Farhana Azim Shiuly

I went to watch a four month long (September 9-January 3) photography exhibition “George S. Zimbel: A Humanist Photographer” at the Graphic Arts Centre of Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition showcased a wide range of black and white photographs of George Zimbel. Zimbel’s show includes candid photos of the famous, including Helen Keller and Harry Truman, as well as powerful shots from bars in Europe and classy theatres in New Orleans. All of the gelatin silver prints in the exhibition were made by the photographer himself and are from his collection. The exhibition also showed an advance screening of a new documentary, ‘Zimbelism’, by Zimbel’s son Matt and documentary maker and photographer, Jean-François Gratton.

No Parking, NY, 1954

An active photographer for over seventy years, the American-born Canadian George Zimbel is known for his documentary approach rooted in the socio-cultural background of his subjects. And his ideals were reflected through this rooted documentary approach. Zimbel made the American society around him his subject during the 1950s and 1960s. He was interested in everyday life, and he also immortalized some cultural icons, like Marilyn Monroe, and political figures, including the activist and author Helen Keller, the pastor Billy Graham and former American president Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. But always armed with his Leica camera, Zimbel was less interested in stars than in the lives of ordinary people. Although nowadays he is known first for his famous photo of Marilyn Monroe, whose skirt is blowing around her in the powerful draft rising from the subway and now his photos of American icons are found in major museums.

Mother and Children Rome, 1953

Marilyn Monroe NY, 1954 ‘Seven Year Itch’

Woman with Tongue Out Nice, France, 1953

In those years, New York street scenes were held to be the ideal reflection of the social and economic climate of post war America. The photographic act became a commitment to the human community. But the artistic aspect was far from being neglected, as is apparent in Zimbel’s compositions — different camera angles and playing with the focus and ambient lighting. He was trained at the Photo League, a New York collective of amature and professional active from 1936 to 1951 who advocated documentary images focusing on social commentary and creativity. The scenes Zimbel captures reveal his sensitive treatment of his subjects, at times with a touch of humour. In 1955 he captured the nightlife of the clubs along New Orleans’ famous Bourbon Street in the same spirit.
Most of George Zimbel’s work is in black and white. He always works with the same type of film, loaded in the same two old Leicas. He develops his pictures in a small darkroom, and prints them with a couple of vintage enlargers.
George Zimbel continues to produce new work and print previously unseen images from his archive. His activity reflects his feeling that creative people speed up as they get older because they have a backlog of ideas and projects along with the realization that time is finite.
In 1960, Zimbel captured a black-and-white photo of John and Jackie Kennedy riding through New York in an open convertible and he was right in front of the car when he took the picture. But he is concerned about the paradox of our times, when cameras are everywhere, but so are gatekeepers to stop the photographers from using one. That’s not what Zimbel signed up for when he began doing street photography in New York in the 1940s, some of which has shown up in the exhibition.
Born in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1929, Zimbel left the United States in the early 1970s protesting Vietnam war and settled in Price Edward Island in Canada. He has been living and working in Montreal since the early 1980s. Though his Montreal works were not exhibited, but he has huge collection of street photos of Montreal from three decades. There is snow in a lot of them, and probably not just because Montreal has long winters. Snow can have magical effects in black-and-white, and people walking in the stuff leave photogenic patterns.
Zimbel also appears in a forthcoming film called ‘Zimbelism’, and has a new book out, called Momento – ‘a word I made up’, meant to suggest two other words without committing to either one. The images are arranged in linked pairs. An intense portrait of Montreal dancer Margie Gillis in action, for instance, faces an older shot of a little girl twirling out her skirt in a private reverie. A lot of Zimbel’s pairings are sweet like that, drawing common links between people from different times, places and situations.
Zimbel’s works have been shown in several galleries and museums, as part of solo exhibitions, including retrospectives. His photographs are found in many museum collections, notably the Museum of Modern Arts in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Valencia Institute of Modern Art, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the National Gallery of Canada and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
In an era of increased manipulation of the photographic image by computer technology, Zimbel’s commitment to the ‘straight’ photograph has become stronger. He sees the early 21st century as a period in which classic photography will have it’s last flowering.
‘George S. Zimbel: A Humanist Photographer’ – the title was vividly reflected in all the exhibited photographs. The opportunity to see the magical black-and-white works of the pioneer of street photography, humanist, classical photographer Zimbel was a unique experience for me, which I will nourish for long.