Howard Greenberg to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award from George Eastman House.
“I started as a photographer and a darkroom junkie. I was completely enamored of printing. A lot of photographs in my collection are there because the print of the image was truly special to me.” – Howard Greenberg
Howard Greenberg Gallery has been a great success for over thirty years. “Acknowledging his longstanding and critical contribution to the world of photography, Howard Greenberg will receive the Lifetime Achievement in Photography award October 29, 2012, at the George Eastman House’s Celebrating Light & Motion Gala in New York City. The award celebrates Greenberg’s trailblazing career, building awareness of—and appreciation for—fine art photography. He is known as an authority on 19th- and 20th-century photography, and has been an acknowledged leader in establishing its value on the fine art market. The award also recognizes Greenberg’s myriad roles as a photographer, as founder in 1977 of the Center for Photography at Woodstock, as a longtime member of the board of directors of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), and as owner for over 30 years of the Howard Greenberg Gallery.” – Gallery Press Release
A selection of photographs from Greenberg’s personal photography collection will be exhibited for the first time at the Musée de l’Elysée Lausanne beginning September 21, 2012.
I spoke recently with Greenberg about his early beginnings in Photography.
Elizabeth Avedon: Where do you think your interest in Photography came from originally? When did it sort of hit you, as a teenager or as a young man?
Howard Greenberg: (…long pause) Our parents had a Brownie, but it didn’t mean much to me; we all took snapshots. I read LIFE Magazine; it didn’t mean much to me, not from the point of view of what photography is all about. My memory of when I got hooked on Photography was after I shot my first couple of rolls of film. What led me to get the camera? I had this girlfriend for a few of weeks and she was into photography. I kind of liked the idea, but I don’t remember any of the pictures. After college I moved in with a very close friend of mine from growing up and he had a camera. He took some photography courses at LIU and he showed me some of his stuff. It just made me think, “Oh, this is interesting.”
I wasn’t in college anymore, but I took a class at Brooklyn College so I could use the darkroom. That was the second class. The first class was at The New School, an evening course with Sandra Weiner who I came to represent and I learned how to process film. I took it two or three times and dropped out. Immediately after that I took this class at Brooklyn College with Barney Cole. Coincidentally both were members of the Photo League, which became important in my life afterwards. I didn’t know it at the time.
I took to Barney Cole’s class really quickly, so Barney let me be his assistant in the darkroom. I remember feeling so in love I would stay in the darkroom until they threw me out. That’s my memory of really falling in love with photography. It wasn’t about a picture I’d seen that moved me to want to be a photographer. It’s that moment.
EA: You became a photographer professionally?
HG: In late August 1972, I took a ten-day workshop at Apeiron Workshops in Millerton New York with Jerry Uelsmann. I didn’t know who Jerry Uelsmann was. Prior to that I found myself experimenting with and printing multiple negatives in a friends darkroom. Someone saw what I was doing and said I should see this book by Jerry Uelsmann. It was like I had found my mentor. I took his workshop to learn more about the kind of photography I was already interested in.
I decided I didn’t want to go to graduate school; I just wanted to keep photographing. While I was at the workshop, my girlfriend and I rented a cabin for ninety bucks a month in Woodstock – and then I had to make a living. I was getting unemployment insurance, I was the Saturday postmaster at the Glenford New York Post Office and I built a darkroom and started teaching Workshops. I was a new photographer, but I was so into it and I had a few private students.
Then I quickly got a job with the Woodstock Times. For $15.00 a week I did all the photography, but they published anything I wanted. Once a week I took a workshop with Malcolm Varon, who was a great artwork photographer. That was in his studio. I learned from one of the great professionals how to make good photographs, color and black and white, of art. Woodstock, being an art colony, and having many, many artists in the ‘70’s, I found I could make a living photographing art, paintings and sculpture for the artists there.
Yes, I made my living by doing photography. It was all on the job training. I got a view camera, I got a medium format camera, and I learned it all because I had to make a living.
That ended. In 1977, I founded the Catskill Center for Photography, for many years. It’s now called The Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW). This summer was it’s 35th Anniversary. I did it because I’d fallen in love with the History of Photography and I was a little frustrated because so many of the painters and artists didn’t know much about photography or think of it as being equal. Once I did that, it was sort of the beginning of the end of my own photography. It took all my time and energy.
In 1980 I backed off because I couldn’t make a penny, I decided to open my own commercial gallery around the corner called Photo Find. In 1986, I opened my first gallery in New York – Photo Find moved to Soho. Lawrence Miller had taken a space; he gave me one third of the space for $900. a month. Five years later I moved and changed the name to my name.
Howard Greenberg Gallery is located at 41 East 57th Street, New York, New York.
Elizabeth Avedon
