Creating Culture: An Architect, An Artist

 Via Front Doors

October 25, 2023

Images courtesy of Tony Vaccaro Studios/The Monroe Gallery of Photography

Georgia O’Keeffe once wrote, “Nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small it takes time — we haven’t time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” Through the lens of O’Keeffe’s life, this notion is evident when considering her nearly three-decades-long friendship with Frank Lloyd Wright.

The two are champions in their field — O’Keeffe’s paintings earned her the title of “Mother of American Modernism,” and Wright is still one of the most celebrated architects in the world — yet, beneath the surface of their achievements lay similarities that run deeper than their success.

Taliesin West’s newest photography exhibition, “American Icons: Wright & O’Keeffe,” explores the pair in a way that’s never been seen before. Running from Oct. 20 through June 3, the exhibit features portraits of the two shot by Tony Vaccaro for “Life Magazine.” The exhibition explores the similarities between Wright and O’Keeffe not just as artists, but as people — and friends.

“They are people that we look very closely at, not just at the artwork they made, but their life,” said Niki Stewart, Taliesin West’s vice president and chief learning and engagement officer. “We as the public don’t always do that with every artist. We sometimes really just focus on their art, but there is a public fascination with both of these figures.”

Both born in rural Wisconsin, Wright and O’Keeffe were drawn to the American Southwest. Wright sought refuge in Arizona during winters, while O’Keeffe found her artistic sanctuary in the heart of New Mexico. The pair were fans of each other’s work, and as Stewart notes, “It’s no overstatement to call them friends.”

One of many similarities was that nature inspired much of their work. O’Keeffe famously painted flowers, landscapes and animal skulls, drawing inspiration from the environment around her. Wright had the same respect for nature, once stating, “No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together, each the happier for the other.”

From the 1930s until Wright’s death in 1959, the pair wrote back and forth, sent books, pamphlets and artwork, and shared ideas with each other. Notably, they only met in person once in 1942 at Taliesin, Wright’s Wisconsin home.

“I feel like that’s a story that people can really relate to today with technology,” said Stewart. “We get so close to people who don’t live where we live. We use instant messaging, FaceTime and all these other tools to get close to folks, some of whom we’ve never met.”

In 2021, Taliesin West hosted an exhibit called “Chihuly in the Desert.” The exhibit paired works of glass artist Dale Chihuly with Wright’s architecture. Following the exhibition’s success, Taliesin West knew they wanted to pair Wright’s work with another artist, this time on a smaller, more intimate scale.

While looking for photos of Wright, Stewart discovered that Tony Vaccaro had photographed Wright and O’Keeffe for “Life Magazine” years apart, and that’s when the exhibit came to life.

Michael A. “Tony” Vaccaro rose to popularity through photos he took while fighting on the front lines of World War II. Vaccaro’s post-military career focused on fashion and celebrity photography for various magazines. Vaccaro would go on to photograph Wright and O’Keeffe, among other celebrities like Sophia Loren, John F. Kennedy and Eartha Kitt. He passed away in 2022, eight days after his 100th birthday.

“After the war, he came home to the United States and started working for magazines like ‘Look’ and ‘Life’ and other magazines that were celebrating what’s good and beautiful about life,” Stewart said. “Because after the war, he decided that’s what he wanted to focus on — what makes life wonderful.”

Visitors of the exhibit can select between an audio or an in-depth guided tour. The audio tour offers a unique experience by featuring recordings of Wright himself, accompanied by some of his favorite music. The in-depth guided tour provides visitors with a more interactive experience, allowing them to engage directly with tour guides who can offer deeper insights and answer questions about the exhibit and its subjects.

“I hope visitors walk out feeling interested in connecting with others and being with other people and being inspired by the people in their lives,” Stewart said. “I think we all run into people who inspire us every day, but what we do with that is up to us. So I hope this inspires you to get connected with others and do great things together.”

The exhibition is included in paid tour admission. To learn more, visit franklloydwright.org.

LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography October 9, 2022–January 16, 2023

 Via Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Margaret Bourke-White, Flame Burner Ann Zarik, 1943

From the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, almost all of the photographs printed for consumption by the American public appeared in illustrated magazines. Among them, Life magazine—published weekly from 1936 to 1972—was both wildly popular and visually revolutionary, with photographs arranged in groundbreaking dramatic layouts known as photo essays. This exhibition takes a closer look at the creation and impact of the carefully selected images found in the pages of Life—and the precisely crafted narratives told through these pictures—in order to reveal how the magazine shaped conversations about war, race, technology, national identity, and more in the 20th-century United States. From Neil Armstrong’s photographs of the historic moon landing to Charles Moore’s coverage of the Birmingham civil rights demonstrations, the photographs on view capture some of the defining moments—celebratory and traumatic alike—of the last 100 years.

Drawing on unprecedented access to Life magazine’s picture and paper archives as well as photographers’ archives, the exhibition brings together more than 180 objects, including vintage photographs, contact sheets, assignment outlines, internal memos, and layout experiments. Visitors can trace the construction of a Life photo essay from assignment through to the creative and editorial process of shaping images into a compelling story. This focus departs from the historic fascination with the singular photographic genius and instead celebrates the collaborative efforts behind many now-iconic images and stories. Particular attention is given to the women staff members of Life, whose roles remained forgotten or overshadowed by the traditional emphasis on men at the magazine. Most photographs on view are original working press prints—made to be used in the magazine’s production—and represent the wide range of photographers who worked for Life, such as Margaret Bourke-White, Larry Burrows, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Frank Dandridge, Yousuf Karsh, Gordon Parks, and W. Eugene Smith.

Interspersed throughout the exhibition, three immersive contemporary “moments” feature works by artists active today who interrogate news media through their practice. A multimedia installation by Alfredo Jaar, screen prints and photographs by Alexandra Bell, and a new commission by Julia Wachtel frame larger conversations for visitors about implicit biases and systemic racism in contemporary media.

“Life Magazine and the Power of Photography” offers a revealing look at the collaborative processes behind many of Life’s most recognizable, beloved, and controversial images and photo essays, while incorporating the voices of contemporary artists and their critical reflections on photojournalism.

The exhibition is accompanied by a multi-authored catalogue, winner of the College Art Association’s 2021 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award. “Life Magazine and the Power of Photography” is co-organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Princeton University Art Museum.

Visit the Monroe Gallery of Photography exhibition "The LIFE Photographers"

Steve Schapiro Talks Photography: Then and Now

Steve Schapiro: Martin Luther King, Alabama, 1965

Via Women's wear Daily

By Susan Stone
November 26, 2012


“I still haven’t done my best photograph, in my mind, at this point. I’m still looking for a photograph which I really feel has lasting quality,” insisted Schapiro, sitting down for a chat at Berlin’s CWC Gallery, the city’s newest outpost of Camera Work. Surrounded by glass-framed photos from his long and varied career — a Factory party with Edie, Andy and the gang, Muhammad Ali shirtless and playing Monopoly, Barbra Streisand in perfect profile — he paged through his latest book “Then and Now,” published by Hatje Cantz.

The book, which recently launched in Germany and is scheduled for a Friday release in the U.S., includes many never-before-seen images from Schapiro’s archives of journalistic work, celebrity portraits and movie-set shoots, as well as some of his recent forays into digital photography. The 50 years’ worth of pictures reveal incredible access and intimate insights.

As a freelance photojournalist in the Sixties, Shapiro worked for the magazines Life and Look, and later shot the first cover for People. His photos hang in the halls of the Smithsonian and Atlanta’s High Museum of Art and feature in countless private collections and galleries, as well as several books. Many of his pictures are powered by that undefinable, invaluable quality that propels so many notables to the top — charisma. Schapiro says it’s not always evident at first glance, citing a shoot with a famous top model as an example.

“We were going to photograph her, and we’re in the Grand Canyon, and we’re driving to it. And she’s, like, incredibly famous. And I’m looking in the [rearview] mirror and I’m saying, ‘This is isn’t going to work at all,’” he says, recalling a shoot with Christie Brinkley. “And the moment we started shooting, it was perfect. So you can’t always tell.”

What is evident is that his images also have a cinematic quality, so he was a natural to take behind-the-scenes portraits on some of the great films, including “Taxi Driver,” “Midnight Cowboy” and “The Godfather.” But whether on the streets or film shoots, he says he wasn’t always aware of when he had a hit in his lens, or that his mountains of daily work would end up as collectibles.

“Basically, this little guy took all these pictures, and now I have them. This little guy was a workaholic, which was great. Because he left me all this stuff,” laughs Schapiro.

The once brightly colored but now fading orange band on Schapiro’s wrist proves that the little guy is still working hard. It’s from the Beloved sacred art and music festival in Oregon, one of the venues he’s visited for his current book project called “Bliss.” Together with his son, who is keenly spiritual, Schapiro is making the rounds of such events internationally, camping in tents and snapping participants reveling in the music and community, for the work in progress. This veteran of several youthquakes says there’s something missing in the current generation of seekers compared with those of the Sixties. “You were very much aware of what was happening in the world. And I would say that in terms of this grouping, there’s less interest in the outside world entirely,” he muses, noting a lack of interest in politics as well.

Go to slideshow

For a man known for his poignant photos of Dr. King and Robert F. Kennedy, politics are still important, but politicians of today hold little appeal, nor do contemporary celebrities whose schedules and speech are highly controlled by publicists, Schapiro says. Once, he spent days or even weeks with his subjects, building relationships that developed into great photos. Now, he says, “if it’s not a cover, you probably spend two hours, and people have to keep changing their clothes every 15 minutes so that it looks in print as if you’ve been with them a long period of time. And you have usually a handler sitting there saying, ‘Oh no, wait a minute, I have to fix your hair — no you can’t put a cigarette — no cigarettes,’” he says, dropping his voice into an intent whisper to imitate the commentary of an intent p.r. agent.

Turning to review the famous faces he’s captured and the moments he’s frozen forever in black and white, he says he can’t really explain what makes a photograph have lasting power. It could be an emotional quality or an intuitive feeling or immaculate design. “Certain pictures get better with time.”


Related:  Steve Schapiro, Then and Now: Rare Images from a Photography Legend

Steve Schapiro, Then and Now: Rare Images from a Photography Legend

Steve Schapiro

left: Selma Marchers On the Road, 1965, right: Martin Luther King Jr., Selma March 1965

"Those who joined the Selma March could hold the flag high. It was a long symbolic walk and the possibility of violence was always there. Dr. King, the symbol of the non-violent revolution seemed to scour the crowds with a portent of what might follow."

Via Time LightBox
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
By Feifei Sun | @feifei_sun


Just the list of people Steve Schapiro has photographed during his career reads like a Who’s Who of the most influential politicians, celebrities and newsmakers in American history over the last five decades. But that Schapiro captured his subjects during their pivotal and seminal moments—Robert F. Kennedy during his 1968 presidential campaign; Marlon Brando on the set of The Godfather; Andy Warhol and muse Edie Sedgwick in The Factory, among others—lends his photographs an added significance. They aren’t just remarkable portraits of remarkable people, but snapshots into our country’s historical and cultural milestones.

Schapiro’s output over his more than 50-year career has been prolific, and many people have probably seen one of his photographs whether they realize it or not. But his new book, Then and Now, gives readers a look at Schapiro’s lesser-known work; the majority of pictures has never been published. “There were so many pictures that I loved but didn’t fit with the format of my previous books, so this was a chance to bring forth that work,” he says. The book is comprised of single images shown over a spread, as well as spreads of disparate images that share a composition or theme—one such example has a portrait of Martin Scorcese holding a gun and grapes on the left page, and a portrat of Mia Farrow holding a baby on the right. “I wanted to make a book that was interesting on every page,” says Schapiro. “That evolved into the idea of working with double pages where one picture worked with another.”

Schapiro first took an interest to photography at 9 while at summer camp. He fell in love with “the magic of photography” in the dark room, where he became fascinated by how pictures came to life after being dipped in various formulas. But it wasn’t until he discovered Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment, as a teenager, that his interest really took hold. He began trying to capture his own decisive moments on the streets of New York City, before going to study the formal aspects of photography under W. Eugene Smith.

In 1961, amid the height of the Civil Rights movement, Schapiro started working as a freelance photographer for publications such as LIFE, Rolling Stone, TIME and Newsweek. Over the next 10 years, which Schapiro calls “the golden age of photojournalism,” he would cover the decade’s most significant events, including Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 march in Selma, and later, King’s abandoned motel room after this assassination, as well as the “Summer of Love” in Haight-Asbury and Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign. “It was an incredible time to be a photojournalist because there was more of an emotional flow—an ability to do more emotional pictures that captured the spirit of a person,” says Schapiro of the period. “I was able to spend a lot of time with people—Bobby Kennedy went to South America for four weeks and I got to go with him. When I got really sick there, Ethel Kennedy brought me Bobby’s pajamas to wear. Bobby was someone who I became friends with, but everyone who worked with him loved him.”

Despite his success as a photographer, Schapiro maintains that he hasn’t taken his most important picture yet—and doesn’t have any idea what it might be. In the meantime, there’s one subject who continues to elude him: “President Barack Obama. I would love to photograph him.”

Slideshow here.