Monday, March 6, 2023 – THE GREAT GREAT GRANDSON OF CORNELIUS VANDERBILT PHOTOGRAPHER OF WELFARE ISLAND
TOMORROW AT 6 P.M.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
MONDAY, MARCH 6, 2023
ISSUE 930
A WELFARE ISLAND
PHOTOGRAPHER
WITH A FAMOUS FAMILY
BACKGROUND
NYC MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES
The other day we featured a photo of the island’s Holy Spirit Chapel with an adjoining pergola.
While examining it, I was curious about the photographer Shirley Carter Burden. That is a familiar name.
Check out his famous family history below.
Plaque on side of brick building: Erected 1906 for D.P.C., Robert W. Hebberd, Commissioner; etc.
Plaque on rusticated wall: Pathological Laboratory of Metropolitan Hospital, completed in 1910. William J. Gaynor, Mayor
Side of stone 3-story building with turrets and balustrade, pointed arched windows. of Smallpox Hospital
Wall of above building with turrets and pointed arched windows, attached to brick building with coins and bays. Smallpox Hospital
Smallpox Hospital: Closer view of above photograph. 2nd story balcony over door.
Close-up of gnarled branches of large tree alongside of building fire escape.
Fire escape of unidentified stone building.
Fire escape of unidentified brick building, looking SE. Queensboro Bridge in background, street lamp foreground.
Side view of small rusticated building. (A chapel?) Looking West, huge apartment building under construction. Ramp foreground.
Large tree trunk in foreground, wooden stool at foot of tree. Blurry church door in background.
Rectangular pergola in foreground; chapel in background.
Stained glass window seen from exterior.
Smallpox Hospital: 3 1/2 story stone building. Arched windows, 2nd story balcony with columns.
Looking SW across East River. Posted on street lamp: One-Way arrow and To Bridge arrow. Manhattan skyline in background.
SHIRLEY CARTER BURDEN
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
FROM WIKIPEDIA
Shirley Carter Burden (December 9, 1908 – June 3, 1989) was an American photographer,[1][2] author of picture essays on racism, Catholicism, and history of place.[3][4] He served on advisory committees of museums, including the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California, and was the Photography Committee chairman at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and of Aperture,[5] which named the Burden Gallery (New York) in his honor.
Early life
Burden was born on December 9, 1908, in New York City, the younger son of William Armistead Moale Burden Sr. and Florence Vanderbilt (née Twombly) Burden. He was the brother of Ambassador William Armistead Moale Burden Jr.[6] His maternal grandparents were Florence Adele Vanderbilt Twombly (1854–1952) and Hamilton McKown Twombly (1849–1910),[7] and he was a great-great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt.[6]
He was at the Browning School in New York City until 1926, but did not go on to college or university education.[8]
Career
Beginning in 1924, Burden assisted at Pathé News. In 1926, he and his cousin filmed an Ontario Indian tribe for their The Silent Enemy, and from 1927 held a minor position at Paramount Studios. A 1929 meeting with Edward Steichen inspired his interest in photography and later gained his mentorship. He sought better motion picture prospects in California and Hollywood[9] and from 1929 to 1934 used his contact Merian C. Cooper to gain associate producer work, most significantly at RKO on Academy Award nominated “She“.
Commercial career
During World War 2 Burden established Tradefilms in 1942, successfully producing training films which were then in demand from the US Navy, the Office of Education, and Lockheed Aircraft. This business was unsustainable postwar and Burden and Tradefilms partner Todd Walker opened a photography studio in Beverly Hills, California, in 1946, producing advertising and architectural photography for magazines Architectural Forum, House and Garden, Arts and Architecture.
Fine art career
Dissatisfied with commercial photography, and having embraced Roman Catholicism, Burden decided on a more fulfilling fine art career, encouraged by Minor White[10] whom he met in 1952. The friendship developed into his patronage of White’s Aperture magazine. He assisted Edward Steichen in gathering photography for, and subsequently contributing images to, MoMA‘s highly successful, international travelling Family of Man (1955), working on this also with Dorothea Lange whom he befriended.
These contacts and experience launched a successful fine art photography career.; his photo-essay on the all-but-abandoned Ellis Island,[11] was exhibited under the auspices of the City of New York, and an invitation to exhibit his essay on the Weehawken ferry at MoMA in Diogenes With a Camera IV in 1958, curated by Steichen, who encouraged Burden to photograph Trappist monks at the abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, Kentucky (God Is My Life).[12] Travel to Lourdes in 1960 resulted in Behold Thy Mother, published by Doubleday in 1965, and notoriety continued with the well publicised I Wonder Why, which documented racism experienced by a young black girl.[13]
He continued with his photo essays (on Japan, and his ancestors, the Vanderbilts[14]) and he repaid his success by chairing or advising a range of photography organisations, and teaching (1978–81, at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.).
Personal life
In 1934, Burden married Flobelle Fairbanks, an actress and niece of actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr.[15] Together, they were the parents of two children, a daughter and a son:[6]
- Margaret Florence (1936–2019), who married Daniel Childs.[16]
- Shirley Carter Burden Jr. (1941–1996), who was a former assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy,[16] and who was married to Amanda Jay Mortimer (b. 1944) before their divorce in 1972.[17][18]
After the death of his first wife Flobelle on January 5, 1969,[16] Burden married Julietta Valverde Lyon in 1971.[8][19]
Burden died June 3, 1989 above Teterboro Airport, on a Los Angeles to New York flight.[6] His grandson, S. Carter Burden III, is the founder of the managed web hosting provider Logicworks.[20] His granddaughter, Constance Childs, married celebrity chef and Food Network host David Rosengarten.[21]
Legacy
He gifted or exchanged, in memory of his first wife Flobelle, large numbers of photographs from his generous and eclectic collection of modernist works to MoMA, The Centre for Photography and other institutions. In 1989, 5 years after Aperture moved headquarters to a five-story brownstone at 20 East 23rd Street in New York,[22] the building’s second floor was devoted to the Burden Gallery, in recognition of Burden’s longtime support.[6] The Burden Professorship in Photography at Harvard University in 1999 was established posthumously by his family.
TO SEE THE REFERENCES GO TO WIKIPEDIA
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
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ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
WEEKEND PHOTO OF THE DAY
THREE VISITORS AT THE LGHTHOUSE IN THE 1950’S
PLEASE NOTE: NO SEAWALL
PEDESTRIANS BEWARE!
GLORIA HERMAN AND ALEXIS VILLAFANE GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
NEW YORK CITY MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES
WIKIPEDIA
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
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