Arnold Newman

American ARNOLD NEWMAN’s (1918–2006) portrait photography is a virtual Who's Who of the Twentieth Century. Creative genuises and intellectuals – from Arthur Miller to Frank Lloyd Wright, Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock to Andy Warhol – consented to portraits, as did statesmen, cardinals and financial and business giants such as Rupert Murdoch and Alfried Krupp. Newman worked for magazines such as Life, Holiday, Look, Vanity Fair, Scientific American, Haarper's Bazaar among others, taking portraits of luminaries including Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton, Konrad Adenauer, Shimon Peres, Yassir Arafat and Benjamin Netanjahu. ARNOLD NEWMANs photographs set new standards of iconography in 20th century portrait photography. Newman, who portrayed his subjects in carefully arranged, real-life settings, is considered the originator of the Environmental Portrait, images that – as a modern variant of Baroque portraiture – simultaneously become character studies. Especially impressive in this respect is the portrait of Alfried Krupp, the industrial magnate who was convicted for Nazi war crimes. Shown in his steelworks in Essen, this is not only the portrait of a controversial personage, it also forges an image of the turbulent history of the 20th century. (Claudia Wente)