Fritz Kaeser

The ninety-three images in Fritz Kaeser: A Life in Photography illustrate the notable fifty-year career of photographer Fritz Kaeser. After World War II, Kaeser studied briefly with Ansel Adams, whose influence is notably evident in Kaeser's remarkable photographs of the American Southwest and the Rocky Mountains.

Kaeser's photographs of the 1940s through the 1960s are wonderfully diverse, ranging from clear, brilliant landscape views of the mountains and high deserts to close-up studies of rocks and plant forms. The volume includes a series of portraits of Georgia O'Keeffe, several of which are published here for the first time.

Late in his career, Kaeser produced totally abstract images and studio shots of bones and skulls, inspired by his readings in religion that included the poems of the Catholic monk, Thomas Merton. Kaeser used photography as a way of searching for the elusive patterns that underlie reality, what Merton called, "a hidden wholeness."

Fritz Kaeser: A Life in Photography is published in conjunction with the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame. The volume includes an essay written by Stephen Roger Moriarty, curator of photography, and an introduction by Dean Porter, museum director. The photographs were part of an exhibition at the Snite in January 1999.