Nickolas Muray

Biography
Birthdate: February 15, 1892
Birth Place: Zseged, Hungary 
Education: He attended a graphic arts school in Budapest. There, he studied lithography, photoengraving and photography.

Significance
Muray was part of the first people to photograph in color. He worked for Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper's Bazaar taking portraits and advertising photographs. His most popular photograph was a portrait of Frida Kahlo in 1939. Muray is most known for his portraits, in which most of his photographs were of celebrities. He is known for making the first natural color commercial photograph.

Concept
Often times Muray photographed portraits of famous people, ranging from celebrities and politicians. It seems to be a trend for him to combine portraiture and commercial art. The vivid colors of his photographs gives his subjects a cartoon-like look, making them appear like his commercial work.

Method
In some of his photographs, Muray used the Carbro technique, which is a type of carbon pigment process for making colored prints.

Motivations
Muray's extensive use of color in portraits and use of color in commercial photographs leads me to think that color was Muray's fascination. By the end of his career, he had taken thousands of colored photographs. I think his goal was to master color photography, which he did.

Opinion
The reason I chose to research Nickolas Muray was because of the way he used color. Each color in his photographs seems pure, reminding me of color aid/screen print. His photographs range from simplistic compositions to more complex ones, but no matter the composition each color becomes important and no color goes unnoticed.