Friday, August 13, 2010

The photography of Flo Fox

A friend recently introduced me to the work of acclaimed photographer Flo Fox... I asked her via Facebook if I could post a few of her photos from the 1970s and early 1980s in NYC... she agreed... and here's a sampling...








All this is even more remarkable given her background... Fox, who grew up in Woodside, Queens, was born blind in one eye.

Here's an excerpt on her from a profile in Alternative Photography:

According to her, she was an automatic photographer because she never needed to close an eye to take a picture. She lost the vision in her other eye in 1975 and was declared legally blind just at the time that she photographed herself nude for Playboy and Penthouse. It was at this time that one of Flo’s sisters was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Soon thereafter Flo began experiencing numbness in one of her hands and legs and had herself tested for MS. The results were positive. She has remained determined to not let this news change anything in her career as a fine arts photographer. This has not been easy with her direction in the medium which is predominately street imagery of people and places predominately set in New York City.

When asked how her disabilities have affected her work, Fox said that she started seeing interfering patterns in 1975 and soon thereafter could no longer focus on an image because of dead nerve endings. As her MS progressed, Flo’s muscle tone deteriorated and she went from using a cane to a motorized scooter.


Check out this interview on Tom Snyder...



You can watch part 2 here.

There are more photos on her website here. Or maybe you could friend her on Facebook.

12 comments:

City Of Strangers said...

Grieve - What a great talent. I'd never heard of her before. I'll have to check out her website - thanks for the post.

T.

Marty Wombacher said...

Great photos, thanks for posting this.

EV Grieve said...

She has a book of photos too — AsphaltGardens. Not sure if it is still in print.

Marty Wombacher said...

Here's the book on Amazon:

http://wwws.us/6djpx8

Anonymous said...

Fox also has a cameo in the current Joan Rivers documentary, Piece of Work.

Melanie said...

Cool piece.

Anonymous said...

Flo has a 5 page story on her coming out in new york magazine next week!

Media glut said...

Love the thumb suck cigarette image.

Doll said...

Fantastic! Thanks so much for posting this - I had never heard of her!

Doll said...

You can order the book through her website

http://www.gis.net/~fotoflo/asphalt.htm

ctsunny said...

Just heard of Flo Fox on the Joan Rivers documentary here in Scotland. Thanks for posting her photos, really great, intersting images.

Unknown said...

Thanks for letting more people know about Flo and see some of her photos.