Happy Birthday, Arnold! You would’ve been 93 today, and your warm spirit touched so many people’s lives, including my own.

The great Arnold Newman (photo from the Arnold Newman Archive)

For those of you who didn’t have the privilege of meeting or knowing about Arnold Newman, he was none other than one of the best portrait photographers of the 20th century. Arnold loved the humility that people shared, especially when times were tough and the underdog prevailed. In addition to being a humanitarian with real class, Arnold was a dazzling, yet low-key teacher.

Many of his portraits are timeless and iconic, including this 1946 portrait of Stravinsky. This is one of my all-time favorite photographs. The magazine that commissioned the portrait didn't like it and didn't use it. Can you even imagine the boneheads who couldn't see the masterpiece as it bonked them over their thick skulls? Let this be a lesson to all you artists who get their work rejected on a regular basis; believe in yourself and keep on producing, no matter what.

“We do not take pictures with our cameras, but with our hearts and minds.” –Arnold Newman

Even his early work had his trademark sense of bold, yet elegant and understated composition.

I met Arnold Newman in 1987, when as a young man, I took a photography workshop with him at the Maine Photographic Workshops. It was when I was just starting to find my own way with photography and was trying to figure things out, looking for answers. Even though it was only a week with him with a small group of photographers, I discovered some very important things about myself and came to some self-realizations about some latent strengths that I didn’t even realize I possessed.

Spending a week with Newman was phenomenal. The workshops were all about being able to spend time making new work, interacting with like-minded photographers, and getting critical feedback from a master. The number one characteristic that I learned about myself at the workshop was that I had the latent ability to give my fellow students insightful and inspiring feedback about their own work.  All of this seemed to unfold by itself at Newman’s workshop, as if I were a witness on the sidelines, and I was just as taken aback as everyone else with my abilities. It’s where I learned that it takes a special kind of person to teach photography and I also had one of the best right in front of me.

At any rate, it was a humbling experience and was one of my best weeks ever as a photographer. For the first time, I blossomed as someone who could help other photographers with their work, and  have Newman to thank for helping me find my gifts. Thank you Mr. Newman, and here’s to you.

Newman had a nice surprise for us on the last day of the workshop. He wanted to make a group photograph of all of us, including his assistants who were right next to him, arm in arm. That's me on the far left wearing a Curious George watch with my spiffy new Canon F-1N that I got especially for this workshop. Arnold gave each one of us a signed print of this negative he made. I like his camera dark cloth around his shoulders from his 4x5 camera; it gave him the air of wearing venerated photographic robes. Made with Polaroid Type 55 negative film, 1987.

Newman's book "Five Decades" is still one of my favorites.

It strikes me that when it comes to photography and life, we never reach where we want to be by ourselves. It got me to thinking about photographic lineage, and how we always have special people along the way who have helped us in some manner. There is no such thing as a self-made photographer, that is a complete myth. Newman had a long list of photographers who had influenced and helped him along the way, so a photographic lineage was something that he acknowledged too. All photographers have branches of photographic roots going in all directions.

As someone who learned photography from both Brooks Institute and the University of New Mexico’s Graduate School of Fine Arts, I think I have a longer list than usual, and am not shy about crediting all of the very giving people from this journey. Arnold Newman was a natural teacher and loved sharing not only his knowledge about all things photographic, but also the more rarefied parts of life that had to do with humility, giving, and having a heartfelt love of humanity in general.

Happy Birthday Arnold, you were the gift to the world, we miss you, and we’ll never forget you.

Story by Larry McNeil, Copyright 2011, All Rights Reserved.

This is a true story.

Flashback to photo school in the 70’s. The instructor in a white lab coat recited the technical characteristics of curvilinear and rectilinear lenses, shooting out facts like a machine gun. I had to scribble notes in fast motion and wished he’d slow the heck down.

Our instructor was oozing professionalism and had a dazzling knowledge about the science of photography.

I thought he said rectal-linear lenses and with all my small-town boy innocence, was a little taken aback that he’d be so direct, but also quite impressed that they could predict how a photographer was going to lean with her or his work, actually muttering “wow” to myself. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be anal or obsessively anxious with my own work, so made a mental note to avoid the rectal-linear lenses in the future.

"Native Epistemology" detail and what is clearly not a rectal-linear lens diagram. It's from one of my own most honored lenses, a Hasselblad 80mm Planar. Lithograph collaboration by myself and Frank Janzen at the Crow's Shadow Art Institute.

The "Native Epistemology" print at my website. The lens diagram is in the top left.

PS: A rectilinear lens renders lines as being fairly straight, as opposed to a curvilniar lens, which has what is known as barrel distortion, kind of like what extreme wide-angle lenses render. Each has it’s own set of physics & mathematical formulas.

Tamarind Art Institute link to the Migrations Project

Native Epistemology Larry McNeil link

Migrations: New Directions in Native American Art Amazon link to the book