Background
Ernst Haas was born on March 2, 1921 in Vienna, Austria. He was the son of Ernst Haas, a high-level civil servant, and Frederike Haas-Zipser. He had an older brother named Fritz Haas.
(Ernst Haas in Black and White is a revelation - of the sh...)
Ernst Haas in Black and White is a revelation - of the sheer scope and quality of Haas's work in this medium, and of a vision years ahead of its time.
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1992
Ernst Haas was born on March 2, 1921 in Vienna, Austria. He was the son of Ernst Haas, a high-level civil servant, and Frederike Haas-Zipser. He had an older brother named Fritz Haas.
Ernst Haas was raised in the cultural climate of Vienna before World War II. His parents, who placed great value upon education and the arts, encouraged his creative pursuits from an early age. His father enjoyed music and photography, and his mother wrote poetry and aspired to be an artist. As a painter, he had particular interest in an artwork's formal qualities, and developed a refined sense of composition and perspective.
From 1935 to 1938, he attended LEH Grinzing, a private school in Vienna, where he studied art, literature, poetry, philosophy, and science. World War II interrupted his formal education in 1938, when the school was closed following Germany's invasion of Austria. The following year, Haas received his diploma from Rainier Gymnasium.
Ernst Haas was sent to a German army labor camp, working six hours a day in exchange for two daily hours of school attendance. He left the service in 1940 and returned to Vienna to study medicine. He was only able to complete one year of medical school before he was forced out as a result of his Jewish ancestry.
Ernst Haas was uninterested in learning photography as a child. Upon his father's death in 1940, he first entered the darkroom, learning to print old family negatives. His interest grew, and he soon began to take his own photographs.
Though his formal education was complicated by the war, Ernst Haas was an autodidact and worked to learn the medium. In 1941 he attended technical classes and developed an interest in filmmaking. He also took advantage of his family's extensive library, as well as museums and libraries in Vienna. He studied philosophy and poetry, in particular, both of which informed his beliefs about the creative potential for photography.
Unsure of his career path, Ernst Haas realized that photography could provide both a means of support and a vehicle for communicating his ideas. He obtained his first camera in 1946, at the age of 25, trading a 20-pound block of margarine for a Rolleiflex on the Vienna black market.
In 1947 Ernst Haas presented his first exhibition at the American Red Cross in Vienna, where he had a part-time position teaching photography to soldiers. Taking a portfolio of his work to Zurich, he drew the interest of Arnold Kübler, an editor for the magazine du. After reviewing his photographs, Kübler introduced Haas to Swiss photographer Werner Bischof’s images of Berlin after the war. Influenced by Bischof's work, Ernst Haas began to consider how an image could simultaneously tell a story and function as an autonomous work of art. When Haas returned home, he similarly documented the war’s effects in Vienna.
Ernst Haas obtained assignments from magazines like Heute, often working with fellow correspondent Inge Morath. In 1947, while scouting locations for a fashion shoot, Haas and Morath witnessed prisoners of war disembarking a train and began documenting their arrival. The resulting photo essay, "Homecoming," was published in both Heute and Life magazine. Warren Trabant showed Robert Capa, the war photographer, Haas's "Homecoming" photographs before they were published. Upon reviewing his work, Capa invited Ernst Haas to travel to Paris and join the international photographic cooperative Magnum Photos, then two years old.
At the same time, he was offered a staff photographer position at Life. He decided he did not want to be limited by Life’s restrictive scope. After carrying out assignments in Vienna and London, Ernst Haas conceived an extensive project about America. Visas to the United States were difficult to obtain, but in 1950 Robert Capa appointed him Magnum's U.S. Vice President. With this position, he was able to obtain the proper documentation, and he arrived in New York in May of that year. The first images Haas took in the United States showed fellow immigrants arriving at Ellis Island.
While Haas would continue traveling for his work, he lived the rest of his life in New York City. In 1952 Ernst Haas hitchhiked across the United States to White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, planning to photograph Native Americans. His finished photo essay, published by Life as "Land of Enchantment" in a six-page spread, was well received by readers and prompted the magazine to iniate another project.
Once back in New York, he purchased color film to begin a new project. He spent two months photographing New York, and in 1953 Life published his vivid images. Titled "Images of a Magic City," the sprawling 24-page story.
In 1954 Robert Capa, Magnum's first president, was killed while on assignment covering the First Indochina War. That same year, Werner Bischof died in a car accident in the Andes. Following their deaths, Ernst Haas was elected to Magnum's board of directors and traveled to Indochina himself to cover the war.
After the death of David "Chim" Seymour in Suez in 1959, he was named the fourth president of Magnum. He made significant and lasting contributions to the organization as its leader. In 1962 Ernst Haas was invited to write and host The Art of Seeing, a four-hour miniseries for National Public Television, then in its first year. Newsweek magazine praised its success as a television program, for Haas combined seeing with hearing. Throughout the series, he demonstrated what makes a successful photograph, illustrating how images can be transformed by the slightest variations of technique, perspective, or choice of tools and materials.
Ernst Haas also taught frequently at photography workshops, including the Maine Photographic Workshops, the Ansel Adams Workshop in Yosemite National Park, and the Anderson Ranch Arts Center near Aspen, Colorado.
In the early 1970s Ernst Haas became interested in creating audiovisual slideshows - long sequences of projected imagery with accompanying soundtracks, dissolving from one image into the next.
After suffering a stroke in December 1985, Ernst Haas concentrated on layouts for two books he wanted to publish, one featuring his black and white photographs, the other his color. At the time of his death from a stroke on September 12, 1986, he had been preparing to write his autobiography.
(Ernst Haas in Black and White is a revelation - of the sh...)
1992(An introduction to and overview of famed photographer Ern...)
Quotes from others about the person
Wrote critic A.D. Coleman: "Haaswas a lyric poet pursuing a photographic equivalent of gestural drawing, utilizing such photographic effects as softness of focus, selective depth of field, and overexposure to telling effect."
In 1951 Ernst Haas married the Hungarian countess Antoinette Wenckheim. They later divorced, and in 1962 he married Cynthia Buehr Seneque, an American editor. They had two children, Alexander and Victoria.
Gisela Minke, a German-born airline stewardess, was Haas's companion for many years. She encouraged his interest in Tibet, and their travels resulted in the book Himalayan Pilgrimage. Six years before his death, he met Takiko Kawai, who he credited with introducing him to the culture and traditions of Japan.