The Illusion of Time: Major retrospectives for photographer Ruth Orkin

Until July 2026, the retrospective exhibition Ruth Orkin: The Illusion of Time is on show in Bologna’s Palazzo Pallavicini, following major European exhibitions over the last five years, in France, Spain, Portugal, Hungary and several other stops in Italy.

By Linda Falcone

Originally published in

RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine

ISSUE 9 SPRING/ SUMMER 2026

Ruth Orkin, Jinx and Justin in MG, Florence, Italy, 1951, courtesy of © Ruth Orkin Photo Archive

This interview begins with insights from French author and curator Anne Morin, who is one of the driving forces behind Orkin’s European debut, via her Madrid-based cultural management company DiChroma Photography which co-produces exhibitions worldwide. In the second part of the article, we hear from Mary Engel, Orkin’s daughter, who has been promoting her mother’s work for nearly four decades. Mary, a documentary filmmaker and director of the Orkin/Engel Film and Photo Archive, is pleased with Orkin’s newfound recognition in Europe and reflects on her mother’s ‘chutzpa’ (passion and drive). These interviews, conducted separately, but ‘in conversation’ here, tribute the woman behind the lens of the iconic photograph American Girl in Italy, originally published in Cosmo magazine in a 1952 article entitled ‘Don’t be Afraid to Travel Alone’. Judging by how Ruth Orkin used her camera, she was not afraid of much.

Restoration Conversations: Work in the archives is often fundamental to bringing the achievements of women photographers to the fore. How did your relationship with Ruth Orkin develop, as you continued to study her?

Anne Morin: Once you get into the archives, there’s the chance to go really deep, like an archaeologist. As soon as you start spending a lot of time with photography, the works begin to whisper things; they tell you stories, and you begin to understand the character of the photographer behind the work and her nuances. I always say to myself, “Let’s listen and get a sense of the work’s secret.” As you have said, a curator is someone who takes care of an artist. It’s like being a gardener. You have to make sure that your plant receives enough light, enough water, so that it can begin growing into a beautiful tree. It takes time, but if you set out to do it, you have to continue in the best possible way. I developed that kind of relationship with photographer Vivian Maier. I have my ‘own’ Vivian Maier. I am very fond of her, and I take care of her the best way I can. I want to make sure we do right by her. With Ruth Orkin, it’s the same.

RC: You’ve often said that when you started studying Orkin, the view you had of her work was “extremely narrow”. Can you tell us more about that?

AM: At first glance, I did not understand that she wanted to ‘create cinema’ with her camera. Only later, did I realise that she had adopted some of the same principles underpinning experimental films that emerged in Paris in the 1950s, with Nouvelle Vague cinematographers – no set, no written script, no big money. It was very experimental for that time. Ruth’s daughter, Mary Engel, approached me about her mother some years ago. “Come to my place in Union Square, and let’s see what you think,” she said. I spent hours there, and finally said, “I see the ghost of the cinema in her pictures.” That was when Mary told me that Ruth had not been able to become a filmmaker, despite wanting to. Women at the time were supposed to be feeding the American dream by being actresses, not by making the movies in which they starred. Ruth worked on Little Fugitive, in 1953, with her husband Morris Engel, and it was a huge revolution. As I explored that film, it opened up a new dimension on Ruth’s work in my mind. She could not get into cinema through the front door, so she found a window, and invented a very specific kind of photography. No one else behind a camera talks about cinema like she does.

Ruth Orkin, Mother and Daughter on Suitcase, Penn Station, New York, 1947. Courtesy of © Ruth Orkin Photo Archive

RC: If you were to choose one photograph that you would like to have on public view and in the minds of people, which would it be?

AM: There’s one picture of a mother and her daughter seated on suitcases, who seem to have been waiting in a train station for hours. The mother looks very tired, and the daughter is leaning on her. The image is so simple, but powerful. I can imagine Ruth wandering by and being touched by that scene – maybe as a mother. There is nothing more beautiful than a little daughter having a rest on her mother’s shoulder. I love this picture. Orkin focuses our attention on the many wonderful things around us. This ‘ability to see’ is an exercise, of course, but her work reminds me of Alphonse Daudet, and the idea that poets and children don’t look at the world, they discover it. Orkin truly had the capacity to discover beautiful things that we might not see by ourselves.

RC: At the Bologna show, I felt that Orkin’s work takes moments we recognise – like images of a man petting a dog or a woman scrutinising a statue – and uses them to tap into collective memory. I often go to shows and wonder, “How can I relate to this? Where does my own experience fit in here?” In this case, I felt at home. Ruth Orkin put humanity out in the open, and it felt like there was something very unifying in her body of works – the simple experience of humanity. It may not be a complicated concept, but it’s not very common today.

AM: To borrow an idea from Victor Hugo, Orkin finds the extraordinary in the depths of the ordinary. Many photographers travel to the ends of the earth, in search of situations that are exotic or astonishing. By doing so, they distance themselves from our daily life, which is actually full of marvellous details like the ones Orkin collected and captured. Ruth was living in New York, which is a very seductive city full of visual stimuli, but she was not drawn to the homogeny of modernism, ‘the big’, ‘the high’ and so on. Rather, she collected small details of ‘extraordinary things’ that all too often are considered trivial. In her lens, there is no need to go far to find poetry. She is honest in her art – honest with herself.

RC: Tell us more about how Ruth handles the protagonists of her photographs, because Jimmy Telling a Story, and Girls Reading a Comic Book have the same communicative power as images of iconic individuals like Einstein laughing, or Spencer Tracy on the film set. 

AM: “Exactly! They’re all on the same level. When Ruth gets close to someone via her camera – whether on the street, or at the terminal station, or in that world of cinema where everybody is an icon – there are no categories, no social classes. She simply embraces whatever is in front of her, and there is absolutely no distance between her and Einstein; there’s no distance between her and children playing cards. It’s exactly the same. She’s very natural, and that is a true power. She does not fear anything or anyone.

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Restoration Conversations: Mary, thank you for agreeing to share insight on your mother. What is your take on Anne Morin’s claim that your mother was fearless in her photography? Can you tell us more about her character and how it shaped her work?

Mary Engel: My mother had chutzpah, in a good way – and a sense of adventure. At just 17, she decided to travel across the country alone [on a journey that was part bicycle-trip and part hitchhike]. It’s not that she convinced her parents to let her go on the trip. She simply didn’t ask for permission. She put a note on the table, hooked up with a ride, and then called them about 50 miles out of LA, saying, “I’m going to New York.” So I think if you need a portal into who Ruth Orkin was at 17, she was self-assured, confident and not willing to listen to anybody except her own inner voice, and what she wanted to do. It is a telling anecdote about who she was, and she carried that attitude through her life.  Her parents may have been beside themselves, but they also trusted her on some level. Keep in mind, her mother had been in a vaudeville trio, and had travelled around the country, so the idea was not completely foreign. Ruth had a lot of drive, passion, and a lot of interests. Portraying people was her specialty. “I take pictures to show people how I see the world,” she used to say. That’s who she was.

Ruth Orkin, Albert Einstein at a Princeton Luncheon, Princeton, New Jersey, 1955, © Ruth Orkin Photo Archive

RC: The Bologna show is very focused on Ruth’s ground-breaking work in creating ‘common ground’ between photography and cinema. Can you tell us more about that?

ME: Her theme of always shooting in series, as if she were shooting film is evident in all her series, which I aways point out to people interested in her work. When my mother was a messenger girl at MGM in 1943, she wanted to become a director or filmmaker in Hollywood, but the cinematographer’s union wouldn’t let a woman in. In her diary, or one of her books, she wrote, “I was too early”, and she was absolutely right. Shewas too early. But she never lost her cinematic sensibility, and she brought that to photography. Ruth (Mom) shot stills in series, in a cinematic style, because that’s what she wanted to do. She was the first girl messenger at MGM; the ‘Hollywood glitz’ was fun, but it was her job, not her life. Her life was not glamorous; it was the  Great Depression, and her parents were on relief. She actually went back five years later, and shot what her experiences ‘would have been like’ as a messenger girl. But the point is that she was far ahead of the curve, in terms of innovation, and ultimately, she tries to bridge the gap between moving pictures and still pictures.

RC: There has been increased interest in your mother’s work in recent years, can you tell us more about it?

ME: During her lifetime, my mother probably had 25 shows, and several books were published about her work. She was widely acknowledged, but never received the big grants, or as much recognition as she would have liked. But she died young, at 63. In fact, I just bypassed her age this year. Although she had exhibitions all over the United States, she never debuted in Europe during her lifetime. Only recently, and because of Anne, she’s had the exposure in Europe. It’s really thrilling. We had no books on her for 40 years, and now all of a sudden, we have six new books out, and a couple more are on the way. Right now, she has a show on in Washington as well, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. I’m trying to keep up with everything, and my work strives to keep her pictures in the public eye. She had a lot of people who loved her work, you know? And it just continues.” LINDA FALCONE