At 83, subject of ‘American Girl in Italy’ photo speaks out

Keith Beaty / Toronto Star

Ninalee Craig, 83, is the woman in Ruth Orkin's 1951 photograph "American Girl in Italy." This photo taken on Aug. 12 shows Craig standing next to Orkin's iconic image and wearing the same orange shawl she wore in the photo nearly 60 years ago.

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By Laura T. Coffey




You know the photo. You’ve seen it a hundred times. A beautiful, statuesque young woman is walking down a street in Florence, Italy. She’s clutching her shawl, and she seems to be moving swiftly. More than a dozen men are staring at her longingly. One of them is grabbing his crotch.
The iconic 1951 image “American Girl in Italy” turns 60 on Monday. As its anniversary approaches, the stunning woman in the photo — Ninalee Craig, now 83 — is speaking up about it. She wants to explain what the photo represents, and what it doesn’t.


“Some people want to use it as a symbol of harassment of women, but that’s what we’ve been fighting all these years,” Craig said in a telephone interview from her home in Toronto. “It’s not a symbol of harassment. It’s a symbol of a woman having an absolutely wonderful time!”

Back in 1951, Craig was a carefree 23-year-old who had chucked her job in New York and secured third-class accommodations on a ship bound for Europe. She spent more than six months making her way through France, Spain and Italy all by herself — something very few women did in the years following World War II.

She traveled as inexpensively as she could, so she was thrilled when she found a hotel right on the Arno River in Florence where she could stay for $1 a day. There, she met another adventurous solo female traveler: Ruth Orkin, a 29-year-old photographer who came to Italy after completing an assignment in Israel.

© 1952, 1980 Ruth Orkin

Ruth Orkin's "American Girl in Italy" photo has become so famous over the years that a Canadian newspaper recently described it as "the image that has endured from dorm-room walls to French bistro loos."

“She was living from day to day, nickel-and-diming it,” Craig recalled. “We talked about traveling alone and asked each other, ‘Are you having a hard time? Are you ever bothered?’ We both found that we were having a wonderful time, and only some things were a little difficult.”

In the course of that conversation, an idea was hatched: They would head out together the next morning, wander around Florence and shoot pictures of what it was really like to travel alone as a young single woman.

From about 10 a.m. to noon the following day, Orkin shot photos of Craig — who then called herself “Jinx Allen,” a name she invented and assumed because it sounded “exciting” — admiring statues, asking for directions, haggling at markets and flirting in cafes.

“We were literally horsing around,” Craig said, reminiscing about the bright orange shawl she wore that day.

Orkin captured her famous “American Girl in Italy” photograph during those two hours of silliness and fun. Her contact sheets from that day reveal that she shot only two frames of that particular street scene.

“The big debate about the picture, which everyone always wants to know, is: Was it staged? NO!” Craig said. “No, no, no! You don’t have 15 men in a picture and take just two shots. The men were just there ... The only thing that happened was that Ruth Orkin was wise enough to ask me to turn around and go back and repeat [the walk].”

Orkin died in 1985. Her daughter, Mary Engel, has devoted her life to protecting her mother’s photographic archive and promoting her legacy as a documentary photographer. Engel agreed with Craig’s account of what happened on that August day in Florence, and she added one more contextual detail.

“She told the man on motorcycle to tell the other men not to look at the camera,” said Engel, director of the Orkin/Engel Film and Photo Archive. “But the composition, it just happened. And my mother got it. That’s what she was good at. ... She didn’t take loads and loads of photos. She waited for
shots.”

This photo is called "Jinx and Justin Flirting at the Cafe," Florence, Italy, 1951.

Of course, a good documentary photograph welcomes viewers into a scene and invites their interpretations. That’s understandable, say Craig and Engel — but both of them stress the same point about “American Girl in Italy”: The photo is primarily a celebration of strong, independent women who aren’t afraid to live life.

“Men who see the picture always ask me: Was I frightened? Did I need to be protected? Was I upset?” Craig said. “They always have a manly concern for me. Women, on the other hand, look at that picture, and the ones who have become my friends will laugh and say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful? Aren’t the Italians wonderful? ... They make you feel appreciated!’”

Craig said she certainly did feel appreciated in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. She turned plenty of heads wherever she went because she was 6 feet tall and traveling alone. She knows the men in the photo appear to be leering and lascivious, but she insists they were harmless.

“Very few of those men had jobs,” Craig said. “Italy was recovering from the war and had really been devastated by it … I can tell you that it wasn’t the intent of any man there to harass me.”
OK, but how about the man committing that not-so-innocent-looking gesture with his hand?

During a whimsical, two-hour photo shoot, Ruth Orkin captured Ninalee Craig negotiating with shopkeepers and having other adventures as a solo female traveler.

“That young man is not whistling, by the way; he’s making a happy, yelping sound,” Craig said. “And where you see him touching the family jewels, or indicating them, with his hand — well, for a long time that was considered an image people should not look at. That part was airbrushed out for years ... But none of those men crossed the line at all.”

 

After she felt ready to end her European tour in 1951 — and after spending less than $1,000 on her entire trip — Craig returned home to New York. She taught school for a time, then got a job writing advertising copy, then married an Italian widower and moved to Milan. That marriage ultimately ended in divorce, so she returned to New York, worked in advertising again, met a Canadian man on a blind date and married him. She first came to Toronto in the 1970s.

Today, she’s a grandmother of 10, a great-grandmother of seven and an avid supporter of Toronto’s arts scene. She’s elated that her friend Ruth Orkin’s photographs and other works are on display at the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto, in part to honor the 60-year anniversary of the moments Orkin captured on that unforgettable day.

“My life has been wonderful,” Craig said. “I’m ready for more.”

Ruth Orkin’s “American Girl in Italy” photograph and other works are on display now through Aug. 27 at the Stephen Bulger Gallery, 1026 Queen St. W., Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Ninalee Craig and Mary Engel will attend a public reception at the gallery from 2 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 20.

The 60th Anniversary of the "American Girl in Italy" photograph by Ruth Orkin

August 22, 2011 marks the 60th anniversary of the photograph “American Girl in Italy by Ruth Orkin (1921-1985). The subject of this famous photograph is Ninalee Craig (then known as Jinx Allen), who now lives in Toronto.

The two were talking about their shared experiences traveling alone as young single women, when Orkin had an idea. “Come on,” she said, “lets go out and shoot pictures of what it’s really like.” In the morning, while the Italian women were inside preparing lunch, Jinx gawked at statues, asked military officials for directions, fumbled with lire and flirted in cafes while Orkin photographed her. Orkin’s best known image, “American Girl in Italy” was also created as part of this series.

Ruth Orkin was 17 when she took a cross-country trip by herself, bicycling and hitchhiking from her home in Los Angeles to New York, snapping pictures along the way. She later moved to New York, where this spirit of adventure continued. She  photographed Tanglewood’s summer music festival, honed her craft in nightclubs, joined the Photo League, and with her first published story in Look magazine, became “a fullfledged photojournalist.” In 1951, Life sent her on assignment to Israel and from there she went to Italy.

Exhibition: Stephen Bulger Gallery