STLCC-Meramec opens new art gallery featuring Ernst Haas, photographer
By: ROBERT KNIGHT
Staff Writer
A few dozen people were on hand for a reception to celebrate the opening of the “Seeing in Color: The Photographs of Ernst Haas” exhibit in the STLCC-Meramec Contemporary Art Gallery. The exhibit of 42 prints is from the collections of the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum and it will run through Dec. 6. The art gallery is in room HE-133 in the northeastern corner of the Humanities East portion of the Humanities Building.
According to David Hanlon, photography professor at Meramec, Haas used color photography as another mode of creative expression.
From the brief biography Hanlon provides viewers as a handout at the gallery Haas (1921-1986) is “acclaimed as one of the most celebrated and influential photographers of his generation.” When Haas began exploring his creative impulses with the camera and color photography in the 1940s, and especially when he “began experimenting with color film” in 1949, color photography was rarely used as a medium for expressing “creative artistic interpretations.” In other words, Haas began to take color photographs for something other than to accurately capture in color the scene of a specific moment in time.
Haas had Life magazine devote portions of two issues to a photographic essay of New York and other similarly prestigious and widely accessible publications published more of his picture stories.
