Social Context

Larry Fink was an American photographer best known for his black-and-white images of people at parties and in other social situations. Fink was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in a politically conscious household and has described himself as "a Marxist from Long Island." He studied at the New School for Social Research in New York City, and has been on the faculty of Bard College since 1986. Earlier he taught at other institutions including the Yale University School of Art (1977-1978), Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture (1978-1983), Parsons School of Design, and New York University.

Fink's best-known work is Social Graces, a series of photographs he produced in the 1970s that depicted and contrasted wealthy Manhattanites at fashionable clubs and social events alongside working-class people from rural Pennsylvania participating in events such as high school graduations. In this series, he accomplished one of the things that straight photography does best: providing excruciatingly intimate glimpses of real people and their all-too-fallibly-human lives.

In 2001, for an assignment from The New York Times Magazine, Fink created a series of satirical color images of President George W. Bush and his cabinet (portrayed by stand-ins) in scenes of decadent revelry modeled on paintings by Weimar-era painters Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and George Grosz.