NEWMAN, ARNOLD

born March 3, 1918, New York, N.Y., U.S. in full Arnold Abner Newman American photographer who specialized in portraits of well-known people posed in settings associated with their work. This approach, known as environmental portraiture, greatly influenced portrait photography in the 20th century. Newman studied art at the the University of Miami, Fla., in 193638 and then took a job as an assistant in the photography studio of a Miami department store. He had become the manager of a portrait studio by 1939, and in 1941 he had his first major exhibition, a joint show (with his old friend and mentor Ben Rose) in New York City. In the early 1940s, during his visits to New York City, Newman began making portraits of well-known painters and other artists, usually posing them in their own studios. From 1946 he ran his own photography studio in New York City, and he gradually broadened his subject matter to include famous people of all types, including writers, composers, political leaders, scientists, and business magnates. Among his best-known portraits are those of Max Ernst, Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keefe, Igor Stravinsky, Alfried Krupp, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Cocteau. The 76 photographic portraits of eminent Britons that Newman made for the National Portrait Gallery in London were published in the book The Great British (1979). Many other portraits are collected in the books One Mind's Eye (1974), Faces USA (1978), Artists: Portraits from Four Decades (1980), Arnold Newman: Five Decades (1986), and Arnold Newman's Americans (1992).