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.

In case you misssed the TODAY Show on NBC today:

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

VJ-DAY, TIMES SQUARE, NEW YORK, AUGUST 14, 1945

The V-J Day picture of the white-clad nurse by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured an epic moment in U.S. history and became an iconic image marking the end of the war after being published in Life magazine.

It is probably the most iconographic image associated with LIFE, photojournalism, and World War II. Eisenstaedt recounts how he got the shot: “I was walking through the crowds on V-J Day, looking for pictures. I noticed a sailor coming my way. He was grabbing every female he could find and kissing them all – young girls and old ladies alike… The sailor came along, grabbed the nurse, and bent down to kiss her. Now if this girl hadn’t been a nurse, if she’d been dressed in dark clothes, I wouldn’t have had a picture. People tell me that when I’m in heaven, they will remember this picture.”

Via Monroe Gallery of Photograpy Blog

"V-J Day, Times Square" is featured in the exhibition "History's Big Picture", through September 25

Why Study History?

The Surbanan Dweller
Via The Westport Patch

By Sally Allen

Whether or not we remember the past, we're probably still 'doomed to repeat it.' But studying history has an enduring--and hopeful--purpose.

The idea that we should study history in order to learn from and prevent the mistakes of the past is a lovely notion but not an entirely convincing mandate. A cursory survey of major historical developments reveals that, in fact, we frequently make the same mistakes, even when theoretically we should ‘know better.’

A very silly example from my own life: I continue to consume popcorn at the movies when I know, with absolute certainty, that doing so will result in a horrible stomachache three hours later. I mean, I will feel like a porcupine is doing somersaults in my stomach, and I will fervently wish I’d just gotten the chocolate-covered peanuts instead. But the next time, I always get the popcorn anyway.
Is this a random folly, a single example of a foolish individual who refuses to heed the lesson of her history?

Well, back in 1912, the White Star Line said The Titanic was ‘designed to be unsinkable.’ As we all know, it sank on its maiden voyage. After this tragic outcome and massive loss of life (over 1,500 of the over 2,200 passengers perished), the press latched onto this phrase with the fervor of a starving infant, and the words ‘unsinkable’ and ‘The Titanic’ have since been inextricably linked in history, a stark and horrific reminder of the price of hubris.

Did we ‘learn our lesson’ about the perils of grandiosity? Not really. Just two years after the ocean liner sank, British author H.G. Wells purportedly popularized the term ‘war to end war’ in relation to World War I. He was one of a number of prominent authors the British government apparently recruited to infuse patriotic sentiments into their work, thus drumming up support for a war that, four years later, would leave 9 million soldiers and an estimated 12 million civilians dead and another 21 million soldiers wounded.

Oh, and twenty years later, we had World War II.

Shortly after that came the Korean War, then the Vietnam War, etc. This isn’t a commentary on whether or not these, or any other, wars were necessary or just. I’m observing that they keep happening, even though at one time we imagined that we could end them.

Even if, by studying history, it were possible to stop making the same mistakes, we’d make other ones. Because making mistakes is a defining characteristic of the human condition. We all make them. Whether large or small, mistakes are inevitable.

If studying history doesn’t prevent us from making mistakes, what does it enable?

This week, I visited the Fairfield Museum and History Center (FMHC) at 370 Beach Road in Fairfield, where they are currently showing a retrospective of photojournalist and Connecticut resident Bill Eppridge’s work. His iconic images, which are on display until Aug. 28, capture seminal events of the 1960s that, though I didn’t live through them, shaped the world I live in today.

Photographs on display include 12-year old Ben Chaney with his mother at the 1964 funeral of his brother, civil rights activist James Chaney. Ku Klux Klan members, in collusion with law enforcement, murdered Chaney along with two other activists, who were working to register African-American voters in Mississippi during Freedom Summer.

The exhibit also features Eppridge’s photos of Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign, including images taken immediately after he was shot in the Ambassador Hotel. The breathtaking curating (which also includes campaign paraphernalia, LIFE Magazine covers, and Eppridge’s equipment) tells the story of the day. Images show Kennedy walking through the hotel’s kitchen, busboy Juan Romeo kneeling over him moments after the shooting, and Ethel Kennedy clasping him in her arms as personnel swarm the scene.

This combination of art and history provides me with a tangible link to events that are not mine through experience but through legacy.

Director of Exhibitions and Programs Kathleen Bennewit, noted that FMHC—which lies in the heart of historic Fairfield, on the site of the original town green where Roger Ludlowe founded Fairield in 1639 and which then included what we now call Westport—is moving towards a more regional focus. This strikes me as entirely appropriate when we consider that our towns weren’t always separate. When we talk about the history of Fairfield, we are also talking about the history of Westport as well as other surrounding towns.

And even if it wasn’t my ancestors whose houses the British burned to ash in 1779, for as long as I live here, I’m part of the history of this town, and so the events of both the past and the present belong, in part, to me too. We’re not connected by blood or even by traditions or events but by an idea that is forever evolving in the hands of those who live here.

In this way, we are all connected, and there is hope in this. Though I probably will still order the popcorn next time I’m at the movies.



Bill Eppridge's photographs will be on exhibit at Monroe gallery of Photography September 30 - November20, 2011

GOING FISHING

John Dominis: Going Fishing, Texas, 1952

Things might get a little slow here and on our Twitter and Facebook feeds for a few days - as summer begins to wind down, its time to enjoy some swimming, fishing, and grilling. We'll be checking in!

Ernst Haas: Color Corrections

Color Correction by Ernst Haas, published by Steidl / www.steidlville.com

California, USA, 1976

Out There
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 | By Kenneth Dickerman
Via Time LightBox

Born in 1921, Vienna’s Ernst Haas is considered by many to be one of the first true masters of color photography, Though he began his career working with black and white. Following the tradition established by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who focused heavily on the decisive moment and rich monochromatic tonality, Haas would receive worldwide recognition for his early work documenting the homecoming of Austrian prisoners of War. Haas eventually moved to color, favoring its ability to work in a more metaphoric, poetic vein that photographers like Saul Leiter and Eliot Porter were examining.

A significant amount of Haas’s output throughout his career landed in the pages of mainstream magazines such as Life, Look and Esquire. But in addition to this more commercial work, Haas was always making photographs for himself. It is these photographs that the German publisher Steidl has brought together for the new book, Ernst Haas: Color Corrections. The book shows mostly unseen work by Haas, work that is at once rich in color and texture as well as being more edgy and experimental than much of the work he became known for during his lifetime.

Haas’s Color Corrections will be released by Steidl in the United States this month.

 

California, USA, 1977

New Orleans, USA, 1960

New Mexico, USA, 1975

USA, circa 1970

USA, 1967

Brooklyn, New York, USA, 1952

New York, USA, 1974

Color Correction by Ernst Haas, published by Steidl / www.steidlville.com

 

LONDON RIOTS: PHOTOS, FACIAL IMAGING, SOCIAL MEDIA POSE NEW ETHICAL QUESTIONS

The New York Times reported:

As rioting continues to roil the streets of London, local police forces are turning to the Web to help unmask those involved in the torching and looting.

On Tuesday, the Metropolitan Police of London posted a set of photos on Flickr showing people they believed to be participants in the riots. Right now the images are primarily from the Croydon and West Norwood neighborhoods in south London, although the site says that more will be posted soon.
Click for full article here.

From The Guardian: London riots: police to track rioters who used BlackBerrys

and:

Facebook and Twitter mobilises hundreds of people to clear debris from streets in London's worst-hit communities

From MSNBC: Citizen cameras capture more London looters than cops

"Yet another indicator of the pervasiveness of social media services, the erosion of anonymity online and perhaps a broader, sweeping change in people’s views about what is public and what is private."

JOE McNALLY: TEN YEARS ON EXHIBIT OPENS AUGUST 24

Via Joe McNally's Blog
In Friends, News at 6:11am

Bill Butler was with Josephine Harris and five other members of Ladder 6, inside the North Tower of WTC when it came down. They resolutely stuck with Josephine, refusing to leave her, despite her painfully slow rate of descent. Bill half carried her, cajoling her all the way about seeing her grandchildren again. The building came down, and the miracle of Josephine’s pace put all of them in a fourth floor stairwell that remained intact. Somehow, as the building came down, crushing everything around it, they, and Josephine, survived.

Bill Butler, 2001, Firefighter, Ladder 6, FDNY

While trapped with Harris and his ladder company in Stairwell B, Butler used a cell phone to call emergency numbers but couldn’t get through. As a last effort, he called his home in Orange County, N.Y. His wife, Diane, answered.

“I just said, “Hi, what are you doing?” I was trying to be nonchalant. She said, “Where are you?” I said “We’re at the World Trade Center.” She asked, “Is everything okay?” Then I said, “Well, we have a little problem. We’re trapped in the Trade Center, but we’re okay.” Then she started to cry a little bit, because she knew there was no World Trade Center. At that point I said, “Listen, you can’t cry. I have to give you some information. You have to call the firehouse or call someone and tell them where we’re at.”

Lieutenant Bill Butler, FDNY, Aug. 3, 2011

Ten years later, Bill is a lieutentant with FDNY, serving at Ladder 56, Engine 48, up in the Bronx. His memories of the day are still vivid, even with the passing of time. Shot this, along with a video interview with Bill, just last week. The interview, and the portraits open at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, on Aug. 24th.

Exhibition made possible with the generous sponsorship of Nikon USA, Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan, and friends of the collection.

More tk….

Related: Joe McNally - Faces of Ground Zero

Vanity Fair: The Elvis Kiss Mystery—Solved!

 

Photograph © Alfred Wertheimer, all rights reserved

By Alanna Nash

WEB EXCLUSIVE August 8, 20
Culture

The Elvis Kiss Mystery—Solved!

In the summer of 1956, a 21-year-old Elvis Presley, already inciting libidinous mayhem from Kansas City to Jacksonville, impishly touched tongues with a young woman in Richmond, Virginia. Photographer Alfred Wertheimer snapped the shutter just at the moment of contact. The result: “The Kiss,” one of the most storied photos in Elvis lore and “the sexiest picture ever taken in the whole world,” according to Diane Keaton, who owns a print. Yet for five decades, no one, not even Wertheimer, knew the identity of Presley’s date—until now.

Read the full article on VF.com here.

EXCERPTS FROM AN EVENING OF PHOTOJOURNALISM

We were honored to welcome two  preeminent names in American journalism, former Time, Life, and People magazine editors Richard Stolley and Hal Wingo for an evening of conversation in the gallery in conjuction with the exhibition "History's Big Picture". The gallery was filled to standing room only as they talked about the power of magazine photography and photojournalism's past, present, and future.

A few excerpts from the evening:

Dick Stolley recounted the events surrounding President John F. Kennedy's assassination, and how he arrived in Dallas on the evening of the assassination and met early the next morning with Abraham Zapruder and secured the original and first-generation print of the "Zapruder film" for LIFE magazine. Stolley continued that he went to the County jail for the transfer of Lee Harvey Oswald, only to learn from a TV camerman that Jack Ruby had shot Oswald as he was leaving the City jail. Stolley then singled out Bob Jackson's Pulitzer-Prize winning photograph in the exhibition and continued:

"Two pictures were taken - a guy named Jack Beers shot a split-second earlier than Bob Jackson and the difference between the two photographs is profound. This captures everything and that split second before just missed. That split second is what makes the difference in so many of the photographs on these walls."

Both Stolley and Wingo covered stories in South during the most violent years of the Civil Rights struggle. Wingo told how he found assignments in the South scared him far more than any in Vietnam. They talked about the power oF the image, and the influence civil rights photographs had on American public opinion at the time.

Dick Stolley: "When LIFE showed up there were already a lot of writers covering the civil rights stories. It was one thing to write about segregationist crowds trying to prevent nine teenagers from going into Central High School, but when you showed these photographs of angry, contorted faces it made all the difference in two ways: one, in us understanding of what was going on in Little Rock and throughout the South, and two, the attitude the people in the photographs had.

It was one thing to be written about, it was a very different thing to wind up in the pages of LIFE magazine with your face contorted in rage...and they caught on to that instantly.

America saw these photograph and thought "Good God, what is happening?"

Hal Wingo continued: "I wonder if anyone here tonight might recognize this picture? Does it ring a bell in any of you?"

He held up this photograph, a double page spread from an old LIFE magazine:

These are the 18 men arrested, including County Deputy Cecil Price and his boss, Sheriff Lawrence Rainey, for the murders of three civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. These 18 men were arraigned not on on State charges, because Mississippi did not charge them, but on Federal charges of violating the rights of the three civil rights workers. This is the picture taken just after their arraignment...do they look worried?

They thought their ace in the hole was they would be judged locally, by a jury of their peers, and that's the safest thing that could happen"

On the state of photojournalism:

Photojournalism today maybe has a broader definition than just the creative work of talented photojournalists who can arrange or capture a moment that will be a lasting impression from these situations. It seems to me today photojournalism is any photograph that is in the sense journalism, that tells the story."  Dick Stolley

We would like to graciously thank Dick and Hal for a wonderful evening of discussion.