ARTIST

Paul Himmel

This black and white photograph shows a naked young man standing on a beach. He is covered in mud.
Mud Boy ⓘ
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Paul Himmel took up photography as a teenager and studied graphic journalism under art director Alexey Brodovitch. From 1947 to 1969, he worked as a professional photographer for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and several of his photographs were included in Edward Steichen’s “Family of Man” exhibition. In the 1950s, Himmel started his own projects, including series on boxers, the circus, and ballet. He experimented with grain structure in his negatives and prints, using a series of silhouetted and elongated forms abbreviated almost to the point of abstraction.