HENRY HORENSTEIN

www.horenstein.com

risd connection: Professor of Photography; BFA in Photography, 1971; MFA in Photography, 1973

special skill: A natural with the camera, Horenstein has an uncanny ability to capture the unique personality of his quirky subject matter, which has included everything from thoroughbred horses and dogs to human anatomy and the country music scene.

breaking in: Horenstein initially studied history in England, worked as a photographer in a Chicago hospital and studied with Minor White in Boston. At RISD, under the guidance of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, he began to see that “the greatest part of photography for me was in publishing books.” He tested out the idea early on — in his final year of grad school — with the publication of the first edition of Black-and-White Photography: A Basic Manual (Little, Brown & Co.). With 600,000 copies of the first and second editions sold, the third edition remains the textbook of choice for photography programs across the country.

the road to risd: While teaching at Harvard and the University of Massachusetts in the mid-’70s, it became obvious to Horenstein that he has “a great time connecting with students.” During six years as a creative consultant at Polaroid Corporation, he began teaching at RISD, where the greatest satisfaction has come from “seeing my students go on to make important contributions to contemporary photography.”

making it: Horenstein has published three other widely used texts, Beyond Basic Photography, Color Photography and Photography, while working on volumes of photo essays and accompanying traveling exhibitions. Among his most well-known monographs are Aquatics (2001), Canine (2000) and Creatures (1999), which capture the sculptural charms of selected animals by angling in on their least-recorded features — a lizard’s foot, a walrus’ snout or a monkey’s tail — and producing the images as rich duotones or tritones. Selections from his monograph Honky Tonk: Portraits of Country Music, 1972-1981 (2003) were on view in 2006 at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and will be shown at The RISD Museum of Art in summer 2007, opening on June 29. His latest monograph, Close Relations (2007), presents “a warm and quirky look at his personal history” through a collection of images made when he was a student at RISD in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Horenstein’s work has been published in LIFE, People, Outside, Fortune, TIME, Vanity Fair, Communication Arts, Graphis and American Photographer, among other magazines.

discoveries: (1) “My best photos are both warm and unsettling.” (2) “Teaching will always be an important part of my life.”

education
Rhode Island School of Design, MFA, Photography, 1973
Rhode Island School of Design, BFA, Photography, 1971

monographs
Close Relations, PowerHouse Books, 2007
Humans, Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg, 2004
Honky Tonk: Portraits of Country Music, 2003
Aquatics, Stuart Chabori & Chang, 2001
Canine, Pond Press, 2000
Creatures, Pond Press, 1999
Branson, MO: Las Vegas of the Ozarks, Artisan/Workman, 1998
Racing Days, Viking, 1987; Owl Books/Henry Holt, 1995
Thoroughbred Kingdoms: Breeding Farms of the American Racehorse, Little, Brown & Co., 1990