Paul Outerbridge

Paul Outerbridge (1896-1958) earned his extraordinary reputation as a master of color photographic practice by making virtuoso carbro-color prints of nudes and still lifes, mainly in the studio, during the 1930s. His new photographs from California and Mexico (1948-1955) mark the discovery of a powerful and previously unknown body of work by one of America’s earliest masters of color photography.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, Outerbridge took his camera to the streets, crossing the border between California and Mexico and photographing the people and places he found. Shooting in bold, luminous Kodachrome, his photographs explore the quirkiness of 1950s leisure culture and examine the blending of two interwoven societies at a distinctive time in history. As brilliant and innovative today as when they were made, these images demonstrate Outerbridge’s breathtaking mastery of the new art of color photography.

Outerbridge left New York in the 1940s, taking up residency in the Mediterranean-style oceanside town of Laguna Beach, California. Living there until his death in 1958, he spent about seven years working on this remarkable body of work, furthering his characteristic precisionist style and dramatic use of color to develop a new visual vocabulary that anticipated the work of photographers working a quarter of a century later, including that of William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld and Joel Meyerowitz, who strove in the 1970s to develop a similar, bold new language in color photography.

Employing a 35mm camera rather than the large-format equipment of the studio, Outerbridge captured vivid pictures on the fly. His images were made using the same precision that characterized his 1930s studio work, but applied to the kinetic world of the street. In the tradition of such photographers as Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Anton Bruehl, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, all of whom made significant photographic forays into Mexico, Outerbridge ventured south in his 1949 black Cadillac, frequenting the seaport towns along the Baja peninsula. One of his favourite stops was Mazatlán, on Mexico’s western coast, where he took particular pleasure in surveying the urban architecture, and absorbing and documenting the brightly-colored topography and the bustling city streets. Outerbridge was keenly aware that the beauty of everyday objects was also tied to the larger meanings anchored in the social landscape.