Moving Pictures: Karl Struss and the Rise of Hollywood

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Moving Pictures examines the Hollywood career of Karl Struss (1886-1981), a pioneering artist of both still and moving images who reached the highest levels of success in both fields. It tells a multimedia story through photographs, films, and archival objects of how he transitioned from an acclaimed fine art photographer to a leading Hollywood cinematographer. The publication focuses on the thirty years between 1919, when Struss first started working in Hollywood, and the late 1940s, when the breakup of the studio system remade Hollywood. Finally, Moving Pictures will explore Struss's cinematography in the two decades after Sunrise, an era of seismic changes in the film industry that witnessed the introduction of sound and colour film, the solidification and then breakup of the studio system, and the postwar rise of television. In these years, he earned an additional three Oscar nominations and established collaborative relationships with some of Hollywood's biggest directors and stars like Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. The publication ends in 1951, when Struss starred as "the cinematographer" in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's eponymous short film, a sign that he had become Hollywood's archetypal cameraman.

Author Bio

Dr. Spencer Wigmore is Curator of Paintings, Sculpture, and Works on Paper at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. Wigmore has organized numerous exhibitions at the Carter, including Art Making as Life Making: Kinji Akagawa at Tamarind; Tracing the Past: Scott and Stuart Gentling's Birds of Texas; and Culture Shock: American Artists from Europe, 1913-1953. A specialist in 19th-century American landscape painting, Wigmore held numerous curatorial internships and fellowships at institutions across the country prior to joining the Carter's curatorial staff, including the Denver Art Museum, Colorado; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE; Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, Winterthur, DE; and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA. Wigmore has extensive knowledge of American art from the country's conception through the early 20th century, with an emphasis on American western art. He earned both his master's and PhD in art history from the University of Delaware, and is a magna cum laude graduate of Carleton College, Northfield, MN.