Ferenc Berkó (January 28, 1916 – March 18, 2000) was a Hungarian –American photographer noted for his early use of

color film Color photography is photography that uses media capable of capturing and reproducing colors. By contrast, black-and-white or gray-monochrome photography records only a single channel of luminance (brightness) and uses media capable only of ...

Early life

Berkó was born in Nagyvarad, Hungary. His father died while Berkó was young, and he was sent to live with family friends in Germany. The family friends were in trun friends of leading Bauhaus figures, including Walter Gropious, who had an early influence on Berkó. He left Germany with just as the Nazis came to power, moving to a succession of cities including Frankfurt, Dresden, Berlin, Morocco, and Mexico.

Career

Between 1933 and 1947, he lived in London, Paris and Bombay, during which time he established a name for himself as a filmmaker and photographer. He earned most of his living as taking photographic portraits, and also published his photographs in the magazines Lilliput, Minicam, U.S. Camera, and Popular Photography. In 1947

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 ...

invited Berko to come to the United States, to teach photography at the Chicago School of Design. Two years later, he took a job as a corporate photographer in Aspen, Colorado, offered by

Walter Paepcke Walter Paepcke (June 29, 1896 – April 13, 1960) was a U.S. industrialist and philanthropist prominent in the mid-20th century. A longtime executive of the Chicago-based Container Corporation of America, Paepcke is best noted for his founding of ...

, who was then the president of the

Container Corporation of America Container Corporation of America (CCA) was founded in 1926 and manufactured corrugated boxes. In 1968 CCA merged with Montgomery Ward & Company, Inc., becoming MARCOR. MARCOR maintained separate management for the operations of each company, but ...

. He would remain for 50 years. In Aspen he was a fixture of the local community, called upon regularly to document events. The year that he moved to Aspen, 1949, the city held a Goethe festival that attracted luminaries of the literature and culture world. Berkó's color photographs of famous individuals at the event, including the pianist

Arthur Rubenstein Arthur Rubinstein ( pl, Artur Rubinstein; 28 January 188720 December 1982) was a Polish-American pianist.

, social philosopher

Albert Schweitzer Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian-German/French polymath. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. A Lutheran minister, Schwei ...

and playwright

Thornton Wilder Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes — for the novel ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' and for the plays ''Our Town'' and ''The Skin of Our Teeth'' — a ...

, were picked up internationally by magazines such as Look and

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...

, further contributing to his celebrity. In 2021 the Musée de l'Elysée in

Lausanne , neighboring_municipalities= Bottens, Bretigny-sur-Morrens, Chavannes-près-Renens, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Crissier, Cugy, Écublens, Épalinges, Évian-les-Bains (FR-74), Froideville, Jouxtens-Mézery, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Lugrin (FR-74), ...

will present a 70-year retrospective of his work titled ''Ferenc Berko: Fascination with the Ordinary''.

Collections

Museum of Fine Arts Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...

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 ...

, New York *

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...

* Musée de l'Elysée, Paris *

Harry Ransom Center The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...

Hood Museum The Hood Museum of Art is owned and operated by Dartmouth College, located in Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States. The first reference to the development of an art collection at Dartmouth dates to 1772, making the collection among the ol ...

References

{{US-photographer-stub 1916 births 2000 deaths 20th-century Hungarian male artists 20th-century American male artists 20th-century American photographers Hungarian photographers Hungarian emigrants to the United States