Photographer’s work displayed
What began as a hobby for a Johnstown car salesman eventually catapulted Luke Swank into the national spotlight in the 1930s as one of the pioneers of modernism in photography. “Not only is Luke Swank interested in interpreting American life, but in revealing what is peculiar to American light and air. Therein, we believe, lies his artistry,’ Vanity Fair magazine reviewer Frank Crowninsheld wrote in 1934.
Once Swank decided at age 41 to enter his work in competitive photographic salons, he was accepted into museums throughout the country, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He received praise from art critics, historians and renowned photographers.
What made people admire his work? Swank’s keen eye turned the ordinary into the extraordinary. He found abstract forms in local steel mills and everyday objects, gave us a behind-the-scenes look at the circus, and showed poetic views of rural and urban life.
But in 1944, after Swank’s death at age 54, his work drifted from the national scene.
Perhaps until now.
Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh is launching a major retrospective photography exhibition called “Luke Swank: Modernist Photographer,’ which is showing through Feb. 5.
“You get the sense that while Swank was alive he was in the company of people that we know today,’ said Howard Bossen, curator of the exhibition and author of a book of the same title. “He died in 1944 before there was a viable art market in this country. So, hopefully, he will re-emerge today with this exhibition.’
Bossen rediscovered Swank when he served as the distinguished visiting professor for the arts in society at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh for 2001-2002 and was introduced to the artist through his works in the collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Bossen, professor of journalism and adjunct curator at the Kresge Art Museum at Michigan State University, was captivated by Swank.
“He had such a discerning eye for composition,’ said Bossen during a recent media preview of the show.
Bossen discovered an astonishing body of work that he said almost no one had seen in its entirety. He played detective hunting down details of Swank’s life, including interviews with relatives. His research took nearly four years.
Bossen discovered Swank was born in Johnstown in 1890 into a mercantile family and had graduated with a degree in horticulture from Pennsylvania State Agricultural College (now Penn State University). Swank served in the Army during World War I, assigned to a research facility to study the manufacture of poison gasses. After the war, Swank, his wife, Grace, and their son, Harry, returned to Johnstown, where he entered the family business as manager of a hardware store and later became manager of the family automobile dealership.
Swank began using a camera in the 1920s and in 1931, his work began appearing on the national scene. In 1932, his photographs of Bethlehem Steel foundry were shown at the Brooklyn Museum’s International Photographers exhibition and Murals by American Painters and Photographers at the Museum of Modern Art along with works of such notable photographers as Berenice Abbot, Margaret Bourke-White, Imogen Cunningham, Walker Evans, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy.
As the Great Depression hurt the family business, Swank’s success in photography continued and he decided to become a professional photographer in 1934. The family moved to Pittsburgh, where Swank took a job at the University of Pittsburgh as official photographer and before long created what’s believed to be the first college-level course in news photography.
Two years later, Swank left the university to open his own studio, financed by his friend Edgar Kaufmann, the Pittsburgh department store magnate who would hire Frank Lloyd Wright to build a country home for him in Mill Run, Fayette County, that became the masterpiece Fallingwater.
Swank’s clients included Alcoa, Calgon Co., Chevrolet, Ford Motor Co., General Electric and H.J. Heinz. Through his work with Heinz, Swank met Edith Elliott, a professional writer for the company. After the death of his first wife, Swank married Edith, who became his collaborator and business partner.
In addition to his commercial work, Swank continued his artistic images and taught photography at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He traveled through several states, taking photographs for clients as well as for books that he and Mrs. Swank planned to publish. He became the subject of an in-depth piece for U.S. Camera Magazine’s first issue in 1938. His work was included in the inaugural exhibition for the Museum of Modern Art’s new department of photography.
Mrs. Swank kept most of her husband’s photographs after his death, eventually bequeathing them to the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh in 1975. Today, most of his photographs are found in institutional collections, including the Carnegie Library, Carnegie Museum of Art and Western Pennsylvania Conservancy at Fallingwater.
For the show, Bossen selected 141 black-and-white photographs, exhibition announcements and catalogues, books and magazines, correspondence and personal items.
Local residents may be interested to know Swank’s work took him into Fayette County with examples featured in the Carnegie exhibition.
They include the Meason House in Dunbar Township, which Swank photographed as part of the Western Pennsylvania Architectural Survey on buildings constructed before 1860. The show includes the 1936 book that came from the survey, open to photographs of the Meason House as well as Swank’s more artistic photographs of the same subject.
Bossen said he chose these photographs because “the first reason is they’re wonderful images.’ But he also was intrigued with Swank’s work with the survey, an important project of the time and the fact the Meason House still is standing.
“Most of the images from the survey are building exteriors. But there are a couple of interiors in the Meason mansion that astounded me. This one of the staircase,’ Bossen pointed to the photograph in the gallery, “and there’s another image that was eliminated because of space. But this image is different from the book, which is fulfilling descriptive needs of the architectural survey to highlight the building in a straightforward fashion. These are also expressive images.’
Swank also photographed Fallingwater, where he and his second wife spent their honeymoon and were frequent guests. The show includes a museum catalogue on Fallingwater, a letter from Wright and two photographs Swank took of Edith at Fallingwater’s old guesthouse. Bossen said he also liked these photographs because Swank took them of his wife: “They were important to him.’
The show is divided into six sections. They include: Steel, Circus, People, Tranformations, Rural/Architectural Landscapes and This is My City.
Bossen said, “A lot of Swank’s work is that little moment when everything comes together as he clicks his shutter.’
The Carnegie is offering a companion show called “Witness to the Fifties: Selections from the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, 1950-53, another black and white exhibition that details the city’s evolution to a modern industrial center. “Witness,’ which runs through Feb. 26, includes images of the downtown, Hill District, Mount Washington, North Side and Oakland that feature construction, community service, Children’s Hospital, Civic Light Opera, Forbes Field and many street scenes.
The Carnegie Museum of Art is located at 4400 Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Oakland section. For more information, phone 412-622-3131 or visit the Web site at www.cmoa.org.