Summary

Creator:

Gedney, William, -1989

Abstract:

Collection comprises the entirety of William Gedney's photographic career, beginning with his student years at Pratt Institute in the 1950s to his early death in 1989. The materials reveal Gedney's intense and meticulous dedication to his work, and his interest in street photography, portraiture, night photography, and the study of human nature. His earliest serious project was undertaken in Kentucky, where he stayed with a coal-miner's family for several weeks in 1964 and again in 1972. His work took him across the U.S. several times, with extensive photographic projects in Chicago, Detroit, Pennsylvania, South Dakota - particularly the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation, and southern and northern California. During these trips, as well as in New York City, he also photographed well-known composers. Fascinated by human group dynamics, he photographed parades, hippies and other street people, and crowds. He also traveled to Kolkata (Calcutta) and Varanasi (Benares), India, England, Ireland, Paris, and Amsterdam. The collection offers roughly 76,000 unique images represented by the over 2000 contact sheets, with over 19,000 selected images in the form of work prints and 1466 exhibit-quality large prints. Other formats include slides, a complete set of master negatives, and personal snapshots. The breadth of these materials offers deep insights into Gedney's editorial process and artistic vision. Additional perspectives on his life and work can be found in his many notebooks and journals; artwork; handmade books; correspondence files; financial, legal and medical records; memorabilia; audiocassettes; and teaching materials. Acquired as part of the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University.

Extent:

115.0 Linear Feet
336 boxes, 1 oversize folder
Approximately 66,800 items

Language:

Materials are in English

Collection ID:

RL.10032

Background

Scope and Content:

Collection comprises the entirety of William Gedney's photographic career, beginning with his student years at Pratt Institute in the 1950s to his early death in 1989. The materials reveal Gedney's intense and meticulous dedication to his work, and his interest in street photography, portraiture, night photography, and the study of human nature. His earliest serious project was undertaken in Kentucky, where he stayed with a coal-miner's family for several weeks in 1964 and again in 1972. His work took him across the U.S. several times, with extensive photographic projects in Chicago, Detroit, Pennsylvania, South Dakota - particularly the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation, and southern and northern California. During these trips, as well as in New York City, he also photographed well-known composers. Fascinated by human group dynamics, he photographed parades, hippies and other street people, and crowds. He also traveled to Kolkata (Calcutta) and Varanasi (Benares), India, England, Ireland, Paris, and Amsterdam.

The collection offers roughly 76,000 unique images represented by the over 2000 contact sheets, with over 19,000 selected images in the form of work prints and 1466 exhibit-quality large prints. Other formats include slides, a complete set of master negatives, and personal snapshots. The availability of every format in the photographic process offers deep insights into Gedney's editorial process and artistic vision.

Additional perspectives come from his many notebooks and journals; artwork, including many sketches and drawings; handmade books and book project materials; correspondence files; memo books; financial, legal and medical records; memorabilia; and teaching materials, all described in fuller detail in this collection guide. Gedney's writings, in particular, provide extraordinary views into his life and work. Notebooks, memo books, travel diaries, and loose writings contain a compelling mix of personal entries, essays, poetry, quotations, expenses, travel notes, observations on slang, music and book lists, and clippings. Viewed as a whole, Gedney's professional and personal papers record his thoughts on photography, human behavior across continents, society and art, and on his own development as a photographer.

The large exhibit-quality prints, and the large groups of work prints from which they were selected, are arranged in series by bodies of work, in alphabetical order: Composers; England/Ireland; The Farm; India, subdivided into Benares and Calcutta; Night; Nudes; Paris; and United States, further divided into the subseries Kentucky, New York, San Francisco, and U.S Trips. The latter comprises his travels to other states such as Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Montana, and Tennessee. The contact sheets and negatives are described and listed under their own series.

To support himself, Gedney undertook commercial work. There is very early work for a bread company and other firms, and he then worked for Time-Life (and photographed office parties there) and other magazines. There are two larger, significant bodies of other commercial work: the earliest consists of portraits of deaf children and their teachers commissioned around 1958 by the St. Joseph's School for the Deaf. The second project, commissioned by the Social Security Administration in 1969, contains only photographic prints - portraits of rural inhabitants of Hays, Kansas (farmers, pensioners, and widows), and Federal employees. A published catalog is found in this series, listing other photographers involved in the projects. The Social Security Administration's archives hold Gedney's original negatives of this work. During the same period, Gedney visited a state mental hospital in Norton, Kansas and photographed a series of arresting portraits of the young people housed there. These bodies of work have not been published online for copyright and privacy reasons; however, the physical prints are open to onsite use.

For further descriptions of each of Gedney's major bodies of work, please follow the series links in the collection guide, keeping in mind that contact sheets, which offer the most complete set of images in thumbnail size, are represented by their own separate collection guide series.

Many of William Gedney's earliest images incorporate personally-significant locations and people. His first serious photographic study, undertaken in the 1950s, centered on his grandparents and their dairy farm in Norton Hill, New York. During this period, Gedney also photographed neighborhoods in his birthplace, Albany, and his hometown of Greenville. Later photographs of friends and family in New York (Arnold and Anita Lobel), San Francisco (Eric Hoffer and Lili Osborne), and Paris (photographer Raghubir Singh and wife Anne Henning) are found throughout the collection, as well as a few shots of his mentors Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus. Self-portraits of Gedney show up frequently in the contact sheet images but there are no known larger images of the photographer.

Gedney was particularly drawn to human gatherings. He photographed people not only on Brooklyn's streets, but also at parties, car and flower shows, motorcycle rallies, body building exhibitions (where he also photographed Diane Arbus), and in bars and at Coney Island boardwalk and beaches. Early series include African American parades and gospel revivals. He continued to focus on crowds everywhere he traveled, particularly in large cities such as San Francisco (where he photographed Golden Gate gatherings in 1966-1967), Los Angeles, Chicago, London, and Paris, often turning his camera to young people and their street culture. In the 1960s he also documented organized labor rallies and migrant programs in Southern California (Cesar Chavez appears in several images), and in the 1970s, important marches and rallies for gay rights in California and New York.

The photographic series also house a handful of large copy prints and contact sheets of Gedney images printed by photographers Margaret Sartor, Julie Stovall and others affiliated with the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies. Finally, there is also a cluster of late 1980s contact sheets and prints processed by Gedney's former student and close friend Peter Bellamy from rolls of film found among Gedney's belongings at his death.

Acquired as part of the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University.

Preferred source for image titles: titles as written by Gedney on the backs of photographic prints. Second preferred source: titles on index cards prepared by Gedney for individual best-quality prints. Third source: captions written by Gedney on contact sheets, describing photo sequences. When no title was found, library staff have used "No title known."

Folder- and group-level titles for work prints, negatives, and papers were devised by library staff in the 1990s and 2010s, and are noted as such when known. Many if not most of these were derived from Gedney's original folder labels and notes; in the absence of an original description, titles have been devised by library staff.

Biographical / Historical:

William Gedney received the following fellowships and grants: a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, 1966-1967; a Fulbright Fellowship for Photography, 1969-1971; a New York State Creative Artists Public Service Program (C.A.P.S.) grant, 1972-1973; and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, 1975-1976.

Gedney's work was largely unknown during his lifetime, but thanks to his supporters and mentors Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, and John Sarkowski, a small show of his work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1968; a few group shows that included his work were held at the George Eastman House and the Rochester Institute of Technology, 1972. A major retrospective exhibit was held in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2000. More recently, exhibits have been held in France, India, and Spain, and at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University.

Timeline

Date	Event
1932, Oct. 29	Born, New York, N.Y.
1955	B.F.A., Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N.Y.
1955-1965	Graphic designer for magazine layout and book design
Summer, 1964	Photographed coal miners and their families in Eastern Kentucky
1965-1969	Photographed American composers
1968, December-1969, March	Exhibit: "Eastern Kentucky and San Francisco: Photographs by William Gedney," Museum of Modern Art, New York
1969, Summer	Documented work of the Social Security Administration, Hays, Kansas
1969-1971	Photographed in Old Delhi and Beares, India
1969-1989 (?)	Adjunct Assistant Professor, Cooper Union, New York
1971-1989(?)	Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute, New York
1972, Summer	Photographed the Cornett family again in Kentucky
1978-1980	Exhibit: "Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960," Museum of Modern Art, New York
1979-1980	Photographed in Calcutta, India
1989, June 23	Died of complications from AIDS, New York, N.Y.
1990	William Gedney's collection of photography books and equipment presented to Chitrabani Center, Calcutta, India
2000	Large retrospective exhibition, "Short Distances and Definite Places: The Photographs of William Gedney" held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Timeline

Date	Event
1932, Oct. 29	Born, New York, N.Y.
1955	B.F.A., Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N.Y.
1955-1965	Graphic designer for magazine layout and book design
Summer, 1964	Photographed coal miners and their families in Eastern Kentucky
1965-1969	Photographed American composers
1968, Dec.-1969, March	Exhibit: "Eastern Kentucky and San Francisco: Photographs by William Gedney," Museum of Modern Art, New York
1969, Summer	Documented work of the Social Security Administration, Hays, Kansas
1969-1971	Photographed in Old Delhi and Beares, India
1969-1989 (?)	Adjunct Assistant Professor, Cooper Union, New York
1971-1989(?)	Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute, New York
1972, Summer	Photographed the Cornett family again in Kentucky
1978-1980	Exhibit: "Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960," Museum of Modern Art, New York
1979-1980	Photographed in Calcutta, India
1989, June 23	Died of complications from AIDS, New York, N.Y.
1990	William Gedney's collection of photography books and equipment presented to Chitrabani Center, Calcutta, India
2000	Large retrospective exhibition, "Short Distances and Definite Places: The Photographs of William Gedney" held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Acquisition Information:

The William Gedney photographs and papers were received as a gift from Richard T. Gedney and Lee Friedlander to the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book Manuscript Library in 1992; additions were received as gifts from 1998-2000.

Processing information:

Processed and encoded by Paula Jeannet, with critical and much appreciated support from Noah Huffman, Kirstin Johnson, and Lisa McCarty, and student assistants Cullen Burling, Aaron Canipe, Cameron Crawford, Caitlin Cristante, Leslie Hayes, Mari Jorstad, Hannah Koo, Emma Loewe, Alexandra Premont, Ben Saalfeld, Alanna Styer, and Mara West, 2013-2018.

Accession(s) described in this collection guide: 1992, 1998-0197, 1998-0282, 1998-0345, 1998-0508, 1999-0124, 2000-0166.

Arrangement:

The collection is organized into two main divisions: photographic formats followed by personal and professional papers. The photographic series are arranged by Gedney's major bodies of work, arranged in alphabetical order: Composers, England/Ireland, The Farm, India (with two subseries, Benares and Calcutta), Night, Nudes, Paris, and United States (divided into subseries for Kentucky, New York, San Francisco, and U.S. Trips). These bodies of work are followed by these series: Commercial Work, Contact Sheets, Negatives, Film and Test Development, and Slides.

The personal and professional papers are organized into these series: Artwork; Audiovisual; Book Projects; Correspondence; Financial and Legal Papers; Grant and Project Files; Indexes; Personal Papers; Printed Materials; and Writings and Notebooks.

Rules or Conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Related

Alternative Form Available:

Over 3,300 photographs and writings from this collection have been digitized and are available in: William Gedney Photographs and Writings - Duke Digital Collections Digitization is ongoing as of 2020.

Subjects

Click on terms below to find related finding aids on this site. For other related materials in the Duke University Libraries, search for these terms in the Catalog.

Subjects:

AIDS (Disease) -- Patients -- New York (State) -- New York
Bookbinding
Composers -- United States -- Portraits
Documentary Photography -- United States
Documentary Photography -- India
Documentary Photography -- Europe
Farms -- New York (State) -- Photographs
Gays -- United States -- Portraits
Gay pride parades -- United States -- Photographs
Hippies -- California -- San Francisco -- Photographs
Indian reservations -- Photographs
Native Americans -- Portraits
Night photography
Older people -- Portraits
Photographers -- Diaries
Photography -- Study and teaching
Photography of the nude
Street photography
Youth -- Portraits
Appalachians (People) -- Kentucky -- Portraits
Drawings (visual works)
Paintings (visual works)

Formats:

Artists' books
Audiocassettes
Black-and-white photographs
Color slides
Contact sheets
Diaries
Gelatin silver prints
Negatives (photographs)
Proofs (prints by function)
Sketches
Slides (photographs)

Names:

Archive of Documentary Arts (Duke University)
Gedney, William, -1989

Places:

Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- Photographs
California -- Photographs
England -- Photographs
Ireland -- Photographs
Kentucky -- Photographs
Kolkata (India) -- Photographs
Myrtle Avenue (New York, N.Y.) -- Photographs
New York (N.Y.) -- Photographs
Paris (France) -- Photographs
Rosebud Indian Reservation (S.D.) -- Photographs
San Francisco (Calif.) -- Photographs
South Dakota -- Photographs
Vārānasi (Uttar Pradesh, India) -- Photographs