Nov 4, 2005
MODERN MAN CARNEGIE MUSEUM EXHIBITION STAKES A CLAIM FOR LUKE SWANK'S PLACE IN HISTORY
He had "the face of a plumber and the soul of a poet."
This description of Luke Swank was relayed by a relative of the late photographer to Howard Bossen as he was wrapping up his research. Bossen is guest curator of the exhibition "Luke Swank: Modernist Photographer," which opens Saturday at Carnegie Museum of Art, and author of a book by the same title published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
The family member, who identified herself as a cousin, said she'd been photographed as a child by Swank and recalled for Bossen the observation made by her mother.
It was a "telling comment," Bossen said during a phone interview Friday. "It kind of crystallized that you've got this guy who's an amazing intellect and an amazing artist."
Swank, who was born in Johnstown in 1890 and as a young man worked in his family's businesses, achieved a national reputation in a short time after beginning a career in photography relatively late in life.
In 1932, his "Steel Plant" was exhibited by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in "Murals by American Painters and Photographers" alongside works by the likes of Berenice Abbott, Edward Steichen and Charles Sheeler. His work was included eight years later in the inaugural exhibition of MoMA's department of photography. In 1931, he'd been given a solo exhibition by the au courant Julien Levy gallery in New York.
Beaumont Newhall, described by Bossen as one of the eminent historians of photography, chose Swank as his subject for the first issue of U.S. Camera Magazine in 1938.
During World War I, Swank, an Army lieutenant, was assigned to a facility that made "war gasses," where an accident with a poison gas canister resulted in hospitalization and chronically affected his health. His ongoing frailty combined with high blood pressure contributed to a heart attack that resulted in his death in 1944 at age 54.
After his early death, Swank's name, and work, passed into obscurity.
Bossen, a professor of journalism and adjunct curator at the Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, was the Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Center for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University for 2001-02 when he happened upon Swank's photographs in the Carnegie collection. Amazed at the quality of the work and puzzled that he hadn't previously heard of Swank, he proposed a project to Carnegie Museum.
This description of Luke Swank was relayed by a relative of the late photographer to Howard Bossen as he was wrapping up his research. Bossen is guest curator of the exhibition "Luke Swank: Modernist Photographer," which opens Saturday at Carnegie Museum of Art, and author of a book by the same title published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
The family member, who identified herself as a cousin, said she'd been photographed as a child by Swank and recalled for Bossen the observation made by her mother.
It was a "telling comment," Bossen said during a phone interview Friday. "It kind of crystallized that you've got this guy who's an amazing intellect and an amazing artist."
Swank, who was born in Johnstown in 1890 and as a young man worked in his family's businesses, achieved a national reputation in a short time after beginning a career in photography relatively late in life.
In 1932, his "Steel Plant" was exhibited by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in "Murals by American Painters and Photographers" alongside works by the likes of Berenice Abbott, Edward Steichen and Charles Sheeler. His work was included eight years later in the inaugural exhibition of MoMA's department of photography. In 1931, he'd been given a solo exhibition by the au courant Julien Levy gallery in New York.
Beaumont Newhall, described by Bossen as one of the eminent historians of photography, chose Swank as his subject for the first issue of U.S. Camera Magazine in 1938.
During World War I, Swank, an Army lieutenant, was assigned to a facility that made "war gasses," where an accident with a poison gas canister resulted in hospitalization and chronically affected his health. His ongoing frailty combined with high blood pressure contributed to a heart attack that resulted in his death in 1944 at age 54.
After his early death, Swank's name, and work, passed into obscurity.
Bossen, a professor of journalism and adjunct curator at the Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, was the Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Center for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University for 2001-02 when he happened upon Swank's photographs in the Carnegie collection. Amazed at the quality of the work and puzzled that he hadn't previously heard of Swank, he proposed a project to Carnegie Museum.