Paul Outerbridge

If ever there were an artist in need of a good biographer, it's the photographer Paul Outerbridge.  A perfectionist who excelled in the creation of black & white platinum prints, he was also a pioneer in the evolution of color photography.  Prior to the advent of Kodachrome, Outerbridge's remarkable Carbro-color prints provided the most accurate and practical means of color representation then possible.  But it was hardly a simple process.  As Elaine Dines-Cox has written in this volume, one of the few monographs of his work to have been published:

"Several laborious hours of concentrated effort and financial investment went into making a single Carbro-color print.  It is unique among photographic processes because the pigments used are the same as in oil paint.  Not only are the pigments unusually permanent, but the exhibit an extra-dimensional quality, the shadows perceptibly deeper in their glossy appearance and the highlights finely graded in their matte surface."

Outerbridge was not only a consummate craftsman, however, but an important modern artist as well.  In 1921, he enrolled at Clarence White's photography school in New York where he was taught by Max Weber.  The influence of the latter was most apparent in his "consideration of two-dimensional Cubist abstract theory in relation to photographing three-dimensional objects."  This proved inspirational to the young Outerbridge who thereafter ingeniously incorporated Cubist design in his early black & white photography through the use of form, pattern and shadow.  His success can clearly be seen in such works as Saltine Box and Ide Collar (both from 1922).  

In 1925, Outerbridge traveled to Paris where he met Man Ray and Berenice Abbott who in turn introduced him to such luminaries as Duchamp, Picasso, Picabia and Brâncusi.  Following his divorce from wife Paula, he relocated to Berlin in 1928 where he studied cinema with the director G.W. Pabst, who was at this time working on his most famous film, Pandora's Box.

Aside from his work in fine arts, Outerbridge was also a highly successful commercial photographer, especially after his return to America in 1929, and his work was regularly published in many prominent periodicals, including Vogue and Vanity Fair. 

Given the quality and importance of Outerbridge's work, one might wonder why he is not better known today.  The answer to this may lie at least partly in the reception given the highly erotic body of work he created in the 1930's and 1940's.  While Outerbridge had often photographed classical black & white nudes in his earlier years, the later work was much more sexualized and often crossed the border into fetish.  The fact that these were shot in color added to their graphic nature and made them that much more disturbing to conservative American viewers.  If the photos had been published in Europe, they might not have elicited such heated response.  In America, on the contrary, the introduction of such themes could well have ended a photographer's career and consigned his reputation to oblivion. 

Paul Outerbridge is a valuable book if only because there are so few devoted to the photographer and his oeuvre.  It opens with a intriguing 1931 essay by Condé Nast art director M.F. Agha that introduces us to the artist at the height of his fame.  This is followed by an all too short biographical essay by Elaine Dines-Cox that never reveals anything of the inner man and leaves the reader wishing for much more information and insight than is here provided.  One invaluable addition to the book for anyone still practicing traditional photography is Outerbridge's own detailed instructions for using the Carbro process.  As for the reproductions, there is a wide selection representing all phases of the photographer's career.  They are of excellent quality though they can, of course, only approximate the tonal values of Outerbridge's original prints.