Ruth Orkin – Bike Trip USA – exhibition
We love bikes. We love photography. Having taken our own bike trip across the USA at age 20 this exhibition and book are particularly poignant, but you don’t have to have crossed the USA on a bike to enjoy this show of the photographer Ruth Orkin’s stunning work.
In 1939, at the age of 17, Ruth Orkin, who grew up in Hollywood, crossed the United States, alone, with her bike, her camera (she received her first one at age 10) and only $25 in her pocket. This “bike trip” across the United States took her from Los Angeles to New York, where she planned to visit the World’s Fair. Her journey and her audacity, exceptional for the time, aroused the curiosity of the local press, which devoted numerous reports to her travels. She actually traveled less by bicycle than with a bicycle, crossing long distances by car, train, and bus, then using her bicycle to explore big cities: Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Boston and San Francisco. Over a four-month period, she took 350 photographs: urban scenes, numerous selfportraits and striking compositions framed by her bicycle. In each city she visited local newspapers covered her story, interviewing and photographing her in turn. With all this publicity, she became a bit of a celebrity and was given tickets to shows and even received a new two-wheeler.
It was during this epic bicycle trip and through her photographs taken along the way that Ruth Orkin sketched out the beginnings of her photographic style. Her street scenes, buildings cut by subtle lighting effects, her poetic and touching images, will be shown for the first time in France at an exhibition at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation this fall. The exhibition brings together around forty photographs and archival documents, including Ruth Orkin’s writing about this adventure.
Later in life, in 1943, the now professional photographer moved to New York where she worked for all the major magazines, including LIFE. She went to Italy, where she met Jinx Allen, an art student and fellow American, who became the subject of her most famous image, American Girl in Italy. The image shows a woman traveling alone, under the gaze of the men who fill the public space around her. It was of course a nod to Ruth’s own experience of traveling solo. The photograph was part of a series titled When You Travel Alone, about what women encountered when traveling alone in Europe after the war.
On her return to New York, Orkin married the photographer and filmmaker Morris Engel. Together they produced two feature films, including Little Fugitive, which was nominated for an Oscar in 1953. From their New York apartment overlooking Central Park, Orkin photographed numerous events (marathons, parades, concerts) and the beauty of the changing seasons. Ruth Orkin passed away in 1985.
At the same time you can view a contemporary female photographer’s work. Carolyn Drake, winner of the 2021 HCB award for her show called MEN UNTITLED.
AND because the HCB Foundation is celebrating 20 years in addition to the Carolyn Drake and Ruth Orkin exhibitions, the Fondation HCB will also present Regards croisés, an exhibition of some fifteen photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck.
All three exhibitions are presented at the Fondation HCB from September 19, 2023 to January 14, 2024.
79 rue des Archives – 75003 Paris
+33 (0)1 40 61 50 50
henricartierbresson.org
OPENING HOURS Tuesday – Sunday : 11am – 19pm
Past exhibitions at the Fondation HCB:
- https://fusac.fr/the-other-coronation
- https://fusac.fr/reconciliation
- https://fusac.fr/triple-exposure
