The City Assembly House is hosting a retrospective of acclaimed photographer Susan Wood’s seven decades of work. Projected as a slide show on five walls, the exhibition presents her work like never before, promising viewers a unique experience. A mix of never-before-seen professional and personal work taken from a life behind the camera lens. Gathered from Susan’s extensive archive by curator Anthony Catania, Re/Collection celebrates her pursuit of beauty in the people, places, and objects she photographs.

Dates: Friday 23rd June to Friday 21st July (Mon-Sat 10am to 5pm, Sun 12pm to 5pm)

About Susan

Susan Wood (born in New York City on 3/25/32) is an American photographer most notable for her photography on location with the 1969 “Road Movie” “Easy Rider” starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper and her portraits of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, John Wayne, Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti, Joseph Heller, Betty Friedan, Norman Mailer, and David Hockney, amongst others.

Her “life style” work during a span of 50 years - photographing families, individuals , their homes, gardens and careers - which she portrayed on assignments for Look, Vogue, House & Garden, House Beautiful, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Ladies Home Journal, McCalls, Esquire, Coronet Gentlemen,s Quarterly, New York Magazine, People and in England, the Weekend Telegraph, British Vogue, and Queen -documented the tastes and look of those times….The 50ties,60ties, 70ties, 80ties and 90ties.

Her work with famous chefs, food and food writers for magazines and books, introduced a new approach to food photography, it was more painterly with softer, appealing use of color , light and compressed depth of field, relating the images more to Oriental perspective than western. These works were generally done on assignment for Vogue and House and Garden, Some of the famous, their food and restaurants and nightlubs she photographed were Regone of Regines, the family owners (name?) and staff and food of Grenouille, Cepe Rengle, Four Seasons and Windows on World.

A Vogue magazine assignment to catch the life spirit of Grenouille, a famous 5 star French NYC restaurant notable for dramatic fresh flower displays piqued her interest in finding a unique and dramatic way to photograph flowers. Mary Kay Baumann art director of Geo admired her efforts and pushed her further in that pursuit assigning her to a story for Geo titled Nature’s Pharmacie – resulting in 8 double page spreads of medicinal plants as humble as dandolion and grand as orchids. Susan regards herself in this phase of her work as the direct descendant of the 18th and 19th century botanical illustrators such as Audabon and Redon.