Events

This day proposes to approach the work of visual artists, photographers or sculptors, through four documentaries.

• I Found Christian B., by Alain Fleischer. Disappeared in 2021, Christian Boltanski appears under the sharp gaze of filmmaker, writer and photographer Alain Fleischer.
• Dani Karavan, the artist of the great outdoors, by Barak Heymann. The Israeli director Barak Heymann captures all the humor and genius of Dani Karavan by traveling with him the world and his monumental sculptures, a few months before his death.
• Last Stop Coney Island: The Life and Photography of Harold Feinstein, by Andy Dunn. Andy Dunn introduces us to the little-known work and luminous personality of American photographer Harold Feinstein.
• This Movie is a Gift, by Anja Salomonowitz. The studio of one of the major figures of new realism, Daniel Spoerri, comes under the benevolent gaze of Austrian director Anja Salomonowitz and her son Oskar.

Streets of New York exhibition catalogue

New York City is the star of the Hofstra University Museum of Art exhibition New York, New York: Photographs from the Collection, a showcase of black-and-white images from 1932-2008, curated by photographer Susannah Ray. The exhibition features works by photographers such as Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Andreas Feininger, Harold Feinstein, Donna Ferrato, Joel Meyerowitz, Dorothy Norman, and Garry Winogrand.

“The works in this exhibition capture New York City in its infinite complexity and variety, celebrating its iconic architecture, everyday signage, authentic faces, and dynamic street scenes.” said Museum Director Karen T. Albert.

The catalogue of the exhibition.

Press Release: Photographs celebrate iconic New York City imagery.

After two remarkable first exhibitions in 2017 and 2018, we complete what we had announced as a trilogy, with this exhibition entitled “Life as it was”.

If the first part of the retrospective devoted to the American artist who died in 2015 honored the photographer’s contagious optimism as he depicted the youth and carefree spirit of the post-war era, the second showed a selection of photographs taken between 1964 and 1988, immortalizing particular moments in the lives of New Yorkers. This new selection of photographs, made between 1949 and 1988, completes a real immersion in the daily life of his contemporaries, depicting life as it was, with a special focus on these unique characters of all ages, all social conditions, and all backgrounds the photographer liked to shoot.

This new selection of 16 black and white photographs, overwhelmingly joyful and human, transports us into what the artist defined as “a small photographic journey bearing witness to the beauty and mystery of this human life” and will be complemented throughout the exhibition by a series of screenings of the documentary entitled “Last Stop Coney Island: The Life & Photography of Harold Feinstein” made in 2019 by film director Andy Dunn.

Finally, a color photograph, never before shown, closes the exhibition. In this image, a true gem, between perfect composition and exceptional play of light, which is reminiscent of Hopper, Harold Feinstein depicts solitude, as if the artist wanted to show us through the use of color, what the modern world was to become.

• Media Coverage
• 2020, Air Mail Arts Intel Report, Harold Feinstein: Boardwalks, Beaches & Boulevards

The west coast premiere of the documentary film Last Stop Coney Island: The Life and Photography of Harold Feinstein took place on February 16, 2020 at the Museum of Photographic Arts and again on February 17 at a local cinema. Both screenings included Q & A with Judith Thompson, Director of the Harold Feisntein Photography Trust and Deborah Klochko.

The special viewing of Harold Feinstein photographs took place from 6:15-7:15 at MOPA’s David C. Copley Atrium as part of the San Diego Jewish Film Festival. A screening of the film followed at 7:15 with guest speaker Deborah Klochklo, Executive Director of MOPA. A second screening will took place on February 18th at The Clairemont Reading Cinema at 4:30 PM. Harold’s wife and director of the Trust, Judith Thompson, spoke at both events.

• A Conversation with director Andy Dunn and curator Carrie Scott (22min video)
• Watch Director Andy Dunn present his documentary at the Curzon Doc House theater in London
• 2019, May 17, Close Up Culture, Last Stop Coney Island: The Life And Photography Of Harold Feinstein – Film Review, J2
• 2019, July 23, Curzon Blog, Three Reasons to Watch: Last Stop Coney Island
• 2019, May 20, The Arts Desk, Last Stop Coney Island review – the life and photography of Harold Feinstein, Saskia Baron

• Photo London Events Page
• Press Release for Found: A Harold Feinstein Exhibition
• 2019, May 14, 1854, Preserving the Legacy of Harold Feinstein, Hannah Abel-Hirsch
• 2019, May 5, The Guardian, Photographer Harold Feinstein, the unsung chronicler of Coney Island, Killian Fox

• 2018, November 15, The Hollywood Reporter, Last Stop Coney Island: The Life and Photography of Harold Feinstein: Film Review, Sheri Linden

Photographs © Grayzon Dantzic, 2018

• 2018, May 24, Art Week, Graciously Yours
• 2018, May 25, Le Monde, The photographer “Harold Feinstein saw in the street a permanent ballet of grace and beauty”, Claire Gilly
• 2018, August 15, Wall Street Journal, Harold Feinstein
• 2018, June 21, Aesthetica Magazine, Feinstein: The New York Years
• L’oeil de la Photographie, Harold Feinstein, an Elegant life lover
• Dodho, Harold Feinstein ; Graciously yours
• 2018, April 08, Elle Magazine, New York is in Paris, beautiful as you’ve never seen it (thanks to photos by Harold Feinstein), Simona Marani
• 2018, June 02, LFI, Harold Feinstein in Paris
• Promotional Film

Odeabank, the young and innovative bank of Turkey, continues to offer world’s prominent artists to the art community in Istanbul. The works by New Yorker Harold Feinstein, named among the most accomplished photographers of the world with his works on the change of daily routines in the USA from a simple perspective, will be available at O’Art, Odeabank’s art platform. The curator will be Coşar Kulaksız.

Feinstein considered the camera as a device which gives people a new eye and “makes them free.” He photographed the daily life in the USA from a natural, simple and humanist perspective. He was interested in the common people, not in the celebrities or the splendent living in the USA. This is what is powerful about photography, artfully reflecting the lives of common people with sincerity.

Feinstein had many awards for his works spanning 60 years which reflect the iconic Coney Island as a space of uninterrupted emotion and life. 48 of these works will be available for exhibition at O’Art until June 30th.

2017, May 22, Yenisafak, Feinstein’s legacy is in Istanbul

Broadcast TV Coverage

• 2017, Februay 27, The Eye of Photography, Harold Feinstein Retrospective, 1940s-1950s: Contagious Optimism
• 2017, February 03, Washington Post, Born in the front car of the Cyclone roller coaster, a photographer who truly adored Coney Island, Chloe Coleman
• 2017, February 01, The Guardian, Coney Island, baby! The romance of mid-century New York – in pictures
• 2017, January 06, Vogue, The exhibitions you need to see in 2017, Manon Garrigues
• 2017, February 11, L’Express, Harold Feinstein, one of the pioneers of street photography, Jacques Brunel
• 2017, February 18, L’Obs, LARGE FORMAT. Harold Feinstein’s Exuberant America
• 2017, February 12, Liberation, Harold Feinstein, the sharpness of a humanist gaze, Gilles Renault
• 2017, January 10, Aesthetica Magazine, Harold Feinstein: Contagious Optimism
• 2017, January 31, Reponses Photo, Harold Feinstein: contagious optimism, Caroline Mallet
• 2017, February, 02, LFI, Harold Feinstein Retrospective
• 2017, February 11, Monovisions, Harold Feinstein – The early years (1940’s – 1950’s): contagious optimism

Harold Feinstein: Retrospective was the largest exhibition of a single artist ever mounted at the legendary Blue Sky gallery, including both their large and small exhhibition spaces. The exhibition included a dialgoue between Sean Corcoran, Curator of Photography at the Museum for the City of New York and Julia Dolan, the Minor White curator of Photography at the Portland Art Museum. The program was entitled Harold Feinstein’s legacy and contributions to the medium.

2016, August 17, Oregon Arts Watch, Harold Feinstein’s camera was always at the ready, Paul Sutinen

This exhibition included the works of five Photo League photographers who were students or close colleagues of Sid Grossman.

They included: Morris Huberland (1909-2003), Leon Levinstein (1910-1988), Sid Grossman, Rebecca Lepkoff (1916-2014), Arthur Leipzig (1918- 2014), Sy Kattelson (1923), David Vestal (1924-2013), Harold Feinstein (1931-2015)

This memorial evening marked the first anniversary of Harold Feinstein’s passing and included a presentation by Sarah Kennel, curator of photography at the Peabody Essex Museum. It was coordinated by Sweethaven Gallery and Blue Wave Gallery.

• 2016, June 23, The Boston Globe, Magnifying a photographer’s lasting impressions, James Sullivan
• Curator Sarah Kennel discusses the photography of Harold Feinstein

“Celebrating Feinstein’s Lasting Impression! “: From the Boston Globe

Gallery FIFTY ONE is pleased to announce its summer exhibition “Backstory”: a group show about back-view portraits. Unlike the traditional, frontal portraiture where the facial expression gives away a straightforward identity; portraits shot from behind are more narrative due to its anonymity. Here, the signifiers of the frame are key players to resolve the mystery of the back and telling its story. The work of different photographers will be juxtaposed, taken over the past half century, in different continents, in studio or urban settings. It will give a glimpse of the visual and the imaginary language of the back portrait.

Press Release

Photographs in this exhibition feature prints acquired during the past year, as well as promised gifts that will contribute to the expansion of the FAM’s photography collection.

Visitors will see different modes of expression on view here: Lucien Aigner’s photojournalistic pictures of the New York scene; Harold Feinstein’s personal records of Army life in the Korean War and of Coney Island; S.B. Walker’s unique take on Walden Pond; Garry Winogrand’s iconic New York street pictures; Al Fisher’s compelling studies of Boston street performers; Victor Landweber’s surreal images from his Artist to Artist series; and Carl Chiarenza’s elegantly structured abstractions.

Visual layouts of the exhibition

Harold Feinstein’s Coney Island opened at the Leica Gallery LA on September 3rd, 2015. It was the first exhibition after Harold’s death on June 20th and consisted of 25 of Feinstein’s iconic Coney Island images from 1946 – 1995. The show, which will hang throughout September, also included Al Satterwite‘s aRound New York series.

See also:

“Harold Feinstein’s Coney Island” Opens at the Leica Gallery LA

Harold and his Leica

Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland is the first major exhibition to use visual art as a lens to explore the lure that Coney Island exerted on American culture over a period of 150 years. An extraordinary array of artists viewed Coney Island as a microcosm of the American experience, from its beginnings as a watering hole for the wealthy, through its transformation into an entertainment mecca for the masses, to the closing of Astroland Amusement Park following decades of urban decline.

Coney Island features more than 140 objects—paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, posters, architectural artifacts, and carousel animals—supplemented by ephemera and film clips. This is the first exhibition in the museum’s newly expanded and renovated special exhibition galleries.

Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland is curated by Dr. Robin Jaffee Frank, Chief Curator and Krieble Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture.

The Cyclone!The Hot Dogs!The Art!, The New York Times, November 18, 2015.

• 2014, December 16, Arts ATL, Review: Lumière’s “View from the Street” a lively dialogue between Harold Feinstein, Vivian Maier, Virginie Kippelen

The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography is pleased to present a retrospective exhibition of the recognized master photographer Harold Feinstein. Most of his photographs are devoted to his native Coney Island, the peninsula, whose appearance had been constantly changing under the influence of immigrants from different parts of the world. The beach is a figurative playground where America had been maturing as a nation. Nevertheless Feinstein’s breadth and exposure are far wider that urban landscape softened by the presence of the ocean, the beach and the bright sun. His work covers a wide array of subjects, including portraits and urban scenes. His first retrospective exhibition in Moscow also features some of his best known street photographs as well as his lesser known, but recently released images from his life as an army draftee during the Korean War and some nudes, still-life and photomontages.

• Independent Media, Harper’s Bazaar Art at Harold Feinstein Exhibition
• Additional Media

On December 12, 2012, a full house gathered at Aperture Gallery in New York to celebrate the launch of Harold Feinstein:A Retrospective published by Nazraeli Press. Harold was joined by photo historian A.D.Coleman and Sean Corcoran, curator of photography at the Museum for the City of New York for a panel discussion about Harold’s work. In addition dozens of Harold’s students from the New York area came out. The book was later selected as one of the best photo books of the year by Photo District News for the year 2012.

Grunts is military vernacular for United States Army or Marine foot soldiers, the mass of devoted men and women who make up the bulk of the armed services. Commemorating the 70th anniversary of the bombing at Pearl Harbor, Panopticon Gallery presents Grunts: The G.I. Experience, curated by Jim Fitts.

Harold Feinstein’s friendship with the New York Photo League founder, Sid Grossman, resulted in him not being ranked as an official armed serviced photographer. Therefore, he documented from the viewpoint of a fellow G.I. serving in Korea. Photographs show draftees being inducted, and soldiers on troopships, reading, sleeping and marching. The body of work also contains images of the historical integration of the armed services.

A selection of vintage photographs by Robert Capa and numerous press photographs from WWII compliment Feinstein’s work. The pictures are memoirs of the common American soldier during WWII. The majority of the images focus on the events between battles, though some illustrate combat.

Grunts, blog post by curator Jim Fitts,

“Seeing GIs fight the good fight“, Mark Feeney, The Boston Globe, December 13, 2011.

The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951 is the first comprehensive museum survey in three decades of the famed photography group’s work, history, artistic significance, and cultural, social, and political milieu. Drawing from two extensive Photo League museum collections housed at The Jewish Museum in New York City and the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, the exhibition includes 150 vintage photographs by more than sixty Photo League members.

It was a gala evening at the Exchange Center in downtown Boston on October 2, 2011. Hundreds of people came to see Griffin Museum’s annual Focus Awards and honor four awardees, among them Harold Feinstein who, at 80, received the first ever Living Legend award. In true form Feinstein regaled the crowd with stories and bawdy humor.

Other honorees included Alison Nordstrom, curator of the George Eastman House for Lifetime Achievement and Eileen Gittens the CEO of Blurb, who received the Rising Star Award.

“Master” appropriately summarizes his 70 year career in photography.

Selection of his work at age 19 by Edward Steichen for MoMA’s permanent collection, membership in the Photo League, essays in major publications, nine books and presence in other notable museum collections testify to the broad recognition of Harold Feinstein.

Lumière has curated this new exhibition – the 40th in its series on accomplished artists – with selections that highlight his creativity, diversity and consistent excellence. From black and white images of the urban landscape to color still lifes of flora and seashells, Feinstein’s prints radiate energy.

Feinstein had his first exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1954 and his first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1957. That year, New York Times photo writer, Jacob Deschin, declared Feinstein’s work “the new pictorialism,” and a year later H.M. Kinzer of Photography Annual said:

At the age of 26, Harold Feinstein has reached the point in his photographic career when the word ‘master’ is being applied to his prints by some ordinarily cautious critics.

Wynn Bullock and Harold Feinstein influenced hundreds of photographers in the history of photography. Feinstein was considered by the photo world as something of a child prodigy, and Bullock decided to become a photographer when he was 42. Their works have been included in over 90 major museum collections around the world and have received substantial critical acclaim during their lives.They also published numerous books and their names appeared in all standard histories.They have in common a reverence to the natural world, and a belief that it can reveal its complexity and mysterious order to the patient observer.The consequent breadth of their investigation of the medium makes them the most experimental photographers in photography history.they reveal familiar things in such shocking, beautiful and honest ways.Those mysterious images make manifest their exploration of the concept of the relationship between linguistic study, space, human beings and nature, and their meanings to photography.The works have deepened our view on natureʼs evolution.

Curated by A.D. Coleman

“Seeing the life in which we live: Photographs of Harold Feinstein” Curatorial statement, A.D. Coleman

Bond Street Gallery’s inaugural exhibition is Coney Island of the Heart, centered on the work of Harold Feinstein. It celebrates the history of Coney Island as the playground of the working-class melting pot through exuberant and singular images of the Jews, Italians, African-Americans, Russians, Puerto Ricans, and others who have played there. Other photographers on display include: Bruce Davidson, Bruce Gilden, Sid Grossman, Harold Roth, and Henri Silberman.

Candace Dwan and Nailya Alexander Galleries are pleased to announce a summer exhibition of photographs, About Love, opening on July 6, 2006.

About Love will include photographs by both famous and less known artists as Kristoffer Albrecht, Richard Avedon, Edouard Boubat, Harold Feinstein, Larry Fink, Lori Grinker, Chester Higgins, Leon Levenstein, Archie Lieberman, Mathieu Borysevicz, James Nicholls, Anna Norton, Lucian Perkins, Pentti Sammallahti, Igor Savchenko, Gerald Slota, Sabine Weiss, Yu Zhang, and Alexander Zhitomirsky.

About Love explores a romantic notion of love through images made in the eighty years from 1926‐2006. It is a photographic journey that we hope will draw the viewer into the passion, sweetness and joy of love.

This exhibition shares some of master photographer Harold Feinstein’s work from the permanent collection, which contains 52 vintage black and white photographs from the 1940s to the 1970s.

• 2001, February 04, The New York Times, ART REVIEWS; Capturing the Seen and Unseen in Photographs, Phyllis Braff

• 2001, January 08, The New York Times, Street Photos That Turn Viewers Into Storytellers, Dominick Lombardi

The Julie Saul Gallery is pleased to announce a photographic exhibition of flowers by Harold Feinstein. The show in our second gallery will include a small selection from the more than one hundred images which have recently been compiled in a beautiful hardbound edition by Bullfinch Press. Noted photography critic A.D. Coleman has written an insightful introduction to the book. These stunning color portraits of flowers have been digitally enhanced and fill the picture field with sensual, and bold but delicate forms. They combine the attention to structure and form of Karl Blossfelt’s botanical studies with the seductive color and obsessive detail of 17th century Dutch still life painting.

Harold Feinstein began taking pictures as a teenager in 1946. He worked in black and white, on the street, and was particularly drawn to Coney Island as a subject. Edward Steichen, director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art became an early advocate. In addition to MoMA, other institutions which own and have exhibited Feinstein’s work include the International Center of Photography, the George Eastman House and the Museum of the City of New York.

Signed copies of the book will be available at the reception.

The Computerworld Smithsonian Award is given out annually to individuals who have used technology to produce beneficial changes for society. Nominees are proposed by a group of 100 CEOs of information technology companies. The award has been given since 1989.

Harold Feinstein was nominated by Epson, Inc. Feinstein created his spectacular scanography images using Epson equipment. The company called his work a Celebration of Life using Digital Imaging, highlighting the contribution of his recent book One Hundred Flowers. They described it as ” an Audobon-like volume of flower images produced exclusively with digital techniques demonstrates a degree of artistic control over the color process that is revolultionizing the possibilities of color photography.”

WORCESTER, Mass. – A Garden of Psalms: Photographs and Words, an exhibition by Harold Feinstein, will run from Tuesday, Jan. 26 to Feb. 28, in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery at Holy Cross. There will be an opening reception on Jan. 26, from 4:30-6 p.m. in the gallery, located in O’Kane Hall.

Feinstein will talk about his work in the gallery on Tuesday, Feb. 16, at 12 p.m. Admission to all events is free and open to the public.

“A Garden of Psalms” is a series of digital images of flowers and other plant forms accompanied by brief “songs.” These color prints (variously Kodak Pegasus, IRIS and Epson prints) are startling in their intensity and, at the same time, deeply meditative. They offer the viewer a sharply focused distallation of the complexity of the natural world with all its variety, rationality and accident.

Famous as a photographer of New York City street life, he is perhaps best known for his photographs of Coney Island taken over the course of five decades. Other black and white portfolios include photographs from the Korean War as well as landscapes. The subjects of his color work range from the natural forms of flowers and seashells to the created form of architecture and the sculpture of Auguste Rodin.

His work has been widely exhibited and published. Recent exhibitions include Metropolis – City of Light at New York’s Municipal Art Society in 1995 and A Coney Island of the Heart at the International Center of Photography in 1990. His photo essays have been published in a number of major periodicals, including Life, Audubon, and Connoisseur. By the time he was 19, his work had been purchased by Edward Steichen for the permanent collection of many international institutions.

This exhibition presents a selective overview of the defining moments in documentary and photojournalistic practice from the 1880s to the present day. The show features over 25 photographers, including Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Marion Post Wolcott, W. Eugene Smith, and Mary Ellen Mark, who seek to chronicle the human condition in all of its vagaries.

This exhibition looks at forty-four years of photographs of Coney Island captured by Harold Feinstein. A Coney Island Kind of Heart looks at an ethnic melting pot of New Yorkers, colorful fortune tellers, hot dog vendors, babies, grandmothers, and carnival queens.

This retrospective show from the University’s permanent collection, features 73 photographs from Feinstein’s oeuvre over the past 40 years, from Coney Island to Vermont to the Korean War, in addition to color dye transfer prints of flowers Feinstein calls Sky Flowers. The artist will be at the opening and give and opening talk to the public in the evening.

1957, Camera Notes, The New York Times, August 4, 1951, Jacob Deschin, P. X 9.

“Five Man Show”, The New York Times, Jacob Deschin, Sunday, May 13, 1951