Louis Stettner

"My way of life, my very being is based on images capable of engraving themselves indelibly in our inner soul’s eye." With these words Louis Stettner, celebrated photographer of the twentieth century, described a passion for photography spanning seventy years.

Throughout his prolific career, Louis Stettner (1922-2016), a force of nature with a Whitmaneque passion for life and the inquiring mind of a philosopher, interacted with and was befriended by many of the most significant photographers of the Humanist school of photography of the 20th Century: Stieglitz, Brassai, Strand, Weegee, Cartier-Bresson, Sid Grossman, Lou Faurer, Lisette Model, Boubat, among many others. The encouragement of fellow photographers, whose reflections and critiques of his work Stettner profoundly valued, was to reinforce a life-time passion, that of grasping the significance of life and reality around him.