Arnold Newman 1918-2006
Marilyn Monroe by Arnold Newman
I remember very vividly my very first encounter with American photography: an exhibition of some 10 or 15 great American photographers was brought to Bogotá during the 1980s (the dark 1980s - Bogotá was very much a cultural desert back then) by the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango. Names like Newman, Leibowitz, Avedon go back in my memory to that particular exhibit. I remember in particular the opening iconic photograph: Newman's hyperfamous portrait of Igor Stravinsky - Stravinsky sitting at the bottom left corner, completely taken over by the grand piano, in a diagonal that seems about to swallow the composer. The elegance of the black and white in this photograph, the seeming perfectness of the photograph seem to correspond well to an ideal of classicism that fitted very well Stravinsky's late musical works.
Seeing this photograph, I am immediately taken back (how could I not?) to our days with María Clara as students of Universidad Nacional, rainy days with buses going downtown to catch a glimpse of some exhibit at the then-newly refurbished BLAA, with escapades in search of new food joints (La Bodega Moderna on Calle 13 was perfect for those few days when the campus would close - I first understood why there are no measurables in the presence of V=L while sipping coffee and eating Torta Frolla there - I also read the proof of Banach-Tarski's paradox to present in Xavier's class in that place). Or just to discover the great, ungentrified, rough and beautiful ugly city - el centro de Bogotá. (Bogotanos of our generation and schooling milieu ended up discovering the real city at that age).
My over-classical sensitivity of that time gave special preference to Arnold Newman over photographers such as Annie Leibowitz in the exhibition. Of course, a lot of water has run since then, and I have come to admire many other American Photographers - María Clara, for one, became for a while a Colombian "American Photographer" when we lived in Pittsburgh and made me discover with new eyes Penn Avenue, East Liberty and Bloomfield. Life in Pittsburgh is much more than just CMU and Shadyside! So Newman holds a special place in my heart - his Stravinsky opened my eyes to many wonders.
It was a bit surprising to see this morning the news of Newman's death yesterday in New York.