Anton Bruehl

(b Hawker, Port Augusta, S. Australia, 11 March 1900; d San Francisco, CA, 10 Aug 1983). American photographer of Australian birth. He trained as an electrical engineer in Melbourne, but in 1919 he emigrated to the USA. He developed his interest in photography while working for the Western Electric Company, New York. In 1923 he attended an exhibition by students of Clarence H. White, who was then considered America's most prominent Pictorialist photographer. White agreed to teach him privately, but by 1924 Bruehl had become both a regular student at White's New York school and a member of his summer faculty in Canaan, CT. White encouraged the individualism shown by his students. Among them, Bruehl, Paul Outerbridge and Ralph Steiner (b 1899) became known for a crisp, graphic style that would distinguish the best commercial photography in the 1920s and 1930s.

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Bruehl, Anton (1900-82), Australian-born American photographer. After studying engineering in Melbourne, Bruehl settled in New York in 1919. In 1923 he studied photography with Clarence H. White. By 1926 he had launched a successful advertising career based on a sophisticated modernist style, characterized by geometric composition, oblique vantage points, close-ups, and a full tonal range. With his brother Martin Bruehl he opened a New York studio in 1927. Condé Nast Publications paired him with the technician Fernand Bourges and, from 1932, they produced 195 colour images of the highest quality then available. Bruehl designed the image, which Bourges took with the ‘one-shot’ camera he had made: during the exposure, light passed through three thin acetate sheets with emulsions of different colour sensitivities. Condé Nast technicians then turned the composite transparency into a copper engraving for printing. Bruehl developed a reputation for elaborate staging and complex studio lighting. In addition to his advertising work, his editorial work appeared in Vogue, Vanity Fair, House and Garden, and other magazines until he closed his New York studio in 1966. Bruehl also pursued art photography, publishing the portfolios Mexico in 1933 and Tropic Patterns in 1970.

— Patricia Johnston

Bibliography

• Bruehl, A., and Bourges, F., Color Sells (1935).
• Yochelson, B., Anton Bruehl (1998)