Photographer Charles Harbutt

Charles Harbutt in 1972, photo Dennis Stock, Magnum

Biography adapted from various sources.

American, b. 1935

Charles Harbutt grew up in Teaneck, NJ, and learned photography from the township's camera club. He received a B.S. in journalism from Marquette University in 1956. That year, he became an associate editor and photographer for Jubilee Magazine.

In 1959, Harbutt began a freelance photography career that resulted in assignments from magazines like LOOK, LIFE, Paris Match, Stern, Epoca and Newsweek. He became a member of the photo cooperative Magnum in 1963, and was elected president of group twice. He left in 1981, citing its increasingly commercial ambitions and his desire to pursue more personal work. That year, he founded Archive Pictures, an international documentary photographers' cooperative.

Throughout his career, Harbutt has taught at colleges like Cooper Union, the Art Institute of Chicago, Rhode Island School of Design and MIT. He is currently an associate professor at Parsons, the New School for Design.

Recent activity includes exhibitions at (among others) the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery and at the Beaubourg, Bibliotheque Nationale and the Maison Europeene de la Photographie in Paris. He is represented in New York by the Laurence Miller Gallery. In 1997, his negatives, master prints & archives were acquired for the collection of the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Ariz. He mounted a traveling exhibition of his work at the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City in December 2000. He has had large recent exhibitions at Perpignan (2004), New York (2006) and Manila (2008). In 2009, he participated in group shows at the Vienna Museum, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and at the Arles Festival.

He died in June 2015 at the age of 79. 

Books:

• 1974, Travelog MIT Press. Arles award: Best photographic book of 1974
• 1978, Kertesz & Harbutt: Sympathetic Explorations, The Plains Art Museum, Moorhead, Minn. Edited by Joan Liftin with critical essay by Andy Grundberg
• 1983, Charles Harbutt: Grandi Fotografi, Editoriale Fabbri, Milan, Italy
• 1986, Progreso Navarin Editeur, Paris, 1986 (English edition, Archive Pictures, NYC, 1987)