Who is James Wong Howe?
James Wong Howe, born in 1899 was a master cinematographer and has worked on over 130 films. He was known as the master of shadow photography and was the first person to introduce deep-cinematography photography. Google decided to celebrate 28th August 2017 by adding his black and white image to the google doodle.
His father migrated to US the day he was born and settled in Washington where he worked for northern Pacific railroad but later opened his own store and made it a success in spite of the intolerance from the locals there.
James was a victim of racial discrimination and was often ignored and bullied by the local kids and spent an unhappy childhood. He once said he had to offer candies from his store to the kids to get them playing with him.
He was interested in photography from his early childhood.
After the death of his father, he re located to his uncle’s house who took care of him.
James has had a struggling career in his early years. In 1915-16 jammie considered boxing as his career and recorded 5 wins, 2 losses, and a draw. Jammie then wanted to attend an aviation school but couldn’t afford so moved to Los Angeles and took up various jobs such as commercial photographer’s delivery boy and later busboy.
Throughout his career, James used lighting, framing and camera movements to express reduced affect display. His discovery in photography includes using a dark background to create different shades of color in a black and white movie.He was one of the most wanted cinematographers of Hollywood during the 1930’s and 40’s. He was won the academy awards for cinematography twice during is life for “The Rose Tattoo” and the “Hud”
