His interest in photography began when he brought a camera to a yacht race from Los Angeles to Hawaii in 1936.[3]
Together with Leland Hayward and John H. Connelly, he co-founded Southwest Airways (no connection to the present day Southwest Airlines), a company that developed the Thunderbird Fields, which trained thousands of military pilots during the Second World War.[2][5]
He was married to actress Dorothy McGuire in 1943 until his death on May 11, 1979.[citation needed] Together they had two children.
Career
He started his career by documenting federal housing projects, a part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal Program.[6]
1936 — He worked as an assistant to Leland Heyward.[7]
1938 — He was commissioned to photograph the work of nurses in Harlem and the Lower East Side by Henry Street Settlement House.[3]
1941 — He began training Aviation cadets in Thunderbird Airfield right after he joined the Army.[6]
1942 — He collaborated with John Steinbeck on an illustrated book, Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team, which documented the training of army cadets.[6]
1945 — He joined the Naval Reserve as a photographer. His first assignment, in June 1945, was to photograph an overseas military flight from Maryland to Paris.[8]
1946 — Began his freelancing career again after his discharge from the Navy. He produced a theatrical play at the La Jolla Playhouse.[6]
John Swope broke the mold of Hollywood's glamour shots when he burst in the scene in 1936.[10] What makes his work unique is how he used available light, shot from unusual angles, and informal portraits. This might come from his influence of Mondrian's use of linear space.[11]
Exhibitions
A Letter from Japan: The Photographs of John Swope - taken in August 1945 documents the devastation caused by World War II. This photographic essay was complemented by a 144-page letter to his wife Dorothy McGuire describing in detail his emotional experience when shooting these images.[6][12][13][14]
Swope's photography has been the subject of five solo exhibitions at Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica, California; "Trees" in 2006, "New York" in 2005, "Photographs" in 2003, "Camera over Hollywood" in 2001, and "A View from Above" in 1996.[15]
Books
Camera over Hollywood: Photographs by John Swope, 1936-1938 (published in 1939)[6][9]
^"John Swope at Craig Krull Gallery". Craig Krull Gallery. Retrieved November 17, 2010. Swope was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1908. ... died in Los Angeles in 1979.
^"Oldies and Oddities: Tinseltown's Training Base". Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine. Retrieved November 21, 2010. They enlisted John Swope, a commercial pilot and photographer who had once shared a bachelor pad with Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda and who would later collaborate with John Steinbeck on the book Bombs Away.
