Obituary: George S. Zimbel

There is only one word to describe his work and approach: Zimbelism. This is the title of the 2016 documentary produced by film makers Jean François Gratton and Matt Zimbel – the photographer's eldest son – looking back over Zimbel senior's decades-long career in photojournalism. He was a storyteller, using his camera to photograph celebrities, presidents, film divas, but also people he met by chance during his photographic forays on the streets of New York and later Montreal. Zimbel's oeuvre is a multi-layered testimony to humanist photography. Time and again, he succeeded in connecting spontaneously with his contemporaries, capturing them in precisely directed shots, turning them into representatives of a particular era and atmosphere. As a member of the legendary New York Photo League, and an exponent of engaged street photography, he compiled a multi-faceted body of work over many decades, working with Leica cameras and almost exclusively in black and white.

George S. Zimbel was born in Massachusetts in 1929. He settled in New York for professional reasons, joining the Photo League and then studying at Columbia University. It was there that he met Garry Winogrand, among others, and had contact with Edward Steichen, then Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art. Zimbel also spent two years in Europe during his service in the US Army, documenting the reconstruction after World War II. After returning to the US, he worked as a freelance photographer for numerous magazines. Among his most famous images were ones of Marilyn Monroe on Lexington Avenue in 1954, when she let her white dress fly up into the air, standing over the exhaust vent for the film The Seven Year Itch. Unlike many other photographers present at the time, Zimbel did not sell a single image. It was not until over twenty years later that they became part of his exhibitions.
In the early 1970s, Zimbel moved to Canada with his family, living in Montreal as of 1980. He continued to devote himself to street photography. Precise lab work (preferably with an over sixty-year-old Leitz Focomat enlarger) and analogue black-and-white photography characterise his work, even though in his later years he came to appreciate the advantages of a digital Leica. Multiple exhibitions, honours and publications in recent times have ensured the rediscovery of Zimbel's work. He passed away on January 9, surrounded by his family.