Virna Haffer (1899–April 5, 1974) was an American photographer, printmaker, painter, musician, and published author.

Biography

Born in 1899 in

Aurora, Illinois Aurora is a city in the Chicago metropolitan area located partially in DuPage County, Illinois, DuPage, Kane County, Illinois, Kane, Kendall County, Illinois, Kendall, and Will County, Illinois, Will counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. Locat ...

, Haffer and her family moved to the utopian community of

Home A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or many humans, and sometimes various companion animals. It is a fully or semi sheltered space and can have both interior and exterior aspects to it. H ...

South Puget Sound South Puget Sound is the southern reaches of Puget Sound in Southwest Washington, in the United States' Pacific Northwest. It is one of five major basins encompassing the entire Sound, and the shallowest basin, with a mean depth of . Exact defini ...

Washington state Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washington ...

in 1907. When she was 15 years old Haffer became the apprentice of the photographer Harriette H. Ihrig. She opened her own portrait photography studio in

Tacoma, Washington Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, Washington, Olympia, and northwest of Mount ...

and began publishing her photographs in 1924. Haffer was known for experimenting with unusual, quirky techniques and created her own artistic style that stretched the boundaries of artistic classifications in the early twentieth century. Haffer's work was eccentric; she produced pictorialist, modern, surreal, and documentary style work. Haffer was married three times, the second time to socialist and labor advocate Paul Raymond Haffer, with whom she had one son, Jean Paul Haffer. One of her works as a commercial photographic portraitist was a childhood picture of future glass artist

Dale Chihuly Dale Chihuly () (born September 20, 1941) is an American glass artist and entrepreneur. He is best known in the field of blown glass, "moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture". Early life Dale Patrick Chihuly was born on September 20 ...

. Haffer's work was first exhibited in 1924 in the Fifth Annual F&N Salon of Pictorial Photography, and in 1928 at the

Seattle Camera Club The Seattle Camera Club (SCC) was an organization of photographers active in Seattle, Washington, during the 1920s. It was founded in 1924 by Japanese immigrants and thrived for the next five years. The SCC was the only Japanese American photo ...

's Fourth International Exhibition. By 1930 her work was internationally recognized, and often appeared in publications such as the ''American Annual of Photography''. In addition, she won recognition and prizes in photographic competitions in the United States in the 1930s.Sandler, Martin W., ''Against The Odds: Women Pioneers in The First Hundred Years Of Photography''. St. Martins Press, 2002. In the 1960s she took an interest in producing

photogram A photogram is a photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light. The usual result is a negative shadow image th ...

s, and in 1969 she published a book about the process called ''Making Photograms: The Creative Process of Painting With Light''. Haffer's work was also the subject of several solo exhibitions at locations including the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, 1960;

California Museum of Science and Industry The California Science Center (sometimes spelled California ScienCenter) is a state agency and museum located in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, next to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the University of Southern California. Bi ...

, Los Angeles, 1964; New York Camera Club, 1967 and the

Museum of Contemporary Crafts The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), based in Manhattan, New York City, collects, displays, and interprets objects that document contemporary and historic innovation in craft, art, and design. In its exhibitions and educational programs, the mus ...

, NYC, 1968. A posthumous retrospective of her work, ''A Turbulent Lens: The Photographic Art of Virna Haffer'', was produced at the

Tacoma Art Museum The Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) is an art museum in Tacoma, Washington, United States. It focuses primarily on the art and artists from the Pacific Northwest and broader western region of the U.S. Founded in 1935, the museum has strong roots in the c ...

in 2011.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Haffer, Virna 1899 births 1974 deaths American portrait photographers American women photographers American printmakers People from Aurora, Illinois American women printmakers 20th-century American women artists