Tag Archives: Ryerson Image Centre Toronto

10.18.15
by

“WEEGEE: MURDER IS MY BUSINESS” – NEW YORK CITY’S GANGSTERLAND IN THE 1930’S & 40’S

WEEGEE1

WEEGEE3Kamikaze photographer ARTHUR FELLIG (1899-1968), better known as WEEGEE, was born in the Ukraine, emigrated with his family to New York in 1909, worked a number of odd jobs, and then became infatuated with the ‘Naked City‘ after dark.  Fellig competed with the NYPD and the Fire Department to be the first arrival at crime scenes, his flashbulb camera at the ready. His aim was to get the picture, no matter how gruesome or bizarre, and sell it overnight to the press.WEEGEE7Weegee’s graphic and often lurid photographs of news events and crime scenes set the standard for tabloid journalism.

03.06.15
by

ANONYMOUS DONORS GIVE RYERSON UNIVERSITY AN INVALUABLE BERENICE ABBOTT ARCHIVE

ABBOTT3    <Ohio-born BERENICE ABBOTT photographed by MAN RAY>  Ryerson University’s Image Centre continues to grow. The latest gift comes from a generous circle of benefactors who want to remain anonymous. The newly acquired BERENICE ABBOTT ARCHIVE represents the entire arc of Ms. Abbott’s six-decade career. The largest and most comprehensive collection anywhere of the artist’s work, the Archive is comprised of more than 6,000 photographs and 7,000 negatives from the mid-1920’s through the 1980’s, as well as book maquettes, correspondence, business journals, personal journals and ephemera.

ABBOTT4Highlights include her early studio portraiture from Paris and New York (1926 and onwards); photographs from her seminal project Changing New York (1935-39); American landscapes, including her abandoned book project focusing on U.S. coastal highway Route 1; her final published series, A Portrait of Maine (1968); and a large selection of her innovative scientific photography.

ABBOTT5Abbott scholars will now have two destinations to study her work. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum in Cambridge, is home to many of Abbott’s papers and manuscripts, project records and other documentation, as well as a collection of her science photography, including work she did for MIT’s Physical Science Study Committee in the late 1950s.

ABBOTT1ADAM KAHAN, Vice President, University Advancement at Ryerson University: “It adds new depth to the Ryerson Image Centre collection, and advances Ryerson’s city building enterprise by further enriching TORONTO’s cultural offering.”  A future exhibition from the BERENICE ABBOTT ARCHIVE is being planned by the Ryerson Image Centre, 33 Gould Street.

ABBOTT2<BERENICE ABBOTT photographed by Hank O’Neal in 1979>