Joseph Bellows Gallery

Joseph Bellows sent me this link to a new exhibition at his La Jolla gallery. Bellows has the premier photographic gallery in the area and is one of the finest dealers in the United States.

Joseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to announce an upcoming exhibition of work by George Schumacher - his first in over forty years. These original 4x5 Polaroid Land photographs, created from the late 1950’s to 1970, and drawn from the artist’s estate, represent a rare trove of pristine, exemplary prints. 

Schumacher’s avid interest in photography was fortuitously enhanced and broadened by a happenstance meeting with Ansel Adams in the mid-1950s, and led to Schumacher’s participation in several of the Yosemite Workshops led by Adams. Adams thought so highly of his protégé’s work that he featured his images in the 1963 publication: Polaroid Land Photography Manual. This technical handbook served to acquaint and instruct photographers on the creative use of this revolutionary new photographic process. It included works by Adams, as well as such early Polaroid practitioners as Paul Caponigro, Minor White, Marie Cosindas, Philippe Halsman and Schumacher.

Active in central and northern California, Schumacher, a psychiatrist interested in group and family therapy, chose to work with the Polaroid medium because of its “immediacy” as well as its ability to express “deep inner reflection through light and framed subject.” Originally resorting to photography merely as a hobby, his success in capturing intimate, delicate, and quiet images led to exhibitions and reproduction in various art and photographic publications including Aperture, Art in America, andInfinity, among others. Aperture magazine, perhaps the most influential photography publication at the time, included Schumacher’s work as early as 1961. Subsequently, through the encouragement of Adams and other peers, important exhibitions would follow, including his 1968 show at the Friends of Photography, one of the first for the Carmel, California based group founded in 1967 by Adams, Morley Baer, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, Brett Weston, and others from the f.64 school.

7661 Girard Avenue
La Jolla, CA 92037
858-456-5620 (t)
858-456-5621 (f)
info@josephbellows.com
www.josephbellows.com