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My dog Little Esther has been on a diet for the last week and a half. She’s a clingy elderly gal, and our vet recommended that rather than put her in a kennel, we bring her with us to Paris. The caveat being that we would need to get her and her carrier bag to fit the 17lb Air France weight restriction.

I am traveling to attend Paris Photo, the largest photography art fair in the world, and an amazing place to introduce The Seymour Jacobs Photography Archive to galleries, museums, and collectors. The idea of attending Paris Photo had been hatched by Alla Efimova just over a month ago as we sat in a bar in Chelsea chatting about photography. Alla lives in California and is the owner and founder of Kunstworks which helps advise artists and archivists like me to get their collections out into the world. We were talking about Paris Photo and she said simply, “We should go together”.

Flying to France to attend Paris Photo on short notice seemed impractical and slightly absurd, but over the next few days the idea rattled around in my brain. I generally do my best thinking in the hour before the alarm rings. It is during this state of dreamy musing that over the years I have decided to marry my husband, switch out of a career in radio, and remember that my lost keys were dropped in the basement. These moments have guided me through many beautiful decisions, and this time they guided me to book our flights to Paris. So now business cards have been printed, a one-sheet archive narrative has been created, and our bags are packed. We will meet up with Alla and head right out to the opening night of Paris Photo. At this point , my only real fear is that while in Paris Little Esther will share too much of Greg’s favorite dried sausage, tip the scales, and get stuck at the French border.

On beautiful spring afternoons in the 1980’s I would get home from school and my father would peel back the canvas top of our yellow convertible Bug. With an unmistakable Volkswagen growl, we would roar down the block, and fly over the BQE towards Brighton Beach with the wind whipping our hair. In the backseat, there would be two rolled up towels and a worn bag which my dad had kindly “commissioned” me to sew for him, constructed out of the legs of a pair of my old jeans. The bag was filled with cameras, a few rolls of black and white film, and a hand-held light meter. My father never left home without it.

Once at Brighton Beach, we would head to Bay II where we would be greeted by Belle, Dolores, Sid, and other beach regulars. The “Beach Ladies”, as my father called them, were in their seventies and eighties and spent their days in bathing suits, enormous wigs, false eyelashes, and pancake make-up. They would lounge around the rocks smoking and chatting, but were vigilante about watching our stuff while we swam. After several brisk laps between the bays, my dad, dripping with sea water, would wander around the sand socializing and photographing the flamboyant characters that he had known for decades. In front of his camera elderly women would primp, body-builders would flex, and generally there would be both a push-up contest and a discussion about the holocaust before sunset.

It’s been twenty years since my father died unexpectedly in Montmartre Paris. He was only 67 years old, and at the height of his career in Europe. The Seymour Jacobs Photography Archives would wait two decades until this past winter when I quit my job and began the project of methodically organizing negatives, scanning images and creating this website. Like my father, the collection can be confrontational at times, but it is also poignant and personal to me. My goal with the Seymour Jacobs Photography Archive, is to revive my father’s artistic legacy in Europe, re-introduce the work to American audiences, and exhibit collections that have never been publicly displayed. I hope that you will enjoy exploring the the work, and I look forward to hunting for buried images, transcribing audio clips, interviewing friends and colleagues, and generally sharing my archival adventure with you.

Little Esther Goes to Paris

The Bug and Brighton Beach