Helen K. Garber
Encyclopedia
Helen K. Garber is an American photographer known mostly for her black and white urban landscapes of cities including Los Angeles
, San Francisco, New York
, Paris
, Amsterdam
and Venice. Her images are in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum
, Museum of the City of New York
, Portland Art Museum
, Yale University
and the George Eastman House
.
. She moved to California
in 1978 and lives in Santa Monica, California
with her husband, Dr. Stuart Garber and two Springer Spaniels. Her studio is located at Venice Beach, California.
Helen worked in many different art disciplines including theatre scene and costume design, painting, computer animation and video documentary. In 1991, she produced and directed the video documentary, Shirley Kaufer, Artist. It was edited by the award winning film maker, Phil Zwickler. Shirley Kaufer was shown in Los Angeles at the juried Women's Film Festival at Barnsdall Park and on local PBS stations.
Helen focused on still photography in 1991 after she documented Le Cirque du Soleil
in Santa Monica, Costa Mesa and New York.
Since Helen lived in the entertainment capital of the world, she specialized in public relations photography. Her portraits were reproduced in many periodicals such as the New York Times, the LA Times, Playbill
, Hollywood Reporter, New York Magazine and the LA Weekly
. Her corporate clients included Hachette Filapecci Publications, The Getty Center, CBS
, Penguin
, Doubleday and the Mayor's Office, City of Los Angeles. In 1997, Helen won the Photo of the Year Award from the Publicity Club of Los Angeles.
The grand prize money from the national 20th Century Photo Contest was used to build out a studio across from Gold's Gym, Venice. Helen spent the next five years documenting the visually extreme members of the gym.
One of Helen's last commercial assignments was to appear on the other side of the camera for the Travel Channel in the 30 minute photo travelogue, Freeze Frame San Diego. She accompanied TV personality, Bill Boggs
on adventures throughout San Diego County, while teaching him photo technique tips. The photos taken during the adventures were reproduced in American Photo, Travel Holiday and Popular Photography magazines.
Helen was hired by Random House
to illustrate the 1998 best selling book, Parents at Last, the New Pathways to Parenthood. She and her husband Stuart (then on sabbatical), traveled around the country documenting 35 families who were created in non-traditional ways.
Helen switched to fine art photography in 2000 and has had her work exhibited in venues such as AIPAD, NY, Photo L.A., Photo New York, UBS Paine Webber
Gallery, NY, The Norton Museum, West Palm Beach, FL, Hermes Gallery, Beverly Hills, Kathleen Ewing Gallery, Washington, DC, Paul Kopeikin Gallery and G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Los Angeles. She is represented in Los Angeles by DNJ Gallery, in New York by Marla Hamburg Kennedy, and in Boston
by Tepper Takayama Fine Arts.
The Santa Monica Arts Commission, The Venice Community Trust, Women In Photography, International, Focus On AIDS and the International Photography Awards are a number of the organizations that Helen either has advised or sat on the board. In 2006, Helen curated FOH, a show of photography for Ocean Front Gallery at Venice Beach, California.
Since 2008, she has been directing a group photography installation, An Intimate View. Seeing that her many photographer friends were reeling from the change in direction of the business of photography as well experiencing the economic slump, she organized a group project where the photographers would document their neighborhoods over the course of the year and then present the stories in the latest digital technology. The first group, GroupSC 2008, An Intimate View of Los Angeles premiered at Gallery Skart along with the opening night of the first Month of Photography, Los Angeles. The MINARC
designed installation using 25 photo screens telling the stories simultaneously was critically acclaimed and invited to re-install at the international Los Angeles Art Show, in January, 2010. This would be the first time that photographers would work together as a group rather than compete against each other as they normally do. The strength of the whole as well as the talent and the passion of the group members was the essence of this successful collaboration.
The second year group expanded to 45 artists and a territory from Santa Ynez to San Diego and East to Palm Springs. GroupSC 2009, An Intimate View of Southern California will premiere April 3, 2010 in conjunction with opening night of Month of Photography, 2010.
Nominated for the 2006 Santa Fe Prize in Photography, L.A. Noir is a multi-media installation consisting of projected images of Helen's night urban landscapes of Los Angeles, text from pulp fiction based in Los Angeles using the city as character and West Coast Sound Jazz.
The recorded version was first shown at The Venice Art Walk, Venice, CA in 2005 and on Wednesday, April 19, 2006 at Sponto Gallery, Venice, CA, and again at The Venice Art Walk in 2006, CA.
Urban Noir/NY-LA,
A multimedia piece including projected images, text extracted from pulp fiction and mid twentieth century jazz along with 20 of Helen's photographic prints was exhibited at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University at New Paltz, NY, October, 2007. The University purchased the twenty images exhibited for the permanent collection of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. John Beasley, noted jazz artist, composed a 17 minute suite to accompany the projected images and text. John performed the piece live for the first time in a multi-media presentation of Urban Noir/LA-NY after Helen lectured at the Annenberg Space for Photography in June, 2009. It was part of the first group of lectures presented at the recently completed institution.
A Night View of Los Angeles, a 360 Degree Panorama of the Entire City of Los Angeles as Seen from the Helipad of the US Bank Tower
A 40 feet (12.2 m) long version of A Night View of Los Angeles, a 360 degree panorama of the entire city of Los Angeles, taken from the helipad of the US Bank Tower (tallest building in Los Angeles and West of the Mississippi
)was commissioned for the 10th Mostra di Architettura di Venezia or Biennale di Architecture in Venice,Italy from September through November, 2006. It was printed with solvent ink on stretched silk. - A second version of A Night View of Los Angeles, also 40 feet (12.2 m) long, but printed with solvent ink on outdoor banner vinyl was exhibited at the front entrance of the international fair, Photo LA, Santa Monica, CA in January, 2007. - - -
A Night View Collaboration
Helen's vision was to then invite the most significant Los Angeles graffiti writers of the past twenty years to share her privileged view of the city and catch (paint) her 40 ft (12.2 m). long masterpiece with their own distinctive street art identities (TAGS). To ceremoniously tag the entire city at once. This was first exhibited at the annual charity event, the [Venice Art Walk http://veniceartwalk.info], on May 20, 2007. The Night View Collaboration was exhibited a second time in conjunction with An Intimate View of Los Angeles, at Gallery Skart, Santa Monica, April, 2009. Again as part of the Santa Monica Pico Art Walk in 2009 and finally at the FADA Los Angeles Art Show, January, 2010.
Helen K. Garber, a noirist, feels a camaraderie with graffiti writers as she and they roam the city after dark while sometimes forsaking their physical safety, to use the urban landscape to create their art. They all share a love for the city of Los Angeles. Despite their differences in age, gender and background, they were able to communicate as equals because of their mutual respect for each other as serious artists.
Duce One designed the collaboration and invited Mear, Saber, Gin, Retna, Gzer, Vyal, Revok, Zes, and Cab to join him. This is the first time so many of these significant artists collaborated on the same production. Vyal gave Helen a lesson in good spray can technique and she added her own tag to complete the collaboration. In 2010, for the FADA Los Angeles Art Show, Duce again invited more writers to add their tags and Duce, Cre8, Mear and Vyal finished the piece during the art show, 3 years after it was begun.
This project opened up a dialogue between Helen and these fellow artists and has given the writers a forum to explain their process. Not only do large corporations support this group's work, the writers are presently in conversation with the Los Angeles Dept. of Cultural Affairs about creating murals for the city. Instead of considering them outlaws, the city hopes to support them for creting the same type of work.
Why? - Young artists rarely tag these artist's murals because their style is well known and respected. The young, ignorant artists generally tag murals that they can't relate to in the hopes that their tag will remain longer on a mural than on a plain wall that can be simply painted over.
While most view territorial gang tagging as urban blight, Helen views it no worse than billboards, electric wires, thoughtless development over the years such as fortress-like indoor shopping malls and McMansions created with lots of money, but no aesthic sense.
Imagine how more beautiful our cities can be if art programs were re-introduced to the public school system with an added emphasis on the appreciation of the urban landscape. That way future taggers, developers and landlords would create with a better understanding of design and aesthetics.
Venice/Venezia
Premiered at DNJ Gallery, Los Angeles, in 2010 Venice/Venezia is a series of b/w diptychs on stretched canvas that create a metaphor on by illustrating the duality of the of life in two distant cities that share the same name. Although the night images are beautiful to view, they are a sugar coated comment on how the residents of tourist destinations must share their lives with hordes of unwanted day tourists and then take back their beloved cities once the sun sets.
A Night View of Los Angeles 2006
A Night View Collaboration 2007 - 2010
GroupLA 2008, An Intimate View of Los Angeles 2009
GroupSC 2009, An Intimate View of Southern CA 2010
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, San Francisco, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
and Venice. Her images are in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
, Museum of the City of New York
Museum of the City of New York
The Museum of the City of New York is an art gallery and history museum founded in 1923 to present the history of New York City, USA and its people...
, Portland Art Museum
Portland Art Museum
The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it the oldest art museum on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the United States. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum became one of the twenty-five largest art museums in...
, Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
and the George Eastman House
George Eastman House
The George Eastman House is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York, USA. World-renowned for its photograph and motion picture archives, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and...
.
Biography
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she earned her bachelor's degree in Theatre Arts, Design at the State University of New York at New PaltzState University of New York at New Paltz
The State University of New York at New Paltz, known as SUNY New Paltz for short, is a public university in New Paltz, New York. It was founded in 1828 as the School for teaching of classics. In 1885, the New Paltz Normal and Training School was established as a school to prepare teachers for the...
. She moved to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in 1978 and lives in Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, US. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and...
with her husband, Dr. Stuart Garber and two Springer Spaniels. Her studio is located at Venice Beach, California.
Helen worked in many different art disciplines including theatre scene and costume design, painting, computer animation and video documentary. In 1991, she produced and directed the video documentary, Shirley Kaufer, Artist. It was edited by the award winning film maker, Phil Zwickler. Shirley Kaufer was shown in Los Angeles at the juried Women's Film Festival at Barnsdall Park and on local PBS stations.
Helen focused on still photography in 1991 after she documented Le Cirque du Soleil
Cirque du Soleil
Cirque du Soleil , is a Canadian entertainment company, self-described as a "dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment." Based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and located in the inner-city area of Saint-Michel, it was founded in Baie-Saint-Paul in 1984 by two former street performers, Guy...
in Santa Monica, Costa Mesa and New York.
Since Helen lived in the entertainment capital of the world, she specialized in public relations photography. Her portraits were reproduced in many periodicals such as the New York Times, the LA Times, Playbill
Playbill
Playbill is a monthly U.S. magazine for theatregoers. Although there is a subscription issue available for home delivery, most Playbills are printed for particular shows to be distributed at the door...
, Hollywood Reporter, New York Magazine and the LA Weekly
LA Weekly
LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
. Her corporate clients included Hachette Filapecci Publications, The Getty Center, CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, Penguin
Penguin Group
The Penguin Group is a trade book publisher, the largest in the world , having overtaken Random House in 2009. The Penguin Group is the name of the incorporated division of parent Pearson PLC that oversees these publishing operations...
, Doubleday and the Mayor's Office, City of Los Angeles. In 1997, Helen won the Photo of the Year Award from the Publicity Club of Los Angeles.
The grand prize money from the national 20th Century Photo Contest was used to build out a studio across from Gold's Gym, Venice. Helen spent the next five years documenting the visually extreme members of the gym.
One of Helen's last commercial assignments was to appear on the other side of the camera for the Travel Channel in the 30 minute photo travelogue, Freeze Frame San Diego. She accompanied TV personality, Bill Boggs
Bill Boggs
William "Bill" Boggs III is an Emmy Award–winning American television presenter and journalist.Boggs was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
on adventures throughout San Diego County, while teaching him photo technique tips. The photos taken during the adventures were reproduced in American Photo, Travel Holiday and Popular Photography magazines.
Helen was hired by Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
to illustrate the 1998 best selling book, Parents at Last, the New Pathways to Parenthood. She and her husband Stuart (then on sabbatical), traveled around the country documenting 35 families who were created in non-traditional ways.
Helen switched to fine art photography in 2000 and has had her work exhibited in venues such as AIPAD, NY, Photo L.A., Photo New York, UBS Paine Webber
Paine Webber
Paine Webber and Company was an American stock brokerage and asset management firm that was acquired by the Swiss bank UBS AG in 2000. The company was founded in 1880 in Boston, Massachusetts, by William Alfred Paine and Wallace G. Webber. Operating with two employees, they leased premises at 48...
Gallery, NY, The Norton Museum, West Palm Beach, FL, Hermes Gallery, Beverly Hills, Kathleen Ewing Gallery, Washington, DC, Paul Kopeikin Gallery and G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Los Angeles. She is represented in Los Angeles by DNJ Gallery, in New York by Marla Hamburg Kennedy, and in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
by Tepper Takayama Fine Arts.
The Santa Monica Arts Commission, The Venice Community Trust, Women In Photography, International, Focus On AIDS and the International Photography Awards are a number of the organizations that Helen either has advised or sat on the board. In 2006, Helen curated FOH, a show of photography for Ocean Front Gallery at Venice Beach, California.
Since 2008, she has been directing a group photography installation, An Intimate View. Seeing that her many photographer friends were reeling from the change in direction of the business of photography as well experiencing the economic slump, she organized a group project where the photographers would document their neighborhoods over the course of the year and then present the stories in the latest digital technology. The first group, GroupSC 2008, An Intimate View of Los Angeles premiered at Gallery Skart along with the opening night of the first Month of Photography, Los Angeles. The MINARC
Minarc
Minarc is an award-winning architecture & interior design studio based in Santa Monica, CA.The firm specializes in modern, innovative and sustainable architecture and design....
designed installation using 25 photo screens telling the stories simultaneously was critically acclaimed and invited to re-install at the international Los Angeles Art Show, in January, 2010. This would be the first time that photographers would work together as a group rather than compete against each other as they normally do. The strength of the whole as well as the talent and the passion of the group members was the essence of this successful collaboration.
The second year group expanded to 45 artists and a territory from Santa Ynez to San Diego and East to Palm Springs. GroupSC 2009, An Intimate View of Southern California will premiere April 3, 2010 in conjunction with opening night of Month of Photography, 2010.
Major works
L.A. NoirNominated for the 2006 Santa Fe Prize in Photography, L.A. Noir is a multi-media installation consisting of projected images of Helen's night urban landscapes of Los Angeles, text from pulp fiction based in Los Angeles using the city as character and West Coast Sound Jazz.
The recorded version was first shown at The Venice Art Walk, Venice, CA in 2005 and on Wednesday, April 19, 2006 at Sponto Gallery, Venice, CA, and again at The Venice Art Walk in 2006, CA.
Urban Noir/NY-LA,
A multimedia piece including projected images, text extracted from pulp fiction and mid twentieth century jazz along with 20 of Helen's photographic prints was exhibited at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University at New Paltz, NY, October, 2007. The University purchased the twenty images exhibited for the permanent collection of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. John Beasley, noted jazz artist, composed a 17 minute suite to accompany the projected images and text. John performed the piece live for the first time in a multi-media presentation of Urban Noir/LA-NY after Helen lectured at the Annenberg Space for Photography in June, 2009. It was part of the first group of lectures presented at the recently completed institution.
A Night View of Los Angeles, a 360 Degree Panorama of the Entire City of Los Angeles as Seen from the Helipad of the US Bank Tower
A 40 feet (12.2 m) long version of A Night View of Los Angeles, a 360 degree panorama of the entire city of Los Angeles, taken from the helipad of the US Bank Tower (tallest building in Los Angeles and West of the Mississippi
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
)was commissioned for the 10th Mostra di Architettura di Venezia or Biennale di Architecture in Venice,Italy from September through November, 2006. It was printed with solvent ink on stretched silk. - A second version of A Night View of Los Angeles, also 40 feet (12.2 m) long, but printed with solvent ink on outdoor banner vinyl was exhibited at the front entrance of the international fair, Photo LA, Santa Monica, CA in January, 2007. - - -
A Night View Collaboration
Helen's vision was to then invite the most significant Los Angeles graffiti writers of the past twenty years to share her privileged view of the city and catch (paint) her 40 ft (12.2 m). long masterpiece with their own distinctive street art identities (TAGS). To ceremoniously tag the entire city at once. This was first exhibited at the annual charity event, the [Venice Art Walk http://veniceartwalk.info], on May 20, 2007. The Night View Collaboration was exhibited a second time in conjunction with An Intimate View of Los Angeles, at Gallery Skart, Santa Monica, April, 2009. Again as part of the Santa Monica Pico Art Walk in 2009 and finally at the FADA Los Angeles Art Show, January, 2010.
Helen K. Garber, a noirist, feels a camaraderie with graffiti writers as she and they roam the city after dark while sometimes forsaking their physical safety, to use the urban landscape to create their art. They all share a love for the city of Los Angeles. Despite their differences in age, gender and background, they were able to communicate as equals because of their mutual respect for each other as serious artists.
Duce One designed the collaboration and invited Mear, Saber, Gin, Retna, Gzer, Vyal, Revok, Zes, and Cab to join him. This is the first time so many of these significant artists collaborated on the same production. Vyal gave Helen a lesson in good spray can technique and she added her own tag to complete the collaboration. In 2010, for the FADA Los Angeles Art Show, Duce again invited more writers to add their tags and Duce, Cre8, Mear and Vyal finished the piece during the art show, 3 years after it was begun.
This project opened up a dialogue between Helen and these fellow artists and has given the writers a forum to explain their process. Not only do large corporations support this group's work, the writers are presently in conversation with the Los Angeles Dept. of Cultural Affairs about creating murals for the city. Instead of considering them outlaws, the city hopes to support them for creting the same type of work.
Why? - Young artists rarely tag these artist's murals because their style is well known and respected. The young, ignorant artists generally tag murals that they can't relate to in the hopes that their tag will remain longer on a mural than on a plain wall that can be simply painted over.
While most view territorial gang tagging as urban blight, Helen views it no worse than billboards, electric wires, thoughtless development over the years such as fortress-like indoor shopping malls and McMansions created with lots of money, but no aesthic sense.
Imagine how more beautiful our cities can be if art programs were re-introduced to the public school system with an added emphasis on the appreciation of the urban landscape. That way future taggers, developers and landlords would create with a better understanding of design and aesthetics.
Venice/Venezia
Premiered at DNJ Gallery, Los Angeles, in 2010 Venice/Venezia is a series of b/w diptychs on stretched canvas that create a metaphor on by illustrating the duality of the of life in two distant cities that share the same name. Although the night images are beautiful to view, they are a sugar coated comment on how the residents of tourist destinations must share their lives with hordes of unwanted day tourists and then take back their beloved cities once the sun sets.
Photography
- Griffith Park Observatory 1997
- Radio Tower, Empire State 1997
- World Trade Center from Empire State 1997
- Bike Path Fog 2001
- Speedway Alley 2001
- LAX 2002
- Santa Monica Pier Fog 1 2002
- Santa Monica Pier Fog 2 2002
- Chinatown Art Opening 2003
- Paris Walk Street 2003
- Los Angeles Panaromic 2 2005
- Disney Hall and Music Center from US Bank Tower 2005
A Night View of Los Angeles 2006
A Night View Collaboration 2007 - 2010
GroupLA 2008, An Intimate View of Los Angeles 2009
GroupSC 2009, An Intimate View of Southern CA 2010
External links
- Helen K. Garber's website
- DNJ Gallery Garber's Los Angeles representative
- Tepper Takayama Fine Arts - Garber's Boston representative
- Gallery Skart: GroupLA 2008 website An Intimate View of Los Angeles Group Installation
- Gallery Skart: GroupSC 2009 website An Intimate View of Southern California Installation