Louis Stettner

Today I'm reviewing a new book about a photographer that I
have to admit, I knew very little about.

This particular photographer created thousands of images over the course of a career that spanned almost eighty years, but I wonder how many of you out there are familiar with his work.
I recognised a few images from the book when I first looked though it but I could not have confidentally put a name to them
if I'd seen them elsewhere.

Well, this book brings to the forefront and celebrates the life
and work of a photographer that we should all know about,
Louis Stettner, and I have to say, they've done a great job, it's a wonderful book.

This is a hardback book containing 190 photographs over 344 pages, it's a weighty tome. The printing, design and paper quality are what you would expect from such a publication and no expense has been spared in its production.

There are four in-depth essays at the front of the book, covering topics such as Louis Stettner's photographic vision, his political and social beliefs, his influences and details of his personal life.

Born in 1922, in Brooklyn, New York, one of four children and an identical twin. He was given a box camera  as a young teenager and ‘just started taking pictures’. He quickly formed an attachment to the streets of his native city, New York and soon realised that taking pictures could become a way of life.

He served as a combat photographer in WWII, he served in New Guinea, the Philippines and later Japan, the war having a profound effect on him. Throughout his career he moved between New York and Paris, arriving in Paris in 1947 intending to stay only a few weeks but remaining there for five years, before later settling there in the 1990s until his death in 2016.

His early pictures received praise from Brassai, who wrote an introduction to his first portfolio and also the novelist Henry Miller. Stettner wrote a monthly column for the New York based, Camera 35 magazine that ran throughout the 1970s and in it he wrote about the history of photography and the understanding
of photography as an art form.

Although his work remained thematically consistent he did not receive the recognition it deserved because he was never a follower of a rigid style. He sought out beauty in his fellow humans and their everyday lives.

The book is organised chronologically and charts his work from the early days in New York and Paris and crucially includes his much later colour work as well as his landscapes of rural France. Stettner studied photography at the Photo League in New York, a cooperative of photographers who banded together around a range of common social and creative causes.

The early pictures from New York feature the subway series, which is a great example of a dedication to a cause. Finding a subject or a theme and fully exploring it until you feel that you have told your story. Too many photographers I see today seem to pick up a project and put it down again without giving it the time it needs to grow and really become something worthwhile.

To experience the rest of this article and to see the book, please watch my video on youtube.

You can order the book here

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