RUTH ORKIN: PHOTOGRAPHER

Here's (above) a poster you've no doubt seen before. Can you guess the photographer's name? Good for you if you guessed Robert Doisneau, the famous photographer of street life in Paris, but...no, it's not by him.

It was shot by an American, Ruth Orkin, for a photo essay called "American Girl in Italy." I looooove Orkin's work, and would like to try something a little bit similar.  I can't afford models so I'll try to badger my friends into acting for nothing.

 She liked to shoot girls being ogled. In some places pretty women cause traffic jams just by walking across the street.

Geez, we men are such horndogs! I think this picture was taken by Eisenstadt.

You can't rely on candids for shots like this (above). This picture is probably Orkin's and it appears to have been staged. Even so, it looks like it was insufficiently planned. Seeing misfires like this gives me a heightened appreciation of the pictures that worked.

BTW, notice the rider of the Vespa on the right has the same pose as the bike rider in the Italian picture at the top.

I think both Orkin and Doisneau wanted their pictures to appear to be candid, even though they often weren't. Poor Doisneaux was taken to court because his alleged models demanded money from the sale of the posters, even though I don't think that was part of the original agreement. The case dragged on for years and was said to have put gray hairs on the man. I wonder if Orkin had a similar problem.