Larry Fink: A Retrospective

Pat Sabatine's Eighth Birthday Party, April 1977
© Photograph by Larry Fink

 

“How do I photograph... the lust that is repressed and engaged in subtle, powerful ways? I run for the bar – sweat glimmers from my face and I start to liquify. Merging into the crowd, my cameras and flash become a delicate wand for my balance. I am aware of the camera's prying aggression in the midst of flesh, attraction, repulsion, illusion. Later, the drinks wear off, and I share a numbness with the last of the party guests. Staggering out the door, I am drained and complete, in control and beyond control.”

– Larry Fink, 1984

Larry Fink, under the early tutelage of Lisette Model, has developed a unique and offbeat style of empathetic reportage. “Like many others in photojournalism in the sixties, I was hungry for immediate social change,” he has written. “I viewed my participation as a covert attempt to saturate the media with a deeper humanism.” With his distinct visual and political perspective, he has explored the underbelly of human interaction in all its glory and decay.

Fink's “Social Graces” essay, which was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1979, compares and contrasts the intricacies of both high-class Manhattanites and working-class rural Pennsylvanians. Using a hand-held flash, Fink catches his subjects off-guard, revealing often humorous, but never under-handed, social interactions. The accompanying book, recently reissued by powerHouse Press, is considered a classic of 1970s photo literature. “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,” wrote Susan Kismaric of MoMA. More recent essays include behind-the-scenes explorations of the worlds of fashion and of boxing, as well as a controversial series of politically-charged photo-tableaux (inspired by Weimar-era German Expressionist painting) featuring a George W. Bush look-alike.

Fink is a two-time recipient of NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. Currently a professor at Bard College, he has also taught at Yale, Cooper Union, Parsons School of Design, and NYU. His work regularly appears in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. This retrospective exhibition contains work from all phases of Fink's extraordinary career.

Number of photographs: approx. 60
Frame sizes: 20 x 24 inches
Linear feet: 220
Rental fee: $7500 for 8 weeks

ADDITIONAL IMAGES FROM THE SHOW

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