Susan Danly

Irving B. Ellis (1902-1977) was an archetypal Pictorialist photographer. A physician by training and a photographer by avocation, he was a dedicated and much-awarded maker of pictures. Active as a photographer during the decades just before and after the Second World War, Ellis experienced the burgeoning growth of amateur photography clubs, the expansion of corporate photography businesses and the establishment of photographic collections in major art museums across the country. This volume, based on an extensive photographic and documentary archive, places Ellis' work within the context of the Pictorialist movement in an effort to gain a better understanding of the complex undercurrents that helped to define this era of American photographic history. Susan Danly contributes essays on the development of Ellis' photographic style and the use of his photographs in advertising, and Chris Thompson contributes an interview with photographer Judy Ellis Glickman, Ellis' daughter and the subject of much of his work.