Photography and the American Theater

Two arts came to fullness together during the First World War and the decade   afterwards: the theater and photography. In the United States they flourished in   conjunction. The theater cleared the mists of pictorialism and the aura of   amateurism from art photography. Photography dressed the stars of the stage with   glamour and assisted in the extraordinary development of the visual dimension of   dramaturgy. Histories of the theater have long recognized the importance of the   period 1914-1934 for the development of the American stage.  
 
  Photography remains the most   evocative medium preserving these landmark innovations. Yet the photographers   who enable us to see the stage bloom into creative maturity have rarely been   recognized for their contributions to the making of the American theater,   particularly for their role in the fashioning of the visual languages of   glamour, psychological dread, and 'the new.' Conversely, the theater's influence   upon the visual language of 20th century photography, has not received its due.   How did stage lighting and the disposition of persons and things on the stage   influence the play of light and shadow, space and substance in the pictorial   field of a photograph? Of the 40 important studios doing theatrical photography   in the United States from 1900 to 1935, six have received attention in   print-those of Arnold   Genthe, Edward   Steichen, James Abbe, Francis   Bruguiere, Nickolas   Muray, and Adolph DeMeyer. There exists no published account of the   development of the crafts of entertainment portraiture or stage photography   during this period.

Hollywood photography, according to [some scholars], was anticipated by   Clarence Sinclair Bull and Ruth Harriet Louise, perfected in 1929 by the genius   of George Hurrell, and polished by studio masters such as Ernest Bachrach, Ray   Jones, Frank Powolny, A.L. Whitey Schafer, and Max Munn Autrey. If more had been   known about the first movie portraitists and still photographers--Frank Bangs, James Abbe, Karl   Struss, Fred Hartsook, Albert Witzel, Hoover Art Studio, Melbourne Spurr, and   Jack Freulich--commentators would have been more careful about their claims.   Most of the inventors of the conventions of film portraiture came from   theatrical photography. Their histories suggest that the genres, functions,   visual conventions, and formats of Hollywood photography were derived from the   art of theatrical photography.

 

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Article courtesy of Dr. David S. Shields, Mclintock Professor at the University of South Carolina