Arnold Newman: Masterclass

"Dr. Edwin H. Land with a group of Polaroid Employees, Polaroid warehouse," Needham, Mass., 1977. © Arnold Newman/Getty Images/Courtesy Contemporary Jewish Museum

"Major Robert Michael White, military aircraft test pilo, with X-15," California, 1950. © Arnold Newman/Getty Images/Courtesy Contemporary Jewish Museum

"Leonard Bernstein, composer and conductor," New York, 1946. © Arnold Newman/Getty Images/Courtesy Contemporary Jewish Museum

"Robert Doisneau, photographer," New York, 1981. © Arnold Newman/Getty Images/Courtesy Contemporary Jewish Museum

"Marilyn Monroe, actress and singer," Beverly Hills, California, 1962. © Arnold Newman/Getty Images/Courtesy Contemporary Jewish Museum

"Truman Capote, writer," New York, 1977. © Arnold Newman/Getty Images/Courtesy Contemporary Jewish Museum

"Self-portait," Philadelphia, 1938. © Arnold Newman/Getty Images/Courtesy Contemporary Jewish Museum

Today more than 200 of Arnold Newman‘s iconic images are on display in San Francisco. Newman, who passed away in 2006, worked for decades photographing famous and innovative people of the twentieth century: Martha Graham, Phillip Johnson, Marilyn Monroe, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Alfred Hitchcock, John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, Piet Mondrian, Mickey Mantle and Audrey Hepburn—to name more than a few. Most of Newman’s subjects were photographed in their own space.

In a press release about the exhibit, titled “Arnold Newman: Masterclass,” the Contemporary Jewish Museum said “A bold modernist with a superb sense of compositional geometry, Newman is known for a crisp, spare style that incorporated the personal environment, the work, and the intellectual background of the subject in his photographs with great sensitivity and care. Artists delighted in sitting for Newman, knowing that he would find a way to convey their sensibility in a forceful, yet always appropriate, fashion.”

The show is the first major exhibition since Newman’s death, and features well-known portraits, as well as early street photography, architectural and still life works. Never-before-seen marked-up contact sheets are also included. “Arnold Newman: Masterclass,” organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis, and the Harry Ransom Center, Austin, opens today at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and runs through February 1, 2015.