Art Shay
Simone de Beauvoir
1950

Name: Simone de Beauvoir
Brand: Art Shay
Rating: 5 (106 reviews)

Price:$2,500

About the Item

Simone de Beauvoir Silver gelatin print on photographic paper, 1950 Signed in ink recto, Signed in pencil verso Note: "He formed a close friendship with the writer Nelson Algren while on an assignment to photograph him for Life. One of Mr. Shay’s best-known photos is of Mr. Algren’s lover, the author Simone de Beauvoir, naked, shot from the rear." New York Times obit Condition: excellent Image size: 11 1/4 x 7 7/8 inches Sheet size: 13 15/16 x 10 15/16 inches Courtesy New York Times: Art Shay, Whose Camera Captured the Famous and the Everyday, Dies at 96 By James Estrin • May 10, 2018 Art Shay, a photographer who chronicled the famous and powerful, including nine presidents, as well as the everyday life of mid-20th-century Americans, died on April 28 at his home in Deerfield, Ill. He was 96. The cause was heart failure, his son Richard said. In more than 1,500 assignments for Life, Time, Look, Sports Illustrated and Fortune magazines, Mr. Shay photographed famous Americans like Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Muhammad Ali, Jimmy Hoffa, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and President John F. Kennedy. He also passionately documented the streets of his adopted hometown, Chicago. Marlon Brando and his dog in Libertyville, Ill., in 1950.Credit...Art Shay/Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography Mr. Shay was a prolific writer as well, with more than 60 books, including many nonfiction children’s books, and five plays to his credit. Two of the plays — “A Clock for Nikita” in 1963 and “Where Have You Gone, Jimmy Stewart?” in 2002 — were performed in the Chicago area. Mr. Shay was born in the Bronx on March 31, 1922, one of four sons of Herman and Mollie (Schesten) Shay, poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father, a tailor, bought him a Royal portable typewriter on an installment plan, putting $2 down and making payments of 25 cents a week. When young Art won a bingo game, he used the prize money to finish paying for the typewriter. He learned how to use a darkroom when he was a Boy Scout and wrote for the school newspaper at James Monroe High School in the Bronx. Art Shay, who took photographs for Life, Time, Look, Sports Illustrated and Fortune magazines.Credit...Sandro Miller He enrolled in Brooklyn College but left in 1943 to join the Army Air Forces, becoming a lead navigator during World War II under the command of the actor Jimmy Stewart. He flew more than 30 bomber missions and survived a deadly air battle in September 1944 in Kassel, Germany, where dozens of American planes were lost and more than 100 American airmen killed. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Croix de Guerre. Mr. Shay always carried a camera with him, and, in June 1944, he photographed a midair collision between two B-24 planes and sold the images to Look for $100. He recounted the experience in his autobiography, “Album for an Age: Unconventional Words and Pictures From the Twentieth Century” (2000). “I was horrified,” he wrote, “but equally horrified because a hysterical colonel was pulling and pushing me, screaming, ‘You can’t shoot that — it’s restricted.’ I ducked, dodged and documented.” Mr. Shay went to Life’s offices to ask for work as a photographer in 1947. Instead, he was offered a job as a writer. He wrote more than 100 articles over the next four years to accompany photos by some of the most famous photographers of the era; along the way, he learned how to tell stories through pictures. He went out on his own as a freelance photographer in 1951 and worked continuously for leading magazines for 40 years. He formed a close friendship with the writer Nelson Algren while on an assignment to photograph him for Life. One of Mr. Shay’s best-known photos is of Mr. Algren’s lover, the author Simone de Beauvoir, naked, shot from the rear. His most memorable assignment, he said, was covering the first presidential debate between Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon in 1960 for Time — because, he said, he was witnessing history as it was happening. On April 4, 1968, Mr. Shay arrived in Memphis just hours after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and photographed the aftermath, in color, for Life. He shared his car with the writer Garry Wills, who was working for Esquire, and they went with the police as they searched for the killer and responded to reports of riots. “Back at the police station,” Mr. Shay wrote last year in an article for the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, “we were told King’s body was taken to the Lewis Funeral Home and they were working on the body to make it presentable to the public. We spent an eerie night in the mortuary, as the attendants labored to camouflage the bullet hole in King’s head while the radio played King’s recorded speeches. People lined up before dawn to see his body. Many of the stunned mourners who filed through the funeral home rued never having seen the man alive.” Mr. Shay married Florence Gerson in 1944. She often accompanied him on assignments, hiding his cameras in her purse while they stalked and photographed mobsters. She later operated a rare-book shop in Highland Park, Ill. The couple had five children including a son, Harmon, who disappeared in 1972 in Florida and is presumed dead. After Ms. Shay died in 2012, Mr. Shay published a book of photographs and reminiscences, “My Florence: A 70-Year Love Story.” In addition to his son Richard, Mr. Shay is survived by another son, Steven; two daughters, Jane Wald and Lauren Lavin; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Last year, Mr. Shay received a lifetime achievement award from the Lucie Foundation in a ceremony at Carnegie Hall. After a brief speech, he whipped out a harmonica to play a solo, noting that any “Jewish kid growing up is expected some day to go to Carnegie Hall.” “So,” he added, “my parents must be kvelling wherever they are.” Courtesy New York Times Simone de Beauvoir, in full Simone-Lucie-Ernestine-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, (born January 9, 1908, Paris, France—died April 14, 1986, Paris), French writer and feminist, a member of the intellectual fellowship of philosopher-writers who have given a literary transcription to the themes of existentialism. She is known primarily for her treatise Le Deuxième Sexe, 2 vol. (1949; The Second Sex), a scholarly and passionate plea for the abolition of what she called the myth of the “eternal feminine.” It became a classic of feminist literature. Schooled in private institutions, Beauvoir attended the Sorbonne, where in 1929 she passed her agrégation in philosophy and met Jean-Paul Sartre, beginning a lifelong association with him. She taught at a number of schools (1931–43) before turning to writing for her livelihood. In 1945 she and Sartre founded and began editing Le Temps modernes, a monthly review. Her novels expound the major existential themes, demonstrating her conception of the writer’s commitment to the times. L’Invitée (1943; She Came To Stay) describes the subtle destruction of a couple’s relationship brought about by a young girl’s prolonged stay in their home; it also treats the difficult problem of the relationship of a conscience to “the other,” each individual conscience being fundamentally a predator to another. Of her other works of fiction, perhaps the best known is Les Mandarins (1954; The Mandarins), for which she won the Prix Goncourt. It is a chronicle of the attempts of post-World War II intellectuals to leave their “mandarin” (educated elite) status and engage in political activism. She also wrote four books of philosophy, including Pour une Morale de l’ambiguité (1947; The Ethics of Ambiguity); travel books on China (La Longue Marche: essai sur la Chine [1957]; The Long March) and the United States (L’Amérique au jour de jour [1948]; America Day by Day); and a number of essays, some of them book-length, the best known of which is The Second Sex. In 2009 a new English-language translation of The Second Sex was published, making the entire original text available to English-speaking readers for the first time; the earlier translation (1953) had been severely edited. Several volumes of Beauvoir’s work are devoted to autobiography. These include Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (1958; Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter), La Force de l’âge (1960; The Prime of Life), La Force des choses (1963; Force of Circumstance), and Tout compte fait (1972; All Said and Done).

Creator:
Art Shay (1922 - 2018, American)
Creation Year:
1950
Dimensions:
Height: 11.25 in (28.58 cm)Width: 7.88 in (20.02 cm)
Medium:
Silver Gelatin
Movement Style:
Modern
Period:
1950-1959
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Fairlawn, OH
Reference Number:
Seller: FA121371stDibs: LU1409381612