Louise Dahl-Wolfe

(b Alameda, CA, 19 Nov 1895; d 11 Dec 1989). American photographer. She studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute (1914-17), where she was taught by Rudolph Schaeffer (b 1886), who encouraged her use of strong colour. She later studied design in New York and then architecture at Columbia University, New York (1923). A self-taught photographer, she was inspired to take it up by the nudes of Anne Brigman (1869-1950). Dahl-Wolfe worked as an interior-design assistant in San Francisco and New York. In 1927-8 she travelled with the photographer Consuelo Kanaga (1894-1978) in Europe. She abandoned interior design for photography, opening a studio first in San Francisco in 1930, and then in Gatlinburg, TN, when she married in 1932.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Dahl-Wolfe, Louise (1895-1989), American fashion photographer, who made her reputation at Harper's Bazaar from 1936 to 1958. In 1928, after studying painting at the San Francisco Institute of Art, then interior decoration in New York, she married the Tennessee artist Meyer (Mike) Wolfe. They settled in New York in 1933 and Dahl-Wolfe soon became a successful commercial photographer, working for periodicals and major retailers. At Harper's Bazaar she collaborated with Carmel Snow, Diana Vreeland, and Alexey Brodovitch. In her 22 years there, she developed a casual but elegant style that the magazine termed ‘The New American Look’, in which more natural, active women replaced staged glamour. Dahl-Wolfe adopted Kodachrome in 1937 and became celebrated for her creative, subtle colour harmonies. In all, she published 86 covers, 600 colour images, and innumerable black-and-white photographs in Harper's. The Dahl-Wolfe Archive at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona, includes 16, 100 negatives, and other materials.

— Patricia Johnston

Bibliography

• Dahl-Wolfe, L., A Photographer's Scrapbook (1984).
• Louise Dahl-Wolfe: A Retrospective, introd. D. T. Globus (2000)

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)