At a grand exhibition at Guild Hall of Taryn Simon’s photography, a man of color looks out from his seat at a bar. The site could be the iconic American working class watering hole in Lynn Nottage’s Sweat on Broadway, with Christmas lights dangling down. But it is the American Legion Post 310 in San Diego, California, and according to the wall text this photograph documents the location where 13 people placed this man, Frederick Daye, but he was convicted anyway of rape, kidnapping, and vehicle theft and served 10 years of a life sentence. This color photography exhibition, “The Innocents” is Taryn Simon’s earliest work, from 2002, and from the look of the stunned faces, it could be plucked off today’s headlines, except that today, and here’s a sinister thought, many of these wrongly accused and convicted individuals might be shot first.

At the intimate Pollock-Krasner House, another kind of photography is at play from Tony Vaccaro (now 95). Black & whites of East End artists, before they were known to the world at large: Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, Georgia O’Keeffe in Taos spying through the hole in a slice of Swiss cheese. Guests for the opening on the Memorial Day weekend were surprised at Vaccaro’s many stories over his long career (he is 95), like the one about his photographing Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at liberation, insisting that they should open the gates and let the Jews out. Or, another he tells is the one about Sophia Loren showing up at his penthouse apartment to be photographed at the wrong time, and his answering the door wearing only a towel. After that, Loren would quip, “Tony was always ready.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura