NEW YORK, NY.- CLAMP announced the gallery's representation of The Estate of Arlene Gottfried (1950-2017)
Arlene Gottfried was a New York City street photographer who is highly celebrated for her intimate and vibrant portrayals of life in the city’s working-class neighborhoods. Mesmerizing, humorous, poignant, or tragic, Gottfried captured images unlike anyone else, turning moments into magic—always without judgment. And her story is as unique as her work.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Gottfried received an old camera from her father as a teen and began roaming the streets of the city, from Coney Island to the Lower East Side and up to Spanish Harlem, documenting daily life and local characters. “We lived in Coney Island, and that was an exposure to all kinds of people, so I never had trouble walking up to someone and asking them to take their picture,” she told The Guardian.
Gottfried's portrayal of underrepresented communities in the 1970s and 1980s record a city that no longer exists. “It was a mixture of excitement, devastation and drug use,” she told the New York Times in 2016. “But there was more than just that. It was the people, the humanity of the situation.”
Arlene Gottfried graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and worked as a photographer at an ad agency before freelancing for top publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Life, and The Independent in London. Her work has been exhibited at the Leica Gallery in New York and Tokyo, and at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, among other venues. She was a recipient of numerous awards including the Berenice Abbott International Competition for Women in Documentary Photography. And although she published five books during her lifetime, including The Eternal Light (1999), Midnight (2003), Sometimes Overwhelming (2008), Bacalaitos and Fireworks (2011), and Mommie: Three Generations of Women (2015), which earned Time Magazine’s Best Photobook Award in 2016, she became more known after her passing.
Her work is part of prestigious collections such as the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, and The New York Historical, which just mounted the exhibition Picture Stories: Photographs by Arlene Gottfried, which includes more than thirty of the three hundred photographs recently acquired by the institution.
Arlene Gottfried, who is the older sister of the late comedian Gilbert Gottfried and a subject in his 2017 documentary "GILBERT," is also the primary focus of another documentary film now in development.
Whether photographing bodybuilders on the beach, preachers on the street, or children playing in fire hydrants, Gottfried immersed herself in the lives of those she captured—sometimes for decades. For example, she did not simply photograph the Eternal Light Community Singers in Harlem, she joined them, becoming a lead soloist gospel singer. For a white, Jewish, soft-spoken girl, this was an accomplishment. Her art and voice were extensions of the same spirit—joyful, soulful, and full of life.
Never just a photographer, Gottfried was a storyteller, a documentarian, and a portraitist who truly saw people—and her moment is now. Stay tuned for upcoming exhibitions and more ways to experience her incredible legacy.
