David Attie

David Attie was a prominent American photographer, widely published in magazines and books from the late 1950s until his passing in the 1980s. He was one of the last great proteges of legendary photography teacher and art director Alexey Brodovitch. Attie worked in a wide range of styles, illustrating everything from novels to magazine and album covers to subway posters,[1] and taking now-iconic portraits of Truman Capote, Bobby Fischer, Lorraine Hansberry, and many others.[2] He also created the first-ever visual depiction of Holly Golightly, the main character in Breakfast at Tiffany's, when he illustrated the Capote novella's first appearance in Esquire Magazine. He was best known in his lifetime for his signature photo montages—an approach he called "multiple-image photography": highly inventive, pre-Photoshop collages that he made by combining negatives in the darkroom. His work has received new attention with a pair of posthumous books: the well-reviewed 2015 publication of his Capote collaboration "Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir, With The Lost Photographs of David Attie,"[3] and the 2021 collection of his behind-the-scenes photographs from the very first season of Sesame Street, "The Unseen Photos of Street Gang."[4] He has been the subject of several solo exhibits in recent years, including a two-year retrospective at the Brooklyn Historical Society. One recent critic wrote that even decades later, "his explorations of photomontage remain durably inspired, innovative, and visually dynamic."[5]

  1. ^ "David Attie album covers". Discogs. Retrieved 10 December 2017.
  2. ^ "David Attie's Lorraine Hansberry Photo Shoot". Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  3. ^ "Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir, With The Lost Photographs of David Attie". Retrieved 15 September 2015.
  4. ^ "Backstage At The Birth Of Sesame Street". 20 December 2021. Retrieved 18 February 2022.
  5. ^ "David Attie: Visual Communication At Keith De Lellis Gallery". 12 May 2021. Retrieved 19 June 2021.