Ned Scott’s career began in New York in 1928. A member of the Camera Club of New York, he was photographing commercial assignments and making photographic excursions into the American West in search of landscape. By the mid thirties Ned was an accomplished photographer and was asked to shoot the film stills for Paul Strand’s motion picture The Wave. Upon completion of The Wave project, Ned relocated from Manhattan to Hollywood in 1935 and began the pursuit of photographic assignments on the West Coast.
Known for his large format photographs of Western landscape, Ned was chosen to shoot the film stills for John Ford’s epic western Stagecoach in 1938. With each subsequent year following Stagecoach until his departure from photography in 1948, Ned’s Hollywood projects became more and more the focal point of his photographic activities. Ned was not only in demand for his aesthetic eye but for his technical expertise as well and collaborated with a variety of professionals such as Karl Freund, the inventor of the exposure meter. Ned also was among the first photographers to shoot Kodak’s new Kodachrome film.
Originally born in France, Ned moved to the United States’ East Coast as a young man. Ned quickly found his muse in the landscape of the West. Being a purest at heart, Ned always returned to the practices first learned at the Camera Club when creating his personal work. Ned’s photography spans two coasts and two very different eras of photography in the United States.
THE HOLLYWOOD YEARS:
Ned Scott first arrived in Hollywood in 1935, taking up residence in an MGM Studio owned building located in Laurel Canyon on Honey Drive. The first seven years Ned worked freelance for an assortment of motion picture directors: Tania Tuttle (1935), John Ford (1938 and 1940) and Orson Welles (1942). At first Ned’s personal work in landscape was his most influential asset, but each film brought recognition for his portraiture style. Ned’s portraits of John Wayne (Stagecoach and Long Voyage Home), Rita Hayworth (Cover Girl) are now Hollywood classics. Ned received LOOK magazine’s Film Still Photo of the Year Award in 1946 for his work on Tars and Spars.
When Ned retired from photography and the motion picture industry in 1948 he had achieved respect and recognition in Hollywood for his glamour shots as a still photographer at Columbia Studio.