The evidence, then, suggests that while his connection to Robert Capa mattered deeply to Morris on both personally and professionally, for Capa the relationship on those levels proved more peripheral — at least until the brief year between his hiring of Morris for Magnum and his death in Vietnam. Not a two-way street, in short, though Morris takes pains to intimate otherwise. […]
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It is now clear that Grottkau consistently supported himself as a professional photographer and studio owner while concurrently leading both local and national socialist labor movements. This fact, long overlooked, is not insignificant to the history of both American photography and American political history. […] Paul Grottkau brought to his work as a studio photographer an aptitude for managing complex, precise technical processes as required in the practice of the building sciences in which he was educated. His day-to-day organizing activities within the labor movement required a deep devotion to social ethics and a sincerely felt empathy for ordinary folks and their interests. This combination of technical knowledge and social conscience must have served him well as he endeavored to put his customers at ease before his lens. […] Hard facts about the [1886 Haymarket] bombing [in Chicago] still remain clouded and the guilt of most, if not all, of the eight convicted men is still questioned. The innocence of the four executed anarchists has been largely proven retroactively. It is one of the “Haymarket Martyrs,” Albert R. Parsons, executed on November 11, 1887, who connects Paul Grottkau the political activist to Paul Grottkau the professional photographer, via this singular image of a mixed-race woman. […] John Pfahl’s innovative work in landscape photography focused on the problems of perception and representation. He systematically questioned the medium. His early and probably best-known series, “Altered Landscapes,” is a perfect example of his constant quest. […] |
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