To accompany the release of his book Lumière, published by Éditions Allary, Matthieu Ricard is offering a series of blogs on photography. An invitation to share wonder, celebrate the beauty of the world, and continue the quest for light that has guided him throughout his sixty-year journey.
Ernst Haas, born in Vienna, Austria, in 1921, initially aspired to become a painter, like several other photographers. He began studying medicine in his native city but was forced to abandon his studies because of the Second World War and his Jewish origins. In 1940, following the death of his father—who himself was passionate about photography—Ernst began developing his father’s negatives. He acquired his first camera in 1946, at the age of 25, trading a ten-kilogram block of margarine for a Rolleiflex on the Viennese black market. He developed a taste for photography, which he quickly mastered as a self-taught artist. Who could have imagined that a block of margarine would be at the origin of such a brilliant career?
Haas later wrote about this:
“I never really wanted to be a photographer. This calling slowly arose from the compromise found by a young man who had two aspirations: to be a painter and an explorer. I wanted to travel, to see and to experience. What better profession than that of photographer—a kind of hurried painter overwhelmed by an excess of changing impressions? But my sources of inspiration came more from the arts than from photography magazines.”
Upon discovering the work of the Swiss photographer Werner Bischof, one of his future colleagues at the Magnum agency, Haas realized that a photograph could both tell a story and be a work of art. His first photographic essay, Homecoming, about Austrian prisoners of war returning home, was published in the Viennese magazine Heute and later in Life magazine.
Robert Capa saw Haas’s photographs, recognized his genius, and invited him to join the Magnum agency, which had been founded two years earlier. To help him emigrate, Capa appointed Haas vice president of Magnum for the United States. Haas thus settled in New York, where he lived until his death in 1986.
Inge Bondi, a Magnum colleague who knew him well, said of him:
“Ernst was a charming man—quick-witted and funny. He had a deep curiosity about people, combined with gracious old-world manners. Strong, handsome, and endowed with great charm, he instantly put strangers at ease.”
Steve Melzer recalls meeting Haas in 1969: “What struck me most about this famous revolutionary photographer was his simplicity and kindness.”
Cornell Capa, Robert Capa’s brother, had by then founded the International Center of Photography and was organizing seminars in partnership with New York University. He invited Haas to present his work. Haas announced that the photographs he was about to show formed the basis of a book he was planning to publish, but that he was unsure how they would be received, as they were all in color. As Steve Melzer recounts:
“There were murmurs in the audience. Remember, this was the 1960s, and most ‘serious’ photographers—photojournalists in particular—saw the world only in black and white. The lights went down, the projector came on, and the first slide appeared. It was an image of horses running through a meadow, and it was startling because both the animals and the background were blurred. It was the kind of photograph that most photographers and editors of the time would simply have thrown away. The audience began to stir, unsure how to react. More images appeared, and little by little everyone grew calm, hypnotized by what they were seeing. At the end of the slideshow, the audience fell silent. Capa stood up and began to applaud, followed by others. Haas bowed his head in acknowledgment of their approval.”
These images, along with others, were published in Haas’s first book, The Creation, in 1971—a classic of its kind that sold over 350,000 copies, making it one of the best-selling photography books of all time.
Inge Bondi continues:
“Haas’s frustration with the limits of technology constantly pushed him to be somewhat ahead of his time. He was a technological pioneer with the eye of a painter and the soul of a poet.”
Regarding his own transition to color, Haas explained:
“Having the possibility of expressing a world in color through color, I was looking for a composition in which color became far more than a simple black-and-white image.”
However, many photographers, museum curators, and historians were still reluctant to consider color photography as art, given the commercial origins of this technology. Even today, although color photography has become the dominant mode of expression, black and white retains its devoted adherents. Roland Michaud—who, together with his wife Sabrina, traveled the roads of Asia for decades—told me during a final visit to India for his book Journey in Search of Light:
“In the Paris scene, if you don’t work in black and white, you’re not considered a photographer, but an illustrator.”
I myself experienced this, since the most enthusiastic critical responses to my modest photographic work were written about the only book I published in black and white, Faces of Peace, Lands of Serenity, as well as for the only exhibition I mounted entirely in black and white, Contemplations, at the Rencontres d’Arles (and yet, those images were color photographs converted into black and white!). As a small anecdote, in Arles I had calligraphed quotations at the bottom of the large prints made on handmade Japanese paper. Someone stopped me in the street and said: “I saw the exhibition of the photos for which you wrote the sentences, but who took the photographs?”
And yet photography is one of the pursuits I enjoy most, and I feel great joy in sharing my images. Gradually, neither truly professional nor entirely amateur, I have taken part in many exhibitions and published twelve photography books. Perhaps one day someone will say to me: “Magnificent photographs—but who wrote the texts?”
You can find this entire photographic project in Lumière, published by Éditions Allary.
Matthieu Ricard donates all of his income—royalties from his books, photographs, and lectures—to development projects run by the Karuna-Shechen association, which works to reduce poverty and empower the most vulnerable women, men, and children. In this way, every reader becomes a direct contributor to solidarity through their purchase.