Demlinger, Sandor

Sandor Demlinger started shooting and developed his first roll of film as a youngster in 1942 working in a basement shed. After high school he started working with full time photographers and learned the art of developing very large mural photo prints.

During his time off he would hang around the old roundhouses and photograph steam engines and the men who worked on them. He started a lengthy project in the 1940's to produce a book on the Chicago scene, collaborating with well-known Jazz historian,
John Steiner, which was finally published in 2003 by Arcadia Publishing Inc. Chicago under the title
DESTINATION CHICAGO JAZZ (Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2003103135).

While working on the book, he trained with master Illustrator photographer Harry Shigeta and learned the dye transfer process from Pat Nakata. Three years into the job, the Korean War broke out and Sandor ended up in the US Army teaching Crime Photography at Camp Gordon, Georgia. During weekend outings, he would take photos of people in town and children from a nearby orphanage in Augusta,
eventually traveling all over Georgia.

Following his years of service, Sandor returned to civilian life and worked professionally as a photographer for
Kooper Neuman Studios, shooting catalog, location and advertisements. 12 years later, Sandor moved his
family to the west coast and landed a job at Western Gear, running the photography and printing departments,
shooting the massive parts manufactured for ships and planes.

After retiring from his day job, Sandor continued his life's passion, working with ceramic photos in porcelain and glass using the separation techniques learned in dye transfer color prints. At the age of 82, Sandor is still taking photographs and developing and printing thousands of images in black & white. "I photograph what I see using my 35mm Cannon F1 with very fast lenses"

Book credits include:

Destination Chicago Jazz
Mining in the Old West
Stage Coach
San Francisco's 1906 Earthquake.


Artist Website