Gjon mili biography

Biography

Gjon Mili immigrated to the United States in 1923, and studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Upon graduation in 1927, he worked for Westinghouse as a lighting research engineer until 1938. Through experiments with Harold Edgerton at MIT he developed tungsten filament lights for color photography; further innovations in stroboscopic and stop-action images brought his work to the attention of Life. Mili worked freelance for the magazine from 1939 until his death, producing thousands of photographs--action shots of dance, sports, and theater events; portraits of artists, musicians, athletes, dancers, and actors. He made films about artists, among them Jamming the Blues, Eisenstaedt Photographs "The Tall Man," and Homage to Picasso. Mili taught at Yale, Sarah Lawrence College, and Hunter College. Among his many exhibitions were Dancers in Movement and On Picasso with Robert Capa, both at the Museum of Modern Art. A retrospective of

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Gjon Mili

Albanian-American photographer (1904–1984)

Gjon Mili (November 28, 1904 – February 14, 1984) was an Albanian photographer from Korçë who developed his profession in America, best known for his work published in Life, in which he photographed artists such as Pablo Picasso.

Biography

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Gjon Mili was born to Vasil Mili and Viktori Cekani in Korçë, in the Manastir Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire (present-day Albania). Mili spent his childhood in Romania, attending Gheorghe Lazăr National College in Bucharest, and migrating to the United States in 1923. In 1939, Mili started to work as a photographer for Life (a position he held until he died in 1984). Over the years his assignments took him to the Riviera (Picasso); to Prades, France (Pau Casals in exile); to Israel (Adolf Eichmann in captivity); to Florence, Athens, Dublin, Berlin, Venice, Rome, and to Hollywood to photograph celebrities and artists, sports events, concerts, sculptures and architecture.

Wor

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Artistic Collaborations: Pablo Picasso & Gjon Mili

Articles & Features

By Tori Campbell

“Picasso gave Mili 15 minutes to try one experiment. He was so fascinated by the result that he posed for five sessions, projecting 30 drawings of centaurs, bulls, Greek profiles and his signature…By leaving the shutters open, he caught the light streaks swirling through space.”

Life Magazine

Introduction

The collaboration between two artistic minds and contrasting ideas can create lasting impressions, sometimes even resulting in new technological innovations and tools. Last week’s Artistic Collaborations series focused on the joint efforts of sculptor Isamu Noguchi and dancer/choreographer Martha Graham. This week, we focus on the legendary Pablo Picasso, and his collaboration with the father of stop-motion imagery, Gjon Mili — a partnership that broke new ground in the use of light and movement in photography.

Pablo Picasso

In 1881 in Málaga, Sp