Karl Bissinger

Karl Bissinger (November 5, 1914 – November 19, 2008) was an American photographer best known for his portraits of notable figures in the world of art following World War II, with regular travel and fashion features in popular magazines of the mid-twentieth century. Bissinger’s career as a photographer took second place to his later work as an activist for the War Resisters League and other pacifist organizations.

Biography

Early years

Karl Bissinger was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, in 1914. He studied art at the Cincinnati Art Museum as a high-school student and moved to Manhattan, where he studied painting at the Art Students League of New York in the late 1930s.

Career

Bissinger's first connection to photography was when he was a stylist for the studios of Condé Nast Publications, where he developed relationships with some of the portrait and fashion photographers on staff, including Cecil Beaton, George Hoyningen-Huene, Irving Penn and John Rawlings. He was part of group that shared a residence on Fire Island with Richard Avedon, who lent him a camera and encouraged him to take pictures. His first photographic subjects were Avedon's wife and author James Baldwin.

His first assignment as a photographer was for Junior Bazaar, and he started taking portraits and doing fashion shoots for Harper's Bazaar, Theater Arts, Town & Country and Vogue. He was staff photographer for the 12-issue lifespan of the magazine Flair, edited by Fleur Cowles, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Gary Cooper, John Ford, Katharine Hepburn and John Wayne. Café Nicholson, which he created with Johnny Nicholson, who had worked with him as a window-dresser at Lord & Taylor earlier in his career, was the frequent setting of his photographs. He became an active member of the War Resisters League, advocating for nuclear disarmament.

In the early 2000s, there was a renewed interest in Bissinger's early photographic work from the 1940s and 1950s; his photographs of Morocco were featured in Elias Canetti's The Voices of Marrakesh (2001), and The Luminous Years, a collection of Bissinger's portraits, was published in 2003.

Death and legacy

Bissinger died at the age of 94 on November 19, 2008, in his Manhattan home at Westbeth Artists Community. A cause of death was not disclosed.