Brian Lanker won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1972 photographs of natural childbirth, taken when he was a 25-year-old staff photographer on the Topeka Capital-Journal newspaper in Kansas. He went next to the Eugene Register-Guard in Oregon and from there to freelance for the national magazines, LIFE, Sports-Illustrated and The National Geographic, as well as becoming a successful commercial photographer of the Marlboro Man.
In the late 1980s he photographed 75 women for his best selling book (and travelling exhibition) titled I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America. In 2011 Brien suddenly and swiftly died of cancer. At his memorial service, a coterie of photographers focused on the need for a book not only on Brian’s excellent photographs but one that celebrated the remarkable, engaging nature of the man.
Photographer Michael O’Brien and designer DJ Stout, worked with Brian’s widow, the painter Lynda Lanker, and his longtime administrator, Lynne Lamb, to design the book. Between the book’s pictures, 23 photographers, colleagues or admirers describe Brian as they knew and admired him. Photographer Rich Clarkson, who had been Brian’s boss on the Topeka newspaper, arranged with an anonymous backer for the Jordan Shnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene to publish the book and mount a major exhibition of the photographs at the museum. The book and show share the title: From the Heart : The Photographs of Brian Lanker.
EXHIBITION
From the Heart
Brian Lanker
From January 23th to April 24th, 2016
Jordan Shnitzer Museum of Art
1430 Johnson Lane
Eugene, OR 97403
United States
http://jsma.uoregon.edu
http://www.brianlanker.com
