Mellon Tytell
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Mellon Tytell is an American photographer with a diverse career that includes fashion, documentary series, erotic photograpohy, and portraits of celebrated personalities.
Mellon, along with her husband, John Tytell, was integral in documenting and canonizing the members of the Beat Generation.
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[edit] Biography
Mellon's beginnings in photography came in 1972 when Ralph Lauren (at that time only a necktie designer) chose her to photograph his first full collection, and she has continued to work in fashion for clients such as, Givenchy, Christian Dior, and W Magazine in Paris.
Her editorial work has been published in over sixty countries during her tenure at Gamma-Liason in New York, and Sipa Press in Paris. "National Geographic, Time, Life, People, Stern, Geo, Fortune, Playboy, Photo, and other magazines have printer her name next to stunning, evocative, and provacative portraits of the famous and the familiar, the downtrodden and the destitute."[1]
Some of her extended documentary series consists of a major body of work on Haiti, made over several years on numerous trips, whose subjects include studies on opium in the Golden Triangle; the Rainbow family gathering in the piney woods of East Texas; life on the Ile Saint Louis in Paris; the bulls and wild horses of the Cammargue region in France; the psychic pilgrimage of a group of young Americans to sacred Inca sites in the Andes; and the Afro-Caribs in Suriname.
Her photographs have been exhibited extensively in Europe including the Villa de Medici in Rome, the Munchner Stadtmuseum in Germany, Amerikahaus Berlin, Mannheim Kunstvairen, Gallerie Agathe Gaillard in Paris, as well as the I.C.P, and Keikrug Phtotographia in New York City.
Her work is collected by the International Center of Photography, in New York, the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris, the MOMA, and various private collections.
In 1999, Mellon collaborated with her husband John Tytell, on the book Paradise Outlaws, a study of the Beat Generation and it's lineage, in which Mellon contributed photographs, and John wrote the text. A photograph Mellon's, portraying Allen Ginsberg, was published in 2006 by Mark McMurray's Caliban Press in the book, Ginsberg's Farm. Most recently, her book My Lucky Dog, a study of her dog Hunter, has been released by Harper Collins and is currently in bookstores.
Mellon and John live with their dog Frank in Greenwich Village and near Danby, Vermont.
[edit] Published works
- Paradise Outlaws (William Morrow, 1999)
- Ginsberg's Farm (Caliban Press, 2006)
- My Lucky Dog (Harper Collins, 2008)
[edit] References
- ^ Sandi Switzer, Rutland Daily Herald, World Globetrotting Photographer Mellon Tytell Captures Kaleidoscope of Images, Sept 9, 1999
