MMFA 2015: George S. Zimbel

George S. Zimbel
A Humanist Photographer

September 9, 2015 - January 3, 2016

An active photographer for over seventy years, George S. Zimbel, an American-born Canadian (born in 1929), has a documentary approach rooted in the social background and realities of his subjects. That was his way to participate in the world that reflected his ideals. The present MMFA exhibition features seventy images from his collection and covers three years of his career: 1953, 1954 and 1955.

The result of photographic commissions for magazines and personal projects, some of these photos have become iconic, such as his series on Marilyn Monroe shot in 1954 during the production of the film The Seven Year Itch by director Billy Wilder.

Zimbel had a liberal education at Columbia University – including literature, philosophy and the social sciences. With a camera in his hand since his teenage years, he made the American society around him his subject during the 1950s and 1960s. Beside immortalizing some cultural and political figures, including the activist and author Helen Keller and pastor Billy Graham, the former US president Harry S. Truman, he was mainly interested in everyday life. His photographer’s approach is discreet, intuitive and spontaneous. He is at once an onlooker and narrator.

In those years, New York street scenes were held to be the quintessential reflection of the social and economic climate of postwar America. The photographic act went beyond social commentary to become a commitment to a human community. But the artistic aspect was far from neglected, as is apparent in Zimbel’s compositions with the different camera angles (bird’s-eye and worm’s-eye views), the focus dissolve and the ambient lighting. Trained at the Photo League, a New York collective of amateur and professional photographers active from 1936 to 1951 who advocated documentaries focussing on social commentary and creativity, Zimbel applied both these principles during trips taken to France and Italy while on leave from military service. The scenes he captured in 1953 reveal his sympathy with his subjects, at times laced with a touch of humour. In 1955, he immortalized the night life of the clubs along New Orleans’s famous Bourbon Street in the same spirit.

“1953, ’54, ’55 — those were tense years. I was in the U.S. Army in Germany working on the Rhine River, but on leave I was seeing Europe for the first time. Then back to New York to freelance for magazines, industry, any assignment, anywhere — New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Texas — I was on my own, shooting all the time, had to make a living doing what I loved,” Zimbel explained.

 Scorning the latest technologies and trends in photography, Zimbel still prefers the black-and-white gelatin silver prints that have become his signature. For him, an image is not fully finished until it is printed, which is why he spends so many hours in his darkroom. Another reason for us to enjoy discovering the work of this photographer and his subjective interpretation of the America of the 1950s.

Born in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1929, Zimbel has lived and worked in Montreal since the early 1980s. His work has been presented in galleries and museums in collective or solo exhibitions, including two retrospectives. Many museums here and elsewhere, notably the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the National Gallery of Canada and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

A sixty-page lavishly illustrated monograph entitled Momento will be on sale at the Museum Boutique and Bookstore. Published by Black Dog, it features 118 of the artist’s images, arranged in pairs.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Hover your mouse over images for description and credits.

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website.