New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009 by Teresa Carpenter
Archive for December, 2011
Tri-Boro Barber School, 264 Bowery, Manhattan. October 24, 1935.
NYPL Notes: Man leans on striped pilaster in doorway of barber school, men look out from behind advertisements painted on window, fire escape above. Source: Changing New York.: The New York Public Library. Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. See more information about this image and others at NYPL Digital Gallery.
Photographs from this series taken by Berenice Abbott for the Federal Projects Administration. Available at NYPL. · Changing New York, 1935-1938.
Sir Cecil
Quick trip to the Museum of the City of New York to catch Cecil Beaton: The New York Years. That Sir Cecil’s work as photographer, costume designer and portraitist could be captured in a single room is amazing. But here it is, in an exhibit that is both rich and spare. Of particular interest; the shots of Wallis Simpson. Any man who could bring out the softer side of the Duchess of Windsor clearly understood difficult personalities. And Katherine Hepburn? I think he adored her celebrity but personally hated her. His gouache of her in the late Thirties makes her appear arch and prematurely old. Three decades later, when he photographed her to promote her Broadway appearance in Coco (the high point of which seems to be his own fabulous red and black dresses) she appeared, as he complained to his diary, “Far too young” to play Chanel, deeming her performance “without any magic, her timing as erratic as ever…”
(See fuller treatment of Beaton’s trials with “K.H.” running through New York Diaries: 1609-2009.)
The exhibit ends February 20. Worth seeing if only for the costumes for the Metropolitan Opera’s performances of La Traviata and Turandot. No fudging here. They’re lush and perfect to the last stitch. Overall, evocative of pastry. On the trip home I bought a cupcake with buttercream icing and ate it before dinner.
