ABSTRACT
The sixties was a decade of tremendous upheaval and tumultuous change, evident in many facets of society throughout the world. There was great violence and there were miraculous achievements. In 1966 Bruce Davidson brought a large-format view camera, flash, and tripod onto East 100th Street, one of the worst blocks in New York City. The portraits, such as Frank , were painstakingly exact in likeness, but they became, paradoxically, depersonalized abstractions. Neel also painted family relationships of others, attempting to capture an essence of her subjects. An unusual portrait was of Cindy Nemser and her husband, Chuck, painted in 1975. Family life was no longer seen as always idyllic, wholesome, or homogeneous. The flower children of the decade sometimes abandoned the nuclear family and sought new family constellations in communes and other family groups.
