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Gita Lenz, Untitled, 1940s-1950s
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September 23 – November 20, 2010
From the 1940s to the early 1960s, Gita Lenz (b. 1910) created a body of work that withstands
comparison to many of the better-known photographers of the time. Aaron Siskind was both a
friend and strong influence. Like Siskind, who started out as a social documentarian and member of
the Photo League in New York, Lenz’s work ranges from the humanist to the abstract. She spent
much of her time making images of the people and the city around her. Also, like Siskind, Lenz
explored abstraction, both in nature and in the urban environment, frequently making complex and
beautiful images of mundane and dilapidated subjects. Some images are tender, demonstrating a
sense of empathy and respect, and others are dynamic, suggesting a modernist and sometimes
surreal perspective.
Gita Lenz moved to an apartment at the corner of Carmine Street and 7th Avenue in 1940. Soon
after, Lenz began photographing infrequently and informally, but by the 1950s she was working
professionally and receiving recognition.
In 1951, following the seminal exhibition Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America at the Museum
of Modern Art, Edward Steichen curated the exhibition Abstraction in Photography, and included
Lenz’s work alongside work by Erwin Blumenfeld, Josef Breitenbach, Alexey Brodovitch, Harry
Callahan, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ralston Crawford, Walker Evans, Lotte Jacobi, György Kepes,
László Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Charles Sheeler, Arthur Siegel, Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer,
Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand and Edward Weston. For Steichen, the exhibition was meant as a
response to the “sensitive reportorial photography” of the period and featured “the work
of
photographers concerned with evolving another reality by probing into the realm of the abstract.”
The first major exhibition of Lenz’s work was in a three-person show, The Third Eye with John Reed
and Don Normark, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1952. Soon after, in 1955, Edward Steichen
included her work in the landmark exhibition at MoMA, The Family of Man.
Lenz pursued commercial and fine art photography into the early 1960s until her financial situation
required her to seek a steadier income. She did, however, continue with other creative pursuits,
chiefly creative writing and poetry.
When the reality of living alone in her fifth floor walkup on Carmine Street became too impractical,
Timothy Bartling, who was her neighbor and had become her friend, helped Lenz move into an
assisted living facility near her old neighborhood and manage her personal affairs. Bartling enlisted
the expertise of his friend the photographer Gordon Stettinius to archive Lenz’s work. It was the
depth and quality of Lenz’s work that inspired Stettinius to found Candela Books and make Lenz’s
work the subject of its first publication. Because Lenz’s memory has been fading in recent years,
it
is due to the efforts of Bartling and Stettinius that we now know of her work and a little of the life
she has led.
Copies of Gita Lenz (Candela Books, 2010) are now available.
BOOKS AVAILABLE:
Angier, Roswell. Train Your Gaze.
(AVA Books, 2007) $49.95
Botman, Machiel. Rainchild.
(Schaden, 2004) $70 signed
Breitenbach, Josef. Manifesto.
(Nazraeli Press, 2008) $60
Caffery, Debbie Fleming. The Spirit & The Flesh.
(Radius Books, 2009) $60 signed
Limited edition $1200
Caffery, Debbie Fleming. The Shadows.
(Twin Palms, 2002) $60 signed
Catherineau, Roger. L'image improbable.
(Editions Musee de la Ville de Rennes, 1992) $40
Frame, Allen. Detour.
(Kehrer Verlag, 2001) $50 signed
Greenberg, Stanley. Architecture Under Construction.
(The University of Chicago Press, 2010) $45 signed
Greenberg, Stanley. Invisible New York.
(The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) $40 signed
Greenberg, Stanley. Waterworks.
(Princeton Architectural Press, 2003) $40 signed
Lenz, Gita.
(Candela Books, 2010) $50
Moral, Jean. L’Oeil Capteur.
(Marvel, 1999) $45
Noble, Laura. The Art of Collecting Photography.
(AVA Books, 2006) $60
Szabo, Joseph. Jones Beach.
(Abrams Image, 2010) $35 signed
Traub, Charles H.
(Gitterman Gallery, 2006) $25 signed
Traub, Charles H. In the Still Life.
(Quantuck Lane Press, 2004) $20 signed
Traub, Charles H. et al. The Education of a Photographer.
(Allworth Press & S.V.A., 2006) $20
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