Looking at Teske an exhibition at Scott Nichols Gallery May 6 through June 26, 2010

Teske #1 — Photo courtesy of Scott Nichols Gallery all rights reserved

Teske #2 — Photo courtesy of Scott Nichols Gallery all rights reserved

The Scott Nichols Gallery is proud to present Looking at Teske. Photographs by Edmund Teske.

The exhibition will be on view from

May 6th through June 26, 2010.

Join us Saturday June 5, 2-4pm for a reception and talk with Nils Vidstrand, curator of the Edmund Teske Archive.

Edmund Teske (American, 1911-1996), a native of Chicago, began seriously photographing in 1932, his interests were not limited to only photography but music, painting and theater. Teske was a ceaseless explorer of the photographic medium for nearly sixty years. Inspired by the avant-garde photography of Man Ray and others, Teske soon learned how to manipulate and transform his photographs in the darkroom. His images explored everything from life in the streets to the abstractions offered by discarded artifacts. In many of his prints, superimposed images are brought into theatrical existence through experimental techniques. His drive to experiment with sophisticated techniques, such as solarization and composite printing, liberated a younger generation of American photographers; at the same time, his subject matter—sometimes abstract, often homoerotic, and always lyrical and poetic—opened up new areas for photographers to explore.

After working in a commercial photography studio in Chicago for two years, Teske moved on to Wisconsin where he took up the first fellowship in photography under the guidance of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. By the late 1930s, he taught at the New Bauhaus School of Design in Chicago, for the Federal Arts Projects and also assisted photographer Berenice Abbott in New York.

In the mid-1940s, Teske relocated to Los Angeles, where he initially worked at Paramount Pictures in the photographic still department. He continued to photograph and began to exhibit his images more frequently. In 1956 he detoured briefly from photography to appear in the film biography of Vincent van Gogh, Lust for Life. After 1960 he frequently returned to older negatives, reinterpreting them through the use of experimental printing techniques.

Edmund Teske’s photographs can be found in the permanent collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum; The Center for Creative Photography Tucson, and other major institutions.

For more information please call the gallery at 415 788 4641 or email at info@scottnicholsgallery.com.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11-5:30 and by appointment.

By Jim McKinniss

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