Harry Warnecke/New York Daily News
Harry Warnecke utilized the carbro process to make his color photos, including this shot of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
In his song Kodachrome, Paul Simon declares that everything looks worse in b lack and white.
Were he alive today, photographer Harry Warnecke (1900-1984) would have wholeheartedly agreed.
In the 1930s, the New York Daily News cameraman revolutionized the art of celebrity portraits by producing color images of famous actors, comedians, athletes, politicians and military leaders.
Despite ushering in a new age of color photography, Warneckes work was basically forgotten after his death.
But the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., has dug up 24 of his celebrity portraits from the 1930s to the 1950s, which are on display as part of the In Vibrant Color: Vintage Celebrity Portraits From the Harry Warnecke Studio exhibit until Sept. 9.
This was not paparazzi, gotcha photography, says curator Ann Shumard. There is a great deal of civility and respect in these images and the color makes them really fun to look at, too.
Utilizing the first practical method for color photography, called the tri-color ca rbro process, Warneckes work for the Daily News Sunday Magazine included portraits of luminaries like Lucille Ball, Jackie Robinson, Laurel and Hardy, and Generals Eisenhower and Patton.
As the exhibit explains, Warnecke designed and built a one-shot camera that yielded the red, blue and green separations needed for color reproduction.
Perhaps more impressive than the portraits he snapped with his one-shot camera is that Warnecke convinced the newspaper to invest in expensive technology and build him a studio fit to produce his labor-intensive color photography.
After all, this was a time when black and white was the norm, not only for newspapers but for movies and magazines as well. And the tri-color carbro process was both complicated and rare.
This was really a groundbreaking move at the time, says Shumard. Warnecke believed that the addition of a brilliant color photograph of a celebrity would really be a novelty and increase sales.
And, indeed, it did boost circulation because the color photographs brought these iconic figures alive in a way that black and white couldnt.
YOU SHOULD KNOW
In Vibrant Color: Vintage Celebrity Portraits From the Harry Warnecke Studio: Free at the National Portrait Gallery (800 F St. NW, Washington, D.C.) until Sept. 9; for more info visit npg.si.edu or call (202) 633-8300.
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