Uelsmann – Eight days wonder

American photographer Jerry N. Uelsmann (1934-2022) was a seminal figure in photo history. Uelsmann catalyzed the transfer from modernist to post-modern photography with his at the time controversial photo montages and double exposures. Decades before the birth of digital image editing programs like Photoshop, Uelsmann created photo montages by combining several negatives in the darkroom. He started to create his surreal, spiritual, and thought-provoking images in the late 1950s and continued to produce them, completely analog, throughout his life.

This first biography, written by Swedish photography historian Moa Petersen who was a close friend of Uelsmann’s, addresses his role as disruptor of the traditional straight photography paradigm and the historical context that shaped him. Several of the included images are published here for the first time.