U.S. photographer Ruth Bernhard, whom Ansel Adams once called “the greatest photographer of the nude,” has died at the age of 101.
The renowned black-and-white photographer died of natural causes Monday at home, according to the San Francisco medical examiner’s office.
Born in Germany in 1905, Bernhard studied at the Berlin Academy of Art and later moved to New York, where she took a job as a darkroom assistant at The Delineator magazine under Ralph Steiner.
Unhappy with the work she was doing, she left the post and began a career as a freelance photographer. In 1935, Bernhard had a watershed moment when she met photographer Edward Weston in California.
Inspired by Weston’s work, Bernard moved to California to study with her new mentor. She lived first in Carmel and then moved to Hollywood, where she worked as a commercial photographer and developed her artistic portfolio.
In 1953, Bernhard moved to San Francisco, where she became friends with photographic contemporaries such as Adams, Imogen Cunningham and Dorothea Lange.
In particular, Bernard gained renown for her classical images of the female figure and was also recognized as a talented still-life photographer, with her subjects ranging from seashells she found on the beach to children’s dolls.
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