RUTH BERNHARD

Life

Born in Berlin, Ruth Bernhard was the daughter of acclaimed graphic designer Lucien Bernhard. She studied at the Berlin Academy of Art before moving to New York in 1927, where she began a career as a commercial photographer. She worked briefly at the studio of Ralph Steiner, using her final paycheck to buy her first camera. She photographed for many notable publications and businesses including The New York Times and Macy’s before a chance meeting with Edward Weston, later her mentor, who inspired her to take her photography in an artistic direction.

When describing the motivation for photographing the female form, Bernhard said that ‘to raise, to elevate, to endorse with timeless reverence the image of woman has been my mission.’ Bernhard was a prominent figure in the Modernist West Coast photography movement and throughout her career she also lectured and taught in universities across the U.S.

Artworks

Ruth Bernhard’s practice was almost exclusively studio-based, using objects and figures to create abstract and striking compositions which she would set up meticulously, often over a period of several days. One of Bernhard’s well-known compositions is Doll’s Head (1936), in which the bodiless head of a plastic doll rests in the palm of a mannequin hand. The eyes of the doll are turned downwards, away from the photograph’s pastoral background of trees, mountains, and a lake. This work is considered to be one of the first examples of Surrealist photography, exemplified by the unexpected juxtapositions of both its subject matter and composition.

Bernhard’s distinctive compositions also lend themselves to high levels of detail. In her work Two Leaves (1952), a pair of leaves are positioned side by side, the curve of one’s edge overlapping the other. The close crop of the photograph emphasises the detail of the leaves: their waxy surfaces, almost translucent in parts, and the intricacy of the veins spreading outwards from central stems.

Ruth Bernhard shot her photographs in black and white, using light to give her subjects a sculptural quality. This is particularly palpable in her photographs of the nude. In her iconic work In the Box - Horizontal (1962), a nude female figure reclines in the box of a photographic enlarger. The box encases the woman’s body almost entirely, her lower legs tucked behind her out of shot and her arm reaching out and draping behind the box’s end.

Exhibitions

Ruth Bernhard’s work has been presented in the following select solo exhibitions: Ruth Bernhard, Galerie Albrecht, Berlin (2021); Body and Form, Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Tampa (2014); Ruth Bernhard: Fifty Images Celebrating the Artist’s 100th Year, John Stevenson Gallery, New York (2004); and The Eternal Body, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1986).

Selected group exhibitions include DECLARATION, Robischon Gallery, Denver (2016); Ruth Bernhard and Imogen Cunningham: The Art of the Nude, John Stevenson Gallery, New York (2003); and P_hotography for Collectors_, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York (1976).

Bernhard’s work is included in numerous major collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Tess Charnley | Ocula | 2021