Biography

Edmund Teske, born in Chicago in 1911, was known as an alchemist of twentieth-century American photography who dedicated his life to art.

Primarily self-taught in the photographic process, his revolutionary darkroom techniques such as layered negative, duotone solarization, and sultry warm tone printing became his distinction.

Teske delved into the human condition and the world around him over the course of a sixty year career with passion and lust for life. His romantic and spiritual nature were the foundation for inspired, poetic, and innovative works of art.

Teske explored sexuality and spirituality with the same breadth.
His work’s lyrical theme was influenced by the myths and ideas of Vedantic Hindu philosophy. He was fascinated by the masculine-feminine principle known as Shiva-Shakti illustrated in many of his photographs.

As an artist, poet and teacher, Edmund Teske established his reputation in the 1930s after the successful reception of his work photographing the Taliesin Fellowship of Frank Lloyd Wright by Mr. Wright’s invitation.

During his employment at a commercial photography studio in Chicago in the 1930s, Teske was exposed to the work of a number of prominent contemporary photographers and artists, including Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Anton Bruehl, Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy and Georgia O'Keefe.

Edmund Teske considered himself a “poet with a camera,” and began exhibiting photographs in Los Angeles in the 1950s. His work was exhibited at major and minor galleries, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pasadena Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Ceeje Gallery in Los Angeles in the 1960s.

In 1980, his photographic monograph: Images from Within was published by Friends of Photography in Carmel.

Although Teske had numerous exhibitions during his lifetime, a high point in his career was in 1993 when the J.Paul Getty Museum honored him with the exhibition: Being and Becoming: Photographs by Edmund Teske, acknowledging his contribution to American photographic history.

In 2004, the Getty Center presented a major retrospective exhibition: Spirit into Matter: The Photographs of Edmund Teske. It was complete with gallery talks, lectures, film and music events and an accompanying catalogue with 127 color and black-and-white illustrations.

View excerpts from this exhibit: http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/teske

Teske continued to photograph until his death in November 1996, a roll of Tri-x pan film still in his 35mm camera. During his last few years he enthusiastically worked on a book project called Emanations, a six-volume unfinished collection of his life’s work which is now part of the Edmund Teske Collection at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

The Edmund Teske Archives is preserving the legacy of this significant artist.

©2011 Edmund Teske Archives
All rights reserved