George S. Zimbel | Photographs of Children

Exhibition Dates: July 21 – September 17, 2011

Reception for the Artist: Thursday, July 21, 5-9pm

Artist Talk: Saturday, July 23, 2pm. RSVP as seating is limited.

The gallery is pleased to present its second exhibition by the acclaimed photographer George S. Zimbel, which concentrates on his wonderful depictions of childhood taken over a period of seven decades. 

An alumnus of Columbia University, the Photo League and the Alexey Brodovitch Seminar, Zimbel (b. Woburn, Mass. 1929) honed his craft in New York City, working for national magazines (Look, The New York Times, Redbook, Parents, Architectural Forum, etc.). Parallel to assignments he was always at work on self initiated projects. These included diverse subjects such as 1950s European photographs, readers from libraries to submarines, politics in the U.S. and Canada, Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, and the ongoing chronicle of his family. For decades, Zimbel has displayed an uncanny ability to take quintessential photographs depicting our life and times.

The Zimbels left the United States and operated Bona Fide Farm on Prince Edward Island from 1971-1980. After moving to Montréal in 1980, Zimbel has been printing and exhibiting from his extensive archive and has had many solo exhibitions at galleries and museums around the world.  In 2000, he was honoured with the largest photography exhibit ever shown at Institut Valencià d’Art Modern in Spain, accompanied by a major catalogue. In 2001, Zimbel was given the Lifetime Achievement Award of Canadian Photographers in Communications and was short listed for the Roloff Beny Award for best Canadian photographic book. In 2004, Zimbel had a retrospective exhibition at Confederation Centre Museum and later that year he had a major presence in the Marilyn Monroe exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. He was subsequently featured in the PBS American Master’s production “Marilyn Monroe: Still Life.” In 2005, Zimbel had a retrospective exhibition at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo and the Owens Art Gallery at Mount Allison University followed by the publication of his book Bourbon Street New Orleans 1955.  In 2006, he was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Art.

Zimbel’s work is in the collections of  National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Musée national des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Québec; Musée des beaux Arts de Montréal, Montréal; Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, Montréal; Confederation Centre Art Gallery & Museum, Charlottetown; Owens Art Gallery, Sackville; Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Jewish Museum, New York; International Center of Photography, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara; Musée National d’histoire d’art de Luxembourg, Luxembourg; and Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach.

"A lot goes into a finished documentary photograph: a very personal view of life, a knowledge of technique, and of course information. It is the information that grabs the viewer, but it is the photographer's art that holds them” George S. Zimbel