H

ERNST HAAS

Austrian

Ernst Haas is celebrated as one the century’s great
innovators in color photography. His ability to
transform mundane and everyday objects or occur-
rences into images of rare beauty with symbolic and
poetic resonances has been much imitated over the
years. Haas himself was unconcerned by these
attempts to imitate his style, but would always
encourage people to find their own vision and way
of seeing the world through the medium of photo-
graphy. Elliott Erwitt, a fellow member of Magnum
Photos, who readily admits to having little interest
in color photography commented:

He has been incredibly copied since the beginning....It
was certainly new—nobody had done it before and
nobody has stopped doing it since....The trouble is that
most of Ernst’s imitators over the years have been photo-
graphically vulgar and obvious, and in a way that’s
reduced his work retroactively, which is a shame. He
just does it better than all of them.
(Elliott Erwitt,American PhotographerDec. 1983)
Ernst Haas was born in Vienna in 1921 to a
middle-class family. His father was a government
official and an amateur photographer, while his
mother was always keen to nurture the creative

talent she saw in her son through drawing, paint-

ing, and music. Always keen to further his studies,

Haas had to contend with the new order in Hitler’s

Austria where he often found himself obstructed

and discouraged from pursuing further education

due to his Jewish ancestry. This would not stop the

young Ernst Haas, who having survived the war

found part-time work in a photographic studio, as

well as teaching a basic photography course at the

American Red Cross center. It was here that he was

introduced to the work of Edward Weston, whom

he cites as an early influence, whose work sang to

him in poetic style that he had never before experi-

enced in photography.

Having exhibited his work at the Red Cross head-

quarters, and with the backing of Warren Trabant,

editor of the German language magazineHeute,

Haas began to receive regular magazine assign-

ments. It was at this point that his widely acclaimed

photoessay of the returning Austrian prisoners of

war from Russia was published. This led to offers of

employment fromLifemagazine and an invitation

from Robert Capa to join the newly formed photo-

graphic agency Magnum in Paris.

True to his own lifelong beliefs in having the free-

dom to create his best work rather than to be driven

by the powerful magazine editors of the time, Haas