Robert Farber: I'm here with Arnold Newman in his New York City studio. I've admired his work, the beauty and sensitivity in his portraits and incredible composition over the years. I have had the good fortune in the last few years to become friendly with Arnold and get closer to knowing him and his wife. Arnold, I want to thank you very much for having me at the studio, and I want to ask you a few questions about your career. First off, when was the first time you picked up a camera?

Arnold Newman: I was 20 years old, and I had just taken a job through the middle of the Depression in 1938. All my friends in Phildelphia went to what was then called the School of Industrial Arts. It's one of the oldest art schools in America, but it's now called University Art School. It now teaches dance, theatre, music, and other art forms as well as painting, sculpture, and photography. At that time it was pretty well limited to photography, art, and textiles. When I accepted the job, because I could no longer go to school (being the middle of the Depression, my father lost all his money in the banks--very common story), I accepted this position to learn photography, doing 49-cent photographs, and earning 16 dollars a week. But all my friends just graduated, and there was an incredible group who had all studied together under Brodovich.

Robert Farber: Who were your other friends in that class?

Arnold Newman: The people in that group were Ben Rose, Saul Meznick, Vincent Traceoff, Irving Penn--I could go on and on--and Morrisburg who became a teacher there [University Art School] in painting. I took the job thinking I would continue to study hard at night, but a few days after I got there, they all went out taking pictures, we all stayed up all night, I was just watching, and it caught fire with me. I thought it was just a very exciting form of art. I borrowed a camera from an uncle of mine, 1920 Contessa with a fixed lens. And some of the pictures I took the very first day are now in museums. But it was just my whole art background that prepared me. As soon as I went out, I understood the difference between painting what was in front of me and photographing what was in front of me. One of them was to create a distortion, the other was to create a selection, and I understood that immediately. So I've been pretty lucky: I had the right teachers at the University of Miami, and the right people like Kibbitzworth in Philidelphia. It was like a post-graduate's course, and from there on in it was all photography.

Robert Farber: What were your influences in photography?

Arnold Newman: Well, actually it began with painting. I wanted to be a painter ever since I could remember. I painted even as a child. What was so wonderful, was even in the depths of the Depression, my parents would scramble up enough money to give me art lessons. Then I got a scholarship at the Univeristy of Miami and was able to continue for two years working two shifts, 8 to 12, 8 to 12, take the free buses out to Coral Gables from Miami Beach, and that sort of thing. But the real influences, of course, was the teachers who told us the history of art, and outside the classrooms there was all this wonderful stuff we were just beginning to be shown and accepted. It had been in America--Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Mondrian, Chagall--and there was so many things, and LIFE magazine, which was very important in those days, was beginning to show them. When I got into photography--when I got to Phildelphia, I also was aware of Stiglitz, Steichen, Strand, Farm Security Administration which I almost became part of. But it was too late. They were just breaking up when I was introduced to Royce Streicher who headed it. There were so many influences that not one single one overpowered me in the sense of being an influence, so I absorbed from all of these great artists, photographers as well as painters. And I learned a great deal that way, besides on my own studying the history. Much more important was I began to meet them when I came to New York in 1941. And I was determined--I was offered a job--Museum of Modern Art discovered me back in 1941--Beaumont Newhall. He sent me over the same day to see Stiglitz who discovered me and took me in, and I used to go back to see him frequently. But I had to go back to Miami Beach because the Draft Board was calling me. Unfortunately or fortunately, however you want to look at it, the Army didn't take me. There was an overabundance of 18 year olds, and I was a borderline case. I stayed in Miami Beach, came north to continue, and at the time, in June, I was offered an exhibit the day after Beaumont and Stiglitz took me in. For Ben Rose, who was my childhood chum in Atlantic City, who went to this school (we all studied under Brodovich by the way), the greatest teacher of photography.

Robert Farber: Who became a great art director. . .

Arnold Newman: Well he was an art director also at that time already, at Harper's Bazarre. I started having ideas about doing portraiture because I was working in these inexpensive places with a camera, the lights--and even the posing bench was practically nailed down, and it was the same old background. You couldn't tell the difference between a man who owned a factory in a town and a foreman on one of the assembly lines who would get all dressed up and get his picture taken. You couldn't tell who was the owner and who was the foreman. I realized there was something more that could be done with portraiture. I had seen the great portraits of all the wonderful masters: Stiglitz, Steichen, Nelson. There was so many of them that were marvelous, but they didn't attempt, for the most part, to say this man is a painter, or show him in his natural environment, whether it be at home or where they worked or whatever. And this was a beginning point. Not every picture I take, or anybody else takes, is what you would call an environmental portrait, although I have been called the author of it. So I began to experiment because after this reception in June of 41, we were offered at this show, Ben Rose and I, in September, and I came to New York. I began to take photographs of all these artists who were so important to me, and that was why I did that, besides doing other portraits. And I began to experiment, and to this day I remain involved in environmental portraiture, which to me that was a natural step, it was an obvious step.

Robert Farber: So in those days when you started doing the people that you admired as painters and had the opportunity to do the portraits, who were some of those people? And also, who was your favorite, or what was your favorite portrait you took in that period?

Arnold Newman: That's the old story about who is my favorite subject, or my favorite portrait. There are no such things. You like this picture, you may not like that one, and you continue on, and the next portrait is the most important one you do. They aren't all portraits that I did. So it doesn't matter. I think it's an accumulation of what you've done. I have so many pictures which I'm very proud about. When I started I was astonished to find that some of the pictures that I did, not necessarily portraits, were amongst my favorites--still lives or abstractions and so on. When I came to New York when I started knocking on doors because I wasn't sure who was in New York and all of that I found out. and I started knocking on doors of some of the realists and I became involved with them, not only professionaly and creatively, but personally. They took me in, they were virtually my family. Rayfield Sawyer, Moses Sawyer, Hiam Gross--so many of the realists--Reggie Marsh. Then later I was photographing many of the great artists who fled Europe because of Hitler, and there was Chagall, Mondrian, and Ossenfaunt. So many of these people, and I was rather startled as kid of 23, they accepted me as an artist, and even the assistant, well we'd like to get some of your photographs, we like it and i'll show it to them and they say can we give you something in return. I never ever asked anybody before I took a picture that I wanted to swamp. That was not the idea of it. If I had done so, that would have lost my to all these wonderful people. But I was very lucky, I have the original drawings of broadway boogie woogie and so on and so forth. It was wonderful, I was accepted, the only thing was my unemployment compensation ran out after 15 weeks at 16 dollars a week or whatever it was. I was sleeping on my cousin's couch in Brooklyn. But here I was doing these pictures, I could only afford eight or nine negatives. Today, when I think of it, I probably only made a few hundred dollars in hard jobs that year. Today, any one of those photographs, particularly if they're have been vintage prints run into thousands of dollars, which I couldn't have even dreamed about at that time. But that was the future, my wife says to this day all through my 20s and early 30s, i'm still living on the work of a young man, on the sweat of a young man.

Robert Farber: That's great. It must have been an incredible time with it. I look around your studio and I see these portraits that were signed by Chagall and presidents--President Kennedy, Eisenhower, Johnson, and Stevenson, and Truman. Just the accumulation of these things what momentos you have here. So where did this lead to from that point? You stayed in New York I imagine?

Arnold Newman: Well I stayed in New York that fall through the spring of 42, when I was called by my draft board. I went home to go in the army, as i mentioned. There was such an abundance of 18 year old kids, and my health because of hypertension, i was not accepted, but i told don't go anywhere because they would probably call me. And i kept calling my draft board. That was a very popular war, and I reallywanted to get into it, but they never called me. I was invited by the Navy as my older brother was to become an officer and gentleman, but he made it under the wire. This is all because what my father did in World War I. But they took one look at my glasses ? and told me to forget it. And I tried to join the Marines, and tried to join this and everything else. I just simply had to sit the war out in Miami Beach, but I would keep going back north doing more portraits and experimental things until 1945, when I was asked to have a show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Robert Farber: Weren't you offered a show in New York before this one in Philadelphia?

Arnold Newman: Yes. So we opened the show in early September--mid September--and all the art directors--Ansel Adams came along with Beaumont Newhall who picked out my first print in the Museum of Modern Art. And I spent the rest of that winter all through spring trying to get started, sleeping on my cousins couch, living on 16 dollars a week, unemployment compensation for awhile, then did odd jobs. At the end of it, I got my first job from Harper's Bazarre. Ben Rose did a cover, I did the inside portrait for Ryder. Then I went home to hopefully join the army, which didn't happen.

Robert Farber: Let me ask you this because people are so used to studio portraiture, and not the environmental portraits that you were starting, so how did people adjust to you doing this?

Arnold Newman: Well, the Philadelphia museum, for some reason knew about my work, because I had now started a lot of portraiture, and I was offered a show called Artists Look Like This. It was in the December 45-Jan 46, and they bought the whole show, about 50 some photographs for 750 dollars, which was a big windfall for me, but the important thing was is that caught the attention of all the magazines. Life magazine (this was days before television) gave me two and half pages. Harpers Bazarre gave me two and a half pages, all the photography and art magazines gave me big write-ups and suddenly I was the new star in that year.

Robert Farber: So would you say this is the launching point of your career?

Arnold Newman: Absolutely. Elliot Elisophin came down to Miami where I had my little studio where I was eeking out a living over the war. And he said you belong in New York. When I came to New York he introduced me all over ? Life magazine. He was one of the stars, and they took me aside and sent me down and the next thing I know I was offered the top price, though it started out at the lowest one and I kept my mouth shut and they offered me not only the top day rate, but they gave me the copyright on the page. Only one other photographer who was doing regular work for them did it, but refused to go on staff. From that point on I did a ton of work for them, for Harper's Bazarre. After a couple years I got disenchanted with fashion and dropped that, and began to work for Holiday magazine, which became one of my really truly great clients at the time. And Frank Zachary, who was the art director--later the editor of Town & Country--had been an editor for me and sent me around the world and worked with me even locally more than any other single person in my career.

Robert Farber: Now after all of this happened, it seems like you're then settled in New York. . . Let me just skip a little more to today--the great portraits that I see of Igor Stravinsky, Picasso, some of these wonderful portraits that you have, even ones that aren't as well known. By the way, I must say the show that you have at ICP is absolutely incredible. That's a show you're doing something with Kodak, right, something they sponsored?

Arnold Newman: This was part of a big purchase gift that went back a few years and had been circulating, and we brought it up to date and added a lot of color to the ICP show. It gives a very good, broad spectrum of sixty years of photography, including the very first photograph I took the first day I went out to take pictures of the mother and child. To me it was such a wonderful thing to go back and see my--well, I'm trying not to live in the past, but people won't let me--I have to go back and think about that. On the other hand, people are still ordering pictures for reproduction and collecting them as art, going back to the very first days I took pictures. It's incredible that I've been so lucky. And I've been doing all these portraits, all these still lives, everything that I've ever done (color, abstractions), on assignment so often, and I've been well-paid to do exactly what I want to do.

Robert Farber: Tell us something about the new book that you've been working on.

Arnold Newman: When we were originally working on a book at that time, we deliberately did not go to publishers, although they found out about it, and to my amazement and satisfaction, several publishers came to us. However, it was called to our attentiont that Tatshin? was beginning to do this series of small books they call it a Brick? in German. It's not too big, about 6 and a half (7) inches by 8 (8 and a half) inches. It has 671 pages of black and white and color, and almost 800 pages including the text, which will be in English, French, and German. This was too good to be true because it was going to sell for 30 dollars, and we decided to go ahead with it. They were enthusiastic about it, and so were we. Because the price we've helped a lot of students and young photographers who were not making very much could afford it. And that was the reason I decided to go ahead with this book. It's book 11. And then the cataloge you can call 12 and I'm planning my 13th book as an autobiography, which I'm starting on almost immediately.

Robert Farber: Your images are so recognizable, so well-known, which of the images do you feel, a few of them that are some of your best-known images as far as you believe.

Arnold Newman: Probably the best-known one is the one I did of Stravinsky with a piano. It's not an environmental portrait, it's a--if you want to give it a title or a description you might say it's a symbolic one--I hate titles! And you've got to do it this way and not that way, i like to be free and do anything I want. The next best-known is probably my big headshot of Picasso, then there are some Georgia O'Keefe at Ghost Ranch. There's so many of them because things keep coming in for request for purchases, there's Krupp, who I put a knife in his back--he deserved it, he was a murderer--sent too many people to death, cooperated with Hitler, sent tens of thousands of people to their death, maybe more, and so on and on. There are so many of my pictures that people order that I'm absolutely startled that they know them.

Robert Farber: Well let me ask you something about that picture of Krupp. I've seen that when you've done your lectures, you told something interesting about his portrait, or how you wanted him to look, knowing what was in your mind when you photographed him.

Arnold Newman: Well the magazine asked me to do it, asked me to photograph him, and I said absolutely not. They asked why not: I think of him as the devil. They said, well good, that's the way we think of him. For one reason or another they never ran the picture. I own all my work and all the copyrights and all rights to my work, I don't do anything. Right from the beginning that was my arrangement with all the magazines, so I've been very lucky. The point was, how am I going to do this? In those days we didn't have faxes, we had cables, sent letters. I got to Paris for other work before I was supposed to go on up to Essen. We then made telephone calls, and finally get up there, and when I got up there the next day, I was brought into a small room and said, "It's off."

Robert Farber: Well, Arnold, let me back up to this portrait that you're talking about Krupp. That was after World War II, and tell us who was he for the people that don't know.

Arnold Newman: Krupp was convicted as a war criminal. He operated these big factories, along with his family...he actually married into. They were the munitions manufacturers for all the emperors and then for Hitler. They made all kinds of guns, ammunition, tanks, and so on. He was given all the slave labor that he wanted, people that were able to work. He chained them to their work benches so they couldn't run away if bombs were falling. They couldn't run away at all. He underfed them, he fed them half the calories that Hitler allowed, to save money, because he had too many slave laborers available to him. When they got too weak to work, they shipped them off to Auschwitz to be killed. Later, he even built a factory in Auschwitz so that all they had to do was walk right into the crematoriums.

Robert Farber: Let me step back for one second. You said you showed up there for the shooting, and they said to you it was off?

Arnold Newman: Well, I was given a beautiful suite at the hotel, which later I found out he owned. My phones were tapped, which was nothing because this happened with anybody who had anything to do with journalism in those days. It probably happens today too, here in America as well, I have a hunch. And the next morning I was ushered--they promised me photographers as my assistants, because when you take your own assistant you can't speak all these languages and you don't where things are when you go to a foreign country. They brought me into the main offices and sat me in a small room around a table with all the vice presidents and public relations, and they said everything was called off, we're sorry you can't photograph Krupp. By the way, what I neglected to say, that he was convicted as a war criminal and then he went to jail. In our great wisdom, eventually we let him out of jail, gave him back his factories, his money, his castles, and everything, which eventually he ran into the ground because he was not a good business man. Because before he was simply supported by the government. He needed money, they would give him money because they needed the arms. So when I got to this little room with this circular table, with these very arrogant, Nazi-type people told me it was off. They apparently took one look at me and decided I would not treat him very kindly, which is what I was about to do (not treat him very kindly). To treat that old German type saying I am sorry and sneak away, I immediately realized that I had to do something, and I slammed my fist on the table and said, "How dare you do this to me?" And they weren't used to having photographers talk to them like that, and they were just absolutely stunned. I said I want you to take my photographs, which I had in a little book, and to show them to Krupp to let him decide. And they did because they didn't know what to make of me, that I would talk to them, they're not very used to talking down to people who are below them and they would practically bow their heads in front of Krupp, and they came back in awe and said, "Herr van Bohlen Krupp will see you." And when I met with him just down the hall, he said, "These are WONDERFUL photographs, of course you must do me." And during that day, I was setting up, and I found the perfect spot. I noticed this HUGE, square U-shaped casting, the biggest casting ever made which framed the photograph. I realized it was in a different bay, and I looked up and there was a rail that I could slide over to where I wanted. They said that's impossible. I said if it's impossible I'll tell Herr van Bohlen Krupp. And he says okay, okay, we'll see what we can do, and in a few minutes we built two-meter high platform, three meters long, sat him up there, nobody could see what I was doing, I pulled a Polaroid to proof out my color and exposure, and I did some others, which I showed to them, but I hard case for 4x5 camera case, and I put the Polaroids in there. With that, they escorted me back to my hotel, and they said we'd like to take you to dinner. I said I am too tired. I didn't want to have anything to do with them, so I told them I would just have dinner sent to my room. They were so insistent, I said I would have drink but then I'm too tired, I have to go back to my room. Later, we found out that they sent somebody up to photograph the Polaroid that I pulled out, because it wasn't working and I said, "Would you lean forward, Herr von Bohlen Krupp?" and he leaned foward. My hair stood on end; it was just the way I planned it. He was sitting back, and I quickly took the picture. Obviously, we know that they photographed the Polaroid, and being what they are, the old type German, he was told just to photograph the Polaroids, not to pull the slides, to ruin them. Her von Bohlen Krupp tried to get me to be cleared persona non grata in Germany, but he didn't have the political clout anymore, and I was able to go back for stories but I was scared. A funny story, when I was being escorted out, my regular driver didnn't show up, and the substitute guy came out and he took a different route in the middle of a forest and I got scared. I pulled out my Swiss Army knife, ready to say, stop or I'll kill you, and there took a shortcut that I didn't know about: there was the airport.

Robert Farber: Arnold, since the Stravinsky picture--such strong graphics with the grand piano, the beautiful composition--it's a symbolic picture, not an environmental one, and so why did you take it that way?

Arnold Newman: Well, the symbolic description, by the way, comes after the fact. I just simply had to solve a problem. Now Stravinsky lived on the West coast, he was coming to New York, and Harper's Bazarre told me to photograph him. When I did a book on him years later, photographing in a hotel room is a whole life, just like you and I (we travel so much). But that was not the way I wanted to present Stravinsky, I wanted to present him as a composer. I just started thinking I loved classical music, I loved his work. And then it hit me: the piano is such a wonderful, beautiful, musical shape. I thought I'd work it out the way it is in this picture, and we found the perfect piano in an editor's house, took down one picture there hanging on one wall, and it made a beautiful composition. The piano is a strong, harsh, linear, but very beautiful shape, that looks like a B flat. It was just perfect for what I had in mind. At that time, I had just come to New York. It was one of the first photographs I did for Harper's Bazarre. And my first photograph for Life magazine, by the way, was Eugene O'Neill. When I came to New York it was unbelievable, I started at the top--but, get back to Stravinsky. . .he loved it and I loved it, but for some reason or another Harper's Bazarre tried to help but they couldn't run it. Thank God I had kept my copyright and Polaroids. And that's one lesson I like to give to young photographers: Never give away all rights, never give away even limited rights, one-time use only, period, otherwise you're giving away your birthright. I'm still taking money in for work I've done the last sixty years.

Robert Farber: Based on that kind of thing and advice, what else sticks in your mind as far as advice for people that are just starting out? If they want to be really successful, whether they have a local portrait photography studio, or they want a photography studio, and they want to do portraits--they might be in a small village or town somewhere around the world--what do you suggest, what is your best advice?

Arnold Newman: It's very simple: study the past, which goes way back. All images go way back to the caveman drawings. Study painting. Study the reaction in the 19th century when there was an overlap of painting and photography. They influenced each other; they're both art if you can make it art. And then work your backside off. There's no other way. You either work morning, noon, and night, or if you just feel you're going to become rich, famous, or successful overnnight, forget it. Unless God has given you the most unusual talent and even you think you have it, you're still going to have to work hard. It would just be in your bones if you're that good.

Robert Farber: Also, let me ask you this: do you think it's necessary (of course your experience and my experiences are completely different than the way they are today) but to your feeling, do you think a photographer has to be in New York or another major city?

Arnold Newman: Looking at all my friends who were very successful, they're scattered all over America, some live in Europe. It's convenient to New York if you can afford it because you're near the publishers and the advertising agencies, but little by little publishers are willing to give you work even though you may live in Swedunk Ohio, or here or there, but it would limit your possibilities. If you're here, you're able to see the editors day by day, or the art directors in advertising. It makes it a little easier. Or else you'll be just shuttling back and forth to New York to see them, and that's a possibility. I can't give you advice on that because I've never had that experience. I found it better for me at least to be right here where the action is.

Robert Farber: Well, Arnold it's been really great and a pleasure speaking with you, and quite imformative and interesting. I love your images, and I love the stories behind them. I wish you many more years of continued success, and we'll all look for your books and for your gallery shows. If somebody is intersted in purchasing one of your famous portraits, what's the best way for them to go about that?

Arnold Newman: Go to your nearest photography gallery, and they will probably have it. If not, get my fax number, go look me up and call me if you're that interested (I don't give it out).

Robert Farber: How about if they email us at the photoworkshop, and we can forward it on to your dealers, will that be ok?

Arnold Newman: That's just fine. We can forward it to the correct people who handle it--after you've tried your local photography dealer

Robert Farber: Arnold, thank you, it's been great to be here, and by the way, thanks for lunch.

Arnold Newman: Oh, you paid for it, so I enjoyed it.

Find out more about Arnold Newman:

icp.org

Note: The above is a transcript of Robert Farber's interview with Arnold Newman. It has undergone some editing for improved readibility. You may also wish--or prefer--to listen to the actual original interview while viewing some of Mr. Newman's images.