Noted portrait photographer, Arnold Newman, died of heart failure in New York on 6 June at the age of 88.

 

June 13, 2006: Noted portrait photographer, Arnold Newman, died of heart failure in New York on 6 June at the age of 88.
In his long and successful life, Newman photographed some of the world’s most eminent people and ø¢â‚¬Å“set a standard for artistic interpretation and stylistic integrity in the postwar age of picture magazinesø¢â‚¬ , according to an obituary in the New York Times. Newman began his career by making 49-cent studio portraits in Philadelphia but went on to work for magazines like Life and Look, producing many memorable cover shots. His work has also appeared in museum and gallery exhibitions and ø¢â‚¬Å“coffee-tableø¢â‚¬ books.
Newman has been credited with popularising a style of photography known as ø¢â‚¬Å“environmental portraitureø¢â‚¬ , which involved capturing his subjects in their surroundings and using visual elements to evoke professions and personalities. A celebrated image is the1946 portrait of composer, Igor Stravinsky, almost dwarfed by the raised lid of a grand piano, which forms the reversed shape of an abstract musical note. In 1941 he embarked on a series of cut-out collages, creating Cubist effects by combining fragments of prints to form disjointed images. He returned to this technique in the 1960s for portraits of Andy Warhol, the artist Dan Flavin and the writer Henry Miller. Other prominent subjects who faced his camera were the artists, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, and Piet Mondrian. Most are pictured with examples of their work.
Despite his many assignments for Life, Newman never joined its staff, preferring to work as a freelancer. Newman taught photography at Cooper Union for many years, and was voted one of the world’s 10 best photographers in a poll published by Popular Photography magazine. Books devoted to his work include “One Mind’s Eye,” a collection of his finest portraits published in 1974, “Bravo Stravinksy” (1967), “Artists: Portraits From Four Decades” (1980) and “Arnold Newman’s Americans” (1992). He married Augusta Rubenstein in 1949 and the couple had two sons, Eric and David. All survive Newman, along with four grandchildren.