“Ruth Orkin, a new discovery” is the perfect and essential title for the new exhibition dedicated to the American photographer which opens at the Sale Chiablese of the Royal Museums of Turin next March 17th.
Ruth Orkin is always a new discovery. For a long time left on the sidelines of the exhibition program without a real why, now the American photographer with elegant snapshots is taking center stage thanks to an attentive and passionate curator, Anne Morin, who had already dealt with Vivian Maier for a long time, contributing to the construction and the dissemination of the phenomenon of the nanny photographer.
Photographer, courageous and independent pioneer
Welcome to the popularity of these pioneering, courageous and independent women who have worked without proper recognition. Above all, it is welcome for the public who has the opportunity to get to know the careful and delicate, curious and reasoned gaze of Ruth Orkin’s photographic narrations.
Ruth Orkin: traveller, photographer and filmmaker
Born in Boston in 1921, Orkin died in New York in 1985. A life marked by the binomial cinema and photography to which she dedicated her energies and from which she drew important successes: “Little Fugitives”the film she makes together with her husband, Morris Engel, is rewarded with the Silver Lion at the 1953 Venice Film Festival. The passion for cinema – fueled by his silent actress mother and cultivated in childhood and adolescence in Hollywood – does not weaken the dedication to the photographic medium. The Orkin is a priestess of the street photography: his images of the street he declines in series transforming them into small screenplays for images.
In ’39 cross America by bicycle, from California to New York, to compose a travel diary with sequenced photographs that looks like a storyboard. And in 1951 he is in Italy. In Florence, in the small hotel where she is staying, she meets the American student Nina Lee Craig, they become friends with her and she will be the model of the “Dont be afraid” project dedicated to women who travel alone.
The feminist icon
Among the photo sequences that he loves so much, the iconic image will now emerge title note American Girl in Italy. The girl with the shawl and the notebook that traversed the looks, comments and gestures of a good group of Italian males. Nina Lee certainly didn’t imagine that she would become a feminist icon or rather, the icon of male rapacity.
Meticulous and discreet observer, in his documentation there is always respect for the subjects shot, a sober distance and the attention and care of the shot. In this way he described his America, now with snapshots of the street, now more sophisticated, shooting scenes of daily life with the camera perpendicular to the street to experiment and build new series.
The Photo League where photography was social commitment and criticism
In the 1940s she joined the Photo League – where she met the photographer Morris Engel who would later become her husband – the cooperative of American photographersni which between 1936 and 1951 welcomes many authors who believe in and practice a photography permeated by strong social motivations.
From the 1950s onwards, his work was officially recognized: it was featured in the best magazines of the time. For Life – the most prestigious magazine in the history of publishing – in 1951 he will go to Israel following the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra.
His photography was dedicated to travel, to the street but no less, he loved and made many portraits: the famous one of Robert Capa with the most light-hearted and seductive gaze imaginable or that of Woody Allen in pictorial pose at the Metropolitan Museum of New York and still an unusual thoughtful and gloomy Marlon Brando in the role of Julius Caesar.
American stage and screen actress Lauren Bacall, born Betty Joan Perske, adjusts an earring as she smokes a cigarette, early 1950s. (Photo by Ruth Orkin/Getty Images)
It is worth discovering Ruth Orkin and today the exhibition that opens its doors in Turin, with 156 famous and lesser-known photographs, is a precious opportunity. In this season of great reinterpretations of the photography of the last century and in a belated emphasis on the discovery of women’s photography, Orkin with her refined poetics and a narrative predisposition not frequent in this photographic genre certainly deserves special attention.
From 17 March to 16 July 2023, the Sale Chiablese of the Royal Museums of Turin hosts the largest retrospective ever organized in Italy by Ruth Orkin.
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