Kirjahaku

The perfect primer on American photographer, photojournalist and filmmaker Ruth Orkin. Ruth Orkin (1921–85) always dreamed of becoming a filmmaker, and although that ambition was thwarted until later in her career, she quickly found other ways of engaging with the world of images. She was given her first camera at the age of ten and by the age of seventeen, she was cycling across America from Los Angeles to New York, documenting her trip in albums of annotated photographs. In the early 1940s she settled in New York, joining the Photo League and making her name with photo stories for major magazines such as Life, Look and This Week. In images that range from celebrity portraits to bird’s-eye views from her apartment window, from children at play to the experiences of a lone American tourist in Italy, Orkin’s photography always retains a cinematic sense of the passage of time and allows the humanity and charisma of her subjects to shine through.

With the discovery of her archive in a thrift auction house in 2007, Vivian Maier’s posthumous trajectory from relative obscurity to one of the great American photographers of the 20th century is a story of a singular consistent talent. From the mid 1950s throughout her adult life she worked as a nanny between New York and Chicago, and it was during this time that she created a huge body of photographs and films recording every day street life, often including her own self portrait and moments of fleeting reflection within the cityscape. With her work compared to Helen Levitt, Robert Frank and Diane Arbus, her photographs are a fascinating window into American life.

Having left photography behind, Jessica Lange embarked on her acting career, playing leading parts in iconic movies and winning two Academy Awards for Best Actress for her roles in Tootsie, in 1983, and Blue Sky, in 1995. Not until later, at the beginning of the nineties, did Jessica Lange take up her photographic exploits again. Her images are captured on her travels and wanderings - her lens has roamed through countries such as the USA, France, Finland and Italy, although she has a particular soft spot for Mexico, as she herself puts it, "for its lights and wonderful nights". The accompanying catalogue for the exhibition, bringing together the collection of 80 photographs taken over the last 20 years, is arranged into two series: 'Things I see' and 'Mexico, On Scene' and represents a journey through Jessica Lange's diary of impressions.