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by A. Sickels
At age eighty-six, the documentary-photographer Vivian Cherry continues to hit the streets of New York with her camera, capturing ordinary people in their everyday lives and turning the moments into extraordinary pictures. A bright-eyed woman with Leftist views, Cherry is committed to her vision, and to seeking out the truth through photographs. On a hot afternoon in August, she spoke to me in her East Side apartment, occasionally looking over to make sure I was eating the cherries and edamame she had put out for me.
Cherry first
started photographing in the 1940s, when she was in her early
twenties; however, it has only been within the last few years
that she is finally getting
the recognition she deserves. In 2000, Cherry had a one-person photography
exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Though she has been taking pictures
for over fifty years, this show was her first major exhibit. Brooklyn Museum
photography curator Barbara Millsetin called her "an unsung heroine of
photography."
Cherry was born in 1920 on 118th Street to Russian immigrants, and grew up in the Bronx. She never thought she would be a photographer – since she was a kid, she had always wanted to be a dancer. As a young woman, she danced in night clubs and Broadway musicals. When her knees began to give her trouble, she stopped temporarily and looked for other work. Though Cherry had no prior knowledge of photography, the war was on, and there were new jobs open to women. She learned how to print, and found work as a darkroom technician.
Game
of guns, 1940s |
I asked her what inspired her to first get a camera. "While I was printing,
I was looking at the photographs, and I kept studying them, and I thought,
Well, I could do this too. So I got a camera," she said with a smile. For a
while, Cherry returned to dance, performing in a Broadway revival of "Showboat."
When she wasn’t performing, she would go out with her camera and take photographs.
Cherry spent her social time with other dancers, artists, and writers, all
of whom were just scraping by. There was a sense of community among them,
and they were united in their politics. Cherry felt deeply disturbed by what
was happening in the U.S. "It was a terrible period," she said, recalling
the pre-Civil Rights racism. The cast of "Showboat" was half white and
half Black, and Cherry and a few of the other dancers formed a small group
to
raise money
to fight the segregation in the South. But of course, racism wasn’t only
limited to the South. Cherry recalled one night after a performance of "Showboat,"
she went out with one of the other dancers, who was Black, and they were
not
admitted into a New York City club.
By 1946, Cherry left dancing to devote herself to photography. "I sort of a
made a choice," she stated. "I decided I liked photographing. And also,
I began to think, what am I doing dancing? War is on, it’s a terrible period.
I think that I might be more productive, or my life might be more meaningful,
if I did photojournalism."
Tearing
down of the 3rd avenue L, 1940s |
In the era of humanistic street photography, Cherry was one of a handful of
women street photographers. She worked on many photo-essay assignments for
major magazines, and in her free time, walked the streets of New York searching
for her own subjects. Some of her most memorable photographs were self-assigned,
including the demolition of the 3rd Avenue El line, and the startling series,
shot in 1947, that depicts a group of kids in East Harlem who are playing at
adult violence – aiming
real-looking guns at each other and staging "lynchings," including one
picture of a Black youth who is pretending to be lynched.
For a short time, Cherry was a member of the famous photographic group the
Photo League, where she was granted a scholarship and studied under Sid Grossman.
The Photo League was formed by professional photographers in the 1930s to
teach and support the art of photography, but it was eventually banned for
being a left-wing organization. Cherry remembers the years of McCarthyism
as a frightening period in American history. Many of her friends were followed
and harassed by the FBI. She had many good friends who had no choice but
to leave the country. "There was a lot of fear," she recalled.
Cherry went to Europe for a year with her first husband. "We were really broke,"
she remembers, "and we met an American who loaned us money to come back."
But when Cherry came back to the states, she felt that "I had to start all
over again." She
traveled around the U.S., shooting photographs on assignments, and then in
1957, she had a baby. She stopped taking pictures.
She admits that part of the reason she quit was to take care of her child.
But she also points out that many of the magazines she had worked for were
no longer in existence. There was also another reason: "I think I quit because
I didn’t like what I was doing. . . I had said at the beginning that I would
stop photographing if I was unhappy with what I was doing."
Cherry went on a twenty-year hiatus from photography. Then one day, two decades
later, she picked up her camera again. This time, for the first time, she
shot in color. "I started to like it again. I started to learn all over again,
and I was getting excited about it." Her eyes brightened as she told me,
"I still feel that way now."
Over the span of her career, Cherry published photographs in a long list of places, including Ebony, Redbook, Amerika, Colliers, and Life. She shot photographs in Brooklyn, the Lower East Side, Harlem, Times Square, and also the rural South and Mexico. She documented Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker, the Navajo in New Mexico and Mexico, and coal miners and their working conditions.
When pressed to find a common theme in her work, Cherry said, "I tend to look
at the underside of life." She laughs. "Maybe that’s where I think
I belong." A
few years ago, she shot a color series on New York tattoo parlors, attending
several of the conventions. Now she has returned to black and white, and
spends a lot of time documenting what is left on the Lower East Side.
Cherry shoots with a sensitive spirit and sharp eye. To be a street photographer,
one has to be able to make a decision in a split-second and have an intuitive
sense for the right moment. I asked Cherry what she wanted her photographs
to convey. "I think a photograph should be a good photograph," she explained.
"It should be interesting, and in a sense, beautiful, no matter what the
subject is."
If she were younger, Cherry says she would like to "go where things are happening,
the war zones." She is disappointed by the political apathy of the country,
and fears that there is not much resistance to the current conservative ideology.
"During the Vietnam War, there was a draft, so everyone was involved." Now
she says that people don’t want to know what is going on – not with the Iraq
war, or the racism against Muslims, or the horrors of Guantanamo.
She partly blames the media – people are not getting a chance to see the truth.
Yet, she also wonders, if people realize what is going on, then, "Are they
willing to get up and fight for it?"
Regarding the future of photographers, Cherry believes fancy, expensive equipment
is not important. "It’s really what you see, and what your eye shows."
She fears that today, photographers and journalists are afraid of showing
the
truths.
In the future, Cherry hopes to publish a book of her work. She is also working
on a book project on Dorothy Day. "I’m back to where I was – I practice
all the time. If I go out and I don’t get anything, I still feel like I’m
practice. It’s still exciting, like it was at the beginning." As for
the future, she says, "I hope that I can take more pictures. … I hope
my photographs are good enough to remember me by."
Cherry is proof that it is never to late to make an artistic debut. The power and beauty of her photographs is inspiring. For over a half-century, Cherry has focused the lens on people and places that are often overlooked or marginzalized in society. Both Cherry and her photographs are important sources of history. With each passing year, there will be fewer and fewer people who actually lived through the Depression, McCarthyism, and the Civil Rights Movement. Cherry was there for all of it, and she has many important stories that we could learn from -- to figure out where we are now, and where we are headed.
You can check out Vivian’s photographs at www.viviancherry.com. |
