His candid black-and-white images, prosaic yet provocative, captured the faces of a wide range of New Yorkers. He also took occasional side trips to the West.
His candid black-and-white images, prosaic yet provocative, captured the faces of a wide range of New Yorkers. He also took occasional side trips to the West.
His candid black-and-white images, prosaic yet provocative, captured the faces of a wide range of New Yorkers. He also took occasional side trips to the West.
Paul McDonough, whose evocative candid photographs, often of crowds, captured what he called the galvanizing energy of turned-on New Yorkers and the tired West Coast venues where urbanites had fled to tune out, died on March 25 in Brooklyn. He was 84.
His wife, the author Yona Zeldis McDonough, said he died in a nursing home from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
Armed with a 35-millimeter Leica or a Siciliano — one of 55 cameras custom-built by his fellow Brooklyn photographer Thomas Roma, who was head of the department of photography at Columbia University’s School of the Arts — Mr. McDonough captured impromptu groups in which individual facial expressions projected multiple impressions; stark romantic images, like a couple kissing in Central Park or youngsters at play; and statues, which he whimsically juxtaposed with human look-alikes.
Mr. McDonough’s works were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library and the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, Mass.; shown at the Sasha Wolf Gallery in Manhattan; and collected in several books, including “New York Photographs: 1968-1978” (2010), “Sight Seeing” (2014) and “Headed West” (2021).