1] [9]
The 2021 documentary film Polanski, Horowitz. Hometown, directed by Mateusz Kudła and Anna Kokoszka-Romer, telling the story of the childhood and youth of Ryszard Horowitz and his friend Roman Polanski, whom he met in the Krakow ghetto. [11]
In 2017, Horowitz was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum. [12]
Horowitz was depicted as a child in Steven Spielberg's epic drama Schindler's List - a film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved over a thousand Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. [13] [14] Horowitz, along with other Schindlerjuden , appears in the final scene as mourners at Schindler's grave in Jerusalem. [15]
Horowitz's photographs appear on the cover of both Dot Hacker's 2014 How's Your Process albums. [16] Because of his unique style, Horowitz was asked to produce the cover for the premier issue of Nuestro magazine in 1977.
In 1974, Horowitz married Anna Bogusz, an architect. They have two sons, Daniel and Emil. [17]
Raymond Roman Thierry Polański is a French and Polish film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and convicted sex offender. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, two British Academy Film Awards, ten César Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, as well as the Golden Bear and a Palme d'Or.
Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist, humanitarian, and member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. He is the subject of the 1982 novel Schindler's Ark and its 1993 film adaptation, Schindler's List, which reflect his life as an opportunist initially motivated by profit who came to show extraordinary initiative, tenacity, courage, and dedication in saving his Jewish employees' lives.
Schindler's List is a 1993 American epic historical drama film directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Steven Zaillian. It is based on the historical novel Schindler's Ark (1982) by Thomas Keneally. The film follows Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved more than a thousand mostly Polish–Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories during World War II. It stars Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as SS officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley as Schindler's Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern.
Płaszów or Kraków-Płaszów was a Nazi concentration camp operated by the SS in Płaszów, a southern suburb of Kraków, in the General Governorate of German-occupied Poland. Most of the prisoners were Polish Jews who were targeted for destruction by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Many prisoners died because of executions, forced labor, and the poor conditions in the camp. The camp was evacuated in January 1945, before the Red Army's liberation of the area on 20 January.
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The Kraków Ghetto was one of five major metropolitan Nazi ghettos created by Germany in the new General Government territory during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It was established for the purpose of exploitation, terror, and persecution of local Polish Jews. The ghetto was later used as a staging area for separating the "able workers" from those to be deported to extermination camps in Operation Reinhard. The ghetto was liquidated between June 1942 and March 1943, with most of its inhabitants deported to the Belzec extermination camp as well as to Płaszów slave-labor camp, and Auschwitz concentration camp, 60 kilometres (37 mi) rail distance.
The Schindlerjuden, literally translated from German as "Schindler Jews", were a group of roughly 1,200 Jews saved by Oskar Schindler during the Holocaust. They survived the years of the Nazi regime primarily through the intervention of Schindler, who afforded them protected status as industrial workers at his enamelware factory in Kraków, capital of the General Government, and after 1944, in an armaments factory in occupied Czechoslovakia. There, they avoided being sent to death camps and survived the genocide. Schindler expended his personal fortune made as an industrialist to save the Schindlerjuden.
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Podgórze is a district of Kraków, Poland, situated on the right (southern) bank of the Vistula River, at the foot of Lasota Hill. The district was subdivided in 1990 into six new districts, see present-day districts of Kraków for more details. The name Podgórze roughly translates as the base of a hill. Initially a small settlement, in the years following the First Partition of Poland the town's development was promoted by the Austria-Hungary Emperor Joseph II who in 1784 granted it the city status, as the Royal Free City of Podgórze. In the following years it was a self-governing administrative unit. After the Third Partition of Poland in 1795 and the takeover of the entire city by the Empire, Podgórze lost its political role of an independent suburb across the river from the Old Town.
Alexey Vyacheslavovich Brodovitch was a Russian-American photographer, designer and instructor who is most famous for his art direction of fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar from 1934 to 1958.
Allan Mieczysław Starski is a Polish Oscar-winning production designer and set decorator.
Marvin Israel was an American artist, photographer, painter, teacher and art director from New York City known for modern/surreal interiors, abstract imagery. Israel created sinister shadowy and exuberant interiors with implications of violence that were often sexual in nature.
Yasuhiro Wakabayashi, known professionally as Hiro (ヒロ), was a Japanese-American commercial photographer. He was known for his fashion and still life photography from the mid-1960s onward.
Wilhelm Brasse was a Polish professional photographer and a prisoner in Auschwitz during World War II. He became known as the "famous photographer of Auschwitz concentration camp." His life and work were the subject of the 2005 Polish television documentary film The Portraitist (Portrecista), which first aired in the Proud to Present series on the Polish TVP1 on 1 January 2006.
The Portraitist is a 2005 Polish television documentary film about the life and work of Wilhelm Brasse, the famous "photographer of Auschwitz", made for TVP1, Poland, which first aired in its "Proud to Present" series on January 1, 2006. It also premiered at the Polish Film Festival, at the West London Synagogue, in London, on March 19, 2007.
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