Raimondo Borea

 

American, b. Italy, 1926 – 1982

Archive Contact: Gartenberg Media Enterprises. For all inquiries related to exhibition, loan requests, reproduction rights, or for more information about this collection contact info@gartenbergmedia.com

Webpage: http://www.gartenbergmedia.com/library-excavation-media-archiving/photographers

Photography enables me to discover, observe [and] understand things about people and their relationships, and it allows me to capture and hold them forever… It is by photographs, rather than by talking about experiences, that I communicate.

 

Photography is an expression of your individuality. You start with color or black and white. Then having chosen your film, the camera, the lens, the developer, the paper for the final print, you can create an almost infinite number of ways to make a photograph.

 

I enjoy being in my darkroom. There is something in the still darkness that brings out your best creative thinking. You relive your past photography and plan your future… You experience a very special sensation holding the end product…the picture you have printed yourself.

 

Building on his career as a young photographer in Italy, Borea began working full time in 1957 as a freelance photographer, traveling around New York City on his three-speed Dunelt bicycle. He shot photographic essays of now-demolished New York City landmarks, including the Washington Square Market and the Third Avenue El. He also photographed many other cityscapes, including Central Park, Riverside Park, and the New York City subway system. In his picture-making, he often transformed these locales into studies of abstraction. Borea also produced photographic essays from his travels around the US and abroad.

MARVIN KONER
1921–1983
http://marvinkonerarchive.com
Pam Koner, Pam@MarvinKonerArchive.com

For nearly four decades, American photojournalist Marvin Koner traveled the world capturing the people, places and personalities that shaped the latter half of the 20th century.

Born into a family of Russian intellectuals in New York City, Marvin Koner would come to see the world through the eye of his camera – observing and chronicling the ordinary and extraordinary.

Stationed in the South Pacific during World War II, Koner served as a First Lieutenant in the Army Photo Intelligence Unit where his interest in photography began. At the end of the war he returned to New York determined to make a career in photography, and enabled by the G.I. Bill, studied with Alexy Brodovitch, the renowned art director of Harper’s Bazaar Magazine.

Spearheading the use of the 35mm. camera and available light, for the next 30 years, Koner’s work appeared in leading magazines, including Life, Fortune, Look, Esquire and Collier’s. During the course of his career Koner received numerous awards from professional journals and served a number of terms as Vice-President of The American Association of Magazine Photographers.

Koner photographed many distinguished subjects, most notably Martin Luther King, Robert Frost, Margaret Mead, Robert Kennedy, Frank Lloyd Wright and Eleanor Roosevelt. Always eager to tell a story, Koner photographically retraced James Joyce’s “Ulysses” main character, Leopold Bloom’s journey through Dublin, covered the exchange of prisoners at the end of the Korean war for Collier’s Magazine, and in the early 1960’s followed the migration by boat, of an Italian family to New York. When the interest in photojournalism diminished and virtually disappeared, Koner turned from magazines to corporate photography on an international scale. His color images of industry, architecture, nature and portraiture have been published worldwide.
Koner died in 1983 at the age of 62. His work in is the permanent collection of the International Center for Photography where a one-man show of his photographs was held there in 1993, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.

Guy Borremans (1934-2012) emigrated from Belgium to Montreal in the mid-fifties and established himself as one of the leading photographer and cinematographers in Quebec and in Canada.

After working as a photographer in Belgium, Borremans found work in Montreal as a press photographer and had his first solo photography exhibit in 1956.

He moved to New York City in 1965 to work for the United Nations Film Department, National Educational Television (NET), as well as Movietone and other production companies. He moved back to Montreal in 1968, and worked in still photography. He also taught film and photography at the University of Montreal, Moncton University and Concordia University.

Borremans has contributed to more than forty productions and has held thirty-three solo exhibitions of his photography.

Guy Borremans photographs are in many private and institutional collections, such as the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa, the Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec City and may others.

Please contact Ariel Borremans for more information.

Ariel Borremans

4828 Hutchison, #2

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

H2V 4A3

514-271-3784

arielborremans@me.com

Joe Schwartz
1913 – 2013
Home page: http: //www.joeschwartzphoto.com
Archive contact: Paula Motlo – joeschwartzphotos@gmail.com

Joe Schwartz (American, b. July 6, 1913 – d. March 13, 2013) was born to immigrant
parents from Eastern Europe, on the top floor of the tenement building at 47 Humboldt
Street in Brooklyn, New York. “Baby” Schwartz began his new life as a “have-not” …
and the “have-nots” were the very people that he chose to photograph during his
lifetime. Joe’s camera became his notes, sketches, diary, memory identifiers, and his
key to the many doors he was afraid to open without the use of the lens. His camera
was used, not as an intruder, but as a participant in each scene.

In the 1930s, David Robbins introduced Joe to the Photo League of New York. It was
there he interacted with the “greats” such as, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange,
Ruth Orkin, and Walter Rosenblum. Joe was strongly influenced by the League’s high
standards and humanitarian values. He interacted with many dedicated artists in the
League and pursued his passion – documenting through photography, life on the streets
of New York as well as other areas of America. Joe’s photos captured the dignity of the
“unfortunates” and showed that hope still burned bright in the bellies of the immigrants
and the American Blacks. While focusing on inter-racial cooperation and understanding,
Joe fulfilled his vision – to serve as a philosopher of hope rather than a messenger of
despair.

Joe married in 1939; he served as a combat photographer on Iwo Jima during World
War II; and as a staff member of Leatherback Magazine. During the war his photos were
printed in several notable publications; and in 1946, Joe was a recipient of the Best
Picture of the Year award. Joe graduated from the Fred Archer School of Photography;
worked as a lithographer; owned Color Magic, a successful print shop; and published
his own photography book, Folk Photography: Poems I’ve Never Written.

Schwartz’s photographs have been widely exhibited. His works are part of the
permanent collections at: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History
and Culture (open to the public in 2016 at the National Mall); J. Paul Getty Museum;
Museum of Modern Art New York; Skirball Cultural Center of Los Angeles; Houston
Museum of Fine Arts; National Gallery of Canada; Santa Barbara Museum of Art;
Columbus Museum of Art; Harn Museum in Arizona; and Center for Creative
Photography at the University of Arizona.

Photo captions:

1. TRICYCLE GANG – 1940s, photo by Joe Schwartz – Herkimer Street, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York, p.91

2. SULLIVAN MIDGETS – 1930s, photo by Joe Schwartz – Sullivan Street, Greenwich Village,  Lower Manhattan – Italian street gang – “Nothing creative to do – nothing to be proud of -except to act tough – Kid-Folk seek low-grade excitement to vent their energies and anger.” p.66

3. MISS AMERICA – 1948 – Ocean Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn – “African American girl at a patriotic gathering.” p.16

4. DOES DISCRIMINATE – 1940s – Ocean Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn – “National Negro Congress, Citizens Affairs Committee – First black women to picket chain (Woolworths) for jobs. p.116

5. TWO’S A TEAM – 1940s – Kingsboro Federal low cost housing project, Ocean Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn – (a mural of this photo is currently on display at the National Mall in Washington D.C. in front of the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture that’s being built). p.41

6. WORK DONE, A FLIGHT BEGUN – 1939 – (year of the New York’s World Fair) – Soho district Remembering the Photo League of NYC – 18 Saint Marks Place – Sign: “Accordion Repairing” – Man on stairs, a window shade repairman, has a bag full of window shades. p210

Alexander Artemiev was born March 25, 1903 in Gomel, Belarus, Russia. He was the youngest child of nine children. His prosperous family educated him in the gynazium where his older brother was the principal. Russia was in great turmoil in 1917, and Alexander, as well as so many others, was caught up in these changing times. He fought as a young teenager in the White Army. He said he liked the uniform and had to do this for his family’s land and property. In the army he was wounded in his left leg, which gave him trouble all his later life. He fled and went into exile for many years in Europe (Belgrade, Prague, Paris), until he was able to enter America. He arrived at Ellis Island in June of 1922 under the name Alexander Artway.

For the next 18 years Artway remained in New York City. He had to learn a new life; adjusting from living on a sprawling Russian farm to very close urban quarters. He worked more with his hands than with his mind, since his European degrees were meaningless in the United States. Away from all family but his brother John (Sergei), Alexander had to seek out new connections. He found Lena, a woman whose family was still in Ukraine. The two explored the city together and carried on an affair that lasted many years.

In New York, Artway was very fascinated by the skyscrapers going up. He recorded these buildings from every angle and rooftop, and perhaps even from airplanes. He attended and taught at NYU, taking a degree in architecture in 1934. Before going to NYU (with the aid of an organization called the Russian Student Fund) he joined the Merchant Marines. He later became a captain of ships and sailed around the world taking pictures of the foreign lands he visited. There are many beautiful studies of skies, clouds, and the ocean. He saw much more of the world than the average person of these times and led an unconventional life.

From his photographs it appears he was both excited and lonely. From his letters we can see that he was very attached to his mother and family back home. In fact, he returned to Russia in 1936 and ’37 to see them, a very risky business. The photographs from this trip to Gomel are touched by a tenderness and nostalgia found nowhere else in his work; they paint a picture of a man returning to his true roots. Even though he is pictured in these photographs in his New York City fine suits and hats, hair-line receding, one can spot a little boy’s grin in the photographs of Alex and his mother.

He documented New York City life yet avoided photographing people he did not know. He recorded city streets, friends, his love life, animals, churches, and of course, architecture. His eye was unique, and his negatives are marked by a modernist aesthetic with a touch of pictorialist romanticism. He photographed nearly compulsively for about 15 years and only slowed down after the birth of his first child. In Philadelphia he became a true family man, and the photographs after 1942 are reflective of Artway’s new identity.

It seems unlikely Artway could have imagined the form which his photographs now take. For him, they were a record of his life, of the compositions he saw around him, of a life well-lived. Now they form the Alexander Artway Archive made up of 4,000 negatives and 3,000 prints all neatly organized in plastic sleeves and black boxes. These are his legacy to his daughter Jeanette. The photographs from Russia, the portraits of his family and friends have become her heritage and her link to a family she’s never known. Now, as we begin to share these images with the public, we hope the photographs will become the heritage of many others. They tell the story of the trials and triumphs of an adventurous immigrant forging a life in America.

For more information please visit our website at www.alexanderartway.com or contact alexanderartwayarchive@gmail.com.

leogoldsteinphotographycollection.com

leogoldstein.photos@gmail.com

East Harlem: The Postwar Years, powerHouse Books, 2019

For further info contact Naomi Goldstein: 917-596-3157

Leo Goldstein, 1901 – 1972

Leo Goldstein was born in 1901 in Kishinev in Bessarabia, an Eastern European region of Czarist Russia. Fleeing the pogroms, his family first settled on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1906, later moving to East Harlem.. Leo was the fourth of 13 children and went to work at an early age to help support the large family. As a young man he studied sculpting and was a talented amateur artist, taking up photography when he joined the Photo League in the late 1940s.

He threw himself into the social documentary tradition of the League, turning his lens, as many of the League members did, to the migrant and poor communities in New York City.  He was greatly influenced by the work of Paul Strand, Lewis Hine and Berenice Abbott, among other members. 

Beginning in 1949, and over several years, Leo photographed in East Harlem using a  Rolleiflex twin-lens camera that he had bought second hand.  With the body of work from East Harlem, Leo left an important and unique addition to the Harlem and Lower East Side studies done earlier by Photo League members.

Until 2016, when the prints were catalogued, the East Harlem photographs remained mostly untouched and unseen. Working with photo editor Regina Monfort, the family was able to have East Harlem: The Postwar Years published by powerHouse Books in the fall of 2019. The book includes 70 duotone images and essays by the award-winning journalist Juan Gonzalez and well known photography critic A.D. Coleman. The 70 vintage prints reproduced in the book  are part of a larger collection of East Harlem photographs consisting of over 250 silver gelatin vintage prints made by the artist.

The East Harlem book garnered excellent reviews, including an essay by Vince Aletti published in the journal Photograph. See the website listed above for this review and others.

A small number of Leo’s images have appeared in exhibits and publications of Photo League work, beginning with the seminal exhibit This Is the Photo League (1948-1949) and later in the book, This Was the Photo League, published by the Stephen Daiter Gallery and John Cleary Gallery in 2001. His work was included in “The Photo League, 1936-1951,” an exhibition organized by Howard Greenberg at the Photofind Gallery in Woodstock, NY in 1985. One of Leo’s images was also included in the 2011-12 exhibit at the Jewish Museum entitled “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951.” 

Leo Goldstein’s work is represented by the Howard Greenberg Gallery.

Archive contact:
Julie Grahame
http://karsh.org

Yousuf Karsh (b. December 23, 1908 – d. July 13, 2002) Born in Mardin, Armenia
Yousuf Karsh grew up under the horrors of the Armenian massacres. In 1924 he was
brought to Sherbrooke, Quebec, by his uncle George Nakash. Instead of studying
medicine, as he had originally thought he would, Karsh was introduced to
photography. Karsh said “While at first I did not realize it, everything
connected with the art of photography captivated my interest and energy…” By
1926 Karsh was apprenticed to John H. Garo of Boston, a fellow Armenian and one
of America’s top portrait photographers at the time, of whom Karsh said “Garo
taught me to see, and to remember what I saw.”

By 1931 Karsh had returned to Canada and set up his own studio in Ottawa. He
soon met the editor of Saturday Night magazine and his photographs were
reproduced for the first time. A close relationship with the members of the
Ottawa Little Theatre gave Karsh the opportunity to learn about lighting (Garo
worked exclusively by daylight) and Karsh became a master.

Karsh was soon to become friends with Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King who
arranged for him to make the famous photograph of Winston Churchill in 1941 –
now thought to be among the world’s most reproduced images. One might say that
the rest is history. In the International Who’s Who of 2000, which listed the
most notable people of the last century, Karsh was the only Canadian of the 100
famous people listed – 51 of whom Karsh had photographed. Mrs Estrellita Karsh
and the Karsh curator, Jerry Fielder, endow and exhibit Karsh prints worldwide
and licensing of the archive keeps the body of work in the public eye.

Images, video clips, publications, awards, and more can be found at
http://karsh.org.

Sam Shaw (1912 – 1999)

www.shawfamilyarchives.com
contact: info@shawfamilyarchives.net

Sam Shaw, a lifelong New Yorker, was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Shaw is internationally recognized for his photographs of films and movie stars, though his interests and talents covered a wide array of subjects including music, theater, sculpture, painting, literature, journalism, as well as social and political activism. Shaw’s prolific six-decade career is remarkable in its breadth and diversity, and remains a historic record of the twentieth century.

Shaw displayed his artistic talents from an early age— without money for materials, he gathered tar from the streets of New York to make sculptures. Shortly after graduating high school, he shared an art studio with the artist Romare Bearden. Shaw eventually turned towards photography but Bearden and Shaw continued to work together throughout their lives. Many of Shaw’s photographs from films, as well as portraits of jazz and blues musicians appear in Bearden’s collages and murals. The two also collaborated on projects with the jazz and literary critic Albert Murray.

In the 1940s, Shaw worked as a courtroom artist, then as a political and sports cartoonist and art director for The Brooklyn Eagle. His career as a photojournalist began with Colliers magazine, which allowed him to travel throughout the United States documenting the lives of coal miners, sharecroppers, burlesque performers, New Orleans’ musicians, civil rights activists, and other everyday people and circumstances. These soulful photographs comprise Shaw’s “Americana” collection, images depicting American life in the mid-twentieth century. Shaw was also an early contributor to the prestigious photographic agency Magnum Photos.

In the early 1950s, Shaw began working in the film industry as a special still photographer. He captured countless stars of the cinema, including Woody Allen, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne, Fred Astaire, Elizabeth Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, Sophia Loren, Charlie Chaplin, Audrey Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, and many more. His photographs appeared often on the cover of LIFE and Look magazines, as well as in Paris Match, L’Europeo, The Daily Mail, Der Stern, Harper’s Bazaar, Connaissance des Arts, and others. Shaw preferred to shoot his subjects without set-ups, makeup, or decorations, encouraging them to be spontaneous and improvise— a style that set Shaw’s work apart from the stereotypical Hollywood “glamour” photographs of the day and foreshadowed his later role as an independent filmmaker.

Shaw was also known as a master of publicity for many of the films and stars with whom he worked. In 1951, he photographed Marlon Brando in a ripped t-shirt, a portrait that came to symbolize A Streetcar Named Desire. A few years later, he created the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe with her white skirt blowing over a subway grate in the film The Seven Year Itch. Shaw’s “flying skirt” pictures are some of the most widely seen photographs ever taken.

After years on film sets, Shaw started making films himself in the 1960s. The first film he produced was Paris Blues (1961), starring Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Joanne Woodward, Diahann Carroll and Louis Armstrong. Shaw’s good friend Duke Ellington wrote the score for the film. Shaw also worked closely with acclaimed actor-director John Cassavetes, the father of American independent cinema, as an advisor on Cassavetes’ first film Shadows (1959). Shaw went on to produce many of Cassavetes’ films including A Woman Under the Influence (1974), nominated for Best Actress and Best Director at the 1975 Academy Awards, and Gloria (1980), which won the prestigious Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion. In addition, Shaw produced Cassavetes’ Husbands (1970), Opening Night (1977), and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) (he later removed his name as Producer), the latter for which he was also the Production Designer. These films, like Shaw’s pictures, embraced independence and encouraged spontaneity.

John Cassavetes aptly described his best friend Sam as a “Renaissance Man.” Shaw’s true love, however, remained photography. Even as a producer, Shaw remained the special photographer on set, while also helping to create the publicity and advertising campaigns for all the films he produced.

Shaw carried at least two beat-up Nikons around his neck wherever he went; ready to capture anything and anyone that caught his attention in both black and white and color. As a result, Shaw’s photographic archive contains a vast array of subject matter from crime photography, sports, landscapes and photojournalism to classic American and European cinema, independent film, and portraiture. The collection includes photos of prominent musicians, artists, intellectuals, and other well-known individuals such as Marc Chagall, Arthur Miller, Marcel Duchamp, Igor Stravinsky, Joe DiMaggio, Irving Berlin, Tennessee Williams, Patti Smith and Deborah Harry of the rock band Blondie.

Today, Sam Shaw’s legacy and work is preserved and promoted by his children and grandchildren through Shaw Family Archives.

Erika Stone
1924 –
Home page: http://www.erikastone.com
Archive contact: Erika Stone (Erika@erikastone.com) or www.howardgreenberg.com

Erika Stone’s documentary photographs reflect her long, active career as a photo journalist and magazine photographer. In the 40’s, Stone was a member of the legendary Photo League, an organization of photo documentarians which she feels most influenced her approach to her personal photographic work. It was during the years as a League member that she developed her interest in documenting people and at the age of seventeen, produced her Bowery series.

Although she considers herself mostly self-taught, she studied at the New School of Social Research with Bereniece Abbott and George Tice.

Stone was a stringer for both Time and Der Spiegel magazines and worked as a general photojournalist until 1960. After the birth of her two sons, she made photographing children and family her specialty. Her photographs have been and are widely published in magazines and textbooks around the world.

Her books include Pro Techniques of Photographing Children, HP Publishing 1986, Tot Shots, a four book series published by Modern Publishing Company 1987, three books in the Walden Publishing Company’s Open Family series: On Divorce, Fears and Phobias, The Adopted One. Nicole Visits an Amish Farm, Walker Publishing and Learning for Little Kids, Houghton Mifflin, as well as The Whole Child by Putnam.

Stone was one of twenty women photographers whose work was published in an anthology Women of Vision in 1982. Her pictures appeared in the US Camera Annuals 1952, 1954, 1955, and 1956. Her fine art and documentary work is in the collections of the Museum of the City of New York, The International Center of Photography, George Eastman House in Rochester, The Portland, Maine Fine Arts Museum, The New York Public Library, and The National Gallery of Ottawa, Canada.