Allan Ludwig

Ludwig c. 1965

Allan Ira Ludwig (June 9, 1933 – November 2, 2025) was an American historian and photographer. His book Graven Images played a role in the rise of interest in Puritan era gravestone studies which began in the 1960s. He also used the pseudonym Elisha Cook, Jr. when documenting street art and graffiti art.

Early life and education

Ludwig was born in Yonkers, New York, on June 9, 1933, to Saul Ludwig and Honey (née Fuchs) Ludwig. His father was a textile manufacturer and his mother was a homemaker. After being introduced to the arts by his mother, he began drawing as a child. When he was 13 years old, he was taught to use a camera by a neighbor.

Ludwig attended Yale University beginning in 1952. He graduated in 1964 with a PhD in art history. His dissertation was on gravestones, which led to his future work as a photographer and the Graven Images series.

Career

Ludwig is best known for his series of 256 photographs of gravestones, published as Graven Images. He also produced a series of images shot in Rome of Renaissance tombs.

In the 1990s, he collaborated with Gwen Akin on a series of grotesque photographs of preserved body parts shot at the Mütter Museum, part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Their collaborative work was included in the Beyond Ars Medica exhibition at Thread Waxing Space in New York City.

Later in his life, he photographed street art and graffiti, which he admired as an international art movement that he compared to pop art. His photographs of graffiti and street art were created under the pseudonym Elisha Cook, Jr.

In addition to his work as a photographer, Ludwig was a professor of fine arts at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He also taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Bloomfield College and Syracuse University.

Reception

The critic and writer Greil Marcus described Ludwig's book, Graven Images, as an "extraordinary work" and compared it to encountering a “vanished community trying to make sense of itself through art.”

Books

• Graven Images: New England Stonecarving and Its Symbols, 1650–1815 (1966, ISBN 9780608187693)
• Reflections Out of Time, Part III: A Portfolio of Photographs (1981)
• Repulsion: Aesthetics of the Grotesque (1986, ISBN 9780932075123)

Source:

Collections

A collection of Ludwig's photographs of Renaissance sculptures shot in Rome is held in the archives of Yale University. Yale Arts Library holds an additional collection of 150 of his photographs in their Allan Ludwig Photograph Collection of New England Gravestones. The Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst holds hundreds of his photographs in their Association for Gravestone Studies Collection. The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC houses 357 of his photographic series "Photographic and historical study of New England gravestone carving from 1653 to 1810". The Boston Athenæum holds a collection of 498 of Ludwig's photographs. The Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art holds in their permanent collection, "The graven images of New England : 1653–1800 by Allen Ludwig, [ca.1960]" consisting of approximately 500 of Ludwig's photographs.

Personal life

Ludwig was first married to Janine, with whom he began exploring graveyards after losing "their way on the back roads of Connecticut" one bright evening in 1955. He married his second wife, Gwen Akin, also a photographer, in 1992, with whom he collaborated on projects.

External links

• Allan Ludwig on Flickr