Edmund Teske
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Edmund Rudolph Teske (March 7, 1911 – November 22, 1996) was a 20th-century
American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...
photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...
who combined a career of taking portraits of artists, musicians and entertainers with a prolific output of experimental photography. His use of techniques like: combined prints, montages and solarizations led to "often romantic and mysterious images". "Edmund Teske; Created Ethereal Photos"
LA Times, November 26, 1996, Accessed online, April 31, 2014 Although he exhibited extensively and was well known within artistic photography circles during his lifetime, his work was not widely known by the public. He has been called "one of the forgotten greats of American photography."


Biography

Teske was born in
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
, the eldest of three children born to Rudolph and Olga Teske. His parents were from Poland. When he was 8 years old his family moved to
Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin Wisconsin Rapids is a city in and the county seat of Wood County, Wisconsin. The population was 18,877 at the 2020 census. The city also forms one of the core areas of the United States Census Bureau's Marshfield-Wisconsin Rapids Micropolit ...
, where they took up farming. During this period Teske developed his first artistic interests by experimenting with painting and poetry. In 1921 his family moved back to Chicago, and Teske began to study music, primarily the piano and saxophone. Two years later his grammar school teacher, Mabel Morehouse, introduced him to photography and let him develop his own photos in the school darkroom. For the next decade he spent most of his free time practicing both the piano and photography, and by 1932 he was accomplished enough in the piano that he became the protégé of concert pianist Ida Lustgarten. At the same time his photographic skills had advanced to the point that he was given his first one-man exhibition at the
Blackstone Theatre The Merle Reskin Theatre is a performing arts venue located in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. Originally named the Blackstone Theatre it was built in 1910. Renamed the Merle Reskin Theatre in 1992, it is now part of DePaul Univ ...
in Chicago. The following year he began to pursue photography as a career and worked full-time at a Chicago studio called Photography Inc. In 1936 he traveled to New York to meet with
Alfred Stieglitz Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was kno ...
, who encouraged and inspired him. That same year he met
Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...
at his
Taliesin Taliesin ( , ; 6th century AD) was an early Brittonic poet of Sub-Roman Britain whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the '' Book of Taliesin''. Taliesin was a renowned bard who is believed to have sung at the courts ...
studio in Wisconsin. At Wright's invitation Teske created a photographic workshop within Taliesin to artistically document Wright's many architectural projects and to explore new relationships between architecture and photography. During Teske's many visits to Taliesin, Wright and other artists and musicians who stayed there helped Teske form his ideas about the role of artists in society and the importance of imparting social messages in his work. The professional relationship with Wright greatly enhanced Teske's reputation, and over the next five years Teske met and sometimes worked with some of the greatest photographers of the time, including
Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advoca ...
,
Paul Strand Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. ...
,
László Moholy-Nagy László Moholy-Nagy (; ; born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the i ...
and
Berenice Abbott Berenice Alice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991) was an American photographer best known for her portraits of between-the-wars 20th century cultural figures, New York City photographs of architecture and urban design of the 1930s, and ...
. He taught briefly with Moholy-Nagy at the
New Bauhaus Institute of Design (ID) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech), founded as the New Bauhaus, is a graduate school teaching systemic, human-centered design. History The Institute of Design at Illinois Tech is a school of design ...
in Chicago, and in 1939 he worked as an assistant in Abbott's studio in New York. During this period he also started work on a sequence of photographs he called ''Portrait of My City'', in which he documented scenes of Chicago with a particular focus on the social issues of the time. He also was introduced to the photographs of
Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, although his t ...
, which inspired him to create his own images containing positive and negative elements. When World War II broke out, Teske was drafted for military duty, but he failed his medical exam for "asocial tendencies, psychoneurosis and emotional instability." These were thought to have been medical code words to indicate his growing sexual interests in other men. As an alternative to military service Teske was appointed by the War Department to work as an assistant photographer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, where he printed aerial maps for military use. During this time he photographed two of his male co-workers nude while expressing his inner challenges in his journal:
Strive to accept the facts of life with courage and serenity to develop talent, as an outlet for emotion, and to find happiness in the world of the mind and spirit. In the days when Greece and Rome ruled the world in arts and letters and philosophy, love of man for man reached openly its pinnacle of beauty. Civilization today, moving forward, must eventually recognize these true facts of love and sex variations.
In early 1943 Teske was able to leave his position at Rock Island, and compelled by the thought of a new way of life and the rising romantic allure of Hollywood, he decided to move to Los Angeles. He stopped briefly at Wright's
Taliesin West Taliesin West was architect Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home and studio in the desert from 1937 until his death in 1959 at the age of 91. Today it is the headquarters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Open to the public for tours, Taliesin ...
in Arizona to photograph the architect's vision there, finally arriving in Los Angeles in April. He started working in the photographic still department at
Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...
, and he quickly inserted himself into the growing artistic and bohemian movement in the city. By coincidence he met
Aline Barnsdall Louise Aline Barnsdall (April 1, 1882 – December 18, 1946) was an American oil heiress, best known as Frank Lloyd Wright's client for the Hollyhock House in Los Angeles, now the centerpiece of the city's Barnsdall Art Park. Biography Born i ...
, a wealthy client of Wright, and she invited him to live in part of a large and then unfinished project called Olive Hill that Wright had begun for Barnsdall but had never finished due to differences of opinion about the design and the cost. She intended him to be caretaker for the property, but with her indulgence he soon assumed a much larger role. Teske started hosting informal parties and artistic gatherings in the rambling spaces of his new home. He grew a beard and "took on the trappings of a bohemian lifestyle.". Because of the expansive surroundings of Olive Hill and Teske's newly uninhibited lifestyle, his parties became a magnet for the creative minds of Hollywood and Los Angeles, including
Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, although his t ...
,
Anaïs Nin Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell (February 11, 1903 – January 14, 1977; , ) was a French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of short stories and erotica. Born to Cuban parents in France, Nin was the d ...
,
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,
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, Tony Smith and John Whitney. During this time Teske met
Christopher Isherwood Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include '' Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939), a semi-autobiographical ...
, who introduced him to the
Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
philosophy of
Vedanta ''Vedanta'' (; sa, वेदान्त, ), also ''Uttara Mīmāṃsā'', is one of the six (''āstika'') schools of Hindu philosophy. Literally meaning "end of the Vedas", Vedanta reflects ideas that emerged from, or were aligned with, t ...
. Teske soon embraced the philosophy, in part because its teachings provided a grounding for how he already viewed life and in part because Isherwood and his friends were already part of the growing gay community in the city. Teske was fascinated with the Vedanta ideas that all aspects of life and nature are connected and that time exists only as it relates to other moments in a large universe. He began to experiment with the concept that a regular photographic image could not define a moment in life, and that only multiple images portrayed together could convey what he called "universal essences." Throughout the rest of his life he continued to produce composite prints made by sandwiching two or more negatives together. Many of these images are now his signature photographs. During this time he also experimented with a variety of other photographic techniques, including
solarization The Sabatier effect, also known as pseudo-solarization (or pseudo-solarisation) and erroneously referred to as the Sabattier effect, is a phenomenon in photography in which the image recorded on a negative or on a photographic print is wholly o ...
and
collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
s. In 1949 Teske left Olive Hill and moved to a small studio in
Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles Laurel Canyon is a mountainous neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills region of the Santa Monica Mountains, within the Hollywood Hills West district of Los Angeles, California. The main thoroughfare of Laurel Canyon Boulevard connects the neighb ...
. He launched into a series of creative photographic experiments in which he both manipulated and combined multiple images to create "new pictorial realities". In one of these series, which he called "Shiva-Shakti", he printed an image of a nude male relaxing on his back with his penis fully exposed and, in separate photographs, overlaid this image with others that included landscapes, rooms, human faces, or completely abstract subjects. Although Teske had photographed nude men throughout his life, this series, with the repeated image of the reclining man, reintroduced "the sensuality of male imagery in his work" in the context of his exploration of Vedantic philosophy. As Teske continued to contemplate the complex teachings of Vedanta, his delved further into using his photography to translate his feelings into imagery. Throughout the 1950s he experimented with new chemical and manipulative techniques, culminating in 1958 when he perfected a combination of
photographic print toning In photography, toning is a method of altering the color of black-and-white photographs. In analog photography, it is a chemical process carried out on metal salt-based prints, such as silver prints, iron-based prints (cyanotype or Van Dyke b ...
and solarization.
Edward Steichen Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography. Steichen was credited with tr ...
coined the term "duotone solarization" to describe this new technique. In 1959 the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
purchased nine of his prints, further escalating his fame within the photographic world. The 1960s and '70s were the busiest time in his career. During this period he was given at least eighteen one-man exhibitions and took part in more than two dozen other group exhibitions. He met and sometimes taught with many of the important photographers of the time, including
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, Harry Callahan,
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,
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, and
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. During this period he also befriended
Jim Morrison James Douglas Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971) was an American singer, poet and songwriter who was the lead vocalist of the Rock music, rock band the Doors. Due to his wild personality, poetic lyrics, distinctive voice, unpredicta ...
, lead singer of
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, and took a series of informal portraits of Morrison and his girlfriend
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. During the last twenty years of his life Teske both worked and lived in his studio in East Hollywood, where he regularly taught workshops and mentored both younger and older photographers who sought his knowledge about art and philosophy. When he was asked by a reporter if he had any advice to give to new photographers, Teske replied, "Yes. Meditate!" Around 1990 Teske embarked on assembling a comprehensive autobiographical collection of his work. Within a short time he had created a six-volume
maquette A ''maquette'' (French word for scale model, sometimes referred to by the Italian names ''plastico'' or ''modello'') is a scale model or rough draft of an unfinished sculpture. An equivalent term is ''bozzetto'', from the Italian word for "sketc ...
he called ‘’Emanations," which he hoped would not only show his work as he wanted it to be seen but also tell the story of his life. He never found a publisher for the work. The
1994 Northridge earthquake The 1994 Northridge earthquake was a moment 6.7 (), blind thrust earthquake that occurred on January 17, 1994, at 4:30:55 a.m. PST in the San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles. The quake had a duration of approximately ...
severely damaged Teske's studio, and he was forced to move out. He was living by himself in downtown Los Angeles when he died in his bed on November 22, 1996. In his obituary in the ''Los Angeles Times'', photographic historian Weston Naef wrote that Teske will "enter the history books as the grand master of a style of picture that is taken for granted now that computers have created ways to cut and paste images seamlessly." Teske was given a posthumous retrospective at the
J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood, Los Angeles, Brentwood neighborhood ...
in 2004.


References

http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/teske/ ''Spirit into Matter: The Photographs of Edmund Teske''. J. Paul Getty Museum


Notes


External links

* Finding Aid for th
Edmund Teske papers
at the Getty Research Institute {{DEFAULTSORT:Teske, Edmund 1911 births 1996 deaths Gay artists American LGBT photographers LGBT people from Illinois 20th-century American photographers 20th-century LGBT people