View the exhibition on-line here
Friday, February 12, 2021
Thursday, February 11, 2021
Ida Wyman: East Harlem, New York, 1947 in Color
Ida Wyman: Hands in pockets, East Harlem, New York, 1947
Santa Fe, NM -- Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to announce an exhibition of rare color photographs Ida Wyman made in East Harlem, New York, in 1947. The exhibit opens in the Gallery (no reception) and on-line at www.monroegallery.com on Friday, February 12 and continues through April 11.
East Harlem in 1947 was a neighborhood of immigrants from poor and working class backgrounds. In the Depression and New Deal era of the 1930s, the Photo League was formed to document poverty and other social problems. Ida’s youthful idealism attracted her to the League, and several League photographers embarked on a mission to document conditions in Harlem.
Her photographs reveal the extraordinary within what, at first glance, might appear to be otherwise unremarkable. Reflecting the related practices of documentary photography, photojournalism, and street photography, these images are a testament to Wyman’s abiding curiosity about the human condition and the complexity of human experience, both familiar and unfamiliar.
This series of color Ektachromes Ida made of East Harlem in 1947 were discovered in her archive only recently, and exist as the only color body of work from that period.
Although not as famous as some of her contemporaries, Ida was one of the defining artists of early street photography that helped shape how we look at our world. Wyman’s photographic vignettes of life in urban centers and small towns in the United States, taken during the mid-twentieth century, illuminate the historical moment while providing a deeply humanist perspective on her subject
Ida strived to capture everyday life of everyday people in all its frustrating, illogical and banal glory.
The daughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Ida Wyman was born March 7, 1926 in Malden, Massachusetts. The family soon moved to New York, where her parents ran a small grocery store in the Bronx. Her parents bought her a box camera when she was 14, and she joined the camera club at Walton High School, honing her skills at taking and printing pictures. By the time Wyman was 16, she know that she wanted to work as a photographer. Opportunities then were few for women photographers, but in 1943 Wyman joined Acme Newspictures as a mail room ‘boy’; pulling prints and captioning them for clients. At lunch hour, she photographed nearby laborers and office workers with her Graflex Speed Graphic camera.
When the war ended, Acme's only female printer was fired so a man could have her job. Wyman set out on her own to begin free-lance work for magazines, and her first photo story was published in LOOK magazine the same year. By 1948 she was in Los Angeles, working on assignments for LIFE magazine. She would eventually cover over 100 assignments for LIFE.
For the next several years, Wyman covered assignments for LIFE, Fortune, Saturday Evening Post, Parade, and many other leading publications of the time. Her varied assignments always focused on human-interest stories, which have become a hallmark of her work. From 1951 through 1962, Wyman took time to raise a family, as well as handling many corporate assignments. From 1962 to 1968 she created photographic documentation for speech research projects at Haskins Laboratories in New York City. From 1968 to 1983, Wyman was the Chief Photographer in the Department of Pathology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1983 she again returned to free-lancing, and handled assignments for The New York Times, Gannett Newspapers, US Magazine, American Lawyer, Inc. Magazine, and other publications. Throughout her career, Wyman held numerous teaching positions and speaking assignments. Her photographs are in the collections of the New York Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Jewish Museum of New York, Fundación Municipal de Cultura in Valladolid, Spain, and other collections. She died July 13, 2019 at age 93.
Current Gallery hours are 10 to 3 Monday - Thursday, 10 to 4 Friday and Saturday, admission is free. Covid-19 safety protocols must be followed and face masks are required throughout your gallery visit. Gallery capacity is limited to no more than 10 visitors..
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Monday, February 1, 2021
Bob Gomel's work endures from Life magazine to ‘One Night in Miami’
Malcolm X takes a photograph of Cassius Clay -- who was about to announce his conversion to Islam and his new name, Muhammad Ali -- on February 25, 1964 in Miami. Malcolm X was staying at The Hampton House Motel, where he spoke with Ali, singer Sam Cooke and football star Jim Brown. The photo was captured for LIFE magazine by Bob Gomel.
Photo: photo by Bob Gomel used with permission
By Andrew Dansby
February 1, 2021
Near the end of the film “One Night in Miami,” Cassius Clay — hours after defeating Sonny Liston and declaring himself king of the world … and so pretty — holds shop in a small diner at the Hampton House Motel over a bowl of ice cream.
“I want a picture with Malcolm!” he says, referring to Malcolm X, who had advocated for the boxer’s conversion to Islam, which yielded a new name: Muhammad Ali.
The film follows Malcolm X for a meditative moment. A dangerous power struggle was in place amid the Nation of Islam, and he had only one year to live. But Clay, in that moment, got his photo.
Life magazine photographer Bob Gomel — the only member of the media inside the diner — caught the champ at the counter, a look of feigned surprise with Malcolm X leaning on his shoulder seemingly enjoying the moment of celebration.
Gomel captured several enduring images from the fight and its aftermath. One included Malcolm X behind the counter taking a photo of a tuxedo-clad Ali. That iconic photo has been acquired by the Library of Congress. Both the photo and the evening have taken on significant cultural weight. The fight and the meetings that followed were caught on film by Gomel and have been written about in biographies of Ali, Malcolm X and Cooke. That one night has become almost mythical, as it saw the rise of a cultural icon in Ali, lending itself to a play that would become a film.
As for Gomel, he’d made a fleeting moment permanent, something he’d done before and would do many times later as a storied and celebrated photojournalist whose work covered presidents and presidential funerals, Olympians in action and the Beatles on a beach.
“I’d suggest the challenge is to do something better than had been done before,” Gomel says, “That was something instilled in me early in my career. When I was just starting my career, I had an editor at Life. I came back and said some event didn’t happen. And he said he didn’t ever want to hear that. After that, I never batted an eye about doing what it took to get a photograph.”
Film on film
David Scarbrough, a professional photographer, met Gomel through mutual friends and colleagues. He’s been in Houston for more than 20 years; Gomel moved here in 1977.
Any time the two would meet, Gomel would share his stories about working at Life from 1959 to 1969. Gomel resisted the idea of putting down those stories as text to accompany the photos in a coffee-table book. So Scarbrough pitched the idea of a film.
“I convinced him to do a proof of concept, and if he didn’t like it, we’d drop it,” Scarbrough says.
Using two iPhones and a makeshift sound studio behind his house, Scarbrough got Gomel to tell the tales behind some of his most famous photos.
Those interviews became the basis of “Bob Gomel: Eyewitness,” available to stream on Amazon, in which the photographer narrates his career, a mix of his photographs and his on-camera commentary. Occasionally, Scarbrough throws in an outside image, as from the first Ali/Liston fight. When Scarbrough called up the fight on YouTube, he thought he saw a familiar face in the bedlam that followed Ali’s win.
“I blew it up, and it was grainy, but there’s Bob on the other side of the ring, climbing the ropes to get the shot. I had to work that in.”
That shot becomes part of a theme throughout the film. Gomel discusses his terror shooting Olympic bobsledders from a bobsled. He is photographed in a wetsuit immersed in a pool to capture a swimmer doing the butterfly. Gomel’s photo presents the swimmer as a human wavelength, her body contorted in a way both beautiful and grotesque.
One of the most fascinating passages includes two presidential funerals. From an elevated space, Gomel photographed President John F. Kennedy’s casket in the Capitol rotunda in 1963. His image is haunting for the light beaming across the rotunda. Gomel that day made a mental note that a direct overhead photograph in the rotunda could be striking. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower died six years later, Gomel rigged a camera directly overhead.
“Everybody knows that photo,” Scarbrough says. “It was a significant moment captured by a well-executed photograph. But people don’t know the preparation to get the picture. The hours and hours of testing. This was before our digital age. You had to string the camera out, bring it back, test lenses. The prep work was incredible.”
Gomel had another concern. “I prayed my lights didn’t start flashing before the event.
“I always draw a distinction. I say you can take a picture or you can make a picture. My objective was always to make pictures. To have some idea of what you’re trying to achieve and then figure out the best way to do that.”
Life behind the camera
Gomel grew up in the Bronx, where his interest in photography began when he was still in grade school. He delivered groceries to make money for his first camera and set up a darkroom in his parents’ home. He earned a journalism degree from New York University before spending three years stationed in Japan as an aviator in the Navy. He says landing planes on an aircraft carrier created a certain fearlessness.
“I’ve never considered safe spaces when I’m working,” he says. “I’d stand on the struts of a helicopter and make sure my wide angle lens cleared the blades. But it never occurred to me to be concerned. A safety strap to the cockpit wall was all I needed.”
He was hired by Life magazine in 1959, “a childhood dream,” he says in the film.
Life at the time had a sterling reputation for its photojournalism. Gomel shot heads of state, athletes and celebrities.
The rush of images that passes in “Bob Gomel: Eyewitness” is astounding for both the richness of the individual photographs and the breadth of Gomel’s work. The photographs clearly stand alone, but the narratives that accompany them offer enrichment through context. A bust of a session with President Richard M. Nixon was salvaged a day later when Gomel returned with some brighter neckties. He also discusses his paintinglike photograph of Manhattan at night during a 1965 blackout, thought to be the first double-exposure image published as a news photo.
In the 1970s, Gomel began doing commercial photography, which led him to Houston. He’d worked closely with an advertising executive at Ogilvy who set up an office in Houston in the early 1970s when Shell relocated from New York.
“I came on a lark, and I liked what I saw,” he says.
He has made Houston his home ever since, working here and sometimes dispensing tough love to students. Long ago he hired now famed photographer Mark Seliger — who at the time was about to graduate from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts — as an assistant.
“A month or two later, I fired him,” Gomel says. “He was too good. I told him to leave Houston and go where the big action was taking place. Fortunately, he took my advice.”
Back to Miami
Seliger is the sort of photographer who might typically appear in a documentary about an old master like Gomel. But Scarbrough had only completed the interviews with his subject when the pandemic shut down his work. So he let Gomel’s stories and his photographs tell the story, which he distributed through Amazon Video Direct.
After a short introduction, the film moves to February 1964, when Life sent Gomel to Miami and assigned him to Clay before he became Ali. Liston was favored 7-1, but Life wanted a Clay cover photo ready should he provide an upset.
Days before the fight, Gomel caught a sweat-soaked Clay smiling. The fight took place Saturday. By Monday, Gomel had a magazine cover.
But the aftermath of the fight proved interesting, too. Because he was assigned to Clay, Gomel traveled with the boxer’s entourage — which included Clay’s brother and Malcolm X — to the Hampton House in Brownsville because no South Beach hotel would accept Black guests.
Playwright Kemp Powers debuted “One Night in Miami” seven years ago. Powers was drawn to a meeting that took place after the fight, when Malcolm X, Clay, singer Sam Cooke and football star Jim Brown gathered in a room at the Hampton. His story, an imagined account of their conversation, springs from four prominent Black men at personal, vocational, cultural and spiritual crossroads. Clay would soon announce his new name and faith; Brown would leave the NFL for film; Malcolm X and Cooke would both become victims of violence.
Late last year, actor and filmmaker Regina King presented a filmed version through Amazon. The film plays with the timeline, flipping the sequence of the diner and the hotel room meeting. It also re-creates that scene from Gomel’s photo: Malcolm X behind the counter, camera in hand.
Gomel expresses frustration that nobody involved with the film reached out to him for licensing or even a credit. He resisted Life’s offers of insurance and equipment allowances to have rights to his photos revert back to him.
Re-creation of photographic moments isn’t unique to “One Night in Miami”; Netflix’s “The Crown” — to name just one TV show — is teeming with shots based on photographs.
Gomel has dealt with the issue before. He’s found the image on T-shirts, throw pillows and earrings.
“It’s new dealing with organizations that don’t do the right thing and contact you,” he says. Gomel recalls the estate of golfer Arnold Palmer securing a photo Gomel took for Palmer’s clothing line.
“That’s the way it was for 50 years,” he says. “People respecting traditions.”
So “Eyewitness” provides the story behind the photo behind the film.
“Just about everybody else in that context is long gone,” Gomel says. “I’m one of very few eye witnesses who was actually there.”
Saturday, January 30, 2021
Friday, January 29, 2021
Stephen Wilkes captures Joseph R. Biden's inauguration from sunrise to sunset in one striking picture
Stephen Wilkes
The inauguration, from sunrise to sunset, captured in one striking picture.
Photographs taken over the course of 15 hours are combined in this historic image. "Sometimes it’s this magical serendipity that I have no control over but I am just present for." --Stephen Wilkes
Read the full article on the making of this historic photograph during unprecedented times here.
See Stephen Wilkes' complete Day To Night collection here.
Monday, January 25, 2021
Hollywood Film Re-creates Bob Gomel's Iconic Photograph
January 24, 2021
One Night in Miami is a movie streaming on Amazon Prime. The film, directed Regina King, is a fictional account based on a true story of the events after Cassius Clay defeated Sonny Liston in February 1964 in Miami.
As you can see in the images above, the movie is based on an actual photograph taken by Bob Gomel. Amazon Studios photographer Patti Perret painstakingly recreated the iconic photograph that appeared in LIFE Magazine.
In the actual picture Sam Cooke and Jim Brown are not in the image as they are in the picture by Perret. The movie is a fictional account based on actual events.
The picture by Bob is featured in the documentary (also streaming on Amazon Prime) Bob Gomel: Eyewitness, as is the entire story leading up and including the fight, as well as, the post fight celebration at The Hampton House where this image was taken.
Bob Gomel owns the rights to the original image. Signed prints are sold through Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, NM.
Bob was not consulted, credited, or compensated in any way in the making of the film or the recreation of the image.
Wednesday, January 13, 2021
Nina Berman's photographs of January 6 Insurrection featured internationally and in "History Now" exhibit
President Trump's image appears onscreen at a rally outside the White House
January 6, 2021 by Nina Berman
"The normally solemn atmosphere at the Capitol Building was transformed into a scene of chaotic violence unprecedented in modern times on Wednesday afternoon, as a mob of insurgents waving Trump flags, Confederate symbols, pro-Nazi messages, and other symbols of right-wing extremist groups breached the building’s security, halting proceedings to certify Trump’s defeat and forcing lawmakers to take cover as they were evacuated to safety with gas masks, as violent protesters roamed hallways, smashed windows, and destroyed Congressional property." Via National Geographic
"America First" Flags at Capitol Insurrection, Washington, DC,
January 6, 2021 by Nina Berman
"We are part of a team of researchers at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Columbia University’s Engineering and Journalism schools that has been developing a tool called VizPol, which helps journalists identify unfamiliar political symbols, since April 2019. Nina had the idea to help improve journalists’ understanding of visual political symbols at a right-wing rally in 2018 after she saw a TV journalist fail to point out a contradiction between what an interviewee was saying and what a symbol she had tattooed on her forearm suggested about her political beliefs. As part of keeping the app’s database up-to-date with the constantly evolving landscape of symbols, we have paid close attention to the various symbols appearing at political rallies across the political spectrum in the United States." Via Vice News
Monday, January 11, 2021
Ashley Gilbertson's Photographs of January 6 Insurrection Featured in NY Times and Monroe Gallery Exhibit
January 10, 2021
Photographer Ashley Gilbertson witnessed the events of January 6, 2021 that will be cemented into US history while on assignment for the New York Times. See the full series of photographs with an important essay by Timothy Snyder here.
Ashley Gilbertson is an Australian photojournalist with the VII Photo Agency living in New York. Gilbertson has covered migration and conflict internationally for over 20 years.
Gilbertson's photographs are included in the current exhibition "History Now".
Thursday, January 7, 2021
Santa Fe Workshops Presents: Perspectives — Stephen Wilkes Day to Night, through Ellis Island, to "Jay Myself”
January 12 - 15, 2021
In a world where humanity has become obsessively connected to personal devices, the ability to focus in a profound and contemplative way is becoming an endangered experience. These three lecture-format presentations promise to provide an engaging alternative to that trend.
Over the course of three days, fine-art and documentary photographer, National Geographic Society explorer, and filmmaker Stephen Wilkes takes you on a deep dive into his most important bodies of work.
Each day Stephen provides an exclusive in-depth look at his creative and technical processes, imbued with treasured stories and inspiration about a single project. This format allows him the rare opportunity to share the rich details of each one and weave them together to showcase the arc of his iconic career.
Day One - Day to Night
Day to Night represents Stephen's 10-year personal journey to capture fundamental elements of our world through the span of 24 hours, as light passes in front of a lens over the course of a full day. This synthesis of art and science is an exploration of time, memory, and history, as witnessed through the daily rhythms of our lives. For Stephen, it also became a meditation. The concept of Day to Night has redefined the medium of photography, melding aesthetics and technology to create a new way of seeing time, capturing history, and using imagery to convey a narrative. Blending these epic images of cityscapes and landscapes into a single photograph is a process that takes months to complete. Day to Night has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning and exhibited around the world.
Day Two - Ellis Island
We explore Stephen's critically acclaimed photographic documentary project capturing the abandoned infectious disease hospital on Ellis Island. In 1998, a one-day assignment to the south side of Ellis Island led to a five-year photographic study of the island’s abandoned medical wards, where immigrants were detained before they could enter America. The project, which was featured on NPR and CBS Sunday Morning, eventually became Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom, named one of the top 10 photography books of 2006 by Time magazine. Stephen served for five years on the board of directors for Save Ellis Island.
Day Three - Jay Myself
A special screening of Jay Myself is made available for participants to watch between the webinar's second and third presentations. Then Stephen shares his fascinating story about the making of the film and his enduring 40-year friendship with its subject, Jay Maisel. The film charts the arduous logistical and emotional journey of Maisel—himself a renowned photographer—as he moves out of his six-story, 72-room home in New York City's Bowery. Variety's film critic Owen Gleiberman said: “After watching Jay Myself, you yourself may begin to see the world in a whole new way, as if you’d woken up to all the images that might have been invisible before, but only because you passed them by.”
These three presentations by a visionary photographer and filmmaker leave an inspirational and indelible mark on all who choose to open their eyes and minds to his technical and artistic mastery. You are invited to join Stephen and experience an unforgettable photographic journey through time. Tune in and let’s get busy!
Sunday, January 3, 2021
Fighter with a camera: Renown photographer, who battled COVID-19, will celebrate turning 98 with a virtual show
By Kathaleen Roberts
January 3, 2021
“The Violinist,” 1947, by Tony Vaccaro. Courtesy of Monroe Gallery
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Tony Vaccaro reigns as one of the few people to have battled both COVID-19 and the beaches of Normandy.
The photographer will celebrate his 98th birthday with a virtual show at Santa Fe’s Monroe Gallery of Photography through Jan. 17, at monroegallery.com.
Vaccaro contracted Covid early in the pandemic – in April. He spent two days in the hospital.
He couldn’t walk from room to room,” his daughter-in-law Maria said in a telephone interview from their home in Long Island City, New York. “He just stopped eating and had no energy.”
Vaccaro survived, despite a 103-degree fever.
“I am a runner,” he explained. “I’ve been running since I was a child.”
“Peggy Guggenheim, Venice, 1968” by Tony Vaccaro
Courtesy Monroe Gallery
He’s also a fighter who carried a camera from the invasion of Normandy through the reconstruction of Europe, capturing some of the most iconic images of World War II. Drafted at 21, he brought his 35mm Argus C-3 camera with him, spending the next 272 days photographing his personal witness to the carnage. He fought on the front lines, developing his photographs in combat helmets at night and hanging the negatives from tree branches.
Photographer Tony Vaccaro
Photo by R. David Marks
“Normandy to Berlin was just tough,” he said, “because you could get killed any minute. I was in the infantry and in direct contact with the Germans.”
After the war, he remained in Europe, covering the rebuilding of Germany for Stars and Stripes. It was in Italy that he heard the strains of a violin coming from a narrow Venetian street.
“I was in Plaza San Marco in Venice,” he said. “And I had an idea of going into the small streets. So I go in and there was a violinist playing, of course, for people to throw down money. When I heard this violinist, it intrigued me. I went into the tiny streets of Venice and don’t you know, I had met him before in Rome.”
He captured his famous portrait of an American GI kneeling to kiss a little girl by accident. He came upon residents of St. Briac, France, singing and dancing in the streets after the 1944 liberation.
“Kiss of Liberation,” 1944, by Tony Vaccaro
Courtesy Monroe Gallery
“There were these people holding hands and singing a song in French,” Vaccaro said. “Here’s this GI who knows not one word of French. They put a handkerchief under the knees of the little girl. It’s the symbol of a carpet for ladies.”
It was the Handkerchief Dance.
When Vaccaro returned stateside, he worked as a commercial photographer for Look, Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, Newsweek and more.
His portrait of the art patron Peggy Guggenheim features a hidden joke. On assignment to do a profile, he followed her to the Guggenheim Museum in Venice. A statue by the Italian sculptor Marino Marini guards the entrance.
“There’s a man on a horse and he’s naked and his penis was as long as half my arm,” Vaccaro said. “She had this habit of whenever she had new guests, she unscrewed it.”
Guggenheim expected a children’s tour group, so she unscrewed the phallus and hid it beneath her cloak. It’s concealed under the garment in Vaccaro’s picture of Guggenheim in the gondola.
“She didn’t want the children to see it,” he said.
“Georgia O’Keeffe, Abiquiú, New Mexico, 1960” by Tony Vaccaro
Courtesy Monroe Gallery
Vaccaro met Georgia O’Keeffe on assignment for Look magazine with art editor Charlotte Willard in Abiquiú in 1960.
The artist refused to speak to him for five days.
O’Keeffe had been expecting a different photographer, one of her favorites, such as Ansel Adams, Todd Webb or Richard Avedon. Trying his best to charm her, Vaccarro cooked the artist a steak and fixed her broken washing machine, to no avail.
“Georgia O’Keeffe at the very beginning didn’t want anything to do with me,” he said. “She didn’t even look at me. She had just left her husband.”
“Guggenheim Hat, New York, 1960” by Tony Vaccaro
Courtesy Monroe Gallery
Suddenly, the topic turned to bullfighting. Vaccaro mentioned he had photographed the great Spanish matador Manolete.
O’Keeffe pivoted to face him. She never looked at Willard again.
Vaccaro still works and goes for regular walks.
“I am shooting, but not as before,” he said. “Before it was survival. Somehow, I have an eye for what’s good before I can click it. I have seen so much that it is really an instinct.”
As for Covid, he said, “I have an idea that the body forgets what it doesn’t like.”
IF YOU GO
WHAT: “Tony Vaccaro at 98”
WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar Ave., Santa Fe
WHEN: Through Jan. 17
CONTACT: monroegallery.com, 505-992-0800.
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