Nancy Wynne Newhall (May 9, 1908 - July 7, 1974) was an American photography critic. She is best known for writing the text to accompany photographs by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, but was also a widely published writer on photography, conservation, and American culture. In 1945, Newhall wrote the text for a book of photographs, Time in New England, by Paul Strand. The work would begin a new phase for her career, in which she became a vocal proponent and a central pioneer of the genre of oversized photography collections. The best known and most influential of these is This Is the American Earth, a collaboration with Ansel Adams, published in 1960. Like Adams, Newhall was involved with the Sierra Club, and wrote often about issues of conservation. She was sometimes accused of political heavy-handedness on that subject-one uncharitable review of American Earth calls her prose "so full of Message that there is no room for poetry" (Deevey)-but her explication of the political context and motivation of Adams' work has been important for the Sierra Club and the conservation movement in general.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Brett Abbott is assistant curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Nancy Newhall (1908-1974) was Edward Weston's official biographer and cofounder of Aperture magazine.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.