Lens Artist

"With a sense of composition and a philosophical wit, RALPH STEINER ['21] has taken pictures that will give more esthetic pleasure than half the contents of the Metropolitan Museum." Such was the characterization of this veteran photographer by the NewYorker magazine some years ago.

Steiner's lifetime from undergraduate days to the present has been dedicated to the camera's recording of the still or moving image, so that, in his words, "emotions are aroused, and the observer begins to see what he looks at, and to look at what he sees." To him the camera is only an instrument and what it produces can vary exceedingly, depending on who operates it. The shutter artist "must fall in love with his subject before the pushed button of the machine disposes." The viewer of the developed print "must be delighted and seduced by the pictorial appeal to his senses and feelings, and in this way he can be roused from his customary unseeing inertia."

Equally masterful at both the still and moving image, Steiner is able to shift from one medium to the other with ease. He has the rare knack of capturing a sense of movement in still pictures by taking split-second shots at just the critical moment, thus creating the illusion of movement, whether starting, in progress, or ending.

As perhaps the crowning accomplishment of his career, Ralph Steiner is now working on a film series sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art, and financed in part by grants from the Carnegie Corporation and the Federal Government. Its title is The Joy ofSeeing and its purpose is "to delight its audiences and thus seduce them through its appeal to their senses and feelings." Its chapters include "The Pleasures of the Edge and the Delights of the Interior," "Energy of Motion," and "The Poetic Departure from Reality."

This series will be available for film libraries, and for rent and sale to art schools, libraries, school systems, and colleges. Undoubtedly the films will appear many times on the National Education Television network, and will be used in art courses throughout the country.

As described by producer Steiner, "There will be few words spoken during the course of the films, and only a background of dubbed-in orchestral music. If I can't show the magic of the world with picture images alone, I'd not help my cause by telling my audiences what to enjoy and how to fall in love with it." He is hopeful that TheJoy of Seeing will give its viewers "a keener awareness of the visual world, and a greater capacity to respond to the forms by which the artist observes and transforms this world."

The earliest years of Ralph Steiner's career were devoted mainly to still photography, and Dartmouth College was the subject of some of his most artistic work. His photographs appeared in various national magazines, including Fortune and Life. But documentary films have played a primary role in his success. His first major production was The City, seen daily at the 1933 New York World's Fair.

Other notable films that followed were The Plow That Broke the Plain,The River, and Surf and Seaweed. In 1939 Steiner was president of American Documentary Films, Inc., which had the avowed purpose of producing motion pictures "in the public interest." With the outbreak of World War II, he went to work in the film division of the Office of War Information.

Steiner can look back also on two less-than-happy years in Hollywood and one year at Sarah Lawrence College, where he gave a course called "How to Look at the World." For MGM he had a hand in A Song ofLove - "one of the stickiest pieces of false sentiment ever cooked up" - which helped convince him that Hollywood was not his thing.

Does retirement come after completion of the current film series on TheJoy of Seeing? Not at all, says Steiner. "I'm a photographera picture man and when I die they will find camera lenses on my eyelids."