[When I received a midsummer email from Blaise Tobia announcing the acquisition of a substantial number of his vintage prints from his stint as a CETA photographer in the late 1970s, I invited him to draft a Guest Post about his experience with the NYC arts component of this largely unsung and sadly forgotten program.

CETA (the 1973 federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) embraced all the professions and trades, of which the arts — visual, performing, literary — comprised just one subset. Unlike the National Endowment for the Arts fellowships of the same era, which subsidized the production of recipients’ own work at their own pace, CETA actually put artists to work — in schools and community centers, in the production of public works of art, in live free public performance, and in other situations that directly benefited the citizenry. In Tobia’s case, they hired him to photograph the artists and community activities they underwrote, while allowing him to spend a good chunk of his paid day-job time on his own projects.

I’d known about the CETA Artists Project back in the day (albeit only sketchily), but I’d completely forgotten about it until Tobia’s email jogged my memory — a sign of how neglected this program has become in the ongoing dialogue over government subsidy of the arts. That’s especially lamentable considering that the NYC branch of the project grew to be the largest CETA art program in the US. Certainly, given its national scale, it bears comparison with the Works Project Administration of the New Deal era, as Tobia points out. Perhaps his account of his own experience with the project will contribute to a reconsideration of it as a model for future support of the arts.

We’ve listed some online resources at the end of this post, and would welcome comments from others who participated in the arts component of the program. — A.D.C.]

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CETA Artists Project 1978-79: The Best Post-Doc Ever

by Blaise Tobia

For two years, 1978-79, I was a full-time documentary photographer on assignment, working for a large multi-disciplinary artists’ project in NYC. This was the CCF CETA Artists Project, administered by the New York-based nonprofit Cultural Council Foundation and funded by the federal government through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. In all, the program employed 325 artists in various forms of community service, overseen by forty administrators (themselves mostly artists as well).

This project was just one part of a nationwide network of arts-related projects funded by CETA that employed in total, over the eight years of CETA’s existence, about 20,000 artists and arts-related professionals. (It is important to note that CETA, overall, employed about one million people, so the artist component was only about 2% of the total. Nonetheless, this was the largest instance of federal funding of artist employment outside of the New Deal. And it is virtually lost to history.)

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For the first year, I was one of three photographers on the project’s “documentation unit,” along with three writers and a coordinator. I was assigned to photograph events, performances, artists at work in their studios or rehearsal spaces, artists at work in their community service assignments, and exhibitions organized by CCF. I traveled to all parts of the city and became more familiar with New York than I had ever been.

How did I come to this work? Part preparation and part pure luck. Along with my wife Virginia Maksymowicz, I had just returned to New York after three years in an MFA program at U.C. San Diego. Prior to that we had earned our BA degrees in Fine Art at Brooklyn College (where I concentrated in photography, studying with program head Walter Rosenblum and other photographers Rosenblum had hired, many of them associated with the Photo League). At UCSD my photo mentors were Fred Lonidier and Phil Steinmetz — two photographers who have become identified as part of the “UCSD Four” along with Allan Sekula and Martha Rosler (who had begun as students and developed into collaborators).

Taken overall, my education as a photographer was wildly incoherent. I had gone from a program firmly ensconced in the concepts of photographic modernism and “concerned documentary” into a program firmly ensconced in Marxist theory and deconstruction. Reconciling these opposites became — and remains — one of the central characteristics of my own practice. I’ll add that my UCSD studies were not just in photography; I studied semiotics with David Antin, conceptual/performance art with Allan Kaprow, environmental art with Newton and Helen Harrison, and nascent computer art with Harold Cohen. (This last experience propelled me into an early interest in digital photography.)

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That was the preparation. The luck came in two forms: because I had been a grad student with very little income, I was able to qualify financially for a CETA position. And, thanks to my wife’s uncle, I saw an ad in the N.Y. Daily News that announced, improbably, “Jobs for Artists in NYC.” I (and Virginia) applied for CETA at Brooklyn’s Borough Hall the very next day and, after income verification and a professional interview, we were both hired for the project. (We later found out that over 3,000 artists had applied for the initial 300 positions.) I was assigned to the documentation unit because the administrator in charge of it (who was also editor of the monthly Art Workers News) liked my work.

Why do both Virginia and I describe our two years in CETA as the “best post-doc ever”? The typical post-doc (post-doctoral fellowship) provides an opportunity for someone who has received their PhD to continue their studies and/or research in an academic setting, usually for a year or two. Like a post-doc, our CETA positions came just after grad school and gave us two years of paid experience in our fields, allowing us to continue learning our professions.

But they were not just more of the same. Our CETA experience was far more diverse than our grad school situation in virtually every sense (and this was before “diversity” was even a term). The work environment was racially and ethnically mixed, gender and sexual preference mixed, age mixed, and it even included physically challenged individuals. It was multi-disciplinary, so we worked with musicians, dancers, poets.

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Further, unlike grad school, there was an expectation of professionalism and the regular delivery of competent products and services. (That is, there wasn’t much room in the task list for “personal exploration.”) As a working professional on assignment, I really had to up my game as a photographer. I learned more about cameras, lights, film and printing than I had ever learned in school. I also learned how to assume a directorial role in situations that demanded it (in artists’ studios, at concerts and performance events, in photographing busy and important people).

I can also add that it was an exceptional “post-doc” because it paid quite well (about $55,000 per year in current terms, with paid vacation and health insurance) and because we were allowed one paid day in our five-day work week to devote to our own projects.

In retrospect, my photography education at Brooklyn College served my work on the project better than the more theoretical education I had experienced at UCSD. Rosenblum and his colleagues were quite demanding in terms of photographic craft and photographic “seeing.” I was able to properly expose and develop film and make excellent b&w prints. I was able to compose images that were visually satisfying, even with sometimes run-of-the-mill subject matter. And this has served me well — both during the project (when my work met the expectations of my supervisors) and after the project, especially in recent years.

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My documentation-unit assignments were varied and sometimes challenging. I especially enjoyed photographing visual artists in their studios (essentially a kind of environmental portraiture). Among these, the one who went on to the most fame is sculptor Ursula Von Rydingsvard. I photographed her in her small SoHo studio among a set of her cedar sculptures. Sometimes the process was collaborative, such as when sculptor Stephen Foust suggested that I photograph him working, literally, inside the sculpture he was fabricating. I love my photo of Bud Wirtschafter in his SoHo studio/copy shop, radiating exuberance for his new color Xerox machine; it is full of wonderful details, like the “Bud” sign in the window, that are often accentuated in b&w.

I also love my photo of Henry Geldzahler — the then-new NYC Commissioner of Cultural Affairs — in suit and work boots in his less than stately office. (The Department of Cultural Affairs had recently been separated from the Parks and Recreation Department but was still headquartered in the Central Park Arsenal.) I photographed the project’s 30-piece classical orchestra in rehearsal and in concert at many venues around the city.

My wife, Virginia, is a good example of the artists who worked in the general community-service pool and received changing assignments lasting three to six months each. With the blessing of my supervisor, I photographed her many times — at after-school centers in Brooklyn and the Bronx, working at BACA Downtown, doing illustrations and a children’s garden sculpture for the New York Botanical Garden, and in her studio.

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Some assignments gave me the opportunity to create really striking photos. One was a gathering of ten project artists on assignment to the building that would become the BACA Downtown Center, The photo ended up quite Rembrandt-ish, thanks to the setting, the light, and the smoke coming out of Bimal Bannerjee’s pipe. Another was made in the majestic upstairs room of Sailor’s Snug Harbor on Staten Island, where project artist Wendy Tiefenbacher was hand-silkscreening the posters for a project-sponsored exhibition called “Artists by the Sea.”

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In all, during 1978 I made about 3,000 b&w negatives for the project, mostly 35mm plus some 6×4.5 medium-format. On my own initiative, I also made a handful of color slides (and wish in retrospect that I had made more.) I produced contact sheets for myself and for the project. I made enlargements for the project on request, often to be used in their monthly “CETA Journal” or in Art Workers News (published by the Foundation for the Community of Artists), as well as a set to be archived.

At the end of 1978 the CETA Documentation Unit was disbanded; it was never explained to me why. During 1979, project documentation was instead handled by giving specific assignments to project photographers and even to administrators. I was put into the pool of photographers who were matched with organizational sponsors of community-based projects (not necessarily arts-related) supported by CETA.

My first such assignment was with the Richmond Hill Historical Society, which wanted a comprehensive photographic record of the Victorian-era buildings in this Queens neighborhood. I shot medium-format b&w, producing about 100 high-quality prints for them over three months. (Some of these images are still in use on their website, almost fifty years later.)

I then had a six-month assignment at the High Rock Nature Preserve on Staten Island. (I’m pretty sure that I was given this assignment because I had a car and High Rock was difficult to reach by public transit.) I photographed there in medium format — both b&w and color — and documented the natural beauty of the preserve, as well as its various educational programs. I provided prints for both promotional and archival purposes.

My final CETA assignment took me to what was essentially a reform school, also on Staten Island (on the grounds of — but separate from — the infamous Willowbrook State School). It was called “Start 5” and it sought to bring a new approach to reform school, avoiding as much as possible the associated stigma. I photographed there in 35mm b&w; looking back on those photos, they include some very powerful portraits of the students.

During 1979 I also took leave for three months in order to return to UCSD to teach a course. The CCF CETA project came to an end in 1980, just ahead of the election of Ronald Reagan, who had characterized CETA as a major example of government waste and inefficiency.

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Fortunately, CCF had a very enlightened policy on copyright: our contract specified that copyright was shared between the photographer and the project. As well, our negatives remained our property. (At this point, I hold exclusive copyright on my CETA images. I have given periodicals and book publishers that have asked to reproduce my photographs permission for limited use in connection with publications.)

I also made a variety of prints for an exhibition sponsored by the project of my work and that of my two documentation-unit colleagues. It took place at Phoenix Gallery (then on 57th Street) in December of 1978 and was titled “Three Photographers, 3 Representations.” By the way, the third member of the unit was Sarah Wells, whom both George and I admired. (I believe she was the best photographer among the three of us.) She died, tragically, very young; also tragically, all of her CETA negatives, contact sheets, and proof prints were somehow lost after her death.

Separately, I made for myself perhaps 200 prints — 8×10 or 11×14 — of my favorite images. It is from this set of “vintage” prints that the New York Public Library recently chose the photos they acquired from me. I believe that this acquisition gives testament to the historic value of these photographs (more than to their artistic value, although I like to believe that this latter aspect contributed to the NYPL’s decision).

My CETA photographs have been used in numerous publications (such as the book on dancer Blondell Cummings published by the Getty Research Institute[1] and the catalog on painter Ellsworth Ausby done for a retrospective at Eric Firestone Gallery.[2]) Dozens of them were used in the 2021 exhibition “Art/Work” (at Citylore and Cuchifritos galleries in New York). Two of them were included in the “Edges of Ailey” show at the Whitney.[3] Most recently, 71 of them have been accepted into the photo collection at the New York Public Library. (Thirty additional prints were acquired from my documentation-unit colleague George Malave.)

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As Virginia and I watched the decades pass we were disappointed that our NYC-based project, as well as the entire nationwide experience of CETA, was rarely acknowledged. Some excellent artists who had been involved in the CETA program — such as nationally prominent photographer Dawoud Bey — have spoken of their formative CETA experiences, while others have downplayed or omitted it, perhaps out of sense of embarrassment that they had been, in some way, on the government dole.

In academia and in the media we would hear many references to the New Deal artist projects but virtually none to CETA — a program that was forty years more recent and on the same order of magnitude as Project One (which included the Federal Artists Project). And this frustration grew during the Covid pandemic, when many people were calling for a “New WPA” to help alleviate the cultural crisis while, in fact, CETA was a more viable model given the political realities. (It had received bipartisan support in 1973, and was actually signed into law by Richard Nixon!).

This public lack of recognition led us to create — in collaboration with other CETA artists and administrators — the CETA Arts Legacy Project, which Virginia and I now coordinate. Our first act, in 2016, was a visit to the NYC Municipal Archives, repository of the project’s records. This was followed by the posting of the first Wikipedia entry on the subject, and then by the creation of a website. We’ve done academic panels (such as at the College Art Association), interviews, articles, podcasts. We’ve created an online archive to support research by historians (which now contains more than 3,000 digital assets).

We teamed up with NYC arts nonprofits Citylore and Artists Alliance to do a variety of events and then, in 2021, the two-venue “Art/Work” exhibition. Recently we teamed up with the group Living New Deal to produce a variety of programs exploring the parallels between the New Deal and CETA, including a webinar series and a conference in San Francisco (where the first CETA artists project was launched, in 1974).

I was very lucky to have been part of the CCF CETA Artists Project, especially as a member of their documentation unit. And the experience has had a lifelong presence both in my work and in my view of the art world and of history.

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Notes:

[1] Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures, 2021, Art+Practice/Getty Research Institute.

[2] Ellsworth Ausby: Somewhere in Space, 2022, Eric Firestone Gallery.

[3] “Edges of Ailey,” Whitney Museum of American Art, 2023-24, curated by Adrienne Edwards.

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Resources:

Blaise Tobia website: blaisetobia.com.

CETA Legacy Project website.

Flickr Collection of Blaise Tobia’s CETA photographs (including many of the images acquired by the NYPL).

NYC Cultural Council Foundation Artists Project Archives.

“Critical Lens: Art x CETA,” video of panel discussion sponsored by City Lore, Artists Alliance Inc., and the NYC Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS), October 11, 2022, featuring Tobia, Maksymowicz, Malave, and others.

Brooklyn Public Library, “Remembering CETA artists in NYC” by Anna Schwartz, August 3, 2022.

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Blaise Tobia is an artist/photographer living in Philadelphia. He is a professor emeritus of Drexel University, where he co-founded the major in photography and was its first director. Most recently, he taught in the Art & Art History Department. His BA is from Brooklyn College (1974) and his MFA from UCSD (1977). He worked for the NYC CCF CETA Artists Project in 1978-79.

His primary subject matter has been material culture, observed in a global context. He has also had a lifelong interest in the interactions of verbal and visual languages and has both written on the subject and produced text/image works. He also works frequently in paired, sequenced, and collaged-image forms as well as limited-edition books.

Recent one-person shows have included Viewpoint Photographic in Sacramento, Artspace North Carolina in Raleigh, Hillyer Artspace in Washington DC, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and the Centro Arcobaleno in Rome. His website appears here. To contact Blaise Tobia, click here.