ERNST HAAS – COLOR CORRECTION
2011-08-01Ernst Haas is unquestionably one of the best-known, most prolific and most published photographers of the twentieth century.
He is most associated with a vibrant colour photography which, for decades, was much in demand by the illustrated press. His colour work, published in the most influential magazines in Europe and America, also fed a constant stream of books, and these too enjoyed great popularity. But although his colour work earned him fame around the world, in recent decades it has often been derided by critics and curators as “overly commercial”, and too easily accessible – or in the language of curators, not sufficiently “serious”. As a result, his reputation has suffered in comparison with a younger generation of colour photographers, notably Eggleston, Shore and Meyerowitz.
Paradoxically, however, there was also a side of his work that was almost entirely hidden from view. Parallel to his commissioned work Haas constantly made images for his own interest, and these pictures show an entirely different aspect of Haas’s sensibility: they are far more edgy, loose, complex and ambiguous – in short, far more radical than the work which earned him fame.
Opposite – Traffic, New York, 1963
Exhibition runs from September 14th to October 22nd, 2011
Atlas Gallery
49 Dorset Street
London
W1U 7NF
