Gift from Kimiko and John Powers, Aspen, Colorado 1971.283
Location
not on view
Kenneth Snelson
Kenneth Snelson American, 1927-
Photographer Kenneth Snelson is perhaps better known for his large-scale outdoor sculptures made of tubular steel and cable. Piqued by his father's trade in high-quality German cameras, his interest in photography began as a child.
After studying at the University of Oregon (1946-48), Black Mountain College in North Carolina (where his teachers included Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, and Willem de Kooning, 1948-49), and the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology (1950), Snelson studied with Fernand Léger at the Académie Montmartre in Paris (1951). Upon his return, he worked as a cinematographer in order to pay for his sculpture. He began creating panoramic photographs in 1975 with the purchase of a Wide-Lux camera that allowed a 140 view. In 1983 he began using a Cirkut 16 camera, which produced negatives 40 centimeters x 3 meters in size and allowed a 360 view.
Born in Pendleton, Oregon, Snelson has taught at Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, and the School of the Visual Arts in New York, and at Southern Illinois University and Yale University. He has received awards from the New York State Council on the Arts (1971), the National Endowment for the Arts (1974, 1975), a Deutsches Akademishes Austauschdienst (daad) Fellowship, Berlin (1975), the American Institute of Architects Medal (1981), an honorary doctorate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1985), and the American Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1987). Snelson lives in New York. A.W.