I have been watching more of Ted Forbes lately. His videos are calm, well researched, and focused on ideas rather than hype. If you care about learning from the masters, he gives you enough context to see why the work matters and how to look at it. No shortcuts, just useful insight.
Ted talks about his early exposure to Arnold Newman through Greg Booth, a photographer who worked with and learned from Newman. That kind of proximity matters. You live around good pictures, you listen to someone who has been in the room, and your eye gets trained before you even know it. It is a quiet form of mentorship that shapes taste and standards.
One picture that can change you
Newman’s portrait of Igor Stravinsky is the example that keeps coming back. The piano lid becomes a bold graphic shape that almost feels like a musical note. It is simple and decisive. A single image can live with you for years and keep nudging how you compose and where you place meaning in a frame. Ted’s story about seeing that print again and again explains how deep an image can root itself.
Design thinking in the photographs
Newman’s portraits read like clean posters. Strong lines, controlled shapes, and a clear idea. Backgrounds are not filler. They act like typography around the subject. You see this with Mondrian, where the space echoes the painter’s grids. You see it in the way diagonals lead, how empty areas give the eye room, and how props are never random. It is photography built with design logic.
The celebrity sessions
Newman photographed an astonishing range – Picasso, Mondrian, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marilyn Monroe, Kennedy, Reagan and many more but he resisted making “famous person in a chair” pictures. The setting had to add understanding. Sometimes it even carried the emotion: compare the cool elegance around O’Keeffe to the harder industrial mood of Alfried Krupp (a rare example where Newman allowed his own judgment to shape a decidedly unsettling portrait). The throughline is intent and the background is never background.
Cropping as design
Newman cropped with purpose. If trimming the frame made the idea clearer, he did it without hesitation. Edges are active in his pictures which he uses to simplify, to push a shape, or to give the subject more weight. It is not “fixing” a mistake; it is finishing the design. The simple idea to carry forward from his work is: Crop to strengthen the statement, not to rescue a weak picture.
Darkroom collage
He also experimented with collage and composite prints in the darkroom; cutting, layering, and re-assembling elements to build a more graphic result. Personally I am less drawn to this strand of his work, but it shows how far he was willing to treat photography as design material when the idea called for it.
What I am taking forward
- Treat the location as part of the portrait. Lines, edges, objects, and light should say something about the person.
- Be brave with shape and negative space. Simple forms last.
- Keep the idea in front. A portrait is not a headshot. It is a design problem with a person at its centre.
- Mentorship can be quiet. Stay close to good work and good teachers. Let it tune your eye.
Explore more (biography, works, and archives)
- Arnold Newman — Official Site
- Portfolios on the Official Site (Portraits)
- MoMA: Igor Stravinsky (1946)
- Harry Ransom Center: Arnold Newman Collection
- ICP: Arnold Newman (Artist Page)
- Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery: Arnold Newman
- AGO Exhibition: Building Icons — Arnold Newman’s Magazine World
- Arnold Newman Prize (Maine Media)