TODD WEBB:
We Will Always Have Paris
November 22, 2025 - January 10, 2026
OPENING AND BOOK SIGNING NOVEMBER 22, 2025, 2-4pm
Celebrating the release of the new publication
TODD WEBB: Paris: A Love Story 1948-1952 (Damiani)
We will be hosting a book signing and discussion with authors
Bill Shapiro and Betsy Evans Hunt, director of the Todd Webb Archive.
Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd is honored once again to exhibit photographs by Todd Webb. Continuing our 45th Anniversary year of exhibiting the work of artists with a strong connection to the gallery, Todd and his wife, Lucille, were close friends, and Todd’s photographs graced our walls over the past many years.
Todd and Lucille lived in Santa Fe in the 1960s, spending time with their close friend Georgia O’Keeffe, with whom Todd created an intimate and personal body of work that showed a more human side of O’Keeffe. In 1961, Todd and Lucille opened a bookstore on Canyon Road. We continue to have visitors at our gallery telling us stories about the bookstore and their friendships with the Webbs, both extraordinary people.
In 1941, while working at the Chrysler Plant in Detroit, Todd and his close friend Harry Callahan, both members of the local camera club, arranged for Ansel Adams to come to Detroit for a darkroom workshop. As Todd would tell us, “The first day Ansel’s presentation was so technical that Harry and I were the only members who returned the following day.” They had a private workshop with Ansel for the week, which not only deepened their knowledge of printing techniques but also led to a long friendship. This experience solidified their ambitions to spend their lives as photographers.
The following year, Todd traveled to New York, where he met Alfred Stieglitz, who proved to be very supportive and highly influential in Todd Webb’s early career. He encouraged Todd to consider photographing New York City in the spirit of a project that Berenice Abbott had done twenty years earlier. While she photographed “old New York,” Todd Webb photographed not just the changing architecture but also the humanity that existed within the cityscape. Todd’s 1940s photographs of New York were very well received, so much so that the only project that Beaumont Newhall took on after leaving the Museum of Modern Art and taking his position at Eastman House was curating the 1946 exhibition, I See a City of Todd Webb’s photographs for the Museum of the City of New York.
Some of our great gallery memories were sitting with both Todd and Beaumont in our Guadalupe Street gallery, listening to them reminisce about those years working together on this exhibit.
By 1948, Todd was off to Paris to photograph. Inspired by and reminiscent of the great French photographer Eugene Atget, who had photographed Paris in depth during the turn of the century.
Webb captured Paris in all seasons and times of day, in quiet alleys and bustling streets. He photographed the architecture and storefront reflections so prevalent in Atget’s works, but also focused on Parisian life. His portraits and street scenes give us a glimpse of Paris in the late 40s- and 50s, and we feel as if we are walking through the streets with him.
As Bill Shapiro writes in the book, “Webb set out to see a city, and to record it. He photographed the aging buildings, peeling advertisements, and old-world streetlamps, which spoke to him of the sweep of time; the tradespeople, peddlers, and performers making their way through the streets; the narrow passageways that created endless opportunities for a disciplined photographer waiting for a few seconds of ethereal light.”
This exhibition includes many vintage prints made and signed by Todd Webb that are included in this new volume. These rare prints are a thrill to view in person. The book contains beautifully reproduced photographs with an insightful text by the author Bill Shapiro, as well as an interview with the noted scholar and curator Keith Davis regarding Todd Webb’s photography.
Both Bill Shapiro and Betsy Evans Hunt, director of the Todd Webb Archive, will be present at the opening, where they will offer a brief presentation as well as host our book-signing.