Sommer also carefully arranged leftover chicken
parts obtained from a butcher to createAnatomy of
a Chicken(1939). Reflecting on the times—during
World War II—Sommer challenged people who
regarded his work as barbaric:
[H]ow could anybody think that anything I could do with
a camera could in any way annoy anybody’s finer feel-
ings, when they were giving consent to warfare on a scale
unprecedented? I can’t answer it... Those things exist
and you might say this was homage to existence as it is.
(quoted in Glenn, 1980)
Yet Sommer also sensitively photographed chil-
dren, although not without a sense of the strange,
as inLivia, 1948, which shows a beautiful but
intense young girl in front of a cracking and peeling
wall. Sommer’s entire body of work is imbued with
an unwillingness to pursue a single or obvious
photographic agenda. Arrangement and pictorial
structure are important, but clear associations are
not. Sommer’s photographs had counterparts in
the Surrealist movement, and his resistance to any
type of canon is comparable to Surrealism’s anar-
chic resistance to established, rational art making.
It is not surprising that his photographs were
included in the avant-garde, predominantly Surre-
alist magazine VVVin the 1940s. Yet Sommer
shunned any connection to the movement, declar-
ing that Surrealists were not rigorous enough in
their thinking. His images were intentioned, care-
fully structured, and designed to withstand intellec-
tual interpretation. Sommer never wanted to
abandon the intellectual content of his work.
In the mid-1950s, Sommer began to make images
that did not require the use of a camera. Reflecting
his drawing background, he developed a method of
working with paint on cellophane, making the
paint so tacky that he could control its application.
These photograms are wholly abstract.Paracelsus
(1959) depicts a sculpture-like torso with photo-
graphic tones and textures that give the image a
burnished, refined look. Sommer later explored the
application of candle smoke deposits on grease-
coated cellophane in the belief that soot could out-
perform silver images. Upon taking these synthetic
negatives into the darkroom, he exposed them in
the conventional manner to create images with
remarkable definition and no grain problems.
In the 1990s, with the publication ofAll Children
are Ambassadorsand a number of exhibitions in
major museums, Sommer finally began to receive
popular acclaim. He died in Prescott, Arizona in
January of 1999 at the age of 93.
CarynE. NeumannSeealso:Photogram; Steiglitz, AlfredBiography
Born Fritz Sommer in Angri, Italy, 7 September 1905.
Naturalized American citizen, 1939. Landscape archi-
tect, 1923–1925. Earned a Master’s Degree in Land-
scape Architecture from Cornell University (1927) but
self-taught in photography. Landscape architect in
father’s firm in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1927–1930.
Married Frances Watson, 1928. Diagnosed with tuber-
culosis in 1930. Moved to Tucson, Arizona, 1932.
Private instructor in watercolor, drawing, and design
in a Tucson, Arizona studio 1932–1934. Moved to
Prescott, Arizona, 1935. Instructor, Institute of Design,
Chicago, 1957–1958. Visiting lecturer, Institute of
Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago,- Coordinator of Fine Art Studies, Prescott Col-
lege, Prescott, Arizona, 1966–1971. Lecturer, Rhode
Island School of Design, 1967. Awarded a John
Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in photography, 1974.
The Frederick Sommer archive is established at the
Center for Creative Photography, University of Ari-
zona, Tucson, 1975. Awarded honorary Doctorate in
Fine Arts, University of Arizona, 1979. Visiting Senior
Fellow of the Council of Humanities and Old Domin-
ion Fellow, Visual Arts, Princeton University, 1979.
Distinguished Career in Photography award from the
Friends of Photography, Carmel, California, 1983.
College of Fine Arts Achievement Award for Art,
Arizona State University, Tempe, 1985. Died Prescott,
Arizona, 23 January 1999.
Individual Exhibitions
1934 Increase Robinson Gallery; Chicago, Illinois
1937 Howard Putzel Gallery; Hollywood, California
1946 Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Santa Barbara, Cali-
fornia
1949 Photographs and Drawings by Frederick Sommer;
Charles Egan Gallery; New York, New York
1954, 1959 Wittenborn Bookstore Gallery; New York, New
York
1957 Drawings, Paintings, and Photographs; Institute of
Design, Illinois Institute of Technology; Chicago, Illi-
nois
1963 Frederick Sommer; Art Institute of Chicago; Chicago,
Illinois
1965 Frederick Sommer: An Exhibition of Photographs;
Washington Gallery of Modern Art; Washington, D.C.
1967 Museum of Northern Arizona; Flagstaff, Arizona
1968 Frederick Sommer; Philadelphia College of Art; Phila-
delphia, Pennsylvania
1972, 1973 Light Gallery; New York, New York
1974 Columbia College Photography Gallery; Chicago, Illi-
nois
Carl Siembab Gallery; Boston, Massachusettes
1979 Light Gallery; New York, New York
Art Museum, Princeton University; Princeton, New
Jersey
1980 Frederick Sommer at Seventy-Five, A Retrospective;
Art Museum and Galleries, California State University;
Long Beach, CaliforniaSOMMER, FREDERICK