Ernst Haas was born in Vienna in 1921, and took up photography after the war. His early Austrian work on returning prisoners of war brought him to the attention of Life Magazine, but he courageously declined a job as staff photographer in order to keep his independence.
At the invitation of Robert Capa, Haas joined Magnum in 1949, developing close associations with Capa, Bishof and Cartier-Bresson. He began experimenting with colour, and went on to become the premier colour photographer of the 1950s. In 1962 New York’s Museum of Modern Art mounted its first solo exhibition of his colour photography. Haas’s books were legion, and one The Creation (1971) sold 350.000 copies. Ernst Haas received the Hasselblad award in 1986, the year of his death.
Colour Correction
Ernst Haas is unquestionably one of the best-known, most prolific and most published photographers of the twentieth century. He is most associated with a vibrant colour photography which, for decades, was much in demand by the illustrated press. This colour work, published in the most influential magazines in Europe and America, also fed a constant stream of books, and these too enjoyed great popularity. But although his colour work earned him fame around the world, in recent decades it has often been derided by critics and curators as “overly commercial”, and too easily accessible – or in the language of curators, not sufficiently “serious”. As a result, his reputation has suffered in comparison with a younger generation of colour photographers, notably Eggleston, Shore and Meyerowitz.
