Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
American, b. 1940
Born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 24, 1940, Arthur Tress began his first camera work as a teenager in the surreal neighborhood of Coney Island where he spent hours exploring the decaying amusement parks. Later, during five years of world travel, mostly in Asia and Africa, he developed an interest in ethnographical photography that eventually led him to his first professional assignment as a U.S. government photographer recording the endangered folk cultures of Appalachia.
Seeing the destructive results of corporate resource extraction, Tress began to use his camera to raise environmental awareness about the economic and human costs of pollution. Focusing on New York City, he began to photograph the neglected fringes of the urban waterfront with a straight documentary approach. This gradually evolved into a more personal mode of “magic realism” combining improvised elements of actual life with stage fantasy that became his hallmark style of directorial fabrication. In the late 1960s Tress was inspired to do a series based upon children’s dreams that combined his interests in ritual ceremony, Jungian archetypes, and social allegory. Later bodies of work dealing with the hidden dramas of adult relationships and the reenactments of male homosexual desire evolved from this primarily theatrical approach.
Beginning in the early 1980s, Tress began shooting in color, creating room-sized painted sculptural installations out of found medical equipment in an abandoned hospital on New York’s Welfare Island. This led to a smaller scale exploration of narrative still life within a children’s toy theater and a portable nineteenth-century aquarium.
Around 2002, Tress returned to gelatin silver, exploring more formalist themes in the style of mid- century modernism, often combining a spontaneous shooting style with a constructivist’s sense of architectural composition and abstract shape. In addition to images of California skateboard parks, his recent work includes the round images of the series Planets and the diamond-shaped images of Pointers. Selected Arthur Tress Books and Publications
Open Space in the Inner City: Ecology and the Urban Environment. New York: New York State Council on the Arts, 1971. Arthur Tress: The Dream Collector. Text by John Minahan. Richmond: Westover, 1972, New York: Avon, 1974. Shadow. A Novel in Photographs. New York: Avon, 1975 Theater of the Mind. Text by Duane Michaels, Michel Tournier and A.D. Coleman. Dobbs Ferry: Morgan and Morgan, 1976. Reves. Text by Michel Tournier. Brussels: Complexe, 1979. Talisman. Edited by Marco Livingstone. Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1986. The Teapot Opera. Photographs and text by Arthur Tress. Goro International, 1986, Abbeville, 1988. Male of the Species: Four Decades of Photography by Arthur Tress. Text by Michale Tournier. Fotofactory, 1999. Fish Tank Sonata. Bulfinch, 2000. Arthur Tress: Fantastic Voyage: Photographs 1956-2000. Bulfinch, 2001. Memories. Photographs by Arthur Tress, Poems by Guillaume Apollinaire. 21st,to
3
8
3
1
Overall Width
to
Overall Height
to
12
2
6
3
7
8
2
2
11
8
4
4
4
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
12
18
1,323
1,133
834
793
1
3
12
Artist: Arthur Tress
Groom with the White Arabian, CA, Black and White Nude Male with Horse Tress
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Groom with the White Arabian, CA, Black and White Nude Male with Horse Tress
1996
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered in ink, recto
Gelatin silver print (Edition of 50)
14.75 x 1...
Category
1990s Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Stormy Weather, Palm Springs
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Stormy Weather
Palm Springs, 1995
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered in black ink, recto
Gelatin silver print (Edition of 50)
20 x 16 inches (50.8 x...
Category
1990s Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Making Leaves - In Celebration of Pride Month
By Arthur Tress
Located in New Orleans, LA
Stone and Press Gallery is excited to offer several works in celebration of the LGBTQ community.
Tress uses a bed, the juxtaposition of two rakes and a scattering of fallen leaves ...
Category
1970s Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
$1,280 Sale Price
28% Off
Boy in Mickey Mouse Hat, Coney Island, New York
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Vintage gelatin silver print
Signed and dated twice, verso
Also inscribed in black ink, verso
Various studio stamps and printing instructions, verso
This artwork is offered by Clam...
Category
1960s Other Art Style Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Claire De Lune, Breezy Point, New York
By Arthur Tress
Located in Carmel, CA
Mint Condition
Purchased directly from artist.
Loose Print
Titled in Pen Left Hand Side
Signed in Pen Right Hand Side
Category
Late 20th Century Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
$4,000 Sale Price
20% Off
Boy in Burnt Out Furniture Store, Newark, New Jersey
By Arthur Tress
Located in Carmel, CA
Purchased directly from artist.
Hand printed silver gelatin photograph,.
Mint Condition
Signed and titled in pen on recto.
Category
1960s Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
$3,750 Sale Price
25% Off
Teenage Runners
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Teenage Runners
1976/printed later
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered in black ink, recto
Gelatin silver print (Edition of 50)
24 x 20 inches, sheet
19 x 19 inches, image
Contac...
Category
1970s Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Price Upon Request
Flood Dream
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Ocean City, New Jersey, 1971
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered, recto
Gelatin silver print (Edition of 50)
14 x 11 inches, sheet
10 x 10 inches, image
Contact gallery for price.
Literature:
John Minahan, The Dream Collector (Westover Publishing Company: Richmond, Virginia, 1972)
Michel Tournier...
Category
1970s Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Price Upon Request
University Tutorial
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Signed, titled, numbered, and dated, recto
Gelatin silver print (Edition of 50)
14 x 11 inches sheet
10 x 10 inches image
Contact gallery for price.
This work is offered by Clamp...
Category
1970s Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Price Upon Request
The Burning Warehouse
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Signed, titled, and numbered, recto
This work is offered by ClampArt in New York City.
Category
1970s Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Price Upon Request
Platonic Friendship
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Signed, titled, and inscribed “for Paul” in black ink, recto
Gelatin silver print
14 x 11 inches, sheet
7.5 x 7.5 inches, image
This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New Y...
Category
1990s Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Price Upon Request
The Last Portrait of My Father, NYC
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Gelatin silver print (Edition of 50)
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered in black ink, recto
This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City.
Arthur Tress is one of t...
Category
1970s Other Art Style Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Price Upon Request
Related Items
Untitled Portrait
By Seydou Keïta
Located in New York, NY
Listing includes framing with UV Plexi ($900 value), free shipping, and a 14-day return policy.
Seydou Keïta
Untitled Portrait, 1952 - 1955 (02158)
23...
Category
1950s Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Photographic Film, Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
Ted Higby at Skyline Rodeo, 1928
Located in New York, NY
Listing includes framing with UV plexiglas, free shipping and a 14 day return policy.
Ted Higby at Skyline Rodeo, 1928
15 x 12 inch gelatin silver print
Image Size: 14 x 8.5 inches
Frame size: 22.5 x 17.5 x 2 inches
Edition of 15
Lora Webb Nichols was born in 1883 and grew up in the small mining town of Encampment, Wyoming. At the age of 16 Lora received her first camera and from that moment and for the next few decades she produced work that is both stunning in its singular voice and revealing in the world it opens up for us.
At first Nichols photographed her family, friends, and the landscape around Encampment, but when the town experienced a copper mining boom Nichols expanded her scope to become a photographer for hire shooting portraits and industrial photographs. When the boom collapsed, Nichols took the risk of opening her own business in Encampment - The Rocky Mountain Studio - which opened in 1925. The studio ran for ten years, accumulating 24,000 negatives that illustrate the lives and environment of the people living in and around the town while creating a distinctive and surprising body of work. If one was to attempt an analogy – Nichols’ pictures fit somewhere between Lartigue and Lange - joyful and generous while objectively intimate. In particular what seems to distinguish Nichols’ work is the way she sees the world from a female perspective. As Vince Aletti...
Category
1920s Other Art Style Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Eve Babitz and Marcel Duchamp playing chess during Duchamp's Pasadena Art Museum
By Julian Wasser
Located in New York, NY
Listing is for an unframed print and includes free shipping to the continental US and 14-day return policy.
Julian Wasser
Eve Babitz and Marcel Duchamp pl...
Category
1960s Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
Liz Hurley (Limited Edition of 25) - Celebrity Photography - 30x40 Print
Located in New York, NY
Elizabeth Hurley photographed by British celebrity and fashion photographer John Stoddart. This risqué iconic black and white photograph expresses her incredible figure, capturing the actress completely naked, against the head of a large Grecian bust...
Category
1990s Young British Artists (YBA) Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
$6,607 Sale Price
20% Off
H 40 in W 30 in
Liz Hurley - Celebrity Photography Print (Limited Edition of 25) -- 20 x 24 In.
Located in New York, NY
Elizabeth Hurley photographed by British celebrity and fashion photographer John Stoddart. This risqué iconic black and white photograph expresses her incredible figure, capturing the actress completely naked, against the head of a large Grecian bust...
Category
1990s Young British Artists (YBA) Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
1970s Nightclubs of Chicago South Side - Black woman striptease dancer
Located in London, GB
"I walked into a timeless place … full of supporting actors and actresses of every conceivable role," Abramson wrote in Light: On the South Side, published by Chicago's Numero Group ...
Category
1970s Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Wood, Glass, Photographic Film, Archival Paper, Silver Gelatin, Photogra...
$2,753
H 18.9 in W 14.97 in D 1.58 in
Daniel Craig Contact Sheet (Limited Edition of 25) - Celebrity Photography
Located in New York, NY
This is a 2002 contact sheet (a positive print of all the negative images from a roll of 35mm film or medium format film) of youthful-looking Daniel Craig...
Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
$1,651 Sale Price
20% Off
H 20 in W 24 in
Michael Caine filming Get Carter LIFETIME black and white photographic print
By Terry O'Neill
Located in Norwich, GB
Terry O’Neill CBE is one of the world’s most collected photographers, with work hanging in national art galleries and private collections worldwide. From presidents to pop stars, he ...
Category
Late 20th Century Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
$4,817
H 24 in W 20 in D 0.01 in
Brigitte Bardot b/w silver gelatin photograph on paper
By Terry O'Neill
Located in Norwich, GB
Terry O’Neill CBE is one of the world’s most collected photographers, with work hanging in national art galleries and private collections worldwide. From presidents to pop stars, he ...
Category
Late 20th Century Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
$10,324
H 24 in W 20 in D 0.1 in
Michael Caine and Geraldine Moffat filming Get Carter, 1971 b/w photograph
By Terry O'Neill
Located in Norwich, GB
Terry O’Neill CBE is one of the world’s most collected photographers, with work hanging in national art galleries and private collections worldwide. From presidents to pop stars, he ...
Category
Late 20th Century Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
"The Glimmer Twins - Mick Jagger" Photography 40x30 in by Charlie Auringer
Located in Culver City, CA
"The Glimmer Twins - Mick Jagger" Photography 40x30 in by Charlie Auringer
Year: 1978
Edition of 50
Medium: Silver gelatin limited edition photographic print on paper
Signed and num...
Category
20th Century Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Catherine Zeta-Jones (Limited Edition of 25) - Celebrity Photography
Located in New York, NY
This 1991 fine art print features Catherine Zeta-Jones when she was a TV actress in Britain and aspiring to be a Hollywood Star. Her success in The Darling Buds of May (English comed...
Category
1990s Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Previously Available Items
Teenage Runners
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Gelatin silver print
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered
20 x 16 inches
(Edition of 50)
This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City.
Arthur Tress is one of the m...
Category
1970s Other Art Style Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Bike Lovers, NY
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Gelatin silver print (Edition of 50)
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered in black ink, recto
14 x 11 inches, sheet
This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City.
A...
Category
1970s Other Art Style Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Stephen Brecht, Bride/Groom
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Gelatin silver print
Signed, titled, and numbered in black ink, recto
14 x 11 inches, sheet
10 x 10 inches, image
(Edition of 50)
20 x 16 inches, sheet
15 x 15 inches, image
(Editi...
Category
1970s Other Art Style Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Teenage Runners
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Gelatin silver print
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered
14 x 11 inches, sheet
10 x 10 inches, image
(Edition of 50)
20 x 16 inches, sheet
15 x 15 inches, image
(Edition of 50)
24...
Category
1970s Other Art Style Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Masked Children, 110th Street
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Gelatin silver print
Signed in black ink, l.l.
20 x 16 inches, sheet
19 x 15 inches, image
This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City.
Arthur Tress is one of th...
Category
1960s Other Art Style Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Bike Fantasy
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Gelatin silver print (Edition of 50)
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered
14 x 11 inches, sheet
10 x 10 inches, image
This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City.
...
Category
1970s Other Art Style Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Groom with Arabian
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Gelatin silver print (Edition of 50)
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered, recto
14 x 11 inches, sheet
10 x 10 inches, image
This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York...
Category
1990s Other Art Style Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Kent on Slide
By Arthur Tress
Located in New York, NY
Gelatin silver print (Edition of 25)
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered
20 x 16 inches, sheet
15 x 15 inches, image
This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City.
...
Category
1970s Other Art Style Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Bride and Groom
By Arthur Tress
Located in Denton, TX
Edition of 50
Signed, titled, dated and numbered.
Category
1970s Contemporary Arthur Tress Black and White Photography
Materials
Silver Gelatin
Arthur Tress black and white photography for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Arthur Tress black and white photography available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Arthur Tress in silver gelatin print and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the contemporary style. Not every interior allows for large Arthur Tress black and white photography, so small editions measuring 11 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Jeffrey Silverthorne, Barry Feinstein, and Edward Steichen. Arthur Tress black and white photography prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $1,280 and tops out at $24,400, while the average work can sell for $5,500.