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June 15–September 26, 2004 at the Getty Center
Teske's inventive narrative style is manifest in this study of the filmmaker Kenneth Anger. Teske created this picture by combining an image of the dashingly attired Anger posing atop a bluff in Topanga Canyon with an engraving by artist Gustave Doré illustrating a scene from Milton's Paradise Lost. Anger's face registers an expression of deliberation mixed with arrogance, while the chorus of rebel angels behind him seems to celebrate his creative powers and commanding physical presence. |
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Teske began his photographic work as a youth in Chicago, where he immersed himself in the artistic community and enjoyed music and acting. He explored Chicago with his camera, photographing street scenes, industrial and commercial buildings, storefronts, workers, children, and any subject that seemed essential to his definition of the city. |
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Teske took this photograph of his lover Richard Soakup shortly after returning to Chicago from New York where he worked as an assistant to documentary photographer Berenice Abbott. Here Teske merges a common theme of documentary photography—people at work—with his personal interest in photographing the male figure. Soakup emerges from the very dark background, with light focused on his tousled hair and bare chest. Although Soakup is engaged in labor usually associated with men, the intimate image has a soft, almost feminine, quality to it. |
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Teske's early photographs in Chicago include studies revealing the end product of consumer culture. In the industrial wasteland around Chicago's steel mills, dumps, and shanties, he found unexpected but richly rewarding subjects. In these images, abandoned household objects disintegrate into the vegetation that grows up around them. |
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Solarization, the process by which some of the tones in a photograph are reversed, often yields unpredictable results. Teske fearlessly experimented with darkroom technique, relishing the one-of-a-kind images he produced with alternative darkroom procedures. Years after his accidental discovery of solarization while developing this negative, Teske recalled: "The gods received me into the secret chambers of an exquisite photographic happening, which for me is the high point of purity." |
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In 1943 Teske moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, compelled by romantic notions of sunshine, the silver screen, and the possibility of a new way of life. He soon began to mix freely with its small but tight-knit community of artists, including Man Ray, writer Anaïs Nin, film directors Lewis Milestone and George Cukor, and architect John Lautner. |
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During the four years Teske lived at Studio Residence B, his work flourished and the studio became a magnet for the city's artists' community. |
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