Laurence Salzmann

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Laurence Salzmann
Born (1944-01-04) January 4, 1944 (age 80)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Photographer
filmmaker

Laurence Salzmann (born January 4, 1944) is an American photographer and filmmaker based in Philadelphia. [1] His work, mostly documentary photography, focuses primarily on the lives of little known groups in America and abroad. [2]

Contents

Early life and career

Salzmann was born January 4, 1944, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [3] He describes himself as being "of that generation which thought that photography could bring about socially beneficial change." [4] Educated in Philadelphia schools, he acquired photographic skills along the way, often from older photographers. [5] Much of his career has involved using photography to preserve the history of groups of people in danger of being ignored and forgotten and encouraging his subjects to retrieve memories and tell their stories. Edward Sozanski, the late Philadelphia Inquirer art critic, wrote of Salzmann's work, "Cross a visual anthropologist with a talented photographer and you get Laurence Salzmann" and goes on to say that Salzmann's deep immersions in local cultures are "what give his photographs exceptional resonance and poignancy." [6]

Salzmann's first documentary project, "Family of Luis" (1966-67), came out of his assignment as a Peace Corps trainee in a barrio humilde of Ciudad Juarez. [7] It attracted the notice of the Photography Curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Kneeland McNaulty, who bought several prints for their Museum Collection. The "Family of Luis" essay led to Salzmann's being hired as a participant observer and photographer by St. Luke's Hospital Department of Community Psychiatry for a joint project with Columbia University. [8] Again, he lived among his subjects, this time in a Single Room Occupancy hotel, on New York's Upper West Side. documenting the lives of its residents. His work, Neighbors on the Block, was published by the New York State Council on the Arts. A grant from the American Film Institute for documentary film making enabled him and filmmaker Peter Barton to complete two films about residents of the hotels. [9]

Salzmann took courses in Sociology at the New School of Social Research and earned a Master of Arts in Visual Anthropology from Temple University (1971-2). [10] This training, in addition to his photographic experience, led to work with Tim Asch as editor for several of the films (Children's Magical Death, New Tribes Mission, Tug of War, Weeding the Garden) in Asch's Yamomoto film series (1971) [11] and as an editor on Alan Lomax's Choreometrics project.

Romania and Turkey

A Fulbright grant enabled Salzmann to spend 1974 – 1976 in the small Romanian town of Radauti, documenting the lives of the remaining members of its Jewish community who had survived the Holocaust. [12] Again, Salzmann learned the language of his subjects and lived among them. His pictures were published in the book: The Last Jews of Radauti with text by Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann, (Doubleday, 1983). [13] [14] His film, Song of Radauti was broadcast nationwide by PBS. At the invitation of Cornell Capa, Director of the International Center of Photography, a large selection of the Radauti pictures was shown at the International Center of Photography. [15]

A grant from the International Research & Exchanges Board allowed Salzmann to live for a year documenting the lives of Transhumant (migratory) shepherds in the Transylvania region of Romania. [16] That work was published in book form under the title of Miortiza and shown in the Bucuresti Peasant Museum. [17] At the invitation of the 500 Years Foundation, Salzmann was invited to Turkey to produce a photographic essay on the country's jewish community. This project took 5 years to complete and culminated in an exhibit, Anyos Munchos I Buenos, that was shown in museums in Israel, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and the United States, in addition to two books, and a documentary film. [18] [19]

Latin America

More recently, Salzmann has worked in Cuba, Mexico, and Peru. [20]

From 1999 to 2004, he documented the lives and work of artists and wrestlers in Fidel Castro’s Cuba in photo series and films. His study of young wrestlers, titled La Lucha/The Struggle, [21] were accompanied by gouache paintings by Cuban artist Luis El Estudiante. [22] Writing of the work, Miles Orvell wrote, "Salzmann's photographs constitute an aesthetic and social document of great power...and are a tribute to his generous vision of cross-cultural understanding.” [23]

Salzmann also published more experimental, abstract photographs from Cuba in Imagining Cutumba, which takes as its subjects one of Cuba’s oldest dance companies, the Ballet Folklórico Cutumba. [24]

Between 2005 and 2008, Salzmann photographed the life that some Mexican immigrants in Philadelphia left behind in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, a mountainous, rural region of Mexico. He also interviewed residents about the changes that increasing emigration had brought to the region for a documentary film. [25]

The resulting project was Échele Ganas (Do Your Best), published as a book in 2012 [26] and exhibited at a six-week celebration of Mexican culture in Philadelphia [27] that year.

Salzmann has also traveled extensively in Peru’s Sacred Valley. [28]

After meeting speakers of Quechuan, an indigenous language family used by the Inca Empire, he was inspired to study the language and document the ways in which pre-Hispanic culture continues on in the region. He was granted a Fulbright Fellowship for this work in 2015 and returned multiple times between 2016-2020. During this period, he produced Mish’I Kachi Runakuna/Sweet Salt People and Salt People, which shows the use of ancient salt harvesting practices by the people of Maras, Peru and neighboring communities. [29]

Legacy

In 2018, Laurence Salzmann and his wife Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann gifted to a large collection of Salzmann’s work to the Kislak Center at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. [30]

Summing up Salzmann's work, Jason Francisco, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Emory College, has written “”The core intelligence of Salzmann's [work] is his non-didacticism, his unwillingness to forsake the suggestive for the merely explanatory ...” [31]

In 2023, the University of Pennsylvania Libraries hosted a retrospective exhibit of Salzmann’s life’s work, titled “A Life With Others.” [32]

Publications

Collections

Salzmann's work is held in the following public collections:

Films

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References

  1. "Museum of Contemporary Photography - Collection - Search" Laurence Salzmann. Retrieved 2023-07-22.
  2. "cfeva.org" Artistic Advisors. Laurence Salzmann. Retrieved 2023-07-22.
  3. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. p. 372. ISBN   9798985300543.
  4. Salzmann, Han (2013). Several Weeks of Searching for a Lost Dog in Winter. Philadelphia: Blue Flower Press.
  5. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. pp. 372–3. ISBN   9798985300543.
  6. Sozanski, Edward (December 28, 2008). "Art: An intimate view of the Diaspora". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  7. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. pp. 49–59. ISBN   9798985300543.
  8. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. p. 375. ISBN   9798985300543.
  9. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. pp. 60–73, 375. ISBN   9798985300543.
  10. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. p. 375. ISBN   9798985300543.
  11. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on May 15, 2008. Retrieved March 27, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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  13. Gursan-Salzmann, Ayse (1983). The Last Jews of Radauti. Dial Press. ISBN   9780385278089.
  14. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. p. 382. ISBN   9798985300543.
  15. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. p. 106. ISBN   9798985300543.
  16. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. pp. 130–45, 377. ISBN   9798985300543.
  17. "Visit Bucharest: The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant" Retrieved 2023-07-19.
  18. "Photographer discusses being 'In Search of Turkey's Jews'". Laurence Salzmann. April 18, 2018.
  19. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. pp. 146–66, 382, 384. ISBN   9798985300543.
  20. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. pp. x. ISBN   9798985300543.
  21. "LAURENCE SALZMANN "LA LUCHA" SANTIAGO DE CUBA". Robin Rice Gallery. November 9, 2011. Archived from the original on September 20, 2023.
  22. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. pp. 276–288. ISBN   9798985300543.
  23. Orvell, Miles (2009). "Laurence Salzmann". The Photo Review. 28 (3): 22–23.
  24. "Photographer Laurence Salzmann will Discuss Williams Center Exhibit at Brown Bag". Lafayette College News. September 23, 2002. Archived from the original on September 14, 2019.
  25. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. pp. 181–199. ISBN   9798985300543.
  26. Salzmann, Laurence. "Echele Ganas: Do Your Best". Laurence Salzmann Archives. Retrieved September 21, 2023.
  27. Matza, Michael (April 24, 2012). "A Lively Look at Area's Mexican Culture". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on July 2, 2022.
  28. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. p. 201. ISBN   9798985300543.
  29. Francisco, Jason (2021). Laurence Salzmann: A Life With Others. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Libraries. pp. 201–220. ISBN   9798985300543.
  30. Kiron, Arthur (December 3, 2018). "Library Acquisition: Laurence Salzmann Photography Collection". Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Archived from the original on March 29, 2023.
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  35. Laurence Salzmann (January 26, 2024). "Collections". Laurence Salzmann.
  36. Laurence Salzmann (January 26, 2024). "Collections". Laurence Salzmann.
  37. "Photographs from La Baie/bath and Vent series / Laurence Salzmann". ARCHIVE GRID. January 26, 2024.
  38. "High Museum of Art" Mr. Thau's Funeral. Laurence Salzmann. Retrieved 2023-07-22.
  39. Laurence Salzmann (January 26, 2024). "Collections". Laurence Salzmann.
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  43. "Philadelphia Museum of Art" Face of Luis. Laurence Salzmann. Retrieved 2023-07-22.
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  47. "Tales of the Inca" Laurence Salzmann. (2018-02-27). YouTube. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
  48. "Revisiting Turkey's Jews, Vol. 1, 2011: Habib" Laurence Salzmann. (2018-03-20). YouTube. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
  49. "El Rayo" Laurence Salzmann. (2017-10-04). YouTube. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
  50. "Imagining Cutumba - 2001 - Photographs by Laurence Salzmann" Laurence Salzmann. (2011-09-01). YouTube. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
  51. "Willy's Blessing (Excerpt)" Laurence Salzmann. (2009-04-01). YouTube. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
  52. "Turkey's Sephardim: Chapter 3" Laurence Salzmann. (2022-02-13). YouTube. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
  53. "Who's Havin' Fun? (1980 Philadelphia Mummers Documentary)" Laurence Salzmann. (2017-12-28). YouTube. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
  54. "Song of Radauti" via www.youtube.com.
  55. "Alfred (from S.R.O.)" Laurence Salzmann. (2023-01-18). YouTube. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
  56. "Eddie (from S.R.O.)" Laurence Salzmann. (2023-01-18). YouTube. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
  57. "Ragman" Laurence Salzmann. (2021-01-22). YouTube. Retrieved 2023-07-19.