Beschreibung:

Ruth Bernhard Sand Dune 1967 Selenium-toned gelatin silver print, printed later. 6 1/2 x 13 5/8 in. (16.5 x 34.6 cm). Signed in pencil on the mount; signed, titled, dated in pencil and copyright credit stamp on the reverse of the mount.
Provenance Acquired directly from the artist Literature Chronicle Books, Ruth Bernhard The Eternal Body, pl. 27 Catalogue Essay RUTH BERNHARD PHOTOGRAPHS Peter C. Bunnell Professor of the History of Photography Emeritus Princeton University "Light is my inspiration. My photographic images search for dimensions that words cannot touch—the result of intense responses to personal experiences. I do not wish to “record,” but rather to touch upon the illusive meanings which I perceive and try to comprehend in this limitless universe." - Ruth Bernhard Born in Berlin in 1905, Ruth Bernhard left her studies at the Berlin Academy of Art in 1927 to join her father, Lucian, a graphic artist and designer, in New York. Two years later, she began her career as an advertising and illustration photographer, working for architects, designers, and artists, some of whom were friends or associates of her father. A stunning example from 1930, Lifesavers (Lot 123), reveals the dynamic Deco play of light and shade, and her mastery of formal design. During a trip to California in 1935, a chance meeting with the photographer Edward Weston who was unknown to her, first inspired Bernhard to pursue photography as an expressive medium and stay in California for the next three years. In 1939 Bernhard moved back to New York in pursuit of work, but found herself returning to California in 1948, and settling in San Francisco in 1953. It was a heady period for photography in that city; the Westons (Edward, her mentor, and his son, Brett), Ansel Adams Minor White Dorothea Lange Don Worth Larry Colwell, Imogen Cunningham Wynn Bullock and several others were all working in the Bay Area and Northern California. With her carefully considered still-life “portraits” of shells, leaves, and everyday found objects and especially her lyrical images of nudes, Bernhard established herself as a key figure in West Coast photography. She was one of the few photographers of the post-World War II era whose work and activity shaped the vision of the artist-photographer—an attitude about the poetics of depiction that matured in the nurturing avant-garde atmosphere of San Francisco after the war. Utilizing subtleties of light and shadow, she transformed the simplest objects into resonant, sensual almost fairytale-like representations, as in Two Leaves of 1952 (Lot 127). By the late 1950’s Bernhard had begun teaching private classes in her studio and giving workshops such as Classic Figure Photography, Problems of Posing and Lighting the Figure, The Art of Feeling, and she became one of the most highly acclaimed teachers of photography. Bernhard’s meeting with Weston most strongly changed her view about photography and its potential. “It isn’t that I was interested in photographing the way Weston photographed,” she had noted. “That didn’t interest me at all. I enjoyed his philosophy—his attitude—the purity of his seeing. And I understood that this was really what I was trying to do, without being aware of it. That’s why I continued being a photographer. … We shared something—photography was considered universal … it was not a cold, mechanical process.” In 1952, in the iconic Classic Torso (Lot 134), Weston’s pictorial influence was nonetheless fully absorbed and made manifest in her own way. Of her relationship with the human form, Bernhard said: “I work very hard at organizing. When I work with a model, I am a sculptor. I work to simplify. I want to create power and simplicity. [For instance, as in the 1967, Perspective II, Lot 130.] That’s what’s important to me. And I want to perfect the image.” Critical opinion has established Bernhard as one of the foremost interpreters of human figure. Her photographs of the female body range from sculptural rendition of the human form to abstractions that recast the body into elegant landscapes, like Sand Dune of 1967 (Lot 118), to multiple images of women and the natural world with which Bernhard felt we are all intimately connected