With His Camera, Larry Fink Documented 60 Years of American Life

Summary

All Of It: With His Camera, Larry Fink Documented 60 Years of American Life

Podcast: All Of It
Host: Alison Stewart
Episode Release Date: July 14, 2025
Guest: Lucy Sant, Curator of Larry Fink's Exhibition "Sensual Empathy" at CPW, Kingston

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Introduction to Larry Fink’s Legacy

Alison Stewart opens the episode by commemorating the life and work of Larry Fink, a renowned photographer who passed away in 2023 at the age of 82. Described by The New York Times as "an exuberant document of the human condition," Fink's photography captured the essence of various social strata and cultural moments over six decades.

“Fink was born in Brooklyn and raised by lefty parents on Long Island. Throughout his life, Larry brought along his camera and immersed himself in the lives of people from a wide variety of social classes and spaces.” — Alison Stewart [00:09]

Fink’s work spans numerous subjects, including jazz musicians, working-class Americans, New York socialites, Studio 54 clubgoers, boxers, and civil rights activists. This summer, Central Pennsylvania Workshop (CPW), formerly the Center for Photography at Woodstock, is showcasing Fink's collection in an exhibition titled "Larry Fink Sensual Empathy," curated by Lucy Sant.

First Encounter: Lucy Sant’s Perspective

Lucy Sant shares her initial encounter with Fink’s work, highlighting a striking photograph she purchased in 1985.

“The picture showed this large older woman aiming a pistol straight at the camera with her tongue parked in a corner of her mouth and a squint that becomes a kind of wink against a violently floral wallpaper. I was just floored by this image and I kept it tacked over my desk for years.” — Lucy Sant [01:18]

Her admiration for Fink deepened when she met him at Bard College, where Fink was a fellow photographer in the department.

“Larry just instantly made you into an accomplice and hijinks would ensue and you can see the whole evening. There's nothing violent about her aiming the pistol, which is, I'm sure, unloaded, but it's them just goofing off at a family party.” — Lucy Sant [02:52]

Expanding Fink’s Work: Curatorial Insights

Discussing the challenges of curating Fink’s expansive body of work, Sant explains how the exhibition had to adapt to different spaces, ultimately focusing on the predominant theme of human social interaction.

“The show was originally meant for a much tighter space, which was the Moose Foundation booth at Paris Photo last November. So it was designed for that space. And because it's so concentrated, I wanted to focus on one aspect of Larry's work which is really the predominant one, which was human social interaction, basically.” — Lucy Sant [03:20]

While the exhibition centers on social interactions, Sant laments not being able to include Fink’s heroic, posed photographs, such as those depicting workers against dramatic skies.

“Larry was curious about everybody and everything, but you have to have sort of a goal of the show. The focus of the show is human interaction as shown especially at parties.” — Lucy Sant [04:41]

Larry Fink’s Artistic Approach

Fink’s dedication is evident in his constant readiness to capture moments, often carrying multiple cameras and a portable flash unit.

“He always had his camera with him. When he was in work mode, he'd have, I think, two cameras around his neck, and he had a portable flash unit and, you know, dressed for battle.” — Lucy Sant [06:49]

Fink was never a passive observer; his presence was felt in his photographs, a principle he adopted from his mentor, Lisette Model.

“You can't pretend you're not there. You can't pretend that the picture was taken by God. You are in the room whether you like it or not.” — Lucy Sant [07:16]

Fink’s Early Life and Influences

Born in Brooklyn in 1941, Fink moved to Long Island as a young child. His parents were socially conscious and connected to the arts, fostering an environment that nurtured his photographic interests from an early age.

“His father wrote insurance policies for Raphael and Moses Sawyer, who became family friends. And one of Larry's earliest pictures is this remarkable mise-en-scène of a young woman who is casting a very artistic pose next to her portrait by Raphael Sawyer.” — Lucy Sant [08:13]

Fink received private photography instruction from Lisette Model, avoiding the competitive classes in Lower Manhattan, which allowed him to develop his unique style.

Immersion in the New York Beat Scene

Fink’s early work was deeply intertwined with the New York beat scene, capturing the essence of bohemian life and the second generation of beat photographers.

“The people that Larry photographs are the second generation beats, the ones who didn't become mythology. They’re very moving, you know, the aspiration, the idleness, the vacancy that can sometimes overwhelm people.” — Lucy Sant [10:05]

Despite many of his subjects remaining ordinary, Fink's ability to portray their profound emotions and daily lives underscores his role as a humanist photographer.

Passion for Jazz Photography

Jazz held a special place in Fink’s heart, inspiring him to document musicians during a pivotal era in New York City's jazz scene.

“He felt accepted and he continued photographing jazz players well into the 21st century. Sometimes, people he'd followed over decades, he continued photographing.” — Lucy Sant [12:11]

Fink admired jazz players deeply, seeing them as heroes whose improvisational spirit mirrored his own creative process.

Capturing the Essence of Studio 54

Fink’s photographs of Studio 54 juxtapose his down-to-earth persona with the glittering, hedonistic atmosphere of the iconic nightclub.

“Larry is earth toned. Larry is the real world. Larry is not cocaine flying spoons through the air.” — Lucy Sant [13:32]

This contrast highlights Fink's unique ability to blend seamlessly into diverse environments while maintaining his authentic perspective.

Adjusting the Emotional Temperature

Fink had an uncanny ability to influence the mood of any room he entered, often using his dynamic presence to create the perfect environment for capturing authentic moments.

“Larry adjusted the emotional temperature. That's something I gleaned from being on senior project boards and things like that. With Larry, I could see, you know, there were usually three person boards and Larry coming into the room was a squall.” — Lucy Sant [14:50]

His vibrant energy and unconventional methods made him both a beloved and formidable presence in academic and social settings.

Exhibition Aesthetics: Sensual Empathy

The "Sensual Empathy" exhibition not only showcases Fink’s photographs but also integrates his poetry, reflecting the organic and spontaneous nature of his work.

“Larry wasn't a straight horizontal line. The pictures had to bounce. They had to look like musical notes, you know, because Larry was always blowing a solo. And likewise, his poetry is that, you know, post-Malraux. It's phrases and words strewn all over the page in this storm.” — Lucy Sant [16:29]

This design choice emphasizes the fluidity and emotional depth of Fink’s artistic vision.

Conclusion: Celebrating a Humanist Photographer

Alison Stewart wraps up the episode by highlighting the significance of the "Sensual Empathy" exhibition and Larry Fink’s enduring impact on American photography.

“Sensual Empathy is on view at CPW in Kingston through August 31st. It’s Larry Fink's photography.” — Alison Stewart [17:33]

Lucy Sant expresses her gratitude for the opportunity to curate the exhibition, underlining the collaborative effort in preserving Fink’s legacy.

“Oh, my pleasure. This is great.” — Lucy Sant [17:48]

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Notable Quotes with Attributions and Timestamps:

• "Fink was born in Brooklyn and raised by lefty parents on Long Island..." — Alison Stewart [00:09]
• "The picture showed this large older woman aiming a pistol..." — Lucy Sant [01:18]
• "Larry just instantly made you into an accomplice and hijinks would ensue..." — Lucy Sant [02:52]
• "He always had his camera with him..." — Lucy Sant [06:49]
• "Larry adjusted the emotional temperature..." — Lucy Sant [14:50]
• "Larry is earth toned. Larry is the real world..." — Lucy Sant [13:32]

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Exhibition Details

• Exhibition Title: Larry Fink Sensual Empathy
• Location: CPW, Kingston
• Duration: Through August 31, 2025
• Curator: Lucy Sant
• Highlights: Fink’s extensive portfolio portraying diverse aspects of American life, integrated with his personal poetry.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of All Of It offers an intimate exploration of Larry Fink’s photography, showcasing his ability to capture the multifaceted nature of American culture. Through Lucy Sant’s insightful curation and personal anecdotes, listeners gain a deeper appreciation for Fink’s enduring legacy as a humanist photographer who truly embodied the essence of "All Of It."

Transcript

[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. When photographer Larry Fink died in 2023 at the age of 82, the New York Times called his work an exuberant document of the human condition. Fink was born in Brooklyn and raised by lefty parents on Long Island. Throughout his life, Larry brought along his camera and immersed himself in the lives of people from a wide variety of social classes and spaces. The second generation of New York beats jazz musicians, working class Americans, wealthy New York socialites, club goers at Studio 54, boxers, and participants in the civil rights movement. This summer, cpw, formerly known as the center for Photography at Woodstock, has organized an exhibit of Larry Fink's work. The show is called Larry Fink Sensual Empathy. It's on view now at CPW's new space in Kingston through Aug. 31. A sample of Fink's photographs from the show is on our Instagram now of itnyc. And I have with me writer Lucy Sant, who curated the show. Welcome, Lucy.

[Lucy Sant]

Hi.

[Alison Stewart]

When did you first become aware of Larry Fink?

[Lucy Sant]

I became aware of Larry Fink when I bought an oversized postcard at the St Mark's Bookshop in, I think, 1985. 5. I'd never heard of Larry Fink. The picture showed this large older woman aiming a pistol straight at the camera with her tongue parked in a corner of her mouth and a squint that becomes a kind of wink against a violently floral wallpaper. I was just floored by this image and I kept it tacked over my desk for years. And then 15 years later, I started teaching at Bard College and I met Larry. We were in the same department, photography. And suddenly that picture came to life because I could imagine the kind of cronyism that was going on between Larry and his subject. Always Larry just instantly made you into an accomplice and hijinks would ensue and you can see the whole evening. There's nothing violent about her aiming the pistol, which is, I'm sure, unloade, but it's them just goofing off at a family party, you know, these working class rural people, small time subsistence farmers in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania, where Larry had a farm for many years until the end of his life.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah, it's interesting you describing that picture because at first it's sort of the amusement of it, it's sort of the. The sort of sort of joy, a little bit of joy of her playing with this camera and playing with whoever's taking the picture. But as you started to look at his work. And you started thinking about curating his work.

[Lucy Sant]

What changed for you about Larry Fink's work?

[Alison Stewart]

What changed in your view of his work?

[Lucy Sant]

Well, it expanded it. The fact is that the show that's now at CPW was, which is spread out across this huge room. It was originally meant for a much tighter space, which was the Moose foundation booth at Paris photo last November. And it had to be worked around a few alcoves and stuff like that. So it was designed for that space. And because it's so concentrated, I wanted to focus on one aspect of Larry's work which is really the predominant one, which was human social interaction, basically. That said, while pondering this show, I was mournful of the fact that there's just no way I could include his heroic, posed against the sky like heroic worker photographs of praying mantises. They're brilliant, but they, you know, that Larry had many facets. Larry was curious about everybody and everything.

When you have someone who is curious about everything and everyone, but you have to have sort of a goal of the show, a sort of a focus of this show, what would you say is the focus of the show?

Well, again, it's human interaction as shown especially at parties.

Parties.

Made a decision in 1970 to become a society photographer. And originally his aim was, you know, he was very anti establishment left wing and he wanted to expose the ruling classes by taking pictures at, you know, museum balls and English speaking union balls and things like this. But at the same time, he'd moved into this farm in eastern Pennsylvania. And as he shot parties in these fancy spaces in New York City and family parties among these farmers in Pennsylvania, he was struck more by similarities than by differences. You know, he noticed that everybody goes through periods of infatuation, of intoxication, of sadness, of regret, of, you know, the whole gamut of human emotions is present in both places. And he was deeply, you know, he was very political, but at root he was a deeply human photographer. And nothing, you know, as the saying goes, nothing human was alien to him. And. And he continued doing that for the rest of his career. You know, the later party shots for which he was famous were the shots of Vanity Fair's annual Oscars party, which he did every year for some five to 10 years. But he also found, you know, and documented instances of community among boxers, fashion models, lumberjacks, all kinds of people. You know, he just, again, he was on the prowl. He was always looking for stuff. The boxer boxing pictures began as a single magazine assignments and spread out over, you know, like, 20 years, he just kept going back to these gyms because he fell in love with them and with the people who worked in them.

[Alison Stewart]

That's interesting. You said he was on the prowl.

[Lucy Sant]

Yeah.

[Alison Stewart]

Did he always have his camera with him?

[Lucy Sant]

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, when. When he was. When he was in work mode, he'd have, I think, two cameras around his neck, and he had a portable flash unit and, you know, dress for battle. And the. The interesting thing about Larry is that he was not a fly on the wall. He was in the room. And that's a principle he learned from his great teacher, the Austrian expatriate Lisette Model, who also taught Diane Arbus, among other people, and that was that. As a photographer, you can't pretend you're not there. You can't pretend that, you know, the picture was taken by God. You are in the room whether you like it or not, and you're casting a shadow, and you're jostling people who are jostling you back. And do you feel that in all of Larry's pictures?

[Alison Stewart]

My guest is Lucy Santi. She curated an exhibition of Larry Fink's photographs called Sensual Empathy. It's on View at CPW in Kingston through August 31st. So Larry was born in Brooklyn.

[Lucy Sant]

Right.

[Alison Stewart]

He grew up on Long Island. Born in 1941. How would you describe his childhood as you understood it?

[Lucy Sant]

Well, so he was born in Brooklyn, but I think he was in the single digits when his parents moved to Nassau County, Long Island. And. And they were, you know, his father was in insurance. They were very middle class, upwardly mobile, you know, the trajectory from Brooklyn to Nassau county, in fact. But at the same time, they were very socially aware and connected to the art. Larry's father wrote insurance policies for Raphael and Moses Sawyer, who became family friends. And. And one of Larry's earliest pictures is this remarkable mise enabim of a young woman who is casting a very artistic pose next to her portrait by Raphael Sawyer. And she's almost in the same pose as in the painting. And so. And when, you know, he needed a photo teacher, his mother arranged for Lizette Model. Model to do to. What's. What's the word? Like the doctors, you know, to do curb service. I'm going to say to come to the house. Larry was not part of the classes she taught in Lower Manhattan, which were contentious and very competitive. Larry got private instruction.

[Alison Stewart]

Some of his earliest work was his immersion in the New York beat scene.

[Lucy Sant]

Yes.

[Alison Stewart]

And the artists and the people who made up that movement. What was interesting to him, to Larry Fink?

[Lucy Sant]

Well, I mean, I deeply appreciated. Identified with those photographs, which I think were published as a book not that long ago, maybe 15 years ago. I already knew Larry by that point, and a lot about him came into focus when I saw those pictures. But for one thing, there were, you know, my tribe now pretty much extinct, which is to say New York City, Bohemia, people living without money for the furtherance of their art. And these, the people that Larry photographs are the second generation beats, the ones who didn't, you know, become mythology. And, you know, although his friends included a few people who later became famous, he. None of the people who appear in the photographs left any particular kind of mark. If you sense they're the ones who, you know, actually did go back to Nassau county and sell insurance. But they're, they're very moving, you know, the aspiration, the idleness, the. The vacancy that can sometimes. Can sometimes overcome people who've been eating less than the standard caloric intake for long enough. You know, they're very. They're moving. And the thing is, you know, it's a kind of portrait of idleness. And these people are never going to amount to anything. You can almost hear their parents, voices in the background. But Larry himself knew exactly what he was going to do, and he was already doing it. You know, that's the irony of the whole thing. Larry was turning in. Larry, who I think did a week of college, I think, with that book. He was turning in his senior project, or maybe his. Maybe a graduate project even.

[Alison Stewart]

He loved jazz. He said jazz players were my heroes. I idolized and was awed by them. What about jazz specifically moved him so much?

[Lucy Sant]

Well, you got to figure that he was alive and around at a watershed time for jazz in New York City. This was, you know, whole train was ascendant. Ornette Coleman had just arrived from the coast. Cecil Taylor was going to high places. This was extraordinary, fertile moment also, you know, on one of his first shy photographic outings as a nervous teenager venturing into clubs, Jimmy Rushing, the great blues shouter, Mr. Five by Five, was very friendly to him and repeatedly friendly over subsequent meetings. And that gave Larry the encouragement to go on. He felt accepted and he continued photographing jazz players well into the 21st century. Sometimes, you know, people he'd followed over decades, he continued photographing.

My guest is Lucy Sanz, who curated an exhibition of Larry Fink's photographs called Sensual Empathy. It's on View at CPW in Kingston through August 31st. Studio 54. I say that it makes me laugh. When you think about Larry Fink at Studio 54, what do you think about?

Oh, I think of Larry with this camera just being Larry, just moving around the room. You know, that's what I think of. I. Although I was alive and going to clubs at that period, I never went there myself. You know, I was strictly downtown and Arta Pavra and all that stuff. But. But, you know, it's a funny image, really, because Larry, you know, okay, everybody has to picture Larry, who is. Who's still a beatnik. And he's also kind of a cowpoke. He's been countrified by living in his farm in Pennsylvania for all these years. And he's wearing work boots and suspenders and he's got these cameras slung on him. And everybody else is wearing glitter and, you know, everybody else is shining. And Larry is, you know, he's. What's the opposite of shining? Larry is earth toned. You know, Larry is. Larry is the real world. Larry is not cocaine flying spoons through the air.

[Alison Stewart]

You know, one of the things you.

[Lucy Sant]

Wrote about Larry in the New York Review of Books was this great line. It says, larry adjusted to the emotional temperature in any room he entered. How was he able to do that?

Well, I said not He. What I wrote was not he adjusted to the emotional temperature.

He adjusted the emotional temperature. Yes.

And that's something I gleaned from being on senior project boards and things like that. With Larry, I could see, you know, there were usually three person boards and Larry coming into the room was a squall. Coming into the room, he. He adjusted the temperature, he adjusted the light because he was just this burst of energy all the time. He was bouncing on his feet. And sometimes, to emphasize a point, he'd reach into the leather holder at his waist and whip out his harmonica and blow Little Walter. And, you know, unexpected in an academic setting. But Larry was not one to defer to decorum at all. And he didn't care. He was going to be exuberant if he felt like being exuberant, and he often was. And he could also scare the living daylights out of students because they weren't used to this pedagogical style, you know, being taught by this wild man who had very sharp judgments and could actually put people in their place if they needed to be put there. Although he was kind, you know, but he was not restrained.

[Alison Stewart]

You included some of Larry's poetry on the walls. Why did you want to do that?

[Lucy Sant]

Oh, that was a mutual decision on the part of the Moose people and myself, you know, for one thing. Okay, I gotta say that it was really interesting. This was news to me. We had to fight the people at Paris photo at the Grand Palais for the right not to hang the pictures in a straight horizontal line because they're Cartesians over there, you know. But Larry wasn't a straight horizontal line. The pictures had to bounce. They had to look like musical notes, you know, because Larry was always blowing a solo. And likewise, his poetry is that, you know, post Malarme. It's phrases and words strewn all over the page in this storm. You know, you follow the shape of his thinking by looking at where the words go. And we had a couple of examples of things that were both pertinent to his photography and also looked right. They look like the bouncing photographs.

[Alison Stewart]

The name of the exhibition is Sensual Empathy. It's on view at CPW in Kingston through August 31st. It's Larry Fink's photography. My guest has been curator Lucy Sant. Thank you for making time, Lucy.

[Lucy Sant]

Oh, my pleasure. This is great.

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