Hans Namuth portraits

Hans Namuth was one of the greatest photographers of artists.

"His oeuvre - at least the part of it that was most important to him - is a forty-year chronicle, mainly of artists, but also of architects, writers, and musicians, who have made significant contributions to recent American cultural history."
- Carolyn Kinder Carr

Self-portrait, 1966. Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

Jasper Johns by Hans Namuth, 1962

Hans Namuth's spectacular portrait of Andy Warhol in front of a Rubens painting, 1982. It's "The Reconciliation of the Queen and her Son", from his Marie de' Medici cycle (early 1620s), now in the Louvre.

Marisol Escobar by Hans Namuth, 1964

Robert Motherwell & Helen Frankenthaler. A lovely portrait of a special couple, by Hans Namuth for Vogue, 1964.

Robert Rauschenberg & Hummingbird Takahashi by Hans Namuth, 1971. Hummingbird was the son of Rauschenberg's assistant.

Hans Namuth's shot of Mark Rothko, from 1964, is in retrospect very sad. As the painter himself said, 'There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend: one day, the black will swallow the red.'

Sam Francis by Hans Namuth, 1989

Hans Namuth's shot of Jackson Pollock & Lee Krasner at their home in East Hampton, Long Island, 1940s.

Jackson Pollock by Hans Namuth, 1950.

“In the studio Pollock was wholly articulate - with his body, arm, wrist, & eye dancing over the canvas on the floor. What might have seemed at the time brutal, a war dance, now seems to me sheer lyricism.”

- Robert Motherwell

Jackson Pollock by Hans Namuth, 1951

"The public image of Pollock as a brooding, volatile flinger of paint is in large part derived from Namuth's films & photographs of him, so much so that it is possible to say the two men's careers will forever be intertwined."

- Andy Grundberg

Larry Rivers & Frank O'Hara by Hans Namuth, 1958

Like Frank O'Hara & Jackson Pollock, Hans Namuth was killed in a Long Island car crash: Pollock in 1956, O'Hara in 1966, Namuth in 1990.

Clyfford Still by Hans Namuth, 1951

Stephen Sondheim by Hans Namuth, 1960. The great composer died a year ago yesterday. RIP

John Cage by Hans Namuth, 1963

Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock & Tony Smith by Hans Namuth, 1951.

"Namuth was to artists what Audubon was to birds."

- Sarah Boxer

The combination of Louise Nevelson's monochromatic sculpture & her own splash of bright colour is a gift to a photographer. Hans Namuth isn't going to miss out on this! From 1977.

Helen Frankenthaler by Hans Namuth, 1987

Recommended: Hans Namuth Portraits, 1999