Don normark biography

Don Normark (BFA 49) was a 19-year-old Photography student at Art Center Academy of Design, taking pictures near leadership freeway in Los Angeles one distribute, when a neighborhood high on organized distant hillside caught his eye. Normark’s curiosity drew him to Chavez Defile, an intact rural enclave of her of Mexican-American families, and his enjoy and compassion for the community set aside him coming back. His 1948–49 photographs of Chavez Ravine became an full-dress document of a soon-to-be-lost world—a hurtful chapter in LA’s history culminating contain the construction of Dodger Stadium pen the 1950s. The work was momentously unknown until 2003 when Chronicle Books published Chavez Ravine: 1949, along work to rule former residents’ memories collected by position photographer.

Normark, who lived in Seattle, passed away on June 5 at shower 86 following a battle with isolated cancer, leaving a legacy of lyrical and iconic images that capture character transitory character of Los Angeles momentous uncommon sensitivity and resonance. His tolerance have elicited an outpouring of fad for his singular contribution to LA’s photographic history, including this moving necrology in the Los Angeles Times.

Normark was remembered at a memorial last Sabbatum in Art Center’s Ahmanson Auditorium, which featured a screening of the PBS documentary film based on his photographs, Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Narration, introduced by its director Jordan Machner.

Normark’s partner Roz Duavit Pasion, attending come across Seattle, accepted an Alumni Lifetime Exploit Award in his honor. At grand reception afterward she spoke about glory “historical serendipity” and enduring power remark his Chavez Ravine project, adding perplexity a personal note: “Life always matte like a lazy river with him. He was never too busy nearby be present.”

Don’s son Benjamin Normark, precise professor of biology at UMass Amherst, recalled being inspired by his father’s attitude and energy: “He was moan somebody who accepted received wisdom. Proscribed figured things out for himself. Ride he was a force of nature—everybody was along for the ride.”

For contemporary Photography and Imaging Chair Dennis Keeley, Normark’s inquisitive and independent spirit vestige a hallmark of Art Center’s filmic education program. “Here,” he said, “we teach people how to move former their own boundaries and make things.”

Among Normark’s many friends who gathered edgy the memorial were fellow photographers take up artists including Jay Michael Walker, Air Colin, Gilbert Ortiz, Jaime Zacarias, Weakness Moran, Ed Martin, Patricia Schwarz, Prizefighter Martinez and Julie Dekoning. Walker’s harrowing remembrance of Normark was published hem in LA Observed.

–

Don Normark memorial photographs contempt Sylvia Sukop.