Exhibition dates: 1st June – 27th August 2023

Curator: Sally Martin Katz

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Boulevard de Clichy, Paris [Boulevard de Clichy, París]
1951
Gelatin silver image
29.7 × 44.8cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

The (in)significant moment

Some thoughts by others on the work of Louis Stettner gleaned from curating this posting:

1/ The elegance of absolute solitude.

2/ The greatest beauty is often found in the quiet moments, in a face, a composition, a living detail.

3/ Stettner preferred to picture solitary individuals, picking them out from their social settings with his camera’s framing and timing.

4/ Stettner called his photography humanist realism.

5/ Spontaneous, of the moment, impassioned and to be thought about later

6/ Gestural skill, compositional skill, fragmented bodies, isolated.

7/ To photograph workers was an act of resistance and also homage.

8/ “His visual sensibility was so varied, so protean that it overlapped with just about every other photographer of his era who worked as he did, in the mode of lyric observation of daily life.  One could make an exhibition pairing his pictures with similar works by a wide range of great figures, among them Roy DeCarava, Willy Ronis, Louis Draper, Aaron Siskind, Walker Evans, Lisette Model, Morris Engel, Edouard Boubat, Shawn Walker, Jerome Liebling, André Kertész, W. Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange, Beuford Smith, Robert Frank, Robert Doisneau, Sid Grossman, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, Bill Brandt, Izis, Louis Faurer, William Klein, Weegee, and Ruth Orkin. There is something of Stettner’s work in theirs, and theirs in his.  My list is long, but it could be much longer. If we were to draw a Venn diagram of the styles of the great observational photographers of the last century, we would find Stettner at the point where they all intersect.”

David Company. “To Value What is in Front of Us. The Photography of Louis Stettner,” on the David Company website Nd [Online] Cited 18/08/2023

The question is, how can we do this underrated artist’s work “justice”. Justice means giving each person what he or she deserves or, in more traditional terms, giving each person his or her due. And by justice in Stettner’s case I mean, how can we value and cherish his photographs then, now and in the future… without them being seen as derivative of others but valued in and of themselves.

In this regard I believe David Campany has hit the nail on the head in his article “To Value What is in Front of Us. The Photography of Louis Stettner” which I heartily recommend you read. He observes, “Humanist realism is not a style, and not even a world view or a disposition. It is more like a reminder to value what is in front of us; to hold it, to appreciate it, to think about it, and to come back to it.”

To value what is in front of us.

Much as I asked you in the last posting about Jewish photographers in the ghettos during the Second World War to look at their photographs with an open and clear mind, to pay attention to the details, to unlearn the familiar and look afresh at the connections and tensions within and between images… then here again we must not become imbued to the familiarity of Stettner’s images because they look like a Robert Frank or a Walker Evans, but we must fully appreciate the value of what is in front of us.

While Stettner was more interested in the significant moment (rather than the decisive moment), focusing on individuals, individual / details (but then we know nothing of subject’s life other than this, perhaps significant, perhaps insignificant, moment) it is the photographers clear seeing – his awareness of the serendipity of that moment – that makes these photographs of value to him and to us. Look at those faces, look at those spaces! What do they reveal to us over time?

Stettner knew the value of what a creative photographer could achieve when taking a photograph : “The photographer gives us a record of what happened at the instant of exposure, but the creative photographer unveils for us what we did not see or could not understand.” The photographs become a revelation of what is normally hidden from view.

For me what is revealed in these photographs is the ever changing nature of the human condition over which we are charged to exercise stewardship. They make me aware of fleeting, flickering time, they make me aware of individual lives and hard work sucked in the great maul of industry, and they make me aware that we are not doing a very good job of our guardianship nor are we being a good custodian to our legacy.

Of the best photographs that he took, Louis Stettner said: “When things work out, it’s like a miracle.”

We need that miracle now for things to work out for the human race.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Fundación MAPFRE for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

With a career spanning almost eighty years, the work of Louis Stettner (New York, 1922 – Paris, 2016) incorporates, in a very personal style, the tradition of American street photography and French humanist photography. He trained at the Photo League School in New York before moving to Paris in 1947, where he developed a close relationship with Brassaï, who became his friend and mentor.

Also very directly influenced by the poetry of Walt Whitman and the social concerns of Marxism, his photographs of New York and Paris reflect the celebration of life and exaltation of the modern city so characteristic of the author of Leaves of Grass, while his images of workers in the performance of their trades propose an explicit dignification of the proletariat. With more than 180 works, this exhibition is one of the largest organised to date in Spain, offering a comprehensive thematic exploration of his extensive career.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE website

“A photograph should always have the last word. Surrounded by silence, it should by it presence dominate all those who look at it. Even the photographer should keep quiet. The picture taken, their work done.”

Louis Stettner. “The Case for the Indestructible Image,” in British Photography, 1952

 

“An image is capable of being like life at its very best – moving us deeply without our knowing fully why.”

“In the midst of noise, dirt, smoke and the risk of accidents, they seemed to me very sensitive people, of innate humanity and with a wonderful ability of organisation and perception of immediate reality. They always made me feel welcome and comfortable […] my stay in the factories was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life…”

“I work on intuition … If something strikes me as significant, I don’t censor what’s around me. I don’t come with any ideas to impose on reality; I let reality speak to me.”

“Time is the best proof of how valuable a photograph is, or how profound the content is … The fact these photographs get more exciting with time is a good sign.”

“The photographer must recognise order and sense in the turmoil of people and places and the thousand and one things which surround them. What he selects as important depends on his own personality and his attitude to life.”

“The photographer gives us a record of what happened at the instant of exposure, but the creative photographer unveils for us what we did not see or could not understand.”

Louis Stettner

 

“Stettner has always been fully conscious that the role of the photographer is not to turn away from all reference to reality, but on the contrary to express a profound experience with it.”

Brassaï, in his introduction to Early Joys, Photographs from 1947-1972, 1987

Louis Stettner: el fotógrafo desconocido más conocido del mundo

Te presentamos la mayor retrospectiva que se ha realizado hasta la fecha del fotógrafo estadounidense Louis Stettner (1922-2016). Con una visión general como hilo conductor, su obra abarca multitud de temas, desde entornos urbanos casi vacíos hasta bulliciosas escenas del metro de Nueva York, la rutina de trabajadores y obreros o los paisajes montañosos del macizo francés de los Alpilles.

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Aubervilliers, France [Aubervilliers, Francia]
1947
Gelatin silver image
29.3 × 23cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1922 of immigrant Austrian parents. His photographic career spanned 70 years, and started at the age of thirteen with the gift of a box camera from his father and the discovery of an article by American photographer Paul Outerbridge Jr., describing the great potential of photography for interpreting the world. Throughout his teenage years, Stettner immersed himself in photography by frequenting the gallery of Alfred Stieglitz and the print room of the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he methodically worked his way through the complete history of American photography by studying original prints and back issues of the photographic journal Camera Work. After having enlisted in the army (1940-1941) and serving as a combat photographer with the US Infantry in the Pacific (1942-1945) during the Second World War, Stettner left his homeland in 1947 on a three-week trip to Paris which extended into five years. Here Stettner became an active and valued member of the local post-war photography scene, photographing the city constantly. During this time he worked as a freelance photographer for various magazines in Europe and the US and studied Photography and Cinema at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC) (1947-1949). In 1952 Stettner returned to the US, where he found a night job at a security company, roaming the streets by day with his camera. To supplement his income, he photographed for magazines and advertising agencies.

Anonymous text. “Louis Stettner,” on the Fifty One Gallery website Nd [Online] Cited 30/07/2023

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Concentric Circles, Construction Site, New York [Círculos concéntricos, obra, Nueva York]
1952
Gelatin silver image
23 × 34.5 cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Manhole, Times Square, New York [Tapa de alcantarilla, Times Square, Nueva York]
1954
Gelatin silver image
46.3 × 32.3cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Brooklyn Promenade, Brooklyn, New York [Brooklyn Promenade, Brooklyn, Nueva York]
1954
Gelatin silver image
29.8 × 44.8 cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Nancy Listening to Jazz, Greenwich Village, New York [Nancy escuchando jazz, Greenwich Village, Nueva York]
1958
Gelatin silver image
28.6 × 20.8cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

This exhibition is the largest retrospective to date on American photographer Louis Stettner (1922-2016), whose work has not been given the recognition it undoubtedly deserves. Organised chronologically, it showcases more than one hundred and ninety photographs spanning his entire career, including some previously unpublished images and some of his hitherto almost unknown colour work.

His experience as a photographer in World War II profoundly conditioned his understanding of life, so present in all his photography: a firm belief in the human being. Also influenced by his literary and philosophical readings (Plato, Karl Marx and Walt Whitman, fundamentally) and by his relationship, through the Photo League, with photographers such as Sid Grossman and Weegee, who conveyed to him the importance of photography as an instrument of social change, Stettner’s work offers us, in short, a vibrant celebration of life, of man’s courage to embrace the adversities and blessings of existence to the fullest.

With this overarching vision as a common thread, Stettner’s work encompasses a multitude of subjects, from almost empty urban environments to bustling scenes of the New York subway, the routines of workers and labourers, and the mountainous landscapes of the French Alpilles massif in his later years. Throughout his career he returned frequently to many of them, especially those connected to his social commitment and his concern for the underprivileged.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE website

The Project

Louis Stettner (New York, 1922 – Paris, 2016) trained at the Photo League school in New York where he studied with Sid Grossman and coincided with Weegee, who became a close friend. In Paris he met Brassaï, who became his mentor. Despite being fully immersed in the debate on historic photography for much of the 20th century, Stettner’s work never received the recognition it deserved, possibly because he was not associated with a particular style. The exhibition now presented by Fundación MAPFRE, comprising more than 190 photographs which span the artist’s entire career, aims to remedy that forgotten status and introduce Stettner to the general public, while also celebrating the work of a photographer whose images captured the poetry of everyday life.

Summary

1/ Living between New York and Paris but without ever attaching himself to one city to the detriment of the other, Stettner remained rooted in these two worlds at a time when most photographers were only affiliated with one of them. In this sense, his work involves elements of both the aesthetic of New York street photography and the lyrical humanism of the French tradition.

2/ Stettner’s work encompasses a wide range of different themes, from almost deserted urban views to bustling scenes of the New York subway, the routine of office workers’ lives, labourers engaged in their daily activities, and the mountainous landscapes of the Alpilles, France in his final period.

3/ Stettner drew on numerous sources of inspiration for his work, both artistic and literary (essentially Plato, Karl Marx and Walt Whitman). Combined with his interest in philosophy and in the social and political issues of his day which he undoubtedly reflected in his work, this makes him a remarkable and unique artist.

Biographical note

Louis Stettner (New York, 1922 – Paris, 2016) was given his first camera at the age of thirteen. Shortly after that he began to make regular visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he became acquainted with the magazine Camera Work. That publication introduced him to the work of photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz, Clarence H. White and Paul Strand, who made a profound impression on him. He soon began to move in Stieglitz’s circle and it was through the Photo League that he encountered the work of Weegee, Sid Grossman, Edward Weston and Lewis Hine.

Aged eighteen, Stettner joined the army as a war photographer in the Pacific, then returned to New York where he continued working with the Photo League. In 1947 he went to Paris where he lived for the next five years, organising the first retrospective of French photography in New York, held at the Photo League Gallery in 1948. During that project he met Brassaï whom he came to consider his master and with whom he established a long-lasting friendship.

In the 1950s Stettner returned to New York where he started to work with various magazines including Life, Time, Fortune and Paris-Match, as well as to write on photography, which became a regular practice from this date onwards. In the late 1960s he started teaching at Brooklyn College, part of Long Island University. Stettner’s life-long political commitment led him to take part in anti-Vietnam War protests and he spent five weeks taking photographs in the Soviet Union at a time when this was uncommon.

Stettner gave up teaching and writing in the early 1980s and focused on a reassessment of his own work. In 1990 he returned to France where he took up painting and sculpture. In 2001 he was made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government and during this period embarked on one of his series in colour, entitled “Manhattan Pastoral”, which he created during his summers in New York. This was also the period of a project with a large-format camera undertaken in the Alpilles mountain range in Provence (France). Stettner died in Paris on 13 October 2016 after the closure of his exhibition Ici ailleurs at the Centre Pompidou.

KEY THEMES

The Photo League

The Photo League (1936-1951) was a New York photographers’ collective which had its origins in the German association known as the Workers Camera League. It met regularly to discuss the connections between photography and politics – without ever adopting a programmatic stance although it was technically Left wing – and to promote photography as a tool of social critique. It was in this context that Stettner met photographers such as Sid Grossman and Weegee and at the age of just twenty-two he accepted a position as the association’s youngest teacher.

A photographer-writer

The 1950s and 1960s were characterised by a certain mistrust of photographers who wrote, possibly because they appeared to be located in a position mid-way between the two disciplines. Stettner always engaged in literary activity as well as photography, writing not just about himself but also about many of his artist friends and colleagues and not only those whose work he admired. His texts were to some degree comparable to his photographs: abrupt, spontaneous and impetuous. In the 1970s he wrote a monthly column in the magazine Camera 35 published by the Photo League, initially with the title “Speaking Out” and subsequently “A Humanist View”. Although he was a prolific writer it was not until the late date of 1979 that he published one of his photographic series in the book Sur le tas, depicting men and women at work.

Walt Whitman

One of the key figures for Stettner’s work was Walt Whitman, with whom he shared the belief that it was possible to find the beauty of the world in everyday, commonplace things. Leaves of Grass almost became his Bible and he carried a copy with him at all times. In his own words: “Whitman’s faith in his fellow human beings, his grasp of the entire life cycle and death, and his cosmic vision has been contagious to me. […] celebrates men and women and is not afraid, which is perhaps one of the reasons why I have never stopped photographing in the streets, wherever human beings are.”

Workers and labourers

Stettner’s social commitment and his concern for the underprivileged led him to regularly photograph workers and labourers with the aim of showing them as authentic, dignified individuals regardless of the precarious nature of their working conditions. In his own words: “I found them amidst a grinding noise, dirt, fumes and danger of accidents, to be very sensitive, innately human with a wonderful grasp of organisation and immediate reality. They have always made me feel welcome and at ease … my time in the factories was one of the most meaningful experiences in my life.” Stettner’s workers often appear strong and proud, frequently absorbed in their thoughts and dominating the image in which they appear. They transcend the context of their activities and reveal themselves as autonomous individuals who refuse to be bowed by the harshness of their daily activities.

The exhibition

The exhibition presented by Fundación MAPFRE is the most extensive retrospective to date on the American photographer Louis Stettner (1922-2016) and is also the first on his work to be organised in Spain. Structured chronologically, it features more than 180 photographs which span the artist’s entire career, among them previously unseen images as well as part of his output in colour, which is little known at the present time.

Stettner’s experience as a photographer in World War II had a marked influence on his vision of life, which is so present in his photographic oeuvre, namely his unshakable faith in humanity. He was also influenced by his reading of literary and philosophical texts (essentially Plato, Karl Marx and Walt Whitman) and by his relationship via the Photo League with photographers such as Sid Grossman and Weegee, from whom he assimilated the importance of photography as a tool for social change. In its totality Stettner’s output represents a vibrant celebration of life, the courage of individuals when facing adversity, and the blessings of our existence.

With this vision as its guiding thread, Stettner’s photographic corpus encompasses a wide variety of themes, from almost deserted urban views to bustling scenes of the New York subway, the routine of workers’ lives, labourers engaged in their daily activities, and the mountainous landscapes of the Alpilles, France, in his final period. Over the course of his career the artist frequently returned to these subjects, particularly those associated with his social commitment and his concern for the underprivileged.

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Woman Holding Newspaper, New York [Mujer sujetando un periódico, Nueva York]
1946
Gelatin silver image
34.2 × 34.6cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Early New York, 1936-1946, and Post-War Paris , 1947-1952

New York Beginnings / The Subway Series / Post-War Paris: The Empty City

Louis Stettner started to take photographs as a teenager. His earliest images include people chatting or customers in New York cafés. In 1946, following the end of World War II, he produced a series on the city’s subway which in which he photographed men and women engaged in their daily routine, going to work or returning home. Using a Rolleiflex camera, Stettner pretended to be adjusting it when he was in fact taking shots.

In July 1947 he moved to Paris with the aim of taking a course on film for a few weeks but he in fact remained for some years. His work of this period is defined by images often taken in the early hours of the morning, showing an empty city attempting to move on from the recent Nazi occupation. These photographs, taken with a large-format camera, convey a melancholy that is remote from the bustling Paris seen in the work of other photographers of the time such as Robert Doisneau. During this period Stettner met Brassaï, becoming a close friend, and was impressed by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson. He wrote about both photographers in the magazine Camera 35 in his monthly column in which he expressed his ideas on the principal social, political and artistic ideas of the day while also using it to establish links between the European and American cultural scenes.

Brassaï on Stettner:

“Sterner has always been fully conscious that the role of the photographer is not to turn away from all reference to reality, but on the contrary to express a profound experience with it. He sees the photographer not only aware of the richness and beauty of the world but also responding to the diverse aspects of the society in which we live … No matter how passionately Louis may become involved with what is most immediate and commonplace around us, he does not allow himself to be seduced by the picturesque. Settler’s stimulant, his reestablished theme, is our natural environment, which he reveals with the utmost accuracy and the simplicity of great art. As for the people, they often move up centre stage to the social milieu around them … Often, there is pathos, sometimes anger and social comment; always they are made bigger rather smaller than life. This empathy for the most positive aspects in people pervades all his work … Perhaps the touchstone to all his photography is this magic amalgam of humanism and deep-rooted realism.”

Brassaï, introduction to Louis Sterner, Early Joys: Photographs from 1847-1972, New York, Janet Iffland, 1987.

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Subway, New York
1946
Gelatin silver image
34.2 × 34.6cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Subway, New York
1946
Gelatin silver image
34.2 × 34.6cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Subway, New York
1946
Gelatin silver image
34.2 × 34.6cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Train Station Near Málaga, Spain [Estación de tren cerca de Málaga, España]
1951
Gelatin silver image
30.4 × 20cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Rue d’Alésia, Paris
1949
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Paris
1949
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

On land or Sea: Spain, Europe, and the USA, 1949-1969

Pepe and Tony: Spanish Fishermen / Beaches and Country

Together with urban photography, Stettner was often attracted to natural locations and their inhabitants. In his travels around Europe he portrayed families relaxing on the beach, children playing in city squares and local people walking along the sunny streets of Malaga and Torremolinos. In 1956 he accompanied two Ibizan fishermen, Pepe and Tony, on their working days. These images use framings that fragment the men’s bodies, emphasising the sensation of proximity between the photographer and his subjects on the small boat. The men are summarised by a single gesture or action, giving rise to a celebration of strength and vitality. In Stettner’s photographs of activities of this type the emphasis is always on human dignity, heightened by the truncation of the framing, as is also the case with his images of agricultural labourers and city dwellers. The artist’s interest in workers and his desire to present them as authentic individuals characterises his photography and arises from his experience of observing people at work, regardless of the precarious nature of their working conditions.

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Tony, “Pepe and Tony, Spanish Fishermen”, Ibiza, Spain [Tony, “Pepe y Tony, pescadores españoles”, Ibiza, España]
1956
Gelatin silver image
23.5 × 15.5cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Commuters, Evening Train, Penn Station, New York [Volviendo del trabajo en el tren de la tarde, Penn Station, Nueva York]
1958
Gelatin silver image
44.5 × 29.8cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Post-War New York, 1952-1969

Penn Station / City Streets / Nancy, the Beat Generation

In the 1950s Stettner returned to New York from Paris and took photographs of the city and other parts of New York State. In his series on Penn Station (1958) he portrayed passengers on trains but on this occasion from outside the carriages, in contrast to his series on the subway of 1946 when he was located inside. He captured private, tranquil moments of solitary self-absorption amidst the public spaces of the station and the train carriages. These images reveal Stettner’s ability to focus on individuals and convey their personality and emotions. As he himself wrote, he placed great emphasis on “showing what can’t easily be seen, capturing what’s most important, enriching our perception of life.” This may explain his interest in portraying individuals engaged in different activities but alone within the urban environment: a man leaning against a lamppost who seems to be looking straight into the lens, a young girl running along the pavement, or a solitary man walking in the shadowy dusk. In order to create his series “Nancy, the Beat generation” Stettner followed a beatnik called Nancy in Greenwich Village for five days, a subject who represented a new force of energy that implied a complete cultural shift in New York of the late 1950s.

“A city is a real city when it’s for the people that live and work there … When it becomes built for tourists, it loses its soul.”

~ Louis Stettner

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Coming to America
1951
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Christmas Eve
1950-1951
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Little Girl Running, Lower East Side
1952
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Odd Man Out, Penn Station, New York (El bit raro, Penn Station, Nueva York)
1958
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Odd Man In, Penn Station, New York (El intruso, Penn Station, Nueva New York)
1958
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Woman with White Glove, Penn Station, New York [Mujer con guante blanco, Penn Station, Nueva York]
1958
Gelatin silver image
24.8 × 23.2cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Legs-Up, Penn Station, New York (Piernas arriba, Penn Station, Nueva New York)
1958
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Malaga, Spain
1963
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Dutch Farmers, Holland
1962
From the series Workers
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Aluminum Foundry, Soviet Union [Fundición de aluminio, Unión Soviética]
1975
Gelatin silver image
33.8 × 22.5cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

The 1970s

Workers / Demonstrations / Spirit of the City

Marxist by political inclination and committed to the working class from a young age, in the 1970s Stettner’s political activism became more intense. He opposed the Vietnam War and supported the Black Panther movement. During those years he visited various factories around the world (the USA, France, the UK and the Soviet Union) to photograph workers. These are images in which once again he celebrates humanity and dignifies individuals who normally pass unnoticed. Stettner’s aim was not, however, to glorify them, nor did he focus on the machinery alongside them. He used his camera in a manner that extracts each individual in order to remove them from their industrial context, as he did in his photographs of anti-war demonstrations, although always making clear the context in which each individual moves.

Stettner was profoundly attracted to the beauty of the urban landscape and the life force of its inhabitants. This is evident in his photographs of ordinary people: couples chatting while they wait for the subway train, women sunbathing on a type of terrace while cars go past underneath them, or a mother and her son on the bus going somewhere.

Sterner was lifelong Marxist, dedicated to the cause of the proletariat and consistent in his opposition to capitalism. The 1970s saw his activism intensify: he was a supporter of the Black Panther movement, committed to racial and economic justice, and vehemently objected to the war in Vietnam. From 1971 to 1979 he wrote a monthly column in Camera 35 titled “Speaking Out,” offering his personal vision and critique of contemporary photography. Throughout the 1970s he toured factories in the United States, France, England, and the Soviet Union, photographing workers at work. Stettner avowed a “lifetime commitment” to the topic of work, producing images inextricably linked to his political engagement. His photographs do not aim to elicit pity or portray the plight of workers, nor do the attempt to glorify them. Instead, he uses his camera to depict workers in a dignified way, perhaps as they themselves would like to be seen. He celebrates their strength, individuality, and humanity. In particular, his use of tight framing extracts the workers from their industrial environment to focus on the human rather than the machine, while retaining sufficient information to provide context for his images. Likewise, his photographs of protestors and ordinary citizens of the 1970s contain a similar thread of humanism, capturing a range of raw emotions that reflect their strength and separations. For Sterner, the common people were a consistent focus of his photographic art, and he saw within them an almost heroic beauty.

Stettner on his photographs of workers:

“I was in a garment factory in New Jersey, quietly but stubbornly taking photographs of a seamstress at her machine. She was buxom, red-haired woman who had first been suspicious, then reassured, as I explained to her that I was working on a book of photographs about workers. She was working so fast, she was hardly able to look up as I spoke. Finally she was flattered and pleased by my picture-taking, and mumbled herself, “it’s about time.” Then in a tone of voice I shall never forget, full of bitterness and haunting torment of the years, she stopped her machine, stared into a dark shadowy corner of the workshop and almost shouted, “Nobody knows we’re alive!”

For the last two years I have been photographing in factories and construction sites, a study of workers at work. The subject is so immense that I did not intend to cover all aspects of the lives of the workers. Their social life and struggles are for a later project. I wanted to show not only the dignity and importance of workers and their work, but also to deal with the joys and anguish attached to productive labor. I hope that whatever I may have accomplished is seen as testimony to the fact that workers are very much alive.”

Louis Sterner, “Workers; From a Portfolio by Louis Sterner,” in World Magazine, November 23, 1974.

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Bingo Factory, Long Island City
1972-1974
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Garment Worker, New Jersey
Nd
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Attaching Fender, Chrysler Automobile Assembly Plant, Delaware
1972-1974
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Worker, Bingo Factory, Long Island City
1972-1974
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Furniture Worker, Long Island City
1972-1974
Gelatin silver image
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Assembly Line Worker, Long Island City, New York [Trabajadora en cadena de montaje, Nueva York]
1972-1974
Gelatin silver image
31.2 × 21.1cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

“In 1974, I started going into factories to photograph workers. I was moved to do this series because people spend most of their time at work, but very few artists follow them there. I also wanted to contribute to the great American tradition of photographing labor done before me by Jacob Reiss and Lewis Hine. I also felt very strongly about working people. They produce everything around us: clothing, food, shelter, yet they were at the bottom of the ladder. Politically they had little power. Economically, they were underpaid if not exploited. It seemed as if there was very little social justice as far as workers were concerned…Yes, my Workers series is my paean of praise, a long heroic poem in homage to working and salaried people everywhere. It was as if I wanted the lyricism of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel brought down to earth, finding it in the everyday factory.”

Louis Stettner quoted on the Louis Stettner Estate website Nd [Online] Cited 01/08/2023

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Demonstrators on March in Support of United Farm Workers, New York [Manifestantes en una marcha de apoyo a la Unión de Campesinos, Nueva York]
1975-1976
Gelatin silver image
33.1 × 22.2cm
Courtesy Louis Stettner Archive, Paris
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Self-Portrait, Santiago, Chile [Autorretrato, Santiago de Chile]
2000-2001
Gelatin silver image
33.7 × 33.5cm
Cortesía Archivo Louis Stettner, París
© Louis Stettner Estate

From the 1980s to New Millennium

Bowery Series Portraits / Reflections of the City

Among the unique characteristics of Stettner as a photographer is the influence of literature on him and his work, particularly Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass which he first read aged twelve. He shared Whitman’s humanism and the belief that it is possible to find beauty in the everyday and the commonplace. As he himself acknowledged, “I started to read him when I was twelve or thirteen, and have continued to read him all my life, carrying his Leaves of Grass with me in my camera bag when photographing in the streets.” Despite living in Paris for much of his life Stettner was devoted to his native New York and regularly returned there. One the areas that most appealed to him was the Bowery, which he would walk around and where he started to photograph homeless people in the 1980s. Many of the images from this period and those he took in the 1990s in both Paris and New York are characterised in terms of composition by reflections, shadows and off-centre framings, while at the same time the artist aimed to celebrate city life in all its aspects. Stettner’s work can be seen in both poetic and photographic terms; an ode to humanity that reflects his profound empathy and generosity of spirit.

Stettner was attracted in particular to New York City’s disappearing Bowery neighbourhood, where he befriended and photographed the individuals who made up its homeless population. He saw in their faces our contemporary society “waiting to be deciphered” and a “map of humanity” to lead us forward into the future. Many of his photographs from this period are characterised compositionally by reflections, shadows, and off-kilter framing, as he sought to celebrate city life in all its aspects. Sterner embraced Whitman’s faith in his fellow human beings and his belief that “all truths wait in all things,” a conviction that drew him constantly to the streets in search of the fundamental humanity of common people. Stettner’s Whitmanesque view of the world and his profound respect and admiration for its people unifies his diverse body of work and lies at the heart of his artistic vision. His entire oeuvre can be understood in poetic as well as photographic terms, an ode to humanity that reflects his deep empathy and generosity of spirit.

New York Colour: The 2000s

While continuing to work in black and white, in the 1990s Stettner began to experiment with colour photography, both in New York and Paris, moving to the latter city permanently and living there until his death. His use of colour captures the sensory overload of the scenes while the sensation of chaos is evoked through the frequent use of an off-centre composition. In many respects Stettner returned to the same compositional strategies that he had employed in previous series. He photographed workers and ordinary people while his solitary figures particularly evoke the loneliness and alienation of city life.

Les Alpilles, France, 2013-2016

One of Stettner’s final projects centred again on a natural setting. In order to create this work, between 2013 and 2016 he made thirteen trips to the Alpilles in Provence (France) with a large-format camera. For the artist it was a “magical place” and a uniquely photogenic one due to its combination of light and shadow. As he himself said, there is “no other place where nature expresses its imagination better”. In relation to all the other natural settings that he photographed, it was only with the images of the Alpilles that Stettner achieved what he termed the “humanisation of the landscape”. In an exemplary manner these images convey the strength of the trees, twisted and contorted to resist the wind, and the intimate space of the forest’s interior. Aged ninety and no longer able to walk around the city with his camera, Stettner travelled to these mountains with his family during the summer and captured the natural world in all its beauty and splendour, qualities that reflect his state of mind and philosophical reflections at the end of his life.

The catalogue

The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition includes reproductions of all the works on display. It also features texts by the curator, Sally Martin Katz, curator of photography at the SFMOMA, by the writer, curator and university academic David Campany, and by the university professors and writers Karl Orend and James Iffland. Finally, the publication includes a selection of articles by Louis Stettner himself which were published in the American magazine Camera 35.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE website

Photographs, particularly those of the kind made by Louis Stettner, show what they cannot explain. The world’s appearance – captured and organised as a picture– is preserved, factual yet poetic and elusive. Faces encountered by chance on the subway. Hats on heads thinking thoughts we shall never know, and which the photographer could not have known either. A street corner with memory longer than ours, and much more obscure. In a window display from 1951, a black cat looking mysterious and quite contemporary, as black cats in photographs always seem to do. Café tables, awaiting or recovering from coffees and conversations. A worker’s arm, taut and purposeful. Newspapers brimming with old urgencies. Figures standing, walking or running between the life before and the life after. A ray of light. A crashing wave. We can marvel at Stettner’s spontaneous and empathetic artistry, making pictures out of the almost nothing of everyday life, turning non-moments into something momentous. But photographs have a way of covering their tracks, of cutting themselves free from the life stories from which they came, but which we will never really know: the stories of those people and things photographed, and the photographer’s own story too. Story, or narrative, is what is sacrificed in the making of a still photograph. It is not a loss. What we gain is our own occasion to respond, to fill in the missing pieces for ourselves, or to enjoy what is missing. …

It is clear that across the decades, Stettner preferred to picture solitary individuals, picking them out from their social settings with his camera framing and timing. When there are two or more figures, each seems to be somewhat alone. Even protesters striking against working conditions are isolated by Stettner from the collective crowd. Not always, but often. It is not uncommon for photographers to choose subjects and to photograph them in ways that mirror or express their own internal sense of themselves and their place in the world. Indeed, it is very difficult to avoid this. Stettner was certainly no doctrinaire Marxist, and neither was he some bourgeois flâneur of the urban scene, but there is a tension in his work between the two, as there is for most left-leaning photographers. What is politically committed photography? There are no clear-cut answers, and the question is made more sensitive because the kinds of people that are attracted to becoming photographers are often empathetic outsiders, loners, even social misfits resistant to putting their camera and observation at the service of collective action. For them, the camera is both a passport to the world and a psychological shield from it. The lens and viewfinder are portals of connection but also protecting screens.

Extract from David Campany, “To Value What is in Front of Us. The Photography of Louis Sterner.” Essay commissioned for the catalogue of the retrospective exhibition Louis Stettner, Fundación MAPFRE, Spain, 2023. In Spanish and Catalan. This English version from the David Campany website [Online] Cited 01/08/2023

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Women from Texas, Fifth Avenue, New York [Mujeres de Texas, Fifth Avenue, Nueva York]
1975
Gelatin silver image
45.1 × 30.6cm
Cortesía Archivo Louis Stettner, París
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Man out of the Shadow, New York (Hombre fur de la sombra, Nueva York)
1980-1981
Gelatin silver image
Cortesía Archivo Louis Stettner, París
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris [Jardin du Luxembourg, París]
1997
Gelatin silver image
25.2 × 25.2cm
Cortesía Archivo Louis Stettner, París
© Louis Stettner Estate

Louis Stettner (American, 1922-2016)
Self-portrait
Nd
Gelatin silver image
Cortesía Archivo Louis Stettner, París
© Louis Stettner Estate

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