Visual art
Jerry Uelsmann
1934–2022 · photographer
Detroit-born master of the darkroom whose seamless, dreamlike photomontages made him one of the most original American photographers of his era.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Gainesville, Florida
aged 87- Birth name
- Jerry Norman Uelsmann
- Detroit years
- 1934–1950s
- Field
- Visual art
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Uelsmann grew up in Detroit, the son of a grocer and a homemaker who encouraged his creativity. As a boy of twelve he saw a Van Gogh self-portrait at the Detroit Institute of Arts, a memory that came flooding back years later in an art history class and helped push him toward art. He studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology and then at Indiana University, and in 1960 began teaching at the University of Florida, where he remained for decades. Working entirely in the darkroom with several enlargers, he combined negatives into single, seamless prints of floating trees, houses in the sky and figures dissolving into landscapes, years before digital editing. He called his method post-visualization, in contrast to the pre-planned approach of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lucie Award, and his work is in major collections, including the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Highlights
- Saw a Van Gogh self-portrait at the DIA at age 12, an early spark
- Pioneer of multi-negative darkroom photomontage
- Coined the term post-visualization
- Guggenheim Fellowship; work in the Detroit Institute of Arts
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Related place · 1946
Detroit Institute of Arts (Friday Night Live!)
Where he saw the Van Gogh self-portrait that stayed with him; the museum holds his work.