An exhibition of vintage photographs

by the Life Magazine Photographer

Jack Birns

by

Ralph Harpuder

 On December 7, yours truly had the opportunity again to meet in person Life Magazine photographer, Jack Birns. It was at his exclusive exhibit of vintage prints “Assignment Shanghai, Photographs on the Eve of Revolution”, where Jack and I with our wives saw each other again. It may be recalled that Jack’s wife, Harriet, represented her husband at the 2004 Shanghai Reunion in Toronto. An invitation to the exhibit is shown in Figure one.

A number of Shanghailanders alive today, and those that in the meantime passed on, were still witness to the human drama unfolding at the time as the conflict between the two regimes of China intensified, and with war becoming imminent to the country ‘s culture and commercial capital. Most of the photographs in the exhibit are illustrated in Birns’ book Assignment Shanghai, published by the University of California Press. More on the book and about the distinguished Life Magazine photographer, Jack Birns can be found on two pages illustrated in Figure two. A part of the exhibit and Birns’ signing his book is shown in Figure three.

How yours truly learned about Jack Birns, and our first social get-together, can be found in a previous article with the same title, and listed under Articles by Ralph Harpuder.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3