About the exhibition
Using her camera, Ruth Orkin captures multiple stories, including the experience of traveling alone as a woman, illustrated by the iconic photograph American Girl in Italy.
“Really like Florence. Includes same charm of Roman piazzas, cafes, bikes, tourists, and narrow streets (really narrow here) & added attraction of center of town & nice sections being built on river.”
From Ruth Orkin’s diary notes
The retrospective exhibition The Illusion of Time presents photographs by American photographer Ruth Orkin. Her dream was originally to work in film, but working behind the camera was reserved for men in the early 1900s, so Orkin carved her own path and spent her career trying to capture the concept of "time" in her photographs. She succeeded in transforming the static into something dynamic, and many of her photo series resemble scenes from early film history. She was frequently commissioned to do photo reports for illustrated magazines like Cosmopolitan, Life, and Look.
Orkin returned several times to the world that fascinated her the most and took many portraits of the era’s most famous Hollywood stars, including Alfred Hitchcock, Humphrey Bogart, and Marlon Brando. But above all, the street and the city served as her stage, where she photographed strangers waiting for their train on the platforms of Grand Central Terminal. What unites her portraits is Orkin’s ability to give voice to what was really important to her: humanity and charisma.
About Ruth Orkin
Ruth Orkin was an award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker. Orkin was the only child of Mary Ruby, a silent-film actress, and Samuel Orkin, a manufacturer of toy boats called Orkin Craft. She grew up in Hollywood in the heyday of the 1920s and 1930s. At the age of 10, she received her first camera, a 39 cent Univex. She began by photographing her friends and teachers at school. At 17 years old she took a monumental bicycle trip across the United States from Los Angeles to New York City to see the 1939 World’s Fair, and she photographed along the way. Her career continued, and she worked for all the major magazines in the 1940s.
In 1951, she took the iconic photograph American Girl in Italy, part of the series Don’t Be Afraid to Travel Alone, which documented the experience of traveling solo as a woman through post-World War II Europe. In 1953, Orkin married filmmaker Morris Engel, with whom she made two feature films. One of them, Little Fugitive, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953 was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953 and is now considered a classic. Ruth Orkin passed away from cancer in 1985, in her apartment, surrounded by her wonderful legacy of photographs with the view of Central Park outside her window.
The exhibition is curated by Anne Morin and organized in collaboration with diChroma photography.
