This exhibition brings together over 100 photographs by Paul Outerbridge (American, 1896–1958) from all periods of his career, including his Cubist still life images, staged magazine photographs, and controversial nudes.
Outerbridge introduced an artist's sensibility to the black and white photographs he made for commercial purposes. By the 1930s he was working in color, using the intensely-hued carbro process to create advertising and fine art photographs. Outerbridge's work has appeared in magazines such as Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, and McCall's, as well as in exhibitions of fine photography. In 1943 he moved to Southern California where he continued photographing and writing about photography until his death in 1958.
uterbridge burst onto the photographic art scene in the early 1920s with photographs that were visually fresh and technically adept. He applied his talent for the formal arrangement of objects to advertisements for men's haberdashery, glassware, and perfume in fashionable magazines such as Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar.
In 1925 Outerbridge moved to Paris to design layouts for French Vogue. His friendship with the photographer Man Ray put him in frequent contact with members of the European avant-garde. In 1928 he moved to Berlin and then to London to work in motion pictures before returning to New York. The following year, 12 of his photographs were included in the groundbreaking exhibition Film und Foto held in Stuttgart, Germany, and 10 of his prints were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
