Tag Archives: photography in the 1970s

30 By 30: Meryl Meisler / Via Wynroth

30 Women Photographers on the Women Photographers Who Inspired Them
A Blog Series in Honor of  Women’s History Month, March 1 – 31

Via at Mardi Gras ©Meryl Meisler

Via at Mardi Gras ©Meryl Meisler

Meryl Meisler is a photographer and art teacher celebrated for her historic images of Bushwick, Brooklyn in the decades following the arson and looting of the 1977 NYC blackout. She has won fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Time Warner, Artists Space, CETA, the China Institute and the Japan Society. Her work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the New Museum, the Dia Center NYC, MASS MoCA, and The Whitney.

Which woman photographer inspired you most?

MM: Via Wynroth, the first Education Director of the International Center of Photography-through her life, profession, and our personal connection as friends.

How did you meet?

MM: In 1977 we were both houseguests of Michael P. Smith and decided to enjoy Mardi Gras together. I had a Norita Graflex 2 ¼, and Via had a plastic Diana camera with color film. We went behind the scenes to visit the Mardi Gras Indians, the floats, the Jazz club Tipitina, then went on a big crawfish-eating frenzy. We returned to New York separately, but didn’t go our separate ways. We’d become dear friends.

What did she teach you?

Via With the Grim Reaper, Mardi Gras, ©Meryl Meisler

Via With the Grim Reaper, Mardi Gras, ©Meryl Meisler

MM: Via used all kinds of media and cameras-the Diana, 35mm, and 4×5-like a poet. She also made beautiful collages in shadow boxes with lace, velvet, miniature dolls, contact-sized photographs, even a deep violet butterfly! Recovering from a bone marrow transplant, she managed to videotape herself.

She taught me the importance of laughter in art and life, that equipment is less important than vision, that photography is mysterious, and teaching profound. Also that passion and integrity are more important than ambition and breaks, that time and health are never a given.

How did she come to photography?

MM: Via was born in Paris on February 20, 1940 to  Jolan Gluck, and Oskar Gluck, a renowned film producer forced from his native Austria by the Nazis. It has always been my suspicion that in order to survive, that she was sent to live with a family in Paris. If so, she was another type of Holocaust survivor, a hidden Jew. After WWII, she was reunited with her parents in New York.

Mary, from "The Looking Glass" ©Via Wynroth

Mary, from "The Looking Glass" ©Via Wynroth

Via studied photography at the Art Institute of Chicago with Barbara Crane, then moved to Ithaca, New York, married, and became a staff photographer for a local newspaper. Her photos of the student protests and Students for a Democratic Society were published in Life Magazine.

But her parents were close friends of the Capas, and when Cornell Capa was planning the International Center of Photography, he invited Via to start an education program. She was the daughter Cornell and Edie never had.

Working in the education department at ICP in the 70s, did she feel a need to help women photographers?

MM: Via was empowered to imagine and bring to reality a model, radical education program. At a time when photographic education was mainly geared for commercial purposes, she founded a program that emphasized vision and art. She sought out and hired the radical, the inventive, the legendary and lesser known, men and women alike. It was a time when the idea of hiring men and women on their own artistic and intellectual merit was far from the norm. It wasn’t an “old boys club€ at ICP with Via in charge. I don’t know that she felt a need to help women photographers in particular, but she hired a lot of women photographers.

Why do women photographers matter?

MM: Whoa!! Why do women matter? Why does photography matter? This would take a lifetime of study, a PhD, a truth serum, a novel and many made for TV movies, plus museum shows and investigative reporting. They just do.

Via eventually took leave from her full time position ICP and traveled to Mexico. She would return to New York to teach ICP’s Summersite Programs, and on one of those visits, learned she had breast cancer.

Via Wynroth, Cornwall, NY ©Meryl Meisler

Via Wynroth, Cornwall, NY ©Meryl Meisler

She stayed, and found new joy in a home upstate in Cornwall, one with a marvelous studio. Via had lots of plans in the works: a one-woman exhibit and a book about her beloved Yucatan, that has yet to be published.

Mrs. Glück survived the passing of her only child, carried the sorrow, and maintained the house and Via’s studio exactly as it had been. When Mrs. Glück passed away, a friend cleaning the Cornwall house found Via’s photographic work that was going to be thrown away. Via’s friend Patt Blue put a halt to that and flew in from Texas to rescue Via’s work. Patt beseeched Steve Rooney, the CFO of ICP, and the ICP collections department took Via’s negatives and archives. Patt worked night and day for weeks to organize, box and bring in Via’s life’s work to ICP.

I will never forget Via Wynroth. When my spouse Pattie and I adopted a beautiful poodle/bichon with wavy black hair we tried very hard to come up with a name. Then Via, with her beautiful black hair came to mind and we named her Via, in honor of Via Wynroth. I’m sure they would both enjoy each other’s company and be proud to share their name.

[This blog post on Via Wynroth is part of a series about contemporary women photographers taking inspiration from other women photographers. The posts are usually about how the "inspiring" photographer's work touched them and affected their own work. In most cases, this inspiration is "remote," from a great, but not personally known photographer to another photographer. But in the case of Via Wynroth, it was not a "remote" mentorship, but an actual friendship. Other people who knew Via have gently corrected the details of her life that were mentioned in Meryl's reflection of her, and we have tried to incorporate these. It is wonderful to know that people care about Via and remember her, and we give thanks to them. She truly was inspiring.]

- Catherine Kirkpatrick, Archives Director

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30 By 30 blog series:

Intro: Dianora Niccolini / Women of Vision
Lauren Fleishman / Nan Goldin
Darleen Rubin / Louise Dahl-Wolfe
Dannielle Hayes / Diane Arbus
Meryl Meisler / Via Wynroth
Shana Schnur / Louise Dahl-Wolfe
Claudia Kunin / Imogen Cunningham
Gigi Stoll / Flo Fox
Robbie Kaye / Abi Hodes
Alice Sachs Zimet / Lisette Model
Juliana Sohn / Sally Mann
Susan May Tell / Lilo Raymond
Nora Kobrenik / Cindy Sherman
Caroline Coon / Ida Kar
Lisa Kahane / Jill Freedman
Karen Smul / Dorothea Lange
Claudia Sohrens / Martha Rosler
Laine Wyatt / Diane Arbus
Ruth Fremson / Strength From the Many
Greer Muldowney / Lee Miller
Rachel Barrett / Vera Lutter
Aline Smithson / Brigitte Lacombe
Ann George / Josephine Sacabo
Judi Bommarito / Mary Ellen Mark
Kay Kenny / Judy Dater
Editta Sherman / The Natural
Patt Blue / Ruth Orkin
Vicki Goldberg / Margaret Bourke-White
Beth Schiffer / Carrie Mae Weems
Anonymous / Her Mother

Of Myth and Men: The Photography of Dianora Niccolini

Frames ©D Niccolini

Frames ©D Niccolini

In 2002, the U.S. Department of Justice paid $8,000 for drapes to cover the bare-breasted Spirit of Justice statue that stands behind the podium where news conferences are held. It was the time of Bush, Ashcroft, and the resurgent Right. In Florence, Italy, where Dianora Niccolini was born, there is none of that. The body, male and female, is celebrated publicly in the statues of Michelangelo,  Donatello,and Ammannati. Many of these don’t have carved drapes, let alone the fabric kind. But there is no shame; the human form is acknowledged and revered.

Her mother was a beautiful American spending her junior year in Florence when she fell in love with Niccolini’s father, who was born a marquis. Though her family opposed the match, they wed, and in the early years, had a great deal of wealth. Dianora, born in 1936, had many toys, including a dollhouse with running water.

Gathering Storm
But Fascism was spreading across Europe, and when Niccolini was six, war came to the city of Leonardo and the Renaissance. Nazis marched by her school and terrible bombings began. “It was rumored that the Americans bombed in the morning while the English bombed in the afternoon, before teatime, and the Germans bombed at night,€ she wrote. “The bombings at night were the most terrifying….we were…always on the alert for the sound of sirens, but most of all the sound of planes. If we heard the planes, we knew they were near. Then we would all run out of our homes into the open fields.€

Where vipers were rampant. There was also the stench of rubble drenched with lye (to prevent cholera), and IEDs which, sadly, are not a recent invention. Anything, she said, “a fine looking pencil, a toy, a shiny object, especially if found on the street, could and often was a booby trap. Countless people lost their limbs, eyes and lives this way…and many were children.€ Walking with her mother one day, she saw another mother and child ahead. They stepped onto a bridge and were blown up. The mother died instantly; the child, ripped apart, died a few days later.

But if there were horrors, there were also lessons in the power of shared endeavor. Since buildings were prime targets for bombs, the community decided to build alternative shelter. Local nuns offered their property, and everyone pitched in. Niccolini recalls seeing “nuns, women from the neighborhood, old men, and my mother digging with shovels and picks. All the young men were at war and the equipment at hand was nothing more than gardening tools.€ But the shelter was effective and saved many lives. It was also an equalizer, utilized by rich and poor alike, including one wealthy women who arrived with her pots and pans.

There was also a refugee smuggled into the Niccolini home in a flour sack, and the adventures of her father who eluded the Germans by posing as a priest, and came home disguised as a nun.

New World, New Life
When the war ended, Niccolini’s family came to America, went to Panama (where she used her spending money to buy a shrunken head), then settled on Long Island. She moved to New York City, attended Hunter College, but wanted to be an artist. She tried her hand at textile and floral design, but neither took. The careers traditionally open to women-secretarial and teaching-didn’t interest her. Finally, stung by her mother’s comment “I can’t believe I raised a failure,€ she took up a medium where individuality and creativity are assets.

D Niccolini ©Don Wong

D Niccolini ©Don Wong

At the Germain School of Photography, she found herself the only woman in the class. Many of the students were Korean War vets, and “always got the pat on the back.€ This was okay till she went looking for a job and discovered the economic repercussions of sexism: no one would hire her. One agency told her: “ “We won’t hire women. We’ve never hired a woman as a photographer.€

Eventually she found work at Cornell Medical College, sweeping up after the male photographers for $45 a week. Even in that capacity she was challenged: quizzed relentlessly by her supervisor about the chemical composition of various developers. It made her even more determined to succeed.

She moved on, first assisting Don Wong at Manhatten Eye, Ear & Throat Hospital, then to Lenox Hill where she founded the medical photography department, then to St. Clare’s where she did the same.

Hoops ©D Niccolini

Hoops ©D Niccolini

Hot Sexy Men
Through it all, she pursued her own vision, encouraged by Arthur Fellig, aka Weegee, who she met in Washington Square Park. She shot a series of female nudes, then a series of male nudes, which was unusual for the time and pre-dated Robert Mapplethorpe by several years. In 1975, she had a show of these at the Third Eye Gallery in Greenwich Village. It was favorably reviewed by Gene Thornton of the New York Times who wrote, ”Dianora Niccolini comes about as close to idealization as is possible in photography.” And Joanne Milani of the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts where some of these are currently on display says “in these photographs, Niccolini shows not individual men but archetypes….They are like the figures the ancient Greeks placed on their temples to represent the sun god or the god of the oceans. As such, they are mythic embodiments of nature’s powers.€

Lute ©D Niccolini

Lute ©D Niccolini

And there is something perfect and remote about these figures, as if they stepped off the side of the Parthenon into some dark empyrean and perfectly imagined space. And it is pretty well imagined because the actual space where many were shot is quite small. But as Niccolini says, “the only essential ingredients required to take any photograph are: light, a light sensitive material, and a camera – sprinkled with a little flexibility and a lot of imagination.€ There have always been two sides of Dianora Niccolini: the practical side that could photograph illness and deformity and produce 20 surgical films, and the dreamer who saw what wasn’t there, but could be.

Moving Women Forward
Back in the 70s, many opportunities that women photographers today take for granted did not exist. Realizing the need “to organize and help women photographers,€ Niccolini founded Women Photographers of New York in 1974, and in 1980 became the first president of PWP.* Under her leadership, the group was officially named Professional Women Photographers, incorporated as a non-profit, and produced the first PWP publication, PWP Times, now a collector’s item.

From PWP Times, Vol.1, Issue 1

From PWP Times, Vol.1, Issue 1

The internet has become such an integral part of our lives, we forget it’s a fairly recent development. In 1980, it was still a small network connecting academic institutions. If people wanted to communicate, they wrote a letter or picked up the telephone, a clunky device that hadn’t shrunk, become mobile or graphics-enabled. If you wanted to communicate more widely, you put out a publication, which is what Niccolini did, providing news for and about women photographers.

PWP Times was an eight page tabloid, with each issue dedicated to a famous, usually older, woman photographer like Lisette Model, Barbara Morgan, and Eve Arnold. Niccolini’s goal was “to highlight and honor women photographers who…opened the door, paved the way.€ (Soundbite of Niccolini on PWP Times & Women Photographers)

 

 

Women of Vision, Unicorn Press

Women of Vision, Unicorn Press

She also published two books, Women of Vision, one of the first anthologies of women photographers (1982), and Men in Focus (1983). Like many women, she had work and family burdens, including the death of her mother, and in 1984, stepped away from PWP.

Today Niccolini is an activist for many causes, always backing up her thoughts with action. But this is a women who never flinched, at shrunken heads, surgical subjects, or people who said “you can’t.” This is a women who was determined to become a professional woman photographer and did. She paved the way and made things easier for us. “Don’t chase money,” she said, ”do something that matters.”  She did, and we owe her a great deal.

Niccolini’s work has appeared in numerous anthologies, galleries and museums. She is represented by Throckmorton Fine Art, and an exhibit of her male nudes can be seen at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts through January 8th, 2012.

(This post draws on interviews with Dianora Niccolini and material in the Archives of Professional Women Photographers, including her autobiography Self Portrait of an Uncommon Woman)

* From 1978-1979 Niccolini was co-president of PWP with Nicola Sargent Miller

 

- Catherine Kirkpatrick, Archives Director