CELEBRATING THE 125TH BIRTHDAY OF AMERICA’S VISIONARY PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTIST WILLIAM MORTENSEN.
January 27 2022 will mark the 125th birthday of William Mortensen (1897–1965), one of America’s most treasured visionary photographic artists.
Venues paying tribute include:
●Heritage Museum of Orange County, Santa Ana CA, will mount an ambitious installation of original works by William Mortensen in both the Maag Farmhouse and the historic Kellogg House. The exhibitions are curated by Annabella Pritchard, and exhibitions are designed by Jamie Hiber, Daniel Cooper, Jessica Bell, Alex Gonzalez and Eli Aguilar. William Mortensen’s final resting place is also in Santa Ana. Opens Saturday January 29th 2022
●The Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick will mount an exhibition of original works curated by museum director Steven Intermill. This is the second exhibition of Mortensen’s works the museum has undertaken. Opens Saturday January 29th 2022
●The Gallery of Everything in London will present the series “A Pictorial Compendium of Witchcraft and Demonology” The Museum of Everything has custodianship of one of the most in depth collections of the works of William Mortensen. Dates TBA.
●The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will highlight online their recent acquisition of the William Mortensen handmade book “The King of Kings” which was commissioned by director Cecil B. DeMille. The Museum will also display the book in The Anne Wilkes Tucker Photography Study Center. On view presently.
●The Laguna Art Museum will present on William Mortensen’s birthday a panel discussion moderated by Stephen Romano featuring Deborah Irmas, Michael Moynihan, Brian Chidester and Matthew Rolston. William Mortensen is also included in the museum’s current exhibition “Sky Space Time Change” through April 25th 2022. Lecture available online January 27 2022
● William Mortensen at 125 has two websites, one with innocuous images and the other with his more visceral images.
● Stephen Romano Gallery in Brooklyn will have a draw for an original William H. Mortensen. To enter, please give a like to this post 👉🏿 ibit.ly/tsp3
www.whmcxxv.com 😇 and www.whmcxxv.net 😈
William Mortensen (January 27, 1897 — August 12, 1965) was an American photographic artist, who first gained acclaim for his Hollywood portraits in the 1920s in the Pictorialist style and later for viscerally manipulated photography, often touching on themes of the occult.
William Mortensen was born in 1897 in Park City, Utah. His family moved to Salt Lake City when he was 11 years old. He was interested in painting and was trained by his high school teacher. He was inducted into the army in 1916 and discharged in 1918. Upon his release from the army, Mortensen spent 1919 and at least part of 1920 in New York City, attending the Arts Students League while there. He traveled to Greece in 1920 and returned the same year. Traveling back to Utah, he took a job teaching art at his alma mater in Salt Lake City. By the end of the school year he left his job at East Side High School, and in 1921 traveled by train escorting a friend’s sister to Hollywood. The sister was Fay Wray who became one of the most well known actresses of her time.
Mortensen worked in the burgeoning film industry in Los Angeles alternately painting scenery, making masks, and engaging in various film art-related services. Simultaneously he began work at Western Costume Company photographing silent film stars in costume.
Mortensen moved to Laguna Beach in 1931 and opened a studio on the Pacific Coast Highway. His school, the Mortensen School of Photography, officially opened in 1931 and always occupied the same address as his studio. Over the years, the school enrolled thousands of students from all over the world.
In 1933 Mortensen married Myrdith Monaghan, his second wife after Courtney Crawford, and met George Dunham. The 32-year collaboration with George yielded 9 books in multiple editions and printings, 4 pamphlets, and over 100 articles in magazines and newspapers. Both Myrdith and Dunham proved to be his most significant models, helping him to produce his most important body of work.
The school remained open until a short time after his death from leukemia in 1965.
William Mortensen, for all his influence, acylates and accomplishments, was completely erased from the history of American photography altogether, mostly as a result of a decades long feud with purist Ansel Adams, who dubbed Mortensen “The Anti-Christ” of photography.
Renowned photography critic A.D. Coleman writes:
“On the basis of these facts alone, Mortensen’s place in the contemporary history of photography would seem to be assured, his right to that place secure and inarguable. When we add to that his eloquent, elegant and indefatigable championing of the pictorialist stance — under the constant fire of such “purist” big guns as Adams, Weston, Willard Van Dyke, Roi Partridge, John Paul Edwards and Nancy Newhall — in a controversial public debate which stretched over a decade, his absence from the history books reveals itself to be the consequence not of inadvertent oversight but of deliberate omission. As such, it is a serious breach of the responsibilities and ethics of historianship.”
William Mortensen’s art has enjoyed a revival over the past decade, with the advent of digital photography his methods and vision now seem seminal.
In 2014, Feral House Publishing released an extraordinary book “American Grotesque — The Life and Art of William Mortensen” which further introduced the artist to an entire generation who has no awareness of him.
Mortensen is now, on the 125th anniversary of his birth, become of one America’s — and history’s - most celebrated visionary photographic artist.
For more information contact romanostephen@gmail.com
For further insight, images and history on William Mortensen see www.whmcxxv.com 😇 and www.whmcxxv.net 😈
“Monsters and Madonnas” a documentary on William Mortensen narrated by Vincent Price
