On Assignment
1931-1962
Published on 8. June 2020
Book
Hardback
672 pages
978-3-95829-506-3 (ISBN)
Description
Drawn from Ed Clark's extensive personal archive of photographs, negatives, contact sheets and scrapbooks, these two volumes reveal the work of a key figure from the golden age of American photojournalism. From the pageantry of politics to the rhythms of small-town life, from movie stars to the working class, Clark covered the defining personalities and events of his age.
Ed Clark is one of the twentieth century's most fascinating and important "unknown" photographers. A gifted photojournalist, Clark began his career in 1929 with The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville, and went on to work for 22 years for Life magazine. He photographed many of Life's most important assignments during the period of the magazine's greatest cultural impact; Clark's images helped shape a nation's sense of itself and the world. His vast range of subjects includes the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the conflict over civil rights in the late 1940s and early '50s, Hollywood stars and the movie industry of the '50s, the people and arts of the Soviet Union, and the White House during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. Through Clark's eyes, we witness some of the central episodes and themes of the post-war world.
Co-published with the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation
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Author
Born in 1911 in Nashville, Tennessee, Ed Clark was a quintessential and prolific American photojournalist. Clark began assisting staff photographers at the daily Nashville Tennessean in 1929, and worked for the paper until 1942. He was hired as a stringer for Life in 1936, the publication's inaugural year, and began his long tenure as a full-time Life staff photographer in 1942. In his work for Life over the next 20 years, Clark held posts in Nashville, Paris, Moscow, London, Hollywood and Washington, D.C. He received a wide range of assignments, from political figures and events, to Hollywood's celebrities, to charming human interest stories. Working in both the United States and Europe, Clark covered some of the most important subjects of his time, including the postwar rebuilding of Germany and France and the desegregation of schools in Arkansas. In 1962 he was forced to leave Life due to failing eyesight, yet in 1980 advances in ocular surgery restored Clark's vision and he returned to making photographs in later years. He died in 2000 at the age of 88. Today Clark's archive is held by the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation in Pleasantville, New York.
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