Les Krims (b. 1942)
Homeless man with handmade antenna on beach, NY, c. 1968
Vintage gelatin silver print
"Estate of Peter C. Bunnell" stamp on verso
Image size: 4 5/8 x 6 7/8 inches
Paper size: 8 x 10 inches
Mat size: 11 x 14 inches
Provenance: Collection of Peter C. Bunnell (#20-039); the Artist
Condition: Overall Excellent; print is rippled on top and bottom edges, not affecting the image
(LK-05)
Retail: $1500
SHORT BIO: Les Krims was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1942. Krims studied at New York's Stuyvesant High School. Krims studied art at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and Pratt Institute. For the last 42 years he has taught photography, first at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and for the last 40 years at Buffalo State College, where he is a professor in the Department of Fine Arts. In describing his staged pictures, and the parodies of candid journalistic propaganda photographs he makes, Krims said, "It is possible to create any picture one imagines." Krims's latest project is a website (leskrims.com) where he sells archival ink jet prints of a wide selection of his pictures. Krims claims new digital printing technology and capitalism make it possible to "own the means of production, rendering moot wall-to-wall delusional Marxist posturing in the culture community." -- wikipedia
Provenance: Peter C. Bunnell:
Peter C. Bunnell (1937-2021) was an American author, scholar and historian of photography. For more than 40 years he had a significant impact on collecting, exhibiting, teaching and practicing photography through his work as a university professor, museum curator and prolific author.
Bunnell received an M.A. degree in art history from Yale University, and later became an associate in the Alfred Stieglitz Archive at the university.
Bunnell joined the Museum of Modern Art staff in New York in 1966, and in 1968 became Associate Curator of the Department of Photography. In 1970 he was named the Curator of the Department of Photography at the Museum.
In 1972, he was invited to teach at Princeton University and was given the position of David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art. This was the first endowed professorship in the history of photography in the United States. That same year he curated a show at the museum called “Photography into Sculpture”, the first comprehensive survey of photographically formed images used in a sculptural manner. The show has been called "one of the great contributions to the history of photography”.
From 1973 to 1978 Bunnell was also the Director of the Princeton University Art Museum.
In 1979 he was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for further study of the history of photography. Bunnell received a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council in 1984.
In 2002, Bunnell retired from his post at Princeton. That same year the U.S. Postal Service issued a set of postage stamps called Masters of American Photography featuring photographers and images selected by Bunnell. In 2011, Princeton University announced the endowment of the Peter C. Bunnell Curatorship in Photography.