The Evolution of Thought: Work by Lucille Fornasieri Gold

This week's Photo of the Week highlights the work of Lucille Fornasieri Gold, a Brooklyn photographer. She started photographing with a Leica camera in 1968, while her children were in school. She would develop and print in the kitchen darkroom of her home in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. When she moved, she lost her darkroom and while her negatives were processed, they remained unprinted for years. Starting in the 1990s, she and her second husband, Jack Gold, scanned the negatives, repaired lost detail due to deterioration using Adobe Photoshop, and printed a curated set of photographs with their home printer. In 2002, Gold retired from the jewelry business and continued to work only on her photography. She moved on to photograph with a digital SLR and continued to review her older negatives for inclusion in curated series. Mrs. Gold died while visiting her son in New Jersey in April 2016.

She said of her photography: "There is always a movement, a gesture, an interesting or bizarre juxtaposition, a color or combination of colors that create a renewed impulse to see. I engage the social and moral questions, but I don't try to answer them. Ultimately there are no answers. When I'm photographing I feel the weight of the antecedents, the spirals of time, the evolution of thought and science."

Her work is also part of the Brooklyn Museum collection. She won first prize in a Con Edison contest called "My Brooklyn," was featured in exhibitions including a group show at Powerhouse Arena and a solo show at the Chelsea Market, and her work has been reprinted in various publications. Around 2008, she self-published three collections of her photography: "Old City," "Young City," and "Brooklyn Doggie."

Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page to search our collections. Questions? Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.