Todd Webb

Todd Webb (September 5, 1905 – April 15, 2000) was an American photographer notable for documenting everyday life and architecture in cities such as New York City, Paris as well as from the American west. He traveled extensively during his long life and had important friendships with artists such as Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Harry Callahan. During the Depression beginning in 1929, he moved to California and worked as a prospector and earned a meager living. What set these photos apart was their "straightforward, descriptive clarity" even though they were often of familiar views. showed a section of Sixth Avenue from 43rd–44th streets which, in 1991, was seen as a "visual time capsule of the city" and was described as a "stunner." Webb's photos reflected the photographer's sense of discovery and captured the times, such as photos of hand-painted banners over apartment house doors saying "Welcome Home, G.I.s". The best photographs, according to New York Times art critic Charles Hagen, contained the "simple geometries of urban architecture" in a "simple elegance"; Hagen thought Webb's New York City photographs were his best. According to the New York Times, the team of professional photographers was "given amazingly free rein by its corporate sponsor" to produce a documentary about oil. Curator Edward Steichen selected it for the 1955 Museum of Modern Art exhibition The Family of Man, seen by 9 million visitors on its world tour. However, in his memoir, Webb records his disappointment with the way images were "over-enlarged to billboard size" losing "all the qualities that make photographs unique."

Webb traveled to Paris, France, in 1949 and married fellow American Lucille Minqueau. While O'Keeffe was known to have a "prickly personality", Webb's photographs portray her with a kind of "quietness and calm" suggesting a relaxed friendship, and revealing new contours of O'Keeffe's character. Webb's landscape photographs as well as photos of the artist walking among the sagebrush bring O'Keeffe to life "even in pictures where she doesn't appear", according to Chicago Tribune art critic Abigail Foerstner. His photos suggest an "ageless spirit" which was "weathered and indomitable" like desert rock formations. These photos were done using matte finish paper and appear in a book entitled Georgia O'Keeffe: The Artist's Landscape.

In 2017, the Todd Webb Archive refurbished its website with biographical data, collection information, and a column regarding news events. In April 2017, an exhibition titled "A City Seen" opened at the Museum of the City of New York. Curated by Sean Corcoran, the exhibit was a comprehensive survey of Webb's work in New York during the 1940s. The book I See a City: Todd Webb's New York (Thames & Hudson, 2017) was published in conjunction with the exhibition.

Webb's estate is managed by Betsy Evans Hunt who serves as the Executive Director of the Todd Webb Archive. In 2026, Webb's estate was acquired by the MUUS Collection .

Awards Webb was awarded the following:

Guggenheim Fellowship, 1955 & 1956 National Endowment for the Arts Grant, 1978

Publications The following publications relate to Todd Webb:

Gold Strikes and Ghost Towns, Doubleday Press, 1961 The Gold Rush Trails and The Road To Oregon, Doubleday Press, 1963 Nineteenth Century Texas Homes, University of Texas Press, 1966 Todd Webb/Photographs, The Amon Carter Museum Georgia O'Keeffe, The Artist's Landscape, Twelve Trees Press, 1984 Todd Webb: Photographs of New York and Paris, Hallmark Cards, 1996 Looking Back; Memoirs and Photographs, University of New Mexico, 1991 Todd Webb: New York, 1946, 21st Editions, 2015 I See a City: Todd Webb's New York, Thames & Hudson, 2017 Todd Webb in Africa, Outside the Frame, Thames & Hudson, 2021

Collections Webb's work is in the following collections:

Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts Akron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania The American Embassy, Paris, France Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas Biblioteque Nationale, Paris, France Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts Carnegie Museum, University of Maine at Orono, Orono, Maine Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, Illinois Colby College Art Museum, Waterville, Maine Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas The David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado George Eastman House, Rochester, New York Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California Graham Nash Collection, Los Angeles, California Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Historic New Orleans Collection & Archives of American Art, New Orleans, Louisiana Institute of Art, Detroit, Michigan The International Center of Photography, New York City Judy and Leonard Lauder Collection, New York City Lehigh University Art Gallery, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, Vermont Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas Museum of Fine Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York City Museum of the City of New York, New York City The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC The National Museum, Tokyo, Japan The National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, Illinois The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico New York Public Library, New York Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois The Painting Gallery, Munich, Germany Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, California Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine Rice University, Houston, Texas Rochester Institute of Art, Rochester, New York Royal Photographic Society, London, England San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California Smith College Art Museum, Northampton, Massachusetts The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico Worcester Museum of Art, Worcester, Massachusetts