Current Collection
The 50,000 item collection documents Gedney's work from the 1950s to 1989. Subjects include photographs of cross country road trips; rural New York; Manhattan; Brooklyn; rural Kentucky; Hippies in San Francisco; composers; gay rallies and demonstrations; St. Joseph’s School for the Deaf; India; England; Ireland; France; and, a large number of nocturnal pictures.
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Book Dummies
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Photographs
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Composers, 1962-1968
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Cross Country, 1966-1967
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Europe, 1974-1982
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The Farm, 1950s
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India, 1969-1971 and 1979-1980
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Kansas, 1969
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Kentucky, 1964 and 1971
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Miscellaneous, 1958-1982
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New York, 1954-1984
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San Francisco, 1966-1967
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St. Joseph's School for the Deaf, ca. 1960
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India, 1969-1971 and 1979-1980 - 1167 Items
William Gedney's first trip to India was made possible by a United States government scholarship under the Fulbright program. He arrived in Delhi in November of 1969 with intention of traveling to Calcutta. On the journey cross-country, however, Gedney was stopped short of his proposed destination by the spectacle of Benares, the sacred city by the Ganges and the oldest continually habitated city in the world. He remained in Benares for fourteen months, living and photographing in the old part of the city. While in India, Gedney kept extensive journals, filling pages with transcriptions from his reading and research on Indian life and culture, and his own descriptions of what he saw and experienced. For a time, he also kept a daily diary. When William Gedney returned to Brooklyn, he spent almost two years editing and printing the images made in Benares. In the end, he made hundreds of finished prints. He created two handmade books of the photographs: "Benares Photographs" in 1977 and "First Dummy of Benares Night" in 1982. Ten years after his first trip, Gedney returned to India in 1979 at his own expense and photographed for four months in Calcutta. No monograph of the these photographs was ever published nor were there any major exhibitions of the work during William Gedney's lifetime.
Rickshaws and carriages; wet men pulling cart of goods; wrestlers massaging each other and standing on each others' backs.
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Two men looking out over the Ganges and Benares from a ghat; one man meditating nearby.
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Men drying dhotis on ghat.
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Two men urinating in open latrine below a billboard.
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Woman kneeling while a boy behind her holds incense bowl in mouth.
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Sculptors at work; Sculptors socializing; Workers putting up a wooden fence; Indira Gandhi propaganda on a wall: "For a Stable Ministry Vote Congress (I)".
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People walking or riding bicycles or rickshaws or cars on street in the rain.
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Two people in ceremonial dress sitting in elevated seats in large seated crowd.
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Woman getting off of bus.
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Two men sitting on ground by street, boy playing with one man's hair.
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Woman praying at an altar on the street corner.
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Elephant kneeling while carrying men in ornate seat on its back; Maharaja of Benares?
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Two women walking on street in rain with the wind blowing their head covering.
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Child weaving on a loom.
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Men leaning into window, hand holding glass, and man exhaling smoke.
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Woman worships at the back of a temple.
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Two young men sit on a cot in the street laughing with each other, young boys are around a trench behind them.
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People at a party.
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Boy behind a teapot looking at the camera.
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Man leading ox down the street.
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Man sitting in parked rickshaw in the rain.
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Man holding on to the outside of a bus while it is moving. Seen from the inside.
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Girl and men walking in rain.
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Man standing on scaffolding, adjusting the head of a large, multi-armed, feminine figure.
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Men holding onto man wearing a hat made out of newspaper; at the Holi Festival.
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Back of a man ascending steps in a temple with people sitting on ground in front of him.
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Two men sitting near bundles of grass.
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Man performing with large phallus while waving to the camera.
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City markets, street scenes; Advertisement: "To Let: Modern Flats, House, Office, Shops, Lands and House For Sale"; Large mural of Indira Gandhi above a major intersection.
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Oiled young wrestler standing, others around him, man in background lying on the ground.
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Man in crowded street thrusting his hand in the air.
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Man and dog sleeping under a wall painting of the Soviet hammer and sickle and CPIM - the Communist Party India (Marxist).
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India, 1969-1971 and 1979-1980 - 1167 Items