Larry Fink

Larry Fink studied with Lisette Model

Larry Fink was born on 11 March 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were the lawyer Bernard Fink and political activist Sylvia Caplan Fink who campaigned against nuclear weapons and for the rights of older people, and his younger sister Elizabeth Fink (1945-2015) also became a successful lawyer and gained widespread notoriety for her role in the trials of the Attica Maximum Security Prison revolt in 1971. Larry Fink thus grew up in a very politically positioned environment and described himself as “a Marxist from Long Island”. He started his studies at the New School for Social Research in New York where he also received tuition from the famous photographer Lisette Model (1901-1983). She recognised his talent for photography and encouraged him to pursue his work. He also taught at various institutions: Yale University School of Art (1977-1978), Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture (1978.1983), Parsons School of Design, New York University, and also Bard College since 1986. 

Lively and intimate portraits of society

Larry Fink achieved great fame in the 1970s with his series Social Graces, which presented the society life of Manhattan’s upper class in comparison with the everyday life of rural Pennsylvanian workers. The Museum of Modern Art in New York dedicated a solo exhibition to the series in 1979, and the New York Times spoke of an exploration of “two radically divergent world” and “agonisingly intimate glimpses” into real human life. These true-to-life, unvarnished pictures became a trademark of Larry Fink. He photographed for many years at the Oscar’s party for Vanity Fair, sometimes choosing idiosyncratic perspectives and even intentionally cutting off the head of one person. Sometimes the subjects appear so alienated because of the glaring flash and enhanced contrast that they can hardly be recognised. Larry Fink’s pictures are not about the individual people but the habitus of entire social classes. 

Many black and white pictures and few colours

Larry Fink photographs mostly in black and white, but in 2001 produced a series of satirical colour pictures for the New York Times Magazine in which models took on the roles of former president George W. Bush and his cabinet ministers, modelled on paintings by the Weimar painters Max Beckmann (1884-1950), Otto Dix (1891-1969) and George Grosz (1893-1959). The planned release was cancelled because of the 11th September 2001 attacks, but was held later in the summer of 2004 under the title The Forbidden Pictures: A political Tableau in the PowerHouse Gallery in New York. Larry Fink has received prizes and awards for his photographic work, including two Guggenheim Fellowships (1976, 1979), and an honorary doctorate from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit in 2002. 

Larry Fink lives and works in New York.