On Saturday, June 22, from 5 to 7 p.m. the Southampton Cultural Center is hosting a reception for the new exhibition “America,” featuring the work of Leonard McCombe. The exhibition is open until July 14, and can be viewed at the SCC Levitas Center for the Arts during gallery hours from noon to 4 p.m.
Leonard McCombe grew up in rural isolation on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. At 14, he contracted Scarlet Fever and had to drop out of high school. While he recovered, he took up painting and photography. At 16, he sold pictures of a local fire to the London Daily Express. By the time he turned 18 in 1941, he was a full-fledged war correspondent. At 21 he covered the great Allied breakout from Normandy and became the youngest Fellow ever elected to the Royal Photographic Society. His images of “displaced persons,” a term he first coined to describe German refugees from Eastern Europe, earned him an invitation to New York to work at LIFE Magazine. From 1946 through the last issue of LIFE in 1973, McCombe documented world history through visual storytelling. His 1948 and1949 images of the American cowboy and the Navajo Reservation were published as books in 1951. He chronicled every aspect of life in America, including Midwestern towns, industrial life, politics and immigrant New York.
The exhibition is open to the public for free.
The Southampton Cultural Center is at 25 Pond Lane, Southampton.
Staff Writer on Jun 10, 2024