CHARLES TRAUB
In addition to a distinguished career as a photo-
grapher, Charles H. Traub has made numerous
contributions to the field of photography through
his critical writings, curatorial endeavors, and as an
editor of several noted volumes on photography.
He is also a respected fine arts educator, most
recently as Chair of the Graduate MFA Program
in Photography, Video and Related Media at the
School of Visual Arts in New York City. Traub is
best known for his close-up portraits of street peo-
ple, and for less obtrusive observations of the sub-
tleties of casual human behavior, both domestic
and foreign. Traub’s camera catches unique flashes
of happenstance—life’s interesting and idiosyn-
cratic moments. His creative acknowledgement of
these chance encounters and evocative surfaces
lend impression and meaning to what otherwise
would remain ephemeral.
Traub was born in 1945 into a professional family
in Louisville, Kentucky. After receiving a Leica
camera from his father, Traub decided to enroll in
a photography course at the University of Illinois.
There, in a hallway, hung an Illinois horizon by
landscape photographer Art Sinsabaugh. The
encounter with the image had a profound effect on
Traub. Sinsabaugh, along with Aaron Siskind
would become Traub’s teachers at the renowned
Institute for Design in Chicago (ID)—a place also
noted for the presence and influence of La ́szlo ́
Moholy-Nagy, Harry Callahan, and Arthur Siegel.
Traub, years later, editedThe New Vision: Forty
Years of Photography at the Institute of Design,
which pays tribute to the brilliant work that ema-
nated from ID, including works by the main men-
tors and illustrious graduates of the school.
Aaron Siskind’s tutelage is most evident in
Traub’s early oeuvre, particularly in a body of
images titled,Early Works, 1965–1970. In these
photographs can be seen the influence of Siskind’s
penchant for abstraction, particularly as it high-
lights forms and details in nature and architecture.
Representative of this period is an image of a small
but brilliant triangular beam of light illuminating
an otherwise tenebrous wooden interior space.
And, in this same series, a wilting head of iceberg
lettuce sits in the interior of a windowsill behind
which is visible the exterior of a nearby window
dusted with snow. Traub also adopted Siskind’s
Modernist understanding of the photographic sub-
ject, namely, that each photograph acts as an object
that confronts you, rather than as an aesthetic
article meant for passive viewing. Whereas Siskind
most often applied these notions to his abstracted
views of rocks, aging graffiti, and peeling paint,
Traub adopted this approach in depicting the
encounters of the human subject. An equally key
early influence on Traub was the artistry and per-
sonal mentorship of photographer Ralph Eugene
Meatyard. The small but legendary gallery in Meat-
yard’s optometrist shop in Kentucky housed
Traub’s first solo show in the late 1960s—an event
that Traub credits as having catapulted him into
the art world.
By the time of hisBeachphotographs in 1978,
we begin to see the main thematic concerns and
stylistic elements that would become emblematic of
Traub’s photographic practice—his interest in doc-
umenting the habits and travails of modern life,
and his creative attraction to the manner in which
people inhabit urban and rural spaces. The beach,
a place of display, offers a particularly good
opportunity for exploring the contours and details
of all manner of human form—a representational
preoccupation that reoccurs throughout his work.
We see in this series another quality that charac-
terizes Traub’s work, the intrusion of the camera
into the subject’s personal space, so much so that
the images provoke a sense of trespassing. This is
particularly true of hisStreet Portraitsseries, shot
between 1976–1980, in which some portraits exude
a mug shot-like countenance, and inStreet Work,
1972–1977, where subjects’ limbs are often severed
by the photographic frame, leaving only torsos as
indicators of expression. In a more explicit group
of work from 1984,Charles Traub: The Artist and
His Models, the voyeuristic implications of the
medium and intrusive qualities of the camera are
even more heightened by the picturing of mostly
gaunt nudes in various states of undress. The raw,
visceral quality evident in this series is a recurrent
trait in Traub’s work; honest, rather than flattering
representations are given more artistic weight. In
his wide-ranging oeuvre, Traub is not solely pre-
occupied with intimacy and physicality. With aTRAUB, CHARLES