Tickets
General Ticket: $10
Member Ticket: Free, RSVP Required
This Program is supported by Cathleen McGuigan and David Berridge, Janelle Reiring, and the Friends of the Fund for Visual Arts.
John Pinderhughes found love behind the lens of a camera in the mountains of Ethiopia during a summer college trip with Operation Crossroads Africa over 50 years ago. He has been capturing moments ever since. Join us for the first Insight Sunday of the new year as John shares with us the special story behind the portrait of his beloved grandmother, his “Gum-Gum,” taken on her first trip to Africa.
Capturing this heartfelt moment would be an inspirational spark to the young Pinderhughes, who would continue to deepen his love for the delicate art of capturing the essence of a moment within the realm of portraiture. With a longstanding career as a commercial and fine arts photographer and an ongoing membership with the Kamoinge Workshop, John proves that passion, commitment, and determination can take self-taught artists to new worlds and open doors for themselves and for others. More importantly, John’s talk asks the audience what role sentimentality plays in the creative process.
JOHN PINDERHUGHES
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John Pinderhughes was born in Washington, D.C. He grew up in Alabama, Maryland, and New Jersey and attended Howard University. He began his career photographing the student uprisings and sit-ins of the 1960s. He moved to New York City in the late 1960s to pursue his dream. He worked for McGraw-Hill and Venture and Look magazines, where he learned from many of the prominent professionals of the day, although they did not understand he wanted to be a pro, too, sometimes assuming he was a messenger. In the very early 1970s, Pinderhughes attended the WNET Film and Television Training School, which was the first major effort to help African Americans crack the television and film unions.
Pinderhughes has worked as a commercial photographer in New York City for the past 50 years, operating his own full-service studio. Advertising clients have included Con Edison, Verizon, Chase Bank, Anheuser Busch, BMW, American Family Insurance, Prudential Insurance, JC Penney, McDonald’s, Burger King, Coors, Pepsi, and Sony. Editorial clients have included Black Enterprise, Odyssey Couleur, Family Circle, TWA Ambassador, Essence, Scientific American, Venture, and the U.S. Army. Album covers and other assignments in the music industry have included work with such luminaries as Whodini, MC Lyte, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Sherry Winston, Scott Jarrett, and Tom Browne, to name just a few. Pinderhughes has also managed to pursue a career in fine art. He has had numerous one-man shows and has exhibited continually over the last 45 years. Prestigious venues include the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution. Pinderhughes has received numerous awards and grants, including a recent grant from the Open Society Foundation to document the post–Katrina Gulf region.
Pinderhughes is the author of a cookbook, Family of the Spirit (Simon & Schuster, 1990), numerous children’s books, and Coming Together, (Hyperion, 2003), a collaboration with author Harriette Cole. He has served on the board of the Advertising Photographers of America. He recently retired from the board of the Long Island chapter of the Nature Conservancy, after serving for 15 years. He has been an adjunct professor of photography at New York University and a Canon Print Master and a Canon Explorer of Light. He has been a member of the Kamoinge Workshop since the early 1980s.