A dear friend and extraordinary artist
Born in Brooklyn in 1941 and raised in New York City, Fink began making pictures in his early teens. He was privately taught and mentored by photographer Lisette Model whose work greatly influenced him.
Fink is best known for his series Social Graces, a body of work made in the 1970s that depicted and contrasted wealthy Manhattanites at fashionable clubs and social events alongside working-class people from rural Pennsylvania participating in everyday events such as high school graduations and birthday parties. Social Graces was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1979 and was published as a monograph in 1984.
Social Graces was just one of many genres that Fink explored during his six decades of image making. He also made series of portraiture, fashion, the logging industry, boxing, nature and most recently quiet and contemplative still lives taken in and around his home in rural Pennsylvania, all skillfully executed with a particular style one could only attribute to Fink.
He will be greatly missed.