Louis Faurer
| Louis Faurer | |
|---|---|
Louis Faurer, Hartsdale, 1971
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| Born |
August 28, 1916 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Died | March 2, 2001 (aged 84) New York, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Photography |
Louis Faurer (August 28, 1916 – March 2, 2001) was an American fashion photographer and a master of candid or street photography. He was a quiet artist who never achieved the broad public recognition that his best-known contemporaries did; however, the significance and caliber of his work were lauded by insiders, among them Robert Frank, William Eggleston, and Edward Steichen, who included his work in the Museum of Modern Art exhibitions In and Out of Focus (1948) and The Family of Man (1955).
Growing up in Philadelphia, Faurer showed an early aptitude for illustration. He bought his first camera in 1937 from the photographer Ben Somoroff. After a couple of jobs as a photographic technician, Faurer made his way to Manhattan and into the world of fashion photography. He quickly made contacts that stood him in good stead: Robert Frank, with whom he shared a darkroom/studio and fast friendship, and Walker Evans, whom he’d long admired, who introduced him to Alexander Liberman at Vogue. Faurer photographed for magazines including Junior Bazaar, Harper’s Bazaar,Vogue,Look, Life, Mademoiselle,Elle and Glamour for more than twenty years. He complained that his work at Life involved too much travel, so he quit in the early 1950s. Most of the prints and negatives of his fashion work have probably been discarded, as Faurer stored them with a friend when he left the country in the late 1960s, then failed to reclaim them.
It is Faurer’s personal work from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s for which he is best remembered. He photographed the streets of New York and Philadelphia, capturing the restless energy of urban life. His sensitive lens probed the great variety of the city's human face, especially "the lonely Times Square people for whom Faurer felt a deep sympathy."
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