Gary Saretzky Photo Books
Steiner, Ralph. A Point of View by Ralph Steiner.
Steiner, Ralph. A Point of View by Ralph Steiner.
Wesleyan University, 1978. Introduction by Willard Van Dyke. Autobiographical essays by Ralph Steiner with a retrospective of more than 50 years of photographs. 1st ed., 1st printing. [Ralph Steiner (1899–1986) was a photographer and film maker who became a leader in avant garde photography and film in the 1920s and 1930s. Steiner produced A Point of View in Vermont after he retired from commercial work in 1962.] Cloth bound, VG+ without dust jacket. Custom made 4-mil polyester jacket.
Note: Born in Cleveland, photographer and film maker Ralph Steiner. studied chemistry at Dartmouth, then in 1921 entered the Clarence H. White School of Modern Photography in New York. His photographs with a strong sense of abstraction led to advertising assignments for magazines like the Ladies' Home Journal. In the 1930s, Steiner was a cinematographer with Leo Hurwitz in the Nikino production company, which transitioned into Frontier Films, for which he worked with director Pare Lorentz on The Plow That Broke the Plains. With Willard Van Dyke, Steiner co-directed The City, with music by Aaron Copland, that opened at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. After a few years in Hollywood, where he photographed “Gypsy Rose Lee and Her Entourage” (1944), Steiner’s later career in New York was largely in magazine assignments before he retired to Vermont in 1962. Bill Jay, who photographed Steiner for his book, Photographers Photographed (1983), described him as “a contentious, feisty little man. His opinions are delivered with such fiery, goggle-eyed vehemence that the audience is verbally bludgeoned into acquiescence.”