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Wednesday, Oct 15, 2008
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Past Out by Liz Highleyman |
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| Who was Ruth Bernhard? | |
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by Liz Highleyman -
SGN Contributing Writer Though she did not publicly self-identify as Lesbian or Bisexual, photographer Ruth Bernhard - renowned for her abstract still-lifes and female nudes - had enduring romantic relationships with both women and men over the course of her lifetime. Bernhard was born near Berlin on October 14, 1905. Her parents divorced when she was 2 years old, and her mother left for the United States. Bernhard's father, Lucien - himself a noted poster artist and type designer - entrusted her to the care of two female teachers in Hamburg, and she was sent off to boarding school at age 11. She later recalled that her father was "not an affectionate person," and that she often felt isolated and abandoned as a child. After studying at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, Bernhard moved to New York City in 1927 to join her father, who had established a studio there. His professional connections landed her a job as a darkroom assistant to Ralph Steiner at The Delineator, a popular women's magazine of that era, but she found the work dull and was soon dismissed. She used her severance pay to buy a viewfinder camera, and embarked upon a freelance career as a commercial photographer. In New York, Bernhard was involved with the Lesbian artistic community in Greenwich Village. Later, while living in Los Angeles in the 1930s, she had a chance encounter on a beach with photographer Edward Weston; he became her mentor, but she decided to keep the relationship platonic. "I had not respected photography until I met him," she later recalled. "I began then to take myself seriously as an artist." In the early 1940s, Bernhard began a 10-year relationship with designer Evelyn Phimister. The two women set up housekeeping together, raised dachshunds, and moved back and forth between New York and California, as Bernhard supported herself photographing celebrities' pets and children (including mobster Lucky Luciano's newborn baby). Bernhard initially went to Carmel to study with Weston, but found it difficult to make a living there and soon moved to Hollywood. During World War II, she spent time in Sanibel, Fla., where she developed a specialty of photographing seashells. After splitting up with Phimister, Bernhard moved to San Francisco in 1953, settling near the bohemian enclave of North Beach at the dawn of the Beat era. In her 50s, she began teaching photography and took on special projects, including a collaboration with film director Melvin Van Peebles - then a cable car gripman - on a book about San Francisco's famed cable cars. Bernhard is best known today for her female nudes, and her work was widely admired by her contemporaries. Renowned Lesbian photographer Berenice Abbott said Bernhard "photographs the nude more sensitively than any photographer I know," while Ansel Adams once called her "the greatest photographer of the nude." Her work often juxtaposed natural and artificial elements, such as women curled up in large bowls or boxes. Two Forms featured a black woman and a white woman - reportedly real-life lovers - with their bodies pressed together. "Woman has been the target of much that is sordid and cheap, especially in photography," Bernhard once said. "To raise, to elevate, to endorse with timeless reverence the image of woman, has been my mission." She added that, "My nudes are ideals of my own feelings about being a woman, not an expression of erotic power, or a love object"; indeed, she said she never photographed anyone with whom she was romantically involved. Bernhard's signature was her masterful use of light. "Light is my inspiration, my paint and brush," she explained. "It is as vital as the model herself." With a long-standing interest in Buddhist philosophy (she said she had been a Buddhist without knowing it since age 5), she strove to portray the interconnectedness of all things. "Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it," she said. "In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe." In her 70s, Bernhard stopped producing new work after she began experiencing impaired concentration due to carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty household heater. Yet she continued to teach, lecture, and travel, accompanied by her then-partner, Price Rice, an African-American Air Force colonel 10 years her junior, whom she had met when he took one of her classes. After he died in 1999, she again began a relationship with a woman, photographer Chris Mende, which lasted until Bernhard's death in December 2006. According to Mende, Bernhard "really felt she fell in love with individual people rather than gender." Over her long career, Bernhard inspired multiple generations of budding photographers, and her work is included in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others. "I always said 'yes' to everything," she told an interviewer in 2002. "I allowed life to give me presents. And everything just sort of happened the way it was supposed to happen. I did not pursue anything. It more or less pursued me." Liz Highleyman is a freelance writer and editor who has written widely on health, sexuality, and politics. She can be reached care of this publication or at PastOut@qsyndicate.com. For further information: Bernhard, Ruth. 1996. Gift of the Commonplace (Carmel Center for Photographic Art). Burrill, Robert. 1988. Illuminations (documentary film). Mitchell, Margaretta. 2000. Ruth Bernhard: Between Art and Life (Chronicle Books). |
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