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The New York Public Library

 

presents

 

An Art and Literature Series Event

 

Penelope's Hungry Eyes

 

Abe Frajndlich in conversation with

Henry Adams and Duane Michals

 

Wednesday December 7, 2011

6:00 P.m.

 

Margaret Liebman Berger Forum

Room 227 (2^nd Floor)

 

The New York Public Library

Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

5^thAvenue at 42^nd Street

New York, NY 10018

917-275-6975

 www.nypl.org

(directions)

 

Room 227 opens to the public at 5:30 p.m.

All events are FREE and subject to last minute change or cancellation.

 

Penelope's Hungry Eyes: Portraits of Famous Photographers is presented at the New York Public Library by Henry Adams, author of the introductory text,  Duane Michals, one of the 101 photographers featured in the book, and Abe Frajndlich, photographer and author of the book. They engage in a three-way discussion about the genesis of the book and its content, which is filled not only with striking portraits but also with personal stories about the world-renowned photographers who are captured in them. While most people know these photographers' iconic photographs, few are as familiar with the image-makers themselves. This book and discussion serve as a thorough introduction to these masters of the medium, spanning across many styles and time periods.

 

Taken over a period of more than 20 years Abe Frajndlich's new book, Penelope's Hungry Eyes: Portraits of Famous Photographers, collects portrait photographs of famous contemporary photographers who taught us how to see and continue to open our eyes. Including portraits of both the old American masters such as Imogen Cunningham and Ansel Adams and the “young kids” from the Dusseldorf School, this book features Berenice Abbott, Nobuyoshi Araki, Richard Avedon, John Baldessari, Lillian Bassman, Peter Beard, Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Chuck Close, William Eggleston, Elliott Erwitt, Andreas Feininger, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Gilbert & George, Allen Ginsberg, David Hockney, Dennis Hopper, Horst P. Horst, Eikoh Hosoe, Inge Morath, Barbara Morgan, Daido Moriyama, Norman Parkinson, Gordon Parks, Irving Penn, Cindy Sherman, Kishin Shinoyama, Thomas Struth, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, Joel-Peter Witkin et al. The pictures are complemented by an autobiographical text by the photographer.

 

Copies of the book are available for purchase and signing at the event.

 

Duane Michals was born in 1932 in McKeesport, PA. He received a B.A. from the University of Denver (1953) and worked as a graphic designer until he focused on taking pictures in the late 1950s. Without formal photographic training, Michals broke new ground in an era dominated by documentary photography. Throughout his career, he has used simple methods to contemplate subjects as universal as love, loss, innocence and immortality. His work has been exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad since 1963. His archive is housed at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA. Michals lives and works in New York City.

Henry Adams, born in Boston in 1949, has been singled out by Art News as one of the foremost experts in the American field. He has been a museum curator, documentary film maker and is currently a professor of American Art at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and is the author of over 280 publications, including Eakins Revealed and Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock. A graduate of Harvard University, Adams received his M.A. and Ph.d from Yale where he received the Frances Blanshard Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in art history. In 1985 he received the Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize of the College Art Association, the first time this had been awarded to an Americanist or a Museum Curator. In 1989 William Jewell College awarded him its distinguished service medal for his services to Kansas City and the Midwest. In 2001 he received the Northern Ohio Live Visual Arts Award for the best art exhibition of the year in Northern Ohio. He lives in Cleveland Ohio.

Abe Frajndlich was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1946. Before arriving in the United States, ten years later, he lived in Israel, Germany, France and Brazil. After studying literature at the graduate level at Northwestern University, and writing a thesis on James Joyce's heroine, Molly Bloom, in Ulysses, he switched to photography in 1970. Frajndlich has been making photographs ever since, and has published a number of books since 1975. When he moved to New York City, from Cleveland in 1984, he began to work for the magazine of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, but also worked regularly for The New York Times Magazine, LIFE, ArtNews, The London Observer, The Independent, and The Sunday Times, among many others. The book, Penelope's Hungry Eyes: Portraits of Famous Photographers, started as an assignment for LIFE in 1988, when they were preparing their 150th Anniversary of Photography Issue. With a subsequent two-year grant from Kodak, numerous assignments afterwards, an exhibition at the Museum Ludwig, and a personal obsession with this body of work about the master photographers, it is now, at long last, finally ready for its public unveiling. He continues to work on numerous ongoing book length projects, including Butoh Muse, Transit, Before During and After 9/11, and Frajndlich Fotographs, a book on his early work.

Conceived and organized by Arezoo Moseni, Art and Literature events bring forth pollinations across the literary and visual arts with readings and discussions by acclaimed artists and authors.