Karl Struss

Karl Struss, A.S.C. (November 30, 1886 — December 15, 1981) was an American photographer and a cinematographer of the 1900s through the 1950s. He was also one of the earliest pioneers of 3-D films. While he mostly worked on films, such as F. W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Charles Chaplin's The Great Dictator and Limelight, he was also one of the cinematographers for the television series Broken Arrow and photographed 19 episodes of My Friend Flicka.

Life and Career

He was born in New York, New York, in 1886, and attended Columbia University, graduating with a B.A. in 1912. He studied photography with Clarence H. White, a faculty member at Columbia. Initially, his reputation gained attention when twelve of his pictorial works were chosen for the Albright Art Gallery International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography by Alfred Stieglitz in 1910. This was the final exhibition of the Photo-Secession, an organization that promoted photography as fine art. . As Struss continued his work and exhibitions, he produced commercial photography for magazines including Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper's Bazaar. (However, he was quick to insist that he was not doing fashion photography.)