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By
RAYMOND J. STEINER
“Two Girls, Coney island”, 1952 |
NEARLY SEVENTY PHOTOGRAPHS, taken through the ‘50s, the ‘60s and the ‘70s, comprise this retrospective exhibition* of the award-winning photographer, Raymond Jacobs
At
first blush, I was somewhat perplexed by the several subjects grouped
in the exhibition — circus performers, the indigent, jazz musicians,
upper-crust society types, and the like — unable to find any unifying
theme by which I might gain some insight as to how I might offer my
readers an overview of the show — exacerbated, I must admit, by
my general ignorance and unease in writing about photography. For the
most part, I know little about the finer points of either the technical
or aesthetic aspect of the art of taking photographs, and must rely
solely on subject matter for entering into its special world. Ostensibly
— at least according to the accompanying catalogue, Raymond
Jacobs: My New York** — the exhibit was “about” New York. However, many of the photographs
might have been taken anywhere, and several, in fact, were from such
places as North Carolina and the Gaspé Peninsula. Thus, not finding
any dominant leitmotif,
so to speak, I found myself merely browsing, wandering aimlessly from
wall to wall, looking but not actually seeing what my eyes were
taking in.
|
Happily,
the Hotchkiss School is about an hour’s drive for me, and it was on
the way home that my mind finally opened to what lay behind Raymond
Jacobs’ well-deserved acclaim. After all, this was a man whose work
had not only won prestigious awards and been featured in such major
New York City exhibitions as “Seventy Photographers Look at New York”
(ca. 1950s), but was also included in the ground-breaking and still-popular
Family of Man.
His
inclusion in the Family of Man might have given me the clue I
needed had I not been so easily confounded by the various and seemingly
disparate themes. Whatever Jacobs’ skills as a photographer —
and I leave that to the experts — he is above all else a humanist
of the first order. It is not place, but “everyman” (or, “everywoman”
I ought to say in these times of political-correctness) that serves
as his subject. From the rich (“Man with monocle and woman in white
mink, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, 1958”) to the poor (“Kids peeking
through slats, North Carolina, 1955”); from the famous (“Salvador Dali-Metropolitan
Museum of Art, NYC, 1958”, “Douglas Fairbanks Jr. - Metropolitan Museum
of Art, NYC, 1958”, “Joel Grey in Mirror, 1966”) to the nameless (“East
Side Tenement, NY, 1954”, “Gaspé Peninsula, Canada, 1954: Landscape
farm with boy on bicycle”); from the clown (“Clown With Blue Vase” 1949”)
to the musician (“Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong, Basin Street, 1954”), Jacobs’
eye democratically accepts all comers that cross his path. Jacobs captures
them sad, pensive, resigned, haughty, flirty, apprehensive, suspicious,
smiling, furtive, thoughtful; he captures them both on-and off-guard,
both posed and candid, both at their best and at their worst; he captures
them at their leisure and while at work, at the most private and most
public moments of their lives. In brief, Jacobs captures “everyman/woman”
at whatever he/she doing and at those very moments when simple humanity
is most evident. This, then, is the theme that lies at the heart of
his work: an abiding fascination and non-judgmental acceptance of the
ever-brewing melting pot of his fellow man.
City
streets and public events might stop Raymond Jacobs the photographer
for that special “photo op”, but Raymond Jacobs the man never
strays far from his real subject matter — his real love —
the never-ending story of the family of man. Surely, visitors to “Raymond
Jacobs Rediscovered” will find themselves somewhere included in his
gallery of human visages.
*“Raymond
Jacobs Rediscovered” (thru Apr 30): The Hotchkiss School: The Tremaine
Gallery, 11 Interlaken Rd.; Lakeville, CT (860) 435-4423. Raymond
Jacobs: My New York is published by Pointed Leaf Press. 172 pp.;
14 x 10 ½; 95 Photographs. $75.00 Hardcover. info@pointedleafpress.com.