Homer Page was my mentor.
But, he was also more than that. I adopted him... as my father.
Page was a documentary photographer who worked from the 1940's through the '60s. He was a good friend of Dorothea Lange and studied at the prestigious New Bauhaus School at the Illinois Institute of Technology
under the visionary photographer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
Page was one of the editors Edward Steichen - the Father of American photography - hired to assemble the world-famous Family of Man project through the New York's Museum of Modern Art and was one of the first photographers to have an exhibit there. In 1947 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship grant to document life in New York City. He called it, "Human Adaptation to the Urban Environment."
The photographs from that were never published except in the Family of Man book... Page was just too fastidious, too demanding, too hard on himself to bring out this project as a book and museum show.
In the late 2000s, a curator at the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City bought many prints from Page's wife Jeanne and presented a very large display of his work there...
a museum book was finally published of the work long after Page had a chance to see it.
I have always seen it as my responsibility to carry on his legacy
of documenting human life in the urban environment.
I'm not sure I do it well, and I know it'll never be as good as him.
Yet, he allowed me to see...that's all that counts..
But, he was also more than that. I adopted him... as my father.
Page was a documentary photographer who worked from the 1940's through the '60s. He was a good friend of Dorothea Lange and studied at the prestigious New Bauhaus School at the Illinois Institute of Technology
under the visionary photographer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
Page was one of the editors Edward Steichen - the Father of American photography - hired to assemble the world-famous Family of Man project through the New York's Museum of Modern Art and was one of the first photographers to have an exhibit there. In 1947 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship grant to document life in New York City. He called it, "Human Adaptation to the Urban Environment."
The photographs from that were never published except in the Family of Man book... Page was just too fastidious, too demanding, too hard on himself to bring out this project as a book and museum show.
In the late 2000s, a curator at the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City bought many prints from Page's wife Jeanne and presented a very large display of his work there...
a museum book was finally published of the work long after Page had a chance to see it.
I have always seen it as my responsibility to carry on his legacy
of documenting human life in the urban environment.
I'm not sure I do it well, and I know it'll never be as good as him.
Yet, he allowed me to see...that's all that counts..
