PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT

Fritz Henle's work goes beyond beauty

By Yvonne Puig
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Thursday, April 02, 2009

The work of German photographer Fritz Henle, on exhibit through Aug. 2 at the Harry Ransom Center, cannot easily be summed up or categorized, but at its center it is indeed pursuant to beauty. To the extent, in fact, that the curators have named the exhibition, "Fritz Henle: In Search of Beauty." And though you will find beautiful photographs here, the label is not strictly reflective of the work.

The Ransom Center exhibition encompasses five decades of Henle's career, from his early magazine work (his first published photograph, of a Munich policeman at the Odeonsplatz, appeared in 1931 in the German periodical Muchner Illustrierte) to his later, stunning color photography in the Virgin Islands. The show also features a display of Henle's cameras as well as clips from his journals, all of which make for a compelling portrait of a busy, inquisitive man.

"Henle championed photography during the period of the rise of the American picture press and the golden age of the popular photographic magazines," said Roy Flukinger, curator and author of the companion book ($55, Ransom Center and the University of Texas Press). "He wrote columns, did picture stories, participated in major art exhibitions, advanced photographic technology, displayed proficiency in both color and black and white, encouraged amateurs and professionals alike, collaborated successfully with contemporaneous editors and designers, networked with fellow artists, photographers, photojournalists, and finally expanded his work onto a world stage during the last decades of his life."

Born in 1909, Henle had his interest in photography piqued by his father's scrapbooking habit. In school, he was ribbed about his "toy" camera, the twin lens Rolleiflex, but Henle went on to become known as "Mr. Rollei," a pioneer of the square negative.

A curious aspect of magazine photography is that it bridges the gap between the art and commerce of the medium. Henle's images record a time when photography was not an instant art and when the market for magazine work was thriving. His pictures resist dubious grouping because, although Henle was often shooting for an intended audience (the periodical reader), there's a joy, stillness and range in his shots that show he was not simply performing a task. This was a man who loved to take pictures.

"Consider our current period of history in which many newspapers and magazines are going under," says Flukinger. "Fewer photographic jobs are out there, and many more photographers are losing their positions. Fritz Henle remained an independent photographer throughout nearly all his career, making his way and creating his art, through the combined talents of creativity, hustle, planning, organization and sheer will."

A few standouts in the exhibition (reprinted gorgeously in the book): The figure of a woman wearing all black, seen from above, carrying a black umbrella, Siena, Italy, 1931. The blissful, coiffed graduates of Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio, running down a hill, 1938. The white sails of a yacht cast against a black sky, 1955. This is beauty sought and captured not for aesthetics' sake, but for the deeper complexity of it - beauty in simplicity, beauty in solitude, beauty in humanity.

"Beauty lay at the heart of Henle's photographic quest," says Flukinger, "but he felt that this goal was universal regardless of the nature of any particular photographic assignment or final application of each of his bodies of work."

There is little suffering in Henle's work, which shares similarities with the work of French photographer Jacques Henri-Lartigue. Henle shares a thirst for life with Lartigue, but unlike Lartigue, Henle had to make a living, so his work occasionally lacks the spontaneity of his French counterpart. Perhaps because of this, it often has more documentary power. Henle's shots of oil refineries and pipelines are some of his best.

The show is structured chronologically, with enlarged prints - each about 4 feet in width - included throughout. "The enlargements used in the show are there in part because Fritz was one of the first photographers to use such very big enlargements in his exhibitions, going all the way back to his first one-man show in 1936," says Flukinger, "and in part because they represent various turning points in both his practical career and in his creative life." This element doesn't work as well with abstract photographs. An enlarged image of New York City at night, a series outwardly spinning circles of light, is muddled by the enlargement.

Both vintage and modern prints hang in the exhibition, the modern prints completed by a printer schooled by Henle himself. It's interesting to note the differences between the two. Where the vintage prints are rich, the modern prints can be stark, not necessarily to their advantage. The most expressive photographs of the show are the portraits, which come at the end.

Henle, who died in 1993, succeeds in capturing the intricacy of human emotion - the beauty, yes, but also the feeling and torment - in his subjects. A 1961 close-up of Harry Truman is worth several quiet moments of observation. More arresting is Henle's 1982 color portrait of Pablo Casals in his music room. The musician is practicing, the face of his cello in deep shadow. Only the side of the instrument, its sinuous line, is illuminated. Between darkness and light, one can almost hear the music.

'Fritz Henle: In Search of Beauty'

Where: Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas campus, 21st and Guadalupe streets.

When: Through Aug. 2. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays; noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays

Cost: Free

Information: 471-8944 , www.hrc.utexas.edu