Larry Fink (1941–2023), Professor Emeritus of Photography
“Self Portrait With Molly” (1983). © Larry Fink, Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery
In a letter to the Bard community, President Leon Botstein memorialized Professor Fink's life.
It is with sadness that I inform the Bard community of the death of Larry Fink, Professor Emeritus of Photography at Bard College. He was 82. He died on Saturday at his home in Martins Creek, PA, after struggling with severe kidney disease. On behalf of the entire College community, I want to extend my deepest sympathies to Martha, his wife, and to his daughter, Molly.Larry Fink was recruited by Stephen Shore in 1988 to help build the photography program at the College, which now is among the finest in the world. Larry retired in 2017. To say that Larry Fink was an exuberant, dynamic, and unforgettable character is an understatement; so too is any facile way to capture what make him unforgettable as an artist, colleague, and mentor. I was grateful for his presence on the faculty and for his friendship. He leaves behind a fantastic body of work and enduring legacy as a teacher.
Stephen Shore, under whose guidance the photography program has flourished, wrote, "Larry came to Bard in 1988 and immediately established himself as a central, dynamic force of our program. His teaching has had an indelible impact on several generations of our students. Larry and I often observed, over the years, that his work with our students and mine were complementary. Where I approached them through their minds, he approached them through their hearts. This was key to not only his teaching, but to his picture making. Larry had the unique ability to see, not only beneath the surface of a picture, but beneath the surface of its content, to a vital force that can animate some images. And some lives. I have never met anyone as exuberantly brimming with life force as Larry. It is difficult to imagine that flame extinguished". To Gilles Peress, the distinguished photographer and Bard colleague, Larry Fink was a "street brother," and the "quintessential photographer."
Tim Davis '91, who was first a student of Larry's at Bard and is now a member of the photography program faculty, recalled: "Larry Fink taught me so much. When he showed up at Bard's photography program in 1988, to accompany Stephen Shore, it was like Buster Keaton walking onto the set of Potemkin. Larry's presence was that of the Shakespearean holy fool who lightens the mood of any scene, and delivers its deepest teachings. Larry would routinely critique your work by scat singing the photograph, spontaneously making a new song to harmonize with the ditty you'd just laid down. It felt like playing in an orchestra--say Duke Ellington's 1940 outfit with Jimmy Blanton--instead of the solo singing the camera usually demands. He made you feel TOGETHER. As a photographer, Larry was a true truffle hound of light, sparking and seeking it in every situation, incapable of making a photograph that didn't sparkle. The thing I learned from looking at his pictures as a young man was how thick a photograph might feel, if its fore- and middle- and background are all powerfully felt. His pictures, whether they be of boxers, praying mantises, weddings, fancy parties, street protests, beatnik road trips around the house, often feel more like holograms than the flat black-and-white prints they most deliriously were. Larry insisted that photography was there for emotional truths. I've taken these lessons increasingly to heart, even if I resisted them as a teenager. I see feeling as being the third element in any photograph, alongside form and content and I owe this awareness to Larry. Which means I owe him almost everything."
Faculty and staff who had the good fortune to have worked with Larry, as well as generations of alumni/ae, extend our condolences to his family. I hope they will take some consolation in knowing that Larry was greatly admired and valued at Bard as an artist, teacher, colleague, and friend.
Post Date: 11-27-2023