Estate Bonanza for Photo Museum

The estate of two-time Academy Award-winner Lou Stoumen has been donated to the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. Valued at about $650,000, according to museum officials, the holdings include archives of Stoumen’s films and photographs, his library and rights to royalties for sales of his photographs and writings.

Stoumen’s documentary “The True Story of the Civil War” won an Academy Award in 1956 as well as first prize at the Venice Film Festival that year. In 1963 he won another Oscar for “Black Fox,” a documentary about Adolf Hitler.

The gift includes $50,000 to underwrite an exhibition and catalogue of Stoumen’s photographs, to open at the museum Oct. 14. Proceeds from the sale of Stoumen’s residence will create a $250,000 endowment, from which income will be used for a semiannual Lou Stoumen Prize for a documentary photographer, beginning no sooner than 1994 to allow the interest to accumulate. Prize amounts will vary, but will not be less than about $20,000, museum director Arthur Ollman said, and the recipient will be selected by nomination through an international network of photography experts.

Stoumen, a longtime Los Angeles resident, retired from the cinematography department of UCLA in 1988 and moved to Sebastopol, Calif., where he died of cancer in 1991. Calling Stoumen a friend, Ollman said he was acquainted with the photographer-filmmaker’s work before he died.

The Museum of Photographic Arts was in competition with three other institutions for the gift, including the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson; Lehigh University Art Gallery in Bethlehem, Pa., and the California Museum of Photography in Riverside.

Well known for his photographs of Times Square in New York from 1940--many of which have been made into popular postcards--Stoumen captured both the moodiness and the joys of everyday life for the common man. He traveled widely as a photojournalist while in the Army during World War II and served on the staff of Armed Forces Radio.

Stoumen’s work was included in three group shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1947, he met Edward Weston and Ansel Adams and, in 1956, wrote and produced the film “The Naked Eye,” a documentary featuring Weston, Alfred Eisenstadt and Weegee.

Ollman said the addition of Stoumen’s work, along with his collection of works by other photographers, is fitting for the photographic museum because it represents the “perfect interface between film and photography.”

All of the holdings in the estate will be made available to the public by appointment once they have been catalogued and installed in storage areas, Ollman said.