Click on the audio play button to listen to an hour interview with Arnold Newman conducted by my wife, author Eve Schaub. The interview was the source material for an article she wrote for PhotoVision Magazine back in 2002 featuring the father of the environmental portrait and his expansive photographic career. This interview has never been heard before anywhere and I am very happy to bring it to the Figital community.
Note from Eve Schaub: Holy cow, I sound young here. Although as a writer I had done interviews before, this was the first time I was speaking to someone we had actually studied in photo history in college! As far as I was concerned he was a living legend, and I was quite terrified. I’ll apologize in advance for the poor audio tape, not to mention all the nervous laughter.
But Arnold Newman was gracious, patient, and incredibly fascinating to talk to. There’s all kinds of great stuff here that never made it to the final PhotoVision article… including the story of how Newman’s wife used to smuggle guns for the Zionist movement, the untimely demise of Holiday magazine, and how the photographers went on strike for a year when Life demanded the rights to all their past work- and won.
Hope you enjoy it.
Eve Schaub is the author of Year of No Sugar (2014). Her next book is due to be released in January, 2017.
I have done my best to bring up the volume and equalize it as the original tape is all over the place.
Any chance for an offline download to soften a boring commute?
Really enjoyed this. Thanks for posting. Heisler has a vid on YouTube where he discusses working for Newman. This was the perfect companion to that. It really brought everything Heisler said to life.
I contacted Heisler for an image to use with this article but as he is gearing up for a new job at SU no surprise I did not get a followup… another aspect of Newman’s work that I like a lot as well as other shooters from the period is their use of lots of grey in their works… shooters today seem to fear grey.