Jerry Uelsmann

Uelsmann, a native of Detroit, Michigan, credited his parents Norman (a grocer,1904-1962) and Florence (Crossman) Uelsmann (a homemaker, 1903–1986) for encouraging his creativity.

His mother saved his artworks beginning in kindergarten and continuing into college.

Jerry Norman Uelsmann (June 11, 1934 – April 4, 2022) was an American photographer.

Uelsmann's father, whose hobby was photography, built a basement darkroom (c. 1948) to share with his two sons, Jerry and Robert.

In high school he worked as a photographer for the school newspaper and later attended Rochester Institute of Technology earning a BFA degree in 1957.

At RIT he was influenced by Minor White and Ralph Hattersley who taught craftsmanship (technical precision) along with the emotional and perceptual aspects of fine arts photography.

Uelsmann appreciated White's mystical philosophy and devotion to Zen-like meditation even when not photographing.

He was particularly affected by Minor White's belief that fine arts photographers should “strive to capture subjects for what they are and for what else they are”.

Ralph Hattersley had theories like those of Minor White especially concerning self-discovery about which he published a text.

A portrait of Hattersley by Uelsmann was used for the cover of Hattersley's book, Discover Your Self Through Photography.

Uelsmann recalled the demanding yet meaningful assignments given by Hattersley that caused him to see ordinary objects differently and personally.

Visual and spiritual awareness were of paramount importance compared to the photographic equipment.

As a student, Uelsmann used many camera formats but settled on a relatively simple medium format (Bronica) for most of his career.

After graduating from Rochester Institute of Technology, Uelsmann enrolled at Indiana University and met Professor Henry Holmes Smith (a mentee of László Moholy-Nagy).

He described Smith as a “mind-bomb of inspirational ideas” and challenging questions that encouraged experimentation with concepts and images.

Uelsmann took extensive art history courses and was particularly fascinated by surrealists including René Magritte, Joseph Cornell, and Man Ray, all of whom worked from dreams, fantasies, and visions.

Also, he admired the avant-garde techniques of Bauhaus photographers and the intuition of abstract expressionists.

As an emerging artist in the 1960s, Jerry Uelsmann received international recognition for surreal, enigmatic photographs (photomontages) made with his unique method of composite printing and his dedication to revealing the deepest emotions of the human condition.

Over the next six decades, his contributions to contemporary photography were firmly established with important exhibitions, prestigious awards and numerous publications.

Among his awards were a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment, Royal Photographic Society Fellowship, and Lucie Award.

Uelsmann described his creative process as a journey of discovery in the darkroom (visual research laboratory).

Going against the established practice of previsualization (Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and others), he coined a new term, post-visualization.

He decided the contents of the final print after rather than before pressing the shutter button.

Uelsmann constructed his dreams like a visual poet with results that often seemed emotionally more real than the factual world.

In 1960, Uelsmann earned two degrees from Indiana University, MS (audio-visual studies) and MFA (fine arts photography).

Uelsmann was recruited in 1960 by Van Deren Coke to teach at the University of Florida (Gainesville), one of the few universities offering photography as a concentration for fine arts majors.

The first twenty years of his career (1960-1980) involved widespread success with numerous honors in education, writings, and exhibitions.

In 1962, he was one of the founders of the Society of Photographic Education (SPE) which held annual meetings where educators, students and historians could share their ideas and images about photography's relationship to themselves and the world.

Uelsmann delivered his first influential paper, “The Interrelationship of Image and Technique," at the SPE initial conference (1962 in Rochester, NY). His second paper, “Post-Visualization,” was presented in 1964 at the SPE in Chicago, IL. Some details on post-visualization and his technique of composite printing can be found below in Additional Notes and in his book Process and Perception.

He had a career breakthrough in 1967 with a solo exhibition of photomontages at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

John Swarkowski was the director.

By the 1980s he became one of the most collected photographers in America.

His work influenced generations of both analog and digital photographers.

Although he admired digital photography, he remained completely dedicated to the alchemy of film photography in the black and white darkroom.

He taught at UF until his retirement in 1998.

He claimed a debt to the 19th-century photomontage artists, Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson.

Vincent Van Gogh influenced Uelsmann, too.

During a modern art history course at Indiana University, Uelsmann saw an image by Van Gogh and suddenly remembered seeing the same painting (a self-portrait) when he was twelve years old at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

He had forgotten the artist's name but never forgot how the painting made him feel.

Both Van Gogh and Uelsmann produced expressive self-portraits, although the ones by Uelsmann were often shown as anonymous figures suggesting everyman and named Untitled.