A Celebration of American Photographer Larry Fink and His Observant Eye for Social Class
“People like to have their pictures taken. Some will endure the pain of flash-blindness because recorded experience is somehow more important to them than actual experience. It is a profound aspect of our culture, this compulsion for proof. It allows me to wade into a party. Once inside, a physical bonding between them and me forms; objectivity and self-portraiture exchange places. When I walk around in a tuxedo and tap my toes, I’m a fancy dude. When I walk around Martins Creek, I’m a rolling country belly,” wrote American photographer Larry Fink in his book, Social Graces.
Fink possessed a rare quality in that he could blend into environments typically inhabited by different socioeconomic classes, and no one would bat an eye. And so in his photo series, “Social Graces”—which brought him international fame and recognition—the collection encapsulated Fink’s time documenting the crème de la crème of Manhattan society during the 1970s at fancy galas and Studio 54, as well as the lives of his neighbors (the Sabatines) in rural Martins Creek, Pennsylvania.
A selection of images from Social Graces is currently on display at Galerie Julian Sander in “Larry Fink. Tough Cookie. Early Prints from the Gerd Sander Collection.” Inside an inviting space on a busy city street in Cologne, Germany, the gallerist Sander—who knew Fink personally since his father, Gerd, represented him in New York City—has curated a robust compilation reflecting the legacy of Fink who passed away a year ago in November of 2023. This exhibition pays homage to him as a visual storyteller while honoring the palpable connection that Sander and his family shared with him.
For example, a portrait of Larry Fink hangs off to the side of the main space, closer to the office area of the gallery. Gerd Sander shot Fink in black and white—expressionless, sitting in front of an American flag with his hands in his pockets. Perhaps the casual observer might miss this detail, but its symbolic presence in the gallery is a testament to how personal the show is—not to mention how the image itself and its position portray the photographer the interloper Fink was in his professional work. He knew how to navigate interactions while keeping his distance.
Larry Fink was born in Brooklyn in 1941 to Bernard Fink (a lawyer) and Sylvia Caplan Fink (an activist) and grew up on Long Island. He studied at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, where Lisette Model became one of his mentors. “Photography starts with the projection of the photographer, his understanding of life and himself into the picture,” Model once said. Fink appeared to have taken these words to heart.
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Fink wrote that Social Graces was born out of “…rage against the privileged class—its abuses, voluptuous folds and unfulfilled lives.” Yet he highlighted that the photos “…were created in the spirit of empathy. Emotional, physical, sensual empathy. This work is political, not polemical.”
If one looks closely at many frames in the gallery space, the similarities between the classes become apparent: a common thread of happiness, sadness and isolation emerges. These people might have lived different lives, yet their universal experiences emerge in these moments: the parties, the conversations and the cigarettes. The first print hanging in the show, Jeanne Sabatine, New Year’s Eve, 1979, features a corpulent, blissful woman glaring off into the distance, on the cusp of celebration with her party hat. It sets the tone of the exhibition.
When asked about a photo that embodies the spirit of this show, Sander suggested “the picture of the two girls with the guy looking from the left side of the frame (Second Hungarian Ball, Hotel Pierre, NYC, 1978). These beautiful girls are having fun and enjoying themselves with this ominous, undefined danger of this guy who could be a nice guy. He could also be a complete creep. It’s completely ambiguous. There’s nothing there to give you any sort of context about him except that his face is that little sliver of his head in the picture.”
Sander can attest to Fink’s intuition in capturing what was happening before his eyes. After all, he has known Fink since he was a child. When he met with Observer, he spoke of a photo of himself as a baby sitting on the photographer’s lap, and Fink’s innate feeling for observation is one of the qualities Sander can remember acutely.
“He watched physical and body language,” Sander said. “These little parts that become important in creating the photograph, but also in reading people. I watched him at various events that we were [at] together. He’d go in, and he’d huddle back first, scan the room, watch people, start a conversation with one, get into a conversation with the next, pick out some kind of anecdote, make people laugh.” He added, “No one really knew: Was he a hippie? Was he an artist? Was he a hedge fund manager wearing shabby clothing? What’s the story with this guy? Then he could start photographing.”
While “Larry Fink. Tough Cookie” contains a fraction of Fink’s archive—for many years, he worked the Vanity Fair Oscar afterparties with his signature flash lighting and his photography has appeared on the pages of GQ and The New Yorker—Sander recently announced that MUUS acquired his estate.
“Larry’s work needs to be seen because it represents a real time in American history,” he said. “After he passed, there was this phase where on Instagram there were just tons of pictures that people had taken that looked like Larry Fink pictures.”
Accordingly, acclaimed film director Sofia Coppola expressed her desire to see “Tough Cookie” on Instagram. With her attention to detail in her own cinematic storytelling, she recognizes a creative kindred spirit when she sees one—and one who chronicled American history with a focused eye.
“Larry Fink. Tough Cookie. Early Prints from the Gerd Sander Collection” is on view at Galerie Julian Sander through November 30.