Paul H. Oelman was born on July 7, 1880, in Dayton, Ohio, where he grew up and eventually worked as a mechanic for the Wright Brothers. After learning how to fly from one of the Wright’s assistants, he moved to Denver, where he constructed and test-piloted planes. He returned to Ohio by the early 1930s and spent the rest of his life in Cincinnati.
Oelman seemingly first took photographs to make postcards of the Wright’s flights. He began exhibiting pictorial photographs in 1932, continuing to show in salons until about mid-century. The 1943-44 exhibition season was his most successful, with 118 prints accepted at more than thirty-five salons. In 1945, he presented an invitational one-person exhibition at Washington’s Smithsonian Institution.
He was a lecturer for ten years, beginning in 1933, at the University of Cincinnati. His service to the Photographic Society of America lead to his fellowship. Oelman photographed female nudes almost exclusively. Often presented in high-key values and against blank backgrounds, the images are escapist and stereotyped. He always worked in his unique downtown studio/residence, where the mothers of his young models supervised the sessions.
Each print is dispatched in an archival sleeve and hard backed envelope.
Happy to combine postage