The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #134322 Message #3054856
Posted By: katlaughing
16-Dec-10 - 12:43 PM
Thread Name: Obit: RIP George Pickow (10 Dec 2010, age 88)
Subject: RE: Sad News - RIP George Pickow (8 Dec 2010, age 91)
Still no published obit that I could find, but I did think this was something folks might like to read, even though it came out in 1999. From HERE:
Stepping Out From Behind the Camera
Published: April 25, 1999
By BARBARA DELATINER
PORT WASHINGTON— IN more than five decades as a photographer and documentary film maker, George Pickow has done it all: covers and photo essays for magazines like Life and National Geographic; album covers for recordings by Theodore Bikel, Clark Terry, Nina Simone and Lawrence Welk; portraits of legendary artists; nature photography like the images of the Grand Tetons that grace the cover of the Sierra Club handbook, and a series of films about American folklore.
Despite occasional moments in the spotlight, though, Mr. Pickow was essentially anonymous until recently. ''Nobody looks at or even cares about print picture credits or even film photography credits,'' he said in an interview in the home he shares with Jean Ritchie, the acclaimed folk singer and folklorist, and his wife and collaborator for 50 years.
About a year ago, however, a friend who runs a small country store in Maine asked Mr. Pickow to ''give him a couple of photographs to hang -- and maybe even sell -- in his store,'' Mr. Pickow recalled. ''And lo and behold, they sold.''
Mr. Pickow still does not think of himself as an art photographer, but when the local library asked him to show his work, he agreed. The monthlong exhibition of 46 prints, which runs through Friday, features a selection of black-and-white stills chronicling his career. There are the artists like Thomas Hart Benton, Reginald Marsh, Chaim Gross and Edward Hopper, all of whom he photographed in Greenwich Village, where the couple lived in before settling here in 1955.
As they had two small sons during those years, ''I couldn't travel the way I usually did,'' Mr. Pickow explained. ''So I started doing those portraits.
''The Marsh shot was real eerie. I made it at his Union Square studio, and we got to talking about a wall he had covered with pictures of dead artists. 'I keep them there to remember who's still alive,' he told me by way of explanation. Well, wouldn't you know it? The day after the shoot, Marsh died.''
There are pictures of folk-music greats like Josh White, Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, whom Mr. Pickow met through Ms. Ritchie and photographed extensively. And a major segment is devoted to pictures he took in Ireland in 1952 and 1953, when Ms. Ritchie was there on a Fulbright fellowship exploring the roots of folk music. Along with her tape recordings of music, his images of traditional musicians and craftspeople were acquired by University College Galway in Ireland in 1996. Called ''The Ritchie-Pickow Archive: A Celebration of Life and Culture in 1950's Ireland,'' it has traveled throughout Ireland.
Born in Los Angeles but reared in Brooklyn, Mr. Pickow, 77, started out to be an artist or an architect, studying at Cooper Union in Manhattan. World War II intervened, and although he was unable to serve because of a physical disability, he found himself making training films for the Navy and switched career plans to cinematography. As fate would have it -- and fate, he said, has pretty much shaped his career -- after the war ''the documentary film industry disappeared in New York,'' he said.
He turned to still photography. Pictures he took and sold freelance during extended bike trips through Europe and Israel in 1947 and 1948 brought him to the attention of Three Lions Inc., a prestigious international photographic agency. Producing stills for textbooks, calendars, Bibles, advertisements and magazine and newspaper articles, he became the agency's principal photographer. ''Probably because I was making too much money,'' he said, ''they made me a partner.''
A chance meeting in the late 1940's with the Kentucky-born Ms. Ritchie, who was then supporting herself as a social worker at the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, led to the next and, he said, most significant phase of his professional and personal life. She piqued his interest in music, especially folk music. When he eventually moved to studio photography, he developed a knack for taking pictures of musicians that made him a leading photographer for album covers.
He recalls his adventure with Dizzy Gillespie during the 1964-65 World's Fair in New York. ''It was for an album of movie music, and since there was a sound stage on exhibit at the fair, the studio wanted me to shoot Dizzy on the set,'' Mr. Pickow said. 'Only Dizzy insisted on having his little poodle in the picture, and to this day I don't know how I managed to make sense of Dizzy on a movie set holding a poodle, but I did.''
Mr. Pickow's most unforgettable experience by far involved Lena Horne. ''She came to the studio to look at a series of shots we had taken the day before, and she just hated them,'' he said. ''She took a scissors out of her bag and cut them all up into tiny pieces. It was the first -- and last -- time that had ever happened to me. Sure, we later got pictures for the album, but after all these years, just thinking about her cutting up those pictures makes me, well, feel bad.''
In his one previous brush with fame, Mr. Pickow made headlines throughout the world as ''the man who stopped Big Ben.'' Accompanying Ms. Ritchie on one of her study tours, in 1960 Mr. Pickow picked up an assignment to photograph maintenance work on the famed London clock. Unfortunately, the technician failed to move a ladder in time, and the works got stuck. It was the first time that had happened; Big Ben had survived even the Blitz without missing a beat. It took 20 minutes to pinpoint the cause and restart the clock. To help the technician keep his job, Mr. Pickow told him to ''say I did it,'' Mr. Pickow said.
He and Ms. Ritchie have collaborated on successful books like ''Celebration of Life'' (Music Sales Corporation, 1971) and ''The Dulcimer Book.'' Accompanying her on concert tours, Mr. Pickow snapped away, building up a vast reservoir of stills that he ultimately put together as slide shows flashed on screen by up to 12 projectors.
When it became possible to make videos easily and ''slide shows became cumbersome and disappeared,'' he switched to videos. He also returned to film making as both a cinematographer and a producer of films like ''Festival,'' about the Newport Folk Festival, which won an award at the Cannes International Film Festival and received an Academy Award nomination. He branched out to create, with the folk singer and composer Oscar Brand, multi-media theatrical pieces like ''Sing America Sing'' for the bicentennial celebration at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington and two recent productions at the 92d Street Y in Manhattan, ''Bill of Rights'' and ''Protest Songs.''
Working on these video and multimedia productions now takes up much of his professional time. With Ms. Ritchie, Mr. Brand and Tom Paxton, he is to participate in a folk festival on May 22 and 23 at the Landmark on Main Street here.
''I was never really great at going out and looking for work,'' he said, explaining his relative inactivity these days. ''I wait until some one comes to me.''
George Pickow's photographs remain on view through Friday at the Port Washington Library, 1 Library Drive. A selection of his films, including ''Oss! Oss! Wee Oss!,'' a record of May Day fertility rites in Cornwall; ''Music and Images from Ireland;'' ''Stir-Off,'' an account of making molasses in Viper, Ky, and segments from ''Festival'' will be shown at the library tomorrow at 8 P.M. Information: 883-4400.
Photos: George Pickow and Jean Ritchie at their home in Port Washington. His library exhibition includes this photograph of Carl Sandburg. (Rebecca Cooney for The New York Times)