Shirley Burden

Shirley Carter Burden (December 9, 1908, New York City, US – June 3, 1989, above Teterboro Airport, US, on a Los Angeles to New York flight) was a prominent American photographer,[1][2] author of picture essays on racism, Catholicism, and history of place.[3][4] He served on advisory committees of museums, including the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California, and was the Photography Committee chairman at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and of Aperture,[5] which named the Burden Gallery (New York) in his honour.

Early life

Burden was born on December 9, 1908, in New York City, the youngest son of William Armistead Moale Burden and Florence Vanderbilt Burden (Twombly). He was at the Browning School in New York City until 1926, but did not go on to college or university education, instead from 1924 assisting at Pathé News. In 1926 he and his cousin filmed an Ontario Indian tribe for their The Silent Enemy, and from 1927 held a minor position at Paramount Studios. A 1929 meeting with Edward Steichen inspired his interest in photography and later gained his mentorship. He sought better motion picture prospects in California and Hollywood[6] and from 1929 to 1934 used his contact Merian C. Cooper to gain associate producer work, most significantly at RKO on Academy Award nominated “She”.

Burden married Flobelle Fairbanks in 1934 (niece of actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr.) and had two children; Margaret Florence (born 1936), and son Shirley Carter Burden, Jr. (born 1941).

Commercial career

During World War 2 Burden established Tradefilms in 1942, successfully producing training films which were then in demand from the US Navy, the Office of Education, and Lockheed Aircraft. This business was unsustainable postwar and Burden and Tradefilms partner Todd Walker opened a photography studio in Beverly Hills, California, in 1946, producing advertising and architectural photography for magazines Architectural Forum, House and Garden, Arts and Architecture.

Fine art career

Dissatisfied with commercial photography, and having embraced Catholicism, Burden decided on a more fulfilling fine art career, encouraged by Minor White[7] whom he met in 1952. The friendship developed into his patronage of White’s Aperture magazine. He assisted Edward Steichen in gathering photography for, and subsequently contributing images to, MoMA’s highly successful, international travelling Family of Man (1955), working on this also with Dorothea Lange whom he befriended. These contacts and experience launched a successful fine art photography career. His photo-essay on the all-but-abandoned Ellis Island,[8] which was exhibited under the auspices of the City of New York, and an invitation to exhibit his essay on the Weehawken ferry at MoMA in Diogenes With a Camera IV in 1958, curated by Steichen, who encouraged Burden to photograph Trappist monks at the abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, Kentucky (God Is My Life).[9] Travel to Lourdes in 1960 resulted in Behold Thy Mother, published by Doubleday in 1965, and notoriety continued with the well publicised I Wonder Why, which documented racism experienced by a young black girl.[10]

Service to photography

In 1971, Burden married Julietta V. Lyon, after the death of his wife Flobelle on January 5, 1969. He continued with his photo essays (on Japan, and his ancestors, the Vanderbilts[11]) and he repaid his success by chairing or advising a range of photography organisations, and teaching (1978–81, at the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, California.). He gifted or exchanged, in memory of his first wife Flobelle, large numbers of photographs from his generous and eclectic collection of modernist works to MoMA, The Centre for Photography and other institutions. In 1989, 5 years after Aperture moved headquarters to a five-story brownstone at 20 East 23rd Street in New York,[12] the building’s second floor was devoted to the Burden Gallery, in recognition of Burden's longtime support.[13]

Burden died June 3, 1989, and The Burden Professorship in Photography at Harvard University in 1999 was established posthumously by his family.

Books

Films

References

  1. ↑ Burden, Shirley C (1981). Presence : Photographs With Observations. Aperture Inc, Millerton, N.Y
  2. ↑ Shirley Burden: Photographs of Ellis Island in the 1950s Dates: June 17, 1987 – September 14, 1987 accessed Feb 17 2015
  3. ↑ Burden, Shirley C (1985). Chairs. Aperture : Distributed by Viking Penguin, New York
  4. ↑ Kotker, Norman & Jonas, Susan & United States. National Park Service & Montclair State College (1989). Ellis Island : echoes from a nation's past. Aperture Foundation in association with the National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior and Montclair State College : Farrar, Straus and Giroux [distributor], New York, N.Y
  5. ↑ Shirley C. Burden, 1909–1989. (obituary). (1989-06-22). In Aperture. (n115), p78(1).
  6. ↑ Fahey, D., & Rich, L. G. (1987). Masters of starlight: photographers in Hollywood. Los Angeles County Museum.
  7. ↑ Hall, J. B. (Ed.). (1978). Minor White: Rites & Passages: His Photographs Accompanied by Excerpts from His Diaries and Letters (Vol. 80). Aperture.
  8. ↑ Jonas, S. (Ed.). (1989). Ellis Island: echoes from a nation's past. Aperture Foundation.
  9. ↑ Book Review: Out of Gethsemani. In Renascence Volume 15, Issue 1, Fall 1962 Essays on Values in Literature Sister M. Thérèse, S.D.S. Pages 46-50 DOI: 10.5840/renascence19621519
  10. ↑ Keliher, A. V. (1966). Helping Children Identify. Childhood Education, 42(5), 275-275.
  11. ↑ Friedman, Bernard Harper. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney: A Biography. Doubleday Books, 1978.
  12. ↑ Anthony Ramirez, “A Patron of the Arts Needs a Patron,” New York Times, February 16, 1997
  13. ↑ “Shirley Burden, 80, a Writer-Photographer,” obituary, New York Times, June 5, 1989.
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