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Larry Fink

Hands On/A Passionate Life of Looking

Published by powerHouse Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

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About The Book

Larry Fink: Hands On / A Passionate Life of Looking is a 432-page encapsulation of Larry Fink’s master photos accompanied by insightful essays from Lucy Sante, Stephen Shore, Graydon and Ash Carter, Yolanda Cuomo, and publisher Daniel Power. Larry Fink: Hands On / A Passionate Life of Looking offers an unprecedented overview of Fink’s career and his profound influence in the Lisette Model world (under whom he was mentored) on photography and on broader American culture.

Celebrated as a photographer of the people, Larry Fink is known for his impromptu, street-style black-and-white photographs that delve into societal complexities, class divides, and the essence of human connection. Throughout his career, which spanned from the 1950s to his passing in November 2023, Fink documented a broad spectrum of subjects, spanning from the glamorous scenes of Vanity Fair Oscar parties to the streets of impoverished Philadelphia neighborhoods. Throughout his life, he dedicated himself to authentically portraying the human experience across diverse communities.

Larry Fink: Hands On / A Passionate Life of Looking presents a comprehensive exploration of Fink's remarkable career for the first time. Over his lifetime, Fink meticulously stored his images in boxes, where they often remained forgotten for months or even years. However, during the pandemic, Fink dedicated himself to combing through these boxes with the dream of creating a retrospective of his work: photographs and beat-style poetry. This endeavor gained momentum when Daniel Power, founder of powerHouse Books and a longtime collaborator of Fink, photographers Jonno Rattman and Jamie Cabreza, and art director Yolanda Cuomo joined Fink in his archival journey. They unearthed a trove of unseen treasures, resulting in a meticulously curated 432-page testament to Fink's unparalleled creativity alongside his trademark jazz poetry.

Fink’s vast repertoire includes photographs of celebrities like Jay-Z and Meryl Streep, protesters marching down streets, and boxers in the ring (Including a look into his other books, Boxing (1998), Runway (2000), Social Graces (2001), Forbidden Pictures (2004), and The Beats (2014)). This book reaches even further by including non-human subjects like intimate portraits of insects in their natural habitat and dead animals grotesquely displayed. Larry Fink's distinctive signature – his raw and experimental approach, his spontaneity, his interest in class commentary, and his intimate perspective – are presented in a manner unprecedented in his body of work, applied to subject matter viewers have rarely seen Fink tackle. Each image, painstakingly selected, offers a poignant insight into Fink's unwavering commitment to his craft and insatiable curiosity about the world.

About The Author

Larry Fink has had one man shows at The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Musée de la Photographie in Belgium, and the Musee de l'Elysee in Switzerland, amongst others. He shows in galleries regularly in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris, France. Along with two John Simon Guggenheim Fellowships in 1976 and 1979, and two National Endowment for the Arts, Individual Photography Fellowships in 1978 and 1986, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the College for Creative Studies, College of Art and Design, Detroit, 2002. A career educator, Larry Fink has been teaching for the last 25 years as a professor of photography at Bard College. Larry's work has appeared in top publications such as Vanity Fair, W, GQ, Detour, New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker, and Fink has published numerous monographs including: Social Graces (Aperture, 1984; powerHouse, 2001), Boxing (powerHouse, 1997), Runway (powerHouse, 2000), The Forbidden Pictures (powerHouse, 2004), Larry Fink (Phaidon, 2005), Primal Elegance (Lodima Press, 2006), Somewhere There's Music (Damiani Editore, 2006), Attraction and Desire: 50 Years in Photography (The Sheldon Art Galleries 2011), and The Vanities: Hollywood Parties 2000–2009 (Schirmer/Mosel 2011).

Product Details

  • Publisher: powerHouse Books (October 28, 2024)
  • Length: 432 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781648230462

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