Still Movies
George S. Zimbel
March 17 to May 4, 1995
| It has been observed that for most of us the "here and now" is
about eight seconds long. In George Zimbel's photographs, the present lasts
for less than an instant. But this razor-thin slice of time can contain
a universe. Zimbel's images are about the "human comedy", and
each image is worth at least one short story. However, in Zimbel's visual stories, beginnings and endings are left out; it's up to viewers to draw their own conclusions from these enigmatic photos. On one level, Zimbel's pictures are meditations on fate and the role of chance in human convergences. By allowing this note of uncertainty, Zimbel portrays a world that is unheroic, yet not totally devoid of all meaning. Armed with his little Leica, the type of camera Henri Cartier-Bresson made famous, Zimbel focuses on ordinary life; he depicts events in the mundane light of day. The extremes of experience, the pure blacks and whites of human emotion, are left out. In Zimbel's images, epiphanies usually come in manageable human dimensions. (...) All along, Zimbel has continued to do works just for himself. The walls of his current studio, located in an old office building in downtown Montreal, are cluttered with on going documentary and portrait projects. Art and photojournalism seem to have found a happy meeting ground in this tiny cramped space. Zimbel is fond of saying, "A photo has to work even if the viewer does not recognize anyone in it". In one of Zimbel's most exciting experiments, he simply perched in a hotel window and photographed random people crossing a cobbled Parisian street. The hurrying figures look like Giacometti statues come to life. Zimbel is concerned about the formal and abstract qualities of his images, but ultimately it is the role of human behaviour that takes precedence. Where Giacometti's art is really an investigation on his inner self, Zimbel's work is an extroverted study of human carryings-on, combining the urban instincts of Studs Terkel with the design sensibilities of Edward Hopper. (...) Zimbel's pictures have an almost crystalline precision of composition. His best images have a rightness that is all the more dramatic because we sense that at any moment chance will intervene once again; and the composition will, much like experience itself, suddenly decompose before our very eyes (...) and the momentary order captured in these beautiful pictures will dissolve into the messy chaos of every day life. — Henry Lehmann, MATRIX Magazine, Montreal, 1991 |
" My work begins with recording an image, but
it is not finished until I have made a fine print. That is my photograph." |
| Biography George S. Zimbel was born in Woburn, Massachusetts on July 15, 1929. He started taking photographs in the 1940's while in high school. In 1949 he studied at the Photo League (New York) and this experience was pivotal in his career as a documentary photographer. In 1951, after graduation from Columbia he was awarded a scholarship by Alexy Brodovitch for his legendary workshop at the New School. During this period he was a stringer for PIX Inc., one of the early photo agencies. He went on to work for magazines such as the New York Times, Look, Redbook, Parents, Architectural Forum and the Saturday Review. He was also one of a small group of photographers who shot the now famous scene of Marilyn Monroe and her billowing white skirt on location for "The Seven Year Itch" in New York. January 1995 marks the fortieth anniversary of the release of that film. The Zimbel family emigrated to Canada in 1971 and moved to Montreal in 1980. George Zimbel association with Galerie Art 45 in Montreal and the Jane Corkin Gallery in Toronto resulted in five solo exhibitions. His photograph of Jacqueline & John Kennedy, NYC 1960 / American Politicians is included in an exhibition opening in April at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In an era of increased manipulation of the photographic image by computer technology, Zimbel's committment to the "straight" photograph has become stronger. He sees the late 20th century as a period in which classic photography will have it's last flowering. |
