Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Search - List of Books by Nancy Newhall

Nancy Wynne Newhall (May 9, 1908—July 7, 1974) was an American photography critic. She is best known for writing the text to accompany photographs by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, but was also a widely published writer on photography, conservation, and American culture.

Newhall was born Nancy Wynne in Lynn, Massachusetts, and attended Smith College in that state. She married Beaumont Newhall, the curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and substituted for him in that role during his military service in World War II. During the 1940s she wrote essays on popular art and culture for small magazines and journals, in which she called for a society more attuned to art, and particularly to visual art. She was always more interested in a popular audience than an academic one; in a 1940 essay, she explores the possibilities of the new medium of television for popularizing the visual arts, suggesting techniques for teaching art and photography on camera:
. . . the cameras should approach an object as an actual spectator does, and, like him, be influenced by empathy. Long shots become closeups, the flow of compositional directions, and, with due care for the results on the screen, studies of detail and texture under dramatic lighting, are all ways of lending motion to motionless things. ("Television" 38)
In another, she argues for the centrality of photography for understanding and teaching American history ("Research"). She became close to photographer Edward Weston during this period, championing his early work and regarding his controversial 1940s work, which juxtaposed still lifes and nudes of considerable beauty and delicacy with wartime items such as gas masks, with some anxiety (Sternberger 56).

In 1945, Newhall wrote the text for a book of photographs, Time in New England, by Paul Strand. The work would begin a new phase for her career, in which she became a vocal proponent and a central pioneer of the genre of oversized photography collections. The best known and most influential of these is This Is the American Earth, a collaboration with Ansel Adams, published in 1960. Like Adams, Newhall was involved with the Sierra Club, and wrote often about issues of conservation. She was sometimes accused of political heavy-handedness on that subject...one uncharitable review of American Earth calls her prose "so full of Message that there is no room for poetry" (Deevey)...but her explication of the political context and motivation of Adams' work has been important for the Sierra Club and the conservation movement in general.

Major Books   more

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Nancy Newhall", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
Total Books: 16
Edward Weston's Book of Nudes
2007 - Edward Weston's Book of Nudes (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9780892369034
ISBN-10: 0892369035
Genre: Arts & Photography
  ?

This is the American Earth
1999 - This Is the American Earth (Paperback)Paperback, Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780821222744
ISBN-10: 0821222740
  ?

From Adams to Stieglitz Pioneers of Modern Photography
1998 - From Adams to Stieglitz Pioneers of Modern Photography [Aperture Writers & Artists on Photography] (Hardcover)Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780893813727
ISBN-10: 0893813729
Genre: Arts & Photography
  ?

From Adams to Stieglitz Pioneers of Modern Photography
1998 - From Adams to Stieglitz Pioneers of Modern Photography [Aperture Writers & Artists on Photography] (Paperback)Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780893813734
ISBN-10: 0893813737
Genre: Arts & Photography
  ?

This Is the American Earth
1995 - This Is the American Earth (Hardcover)Paperback, Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780821221822
ISBN-10: 0821221825
Genres: Arts & Photography, Travel, Science & Math, Outdoors & Nature
  ?

Masters of Photography
1982 - Masters of Photography (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780891040101
ISBN-10: 0891040102
Genre: Arts & Photography
  ?

Edward Weston
1971 - Edward Weston (Paperback)Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780670289882
ISBN-10: 0670289884
  ?

Ansel Adams the Eloquent Light
Ansel Adams the Eloquent Light (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9780893810665
ISBN-10: 0893810665
Genres: Arts & Photography, Biographies & Memoirs
  ?

PH Emerson The Fight for Photography As a Fine Art
P H Emerson The Fight for Photography as a Fine Art
P H Emerson the Fight for Photography As a Fine Art (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780912334592
ISBN-10: 0912334592
  ?

The Tetons and the Yellowstone
The Tetons and the Yellowstone (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780913832066
ISBN-10: 0913832065
  ?

Edward Weston Color Photography
Edward Weston Color Photography (Hardcover)Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780938262145
ISBN-10: 0938262149
Genre: Arts & Photography
  ?

Alvin Langdon Coburn Photographs 19001924
Alvin Langdon Coburn Photographs 19001924 (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9783908161332
ISBN-10: 3908161339
Genre: Arts & Photography
  ?