Lusha Nelson: Photographs of Jesse Owens, Katherine Hepburn, and more

In this episode of “Why Did They Put That in a Museum?” hosts Beth Bacon and Sarah Lees discuss the photographs of a little known photographer, Lusha Nelson. Nelson’s photos were found in a yard sale. Why’d they put them in a museum? These were not just any old thrifted finds. First, they are stunningly beautiful. Plus, Nelson's photographs include portraits of icons and luminaries like Jesse Owens and Katharine Hepburn. The shading and compositions are rich and evocative. Who is Lusha Nelson? He emigrated from Latvia to New York in the 1920’s. He's a self-taught photography who,  during the depression, took photos for Condé Nast (yes Condé Nast was an actual person). Nelson's life and career were cut short due to his early death in 1938. Then his works were almost lost to time. Sarah shares a personal connection to this project, recounting that, when she worked at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, someone contacted the museum and offered some prints she and her husband had found in a yard sale many years earlier. Usually, curators politely decline this kind of request. But Sarah and her colleagues took a look and found a treasure trove of stunning portraits and street scenes. Sarah talks about organizing the exhibition of Lusha Nelson’s art in 2017 and the role of museums in sharing work that’s spectacular enough to be preserved and shared with the public. 

00:00 Introduction to the Episode

00:23 Meet Lusha Nelson the photographer

00:32 The Discovery of Lusha Nelson's Work

02:19 Iconic Photographs: Jesse Owens and Katharine Hepburn

03:39 The Significance of Nelson's Work

08:23 Sarah’s Personal Connection and Rediscovery of Nelson

12:02 Lusha Nelson's Life and Career

17:01 Street Photography and Lesser-Known Works

20:46 Legacy and Preservation

27:58 Conclusion 

To look at Nelson's art, visit:

https://philbrook.org/exhibitions/lusha-nelson-found/

https://www.artnet.com/artists/lusha-nelson/

To reach out to the podcasters, visit: 

https://whydtheyputthatinamuseum.com/

© 2025 Why'd They Put That In A Museum  podcast hosts Beth Bacon and Sarah Lees.

Transcript

Lusha Nelson Transcript

Beth Bacon: So welcome back to another episode of why did they put that in a museum? We are going to go one more time into the photography world

Sarah Lees: We're back on the topic of photography because I'm definitely a fan of it. Uh, and this subject is particularly close to my heart because we're talking about a photographer named Lusha Nelson, 

Beth Bacon: Lusha Nelson. 

Sarah Lees: Who also a pretty  amazing story, much like Vivian Myers, although I think he is less well known. But the story begins when most of these photographs were basically found in a yard sale, a yard sale.

Beth Bacon: A Yard sale? 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. 

Beth Bacon: Wow. So,  Vivian Myers stuff was found in a storage unit. The Dolly Madison daguerreotype was found in someone's basement. And now. These photos by Lusha Nelson were found in a yard sale. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, kind of makes you want to get out there and start. Start thrifting. 

Beth Bacon Trifting, exactly.  Yeah, maybe we'll find a treasure.

Sarah Lees: You never know. Yeah,

Beth Bacon: And just to, uh, introduce ourselves, I am Beth Bacon. 

Sarah Lees: And I'm Sarah Lees, I'm a museum curator and researcher. And what we're here to do is talk about art and objects and museums and what happens when you put them together and invite people in to look, 

Beth Bacon: You know, sometimes I walk through a gallery and I wonder why is this object here? So in this podcast, we're diving deep into the stories behind some of the artifacts that we find kind of interesting. Well, let's, let's get to it. And let's take a look at some of Lusha Nelson's work. 

Sarah Lees: I should say, I wanted to do this in part for personal reasons, because I have some connection to this project, as we will get to. Lusha Nelson is not a name I think that many people know 

Beth Bacon: Let's actually even spell it. Lusha is L U S H A. Right. Nelson is N E L S O N. Lusha Nelson. Lusha Nelson.  

Sarah Lees: I think that some of his images people may well have seen. So if we start with one that I think may, among who's best known,  this is a photograph of Jesse Owens, the famous track star. It was photographed, in 1935   

Beth Bacon: The name of the picture we're looking at, if anyone wants to look it up Yeah. Is a portrait of Jesse Owens shirtless, by Lusha Nelson, and I found it on the Condé Nast store website, and we'll talk about why it is on the Condé Nast store.

Sarah Lees: Yeah, yeah. But first of all, if you look at the image, I hope it may be familiar to some people. So it shows Jesse Owens basically from the waist up. He's kind of leaning diagonally across the picture frame. With one arm up as if he's about to jump off the starting block, right, for a race.

Beth Bacon: Yeah. And in fact, I think I found it when I Googled: Jesse Owens at the starting block. And the picture came up. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. Oh, how cool. Okay. Cause it is clearly a studio portrait, right? He's not out in the world. No. This is studio lighting. It's really artfully done so that It's slightly behind him, he's slightly backlit, and the light is actually illuminating his raised arm and shoulder. You know, kind of the back of his head and his features are slightly in shadow. I mean, it's really beautifully done. Um, but it is clearly a studio portrait. Here's the significant thing, I think, about the fact that it was published in 1935. This was before Jesse Owens went to the Berlin Olympics in 1936. So, at this moment, he had set three world records as a track star at Ohio State University. So, he was still, like, a college athlete and hadn't yet become world-famous by putting the lie to, Hitler's horrible racist theories. Yeah. 

Beth Bacon: And actually, Sarah, can you mention just what, like, about Jesse Owens and what happened at the Olympics?

Sarah Lees:  Yeah. He won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. And of course that would make pretty much anyone world famous then as today. But the fact that it happened in Berlin, where in 1936, Hitler was already in power and already Promoting ideas, just racist ideas about, you know, black people, about Jews, that they should be incinerated, that black people were inferior, and this was the strongest rebuke to the idea that black people could not excel.

Beth Bacon: Yeah, so  this was a year before that. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, exactly. And so it was published in Vanity Fair magazine in September because he was already gaining fame for his achievements as a runner. Lusha Nelson managed to catch him sort of before, his highest moment of fame, you could say.

Nelson did this more than once. Another of his photographs, which we can look up, is one of Nelson's earliest photographs, and it is of Katharine Hepburn dating to 1932, at which point she had done several plays on stage, but had been in only one movie. Bringing up Baby, for example, which, maybe one of her best known roles was not until 1938.So she, she was just like a young star on the rise andNelson captured her in a couple of different poses. One of them shows her kind of,  wrapped up in a heavy coat, in profile looking downwards. So very kind of remote, serene, you know, screen goddess, type of image, even though she had only been in one movie thus far. And that image was also published in Vanity Fair. Of course she went on to much greater fame.  

Beth Bacon: Let's talk about the Jesse Owens picture and describe it a little bit for the listeners. It definitely is a studio print. It's black and white. Jesse Owens’s expression is, um, he's not smiling.

Sarah Lees: Mm hmm. 

Beth Bacon He kind of looks like he's concentrating.  

Sarah Lees: Yeah. 

Beth Bacon: And his, his face is sort of slanted way over on the left side of the picture. But his eyes are like looking up and over to the left. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. 

Beth Bacon: It's really interesting composition. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. I mean Nelson wanted to make these striking compositions that are also quite simple, right? It's not… There's not a lot of, there are no props really. There's no kind of soft focus. Like you might think “glamor shot.” It really concentrates, you're right on this kind of expression of striving, maybe of aspiration, uh, anticipation, you know, trying to win the race. Um, looking forward to…

Beth Bacon:  Seriousness. There's also a little bit of sadness in his expression. 

Sarah Lees: I think, yeah, I think you could read that. 

Beth Bacon: I mean, it's pretty blank, but he's definitely not, like, confident and happy. I would say.  He's just, you know…

Sarah Lees: So we do have, there's one and again, we have to get to why this is there is one sort of narrative about Lushan Nelson's process of taking these photos. In which he describes wanting to capture the nature of the person he's photographing. And he says that when the person is well known, it's a little easier for him,  because, both the person and the photographer know the personality that they want to capture in the image, right? So I think in this case, Nelson wasn't going for a Hollywood movie star, he was looking at an athlete.  And so he wanted to get that sense of, you know, the desire to win, let's say.  The seriousness of a young man who, you know, was in competition. That is part of the photographer's process, is to try to capture a sense of the sitter's personality.

Beth Bacon: Yeah. Okay, so Sarah, tell us your story with Lusha Nelson. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, why Lusha Nelson? And why is it in a museum...

Beth Bacon:  First of all, reason alone, his photography is beautiful. 

Sarah Lees: It really is.

Beth Bacon: I mean, the quality and what he can do with the black and white photography and The unusual compositions of all of his portraits.They're not just your typical portrait, they're definitely works of art. So, but what else? 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, what else I think is about this? What made him stand out? So, in 2014, , a colleague of mine at Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, got a phone call from a member of the museum who said that she had this whole stash of photographs, of negatives, and of papers and documents. And, would my colleague, the curator, be interested in looking at it? Now, most of the time, if a museum professional ever gets a phone call like that, the answer is, “Thank you so much for thinking of us. You know, we're not interested.” In this case, though, it sounded intriguing enough. And the caller had already done some research. So she already had a name to attach to this stash of photos. And she already knew that this photographer was named Lusha Nelson. So when my colleague went to look at the stuff, she realized what an incredible treasure trove this was.

She and I continued to do research to try to figure out, you know, what this was and why this photographer who had been based in New York, why his prints were suddenly showing up in Oklahoma.  And that story is interesting in itself. Lusha Nelson and his wife had one child. And in the 1980s—1983—their daughter had essentially like a yard sale in Brooklyn. And put all this stuff, I don't know if it's actually out on the sidewalk or you're going into the basement. Anyway, a neighbor down the block in Brooklyn bought this whole stash of stuff. That neighbor apparently didn't do very much with it for 20 years. Moved to Oklahoma. And then the neighbor's wife… the neighbor had died, and the neighbor's wife is the one who finally said, you know, I've been hauling these boxes all over the half the country for 20 years, I should look into it. And that's when she started doing research and realized that this collection of stuff should be in a public institution because it is so significant. And that after doing our research and trying to figure out what it was, the museum did eventually acquire this whole stash of material. And from that collection, we organized an exhibition about Lucien Nelson. And that happened, in 2017,

Beth Bacon: So there's a little bit of an echo of the other podcast that we recorded about, Vivian Meyer.

Sarah Lees:  Exactly.

Beth Bacon: Her stuff was also sort of found, found photos. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. Yeah. This was a discovery because this stuff, again, as I said, they'd been in the basement for 20 years and nobody really knew about it. But the difference between Lushan Nass and Vivian Meyer, or one of them, is that he actually had a successful career. He was well known. He worked for Condé Nast, the publisher of Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines, among other things. Condé Nast is still around as an organization, as a publisher of magazines. His photos are out there and are known. But I think his name has kind of fallen out of recognition, except, hopefully once we did the show, he's better known. 

A little more biography of Nelson himself. He was born in Latvia, in 1907. He ran away from home at the age of 15. Shortly thereafter, he signed on as a mess boy on a ship in Latvia. Which, when it sailed to New York in 1922, he got shore-leave papers and never went back to the ship. 

Beth Bacon: Wow. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, like a super classic New York story. 

Beth Bacon: So he was AWOL? 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, basically. 

Beth Bacon: I guess you could do that back then?

Sarah Lees: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that was probably not an uncommon way to get here. So from much of the 20s,  we think that he just kind of kicked around New York essentially looking for jobs. I think he worked in kitchens.  He may not have picked up a camera until we think about 1928. He apparently was inspired by a film by Sergei Eisenstein about the Russian Revolution. So sometime between 1928 and 1932, we don't know how he bought a camera. He got good enough at it that he first, his first published photo appeared in the New York Times in 1932. And then I think a year or so—no, that same year it must have been, he caught the eye of Condé Nast. Condé Nast is actually a person,  right, the publisher of these magazines.

Beth Bacon: Oh, really? I never realized that. Is that the first and last name? 

Sarah Lees: I believe it is, yeah. Wow. But he also had photographers, it wasn't Steichen, although Steichen I think worked. with him. In any case, whoever the head of photography was, at his publications hired Lusha Nelson. You know, who clearly, a young man who had only just learned his craft. From then on, many of Nelson's celebrity photographs of which he took Again, many, Cary Grant; Marian Anderson, the singer; Jesse Owens, already mentioned.

Beth Bacon:  I think you mentioned Cole Porter?

Sarah Lees: Cole Porter, Tallulah Bankhead, I mean, and this is, mind you, this is the 30s, this is the heart of the depression,  when movies were like the only means of escape, so movie stars were, quite significant, and of course, sold magazines pretty well.

Beth Bacon: Was  Vanity Fair... It must have only printed in black and white back then?

Sarah Lees: Correct Yeah. In the 30s, Vanity Fair,  we looked at some original issues, the photographs were black and white, but you could, it was probably like a fun mechanical or lithographic process, you could print, like, ads in color.

Beth Bacon: Oh, interesting. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, but they wouldn't have been photographs. I mean, they would have incorporated photographs, but it wasn't, you know, so the, the images, especially like celebrity things or advertisements for that matter, because Lusha Nelson also photographed advertisements for department stores, like Saks Fifth Avenue. You wouldn't want sort of a, you know, high quality photography look and not a photo mechanical with a graphic look to your celebrity images in your advertisements. Those were not in color. And, color  Photography was definitely around, but I don't think it would have made it into magazine publishing until later. So all of his published photos are in black and white. And I think… I don't know that we have any color photos actually by him. I'm trying to think of any examples that we came across and I can't really. The process of developing color film would have been more costly. And my sense is that he did develop some of his own photographs. The black and white process is just a lot easier and more accessible. So I think another major reason why he is less well known is because he died very young. He actually had only a six year career.

Beth Bacon: Wow. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. He died of Hodgkin's lymphoma, which apparently now is,  fairly treatable, but it was not in the thirties and so not only did he not stick around, he had, he did show work in some group exhibition. And there's actually a photograph, not by Nelson, but of him standing, with Edward Steichen and some people who are associated with the Museum of Modern Art.

So he did move in those circles. He was known as a photographer, but he died young.  These prints stayed with his family and he never really had a monographic exhibition just about his own work. He was in a handful, maybe like three or four or five, group shows, but not a singular one of his work. So in the interim between—when did I say he died? I think it was 38—and 83, you know, there was basically nobody looking after his legacy.  The photographs. were owned and cooperated by Condé Nast, at least the celebrity ones, but there's a whole nother stash that we haven't even talked about.

He took smaller format, like four-by-five, images of New York City.  There's a great one showing Coney Island and the kind of pinwheel Luna Park sign, which you may or may not be familiar with. He also took a few photographs of, basically people on the street, like sleeping on the street in the 1930s because this is what he saw. I mean, that was his experience of New York.

Beth Bacon: And that was the heart of the depression. 

Sarah Lees: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So there's one image. Actually, there's a couple that I can talk about. And they may be hard to find online. One of them I think is a staged photograph and one is not staged. So the not staged one, basically Nelson, was walking past a loading dock, you know, on the street in New York City, like a big garage type of area. And he took an image of a man sleeping on the loading dock. It looks like a man. Anyway, he's sort of wrapped up in a coat.  It clearly appears to be sort of a candid shot he's lying on, could be one big overcoat and wrapped in another and he's got like a hat pulled down over his eyes. Incredibly simple,  basic shot. It's kind of almost as simplified as that Jesse Owens image. There's just, the diagonal of the loading dock, a vertical of the building, and then sort of the corrugated doors, that you kind of roll up. Incredibly simple, but amazingly, the print that Philbrook has is actually signed by Nelson, which he didn't do on all of his things. I think it means that he may have put it in one of these group exhibitions, although I'm not sure, but I suspect that's why. Another similar image—

Beth Bacon:  Was that smaller image one of the ones that was found in Oklahoma? 

Sarah Lees: Yes. Yeah. But to our knowledge, it was never published. Right? So this is not one that showed up in Vanity Fair, because that's not the kind of image that they were looking to promote, or even publicize the depression as a fact of what people were living through.

The other one that I, I just wanted to mention briefly, I do think is staged. It's a fabulous image. This also is a street in New York. And I think there might be an elevated subway line above it, although you can't see that, but you can see  the lattice work of the supports. What the image focuses on is two men on a public bench. So one of them appears to be a bit younger, he's got one foot up on the bench, he's leaning on his elbow, again his hat is pulled over his eyes, so he's basically dozing on the bench, it looks like. And then there's an older gentleman in a bowler hat. I mean he really looks like the Monopoly guy. He has, appears like a white mustache, and I think he shows up in a few other photos by Nelson. And he's reading what looks like a magazine or newspaper, he's got one leg crossed over the other. He's just hanging out on this park bench. So you have the contrast between a younger man sleeping for whatever reason, maybe he has no other place to sleep? And a sort of a more well off looking guy reading his newspaper. But the kicker, the punctum, if you will, of this photograph is that on the bench you can read the stenciled sign and what it says is: “women and children only.” I don't know why you would restrict a bench,  a public bench, to women and children only and then so which is why I think one of the reasons I think the image is staged right like I suspect that Nelson asked at least one of those men if not both maybe the sleeping man was there I don't know I think the boulder headed guy probably wasn't. And he just I think Nelson loved the irony of these two men sitting on a women and children only bench. That I think..

Beth Bacon: Yeah

Sarah Lees: Capture something of, his eye and his. approach as a photographer, which I, I wish could be better known. 

Beth Bacon:  In the Philbrook Museum in Oklahoma are any of these photos available for viewing now, or was that just a special exhibit that you had?

Sarah Lees: Well, we did the special exhibition in 2017.  Photographs, because they're works on paper, as you may know, they can't be on view all the time. They have to be kept in a controlled environment and not exposed to light or they'll deteriorate further.  So I don't think that any of them are on long term view, although they might be, I don't know currently now. But I think if you wanted to, you could go there and request to see them. 

Beth Bacon: Okay. So anyone who's taking a trip to Tulsa. Yeah, exactly. Since we're talking about Ask for a special viewing. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, yeah. I'm sure they'd be happy to give you an appointment. But so this is another thing about museums and collections and these kinds of found works, is that I don't think very many other places own prints by Lucy Nelson. I just checked MoMA briefly. They don't have an image by him—although they did include at least a photograph by Nelson in their, in the first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1937. I think they included one of his photos, maybe two. 

Beth Bacon: Wow. And so that was the year before he died.

Sarah Lees: Correct. 

Beth Bacon: But he was a working photographer in New York City, and he got a piece in the Museum of Modern Art. That's pretty special. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. But they don't own one in the permanent collection.  So we published a catalog for our 2017 show in Tulsa, but we published it online. And we only printed a handful of copies, maybe 10 printed books. And I can no longer find our online catalog online, which makes me super sad. Because it is, to my knowledge, the only kind of full length publication about Lusha Nelson. I would love, maybe someone listening to this podcast, if anyone does, will be interested. And they can get in touch with us, and talk about how he can get the word out about his work, because I think it's really worth Looking at, in greater depth.

Beth Bacon: Yeah. It's so interesting. So a museum is a place to display interesting works for the public and… why’s they put this in a museum?  Because somebody actually found these photos and thought they were important enough to share with others. 

Sarah Lees: Right. 

Beth Bacon: And reached out to the museum.  That's just a really amazing full circle, right? Someone saying, “I want to share this with the community,” and having the museum be  the center of all of that.

Sarah Lees: Yeah. I don't want to make this point too sharp, but we might think about comparing that with the collector who has all the Vivian Myers photographs, right? He's an individual, and he has done a far better job of publicizing her work. But most of her photographs are not in a public institution. Again, does it make a difference? I don't know. 

Beth Bacon: Well, certainly it makes a difference, to have somebody advocate for you as an artist. 

Sarah Lees: Right. 

Beth Bacon: It reminds me of our conversation about Van Gogh. And Van Gogh's sister-in-law was the one who promoted his work and got it to the attention of people who ran museums and ran galleries. And so Van Gogh is who he is today because of his sister-in-law. Or he's not, you know, he's known the way he's known today. Thanks to the advocacy of his sister in law. And then I was thinking about when we were talking about Faith Ringgold, she was her own advocate. She really did a lot of work, to say,  “My work is worthy of looking at,” and would not be intimidated by people who didn't want to give her the time of day. So, it's not just enough to be an amazing, interesting artist.

Sarah Lees: Right.  

Beth Bacon: Nobody will know about you if nobody advocates for you. Yeah, that's true. Whether it's yourself, your sister-in-law, your, you know, your neighbor’s wife…

Sarah Lees: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Although I have to say, I think, photography adds an interesting wrinkle in that a photograph is a multiple. That we are out of the age of the daguerreotype, meaning a photograph with a negative can be printed multiple times. And so in a way it's more ephemeral  there is not really an original in a sense. You know, Lushan Nelson did get his name out there. He did have an advocate and the magazine publisher,  people knew his images  but you're right. He still didn't have somebody. after his death,  consolidating and raising the profile of his legacy as a creator. 

Beth Bacon: Yeah, like, let's say he,  Had his piece in the museum of modern art in 19, what is it? 36 or whatever. And then two years later he dies. Somebody at the museum of modern art could have been like, “Oh, that guy just died? He was so awesome. Let's talk to his family about maybe acquiring his collection.” It sounds like there was nobody at the museum of modern art who did that. 

Sarah Lees: I think that's true. And again, another, another wrinkle, cause this is complicated, is he was, he wouldn't have framed himself as an artist, right? He was a commercial photographer. He worked for a magazine. He worked for advertisers. Um, he worked for a philanthropic organization, with quite a long name, but basically, um, kind of for the Jewish community,  because I believe he was Jewish. And, so he contributed photographs to like their fundraising brochures. He took photographs clearly for the love of it and he had a fantastic eye. But also, to make a living, really. And you wonder whether his view of his work was kind of more as a product than as art.  So maybe that also would contribute to, kind of the lack of a defender, right? Like, as you said, somebody at the Museum of Modern Art now, I think, would have a different view of it. But at the time, we'd maybe think, well, he just worked, you know, for a magazine publisher, and so he's not really worthy, should we say, of being in a museum. That's speculation on my part, but I think that could be another factor.

Beth Bacon: Yeah. Well, so interesting. Thank you for introducing me and the listeners to this really incredible photographer, Lusha Nelson, who has not lost a history thanks to correct a, really go get 'em kind of person in Oklahoma. And also a very receptive audience at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa.

Sarah Lees: One of the roles we try to play is preserving things, frankly. And recognizing the value, as you say, of stuff that might've been neglected previously.

Beth Bacon: Well, thanks so much.  This may be the end of season one for our podcast. So if anyone is listening out there and you have enjoyed our season, let us know. And that will, help us, be informed if we should do a second season or not. And if you have ideas of artists or works of art for us to analyze and talk about and present. 

Sarah Lees: We can have guest speakers, maybe. 

Beth Bacon: Guest speakers, yes. We could do live, in-person things. We can do all kinds of things in order to answer this very, very rich question, “Why did they put that in the museum?” 

Sarah Lees: Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave us a review. 

Beth Bacon: Tell your friends about “Why'd They Put That In a Museum?” 

Sarah Lees: Thanks for being here and please join us for our next episode of “Why'd They Put That in a Museum?” See you next time!