saw much more correspondence with his own vision
in the photographic work of the Europeans Hans
Bellmer, and Euge`ne Atget, the expatriate Man
Ray; the paintings of Russian refuge Eugene Ber-
man; and the constructions of the eccentric Amer-
ican artist Joseph Cornell. Laughlin’s active
collecting of books and other literature of the Sur-
realist movement, along with his 1940 exhibition at
the New York gallery of Julien Levy has often
caused him to be considered part of that movement,
but he was never officially associated with them.
Bolstering a Surrealist affinity is a unique group of
pictures calledThe Color Experiments. These were
created between 1943 and 1946 using the materials
of the dye-transfer process, at times in combination
with gelatin silver camera images or photograms,
and sometimes employing elements of drawing, col-
lage, and frottage.
Laughlin initially used the subject matter of his
native Louisiana to forge his approach to what he
called ‘‘the third world of photography, the world
beyond documentation and purism.’’ His earliest
books,New Orleans and Its Living Past(1941) and
Ghosts Along the Mississippi (1948), respectively,
synthesize urban and rural milieus, suffusing the
characteristic architecture of each place with both
symbolism and nostalgia. His fascination with the
lessons that could be learned from the architecture of
the past were set in sharp contrast against what he
felt was the mechanized pace of modern life, and the
soulless architecture that often accompanied it. With
the outbreak of World War II, Laughlin began an
even more symbolically charged set of pictures
(Poems of the Interior World) that he hoped would
expose the folly and madness of global war. Work
on the series of over 300 prints and accompanying
captions continued throughout the 1940s, and must
be regarded as among his most ambitious projects.
From the late 1940s until he ceased photograph-
ing in 1967, Laughlin worked more outside of
Louisiana than within his native state. He traversed
the western part of the United States, usually on
commissions to photograph new architecture or to
deliver lectures, and began to record the vanishing
inventory of Victorian-era architecture in major
cities. Chicago is perhaps best represented in the
over 5,000 negatives that form this project, but
extensive work was carried out in Milwaukee and
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Galveston and San An-
tonio, Texas, and Los Angeles and San Francisco,
California. For this project, in some ways an exten-
sion of his earlier architectural work in Louisiana,
Laughlin seemed anxious to record every detail of
the buildings and abandoned the overt symbolism
he had favored in the 1930s and 1940s. These
photographs present the buildings as a catalogue
of relics, a precious heritage doomed by the mis-
guided policies of urban renewal.
Failing health and other obligations curtailed
Laughlin’s career as an active photographer after- Though he had long looked to Europe (espe-
cially France) as a source of inspiration, Laughlin
didn’t travel abroad until 1965. On that trip he
photographed briefly in England and France, form-
ing the last of his categories,Fantasy in Europe.
For the last 20 years of his life Laughlin re-
evaluated his accomplishments in photography.
This process included creating a master index of
his negatives and refining the arrangement of the
groups. He also worked on writing projects, orga-
nized exhibitions of his work, and actively sought a
home for his archive. In 1968, the University of
Louisville Photographic Archives purchased his
negatives and a set of prints. In 1973, the Philadel-
phia Museum of Art produced the retrospective
exhibition,The Personal Eye, accompanied by a
book of the same name published byAperture.In
1981, his voluminous archive of correspondence,
master prints, and manuscripts were acquired by
the Historic New Orleans Collection. And in 1983,
theportionoftheworkattheUniversityofLouisville
was combined with the archive in New Orleans. Less
than two years later Laughlin died in New Orleans
after a series of debilitating ailments. His ashes were
interred in Pere-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. JohnH. Lawrence Seealso:Adams, Ansel; Architectural Photography; Atget, Eugene; Bellmer, Hans; Dye Transfer; Levy,
Julien; Man Ray; Manipulation; Photogram; Photo-
graphy in the United States: the South; Steichen,
Edward; Stieglitz, Alfred; Strand, Paul; Surrealism;
Weston, Edward
Biography
Born near Lake Charles, Louisiana, 14 August 1905. Moved
withfamilytoNewOrleansin1910,wherehewaseducated
inlocalschoolsuntiltheninthgrade.Continuedhiseduca-
tion with selected night courses during the 1920s. Self-
educated in photography beginning in 1930. From 1936–
1941 was a photographer with the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers. Had a trial period of employment atVogue
magazine, 1941. Appointed Assistant Photographer in
the National Archives in Washington, D.C., 1942. Mili-
tary service in World War II was as a photographer with
the U.S. Signal Corps (New York) and Office of Strategic
Services (Washington, D.C.), 1943–1946. From 1946–
1965 earned his principal living by photographing con-
temporary architecture, writing magazine articles about
photography, circulating exhibits of his own work, lectur-
ing throughout the United States on his photographic
theories. Received a Carnegie Corporation grant throughLAUGHLIN, CLARENCE JOHN