New York to Hollywood

the long version

Karl Struss (1886-1981) was a master of both still and motion picture photography. A native of New York City, he first studied photography with Clarence White and soon mastered the tenets of pictorialism. Alfred Stieglitz featured his work in a 1910 exhibition and a 1912 issue of Camera Work and invited Struss to become a member - as it turned out, the last member - of the Photo-Secession. New York to Hollywood: The Photography of Karl Struss surveys this consummate artist's long career with the camera, including his pioneering color photography using the autochrome process, his photographic explorations of New York and Europe before War World I, his images of Hollywood stars and western landscapes and seascapes, and his motion picture work. Essayist Bonnie Yochelson surveys his early work in New York, Richard Koszarski his career in cinematography, and Barbara McCandless examines how Struss' background and early work not only led him to Hollywood but greatly contributed to the artistry of the still-young film industry there. John and Susan Edwards Harvith, who rediscovered Struss' work in the 1970's and interviewed him at length in his later years, round out the portrait of both the man and the artist.