Harry Lapow Explained

Harry Lapow (February 6, 1909 – September 14, 1982)[1] [2] was an American photographer and graphic designer.

Career

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1909, Lapow took art classes while in high school and after graduation, aged 15 he trained in commercial art before in 1934[3] he moved to New York City to work for package designer Martin Ullman and married Ruth Benzer in February that year.[4] Lapow registered for the US Army draft in October 1940.

Until 1957 he and seven others operated as Koodin-Lapow, with Ben Koodin directing selling, and he in charge of packaging design[5] for R. H. Macys, Wamsutta Mills, Seagram, Startex[6] and Rokeach, among others.[7] [8] He set up on his own as Harry Lapow Associates in 1960, seeking more freedom for his photography,[9] and added clients including Peter Pan Foundations.[10]

After the War as the business expanded they hired young Cooper Union graduates Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast and Edward Sorel.[11] He was one of 13 founding members of the Package Designers Council.[12] In a 1957 newspaper article he described trends of visibility and 'buy-me' designs in packaging as overworked clichés, advocating instead for consideration by designers of 'bagability,' easy opening and dispensing of contents, portability and 'giftability.'[13] By the mid-1960s he was corporate design director with the firm Lehn & Fink Products Corporation[14] [15] from 1962 and wrote articles for the journal Packaging Design on a variety of topics including the use of flocked paper,[16] the role of research in packaging design,[17] and expressed concerns about the 1967 US Federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, complaining that it would "play havoc with our designs."[18]

Photographer

Lapow took courses with his near-contemporaries Lisette Model[19] and Sid Grossman at The New School for Social Research together with his good friend, Leon Levinstein, using a second-hand 6x6 twin-lens reflex Ciroflex camera that he received for his forty-third birthday in 1952, Asked what he was looking for to photograph, he replied "I don't look for anything; the photograph looks for me. When I see something I have to shoot it."[20]

During the 1960s Lapow studied painting with Evsa Model, Lisette's husband, but he continued photographing, mostly at Coney Island, in spare time available from his career in package design;

Coney Island is like a piece of candy for me. I've been to a lot of beaches--Miami, Morocco, Sardinia, Atlantic City--but Coney Island is the amazing place. I don't know why, and I don't want to know why, but these people appeal to me.[21]
Among his several portrait subjects was Victor Perera,[22] and he traveled to photograph desert people of North Africa, Crow people in Montana, Canada's Gaspé fishermen, farmers in Sicily, and Sardinian shepherds, with work published in Industrial Design magazine, New York magazine,[23] the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Recognition

For over 25 years, between 1952 and 1977, Lapow took photographs of Coney Island,[24] as both Model and Grossman did, and as other significant photographers had, including Weegee.[25]

One of Lapow's early photographs of an Italian wedding on the beach at Coney Island was selected by Edward Steichen for The Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art,[26] that toured the world and was seen by 9 million visitors. Jerry Mason's follow-up publication The Family of Women of 1979 included Lapow's photograph of an older woman wheeling her bicycle.[27]

He traveled widely, photographing in small fishing villages in Nova Scotia, farming and fishing communities in the Gaspé Peninsula of Québec, a Crow Nation reservation in Montana, the Magdalen Islands, Prince Edward Island, and later, in Morocco, Sardinia, and Italy.

Helen Gee gave Lapow his first exhibition at her Limelight Gallery in Greenwich Village in 1959. He also showed in group exhibitions at A Photographer's Gallery, New York, Washington, DC, Photokina in Cologne, Vu Par Cultural Center in Paris, and at Expo 67, Montreal, Canada. In 1970 he held a joint show at Ashland College devoted to Coney Island with poet Mark McCloskey in which the latter showed verse in black-on-gray panels interspersed by Lapow's monochrome photographs.[28] The show followed another early that year which included the two at the State University College at Potsdam Lapow presented lectures on his work, including on at the State University College in 1975,[29] and at Tompkins Cortland Community College in 1978.[30]

In 1978 Dover Publications published a book of his Coney Island work, Coney Island Beach People, one hundred and thirty-eight full-page or slightly cropped medium-format images arranged for their visual connections rather than chronologically.[31] [32] [33] In his introduction, David Toor writes that;

Harry Lapow concentrates on individuals and small groups. He uses the sand, sea, sky and the shape of the individual to create negative space, abstract form, striking composition. He emphasizes the interplay and repetition of shapes created by the subjects and the background, the shadows on the sand, the reflections in the water.

John Gabree, reviewing it for Newsday remarks that;

Sometimes the human beings who inhabit Harry Lapow's Coney Island look less like people than like geological phenomena, mountains especially, or rocks strewn on the beach. Other times, in their grotesque poses, they are like sculptures. With their noses covered and sunglasses, many resemble creatures from Mars. Lapow creates beauty rather than capturing it. No lively creatures in bikinis grace his pictures...And yet there is extraordinary beauty in these photographs.[34]
Fotofolio, the postcard company, distributed several Lapow images. Robert L. Pincus, reviewing Lapow's 1981 joint show with John Brumfield and Lou Stoumen at G. Ray Hawkins Gallery in Los Angeles considered that it was;
...his photographs of the '70s that seem most confident and perceptive. A 1975 portrait of two elderly women in bathing caps strolling along the shoreline is particularly poignant; both their halting stances and facial expressions, caught unaware, are effectingly vulnerable.[35]

Exhibitions

Solo

Group and joint

Posthumous

Solo

Group

Collections

Publications

Legacy

Still photographing at 67 and living in Greenwich Village, Lapow was vocal in widely-syndicated articles in the press[54] [55] and on television[56] the in mid-1970s against ageism and enforced retirement. His wife Ruth died in 1979. He was survived by his folk-singer son Gary in Berkeley, for whose album Bamboo in the Wind Harry photographed the cover,[57] and daughter, the artist/designer Marcelle Lapow Toor, whose husband SUNY English lecturer David wrote the introduction to the 1978 Dover monograph, and who until her death in 2009 was executor for Lapow's estate and maintained his archive. In 1983, son Gary produced a special performance at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, incorporating projections of Harry's Coney Island imagery,[58] [59] and remembered his father's encouragment to "be creative."[60]

External links

Notes and References

  1. National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; WWII Draft Registration Cards for New York City, 10/16/1940 - 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147
  2. Social Security Number: 061-09-4053 Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File
  3. Vaughn . Betty . February 1970 . The Business of Packaging Design : Where Is It Going ... And Why . Packaging Design . 11 . 1 . 81.
  4. News: 20 February 1934 . Marriage Licenses . 12 . Times Union.
  5. Mason, S. (1972). "Encapsulating Magic: The Challenge of Package Design for Cosmetics". Graphis (Archive : 1944-2005), 28(164), 504-517.
  6. "Packaging Switches to the Soft Sell (Printers' Ink)". (1959). Management Review, 48(7), 41.
  7. Industrial Design, Volume 9, Page 26
  8. Tide, Volume 31, Issues 13-24, Page 22, Tide Publishing Company, 1957
  9. Teague . Walter Dorwin . October 1960 . Large offices and cooperative effort . Industrial Design . 7 . 10 . 69.
  10. December 1961 . 'Conventional' Packaging For Undergarments . Packaging Design . 2 . 6 . 9, 57.
  11. Art Direction, Volume 21, Page 117, Advertising Trade Publications, Incorporated, 1969
  12. March 1961 . Caplan . Ralph . In This Issue . Industrial Design . 8 . 3 . 8.
  13. News: Roessner . Elmer . 7 March 1957 . Business Today: New Ideas Stressed In Packaging Design . 16 . Courier-Post.
  14. February 1968 . Reclosable Cosmetic Blister-Packs . Packaging Design . 9 . 1 . 43.
  15. February 1966 . Showcase for liquid-into-foam action . Packaging Design . 7 . 1 . 29.
  16. Cahn . Joel G. . October 1965 . Harry Lapow: A Designer Looks at Materials . Packaging Design . 6 . 5 . 26–30.
  17. April 1965 . The Role of Research In Packaging : A Panel Discussion : The advantages and limitations of research as seen from five different vantage points . Packaging Design . 6 . 2 . 32.
  18. Cahn . Joel G. . February 1968 . The Packaging Year in Review: An Industry Report . Packaging Design . 9 . 1 . 13, 16, 19, 72-3.
  19. New Boston Review, Issues 4-5, p.213
  20. News: Scully . Julia . 23 Jul 1988 . Surrealist suns at Coney Island . 35 . The Durham Sun.
  21. 27 January 1975 . Sunday Best . New York Magazine . 8 . 4 . 53.
  22. News: Salopek . Paul . 2 September 1986 . Rites: A Guatemalan Boyhood (photograph accompanying review) . 43 . Albuquerque Journal.
  23. 24 April 1978 . Best Bets . New York Magazine . 11 . 17 . 69.
  24. Book: Lapow, Harry . Coney Island beach people . Dover Publications . 1978 . 9780486236148 . New York . 4123375.
  25. Infinity, Volume 20, American Society of Magazine Photographers
  26. News: Braun-Reinitz . Janet . 19 February 1986 . Keeping art in the family . 9 . The Ithaca Journal.
  27. Book: Mason, Jerry . The family of woman . A Ridge Press book, Grosset et Dunlap . 1979 . 9780448162683 . 1st . New York . 158 . 916299184.
  28. News: 11 October 1970 . Currier and Ives Exhibit at College . 6 . Mansfield, Ohio, News Journal.
  29. News: Carey . Dan . 26 March 1975 . Photographers Meet Tomorrow . 91 . The Post-Standard.
  30. News: 26 September 1978 . Photography lecture, workshop set at TC3 . 5 . The Ithaca Journal.
  31. Reviewed in Creative Camera, Issues 176-194, Page 64
  32. "Sunshine Boys and Girls", New York Magazine, April 24, 1978, Vol. 11, No. 17. ISSN 0028-7369, New York Media, LLC
  33. "Sunday Best", New York Magazine 27 Jan 1975, p.53, Vol. 8, No. 4, ISSN 0028-7369, New York Media, LLC.
  34. News: Gabree . John . 18 June 1978 . New and Notable . 30 . Newsday (Nassau Edition).
  35. News: Pincus . Robert L. . 8 May 1981 . Galleries . 107 . The Los Angeles Times.
  36. News: 29 June 1959 . Speaking of pets . 11 . The Hopewell News.
  37. News: 10 February 1970 . The artist and his art . 41 . The Post-Standard.
  38. News: 11 March 1971 . City Life : Photo exhibit . 5 . The Oneonta Star.
  39. News: 3 May 1981 . Calendar : Art : Opening Today . 434 . The Los Angeles Times.
  40. News: Pontzious . Richard . 6 December 1982 . New art exhibits this week . 32 . The San Francisco Examiner.
  41. 17 December 1982 . Focus Gallery Presents Photography With Different Views Of Beauty . West Art . 21 . 7.
  42. News: 22 June 1984 . Continuing Exhibitions . 21 . Albuquerque Journal.
  43. News: Netsky . Ron . 19 January 1986 . Gallery Notes . 47 . Democrat and Chronicle.
  44. From New Orleans To 52nd Street.(The City Weekly Desk). (2002). The New York Times, p. 3.
  45. News: 4 January 1980 . Brooklyn on film . 351 . Daily News.
  46. Bortolot, L. (2015). Arts & Entertainment: Coney Island: Signs, Schooners and Spook-A-Rama. Wall Street Journal, p. A.21.
  47. Web site: Coney Island 1970s Harry Lapow . 2022-12-27 . Metropolitan Museum.
  48. Web site: Harry Lapow . Brooklyn Museum.
  49. News: 5 February 1980 . G. Ray Hawkins Gallery . 117 . The Los Angeles Times.
  50. Web site: Record Couple on Beach, Coney Island Collections Search Center, Smithsonian Institution . 2022-12-27 . collections.si.edu.
  51. Web site: Harry Lapow Photograph . 27 December 2022 . Musée Des Beaux-Arts Du Canada.
  52. News: 28 May 1978 . Coney Island beach boy . 332 . Daily News.
  53. News: Turan . Kenneth . 11 June 1978 . Publisher Does Everything Wrong And Flourishes . 108 . The Sacramento Bee.
  54. News: Barclay . Dolores . 2 June 1976 . Retirement: mandatory end to 65 years . 2 . Abilene Reporter-News.
  55. News: 2 June 1976 . First of a Series.. Proportion of Elderly Is Increasing . 2 . The Emporia Gazette.
  56. News: Lapow . Harry . Brophy . Alice . O'Dwyer . Paul . 28 March 1976 . Television schedule : Getting On : Senior Power . 490 . Daily News.
  57. News: Kelp . Larry . 12 December 1982 . Concerts : A singer tours his own life . 132 . Oakland Tribune.
  58. News: 8 December 1983 . Music . 72 . The San Francisco Examiner.
  59. News: Elwood . Philip . 10 February 1984 . An eloquent singer of original songs . 64 . The San Francisco Examiner.
  60. News: Stanley . John . 3 July 1988 . He Uses His Noodle to Get Through to Kids . 202 . The San Francisco Examiner.

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