"Ruth Orkin - The Illusion of Time" by Ruth Orkin
The Cascais Cultural Centre Cascais joins a select group of international museums in presenting "Ruth Orkin - The Illusion of Time", the first major anthological exhibition dedicated to the work of photographer and filmmaker Ruth Orkin (1921-1985), a major figure in the history of photography, author of "American Girl in Italy," one of the definitive images of 20th-century photography.
The exhibition brings together about 120 photographs (mostly vintage reproductions), as well as films, documents, and original objects, such as letters, excerpts from newspapers and magazines, pages from Orkin's personal diary, and a camera that belonged to her, to build a vivid panorama of her artistic trajectory and reveal the originality of her personal and intimate perspective on the everyday chronicles of "American life."
Ruth Orkin's photography, as revealed in the exhibition "The Illusion of Time," is a celebration of courage, independence, and vitality. The daughter of a silent film actress and a toy manufacturer, Orkin grew up in the corridors of Hollywood studios. At the age of 10, with her first camera, she began to photograph. At 17, alone, she pedaled between Los Angeles and New York to visit the 1939 World's Fair, photographing along the way to create a photographic road movie. In Cascais, some pages from the scrapbook "Bicycle Trip, 1939" made by Orkin to document this adventure will be exhibited.
Ruth Orkin's first passion was moving images, cinema. If a filmmaking career in the first half of the 20th century seemed unattainable for women, Orkin was able to redirect her vocation to photography, whose history she helped shape. If she did not succeed in becoming a filmmaker, she became one of the most important photojournalists in history. In her photographs, as we can see in the exhibition, a cinematic sensitivity persists. Orkin invented for herself a new visual language, situated between moving and still images, leading the viewer into a continuous dialogue between these two temporalities.
Anne Morin, curator of the exhibition, notes that "Orkin never ceased to combine the temporal qualities of the photographic image to simulate cinema. Sequences, motion decomposition, duplication, simultaneity, her visual language is located at the intersection of the photographic image and cinema, at the crossroads of stillness and action. Orkin's photography is a cauldron, a space that restores time and movement, taking photographic language beyond its limits to yield to the power of illusion and magic."
Throughout her career, she repeatedly approached the world of cinema, portraying famous faces such as Alfred Hitchcock, Lana Turner, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and Marlon Brando, as well as personalities from other areas such as photographer Robert Capa, conductor Leonard Bernstein, and scientist Albert Einstein. All these portraits, which reveal Orkin's ability to portray people with candor and spontaneity, can be seen at the Centro Cultural de Cascais until July 7, 2024.
Learn more about "Ruth Orkin - The Illusion of Time," by Ruth Orkin: HERE
For more information: +351 214 815 660 | geral@fdl.pt
Organization: Câmara Municipal de Cascais | Fundação D. Luís I | Bairro dos Museus