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The Ida Kar collection of photographic prints is comprised of
124 gelatin silver prints dating from 1953 to 1964. The collection consists
largely of portrait photographs featuring prominent men and women associated
with the arts, including painters, sculptors, authors, poets, playwrights,
composers, and museum directors. The collection is subdivided into four lots:
Loose prints, 1953-1962 (37 items); Exhibition prints from
Ida Kar: Artist with a camera,
1953-1962 (77 items); Loose prints of the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London)
exhibition in situ, 1960 (6 items); and Photographs of Ida Kar by other
photographers, 1960-1964 (4 items). |
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Comprising over half the collection is a group of oversize,
mounted exhibition prints by Kar from a show, titled
Ida Kar: Artist with a camera,
held at The University of Texas' Art Museum in October and November of 1966.
These photographs, with the exception of 12, are from a series of limited
edition prints Kar selected for her Whitechapel exhibition. These photographs
capture Kar's signature style of photographing her subjects in their familiar
surroundings relying largely on the natural light of the location, as well as
her belief "that a picture naturally dictates its right size and shape" whether
that be 20 × 24 inches or over 6 feet. Kar photographed the majority of her
subjects in Great Britain, but she captured 21 in France and an additional 12
in the USSR. Notable sitters include Henry Moore, Somerset Maugham, T. S.
Eliot, Brendan Behan, Noel Coward, Cecil Beaton, Man Ray, Marc Chagall, Georges
Braque, Hans Arp, Le Corbusier, Alberto Giacometti, and Jean-Paul Sartre among
others. |
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The following item list is arranged by accession number.
Titles were taken from print versos (when present), from Gernsheim's inventory
(Inventory 16, Contemporary Photographers), or from exhibition inventories.
A
subject index, sorted alphabetically by surname, is featured at the end of
this
inventory. |
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Scholars seeking additional information on Ida Kar will find
several published sources, as well as Helmut Gernsheim's notes and clippings,
in the Photography Collection. |
