CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/20/2013

Best of 2013: Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman

"Christmas Cakes and Cookies" (circa 1935), by pioneering commercial photographer Nickolas Muray, is reproduced from Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman—one of our favorite photography books of 2013. Muray's work with carbro color printing revolutionized American lifestyle and fashion magazines. "Though carbro printing was complicated and expensive, requiring the combination of three separate negatives to create the color tonality of the final print, Muray regularly employed the process due to its ability to reproduce vibrant, eye-catching hues that captured the attention of readers… Muray's advertising photography made its debut at a fine-art institution when Beaumont Newhall included two of his carbro prints in the color section of the 1937 exhibition Photography 1839–1937 at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Though displayed alongside carbro prints by photographers such as Edward Steichen and Paul Outerbridge, Muray's prints were the only advertising photographs in the exhibition that were commissioned by commercial brands. Muray was such an accomplished practitioner that it was no surprise his work was chosen by Newhall as the quintessential model of carbro color photography in advertising."