Harvey Lloyd (born November 26, 1926) is an American photographer and the leading figure in the "Breaking the Light" abstract expressionist photographic movement.[1][2] He is well known for both his realistic and
abstract photography. Lloyd trained under the legendary
Alexey Brodovitch and his photography spans a range of realistic styles from advertising to
aerial photography to
nature photography, and social photography; as well as, more recently, abstract styles. Lloyd uses his abstract work to inform his realistic work.
Early life
Lloyd was born in
Brooklyn, New York to Jewish
Ukrainian immigrants. He attended public schools in New York. He spent one year at
Cooper Union in New York studying graphic art and art direction.
Progression of Styles
Lloyd began his career as a
graphic designer for the old American Weekly Hearst Sunday Magazine in New York. In the 1950s he created his own companies Graphic Arts Center and APA and Lloyd Inc. where he practiced traditional graphic design. In the 1960s, he attended
Brodovitch's Design Laboratory in New York for graphic designers. He made slide shows for projection in the workshop using images and sound in an aleatory manner to discover serendipitous and unexpected combinations of audio-visual experiences. He then attended Brodovitch's Design Laboratory Workshops for photography. He became involved in photojournalism using a realistic traditional style of photography.
Lloyd's interest in
photojournalism was accompanied by an interest in and practice of
abstract photography. Initially, his approach was in the manner of traditional photographic abstraction—seeing patterns of peeling paint, tattered wall poster ads, patterns of every kind. Partly influenced by the blurred bullfighter images of his colleague
Ernst Haas, Loyd's traditional still
color and
black-and-white photography transformed in 1995 with his first photography of the Halloween Eve parade up Sixth Avenue in Manhattan at dusk and night. He made blurred several-second exposures of the grotesquely masked witches, skeletons, etc., and fired his camera mounted flash during the long exposures. These images straddled between the real and the abstract blurred impressions. These post abstract expressionistic and post impressionist images "reinvented" the over two hundred year old "What you see is what you get" art of still film photography. He made tens of thousands of these images around Manhattan at night. "Breaking the Light" is the name for his post-abstract photographs. Each image is made during a single exposure in Lloyd's digital camera. The name "Breaking the Light" was coined in 2002 by Ivana Lovincic, photographer and current Director/Curator of Lloyd's Studio.
In 2010 Loyd moved to
Santa Fe, New Mexico. From Santa Fe he traveled approximately eighty thousand thousand miles to photograph National Parks and Pueblo ruins. He used his classic still film realistic technique. However his work was influenced by Breaking the Light. In addition, concepts from
quantum physics,
metaphysics and
Eastern philosophy influenced the realistic work.
The
Heard Museum in Phoenix with the installation of the multi-screen show Our Voices, Our Land[5]
"Harvey, I literally had goose bumps when viewing your (new Southwest images DVD) which I became recipient of only moments ago. It was nearly 30 years ago that you created the single most compelling multi-media production of any public attraction at the time... To think this show ran in the orientation theater for a good 15 years and it is still being shown in the Heard daily within their permanent exhibit! A remarkable run because of a remarkable artist and his creation that I am confident has impacted millions of lives."—Mike Fox, former director Heard Museum[6]
Awards
The Pacific Area Travel Association's gold medal for photography of China
The Art Director's Club Gold and silver medals for the
Royal Viking Line advertising campaign