The 1940s school that turned photography into art in pictures | Art and design

Posted by Jenniffer Sheldon on Friday, June 28, 2024

The 1940s school that turned photography into art – in pictures

Mentored by the likes of Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Edward Weston, photography students at the California School of Fine Arts explored everything from abstraction to documentary

Main image: Dancing at a Joint in the Bayview District, San Francisco, CA 1957. Photograph: David Johnson

Thu 29 Sep 2016 02.00 EDT Last modified on Thu 26 Mar 2020 10.36 EDT

  • Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, CA 1948

    A new book charts the astonishingly rich work made at the California School of Fine Arts in the middle of the 20th century, pushing the boundaries of documentary, landscape and portrait photography. The Golden Decade: Photography at the California School of Fine Arts 1945-55 is out now, published by Steidl

  • Dancing at a Joint in the Bayview District, San Francisco, CA 1957

    In the immediate aftermath of the second world war, the California School of Fine Arts hired Ansel Adams – the pre-eminent photographer of the American west – to create the first fine art photography department in the US

  • San Francisco, CA 1948

    The teaching staff was a who’s who of contemporary greats, including Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham and Minor White

  • San Francisco, CA 1953

    Previously, most photographers just dabbled in the form as amateurs, in photo clubs and back rooms; few thought of photography as serious art

  • Bay Meadows racetrack, CA 1945

    The school underlined that photography could hold its own against painting and sculpture in terms of visual daring and emotional impact

  • Nude, c.1950s

    The forms of this nude are a good example, showing how photography could deal with abstraction as well as more straightforward portraiture or storytelling

  • Halprin/Lathrop Dancers, San Francisco, CA 1953

    Students and teachers would sometimes collaborate together – for instance, Lange and Pirkle Jones created a series of images of Monticello, a Californian town that was to be flooded by the arrival of a dam

  • San Francisco, CA 1948

    One of The Golden Decade’s authors is Victoria Whyte Ball, whose father Don Whyte took this image – he bequeathed sheafs of negatives and contact sheets to her from the school

  • Chinatown, San Francisco, CA c.1951

    Charles Wong focused his work on San Francisco’s sizeable Chinese community, interlacing his series of images with poetic text

  • Minarets from Tam above Lake Ediza, now Ansel Adams Wilderness, CA 1950

    Perhaps inspired in part by Adams’ landscapes, Philip Hyde documented the majesty of California’s nature. He became the chief photographer for the Sierra Club conservation group, and successfully lobbied against the creation of dams in the Grand Canyon. His photos also helped grant protection to areas including Big Sur and the Point Reyes peninsula

  • Hats, Seattle, WA 1951

    A relatively rare urban scene from William Heick, who spent much of his career documenting – both in photography and film – the lives of native Americans and their ceremonies

  • The Orient Express, 1952

    Following mentorship at the California School of Fine Arts under Weston, Ira Latour travelled to Europe, taking photos as well as presenting a radio show on photography for foreign troops

  • Paris, France c.1945-50

    Benjamen Chinn came to the school from a job as an aerial photographer in the air force. He also learned painting under Richard Diebenkorn, and was later taught sculpture by Alberto Giacometti in Paris
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