Penny Wolin

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Portrait of Penny Wolin

Penny Wolin (born June 5, 1953 ), also Penny Diane Wolin and Penny Wolin-Semple, is an American portrait photographer and visual anthropologist . She has exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution and received two awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and one from the National Endowment for the Arts . Her work is on permanent display at institutions such as the Santa Barbara Museum of Art , the New York Public Library, and the National Museum of American History , administered by the Smithsonian Institution. Known for her documentaries and concept photos, she has worked on assignments for large corporations, well-known magazines and private collectors. For the past 25 years she has explored the Jewish civilization of the US through portrait photos and interviews .

Youth and education

Wolin is the youngest of five children of a Jewish family from Cheyenne, Wyoming . Her father was Morris Aaron Wolin (born Wolinsky), who immigrated to the USA as a child from Hrodna ( Belarus ) and became a businessman there. Her mother, the artist Helen Sobol Wolin, was from Denver . She started working with a Kodak brownie camera when she was ten , and when she was 16 her brother Michael Wolin gave her a high-quality rangefinder camera and darkroom equipment , which she started her career with.

She attended the University of Wyoming and later graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, majoring in photography and film. She then studied in the master's program of the Department of cultural anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles under her mentor, the cultural anthropologist Johannes Wilbert. She has also received a Directing Fellowship from the American Film Institute , Center for Advanced Film and Television Studies.

Main projects

Descendants of Light: American Photographers of Jewish Ancestry (Descendants of Light: American Photographers of Jewish Ancestry)

In 2005 Wolin started her research on descendants of light . Since the 1850s, photographers of Jewish origin have made significant contributions in many areas of photography, including fashion, advertising, portrait and fine art photography, as well as journalism.

Wolin photographed and interviewed each photographer (or interviewed the descendants who were still alive if the original persons were already deceased). If available, she reproduced old photographs of the ancestors and thus created a symbolic image. In this way, she was able to create a visual and linguistic document of the interpenetration of multigenerational history between American-Jewish culture, modern American culture and the history and practice of photography. The book is finished and available since November 2015; the large pictures (as silver-gelatine prints) are being prepared for a traveling exhibition. She photographed and interviewed more than 70 of the leading and most original Jewish-American photographers such as Lillian Bassman , Jo Ann Callis , Lauren Greenfield , Elinor Carucci , Lois Greenfield , Bruce Davidson , Annie Leibovitz , Herman Leonard , Helen Levitt , Jay Maisel , Joel Meyerowitz , Arnold Newman , Robert Frank and Joel-Peter Witkin . There are also interviews with descendants of Philippe Halsman , Herb Ritts , Nickolas Muray , Arthur Rothstein , Roman Vishniac and Garry Winogrand . Alan Trachtenberg , Yale University , wrote the introductory essay entitled The Claim of a Jewish Eye . The work was funded in part by crowdfunding and published by Crazy Woman Creek Press , Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The Jews of Wyoming: Fringe of the Diaspora (The Jews of Wyoming: On the Edge of the Diaspora)

In 1982, Wolin met with Shirley Burden , the largest donor to the Photography Department of the Museum of Modern Art . Through his sponsorship and financial support, as well as endowing two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships administered by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities, Wolin was able to complete her visual and language studies spanning 140 years and five generations of Wyoming Jewish culture. The Jews of Wyoming: Fringe of The Diaspora was supported by what is now known as the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and has a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian and the National Museum of American History , National Museum of American Jewish History , Judah L. Magnes Museum and the Ucross Foundation . A book with the same title was published by Crazy Woman Creek Press, Cheyenne, Wyoming in 2000.

Jackalopes, Cowboys and Coalmines: A Photographic Survey of Wyoming (Wolpertingers, Cowboys and Miners: A Photographic Survey of Wyoming)

1978 Wolin was a Grant of the National Endowment for the Arts to their work awarded Jackalopes, Cowboys and Coalmines: A Photographic Survey of Wyoming to accomplish. Due to its mineral and oil wealth, Wyoming has a history and culture that has been shaped by the economic boom. As a result of the energy crisis in the 1970s, Wolin's home country experienced a boom in the economy. This boom resulted in the ultimate Americanization of rural, rural villages in this most sparsely populated state in the United States (excluding Alaska ). Shopping malls and fast food restaurants opened up, the previous local business life had to close and the existing farm economy was on the verge of collapse. Previous incomes were disproportionate to those paid in the coal mines and oil production facilities. Wolin traveled around Wyoming at all times of the year, photographing and speaking to locals and newcomers, from cowboys to oil workers, and selected members of the public. The results of this work were sent through Wyoming as a traveling exhibition supported by Governor Edgar Herschler . The texts and photographs are now part of the collections of the Wyoming State Museum and the Smithsonian Institution , Smithsonian American Art Museum .

Guest Register (guest list)

In 1975, while she was still at the Art Center College of Design , Wolin began working on the Guest Register . This work consists of 32 photographs and excerpts from conversations with guests in all 32 rooms of the St. Francis Hotel in Hollywood . The hotel was on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue and accommodated guests who lived there from one night to 30 years. What they had in common was that they all came to Hollywood to live their (American) dream. The work represented a particular style of editing text and images and attracted the attention of a number of graphic designers, museums and collectors. At that time, commissioned Bob Cato of A & M Records Wolin so, the group The Band to portray. Lloyd Ziff, Art Director of New West magazine in Los Angeles commissioned her to take pictures of Ansel Adams and George Burns ; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art invited her to participate in a group show, and Marvin Israel , a well-respected graphic designer who worked in New York, began preparing Guest Register for publication with Aperture Books. Aperture finally decided not to publish it and so the work is still unpublished.

Reviews (selection)

  • Penny Wolin's work and biography are included in this extensive work from Yale University Press (Volume 10, starting on page 587).
  • Film's Not Dead . Interview by the London online photo magazine in connection with the Kickstarter campaign for Descendants of Light: American Photographers of Jewish Ancestry .
  • Huffington Post , A Picture of Persistence, How a Photography Collection Was Born In honor of the exhibition at the New York Public Library Recollection: Thirty Years of Photography at the New York Public Library, Wolin's work is part of the collection of photographs owned by Shirley Carter Burden. (Julia Van Haaften, October 2010)
  • The Jewish Week: Text Content - The Photography Issue ( Memento from April 10, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ). Penny Wolin raised the question of why so many Jews are attracted to photography. Your partial preview of works, your work in progress to travel the USA to interview photographers. "We clung to her when she was touring the southwest with her van." (Sandee Brawarsky, June 26, 2009)
  • Wyoming was not inundated by American mass culture at the time. “There wasn't a McDonald's in every city, nor was there a Holiday Inn. I realized that was changing and I felt compelled to document people and their feelings about these changes ”. Although Wolin didn't particularly like the influx of these corporate chains, she didn't blame the change in Wyoming with her 1978 job. Instead, it was a project that tried to document "America's last bastion ... the small town society and the spirit of the West". A Wyoming Council on the Arts press release noted that Wolin's primary concern was "to show the final and inevitable integration of the 'old west' into 'American culture'" (emphasis added). Wolin's documentation is "less an open political act than a reminiscence of a disappearing way of life".
  • San Francisco Chronicle , Sonoma Festival Takes a Closer Look At Women in Film : "But the most exciting aspect of the festival is the resurrection of past classics, which gives audiences the opportunity to experience three great black and white films in their original glory ..." Penny Wolin, program director of the festival, chose Olympia for its artistic quality and importance. "If you want to show documentaries by or about women," said Wolin, "are the greatest ones ever made by Leni Riefenstahl ." (Mick Lasalle, March 29, 2000)
  • San Francisco Chronicle , A Menorah Moose and Other Tales : “She has a wonderful way of doing black and white portraits and a lovable approach to the people ... I got a great book called The Jews of Wyoming: Fringe of the Diaspora. "(Jon Carroll, September 1, 2000)
  • Los Angeles Times , Lost and Found in America : The Jews of Wyoming by Penny Diane Wolin tells a more complex story of adaptation and evolution. Wolin, a documentary photographer who has made a living from photographing celebrities for the past two decades, spent 15 years compiling the successful story of 150 years of Jewish history in Cowboy State ... Indeed, the wide range of images and characters in the book give him his dynamism. Wolin has not looked for a definition of what it means to be a Jew in the most sparsely populated state of the Union. Instead, she revels in the variety of definitions between believers and non-believers; those who feel strongly as Jews and those who don't. Your themes set out in the attitudes or accessories that make them unique individuals. A young member of Future Farmers of America holds a pig by the hind feet in front of an open field. “I don't eat it,” he says, “but I give someone a good product” (Gregory Rodriguez, November 26, 2000)
  • The Washington Post , Kosher Cowboys: The Jews of Wyoming ; At the National Museum of American History: “When you walk through the exhibition and try to understand both the text and the photographs, it takes time because both are works of art. The words and pictures are so moving and sometimes so surprising that they are worth a closer look. Wolin is an excellent photographer and a first class interviewer and her choice of who to focus on is great. ”(Sarah Booth Conroy, August 36, 1992)
  • Los Angeles Times , Alone in the Desert : “An unloved people in an unloved place, the Jews of Wyoming did not become 'the cowboy man' about which the entertainer Mickey Katzsangin his Yiddish rendition of I'm an Old Cowhand . However, their coexistence alongside such an incompatible culture made them an unusual microcosm of Jewish experiences in the United States. ”(Elizabeth Venant, December 13, 1990)
  • Los Angeles Times , Art Review: 'Hollywood' Resembles A Cutting-room Floor: “The only thing that saves the exhibition is photography, particularly Penny Wolin's Diane Arbus- esque Guest Register (1975), a touching yetdevastatingdocumentary about the guests of the St. Francis Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard . The connection of image and text in Wolin's contemplation of the lost souls of life and anonymous people in transit manages to be emotionally distant, but nevertheless not condescending. ”(Colin Gardner, August 11, 1986)
  • American Photographer magazine, Getting a Grip on Hollywood : “She is ... methodical, discreetly professional, uses large-format negatives, presents her subjects carefully, focuses on details ... Unlike so many top photographers , Wolin is capable of other people to be able to enter into and to subordinate oneself well to their topics. "

Selected commercial projects

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Johannes Wilbert
  2. ^ The Camera and the Jewish I: A Photographer's Search for the Mysteries of American Photography. In: Jewish Week. September 16, 2009 ( Memento from April 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Alone in the Desert , Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1990
  4. ↑ Kosher Cowboys: The Jews of Wyoming , Washington Post, Aug. 26, 1992
  5. ^ Lost and Found in America , Los Angeles Times, Nov. 26, 2000
  6. ^ A Menorah Moose and Other Tales , San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 26, 2000
  7. ↑ Through the Lens of the City: NEA Photography Surveys of the 1970s , University Press of Mississippi (Wolpertinger, Cowboys, and Miners: A Photographic Study of Wyoming)
  8. ^ Guest Register , Los Angeles Times, Aug. 11, 1986
  9. ↑ Deborah Dash, Nurith Gertz: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization. Volume 10: 1973-2005. Yale University Press, New Haven 2012, ISBN 978-0-300-13553-4 , from p. 587.
  10. ↑ Film's Not Dead: Interview of the London online photo magazine Film's Not Dead with Penny Wolin
  11. ^ Mark Rice: Through the Lens of the City: NEA Photography Surveys of the 1970s . University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2005, ISBN 1-57806-707-3 , p. 52.
personal data
SURNAME Wolin, Penny
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wolin, Penny Diane
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH 5th June 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Cheyenne , Wyoming