LARB Reviews Hands On by the Late Larry Fink, Professor Emeritus of Photography
“Self Portrait With Molly” (1983). © Larry Fink, Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery
A review of a book by Professor Emeritus of Photography Larry Fink (1941–2023) was published in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Yael Friedman discusses how Fink’s most recent book, Hands On: A Passionate Life of Looking, which was published posthumously and is a survey of his career over six decades, puts his street photography alongside more famous photos of civil rights activists while showcasing previously unpublished images from nearly 30 monographs. The book includes an essay from Lucy Sante, a former Bard faculty member who curated the exhibit Larry Fink: Sensual Empathy at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. “Larry clearly didn’t see social events as a disposable theme,” she writes. “For him, they were life itself.”
The book is one of several projects which Fink, who spent years working as a solo photographer before coming to teach at Bard’s photography program in 1988, had begun while he was still alive but were completed posthumously. “A monumental book, a beautiful short film, and his first joint exhibition with his wife, artist Martha Posner, provide a richer portrait of him as a person and unveil new facets of his work as an artist,” writes Friedman in his review. “We can now (almost) fully see how he managed the near-impossible.”
Post Date: 08-05-2025
The book is one of several projects which Fink, who spent years working as a solo photographer before coming to teach at Bard’s photography program in 1988, had begun while he was still alive but were completed posthumously. “A monumental book, a beautiful short film, and his first joint exhibition with his wife, artist Martha Posner, provide a richer portrait of him as a person and unveil new facets of his work as an artist,” writes Friedman in his review. “We can now (almost) fully see how he managed the near-impossible.”
Post Date: 08-05-2025