Vivian Cherry
American, 1920-2019
Born 1920, Manhattan, New York
Died 2019, Albuquerque, New Mexico
As a young woman, Cherry danced with the Helen Tamiris Dance Company, in night clubs (La Conga, Le Bal Tabarin), at the Roxy Theatre, and on Broadway in the 1945 revival of Showboat. After a knee injury ended her dancing career she took a job as a darkroom technician for Underwood & Underwood, where she developed printing skills and a passion for photography. In 1946 she joined the Photo League, and studied with Sid Grossman. She soon began selling her photographic essays to magazines such as Life, Look, Popular Photography, and Ebony. Her 1948 series Game of Guns, which examines the violence in children's games, was published in the Parisian magazine Regards and appeared in 1952 in the American periodical Photography. She worked with Arnold Eagle on a documentary film about the Actors Studio and its director, Lee Strasberg. She made her first forays into color photography in the late 1980s, but by 2000 she was back to shooting in black and white. The Brooklyn Museum mounted a major retrospective of her work in 2000, and two monographs on her photography have been published: Helluva Town: New York in the 1940s and 50s (2007) and Vivian Cherry's New York (2010). Her work has appeared in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art; the International Center of Photography; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; and the New York Public Library; and was featured in the exhibition The Women of the Photo League at Higher Pictures Gallery, New York (2009).
Died 2019, Albuquerque, New Mexico
As a young woman, Cherry danced with the Helen Tamiris Dance Company, in night clubs (La Conga, Le Bal Tabarin), at the Roxy Theatre, and on Broadway in the 1945 revival of Showboat. After a knee injury ended her dancing career she took a job as a darkroom technician for Underwood & Underwood, where she developed printing skills and a passion for photography. In 1946 she joined the Photo League, and studied with Sid Grossman. She soon began selling her photographic essays to magazines such as Life, Look, Popular Photography, and Ebony. Her 1948 series Game of Guns, which examines the violence in children's games, was published in the Parisian magazine Regards and appeared in 1952 in the American periodical Photography. She worked with Arnold Eagle on a documentary film about the Actors Studio and its director, Lee Strasberg. She made her first forays into color photography in the late 1980s, but by 2000 she was back to shooting in black and white. The Brooklyn Museum mounted a major retrospective of her work in 2000, and two monographs on her photography have been published: Helluva Town: New York in the 1940s and 50s (2007) and Vivian Cherry's New York (2010). Her work has appeared in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art; the International Center of Photography; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; and the New York Public Library; and was featured in the exhibition The Women of the Photo League at Higher Pictures Gallery, New York (2009).
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