Henry Horenstein, Cownose Ray, Rhinoptera bonasus

In Boston’s South End, Henry Horenstein unlocks the door to his studio. “It’s my life,” he says about the small, well-lit space, about the size of a living room, with neatly labeled file boxes of prints and framed black-and-white photographs. There’s a comfy, green leather couch in front of a wall of books—hundreds of them, collected by Horenstein ever since he entered the business more than thirty-five years ago. “I wouldn’t trade this for anything,” says Horenstein, his expression that of a boy showing his trophies.

Horenstein photographs subjects that he loves and compiles them into books—more than thirty now. His latest is Animalia, released last spring by Pond Press. Most artists put together an exhibition of their work, and then a catalogue. Horenstein works in reverse. He focuses on the book, then the exhibitions. “I love books,” Horenstein says, taking a few steps over to his library. “People say that kids don’t read books.” He shrugs. “I read books as a kid. I was a loner and sat in a corner reading.”

Passion for books led Horenstein to study history in England, then at the University of Chicago. But a summer photography class at Harvard, taught by Minor White, inspired him to change direction. He transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design to study photography under Harry Callahan and Aaron Suskind. Callahan’s influence would set the course for Horenstein’s career. He asked his mentor, “What kind of subjects should I be photographing?”

Callahan turned the question around and asked him, “What do you like to do besides taking pictures?” Horenstein told him that he liked country music and horse races. “Why don’t you photograph that?” Callahan asked. “Even if you make lousy pictures, you’ll have a good time.” The idea stuck with him. “My goal is to do that—to have a good time and make some good pictures along the way,” Horenstein says.

Henry Horenstein, Smokey Giraffe, Giraffa camelopardalis angolensis.

In the studio, facing the bookshelves, Horenstein’s walnut-colored eyes skim the spines. “Do you know James VanDerZee?” He pulls down The World of James VanDerZee: A Visual Record of Black Americans and tears off the protective plastic wrap. As he flips through the pages, he grins. “I just loved this book. I don’t know why. I guess it’s a history of a world that’s gone and would have disappeared if people like VanDerZee hadn’t captured it.”

VanDerZee was a well-known Harlem Renaissance studio photographer who documented the life of middle-class African Americans. He photographed weddings, funerals, parades, sports teams, families, couples, kids, dancers, and just about every activity going on in Harlem at that time. When the photographer died in 1983, he had more than 75,000 photographs.

“I looked at these pictures and thought, ‘I can do this,’” says Horenstein. They inspired him to visually record life in the documentarian manner of VanDerZee, Weegee, and Diane Arbus.

In the studio, Horenstein looks through a stack of framed black-and-white photographs and stands one upright. It’s Dolly Parton taken in 1972 for Boston After Dark (now the Boston Phoenix). Back then, Horenstein was a spunky twenty-five-year-old graduate student at RISD and a huge country music fan. When he heard that Parton was coming to Boston Symphony Hall—part of a Rounder Records tour—he talked After Dark into a photo assignment. He was paid just $10, but spent an hour backstage with Parton. Horenstein’s photo captures Parton, at twenty-six, in a chiffon dress with flowing sleeves, looking quite different from today’s “Dolly”—optimistic, but slightly vulnerable. It was not only Horenstein’s first publishing success, but the beginning of a book called Honky Tonk. The book captured an age in country music (1972–1981) as the Grand Ole Opry was leaving the Ryman Auditorium. Country legends such as Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt, and Hank Snow were making their last appearances; and the whole style of country music shifted away from folk and bluegrass, becoming more mainstream to appeal to broader audiences.

Henry Horenstein, White-cheeked Spider Monkey, Ateles marginatus.

Also in the early seventies, Horenstein worked on Close Relations, a study of his friends and family in bold, checked pantsuits, teased hair, and rooms with flowered wallpaper. It’s more than just a loving tribute to those near and dear to the photographer; it documents the life and culture of most Americans post-sixties, as the Vietnam War drew to a close. “They were just pictures I did,” Horenstein says about them. “Years later, I realized that they represented a period of history. I built the framework afterward.”

This is one of the reasons why it’s difficult to come up with a chronology of Horenstein’s work. In reality, he shoots what he loves, and when he has enough images that work together, he puts them into a book. In fact, most of the photographs for Animalia were taken between 1995 and 2001. “That’s the thing I love about photography, art, and music,” says Horenstein. “The execution is what’s important. If the work isn’t compelling, then who cares about the idea?”

In the studio, Horenstein looks through the framed photographs, back from the first Animalia show at Gallery 339 in Philadelphia. The stacks contain a cownose ray with a grin like Howdy Doody’s; a Nile monitor lizard whose scales resemble chain mail; a walrus whose feet look like a daylily closing for the night; and the butt of a rhinoceros, rough as iron, but engineered with the type of grace you’d see on old-fashioned industrial machinery. In this way, Horenstein draws the eye to the animals’ unexpected textures, forms, and shapes. He shoots extra close and chooses an angle that challenges the viewer to see differently. He removes frame, context, and landscape so the eye travels directly to the animal.

Henry Horenstein, Harmonica Player, Merchant’s Cafe, Nashville, Tennessee, 1974.

“Photographing animals is very different from photographing people,” writes Horenstein in the book. “You can’t tell an elephant where to stand, and you can’t ask a skate to smile, or a lizard to say ‘cheese.’ Instead, you must be very patient and wait….” Horenstein shot nearly all of the animals in zoos and aquariums, observing them, just like any other visitor, through bars or glass. This way of working offered him two benefits: he knew where to find his subjects and he could isolate them, as if they were models posing in a studio.

Recently, a local photographer called Horenstein “the Avedon of fish.” Though it sounds flattering, Horenstein says, “I don’t think that he was being complimentary. But I’m good with that.” In fact, Horenstein was going for an Avedon-type look. In the late nineties, Horenstein began experimenting with a silver-rich positive film, Agfa Scala. This inspired him to photograph animals in a way that hadn’t been done before, in the manner of Milton Greene, Lillian Bassman, Bruce Weber, and other high-fashion photographers. While photographing the animals, Horenstein was reading about Alexey Brodovitch, a Russian photographer and artistic director for Harper’s Bazaar, who founded the graphic design magazine Portfolio. “He was the guru of his time,” says Horenstein. “He ran salons. He mixed décor with fashion with celebrity with journalism. He didn’t believe in segmenting art or photography.” And when he gave direction to Richard Avedon, Brodovitch commanded him: “Amaze me.” That’s what Horenstein wanted to do with his animal pictures: amaze.

Henry Horenstein, Dolly Parton, Symphony Hall, Boston, Massachusetts, 1972.

The Animalia photographs and the book are on tour and will be in the area: February 23–April 7, 2009, in the Foster Gallery at Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, Massachusetts; and February 27–March 28, 2009, at Robert Klein Gallery in Boston.

A few of the photographs may look familiar. Nineteen appeared in the Harvard Museum of Natural History’s 2006 show, Looking at Animals. “His pictures challenge us to look more closely, to ask questions, and make connections,” writes Elisabeth Werby, executive director of the Harvard Museum of National History, in the forward to the book. “We think about form and function: the relationship between an elephant’s foot, a horse’s foot, and our own toes. We ponder modes of sensing…Examining these photographs, we become scientists and discoverers.” Certainly Horenstein is a discoverer and recorder of life as he sees it. But he’s also the consummate observer, the fly on the wall, poised to see and learn from his subjects.

“I didn’t know that there were 400 ray species before taking these pictures,” he says. “I loved the subject. I loved the form. I loved the change—getting closer and closer. I did this because I loved it.”

Callahan’s advice paid off for him. So when Horenstein’s students at RISD ask how they can achieve success, he passes the philosophy along: “Love what you do and figure out how to keep doing it.”

Debbie Hagan is an arts journalist who has written for the Boston Globe, American Style, Robb Report, and others. She is the book review editor for Brevity literary magazine and author of the narrative nonfiction book, Against the Tide (Doukathsan Press, 2008)

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