Carl Siembab, Remebrance

Daniel Ranalli, photographer and director of Boston University's Arts Adminstration program, sent along his remembrance of Carl Siembab, who died on Feb. 27.

A few days ago, on February 27th Carl Siembab, an icon of American photography passed away. Living in Ireland for the past several years, Carl ran a gallery of the same name in Boston that was devoted to photography for over 25 years. Located at 162 Newbury Street – and previously at several other addresses on the street within a one-block radius, Carl showed some of the finest work being made in the medium at a time when its audience was quite small.

Carl’s gallery was tiny – a second floor space – with an exhibition room not more than fifteen feet square partially bisected by a middle wall and with a kind of anteroom with its doors removed containing a long table and an old desk and chair. Carl was inevitably seated at the desk squared in the doorway and facing out into the gallery.

Carl opened his gallery in 1956, and by the early 1960s it was dedicated exclusively to photography. The exhibitions he offered were a Who’s Who of American photography – Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Aaron Siskind, Wynn Bullock, Harry Callahan, Lisette Model, Dorothea Lange and Minor White are just a few of the artists he showed.

Arriving in Boston in 1968 to attend graduate school in another field, I soon realized I wanted to devote myself to photography and Carl and his gallery were a major part of my education. I went to every exhibition he mounted, occasionally sustaining enough courage to strike up a conversation with him. He seemed hard to talk to – I later realized he was hard of hearing – but he spoke about photography with immense passion and eloquence. He lived for photography – especially work that exemplified the ideals of formal elegance and craftsmanship. By the late 1960s Boston had become a Mecca for fine photography and Carl was a big part of that reason. I remember taking a class through the Boston Center for Adult Education on the History of Photography that Carl Siembab taught at his gallery. There were perhaps six or eight of us who sat on the floor while Carl brought out original works by Weston or Stieglitz and passed them around for us to look at – works that now command up to a half-million dollars each in the uber-art market but in the late 1950s and early 1960s were $50 to $100 each.

Some years later I asked him if I might bring him some work to look at – though I don’t think he really knew my name. Speaking to him meant interrupting him from the Boston Globe that he invariably had spread out on the desk in front of him and that he seemed to meticulously read every word of. A week or so later I came in with a box of my photographs. We stood in the back alcove and Carl slowly and carefully looked at each print as I stood nearby perspiring I suspect. He did not say a word until he had turned the last print over. He then said, “They are very fine - so, what can we do for you?” Nervously I asked him if he would give me a show. In the fall of 1978 I had the first of four one-person shows I would eventually have over the next 7 or 8 years at the Carl Siembab Gallery. We became friends over those years.

To say that Carl lacked business acumen is an understatement. Indeed, he seemed to resent the mushrooming of prices and art-stardom that had begun to overtake photography. He was struggling financially while the medium was thriving in New York and many of his former artists had to stop showing with him as they signed on with major New York galleries.

I learned a great deal from Carl Siembab – the power of a photograph, its luminosity, its magic and its intensity – but more importantly the value of personal conviction and an almost obsessive devotion to pursue one’s own vision. He was like his beloved Red Sox, whose afternoon games could always be heard softly in the background on the cream colored plastic radio he kept on when they played, a bit of an underdog who helped to make Boston unique. Carl Siembab was a great friend to photography and to the many artists he championed. I am proud to have been one of them.

Photo by Charles Giuliano