Tag: portraiture

Paul Kolnik’s Photo of Chase Finlay

Paul Kolnik, “Chase Finlay as Apollo”, 2011, The George Balanchine Trust Studio

Dancer Chase Finlay played the title role in Balanchine’s 1928 ballet “Apollo”.   It was the third performance at the New York City Ballet on the night of May 5th of 2011, proceded by the Balanchine-Stravinsky 1960 “Monumentum Pro Gesualdo”  and the 1963 “Movements for Piano and Orchestra”.

Amy May Wong: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Anna May Wong”, Portrait Photo, Date Unknown, 8 x 10 Inches

America’s first female Asian American star, Anna May Wong was born oin January 3rd in 1905, Wong was a minor film star from the 1920s through the 1940s who fought against stereotypes and sometimes, of necessity, worked with them. She was almost exclusively a film actress as opposed to a live performer. However, she did occasionally make vaudeville tours to promote her film career during the twenties and early thirties.

In 1935 Wong was dealt the most severe disappointment of her career, when Mertro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to consider her for the leading role of the Chinese character O-Lan in the film version of Pearl S. Buck’s “The Good Earth”, choosing instead the white actress Louise Rainer to play the leading role. Wong spent the next year touring China, visiting her family’s ancestral village and studying Chinese culture.

In the late 1930s, Anna May Wong starred in several B movies for Paramount Pictures, portraying Chinese and Chinese Americans in a positive light. She made history in 1951 with her TV show “The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong”, the first ever U.S. television show with an Asian American in the starring role. Wong had been planning her return to film with “The Flower Drum Song” when she died in 1961, at the age of 56 of heart failure.

Paul Freeman

Paul Freeman, Titles Unknown, ( The Mechanic )

“The mechanic, when a wheel refuses to turn, never thinks of dropping on his knees and asking the assistance of some divine power. He knows there is a reason. He knows that something is too large or too small; that there is something wrong with his machine; and he goes to work and he makes it larger or smaller, here or there, until the wheel will turn.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child