Leo Rubinfien
Guest Curator, Garry Winogrand

Leo Rubinfien
Guest Curator
Photo by Min Jung Kwak

Leo Rubinfien first came to prominence as one of the generation of American artist-photographers who investigated new color techniques and materials in the 1970s. He was also part of the circle of younger photographers who were associated with Winogrand in the 1970s and early 1980s. Rubinfien’s first one-person exhibition was at Castelli Graphics, New York, in 1981, and other solo shows followed at institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Cleveland Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. He is the author of two books of photographs, A Map of the East (Godine, Thames & Hudson, Toshi Shuppan, 1992) and Wounded Cities (Steidl, 2008).

Rubinfien is also active as a writer and has published essays on major photographers of the 20th century, as well as the memoir “Colors of Daylight” (in Kevin Moore’s Starburst: Color Photography in America, 1970–1980, Cincinnati Art Museum, 2010) and the long personal and historical essay that appears in Wounded Cities and recounts the attacks of September 11 and the years that followed. From 2001 to 2004, he served as guest co-curator of the SFMOMA’s retrospective of the work of Shomei Tomatsu and coauthored Shomei Tomatsu/Skin of the Nation (Yale University Press, 2004). Since 2010, he has served as guest curator of a major retrospective of the work of Garry Winogrand, organized by SFMOMA and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, premiering in San Francisco in March 2013, touring worldwide thereafter. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Rubinfien was part of the circle of younger photographers who were associated with Winogrand.

Rubinfien’s work has been acquired for numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, SFMOMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. He has held Guggenheim, Japan Foundation, and Asian Cultural Council Fellowships; he was also a fellow of the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University and was awarded the Gold Prize at the Fifth Lianzhou International Photography Festival in 2009.

Rubinfien’s solo exhibitions most recently have been at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the Yale University Art Gallery; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome.