THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF ERNEST BLOCH

Ernest Bloch was an avid photographer. He made over 6,000 negatives beginning in the late 1890s as a teenager, working with glass plate, stereo, and film cameras. His photographs ranged from self-portraits to pictures of his family, musicians, rural people, and many diverse landscapes. He developed his own plates and films, then made contact prints for albums to show family and friends. After acquiring his Leica in 1927, he had small commercial enlargements made. His photography showed a dedication to technique as well as an eye for light, composition, and a sensitivity to human expression.

Photography was also part of the remarkable artistic world surrounding Bloch. Through friendships and encounters with some of the leading artists and photographers of his time, Bloch was exposed to ideas about photography as an expressive art form that helped nourish his own development behind the camera. His friendship with Alfred Stieglitz, whom he first met in New York in 1916, brought him into the artistic circle surrounding Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe. By 1922, Bloch was writing publicly about photography, arguing that technical mastery alone was not enough and that great photography, like music or painting, must express the individuality of the artist. His admiration for Stieglitz was rooted in precisely this belief.

On the West Coast, Bloch’s circle included painter Maynard Dixon and photographer Dorothea Lange. He was photographed by Imogen Cunningham and knew Ansel Adams. These relationships connected Bloch with some of the most significant figures in American art and photography while he continued to develop a photographic vision distinctly his own.

Bloch’s family understood and preserved this aspect of his creative life. His youngest daughter, Lucienne Bloch, herself a photographer, held her father’s negatives and printed from them as well as pursuing her own photography. Hundreds of prints made by Ernest and Lucienne remain in the Bloch family archives.

In 1970, encouraged by a professor at the University of Oregon, student Eric B. Johnson made contact with Lucienne, who gave him access to her father’s photographic archive. Over the following years, Johnson researched the collection, made exhibition prints from Bloch’s negatives, published and exhibited the photographs, and played a major role in bringing Bloch’s lifelong passion for the camera to a wider public.

His early work led to A Composer’s Vision: Photographs by Ernest Bloch in Aperture magazine, Vol. 16, No. 3, an important presentation of Bloch’s photography to the broader photographic community. Johnson has continued to research and champion this important aspect of Bloch’s creative life for more than fifty years.