Helen K. Garber
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Helen K. Garber (born 1954) is an American photographer known mostly for her black and white urban landscapes of cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Paris and Amsterdam. Her images are in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of the City of New York, Portland Museum of Art, Oregon, Yale University and the George Eastman House, International Museum of Film and Photography in Rochester, New York.
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[edit] Biography
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she earned her bachelor's degree in Theatre Arts, Design at the State University at New Paltz, New York. 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. Her experience with the world-famous entertainers made her realize that one must follow their passion to lead a fulfilled life.
Since Helen lived in the entertainment capital of the world, she specialized in public relations photography. Her portraits were reproduced in many important 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 important 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 Stephen Cohen 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. She has also judged a number of photo contests for non profit organizations.
L.A. Noir, nominated for the 2006 Santa Fe Prize in Photography, 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 in 2006 at Sponto Gallery, Venice, CA, and again at The Venice Art Walk, CA.
The live installation, including the text read aloud by fellow theatre alumni John Turturro, Michael Badalucco and Charlayne Woodard, will be produced at Parker Theatre along with Helen's photographic prints exhibited at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University at New Paltz, NY in 2007.
A 40 foot long version of Night View of Los Angeles, a 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)will be exhibited at the 10th International Biennale of Architecture in Venice, Italy from September through November, 2006.
[edit] Major Works
[edit] 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
[edit] Books
- Parents at Last - The New Pathways to Parenthood, Clarkson N. Potter, 1997, Wendy Wilkinson, Cynthia Peck, authors, Helen K. Garber, Illustrator
- Venice Beach, California Carnivale, Xlibris Books, 2005, Helen K. Garber, Author
- Looking at Los Angeles, Metropolis Books, 2005, Marla Hamburg Kennedy, Ben Stiller, Craig Krull, Jane Brown, Editors, Helen K. Garber, Julius Shulman, Elliot Erwitt, Diane Arbus, David Hockney, Ralph Gibson, others, photographers
[edit] Films
- Shirley Kaufer, Artist 1990
- L.A. Noir 2005
