Larry Fink’s Social Graces series contrasts two social worlds that seem a world apart: those of Manhattan high society and Pennsylvania farm country. In the city, coiffed and bejeweled patrons of the arts dance and drink at gallery openings, benefits, and the famed Studio 54 nightclub; in Martin’s Creek, Pennsylvania, a farming family and their circle celebrate birthdays and graduations, gathering at the roller rink and the Legion. The dress and comportment of Fink’s subjects, and the environments in which they exist, diverge as one might expect. What they share is a desire to be seen—to be photographed. “People like to have their pictures taken,” Fink wrote. “It is a profound aspect of our culture, this compulsion for proof. It allows me to wade into a party.”
Fink was born in 1941 into a politically radical Brooklyn household, and his images in this series dramatize the class divide that long fascinated and troubled him. When he began photographing Manhattan galas in the mid-1970s, he was driven by curiosity about and anger at the rich, and his images of the people he winkingly called his “political enemies” are often unflattering. But so too are those he made in Martin’s Creek, to where he moved from New York City around 1980. Ultimately, the series is a highly subjective view of the actions and interactions of people Fink observed as an outsider, and a monument to his ability, with his cameras and flash, to make a theater of everyday life.
Social Graces was first exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1979 and published as a book in 1984, establishing Fink as one of his generation’s great photographers of people. It remains his best-known series. Larry Fink died at his home in Martin’s Creek in November 2023.
The photographs on view were gifts to the permanent collection from Gary Davis, Class of 1976.
This exhibition was curated by Kate Addleman-Frankel, the Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography, and supported in part by the Appel and Ames Exhibition Endowments.
Larry Fink
Social Graces
6 June – 27 October, 2024
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
114 Central Avenue
Ithaca, NY 14853
https://museum.cornell.edu
Hungarian Debutante Ball, New York City, February 1977, from the series Social Graces,
Larry Fink,
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
Hungarian Debutante Ball, New York City, February 1977, from the series Social Graces,
Larry Fink,
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
Joseph Gasparetti’s baptism, Martins Creek, Pennsylvania, April 1979, from the series Social Graces,
Larry Fink,
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
Oslin’s graduation party, June 1977, from the series Social Graces,
Larry Fink,
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
Sabatine-Miller graduation party, June 1977, from the series Social Graces,
Larry Fink,
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
Studio 54, New York City, May 1977, from the series Social Graces,
Larry Fink,
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
Benefit, the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, June 1977, from the series Social Graces,
Larry Fink,
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
Gallery opening, New York City, February 1974, from the series Social Graces,
Larry Fink,
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
Russian Ball, New York City, November 1976, from the series Social Graces,
Larry Fink,
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
Russian Orthodox Fund, October 1975, from the series Social Graces,
Larry Fink,
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
