Ernst Haas - Technique and Innovations in Color Photography

Technique and Innovations in Color Photography

Though Haas continued to use black-and-white film for much of his career, color film and visual experimentalism became integral to his photography. He frequently employed techniques like shallow depth of field, selective focus, and blurred motion to create evocative, metaphorical works. He became interested in, as he put it, "transforming an object from what it is to what you want it to be." Beyond the physical place, person, or object he depicted, Haas hoped to reflect the joy of looking and of human experience.

Haas supported his adventurous personal work with commercially viable photojournalism, advertising, and motion picture stills photography. While on such assignments, he would make his own photographs simultaneously, translating his passion for poetry, music, painting, and adventure into groundbreaking color imagery. His reputation on the rise, Haas traveled the world, photographing the U.S., Europe, South Africa, and Southeast Asia in expressionistic color.

In the late 1940s, Haas switched from his medium format Rolleiflex to the smaller 35mm Leica rangefinder camera, which he used consistently for the rest of his career. Once he began working in color, he most often used Kodachrome, known for its rich, saturated colors. To print his color work, Haas used the dye transfer process whenever possible. An expensive, complex process most frequently used at the time for advertising, dye transfer allowed for great control over color hue and saturation.

As the technology of color photography evolved and improved during this period, audience interest in color imagery increased. Many of the magazines that published Haas’ work, such as Life, improved the quality of their color reproduction, and increasingly sought to include his groundbreaking work in the medium. Despite this progress, many photographers, curators, and historians were initially reluctant to consider color photography as art, given the technology’s commercial origins.