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Philip Trager

January 01, 1970

Philip Trager (born 1935) is an American art photographer, known principally for his photographs of architecture and of modern dance.[1] As of 2015, 11 monographs of his photography have been published by houses such as New York Graphic Society; Little, Brown; Wesleyan University Press; and Steidl.

The transfer of Trager's archive of photographic prints, negatives, and marked proofs to the Library of Congress began in 2006. As C. Ford Peatross — founding director and curator for the Library of Congress's Center for Architecture, Design and Engineering — remarked: "[Trager's] careful eye, his sensitivity to the slightest nuances of light and atmosphere and his finely honed understanding of structure have allowed him to capture—and us to see anew—subjects ranging from the gritty vernacular of American cities to the works of Palladio and the monuments of Paris, from the clouds framing and defining landscapes to frozen moments in the drama of the dance."[2] Once the transfer of Trager's work is complete, “this exceptional trove of artistic images will be available to scholars, photographers, and the public for generations to come.”[3]

Biography edit

Trager was born in 1935 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he attended high school. He completed his undergraduate studies in history at Wesleyan University, which conferred an honorary Doctor of Arts degree on him in 2008.[4] He next attended Columbia University School of Law in New York.[5] He pursued dual careers in law and photography until 1992, when he ceased practicing law and commenced devoting his focus to photography exclusively.[6]

Trager lives in Connecticut, his home for most of his life, with his wife, Ina.[7]

Photography edit

As Library Journal said in 2006, "Trager has spent more than 40 years making photographs that transform our physical world into moments of clarity and brightness unique to the medium."[8] Initially, his images' subjects centered on buildings and their settings, but less from the viewpoint of architect or engineer than from what Peter Schjeldahl has termed "place portraiture."[9]

In 1987, Trager published Villas of Palladio (New York Graphic Society), about which Schjeldahl wrote that, “the place-portraiture of Philip Trager’s Palladian villas [is] . . . as beautiful, it seems to me, as any photographs I have ever seen.”[9] By the time this book was released, however, Trager was already devoting himself to making images of modern dancers in motion. His book Dancers was published in 1992.[10]

Trager does not use stop-action strobes, a photographic device popular with many dance photographers; instead, his images of dancers such as Mark Morris, Eiko & Koma, David Parsons, and Bill T. Jones (among many others), show them soaring through space or sagging heavily to the ground.[11] Trager made almost all of these dance images outdoors in natural light. In the LA Times, Donna Perlmutter said that, "this collection of startling black-and-white museum pieces, using lush alfresco settings. . . besieges the eye with its bold sense of mystery, contradiction and surprise."[12] Returning to architecture in the mid-1990s, Trager began work on a collection of photographs of the built environment bordering the Seine in Paris.[10]

From the start, Trager has used large-format view cameras (particularly 4 x 5 and 5 x 7, occasionally 11 x 14) for his images of architecture.[13] During a 2005 interview with Stephanie Wiles, then director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, Trager said, “I happen to be a Type-A personality and quick by nature, and with the view camera somehow you have to slow down. The dance photographs, of course, were totally different.”[6]

To communicate his vision fully and accurately, Trager personally prints all his gelatin silver prints, and relies on a master photographic-printmaker for the palladium and platinum prints often seen in exhibitions.[14] As Jeremy Adamson, chief of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, wrote: “[Trager’s] keen eye for expressive form and shape, his emotional sensitivity to the effects of light and atmosphere, his intellectual appreciation of the dynamics of structures, both architectural and human, and his command of the temporal moment have resulted in extraordinarily evocative compositions.”[3]

Monographs edit

Although Trager's photographs have been reproduced in many publications dealing with the art of photography, architecture, and dance, he is best known for the meticulously prepared and produced monographs of his black-and-white photographs. Many of his early architectural images were collected in two such monographs: Photographs of Architecture (1977) and Philip Trager: New York (1988), and in the introduction to the latter art historian Samuel M. Green II situated Trager's visual acuity, saying, “the success of these photographs…derives from the penetration of [Trager’s] vision, his ability to state the quintessential.”[15]

His next publication, The Villas of Palladio (1987), was widely and favorably reviewed. For example, in Progressive Architecture, John DiGregorio wrote: “With this volume Trager has done something extraordinary—he has managed to transcend the boundary between the use of the photographic image as visual documentation and its use as a vehicle for artistic expression.”[16]

Changing Paris: A Tour along the Seine (2000), Trager's eighth monograph, was the last to be published by a United States-based publisher. The German publisher Steidl released Faces in 2005 and Philip Trager, the catalogue to a major traveling retrospective exhibition of his work, the following year. The same house is publishing New York in the 1970s (2015), which draws on negatives recently rediscovered by the photographer.[17] In 2016, Steidl will release Photographing Ina.

Bibliography of monographs edit

  • Photographing Ina. Foreword by Andrew Szegedy-Maszak. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, [forthcoming 2016].
  • New York in the 1970s. Foreword by Stephen C. Pinson. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2015.
  • Philip Trager [retrospective]. Essays by Barbara L. Michaels, Norton Owen, Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, and John Wood; interview by Stephanie Wiles. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2006.
  • Faces. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2005.
  • Changing Paris: A Tour along the Seine. Architectural commentary by Thomas Mellins; foreword by Pierre Borhan; introduction by Diane Johnson. Santa Fe, NM: Arena Editions, 2000.
  • Persephone. Poems by Eavan Boland and Rita Dove; text by Ralph Lemon and Andrew Szegedy-Maszak. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, with New England Foundation for the Arts, 1996.
  • Dancers. Foreword by Bill T. Jones; essays by Joan Acocella and David Freedberg; afterword by Mark Morris. Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1992.
  • The Villas of Palladio. Text by Vincent Scully; foreword by Renato Cevese; introduction by Michael Graves. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1986.
  • Wesleyan Photographs. Foreword by Paul Horgan; text by Vincent Scully, Eve Blau, and Samuel M. Green II. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982.
  • Philip Trager: New York. Foreword by Louis Auchincloss. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1980.
  • Photographs of Architecture. Introduction by Samuel M. Green II. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1977.
  • Echoes of Silence. Danbury, CT: Scroll Press, 1972.

Museum and library collections edit

The definitive collection of Trager's photographs is owned by the Library of Congress, Washington, DC). A partial list of other North American collections with holdings of his photographs include:

  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH)
  • The Art Gallery, University of Maryland (Baltimore)
  • Baltimore Museum of Art
  • Birmingham Museum of Art
  • Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montréal, Québec)
  • Center for Creative Photography (Tucson, AZ)
  • Contemporary Art Galleries, University of Connecticut (Storrs)
  • Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT)
  • George Eastman House International Museum of Photography (Rochester, NY)
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
  • Museum of the City of New York
  • Museum of Modern Art (New York)
  • National Building Museum (Washington, DC)
  • National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collection (Washington D.C.)
  • National Museum of American History (Smithsonian Institution; Washington, DC)
  • New York Public Library
  • Philadelphia Museum of Art
  • Phillips Collection (Washington, DC)
  • Smith College Museum of Art (Northampton, MA)
  • Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT)

In Europe, Trager's photographs are in the collections of:

  • Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris)
  • Galeries Fnac (Paris)
  • Musée Carnavalet (Paris)
  • Musée de l’Elysée Lausanne (Switzerland)

References edit

  1. ^ "Philip Trager, Architectural Photographer". Library of Congress Webcasts. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  2. ^ "Library of Congress is Repository for Photographs by Philip Trager, Now Featured in National Building Museum Exhibition," in "News from the Library of Congress," July 16, 2009. https://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2009/09-141.html
  3. ^ a b Jeremy Adamson (2009). "Foreword". Philip Trager. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl. p. 7. ISBN 978-3865212399.
  4. ^ Olivia Drake, "2008 Honorary Degree Recipients Announced," in "news@Wesleyan," April 4, 2008. https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2008/04/04/0408honorarydegrees-htm/
  5. ^ "Philip Trager talk to Columbia University Club of Washington, DC, National Building Museum, 10/18/2009". Vimeo. Columbia University Club of Washington, DC. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  6. ^ a b Philip Trager. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl. 2009. p. 25. ISBN 978-3865212399.
  7. ^ . WSHU Public Radio. WSHU. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  8. ^ [Debora Miller, “Philip Trager” [review]. Library Journal, December 2006, p. 121.]
  9. ^ a b [Peter Schjeldahl], “The Instant Age,” in Legacy of Light, ed. Constance Sullivan. New York: Knopf, 1987, p. 13.]
  10. ^ a b "Form and Movement: Photographs by Philip Trager". National Building Museum. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  11. ^ Trager, Philip (1992). Dancers. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0821218945.
  12. ^ Donna Perlmutter, "Nonfiction," LA Times, October 18, 1992. http://articles.latimes.com/1992-10-18/books/bk-669_1_philip-trager
  13. ^ Philip Trager. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl. 2009. pp. 25, 28. ISBN 978-3865212399.
  14. ^ "Popular Photographic Print Processes: Platinum and Palladium Prints". Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress. August 30, 2011. Retrieved January 24, 2016.
  15. ^ [Quoted in “Light and Line: Lawyer Makes His Mark as Art Photographer.” ABA Journal 70 (November 1984), p. 37.]
  16. ^ [John DiGregorio, “The Villas of Palladio” [review]. Progressive Architecture 68 (August 1987), p. 115.]
  17. ^ "New York in the 1970s". Steidl. Retrieved 17 November 2015.

External links edit

  • Official website  

January 01, 1970
philip, trager, born, 1935, american, photographer, known, principally, photographs, architecture, modern, dance, 2015, monographs, photography, have, been, published, houses, such, york, graphic, society, little, brown, wesleyan, university, press, steidl, tr. Philip Trager born 1935 is an American art photographer known principally for his photographs of architecture and of modern dance 1 As of 2015 11 monographs of his photography have been published by houses such as New York Graphic Society Little Brown Wesleyan University Press and Steidl The transfer of Trager s archive of photographic prints negatives and marked proofs to the Library of Congress began in 2006 As C Ford Peatross founding director and curator for the Library of Congress s Center for Architecture Design and Engineering remarked Trager s careful eye his sensitivity to the slightest nuances of light and atmosphere and his finely honed understanding of structure have allowed him to capture and us to see anew subjects ranging from the gritty vernacular of American cities to the works of Palladio and the monuments of Paris from the clouds framing and defining landscapes to frozen moments in the drama of the dance 2 Once the transfer of Trager s work is complete this exceptional trove of artistic images will be available to scholars photographers and the public for generations to come 3 Contents 1 Biography 2 Photography 3 Monographs 4 Bibliography of monographs 5 Museum and library collections 6 References 7 External linksBiography editTrager was born in 1935 in Bridgeport Connecticut where he attended high school He completed his undergraduate studies in history at Wesleyan University which conferred an honorary Doctor of Arts degree on him in 2008 4 He next attended Columbia University School of Law in New York 5 He pursued dual careers in law and photography until 1992 when he ceased practicing law and commenced devoting his focus to photography exclusively 6 Trager lives in Connecticut his home for most of his life with his wife Ina 7 Photography editAs Library Journal said in 2006 Trager has spent more than 40 years making photographs that transform our physical world into moments of clarity and brightness unique to the medium 8 Initially his images subjects centered on buildings and their settings but less from the viewpoint of architect or engineer than from what Peter Schjeldahl has termed place portraiture 9 In 1987 Trager published Villas of Palladio New York Graphic Society about which Schjeldahl wrote that the place portraiture of Philip Trager s Palladian villas is as beautiful it seems to me as any photographs I have ever seen 9 By the time this book was released however Trager was already devoting himself to making images of modern dancers in motion His book Dancers was published in 1992 10 Trager does not use stop action strobes a photographic device popular with many dance photographers instead his images of dancers such as Mark Morris Eiko amp Koma David Parsons and Bill T Jones among many others show them soaring through space or sagging heavily to the ground 11 Trager made almost all of these dance images outdoors in natural light In the LA Times Donna Perlmutter said that this collection of startling black and white museum pieces using lush alfresco settings besieges the eye with its bold sense of mystery contradiction and surprise 12 Returning to architecture in the mid 1990s Trager began work on a collection of photographs of the built environment bordering the Seine in Paris 10 From the start Trager has used large format view cameras particularly 4 x 5 and 5 x 7 occasionally 11 x 14 for his images of architecture 13 During a 2005 interview with Stephanie Wiles then director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College Trager said I happen to be a Type A personality and quick by nature and with the view camera somehow you have to slow down The dance photographs of course were totally different 6 To communicate his vision fully and accurately Trager personally prints all his gelatin silver prints and relies on a master photographic printmaker for the palladium and platinum prints often seen in exhibitions 14 As Jeremy Adamson chief of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress wrote Trager s keen eye for expressive form and shape his emotional sensitivity to the effects of light and atmosphere his intellectual appreciation of the dynamics of structures both architectural and human and his command of the temporal moment have resulted in extraordinarily evocative compositions 3 Monographs editAlthough Trager s photographs have been reproduced in many publications dealing with the art of photography architecture and dance he is best known for the meticulously prepared and produced monographs of his black and white photographs Many of his early architectural images were collected in two such monographs Photographs of Architecture 1977 and Philip Trager New York 1988 and in the introduction to the latter art historian Samuel M Green II situated Trager s visual acuity saying the success of these photographs derives from the penetration of Trager s vision his ability to state the quintessential 15 His next publication The Villas of Palladio 1987 was widely and favorably reviewed For example in Progressive Architecture John DiGregorio wrote With this volume Trager has done something extraordinary he has managed to transcend the boundary between the use of the photographic image as visual documentation and its use as a vehicle for artistic expression 16 Changing Paris A Tour along the Seine 2000 Trager s eighth monograph was the last to be published by a United States based publisher The German publisher Steidl released Faces in 2005 and Philip Trager the catalogue to a major traveling retrospective exhibition of his work the following year The same house is publishing New York in the 1970s 2015 which draws on negatives recently rediscovered by the photographer 17 In 2016 Steidl will release Photographing Ina Bibliography of monographs editPhotographing Ina Foreword by Andrew Szegedy Maszak Gottingen Germany Steidl forthcoming 2016 New York in the 1970s Foreword by Stephen C Pinson Gottingen Germany Steidl 2015 Philip Trager retrospective Essays by Barbara L Michaels Norton Owen Andrew Szegedy Maszak and John Wood interview by Stephanie Wiles Gottingen Germany Steidl 2006 Faces Gottingen Germany Steidl 2005 Changing Paris A Tour along the Seine Architectural commentary by Thomas Mellins foreword by Pierre Borhan introduction by Diane Johnson Santa Fe NM Arena Editions 2000 Persephone Poems by Eavan Boland and Rita Dove text by Ralph Lemon and Andrew Szegedy Maszak Middletown CT Wesleyan University Press with New England Foundation for the Arts 1996 Dancers Foreword by Bill T Jones essays by Joan Acocella and David Freedberg afterword by Mark Morris Boston Bulfinch Press 1992 The Villas of Palladio Text by Vincent Scully foreword by Renato Cevese introduction by Michael Graves Boston New York Graphic Society 1986 Wesleyan Photographs Foreword by Paul Horgan text by Vincent Scully Eve Blau and Samuel M Green II Middletown CT Wesleyan University Press 1982 Philip Trager New York Foreword by Louis Auchincloss Middletown CT Wesleyan University Press 1980 Photographs of Architecture Introduction by Samuel M Green II Middletown CT Wesleyan University Press 1977 Echoes of Silence Danbury CT Scroll Press 1972 Museum and library collections editThe definitive collection of Trager s photographs is owned by the Library of Congress Washington DC A partial list of other North American collections with holdings of his photographs include Allen Memorial Art Museum Oberlin College Oberlin OH The Art Gallery University of Maryland Baltimore Baltimore Museum of Art Birmingham Museum of Art Canadian Centre for Architecture Montreal Quebec Center for Creative Photography Tucson AZ Contemporary Art Galleries University of Connecticut Storrs Davison Art Center Wesleyan University Middletown CT George Eastman House International Museum of Photography Rochester NY Metropolitan Museum of Art New York Museum of the City of New York Museum of Modern Art New York National Building Museum Washington DC National Gallery of Art Corcoran Collection Washington D C National Museum of American History Smithsonian Institution Washington DC New York Public Library Philadelphia Museum of Art Phillips Collection Washington DC Smith College Museum of Art Northampton MA Yale University Art Gallery New Haven CT In Europe Trager s photographs are in the collections of Bibliotheque Nationale Paris Galeries Fnac Paris Musee Carnavalet Paris Musee de l Elysee Lausanne Switzerland References edit Philip Trager Architectural Photographer Library of Congress Webcasts Retrieved 17 November 2015 Library of Congress is Repository for Photographs by Philip Trager Now Featured in National Building Museum Exhibition in News from the Library of Congress July 16 2009 https www loc gov today pr 2009 09 141 html a b Jeremy Adamson 2009 Foreword Philip Trager Gottingen Germany Steidl p 7 ISBN 978 3865212399 Olivia Drake 2008 Honorary Degree Recipients Announced in news Wesleyan April 4 2008 https newsletter blogs wesleyan edu 2008 04 04 0408honorarydegrees htm Philip Trager talk to Columbia University Club of Washington DC National Building Museum 10 18 2009 Vimeo Columbia University Club of Washington DC Retrieved 17 November 2015 a b Philip Trager Gottingen Germany Steidl 2009 p 25 ISBN 978 3865212399 Photographer Philip Trager on making photographs of Connecticut architecture WSHU Public Radio WSHU Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 Retrieved 17 November 2015 Debora Miller Philip Trager review Library Journal December 2006 p 121 a b Peter Schjeldahl The Instant Age in Legacy of Light ed Constance Sullivan New York Knopf 1987 p 13 a b Form and Movement Photographs by Philip Trager National Building Museum Retrieved 17 November 2015 Trager Philip 1992 Dancers Boston Little Brown and Company ISBN 978 0821218945 Donna Perlmutter Nonfiction LA Times October 18 1992 http articles latimes com 1992 10 18 books bk 669 1 philip trager Philip Trager Gottingen Germany Steidl 2009 pp 25 28 ISBN 978 3865212399 Popular Photographic Print Processes Platinum and Palladium Prints Prints and Photographs Reading Room Library of Congress August 30 2011 Retrieved January 24 2016 Quoted in Light and Line Lawyer Makes His Mark as Art Photographer ABA Journal 70 November 1984 p 37 John DiGregorio The Villas of Palladio review Progressive Architecture 68 August 1987 p 115 New York in the 1970s Steidl Retrieved 17 November 2015 External links editOfficial website nbsp Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Philip Trager amp oldid 1194529963, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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