Commercial Work, circa 1955-1985

Use restrictions for this series:

Due to copyright and privacy issues, images in the Commercial Series have been digitized but not published online; they are available onsite for educational and research use.

Images of students and teachers from the St. Joseph's School for the Deaf, and images from the Kansas state hospital for the mentally ill may fall under FERPA and HIPAA regulations for privacy and confidentiality. Although the library holds the copyright for other Gedney images, his commercial work may involve other copyright considerations.

Researchers should keep medical information and privacy laws in mind when considering using these images for any other purpose outside viewing in the reading room.

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Scope and content:

To earn enough income to support his independent photographic work following graduation from Pratt Institute, Gedney found work with several New York-based small businesses, including Watson Flour Products and National Bakeries, and later, several publishers, including Glamour and Time-Life, where he met Walker Evans. He also served as photographer at a few New York weddings and a first communion. The collection includes images from Gedney's commercial work in the form of finished prints, proof prints and contact sheets. Some images only exist in contact sheet format. FInished prints are found only for the St. Josephs and Social Security series (descriptions follow). There are no examples of work for Time-Life or Glamour.

In addition to the photographs in the Commercial Work series, records for many of these assignments are located in the Grants and Work Files and the Correspondence series.

One of Gedney's first serious commissions following art school came in the late 1950s from the St. Joseph's School for the Deaf in the Bronx, and involved creating the layout and illustrations for a promotional publication for the school. The hundreds of images of young students and their teachers in classrooms, testing rooms, and playgrounds reveal Gedney's already-evident skill with portraiture, as well as his empathy for the subjects. The large prints in this series are typically mounted on thin board, with most of the prints measuring 11x14 inches.

In 1969, Gedney was one of six photographers hired to document the work of the Social Security Administration (the group included Diane Arbus). He was assigned to the Hays, Kansas Bureau, and spent about a week photographing Social Security applicants, chiefly rural Kansas farmers, pensioner, and widowers, and the Social Security representatives in their offices and in the field. Although Gedney sent the negatives to the Social Security Administration, the contact sheets and photographs remain in this collection, along with a copy of the complete catalog of photographs taken by the six photographers, in the Printed Materials series.

Material specific details:

The earliest image identifiers usually begin with letter codes rather than the contact sheet-row-frame number system he developed around 1959. Library staff have retained the earlier legacy id's to form the main image identifier; other legacy id's are listed in the note field.

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