He added more than fifty years as a professional of photographic tools. He accumulates an incalculable number of publications. He collects exhibitions without counting. He fills up libraries with his books. he … . And mostly, he has really transmitted his mastery of photographic tools to future generations for over fifty years.
It’s no longer a riddle, it’s Larry FINK.
Larry FINK? He is … the Photographer, that is the man who masters and tames the light to extract it and make a picture as perfect as possible. Nothing is left to chance, let’s take a look at this likeable and appealing image that some imagine coming in straight line from the latest smartphone. That is not so, everything, or almost everything is in this image, to transcend a message, a visceral emotion, a mockery or a distress, a compassion or an emotional sharing, in short nothing leaves us indifferent. I affirm that nothing comes from chance. The masses shaped by its light define the composition and the place of the reader in front of the image, the greyscale distil the importance and the role of each component, the tones involve the curious in the atmosphere, graphic reports transform the visitor into a protagonist. That’s it, it’s simple, the curtain rises and the spectators are on the scene, they are inside the scene, they participate in the action … better, they live the action.
Professor Larry FINK struck, because there is a multitude of training to learn to dominate photographic tools ; for me, I always thought that at all times the real photographers have forged themselves more by contemplating images (all technicals) than by studying many ” kitchen recipes” as good they may be.
This is my technical and objective analysis of nearly all artworks exhibited by Larry.
But that is not the end. The man is exquisite. The photographer is conscientious and close to perfection, I just exposed it for his achievements. Now, I can not, and I do not want to, dodge the very brilliant creator of whom I can predict that posterity will honour the works, even if his modesty suffers.
His insatiable curiosity, his restrained sensitivity, his open-mindedness, his controlled reserve, his concealed tolerance make Larry FINK, the ideal creator to blend into the social and psychological strata of a society of which he has lived all the changes . While in our generation comrade, Martin PARR offers us a very colourful and clearly displayed satires of different “castes” through his lenses, Larry FINK immerses us in subtlety.
I find in his photographs a Larry FINK mocking, caustic, ironic, slightly sly, and a little mischievous. He knows how to impose himself inside social landscapes by the small door to be confident of his invisibility in the middle of the protagonists. He literally dissects people, the interactions and the unsaid, with his scalpel of light, to allow the greatest number of readers to get involved effortlessly, at the end of a boxing fight, on the birthday of his mother , at the last “swell” party in New York and, more recently, in sumptuous works, on the life of his human encounters, such as this Parisian construction worker.
If the opportunity presents itself to you, do not hesitate to stop a few moments in front of the photographs of Larry FINK, one of the great creative photographers between two millennial age who devoted his know-how to a social and behavioural vision of our society where family tribes give way to a lot of media and behavioural tribes.
For this official edition of Fotografia Europea 019, the exhibition of works by Larry FINK is really the best and deserves a great detour to go, first, to live inside his photographs.
Thierry MAINDRAULT
Fotografia Europea
Palazzo da Mosto
Reggio Emilia
