HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY:
POSTWAR ERA
There is one thing the photograph must contain, the
humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is
realism. But realism is not enough—there has to be
vision and the two together can make a good photo-
graph. It is difficult to describe this thin line where
matter ends and mind begins.
(Robert Frank 1962)At the end of World War II, the world’s vision of
itself had been shattered, and it had to reconceptua-
lize the idea of ‘‘humanity’’ in order to face new issues
and concerns that were arising in the postwar era.
Photography, which, in the interwar years, had been
highly experimental, even in some of its practical and
commercial applications, also changed to fit the new
times. During WWII, photojournalism, with Europe
as its primary arena, had captured the horrors and
traumas of the war. In the postwar years (roughly
1945–1959), the recognition that photographers could
use their cameras not just to record events, but to
influence the way in which the public responded to
these events, changed the way in which the art of
photography was conceived. Insurrection in India,
poverty in the United States, the war in Korea, and
thenewsocialeliteinEuropewerejustafewofthe
subjects that would come to dominate the work of
postwar photography. These new subjects, combined
with the more critical support and sponsorship of
photographers, led artists to realize that they could
shape attitudes and history through their concerns
and a commitment to the medium. The concept of
the independent photographer as a lone individual
with a personal vision, and not connected or obliged
to anyone, took shape during these years in which the
photographer began to explore the world and the self.
These years are remembered as a time when photo-
graphers such as Robert Frank, William Klein, and
Minor White among others, would carve out an
important niche in the new world order, initiating a
wide variety of developments.
There are three main shifts that occurred in the
photographic world after 1945. The first was physi-
cal. Up to and during WWII, Europe, especially the
capitals of France and Germany, had been the lively
and energetic nexus of the photographic and artistic
world. It was known astheplace artists went if they
were serious and wanted to fully develop their
talents. The onslaught of war only emphasized the
importance of going overseas, and many Americans
left their homeland in the late 1930s and early 1940s
to go abroad and follow the events in Europe,
Africa, and Asia. After the war, European photo-
graphy continued to be important as we can see in
the postwar work of such talented men as Henri
Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau, but the cen-
ter of the photographic world had shifted its focus
west to the United States as expatriates returned
home and American photographers began to ex-
periment with light and form. European photogra-
phers, aroused by this demographic shift, also left
their homeland to search out new subject matter in
America, which had happened only infrequently
prior to WWII.
The second shift that occurred was stylistic, and
grew out of the renewed interest in what is called
‘‘straight photography.’’ It was originally conceived
by art critic Sadakichi Hartmann who, although he
highly praised the 1904 exhibition of the Photo-
Secession at the Carnegie Institute, in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, called for a return to a photography
that was untouched and left as the eye had origin-
ally seen it. ‘‘To work straight’’ according to Hart-
mann was to ‘‘[r]ely on your camera, on your eye,
on your good taste and your knowledge of compo-
sition...’’ In other words, the goal should be to
produce ‘‘photographs that look like photographs’’
as opposed to the more abstract photography that
was prevalent in the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury. The postwar photographers answered Hart-
mann’s call as is evidenced in many images of the
time by artists such as Paul Strand, Ansel Adams,
Robert Capa, and Ruth Orkin.
The third shift was social. The ‘‘humanist move-
ment,’’ as it is now called, was perhaps the greatest
innovation in the postwar years and hit its apex in
the photographic work of the 1950s. Up to the end
of the 1940s, photographers had primarily worked
for the sake of society, to inform it, if not to
improve it, or to declare some sort of personal
truth as we see, for example, in the work of AlfredHISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY: POSTWAR ERA