Photographer Kenn Duncan’s Archive Comes to the Library for the Performing Arts

Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gregory Hines, Bernadette Peters, and Bette Midler Among Celebrities Captured by His Lens

New York, NY, September 8, 2003 -- Glittering performing artists from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s are represented in a collection of 600,000 photographs by Kenn Duncan that has been acquired by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. An animated shot of Gregory Hines at the height of his fame on Broadway, Anita Morris in her skin-tight costume from the musical Nine, and pictures of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev during the time of their explosive popularity, are among the many iconic images the collection will make available to researchers.

“This remarkable trove of studio portraits and production photographs perfectly complements the Library’s other documentation of personalities and productions from the same era,” said Jacqueline Z. Davis, the Barbara G. and Lawrence A. Fleischman Executive Director of the Library for the Performing Arts. “It will provide researchers with an unparalleled resource for investigating the performers and stage works of the time.”

The Library for the Performing Arts has acquired Duncan’s entire archive. The prominent photographer captured the distinctive style of each of his subjects, and his studio became a magnet for such famous performers as Peter Allen, Carol Channing, Candy Darling, Judith Jamison, Eartha Kitt, Angela Lansbury, Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters, Christopher Plummer, Chita Rivera, Tommy Tune, and Twiggy.

Duncan photographed such major dance companies as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theater, the Bolshoi Ballet, and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The Broadway shows that he shot include Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The Elephant Man, La Cage aux Folles, and Sophisticated Ladies. His commercial fashion photography, posters, and silk screens comprise other major segments of the collection.

It is estimated that by the end of 2006 the archive will be available to researchers at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. A major retrospective exhibition of Duncan’s photographs is being planned at that time.

For a photography column in The New York Times in 1977, Kenn Duncan described how he became a photographer, “I’d been a dancer and a skater, but injured my leg badly. While recuperating, I got a &lsquo:gofer’ job with a photographer, and I gradually learned how to use the camera. I began to try to recapture the spirit of dancing through photography.”

Kenn Duncan (1928-1986) is represented in the collections of major museums and libraries around the world, including The Brooklyn Museum, the Chicago Historical Society, the Dance Library of Israel, the Harvard Libraries, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, the Parsons School of Design, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, as well as The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The three books of his work are testaments to his interest in the human form in motion and in repose. Red Shoes, inspired by the film The Wizard of Oz, depicts celebrities in telling white costumes with complementary red shoes, boots, sandals, sneakers, toe shoes, or ballet slippers. His two books of nudes, Nudes and More Nudes, feature discreet and artistic arrangements of exceptional bodies.

Duncan was born in New Jersey and became a roller-skating champion at an early age. In order to perfect his form, he took ballet lessons and eventually abandoned skating for a dance career. The injury that put an end to his dancing career set him on a new course that eventually won him international acclaim as a photographer. He was the recipient of such recognition as a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and the International Brotherhood and Peace Award.

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Contact: Rima Corben or Herb Scher at 212.704.8600 or 212.221.7676



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