About the work

ERNST HAAS: NEW YORK
opens October 19, and the exhibition continues through November 26, 2000

SoHo Triad Fine Arts, New York, 107 Grand Street, is pleased to announce an exhibition of photographs by Ernst Haas, acclaimed as one of the most celebrated and influential photographers of the Twentieth Century.

The exhibition features Haas' unique views of New York City, in both color and black and white photographs. Numerous photographs in the exhibition have never-before been exhibited.

Ernst Haas was born in Vienna, Austria in 1921. He attended medical school, but his strong artistic bent led him to the camera. In 1947, he held his first exhibition in Vienna. Only two years later, following the publication of his photographs of returning Austrian prisoners-of-war, he was invited to join the international photographers' cooperative, the Magnum Agency.

Haas moved to the United States in 1951, and for the next 30 years he traveled extensively, photographing for a wide variety of publications including LIFE, Vogue, Look, Der Stern, and Geo. In addition, he became increasingly well-known for his movie set photographs documenting the making of such films as The Third Man, The Misfits, West Side Story, Land of the Pharaohs, Little Big Man, and The Quest for Fire. Haas' work with film extended to a four-part series aired on WNET-TV in 1962. His keen eye and artistry also contributed to visually groundbreaking advertising campaigns, including those for Marlboro and Volkswagen.

Over the course of his career, Haas spent an increasing amount of time on his own projects. He was the author of four major photographic texts, The Creation (1971), In America (1975), In Germany (1976), and Himalayan Pilgrimage (1978). In addition, Haas contributed to many books, foremost among them the Time-Life series (The Grand Canyon and Cactus Country for their Wilderness series and Venice for their Great Cities series.)

During his lifetime, Haas' photography was the subject of numerous American and European exhibitions. Some of those institutions, which presented his work, were the Photokina (Cologne), Photomuseum (Munich), Museum des 20 Jahrhunderts (Vienna), La Fotogaleria (Madrid), and in New York, Asia House, the International Center of Photography the IBM Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art. At the Museum of Modern Art, Haas' work was the subject of their first exhibition devoted solely to the color photography of a single artist (Ernst Haas/Color Photography, 1962).

Since his death in 1986, Haas has continued to be the subject of museum exhibitions and publications. The most recent books on his photography are Ernst Haas Color Photography (1989) and Ernst Haas in Black and White (1992). Major museum exhibitions accompanied both of these publications.