Exhibition illuminates photographer

AUSTIN (KXAN) - When Tina Henle was 12 years old, she joined her older sister and her younger brother on a world tour with their parents. It was an enormous adventure. Their father was Fritz Henle , one of the world’s great independent freelance photographers. He contributed to major magazines including Life and Harper’s and he gave his children the education of a lifetime.

Henle had the credentials for such a mission. He fled Nazi Germany for America in 1936. Delighted with his new home and all it offered, he threw himself into his work and a career that spanned six decades.

Now his archive rests with the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. Curator Roy Flukinger mounted an exhibition of Henle’s work and published a book on the subject to compliment the show. Flukinger called the exhibit, "Fritz Henle: In Search of Beauty."

This week, Tina Henle was in Austin for the opening and she spent some time with KXAN Austin News, remembering life with her father and his search.

"I know that’s a really big word because a lot of his subject matter may not have been what we might say is, you know, a beautiful subject," she said, "but he would find the way to bring a perspective of beauty in it, either through the composition or from the moment, or just somehow it was always about capturing something that could convey more, way more that the 'what' of it."

That beauty will adorn the walls of the Ransom Center through Aug. 2, 2009.