Jerry Uelsmann (I always heard it pronounced beginning with "you'll," as "YOU'LLs-mun"), who was famous, especially in the last third of the 20th century, for his endlessly creative surrealist combination printing, died in Gainesville, Florida, on April 4th, at the age of 87. He made photomontages entirely in the darkroom from multiple negatives, some of which were known to appear in more than one of his works. He was the ex-husband of Maggie Taylor, an early proponent of surreal montages made in Photoshop, although, as a master printer who was able to do things in the darkroom that many others who tried could not, Uelsmann himself chose not to make the transition to digital imaging.
He studied as an undergraduate at RIT with Minor White and Ralph Hattersley, graduating in 1957, then did graduate work at Indiana University, earning his MFA under his mentor and influence Henry Holmes Smith in 1960. In that year, during a period when photography was entering into university curricula around the nation, he was recruited by Van Deren Coke to teach at the University of Florida, where he spent his career.
That career can be said to have been somewhat charmed; he came along at just the right time. He is widely credited with bringing the then-current sensibilities of Pop Art into photography (and/or vice versa), in kinship with artists such as Joseph Cornell and Robert Rauschenberg. His career reached an early peak in 1967 with a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art and a Guggenheim Fellowship beginning that same year; in that period, an entire issue of the influential journal Aperture was devoted to his work. He was a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) among many other accomplishments and honors.
Although the work itself may be something of an acquired taste, he was celebrated as the leading proponent of his style throughout the 1970s especially, and of course thereafter, although my own impression is that he gradually became less and less well known after the advent of digital imaging, when artists such as Julie Blackmon, Dominic Rouse, Maggie Taylor, Gregory Crewdson, Erik Johansson, John Paul Caponigro, Loretta Lux and many others began to expand the aesthetic territory he had once inhabited more or less alone. Uelsmann constructed his pictures by moving the same sheet of paper from enlarger to enlarger—"most photographers carry many cameras with multiple attachments," he said, whereas he carried only one, but "most photographers have one enlarger. I have half a dozen."
Combination printing has been a constant thread in photography from early on: Oscar Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson are fixtures in most histories of photography, never mind such tricks as the Cottingley Fairies or gag postcards showing a single giant potato on a horse-drawn wagon. More modern artists such as Duane Michals have used some of the techniques as well. But Jerry Uelsmann was sui generis. No one did what he did quite the same way, with quite the same range of inventiveness or at his level of darkroom prestidigitation and skill, and most of his creations are easily recognizable as his. He leaves behind a plentiful legacy, both as a teacher of generations of students and as a distinctively unusual photographer/artist.
Mike
Book o' the Week:
Ernst Haas: New York in Color 1952–1962. "When Haas moved from Vienna to New York City in 1951, he left behind a war-torn continent and a career producing black-and-white images. For Haas, the new medium of color photography was the only way to capture a city pulsing with energy and humanity. These images demonstrate Haas's tremendous virtuosity and confidence with Kodachrome film and the technical challenges of color printing."
This book link is a portal to Amazon.
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Bob Rosinsky: "I had the opportunity to see him present his work and give a talk at the Polk County Museum in Lakeland, Florida ten or fifteen years ago. He impressed me as being approachable and somewhat modest, truly a nice guy. Back in the '70s, when I was just getting into processing and printing black and white, I was in awe of his work. With digital photography entering its third decade, it's understandable why people today may find it quaint."
John Camp: "And he published a book in 1992 called Photo Synthesis with a foreword by A.D. Coleman. Still available on Amazon."
ASW: "I'm not sure if I should admit to having never heard of Mr. Uelsmann before this post, but 'Self-Portrait' definitely brought out my first LOL (as the kids say) in a good long while. I think I would have liked him."
Mike replies: I always wondered if he meant he had his head in the clouds. :-)
For those not unalterably opposed to mixing Youtube and photography there’s a nice, well produced look at some of Uelsmann’s work in this short video: https://youtu.be/LXHs4lu8SxQ.
Posted by: Michael Matthews | Friday, 08 April 2022 at 10:41 AM
...He was the ex-husband of Maggie Taylor...
And two other women before her.
Posted by: Sal Santamaura | Friday, 08 April 2022 at 10:42 AM
Even if (for some reason) you didn't like his work- you still had to be in absolute awe of what he was able to create!
Posted by: Stan B. | Friday, 08 April 2022 at 11:56 AM
A lesson in modesty: The mere fact that I am not impressed by his work does not mean he is not a great artist.
Posted by: Anton Wilhelm Stolzing | Friday, 08 April 2022 at 03:34 PM
I remember “discovering” Uelsmann in the London [Ontario] Public Library as I was just beginning to submerse myself into “serious” photography, around 1974-75, devouring every issue of Aperture. It was a magical experience - his style and methods were not something I was interested in attempting (or thought I could accomplish) but he expanded my horizons, showed me that photography was not necessarily about “straight” representation, even with the keen insights of dozens great rapporteurs/journalists. I owe him.
Posted by: Earl Dunbar | Friday, 08 April 2022 at 07:48 PM
For those of you with Lenswork Online subscriptions, be sure and catch Brooks' discussion and video presentation of Uelsmann's work in an early edition of the magazine.
https://www.lensworkonline.com/resourcelibrary/ebi/ebi%20index.php
Posted by: John Krumm | Saturday, 09 April 2022 at 10:21 AM
About ten years ago I met Jerry Uelsmann very briefly by chance while I was in the photo department offices at the Art Institute of Chicago. He was with a small group of other folks attending an annual photo educators' conference in Chicago and was stopping by to say hello. (The AIC has a nice little collection of his work.) He struck me as a bit of a funster. Associating him with his work would have been a cinch after even a 5-minute chat.
Posted by: Kenneth Tanaka | Saturday, 09 April 2022 at 05:42 PM
He was nothing short of a genius. Long before Photoshop made such creations "easy," he did photomontages that were artistic and incredibly technically challenging. His work was so much more than the sum of its parts. I heard him speak in Portland a number of years ago and found him to be charming and humble. We've lost another of the great ones.
Posted by: Eric Brody | Saturday, 09 April 2022 at 07:26 PM
I always enjoy the Book o'the Week as well as the links to books by the photographers that you write about. I had no knowledge of Jerry Uelsmann and found his work interesting. I also enjoyed the blog on Ernest Haas. My question is, of your personal collection of books dealing with photography or photographers, which 10 would you want if you were on that proverbial desert island? Thank you.
Posted by: Thomas Walsh | Sunday, 10 April 2022 at 01:58 PM