Tag Archives: Catherine Kirkpatrick

30 For 30: PWP Goes Live!

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re featuring items from the PWP Archives* each day on this blog. In looking back, we see not only where we started, but how far photography, women, and the world have come since 1975.

1975 was the founding year not only for PWP, but also for Microsoft and Apple Computer. At the time, most people couldn’t imagine how digital technology would change not only the way they took pictures, but the way they lived. In PWP’s earliest days ads, memos, and publications were done on paper. But in 1999, Babs Armour led an effort to create a website that would make the organization accessible from anywhere in the world. The first version of pwponline.org launched in 2000:

pwponline.org 10/13/2000, courtesy of waybackmachine.org

pwponline.org 10/13/2000, courtesy of waybackmachine.org

It featured information about the organization’s history and how to join, and a directory where each member could upload a single image. It was detailed in a PWP magazine:

PWP article about the development of its website

PWP article about the development of its website

The Internet evolved quickly, and around 2008-2009, the PWP website was revised under the supervision of Jackie Neale. It provided a content management system allowing directors to list and edit their own events, and featured a rotating “film strip” of member images, as well as an individual portfolio area and, for the first time, a blog:

pwponline.org 1/24/11, courtesy of waybackmachine.org

pwponline.org 1/24/11, courtesy of waybackmachine.org

The most recent version was developed by a committee led by PWP president, Fredda Gordon, with an assist from former president, Maddi Ring. It features super easy content management, and individual portfolio space where each member can upload 200 images.

pwponline.org 12/12/15, courtesy of waybackmachine.org

pwponline.org 12/12/15, courtesy of waybackmachine.org

– Catherine Kirkpatrick

Sid Kaplan: Scenes of the Unfolding City

Laundry and Tracks ©Sid Kaplan

Laundry and Tracks ©Sid Kaplan

He’s a Fifties’ boy from the Bronx, peppery, bantam, and tough–Jake La Motta with an SLR. His knowledge of New York and gelatin silver printing is vast. Not for nothing is he called the “last of a vanishing breed.” But Sid Kaplan is alive and well, thank you, busy documenting the changing face of his beloved town.

He was born in the Bronx in 1938 and began photography at age ten. He grew up at a time when color film was coming in, but serious photography still meant black-and-white. And he was very serious from an early age, attending The School of Industrial Arts, hanging around Peerless Camera Store and the Police Athletic League to pick up information and tips. There were also meetings and shows at the Village Camera Club, but behind it all, an intensely practical nature and steely determination. He took tons of pictures, printed them in darkrooms rigged up in bathrooms and kitchens, then went out and took some more. If he found himself in a tough neighborhood, he learned to mind his own business, honing his eye and sense of the street.

Flat Iron Building ©Sid Kaplan

Flat Iron Building ©Sid Kaplan

Kaplan was a prodigy, winning prizes for his beautiful prints, but early on divided his photography into “personal” work–images he took for himself–and “professional” work where he printed the photographs of other people. It was a flimsy Chinese wall, but ensured a kind of purity, even though the two spheres informed each other throughout his career.

Many facts of which are known, while others, for various reasons including legal, are downplayed. As a young man Kaplan joined Compo Photocolor Lab, known for its mural-size prints and work on the 1955 Museum of Modern Art exhibit, The Family of Man. “Those were the guys I learned from,” he said. “Where did most of those guys learn to print? The military.”

Kaplan also learned through sheer volume and repetition, often clocking 60 to 80 hours a week. He also began to print for great photographers like Halsman, Steichen, and the Capa brothers, Robert and Cornell.

Madison Square Park ©Sid Kaplan

Madison Square Park ©Sid Kaplan

In 1968, he set up his own shop, Custom Work Darkroom, in quarters on east 23rd Street that overlooked Madison Square Park. There he worked with more illustrious clients including Allen Ginsberg, Duane Michals, Eugene Smith, and Robert Frank, with whom he developed a lasting professional relationship.

Which isn’t surprising, because in addition to his vast knowledge of chemistry, Kaplan brings to the printing process his own sensibility as a working photographer. He has a great respect for and knowledge of light, as well as the ability to listen to and work intuitively from a photographer’s description of the scene and atmosphere photographed. Which takes imagination in addition to technical know-how.

When Kaplan began printing for the legendary photographer of The Americans, Frank hovered. He had apprenticed for photographers in Switzerland, and had deep knowledge of chemistry and exposure, as well as exacting artistic standards. “He knew exactly what he wanted,” Kaplan said, “and exactly what the paper would do.”

But after the first batch, Kaplan was given an old print to follow and more or less left alone. By then, he had racked up a lot of experience: “when it gets drilled into you for so many hours…you can do a lot of it when he’s not around.”

Parade ©Sid Kaplan

Parade ©Sid Kaplan

Beginning in 1972, students at the School of Visual Arts also benefited from Kaplan’s knowledge, as do participants in his annual summer workshop held in South Dakota, of all places. A diehard New Yorker, his tastes are somewhat eclectic and unpredictable. Teaching in the Badlands? No problem. And for thirty years, he’s returned annually to Philly to photograph the Mummers’ Parade and a club associated with it because he likes their costumes and blue collar ethic.

But for most of his life, he’s concentrated on his beloved New York even as it’s changed nearly beyond recognition. He’s captured the dismantling of the Third Avenue L, the ever-evolving Lower East Side, Madison Square Park in all seasons, and Times Square from the 1950s when it served as the de facto photo district, providing a steady stream of actors, models, and hit shows to support the photographic trade.

Bar ©Sid Kaplan

Bar ©Sid Kaplan

If the aforementioned resume seems a little sanitized and glib, it is. For discretion, certain colorful stories and situations have been omitted, though perhaps a hint is in order. During our lunch, mention was made of a nude model with a Pilgrim hat and musket, that may or may not have been a centerfold, and sotto voce, of a “strange underground” of men who paid $5 apiece to shoot unclothed or barely clothed women. Today that goes by the classed-up name of “boudoir photography,” and ladies in all states of undress are available with a few taps of the screen. Reference was also made to a hasty shredding/disposal session at his studio. In talk as in his life, there is a mix of high and low, a delight in the range of human behavior and odd situations tossed up by the world.

One is the class he teaches each summer in South Dakota. “No self-respecting workshop would want to have us,” he said of fellow teacher, Howard Christopherson. Who Kaplan sized up pretty fast: “When you’re a mutt, you can smell another mutt quite a distance away.” But there they are, driving caravan-style under the big sky from Minneapolis to Lily, SD. Which is a long way from Hunts Point in the Bronx.

New York ©Sid Kaplan

New York ©Sid Kaplan

Kaplan has been around and seen a lot: half of New York torn down and put back up again, black-and-white displaced by color, film replaced by digital, the fine art of printing tossed aside as everyone grabs snaps on their phone. But he’s still here, doing his thing. There have been shows and honors, richly deserved, but always played down. Self-promotion isn’t his thing; craft and art are.

I know him from Flo Fox’s Non-Camera Club, a monthly supper where he arrives late and is received like a king. Which he is when talk turns to photo chemistry and printing. The jokes stop and the craggy face comes alive with boyish wonder. Amid friends, without pretense or pomp, the Bronx boy with a heart of gold rules.

– Catherine Kirkpatrick

30 For 30: Exhibition and Anger

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re featuring items from the PWP archives each day on this blog. In looking back, we see not only where we started, but how far photography, women, and the world have come since 1975.

Personal computers did not exist in 1975, so the roster for the FIT show Breadth of Vision: Portfolios of Women Photographers had to be mimeographed for distribution.

Mimeographed roster for the 1975 FIT show "Breadth of Vision"

Mimeographed roster for the 1975 FIT show “Breadth of Vision”

It was the largest exhibition of its kind at the time, and featured photo luminaries such as Ruth Orkin, Suzanne Opton, Mary Ellen Mark, Susan Meiselas, and Dianora Niccolini, who would become PWP’s first president.

Detail of the FIT show roster

Detail of the FIT show roster

Dismayed by the lack of press, Dannielle Hayes, one of the organizers, brought exhibitors together at ICP (then on Fifth Avenue) for a quick publicity campaign. Results included an article in the New York Herald Tribune (unfortunately under “Hobbies”), and a plan for the photographers to keep meeting. Women’s Lib was in full swing, and there was tremendous grassroots energy in the arts. Groups long excluded from exhibitions and representation decided to take action for themselves. Some of the organizations founded in the 1970s include the A.I.R. Gallery, Soho Photo Gallery, and the Visual Studies Workshop (actually founded in 1969).

New York Herald Tribune article on the FIT exhibition

New York Herald Tribune article on the FIT exhibition

Invitation for the FIT show

Invitation for the FIT show

– Catherine Kirkpatrick

 

 

 

Some Mother’s Son: The War Photography of Josephine Herrick

©Josephine Herrick

©Josephine Herrick

On December 6th, 1941, Pearl Harbor wasn’t a place on the mind of many Americans, if they knew about it at all. Located on the island of Oahu near Honolulu, it was home to thousands of servicemen and the U.S. Pacific fleet. Danger was thought to be elsewhere, in the war spreading across Europe. America, protected by sea and strong isolationist sentiment, wasn’t involved.

That changed the next morning when hundreds of Japanese planes dropped from the sky just before eight. Swooping down on the naval base, they bombed, torpedoed, and strafed till twenty U.S. vessels and hundreds of aircraft were crippled or destroyed. When they departed two hours later, the harbor was black with smoke, the water strewn with wreckage and crumpled ships. Nearly 2,500 servicemen perished, 1,177 of them entombed in the USS Arizona when a bomb struck the ammunition magazine. It was the day that changed the course of America, and sent the destinies of a generation spinning.

The Bombing of Pearl Harbor

The Bombing of Pearl Harbor

Honolulu_StarUnlike recent conflicts, Word War ll was a shared burden that cast a long shadow over many families. As troops headed overseas, people pitched in at home. Many women went to work in factories like Rosie the Riveter, and millions volunteered for the Red Cross, while others contributed in unique, personal ways. One of these was Josephine Herrick.

Portrait of Josephine Herrick

Portrait of Josephine Herrick

Herrick was born in 1897, the third child of a prominent Cleveland family. During World War l, she served as a Red Cross nurse in her home city, then attended Bryn Mawr, and later the Clarence H. White School of Photography in New York. There she mastered the technology and art of the discipline, exhibiting her work, winning several awards in shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 1928, she opened a photo studio with her friend, Princess Miguel de Braganza, an American socialite who’d married a man of royal Portuguese descent. Located on East 63rd Street in Manhattan’s Silk Stocking District, the studio specialized in portraits of debutantes and children. Before Pearl Harbor, as conflict grew in Europe, Herrick joined the American Women’s Voluntary Services, training photographers to document news events and educate the public on blackouts.

When America plunged into war, she mobilized thirty-five photographers to photograph servicemen heading overseas. A copy of the image along with a personal note was sent to each man’s family. It meant a lot because photography then was not the casual, ever-present thing it is now. It required a camera–out of reach for many in the Depression era–as well as knowledge of exposure, film stock, and printing. During those hard times, many families did not have pictures of sons heading off to fight, many of whom would not return.

Negative of a U.S. serviceman ©Josephine Herrick

Negative of a U.S. serviceman ©Josephine Herrick

On a sunny June day, I had the chance to look at some of these negatives and images at the Josephine Herrick Project. Located in an old, nondescript building in lower Manhattan, the office has a view of the Brooklyn Bridge, but wouldn’t win any prizes for décor. But that’s not what it’s about. It is an organization dedicated to important, fundamental things–like creating images of sons so loved ones could hold onto them when they were gone.

Herrick Foundation Negatives

Herrick Foundation Negatives

Tucked neatly in glassine envelopes, the negatives fill several wood boxes. Collectively they are the portrait of a generation, individually the picture of some mother’s son. To hold them is to feel the pulse of history. You wonder how each man fared, if they were wounded, whether they made it home. You hope they did, though many did not.

Also in their archives is a book of photographs Herrick took on a navy ship after the war. The setting is New York harbor on a day so sunny and bright it is easy to forget that the American Century was paid for with American lives. In the background the city rises, not yet too tall or threatening, preparing for its moment as the capital of the world.

Herrick_Book_4154

The images are simple, but not simplistic, with a brightness that goes beyond the weather: the war was over, the troops were coming home, and for that day, maybe a little longer, equilibrium and happiness reigned. My own father served and survived, as did the father of Maureen McNeil, Executive Director of the Josephine Herrick Project. One day in the Pacific, she said, he drew kitchen duty on board his ship. He tried to get out of it, but couldn’t, and when the ship was attacked by kamikazes, it saved his life. Three thousand people died.

In the book I was delighted to find a picture of one of the men Herrick had photographed shipping out. He’d made it back, and sun in the pictures and outside in the street seemed a little bit brighter for it. For a moment the shadow of history had a soft edge.

Image of a serviceman in book of post-war images by Josephine Herrick ©Josephine Herrick

Image of a serviceman in book of post-war images by Josephine Herrick ©Josephine Herrick

After the war, Josephine Herrick went on to many other ventures, including a collaboration with Howard Rusk to photograph and teach photography to wounded veterans. Though she died in 1972, the organization she began continues her good work. Through dedicated volunteers and partnerships with local organizations, it brings the gift of photography to children, teens, adults, and seniors who otherwise would not be exposed to its healing powers and visual magic.

– Catherine Kirkpatrick

 

 

The How-to Guide on Being a Woman as Told by Men, Retold by a Woman

Self-portrait House Wife ©Alexa Telano

Self-portrait House Wife ©Alexa Telano

The title of her thesis is complicated. At least till you look at the pictures then more becomes clear. Like the fact that Alexa Telano is very talented, imaginative, and witty. She recently completed her senior thesis BFA photography exhibition at the Pratt Photography Gallery. Called The How-to Guide on Being a Woman as Told by Men, Retold by a Woman, it addresses gender issues with a light and humorous touch. You enjoy looking at the work. It makes you think, but not in a hard, unpleasant way. It slips in through your funny bone. I have the Self-portrait House Wife card on my refrigerator, and don’t plan on taking it down anytime soon. It makes me smile. Here are some of her thoughts and images.

 

AT: “My work uses photography to challenge gender roles, norms and stereotypes. I work with images as objects to reflect the way women are treated as sexual objects, void of personality. I am also interested in the material items we assign to gender and how objects can play a role in power dynamics among genders.”

House-Wife Puzzle ©Alexa Telano

House-Wife Puzzle ©Alexa Telano

“This is not an issue from the past nor is it just a contemporary one; objectification transcends through time, making these issues more complex and damaging as it does. I am reacting to these issues by posing myself like, as well as appropriating images of, idealized women from the 1950’s and in contemporary times. Some of these photos have a theme of subservience that is caused by our patriarchal society. Others are less submissive, and actively challenge objectification. Overall, I wish to subvert the patriarchy, as a way to feel powerful in my own body.”

Trophy Girl ©Alexa Telano

Trophy Girl ©Alexa Telano

“Using humor, satire and “tongue-in-cheek” moments in my photography is a way for me to discuss these issues so that not only other people will understand, but so I can personally process them. This humor serves as a platform for discussion about these issues, with the intent for people to recognize something within themselves.”

Playing cards ©Alexa Telano

Playing cards ©Alexa Telano

As herself: a self-portrait that brings to mind Vivian Maier. Stay tuned…

Look, part one ©Alexa Telano

Look, part one ©Alexa Telano

– Catherine Kirkpatrick