wood, they never materialized. However, he knew
many Hollywood film actors and in 1956 landed a
brief role in the filmLust for Life.
His first efforts at serious photography were
documents of Chicago during the years of the
Great Depression, for example,Street Car, Chi-
cago(1934–1940). While riding the street car with
a Rolleiflex camera, he photographed a lone pas-
senger lost in thought. As was common during this
period, his photographs are darkly printed and
somber in mood. In these photographs Teske pre-
dates Walker Evans subway portraits by several
years. His social conscience and personal outrage
were expressed inSteel Workers’ Organizing Com-
mittee(1937) in which he combined his verse on
four panels depicting the mill, police beating the
strikers, and portraits of the victims who were
killed during the Memorial Day Massacre in
South Chicago.
While working in a documentary style, Teske also
challenged the parameters of photography. During
the 1940s, using the opposing sides of aVogue
magazine page as a negative, he printed the images
onto photographic paper. During this time Teske
also began combining negatives and for his ‘‘key
images’’ varied his themes—Jane Lawrence Smith,
Mono Lake, and later Jeffery Harris. Many of these
photographs have become some of his best known
photographs, for example,Jane Lawrence, Compo-
site, Los Angeles(1947).
Teske’stour de forcewas his accidental discovery
in the late 1940s of a variation of the solarization
process. In the solarization process a print or
negative is flashed with light during the process of
development. The result is often an abstracted,
otherworldly appearing image. However, Teske
experimented even further and achieved sponta-
neous and unpredictable color effects, originating
a duotone solarization process. Using high contrast
paper, he placed an exposed print in full strength
developer for three to thirty seconds, followed by
placement of the print in the stop bath and fixer for
one second. Next, he laid out the print and exposed
it to light, which exposed the partially fixed print.
The remaining traces of developer then continued to
develop. The interaction of light and chemicals cre-
ated beautiful warm and cool tones in what origin-
ally was a black and white print. When he achieved
the desired effects, the print was again fixed. His
striking Mother and Child, South Chicago 1938
(Republic Steel Mill Strike and Massacre)of this
time demonstrates both this technique and his use of
previously shot material.
Teske was also a pioneer in the area of homo-
erotic imagery in photography. Inspired by the
photographs of Edwin Boland, a Chicago photo-
grapher, Teske photographed the male nude as
early as the 1930s, but then destroyed the photo-
graphs. In 1945, when he was introduced to the
philosophy of Vedanta, a branch of Hinduism, he
openly began to create images of the nude male.
Already familiar with the writings of the founders
of psychiatry, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and
Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the numerous graphic
forms and ideas of Vedanta appealed to him, espe-
cially the Shiva-Shakti principle. Teske often used
the image of the mother dancing upon the nude,
prostrate form of Shiva and modernized it in his
photographs, for example, his numerous combined
negatives of Jeffrey Harris with various landscapes.
Always pushing the limits of photography, in
1954 Teske photographed experimental filmmaker
Kenneth Anger on a bluff in Topanga Canyon in
the Los Angeles area and overlaid it with an appro-
priated Gustave Dore engraving for Milton’sPara-
dise Lost. Teske then created solarized and negative
print variations further abstracting the image and
suggesting an other-worldly experience. Teske col-
laborated with Anger on his film, theInauguration
of the Pleasure Dome(1954). He also photographed
experimental Los Angeles-based artist George
Hermes and his wife Shirley.
InGreetings from San Francisco (1971) Teske
projected a strong light through a postcard so
that the image on one side and the writing on the
opposite side of the card are seen simultaneously
when printed as a photograph. It served as both a
document and an art object.
Edmund Teske’s technical and conceptual con-
tributions to American photography are signifi-
cant; he challenged the parameters of photography
during the late 1930s through the 1960s at a time
when purism dominated photography. His interest
in experimentation, Surrealism, and homoerotic
imagery, however, made him virtuallypersona non
gratawithin the photographic establishment, with
recognition for his achievements coming only at the
end of the twentieth century.
DarwinMarableSeeAlso:Erotic Photography; Manipulation; Multi-
ple Exposures and Printing; Print Processes; Solar-
ization; SurrealismBiography
Born in Chicago, Illinois, March 7, 1911. Died Los Angeles,
California, November, 22, 1996. Educated in Chicago’s
public schools, 1916–1929. Self-taught photographer
working since 1928. Designer, actor, and photographer,TESKE, EDMUND