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Title: Lou Stoumen Archive
Dates: 1925-1992
Collection Number: 1992.001
Creator/Collector:
Stoumen, Louis Clyde--Archives
Extent: 18 boxes, 4 record cartons (11 linear ft.)
Repository:
Museum of Photographic Arts
San Diego, California 92101
Abstract: The Lou C. Stoumen Archive, 1925-1992 consists of personal and subject files spanning a wide range of Stoumen’s professional
activities, from his involvement with the Photo League as a young freelance photo-journalist and service in the U.S. Army
during WWII, to his professorship with UCLA’s Cinematography Department, 1966-1988. Materials in the collection include catalogs,
contracts, correspondence, photographs, negatives, slides, portfolios, certificates, news clippings, magazine clippings, newsletters,
pamphlets, design booklets, diagrams, prints and illustrations, manuscripts (typed and hand-written), manuscript dummies,
screenplays, scripts, proofs, programs, promotional flyers, date books, journals and ledgers, magazines, passport and war
correspondent pass.
Language of Material: English
Collection stored on-site at the Museum of Photographic Arts. Open for research by appointment only. Contact the Edmund L.
and Nancy K. Dubois Library for information.
Permission to publish material from the Lou C. Stoumen Archive must be obtained from The Edmund L. and Nancy K. Dubois Library
or the appropriate holder of copyright.
[Identification of item]. Lou Stoumen Archive. Collection Number: 1992.001. Museum of Photographic Arts
Morrie Camhi, Trustee; gift; 1992.
Biography/Administrative History
Louis Clyde Stoumen was a writer, award-winning filmmaker, photographer and teacher born in Springtown, Pennsylvania in 1917.
Stoumen attended Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1939 with a B.A. in Fine Arts. In 1939, Stoumen
self-published his first book, Speech for the Young: First Poems and Camera Work. After graduating from Lehigh University,
he moved to New York and became a freelance photographer and journalist. That same year, he studied with the Photo League
for six weeks under Sid Grossman, eventually becoming editor of the Photo League’s publication Photo Notes in 1940. Stoumen
received his first photo-journalist job in 1941 working for the National Youth Administration in Puerto Rico. He volunteered
for the army in 1942, serving as a combat correspondent and photographer for the U.S. Army Weekly publication Yank. Honorably
discharged from the Army in August of 1945, Stoumen relocated to the Los Angeles area, working as a freelance photographer
and journalist. In 1948, Stoumen exhibited his photographs in group shows at the MoMA, New York curated by Edward Steichen:
Out of Focus, A Survey of Today’s Photography, April-July, and Fifty Photographs by Fifty Photographers, July-September. During
the 1950s, Stoumen studied graduate film, television and photography on the GI Bill, under his mentor Slavko Vorkapich at
the University of Southern California. In 1951, he entered the film industry as a cinematographer. He wrote, directed and
produced numerous films and TV treatments and was a two-time Academy Award winner and Academy Award nominee. The UCLA Department
of Motion Picture and Television invited Stoumen to join their faculty in 1966; he retired from the UCLA Cinematography Department
as Professor Emeritus in 1988. Louis Clyde Stoumen died of cancer in 1991 at his home in Sebastopol, California.
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection consists of personal and subject files spanning a wide range of Stoumen’s professional activities, from his
involvement with the Photo League as a young freelance photo-journalist and service in the U.S. Army during WWII, to his professorship
with UCLA’s Cinematography Department, 1966-1988. Materials in the collection include catalogs, contracts, correspondence,
photographs, negatives, slides, portfolios, certificates, news clippings, magazine clippings, newsletters, pamphlets, design
booklets, diagrams, prints and illustrations, manuscripts (typed and hand-written), screenplays, scripts, proofs, programs,
promotional flyers, date books, journals and ledgers, magazines, passport and war correspondent pass.
The collection is arranged in two series: Personal and Subject Files.
Photographers--United States--Archival resources
Cinematographers--United States--Archival resources