Harry de zitter photography schools
Meet Naples Visionary Photographer Harry De Zitter
In April, photographer Harry De Zitter found himself standing in the middle of a road in his native South Africa. He was talking with a friend in the Karoo, an arid region covered with low scrub brushes. The open, umber-colored plains surrounding them reached into infinite stretches as another man approached. Harry’s focus drifted to the newcomer’s fraying boots and the dusty, shattered asphalt beneath. He couldn’t help but take a shot. The resulting black-and-white photograph is so sparse and candid that it becomes affectingly intimate.
Harry, who spends most of the year in Naples, has a decades-long career as an advertising photographer. He’s a titan in the industry, globetrotting to cover splashy campaigns for dozens of top-tier clients, ranging from Mercedes-Benz and Stella Artois to Wrangler and IBM. He’s photographed Paul McCartney and Bill Gates, run studios in New York City and London, and published work in Elle Italia and Conde Nast Traveler.
But, when it comes to his personal projects, Harry favors story-driven compositions in black and white. Images like the one he captured on that desert road this past spring, Worker with Well-Worn Boots, elevate the aloof or mundane into a haunting human treatise and distinguish the photographer as an artist. “My viewfinder is my window to the world,” he says.
Harry estimates that 90 percent of his work as an advertising photographer has been in color; his black-and-white photographs are all his—a fascination that’s stayed with him since college. He recalls the campus’ dark room and watching his first black-and-white shot come into focus under dim red light. “I was smitten,” he says. “It was magic.”
As his career in advertising photography coalesced, Harry kept returning to his monochromatic passions. It has cojones (nerve), he says of the grayscale palette. “It has texture; it h
Baker Museum offers three photography exhibitions, headed by Harry De Zitter works
Most people love Naples for its iridescent sunshine. Harry De Zitter loves it for its clouds.
"The clouds in Southwest Florida are epic," declared the prominent photographer, who has chosen Naples for his home base while he wings to assignments around the world. "There’s a beauty,
"This is my third summer chasing clouds," he added of his Florida home. He already has several favorite shooting spots: the end of the Naples Pier — "There's a clear view, no interruption" — as well as the top of the Goodland bridge facing the Everglades, and at the condo of a friend in a Gulfshore Boulevard high-rise.
De Zitter's work is at The Baker Museum in Naples in the photographer's first American show, a 110-photograph retrospective that reveals the breadth of his work.
In his early 60s, the native of Belgium has been shooting for magazines and advertising agencies for decades, and is so much in demand he works through an agent. Within a week of talking about his exhibition, he would be off to Africa to shoot, for a food company — the continent as seen through the eyes of Harry De Zitter.
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"I can choose what I shoot. It's a dream assignment," he said. De Zitter has shot a lot of other people's dreams to get there, however. He began his career in South Africa, where he grew up, moving on to Europe and then to the U.S. in the 1980s.
"But I still like to shoot both sides of the Atlantic because the work is very different," he said.
He's particularly proud of bringing American advertisers a taste for his large-format Linhof camera work, with its 6- by 12-centimeter and 6- by 17-centimeter film, Now however, he shoots digitally.
"In the early days of digital film file sizes weren’t big enough for high-quality magazine work. But it’s all caught up," he said. "I walked away from film about 10 years ago."
What he's never lost sight ABOUT HARRY DE ZITTER Born in | Oudenaarde East Flanders Belgium 3rd August 1949 Education | Gill College Somerset East South Africa 1962-1967, Port Elizabeth School of Art (Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) South Africa 1968-1970 Awards City of Port Elizabeth Municipal Silver Medal / “Student of the Year” / 1970 CLIO Award “Best Photography” for Mercedes Benz / New York / 1983 CLIO Award “Best Photography” for Fruhauf / New York / 1984 AFAEP Portfolio Gold Award / London / 1984 AFAEP Landscape Gold Award / London / 1984 Adweek “American Advertising Photographer of the Year 1986” / New York Kelly Award for “Best USA Advertising Campaign” / 1986 Kelly Award for “Best USA Advertising Campaign” / 1990 CLIO Award “Best Photography” for George Dickel Whisky / New York / 1990 Kelly Award for “Best USA Advertising Campaign” / 1994 PHOTOGRAPHIS “Best of Show” Statue Award / New York / 1995 Kelly Award for “Best USA Advertising Campaign” / 1996 Mondi “Best of Show” Gold Award / South Africa / 1998 Mondi “ Best of Show” Gold Award / South Africa / 2000 “200 Best Advertising Photographers in the World” Lurzers Archive / Germany 2004-5 “200 Best Advertising Photographers in the World” Lurzers Archive / Germany 2006-7 Exhibitions SHELL House (1st “One Man” Show) Cape Town South Africa / 1972 Council for the Protection of Rural England Images London UK (Opened by HM Queen Elizabeth II) / 1989 Modern British Advertising (Benson & Hedges Campaign) National Gallery London UK / 1989 “Travels with Harry” World Trade Center Boston USA / 1990 Gruppo Lino Manfrotto PHOTOKINA Cologne Germany / 1994 “Out West” Permanent Collection Philip Morris Home / The Baker Museum /Past Exhibitions /Harry de Zitter Back Harry De Zitter. Llao Llao Hotel, My First Paid Landscape. Nahuel Huapy Lake, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, 1973. Photographed with Pentax 6x7. Commissioned by Fair Lady magazine, Travel section. Harry De Zitter. Jacque Fresco. Venus, Florida, 2013. Photographed with Canon IDS MK III. Personal project. Harry De Zitter. Feet of a Himba Woman. Opuwo, Namibia, 1997. Photographed with Rollei 6008I. Namibiana project. Harry De Zitter. The Cage at the Original Plant in Juneau Ave. Milwaukee, USA, 1992. Photographed with Linhof 612. Commissioned by Harley-Davidson. Harry De Zitter. Lynn Jennings, World Champion Long Distance Runner. San Francisco, USA, 1990. Photographed with Fuji GX 680. Commissioned by Nike. Harry De Zitter. Proteas, National Flower of South Africa. Cape Grace Hotel, Cape Town, South Africa, 2015. Photographed with Fuji X Pro I. Commissioned by M&A Design for the Cape Grace Hotel. September 6 – November 13, 2016 Freelance photographer Harry De Zitter’s life and career have interwoven into an incredible journey. Starting in 1949 when he was born in Belgium, it continued to South Africa, where he grew up and studied, and took him later to the US and numerous other countries to become a key figure in advertising photography while he developed extraordinary personal projects. The photographer’s vast body of work, produced over four decades, accounts for an insatiable search. His motto, “expect the unexpected,” defines his approach to both life and photography. De Zitter’s open mind behind the camera explains the interchangeability of his commissions and self-assignments. Often, a personal photograph has become the leading image of a campaign; in other instances, shooting for ads has enabled him to make powerful coll
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Harry De Zitter
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