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Luke Swank, Rings and Shadows, 1930’s (detail)
Reality and Imagination: Photographs by Luke Swank
May 6 through September 3
Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1890, Luke Swank did not become
seriously interested in photography until the age of forty. Before then,
he held various jobs and took occasional snapshots with his Kodak camera.
With the sale of his first photographs of a Bethlehem Steel plant in 1930,
Swank launched a successful and prolific career that lasted until his death
at age fifty-four.
Swank exhibited his work nationally, taught, maintained a commercial
studio, and worked for many publications. The renowned photographer Alfred
Stieglitz praised his images after the two men spent a day looking at 200
of Swanks photographs. That same year, Swank had five works accepted in
San Franciscos “First Salon of Pure Photography,” more than any other
entrant; his
work was shown alongside such well-known photographers as Ansel Adams,
Edward Weston, and Willard Van Dyke.
Known for his photographs of circuses and steel mills, as well as his
architectural surveys, Swank became the University of Pittsburghs first
official photographer in 1935 and later developed the first college-level
course in photojournalism. In 1980, in response to a solo exhibition of
Swanks work at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh photographer Clyde Hare
praised his “integrity as to subject and his sensitivity to light and its
subtle play.” Swanks brief career ended with his death in 1944. While
he gained recognition quickly during his lifetime, his work continues to
be highly regarded and was recently seen at Carnegie Museum of Art in the
1997 exhibition Pittsburgh Revealed.
Reality and Imagination focuses on Swanks non-documentary photographs,
which make use of real objects to create abstract forms. “The photographs
that are most interesting,” says Linda Batis, Associate Curator of Fine
Arts, “are those in which you know there is an object, but you have to
struggle to discern what it is. One photograph shows what is obviously
a shed, for example, but Swanks interest is clearly in the shapes that
are created by the angles and the shadows. It works as a pattern, rather
than a place.”
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E-mail: carnegiemag@carnegiemuseums.org
