Ferenc Berkó (January 28, 1916 – March 18, 2000) was a Hungarian –American photographer noted for his early use of

color film Color (or colour in Commonwealth English; see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though color is not an inherent property of matter, color perception is related to an object's light absorp ...

Early life

Berkó was born in Nagyvarad, Hungary. His father died while Berkó was young, and he was sent to live with family friends in Germany. The family friends were in turn friends of leading Bauhaus figures, including Walter Gropious, who had an early influence on Berkó. He left Germany with just as the Nazis came to power, moving to a succession of cities including Frankfurt, Dresden, Berlin, Morocco, and Mexico.

Career

Between 1933 and 1947, he lived in London, Paris and Bombay, during which time he established a name for himself as a filmmaker and photographer. He earned most of his living as taking photographic portraits, and also published his photographs in the magazines Lilliput, Minicam, U.S. Camera, and Popular Photography. In 1947

László Moholy-Nagy László Moholy-Nagy (; ; born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by Constructivism (art), con ...

invited Berko to come to the United States, to teach photography at the Chicago School of Design. Two years later, he took a job as a corporate photographer in Aspen, Colorado, offered by

Walter Paepcke Walter Paepcke (June 29, 1896 – April 13, 1960) was an American businessman and philanthropist who was prominent in the mid-20th century. A longtime executive of the Chicago-based Container Corporation of America, Paepcke is best noted for his f ...

, who was then the president of the

Container Corporation of America Container Corporation of America (CCA) was founded in 1926 and manufactured corrugated boxes. In 1968 CCA merged with Montgomery Ward & Company, Inc., becoming MARCOR. MARCOR maintained separate management for the operations of each company, but ...

. He would remain for 50 years. In Aspen he was a fixture of the local community, called upon regularly to document events. The year that he moved to Aspen, 1949, the city held a Goethe festival that attracted luminaries of the literature and culture world. Berkó's color photographs of famous individuals at the event, including the pianist Arthur Rubenstein, social philosopher

Albert Schweitzer Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was a German and French polymath from Alsace. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. As a Lutheran minister, ...

and playwright

Thornton Wilder Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, for the novel ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' and for the plays ''Our Town'' and ''The Skin of Our Teeth'', and a U. ...

, were picked up internationally by magazines such as Look and

Life Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...

, further contributing to his celebrity. In 2021 the Musée de l'Elysée in

Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...

will present a 70-year retrospective of his work titled ''Ferenc Berko: Fascination with the Ordinary''.

Collections

Museum of Fine Arts Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 5,000 years of history with nearly 80,000 works from six continents. Follo ...

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York *

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP) is a photography museum and school at 84 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. ICP's photographic collection, reading room, and archives are at Mana Contemporary in Jer ...

* Musée de l'Elysée, Paris *

Harry Ransom Center The Harry Ransom Center, known as the Humanities Research Center until 1983, is an archive, library, and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe ...

* Hood Museum

References

{{US-photographer-stub 1916 births 2000 deaths 20th-century Hungarian male artists 20th-century American male artists 20th-century American photographers Hungarian photographers Hungarian emigrants to the United States