MEDIA COVERAGE FOR GEORGE ROMANATION
HONEST REWARDS AT A DIVERSE PHOTO REGIONAL – Times Union, Albany, NY, May 2, 2004
TIMOTHY CAHILL Staff writer
Section: ARTS-EVENTS, Page: I1
Date: Sunday, May 2, 2004
The Photography Regional, now in its 26th year, has found its identity as an annual showcase for emerging talent. Fewer and fewer of the area’s established masters make their appearance in the show, and there seems to be only a small community of journeymen whose progress can be followed from year to year. This year’s Regional is the most rewarding in three years, modest in its ambitions but engaging in its breadth and convincing in its honesty. The show, at the Fulton Street Gallery in Troy, features some 70 images representing 43 photographers. As juried by Westchester-based art photographer Tanya Marcuse, the exhibit evinces a diversity of styles and sensibilities that generates a pleasing energy…
…George Romanation returns us to the days of Atget’s Paris with his two wheels-within-wheels pictures of Paris windows and reflections.
Paris, Palais-Royal, 1994 / ©1994 George Romanation
Paris, Buttes Chaumont, 2000 / ©2000 George Romanation
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QUEENS CHRONICLE
Woodside Shutterbug Sees ‘Off Kilter’
Posted: Thursday, June 28, 2007 12:00 am
by Michael McLaughlin | 0 comments
“Old school” is a phrase that surfaces several times in conversation with George Romanation, a photographer from Woodside. It’s clearly a sort of imperfect shorthand he uses to describe his methods and aesthetic sensibility.
He uses the word with some reluctance — but it’s apt for a man who prefers to shoot with black and white film in the digital age.
Much of Romanation’s work comes from focusing his lens on street life in New York or European cities, where he travels regularly.
“There are very simple moments on the street that might seem quite common,” he said, adding that with close attention and a little luck, the camera will reveal things that are “off kilter.”
Sitting in the Aubergine Cafe near the apartment he has called home for the last eight years, Romanation explains his work as an “old-school approach to street photography.”
In one photo, Romanation captures a woman inexplicably bent over low to the ground before a standing sculpture of a classical figure at the Louvre Museum in Paris. It’s a personal favorite. “It’s just a moment that comes out of nowhere,” he said.
A moment later, the woman stood up straight, and all was back to normal.
Romanation is 52 years old and employed as a travel consultant for corporations who send their executives around the world on business trips. He describes his life as being “on dual paths for some time.”
On weekends or his vacations, he might spend hours on a street corner or in a city park taking pictures, but he is not after a preconceived image. “If I plan too much, it doesn’t seem to work,” he said.
In fact, he says that he’s been accused of doing just that, a charge that results in a staunch defense of the spontaneity of his work.
One photo his friends thought he orchestrated was taken in a Parisian park and features two elderly women settled on a bench. There is a pair of men’s dress shoes left on the grass in the foreground near the women — a detail that raised people’s suspicions that he posed the shot. He assures he was but a passive observer.
Romanation only began seriously cultivating his photographic skills at age 35, taking classes at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. He also dabbled in politics in college and speaks fluent Russian and Ukrainian. In his 20s, he considered joining the CIA or National Security Agency, but a year spent studying in Moscow did more to spur his artistic interests than propel him toward a government career — a retrospective of photos from that year in Moscow in the late 1970s and early 1980s are available on his Web site. He has also shown his work at the Flux Factory gallery in Long Island City and upstate galleries in Albany and Troy.
Despite his claims of dedication to a bygone craft, he has veered into the modern. Recently, he ditched his 35 mm Nikon, picked up a digital camera, and did a series of abstract nudes, then tweaked the results with computer programs to get the coloring and graininess he desired.
These modern renditions of his work as well as a set from the 1970s and 1980 in the former Soviet Union are all available on his “new school” Web site, www.gromanation.net. (Website no longer active)
Rockefeller Center, NYC, 1987 / ©1987 George Romanation
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QUEENS CHRONICLE
Frozen moments on the streets of Paris
Posted: Thursday, January 31, 2013 10:30 am
by Josey Bartlett, qboro Editor | 0 comments
Woodside resident George Romanation’s black-and-white photography book of Paris is a long time coming.
Romanation, 58, a Parson School of Design graduate and travel consultant for corporations and for the United Nations, has been visiting the City of Love for 25 years. With each trip he snaps more pictures of everyday life — a day at the cafe, a ride on a carousel and a cat nap at the Louvre.
“The common thread that runs through many of the photos is an expression of life’s emotions — love, affection, sadness, humor,” Romanation said. “I hope my pictures convey how fleeting and precious these moments are.”
Romanation’s style in the book “Paris Personal” emulates street photographers of the ’40s and ’50s, the type of work seen in “National Geographic” and “Life” magazines during that era, he said.
Romanation likes to pick a neighborhood, museum or locale like the banks of the Seine to walk around for the day with his 35 mm Nikon and a surplus of black-and-white film. He gives himself no boundaries or stipulations, but takes pictures of the moments that strike him.
Sometimes he gets lucky, as on one visit in 1995 when he took five of the images that are published in the book; other times he’ll go days without pressing the shutter release.
One day he’ll take several images, but other times he just has one chance. That was the case one day at the Louvre museum. Romanation glanced at a bench next to a classic nude sculpture about 50 yards away using his zoom lens. What caught his eye was a slouched woman with her forehead on her knees.
“I don’t know if she was upset or depressed or if she was just taking a power nap,” he said. “I took one frame. A second later she got up, shook her head and went about her day.”
Those moments he thought were perfect can be interpreted completely differently by someone else. “That’s the fascinating part of street photography,” he said. “It’s in the eye of the beholder.”
Or that moment could be ruined by a tourist who wanders seemingly out of nowhere and into the frame. Or perhaps what he clicked isn’t seen until he prints it out.
That was the case with his favorite photo of the famous Cafe de Flore where Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus would write, chat and sip coffee.
Romanation would also end his days there while on his vacations. The cover picture on his book is one such moment
“The menu and the woman in the center with two shopping bags are aligned perfectly,” Romanation said. “Everything in my view fell in perfect harmony, but it’s a completely random street moment. It’s completely a split second frozen in time.”
“It also has sentimental value,” he said.
The self-published book, which is available on blurb.com for $44, or $60 for a hardcover, compiles the Woodsider’s 30 favorite photos from Paris beginning with the first year he visited, 1988, to the arbitrary end year of 2000.
“It took a long time,” Romanation said. “Life kept getting in the way.”
Romanation plans to compile a book of his home city in the future. Let’s hope we won’t need to wait another quarter century for a glimpse.
Cafe de Flore, Paris, 1992 / ©1992 George Romanation
George Romanation / Archive Photo
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Times Ledger
Self-published books showcase western Queens scenes
Posted 12:00 am, November 22, 2013
By Bill Parry
Two photographers in western Queens have released photo books about their neighborhoods, and both are self-published but at different ends of the spectrum. Using an online platform called Blurb, they have produced interesting looks at Long Island City and neighboring Sunnyside…
…George Romanation’s “The Fine Art of the Hang” is a different book. A soft cover, 22-page look at the nightlife along Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside Gardens, it sells for $20.
At a book release party at Flynn’s Garden Inn, at 46-08 Skillman Ave., Romanation signed each copy.
“I’ve lived at the Phipps Houses for 15 years and wanted to do a book,” he said. “Call it a visual appreciation of the art of the hang in my neighborhood, hence the title.”…
… “Self-publishing is a challenge; it’s also a labor of love,” he said.
https://www.timesledger.com/stories/2013/47/licbook_tl_2013_11__22_q.html
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PRAISE FOR “PARIS PERSONAL,” A BOOK OF BLACK & WHITE PHOTOS OF THE CITY OF LIGHT, PUBLISHED IN 2013.
“ ROMANATION’S EYE CATCHES THE SUBTLE POETIC MESSAGES TO BE FOUND IN THE MOST PROSAIC OF REALITIES, FOR THOSE WHO KNOW HOW TO LOOK … THE IMPRINT OF HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON, ANOTHER SOURCE OF INSPIRATION, IS ALSO EVIDENT IN ROMANATION’S RICH AND EVOLVING PHOTOGRAPHY.”
– PHILIPPE DELAIDE, BLOGGER, “ LE POISSON REVEUR”, PARIS ( IN HIS INTRODUCTION TO “PARIS PERSONAL” )
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George Romanation 