On 4 October 2008, the 84th anniversary of Harry Shunk’s birth, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation announced it had recently acquired the entire photographic archive from the estate of the renowned photographer Harry Shunk [a.k.a. Shunk-Kender / Harry Shunk].  The Foundation made this purchase at the public estate auction conducted by the Public Administrator, County of New York on 29 August 2008.  

Harry Shunk died intestate on 26 June 2006 at age 81.  While these photographs of art, artists, ephemeral performances, openings and rare events of the European and American art scenes are often critical documents known worldwide, the facts of Shunk’s reclusive later life and his total oeuvre, and the oeuvre of his previous collaborative partner, Jean Kender, still deserve significant research. 

The Shunk photographic archive collection numbers more than 100,000 items, with over 60,000 printed photographs.  There are also many thousands of negatives (some of which may never have been printed) and contact sheets, all previously housed in Shunk’s studio in Westbeth, West Greenwich Village, New York City.  We believe over 500 artists or art events were documented.   

Shunk, whose name was spelled variously Schunk and Schunke, held a German passport and an American Green Card.  Both documents give his birth city as Reudnitz (near Leipzig), and a birth date of October 4, 1924.  The obituaries in 2006 incorrectly listed his birth city as Trieste, Italy and suggested his nationality was “possibly Austrian.” Other references have erroneously given Shunk’s birth date as 1942 and his citizenship as “possibly American.”

From c. 1957 to c. 1973 Shunk partnered with János (Jean) Kender and by their design all their photographs taken during that period were credited to “Shunk-Kender.” János Kender was born in Pécs, Hungary in July 1937. He fled to France in 1956 during the Hungarian Revolution.  Shunk and Kender left Paris for Canada in 1967 and then relocated to New York City.  Their creative partnership was formally dissolved in 1973 with Shunk retaining the photographic archive.  Kender died in Florida in December 2009.  

The Shunk-Kender images range from Yves Klein’s iconic action Le Saut dans le vide [Leap into the Void], which Shunk confected by photomontage with Klein and Kender in a Paris suburb in 1960, to primary documentary images of Christo’s Valley Curtain, early photographs of Andy Warhol, Lucio Fontana, George Segal, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Rauschenberg, Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Claes Oldenburg, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Alan Kaprow “Happenings,” among numerous others.  

Shunk-Kender also photographed openings at the Sonnabend and Castelli galleries, café and art parties, Nouveau réaliste and conceptual art performances in Paris and New York, and Shunk himself would continue to photograph many other emerging and important artists, critics and collectors from 1973 until the early twenty-first century.  

The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation is a private operating foundation established by the artist and his family to preserve and expand not only the artistic legacy of Roy Lichtenstein but also information about the art and artists of his time.  Thus the Foundation will, as part of this mission, pursue the trajectories of Shunk and Kender’s lives and creativity - safeguarding, promoting and helping interpret their profound photographic legacy. 

Dorothy Lichtenstein, widow of the artist, remarks: “Roy, given his characteristic modesty, would have preferred that his foundation not be only about him and his art.  We are delighted that we have now been able to acquire the Shunk archive and to keep it from being randomly dispersed.  The works need to be preserved and studied in context.  We believe they are primary and rare documentation of a number of related generations of modern European and American artists of the 1950s through the 1990s.”

Jack Cowart, founding executive director of the Lichtenstein Foundation, adds: “It was important for us to step in quickly to save this treasure trove of photographic art history and we thank Dorothy Lichtenstein for her immediate advocacy.  Shunk led a fascinating life in fascinating times. We now have years of work ahead of us but we are intrigued by all the wonderful possibilities for institutional collaboration, new scholarship, new energies and a restored visibility to this reclusive photographer who frequently seemed to have been in the right place at the right time.”

He continues, “We owe a debt of gratitude to all who stepped in to protect these photos, to include his caring social worker, interested curators, the staff at Westbeth, representatives of the Public Administrator and those at the appraisal firm of O’Toole-Ewald Art Associates, Inc.  They recognized that this time capsule of rare photographic documentation and imagery promised to be much more than the sum of its parts and early on they facilitated keeping the collection intact.”

The public estate sale conveyed the photographers’ copyrights to the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. The Foundation will work with qualified museums, researchers, publishers, artists and critics needing imagery and authorized permission.  

Consultation, Research and Imagery Requests Shunk-Kender/Shunk Archive
Status March 2010

Remarks:
Please be advised that this (still largely) uncatalogued and off-site photographic archive is very much a work in process.

The Foundation staff and archivists cannot accommodate visitors to see the physical photographs, negatives or contact sheets at this time. The storage facility is remote and too small. The Foundation space itself is under renovation and we have not been able to move any inventoried photographs back to our storages.

Notably, we aspire to be a cross-reference matrix for the images and locations of all Shunk-Kender/Shunk archival prints worldwide, but not to operate like a stock photo house.

The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation provides its staff, contract archivists and contractors as a donated service to the art historical field [within reason]. These professionals are neither de facto research assistants nor operating under any implied contract with the applicant.

The Shunk-Kender/Shunk archive is a complicated and formerly uncatalogued /admixed entity held by the reclusive Harry Shunk who made no plans for his legacy. So the RLF is progressively inventing ways to deal with decades of pent-up demand and to facilitate public access. This situation requires patience from all sides and careful planning on behalf of those making inquiries.

Our current process has been to begin with the largest groups of semi-organized photographs relating to major artists and major art events [for example: Yves Klein, Nouveau Realistes, Christo, Sonnabend Paris, Pier 18, among others]. By design, we are not researching captions, dates, themes, interpretive connoisseurship, bibliography, biography or portrayed subjects beyond the obvious. Our plan is to inventory the photographic prints, do low res scans and then post all these images on a forthcoming “Wiki-like” Shunk-Kender/Shunk website. Negatives and contact sheets will be cross-referenced last.

Mandatory Guidelines:
1. The very first step for scholars, museums, curators, critics, publishers or writers is that they must contact :
Shunk-Copyright@lichtensteinfoundation.org
with any request and, then, any and all follow-up. This address is the unique portal for all requests, subsequent requests, all scan direction and technicalities, all permissions, copyright clearance and all conditions of use.

2. Shunk-Copyright will email the applicant a confirming detailed business form to be completed and returned. The return of that form starts our process.

3. Upon receipt of the form, the applicant should expect a minimum of ten days RLF response time for a simple inquiry. The RLF response will be limited to our estimate of the number of relevant photographs currently found and the number of low-res scans currently in our system.

4. If multiple artists or multiple events or cross-referencing on techniques or collaboration or historical context are part of the request, more time will be needed, at the discretion of the RLF. The RLF may decline this work if there are more pressing priorities dealing with either Lichtenstein or Shunk-Kender/Shunk.

5. If there are follow-up questions, the RLF second response will estimate how long it may take for the contract archivists to locate any additional desired materials or other esoterica.

6. Following the applicant’s selection of determined images, the RLF will aspire to email the digital files to the applicant within one business week.

Thank you for your participation, assistance and patience in this collaborative matter as we try our best to assist your research and reference concerning Harry Shunk and Janos Kender.

Jack Cowart
Executive Director
Roy Lichtenstein Foundation
March 2010

This new section has been established here in the Foundation’s primary website. Eventually all known Shunk-Kender / Shunk images will be visible and documented on the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation website.                                   

Preliminary List of Artists/Subjects Presumed to Have Been Photographed by Shunk-Kender and/or Harry Shunk