Kurt Fishback
New York World's Fair 1965
1965
Archival pigment print
19 x 15 in.
Fair market value: $1800

Kurt Edward Fishback, name-sake of photographer Edward Weston, grew up as part of the photographic community in Northern California during the 1940s and 50s. Mentors and friends of the family included Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, and Edward Weston. Despite his immersion in the world of photography, Fishback began his artistic career studying ceramic sculpture at Sacramento City College, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of California, Davis in the 1960s. Photographs of artists and the landscape are his current focus.

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"In 1965 I spent two months in Egypt making photographs in the street in locations like Cairo, Luxor and Alexandria. My Aunt worked in the American Embassy and had asked me if I wanted to come to Egypt. Of course I said yes. On my return to the United States I stopped in Port Chester, NY to visit another aunt, my “Egypt” aunt’s sister. My uncle was an executive with IBM and suggested we visit the World Fair as IBM had an exhibit there. The exhibit was in the form of a huge cement sphere lifted off the ground on posts. The bleacher seats pictured here rose up into the dome when full of people to view a many projector slide show about IBM. What was really interesting to me was the fact that not a single person payed any attention to me even though I was pointing a camera at all of them. Several months later the identical composition created by another photographer appeared on the cover of NewsWeek Magazine with different people in it. Another proof that ideas are universal and often borrowed from the same source."

- Kurt Edward Fishback