Ted Castle (photographer)

Ted Castle (1918-2000) was an American photojournalist and member of Magnum agency.

Early career

Ted Castle was born in 1918 in Los Angeles. He wanted to be an artist as a child and was given a Kodak camera at age 12. He graduated from Los Angeles High School (1936) then studied engineering at the University of California (1936–38) and Berkeley (1939) and worked for Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica. During WW2 he served in the Army Tank Corps (1943–44) and the Air Corps (1945) in the Philippines.[1] On return, he was employed as an engineer with Bethlehem Steel but was frustrated by the lack of human interaction in that career, so quit and signed up for a photography course in Santa Barbara at Brooks institute 1946-1948. There he learned photographic processes and aesthetics,[2] and after a year developed the ambition to become a photographer for Life magazine, with the chance to meet people and learn languages.

Castle took his first job related to photography with News Enterprise Associates on the teletype desk, midnight to 8 am, choosing stories for which he commissioned photographs for their illustration. NEA ran Acme Newspictures. He left after encountering the racial prejudice of the organisation in censoring his image of a blind black university student at her graduation.[2]

Photojournalism

In 1948 Castle, having saved $1000, hitchhiked to New York, took a small apartment, and became a member of New York's Photo League.[3] He sought an interview with the director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, Edward Steichen who, on viewing his portfolio told him to go back to engineering. Castle recalled;

I walked out of there and said to myself, 'I'm not ever going to give up until I get some of my pictures into the Museum of Modern Art.'[4]

Castle joined Magnum Photos (1950–51). Steichen remained a mentor[5] and assisted him in obtaining work for the American Friends Service Committee in the 1950s in Austria, Germany, in Ortona, Italy with the Save the Children Fund,[6] and also in Spain. There, he assisted W. Eugene Smith who had preceded him across the Atlantic by plane while Castle went by ship and arrived in early January 1950 at Southampton. In the village of Deleitosa in Extremadura, they worked on Smith's classic Life essay ‘Spanish Village’ over May 5–7 July 1950.[7][8]

Before Castle's departure for Europe Steichen had advised, 'Now don't forget, you get close in on your subject and don't do any cropping when you get back to develop them.'[4] In 1952/3 working out of Paris, he saw Detective Story about officer working with underprivileged and wondered should he go into social service, but decided his photography could serve a humanitarian purpose.[2] Later, his conviction was borne out when he followed Steichen's advice; two of his images from the European work were shown in Steichen's world-touring The Family of Man that was seen by 9 million visitors.[9][10] Both are tightly cropped; a contentedly smiling Austrian mother and daughter embracing, and a pair of gap-toothed German peasant women laughing.[11] In a 1994 interview, he remarked that;

Photojournalism is an art of being able to ‘feel’ an image and then to snap the picture.[12][13][2]

Other subjects include the NBC Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in an appearance without their retired conductor Arturo Toscanini, the Grand Canyon's Havasupai Indians, African drummer and dancers in the Belgian Congo, and for TWA and Pepsi he photographed black goldminers in Johannesberg, emphasising their dignity and strength of personality.

Technique

Though he first used a Rolleiflex, Castle preferred 35mm for speed of use and a more direct vision, and for the camera's size, which enabled him to conceal it when necessary.

Stills photographer

Castle was stills photographer on Hollwood productions Man on a Tightrope (dir. Elia Kazan, 1953) filmed in Bavaria,[14] and Oklahoma! (1955).[15]

Magazine work

Castle's first magazine job was for Fortune, photographing the shipping industry and he freelanced for many, including for Life[16][17][18] and Business Week. His portraits include some celebrity subjects including Eleanore Roosevelt at the United Nations in Long Island, Seretse Khama,[17] violinist Yehudi Menuhin, and editor Geoffrey H. White.

Later career

Moving to Sausalito in later years, he turned to commercial photography, making a picture of the first microchip using an ant to show scale, worked for television in Los Angeles, and photographed accident victims for their lawyers.

Exhibitions

Solo
  • Ted Castle - Nomadic Eye, California Museum of Art, Santa Rosa, 1997

Group

References
  1. Tucker, Anne; Cass, Claire; Daiter, Stephen; Photo League; Stephen Daiter Gallery; John Cleary Gallery (2001), This was the Photo League : compassion and the camera from the Depression to the Cold War, Stephen Daiter Gallery, retrieved 26 October 2019
  2. McGlinchey, Rich (Interviewer) Ted Castle  : award-winning photographer, 1994, Series  Sonoma County in the 90s, directed by Brian Leach, Sonoma County (Calif.). Public Information Office, broadcast  2/3/1994, 00:30:05
  3. Photo League., & Newhall, N. W. (1948). This is the Photo League. New York: The Photo League.
  4. Gretchen Giles, ‘Photographer Ted Castle records the human condition’ Sonoma County Independent, April 10–16, 1997
  5. Steichen, Edward. "Photography: Witness and recorder of humanity." The Wisconsin Magazine of History (1958): 159-167.
  6. U.S. Camera Annual 1954
  7. Hughes, Jim (1989), W. Eugene Smith : shadow & substance : the life and work of an American photographer, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 978-0-07-031123-7
  8. Ortiz-Echagüe, Javier. "Mundo Hispánico versus Life:“Spanish Village” by W. Eugene Smith and the Debate over Spain in Illustrated Magazines (1949-1952)." (2014).
  9. Hurm, Gerd, 1958-, (editor.); Reitz, Anke, (editor.); Zamir, Shamoon, (editor.) (2018), The family of man revisited : photography in a global age, London I.B.Tauris, ISBN 978-1-78672-297-3CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  10. Sandeen, Eric J (1995), Picturing an exhibition : the family of man and 1950s America (1st ed.), University of New Mexico Press, ISBN 978-0-8263-1558-8
  11. Steichen, Edward; Sandburg, Carl; Norman, Dorothy; Lionni, Leo; Mason, Jerry; Stoller, Ezra; Museum of Modern Art (New York) (1955). The family of man: The photographic exhibition. Published for the Museum of Modern Art by Simon and Schuster in collaboration with the Maco Magazine Corporation.
  12. "Ted Castle : award-winning photographer, 1994". digital.sonomalibrary.org. Retrieved 2019-10-26.
  13. Sonoma County (Calif.). Public Information Office (1994-02-03), Ted Castle : award-winning photographer, 1994, retrieved 2019-10-26
  14. LIFE - 11 May 1953 - Page 25, Vol. 34, No. 19
  15. Schweiz, Fotostiftung. "Fotostiftung: photographer". Fotostiftung. Retrieved 2019-10-26.
  16. LIFE - 10 Oct 1960, Vol. 49, No. 15
  17. LIFE - 3 Apr 1950 - Page 19, Vol. 28, No. 14
  18. LIFE - 8 Nov 1954 - Page 21, Vol. 37, No. 19
  19. "Serious Play". Denver Art Museum. Retrieved 2019-10-26.
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