Nixon Summed Up

(his best known photo series) "series which show us again and again why his work with the slow, contemplative large format camera surprises and enthralls viewers. It is because the results are more than portraiture; large format has never been used in quite the way Nixon uses it. Technically, his photos are always thrillingly composed and lovingly detailed. Emotionally, his photos inhabit a world somewhere between the action click and the thoughtful composition, capturing fleeting but meaningful moments. His subjects' expressions combine a buoyant hopefulness with an ominous cognizance of human frailty. These qualities are what give his photographs their poignancy."

-New York Institute of Photography, Photographer's Spotlight

Nixon - People/Lovers

Various Magazine Work by Larry Fink

Nicholas Nixon - Lovers

Nicholas Nixon, M.P., M.J., Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, 2000

Nicholas Nixon, M.C., P.G., Brookline, 2000

Nicholas Nixon, K.S., J.Z., Somerville, Massachusetts, 2000

Thoughts on Nicholas Nixon:

"Once decried as another victimization of the person with AIDS, Nixon's photographs are now being reconsidered as historically important and aesthetically significant, as highly exceptional counterpoints to the by now entrenched iconography or the healthy and beautiful person with HIV/AIDS."
- A New York University literary review of People with Aids


(on his School series) "His pictures persuade us that we see individuals, not symptoms of a problem, or worse, heroes of a solution."
(Nixon's work) "embraces the idea that sympathetic photographs of ordinary... people can address the deepest human values."
- Peter Galassi, Chief Photography Curator at the Museum of Modern Art

Thoughts on Larry Fink:

"I love working with him. I can count on a picture that goes beyond the obvious, a picture that is both stylistically strong and in content reflects the story for which it has been taken."
- Elisabeth Biondi, picture editor at New York Magazine

"Larry Fink's photographs are like the stage in a darkened theater. His hand-held flash splendidly illuminates the details of the drama before us and reveals the nuance of the personal moment"
- Susan Kismaric, associate curator, Museum of Modern Art.

From the start of his career, Larry Fink has exhibited a sharp eye for sociological detail and a consistent aim: to explore human beings as wonderful, flawed creatures. Whether prowling weddings, bar mitzvahs, high-society galas or the boxing ring, his favorite subject is the social animal. Through photography, Fink connects with his subjects on an emotional level, using flash to extract moments of startling honesty... Fink’s work is also marked by a sympathetic portrayal of social conditions and a relationship between photographer and subject that is affectionate and empathetic, yet unflinching.




[source: http://www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum/maylectures2005_06.html]

Fink: how the working-class throws parties

Pat Sabatine’s Twelfth Birthday Party, May, 1981

Pat Sabatine's Eighth Birthday Party, April 1977

Tying in with Maggie's earlier post of Fink's work with the nightlife of America's VIPs & Hollywood power players, Fink also explored the celebrations of the working class in Pennsylvania. Pat Sabatine’s Twelfth Birthday Party, May, 1981 features neither the celebrating child nor what Fink refers to as the “holy mess” of the Sabatine family kitchen, but simply an anonymous hand and the geometry of a gesture. Such intimacies underscore Fink’s belief that all of his subjects, regardless of social status, share the same underlying of emotions, political ideals, and alliances.





[source: http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/fink_larry.php]

"Can This Marraige Be Saved?"

An article published in The New York Times Magazine by Laurie Abraham on August 12, 2007 described a year-long couples therapy session given by psychologist Judith Coché. The photographs that accompanied the article (all taken by Nicholas Nixon) are of the couples it described (and of Coché) and were taken in Coché’s Philadelphia office.

[source: nytimes.com]

Fink - Runway

Larry Fink: The Forbidden Pictures

In 2004 Larry Fink's series The Forbidden Pictures was on public view for the first time.

Fink: “I was shooting fashion, perhaps a compromise for me, but a trivial, jovial, stylish learning theater. Why not use its public accessibility for subversion, satire, association and education?”

The photographs in this series put look-a-like politicians in satirical situations. Originally the photo spred was going to run in The New York Times Magazine on September 16, 2001, but that was thwarted with the events of 9/11.

The exhibition eventually went on display January 28, 2004 at the Dubois Gallery of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA.


* * *

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

It was time – the election was stolen, robbed by middlemen on top. Folks who thought the past was the future because they owned the present. Entitlement didn’t come from being lazy; it came from cunning aggrandizing connivance.

The leader was a twice entitled frat boy with charisma informed by homily and stubborn gotcha comfort.

It was simple! I was shooting fashion, perhaps a compromise for me, but a trivial, jovial, stylish, learning theater. Why not use its public accessibility for subversion, satire, association, and education?

An idea! One of my favorite periods in 20th Century art was Weimar Germany, with Beckmann, Dix, and Grosz all melting down convention in an impassioned visionary way. Grosz was especially political but all of them were hyper-aware of the decadence, the despair, the hysteria, and the lies.

I suggested to the New York Times Magazine (whose rear end is sometimes gifted with fashion spreads) an idea to replicate the period but loosen it, update it, and tell it anew. There were fashion equivalents and certainly moral and historical ones.

Oh the glee! They said yes. I suggested that rather than the corpulent Weimar German types, why not use our current fraudulent leaders, George W. and his cabinet. Oh the glee! They said yes. Political satire and critical acuity are something rarely if ever done in fashion. Yet another coup.

We searched for the cast of dancers, whores, merry makers, and priests. We searched for the lookalikes of our own Mr. G.W. and his consortium. We found it all and went to work. Five paintings chosen from the period and three days shooting them, interpreting them, and creating aesthetic clarity and political bedlam.

The work was to run in the Times on Sunday 9/16/01.

9/11 gave birth to doom. The tragic inevitable moment, the rupture of providence, the rape of the external soul of America. And its aftermath.

Critical images of the president and his men would not be published. In fact, all critical thought was temporarily suspended and the fundamentalist Islamic conspiracy bore the turf for the fundamentalist neoconservative conspiracy which was already in wait for the history which would give it license and muscle. Its muscle is still prominent and will be for some time.

As it became apparent that the presidential team was acting beyond the righteous knee jerk of anti-terrorism, when the public critical spirit was on the rise, I offered the pictures again to the Times. No! The New Yorker. No! Harper’s Magazine. No! The European market I felt sure would publish them. But no. Like their influences, the images were banned, not by decree but by mute fearful compliance to the norm.

Here in the halls of political science of Lehigh University, they speak their eye and tongue. They are free. But the ever-evolving question is, are we?

--Larry Fink

Nixon - His Family

Bebe and I, 1997

Clementine and I, 1997

Bebe and Clementine, 1986

Sam, Bebe and Clementine, 1989

Clementine, 1986

Sam and Clementine, 1995