This seems to be the Summer for eulogies…

 

Don Donaghy, 2000, by George Krause

 

 

 

I first met Don Donaghy, the photographer, when he was taking pictures in the early 60s. We met again in his last years when he had returned to photography after many years of pursuing other arts such as film-making and sculpture.

 

 

 

All photos by Don Donaghy unless otherwise specified.

All black-and-white images date from the 1960s. Click on image to enlarge.

 

 

 

As a young man, prowling the streets of Philadelphia and New York with his Leica in the 60s, Don was famously silent, and when we met again in 2005, he was no more talkative. But when he was young, you felt that silence was because he was thinking in images, not words. Sadly, when we met again after a gap of forty years or more, the silence seemed more problematic: Don would drift in and out of the present and would often have difficulty recalling events or people in his past, whether recent or far back in time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From about 1960 to 1970, when Don was in his twenties, he made some of the most compelling street photographs ever recorded. Although it is obvious Don’s spiritual brothers are Eugene Atget, Cartier-Bresson and his contemporaries George Krause, Garry Winogrand and Robert Frank, those influences in a Don Donaghy photograph melt into an vision uniquely Don’s own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was nothing on the street that escaped Don’s eye from the quickest gesture, to the most fleet expression, the most trivial object, to the street itself, a landscape of asphalt , brooding and desolate. This is our urban history seen at its rawest; a vision at once anguished and beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As Jane Livingston [author of  The New York School, Photographs 1936-63 which featured the first publication of Donaghy images in many years] said:”Don Donaghy’s photographs of the early 1960s are among the most beautiful images made in the history of American photography.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that amazingly productive decade, Don, feeling his photography had reached a dead end, “dropped out” to use his own words, tuning in to the counter-culture, moving first to Woodstock where he met his present wife, Maggie, then on to Boulder, Colorado where found his art in sculpture, painting, and film-making, while supporting himself and family with construction jobs. In addition to his wife, Maggie, he is  survived by a sister, Leslie Donaghy and his three children, Steve Harley, and daughters, Mahala Donaghy and Halona Donaghy .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only in the last twenty years of his life or so did Don return to photography; this time in color, photographing still-lives and landscapes. If his earlier work is taut with a mixture of despair and beauty, his  color work is serene and contemplative, perhaps reflecting his turn towards Buddhism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What made Don give up photography for twenty years or more? Don himself said it best in a statement written for a Guggenheim application in 1991, the only time on record he talks about his work:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Statement: After completion of a four year major in commercial art at the “prestigious” Philadelphia Museum School of Art, one might assume that I would seek employment in this field. However, I found myself driven to wander the streets of Philly, searching for images in order to learn to use my camera. An afternoon job delivering flowers to hospitals and funeral homes left my mornings free for taking photos and my evenings for developing films in the clothes closet.

 

 

 

 

 

I kept my photography as a very personal and pure pursuit of art throughout my remaining years in Philadelphia and in New York City. I compiled a huge portfolio during these years and though my work was included in museum collections, numerous shows and magazine publications, I found myself disillusioned, exhausted and unable to continue.

I defensively decided that photography must be a limited medium in which I had accomplished all that could be done. To seal this theory, my camera and all my equipment were stolen! [ in 1969.]

It was only after “dropping out”, spending my time painting and sculpting, moving to Woodstock, and then to Boulder, Colorado, where I met a Buddhist teacher, that I had a glimpse of understanding that there was no ax to grind.

So, again, I bought a camera. I started over, working mostly with color and feeling like a fledgling photographer. Over these last twenty years, I have again found the passion for capturing the moment, but perhaps without quite so much expectation. Don Donaghy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don Donaghy, an important if largely neglected figure in the history of photography, died july 23, 2008. There is no one iconic Donaghy image although some have been reproduced a number of times; one might say all of Don’s black and white street photographs are iconic. This Fall, Nazraeli press is planning to publish a book of Don’s photography. Perhaps now his work will gain the larger recognition it deserves.

 

 

 

 

Mark L. Power

Don Donaghy and friends, July 2005.

from L.to R.: Kevin Heidt, Don, Maggie Donaghy, Mahala Donaghy,

Joe Mills, Norman Carr, Paul Roth, and Mary Del Populo.

 

 

Don’s obituary is at www.dailycamera.com/obits/2008/jul/25/don-donaghy/. He has a website at www.dondonaghy.com and also has an entry in Wikipedia where you can see his publication and exhibition lists.