Zine
Steven Cuffie: Karen 1979
$ 20.00
Published by New York Life Gallery, 2024.
Edition of 300
28 pages
7 x 10 in
© The Estate of Steven Cuffie
Shot over the course of a year in Baltimore, the previously unpublished 26 black and white portraits that make up the zine capture Karen in a variety of states: in bed, on the street, dressing up, undressing. What unites these images is Steven Cuffie’s intimate and playful depiction of Karen and the glimpses of her personality. Laid out in spreads that imply narrativity and seriality, the sequence of images suggests a character sketch of a subject whose biographical information is otherwise unknown. This zine is edited by the photographer’s youngest, Marcus Cuffie, who notes that the nature of Steven and Karen's relationship, romantic or artistic, is ambiguous, and invites the viewer to imagine the gaps in the archive of their father’s work.
Steven Cuffie (1949–2014) was born in North Carolina and moved to Baltimore with his family as a child. He began taking photos as a teenager, and after studying photography for three years at the University of Maryland, he dropped out to pursue a career in the field. After leaving college, Cuffie connected with a small group of Baltimore-based photographers, showing his work in a few exhibitions around the city and doing work on commission. For the majority of his life, he worked as a photographer for the City of Baltimore, taking pictures of city events, crime scenes, water main breaks – everything mundane and extraordinary required for public record. Cuffie’s day job meant most of his hours were spent taking photos and his practice extended to his time at home, where he built a darkroom in his basement and turned the laundry room into his studio. Here, he had all the necessary equipment and chemicals to develop and print his own work. By the time Cuffie’s oldest daughter Morgan was born in 1982, he had stopped showing his work publicly, though he continued taking pictures, processing film, and making prints throughout his life. In 2022, New York Life Gallery held a solo show of Cuffie's work, his first exhibition since the 1980s and outside of Baltimore.