Fred R. Archer

He later became a photography teacher, and ran his own photography school for many years. Along with Edward Weston, whose portrait he took, Archer was known as one of the "two big names in art photography in those days out on the west coast". He socialized with and exchanged ideas with many other artists and intellectuals in Los Angeles for decades. He was "without a doubt, the individual with the longest history of participation in the Southern California Salon movement."

• Name — Fred Robert Archer • Born — December 3, 1889 • Birthplace — Georgia, United States • Died — April 27, 1963 • Place of death — Los Angeles, California, United States • Occupation — Photographer, educator • Organizations — Art Center School Fred Archer School of Photography • Known for — Co-developing the Zone System with Ansel Adams Hollywood portrait photography Photography education • Notable Works — Fred Archer on Portraiture (1948) • Awards — Stuyvesant Peabody Memorial Award (1959)

• Illustration — Edward Weston, taken by Fred Archer in approximately 1915 He was born on December 3, 1889, in Georgia, and his family moved to Los Angeles, California. Archer was experimenting with photography as early as 1915, when he made a portrait of Edward Weston. Archer served in a military aerial photography unit in France in World War I, and returned to the United States in May, 1919. He began studying commercial art, and photography was at that time a hobby of his. In less than a year, Archer gained critical attention in two east coast photography journals, American Photography and Photo-era Magazine, which reported that he had exhibited five "somber" photos of the World War I battlefields of France at the Seventh Pittsburgh Salon. In the early 1920s, he was hired as assistant head of the Art Title Department for Universal Pictures and was promoted to head the department the following year. He soon moved on to motion picture photography.

Archer collaborated with Ansel Adams to codify the Zone System, which is a photographic technique for determining optimal film exposure and development. The technique is based on the late 19th century sensitometry studies of Hurter and Driffield, and provides photographers with a systematic method of precisely defining the relationship between the way they visualize the photographic subject and the final results. Although it originated with black-and-white sheet film, the Zone System is also applicable to roll film, both black-and-white and color, negative and reversal, and to digital photography. Archer and Adams formulated the system while teaching together at the Art Center School in Los Angeles. Ansel Adams went out of his way to give Archer equal credit for the Zone System: "I take this opportunity to restate that the Zone System is not an invention of mine; it is a codification of the principles of sensitometry, worked out by Fred Archer and myself at the Art Center School in Los Angeles, around 1939-40."

• Illustration — Cover of Fred Archer on Portraiture Archer's only book, Fred Archer on Portraiture, was published in 1948. The book was a "popular text" that "remained in print for a number of years", and was reviewed in several national photography magazines.