Diana Davies (photographer)

Last updated

Diana Davies (b. 1938 [1] ) is an American photographer, playwright, painter, graphic artist, illustrator, and musician who was one of the leading photojournalists documenting the feminist and gay liberation movements of the 1960s and '70s. [2] Her photographs cover the early days of diverse women's and LGBT social movements, as well as the Civil Rights, Peace, and farmworkers' rights movements.

Contents

Early life

Born in 1938, Davies was raised in Maine, the Catskills region of New York State, New York City, and Boston. Her grandparents were union organizers and Debs socialists — Davies credits her family background with influencing her later activist work. [3]

Davies left high school at 16 and worked as a waitress and dishwasher while pursuing a musical career. [3] [4]

Career

In the 1960s, Davies became involved in photography during her work with theatre and music, and began her work using equipment purchased at a yard sale. [4] She taught herself how to develop and print her own photos, and began her photography work shooting behind-the-scenes images at theaters. [1]

Davies began working with Agnes "Sis" Cunningham and Gordon Friesen, editors of Broadside magazine. Through her contact with them (and based on her family background), she developed an interest in human rights work. [1]

Davies photographed numerous pivotal moments in music and social justice movements throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including the Poor People's March on Washington, Newport Folk Festival, and the Philadelphia Folk Festival. [1] She photographed the Smithsonian Folklife Festival during its early years. [1] In addition to her work in the United States, she has photographed Central America, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. [5]

From the 1960s through the 1980s, her work appeared in such publications as Life , The New York Times , and The Boston Globe . [4] Davies aligned herself with the Gay Liberation Front and contributed images to Come Out! , a magazine published by the GLF. [6] She documented the first [Pride Parade] in New York City on 28 June 1970. [7]

In the 1990s, she shifted her focus to illustration, painting and graphic art and largely ceased working as a photographer. [5]

Davies writes plays with social justice themes, having throughout her life participated in and supported all aspects of "people's theatre." [2]

As of 2018, Davies was living in Northampton, Massachusetts. She continues to perform in musical groups — including as percussionist for the group Flame n Peach and the Liberated Waffles. [8]

Collections

Davies' work is housed in the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections located in the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the New York Public Library, Howard University, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, and the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. [9] Additionally, The New York Public Library holds some of her materials. [10]

Works

Books

Plays

Discography

See also

Related Research Articles

John Cohen was an American musician, photographer and film maker who performed and documented the traditional music of the rural South and played a major role in the American folk music revival. In the 1950s and 60s, Cohen was a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, a New York–based string band. Cohen made several expeditions to Peru to film and record the traditional culture of the Q'ero, an indigenous people. Cohen was also a professor of visual arts at SUNY Purchase College for 25 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esther Bubley</span> American photographer

Esther Bubley was an American photographer who specialized in expressive photos of ordinary people in everyday lives. She worked for several agencies of the American government and her work also featured in several news and photographic magazines.

Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records, donated the entire Folkways Records label to the Smithsonian. The donation was made on the condition that the Institution continue Asch's policy that each of the more than 2,000 albums of Folkways Records remain in print forever, regardless of sales. Since then, the label has expanded on Asch's vision of documenting the sounds of the world, adding six other record labels to the collection, as well as releasing over 300 new recordings. Some well-known artists have contributed to the Smithsonian Folkways collection, including Pete Seeger, Ella Jenkins, Woody Guthrie, and Lead Belly. Famous songs include "This Land Is Your Land", "Goodnight, Irene", and "Midnight Special". Due to the unique nature of its recordings, which include an extensive collection of traditional American music, children's music, and international music, Smithsonian Folkways has become an important collection to the musical community, especially to ethnomusicologists, who utilize the recordings of "people's music" from all over the world.

Ralph Rinzler was an American mandolin player, folksinger, and the co-founder of the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the Mall every summer in Washington, D.C., where he worked as a curator for American art, music, and folk culture at the Smithsonian. This festival was from the beginning and continues to be a major event for musicians, artistans, and craftsman from a broad variety of American culture, including African American, Native American, Appalachian, Southern, Western and other groups in the United States.

The Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage (CFCH) is one of three cultural centers within the Smithsonian Institution in the United States. Its motto is "culture of, by, and for the people", and it aims to encourage understanding and cultural sustainability through research, education, and community engagement. The CFCH contains (numerically) the largest collection in the Smithsonian, but is not fully open to the public. Its budget comes primarily from grants, trust monies, federal government appropriations, and gifts, with a small percentage coming from the main Smithsonian budget.

The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College is an internationally recognized repository of manuscripts, photographs, periodicals and other primary sources in women's history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carmen Vázquez</span> American LGBT rights activist (1949–2021)

Carmen Vázquez was an American activist, writer, and community intellectual.

Joan E. Biren or JEB is an American feminist photographer and film-maker, who dramatizes the lives of LGBT people in contexts that range from healthcare and hurricane relief to Womyn’s Music and anti-racism. For portraits, she encourages sitters to act as her “muse”, rather than her “subject”. Biren was a member of The Furies Collective, a short-lived but influential lesbian commune.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kay Lahusen</span> American photographer, writer, and activist (1930–2021)

Katherine Lahusen was an American photographer, writer and gay rights activist. She was the first openly lesbian American photojournalist. Under Lahusen's art direction, photographs of lesbians appeared on the cover of The Ladder for the first time. It was one of many projects she undertook with partner Barbara Gittings, who was then The Ladder's editor. As an activist, Lahusen was involved with the founding of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) in 1970 and the removal of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). She contributed writing and photographs to a New York–based Gay Newsweekly and Come Out!, and co-authored two books: The Gay Crusaders in 1972 with Randy Wicker and Love and Resistance: Out of the Closet into the Stonewall Era, collecting their photographs with Diana Davies in 2019.

Diana Walker is an American photographer known for her work as a Time magazine White House photographer from 1984 to 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bettye Lane</span> American photojournalist (1930–2012)

Bettye Lane was an American photojournalist known for documenting major events within the feminist movement, the civil rights movement, and the gay rights movement in the United States. She joined CBS television in 1960, and from 1962 to 1964 she was with the Saturday Evening Post. Her work has been published in the National Observer, Time, Life, and the Associated Press.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Milton Bell</span> American photographer (1848–1893)

Charles Milton Bell was an American photographer who was noted for his portraits of Native Americans and other figures of the United States in the late 1800s. He was called "one of Washington's leading portrait photographers during the last quarter of the nineteenth century" by the Library of Congress.

Roland L. Freeman was an American photographer and award-winning documenter of Southern folk culture and African-American quilters. He was the president of The Group for Cultural Documentation based in Washington, D.C.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frances Carpenter</span> American folklorist, author, and photographer

Frances Aretta Carpenter was an American folklorist, author, and photographer. She traveled to, and published collections of folk stories from, nations on five continents.

Ellen Shumsky is a lesbian feminist activist, photographer, psychoanalytic teacher, psychotherapist, supervisor, and writer.

Marilyn Nance, also known as Soulsista, is an American multimedia artist known for work focusing on exploring human connections, African-American spirituality, and the use of technology in storytelling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ming Smith</span> African-American photographer

Ming Smith is an American photographer. She was the first African-American female photographer whose work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Esther "Esta" Nesbitt, born as Esther Feuerman (1918–1975), was an American illustrator, xerox artist, filmmaker, and educator. Between the 1940s until the 1960s, Nesbitt actively led a career as a fashion illustrator for leading magazines and newspapers including Harpers Bazaar, Mademoiselle, and the New York Times Magazine. In the 1960s she began experimenting with fine art, in multidisciplines and with xerox art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sophia Wells Royce Williams</span> American philanthropist

Sophia Wells Royce Williams was an American civic activist, philanthropist, and photographer, who with her husband, Talcott Williams, donated a substantial collection of Moroccan ceramics and other materials to the Smithsonian Institution and the Penn Museum. She was the subject of a Thomas Eakins portrait, entitled The Black Fan, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Stephanie Smith; Joyce Capper; Jillian Foley; Meaghan McCarthy (2004–2005). "Diana Davies Photograph Collection Finding Aid" (PDF). Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.
  2. 1 2 "Diana Davies Papers, 1960s-1996 (ongoing)". Sophia Smith Collection . Smith College. Archived from the original on 28 May 2013. Retrieved 28 September 2013. Creative Commons by small.svg  This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 3.0 license.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Diana Davies photographs · SOVA". sova.si.edu. Retrieved 2020-05-13.
  4. 1 2 3 "Sistervision: Seeing Women's Lives. Photos by Diana Davies- An exhibit in the Sophia Smith Collection". Smith College Libraries. March 2000. Archived from the original on 2016-10-01. Retrieved 2017-03-05.
  5. 1 2 "Davies, Diana, 1938-". socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu. Retrieved 2017-03-05.
  6. ↑ Palumbo, Jacqui (2019-06-28). "The Underrecognized Photographers Who Showed Queer Life in the 1960s". Artsy. Retrieved 2020-05-15.
  7. ↑ Nadan, Tal (June 18, 2020). "Remembering the First New York City Pride March Through Diana Davies' Photographs". New York Public Library. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  8. 1 2 Meyer, Will (2018-02-12). "Basemental: The World According to Moggie". Valley Advocate. Retrieved 2020-05-15.
  9. ↑ "Diana Davies Photograph Collection". Diana Davies Photograph Collection Finding Aid. Smithsonian Institution . Retrieved 28 September 2013.
  10. ↑ "Remembering the First New York City Pride March Through Diana Davies' Photographs". The New York Public Library. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  11. ↑ Davies, Diana (1989-01-01). Photojourney: photographs. Bag Lady Press. ISBN   9780962243202.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.