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John (Ferno) Fernhout | Eva Besnyö liggend tussen haar portret van een grafoloog, Berlijn (1932)
John (Ferno) Fernhout
Agfa Schule
In Berlin, Fernhout attends the Agfa Schule for roughly a year. Along with Hollywood, Berlin is the centre for silent movies and avant-garde film at this time. At the Agfa Schule, Fernhout improves his skills as a photographer by doing assignments such as making technically perfect microscopic photographs.
Eva Besnyö
In the spring of 1962, Fernhout becomes romantically involved with the Hungarian photographer Eva Besnyö. It is she, rather than the school, who inspires Fernhout to take up photography with enthusiasm. She also introduces him to the latest developments in the field and to other photographers, such as the boy who used to live next door to her in Budapest, Endre Friedmann, who will later become famous as Robert Capa. Partly because of the influence of their contacts with the international avant-garde, Besnyö
John (Ferno) Fernhout | Eva Besnyö op een strand aan de Oostzee (1932)
and Fernhout develop a preference for a businesslike type of photography, the so-called New Photography.
New Photography
This type of photography dismisses pictorialism and uses the camera to make razor-sharp images. Instead of trying to imitate painting, these photographers use their lenses to show more than the human eye can see. Inspired by scientific photography, they aim for maximum objectivity. To enhance the expressiveness of photographs, they introduce the dynamic element of the diagonal. A typical example of this New Photography is Fernhout's photograph of Eva Besnyö lying between the portraits she has made of a graphologist.
John (Ferno) Fernhout
Talent
Fernhout met Eva Besnyö through Györgi Kepes, the Hungarian artist and filmmaker, who at the time was the assistant of the photographer László Moholy-Nagy. Here, Fernhout has photographed Kepes with his friend Chaja Goldstein, using the same diagonal composition as in his portrait of Besnyö. This image, too, may be regarded as one of the high points of the New Photography. Kepes and Goldstein are standing in front of a birch tree that cuts diagonally through the image.
Fernhout's photographs and films undeniably show that he has a keen camera eye, but eventually he preferred film to photography.
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