Ranee Palone Flynn died following a long battle with cancer. I last spoke to her right before Christmas, as I was getting ready to leave for Scotland. I wanted to check in with her, even if we didn’t have anything going on in terms of work. I just wanted to see how she was doing and to let her know that I was thinking of her. She sounded frail. “This thing is kicking my ass,” she said. “I’ll give you a call back when I’m feeling better.” I never spoke to her again.
Julia Felsenthal wrote on August 19, 2013 in The New York Times Style Magazine: “Flynn’s photographs – primarily images of disaffected teenagers, androgynous men and yearning young women, shot with a maternal tenderness and a tranquil sort of Dutch Renaissance light – are all about capturing a moment of emotional connection between photographer and subject.” “There is a kind of innocence, this kind of open-arm quality, like an embraceable kind of quality, in her pictures,” the photographer Bruce Weber added.
Ranee was a terrific artist, and I’m going to miss her eye, her way of seeing things. She had tremendous empathy for the people she photographed; she liked tough girls and tender guys, and she was able to establish an almost instantaneous connection with them, whether they were teenagers or older adults.
More often than not, though, when we got together, the work conversations only lasted a few minutes. The life conversations lasted much longer. I can still picture her, heading down the stairs of my apartment, offering me a few last words of advice:
“Protect your heart. Open your heart.”
Peter Hay Halpert
Peter Hay Halpert is a fine art dealer in the United States with a collection spanning the entire history of photography.
http://www.phhfineart.com/
