Ned Scott

Ned Scott (April 16, 1907 – November 24, 1964) was an American photographer who worked in the Hollywood film industry as a still photographer from 1935-1948. As a member of the Camera Club of New York from 1930–34, he was heavily influenced by fellow members Paul Strand and Henwar Rodakiewicz.

Form was his goddess, his muse. The photographic process was a constant search for the right form, the pure essence, the truth of anything. Creativity was a battle, a struggle between his exacting eye and the nature of his contrary and rebellious self. That battle always intrigued him, but left him exhausted. Since form ascendent was the essence of Ned Scott's creativity, he parted company with practitioners of the Photo-Secession movement, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen of earlier decades. The shape of anything always preceded the idea of its truth, not the reverse. Reality was a function of structure, not the thought process. Capturing that structural truth was the driving force of his photography.

While living in New York and visiting the Camera Club, Ned Scott began commercial work with still lifes and x-ray tubes. He experimented with light and form during this period. Unfortunately little survives except that which he saved for his own personal collection. His other photographic efforts during this time included a study of La Iglesia de San Francisco in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico.

Ned Scott spent the latter half of 1934 working for Paul Strand on location in Alvarado, Mexico to produce the Mexican funded propaganda film, Redes.Fred Zinnemann, who also worked on this film in his directorial debut, referred to Ned Scott's stills as "classics" in his autobiography. Two months following Strand's return to the USA from Mexico he referred to these stills as "the finest set of still photographs I have ever seen for any film".

His assignment was the creation of film stills during the production of the film. He used a 5 x 7 Graflex camera throughout production. He masked the back plate of the camera to a 5 x 6 size at the suggestion of Paul Strand, thus producing exposed film which was a little smaller than usual. Because the sun was so intense at the midday period, filming of Redes took place in the early morning and late afternoon. Fred Zinnemann made this filming schedule due to the fact that most of the participants wore large straw hats, characteristic of the culture and area, and these hats created very dark shadows over the actors' facial features. So it was that during this midday time, Ned Scott had the opportunity to make photographic forays into the community of Alvarado to document the town. He also used this time to make character portraits.

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