RIVKA SHIFMAN KATVAN
Harriet Whelchel is a former Senior Editor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art & Abrams Books.
Rivka Shifman Katvan’s studied photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she earned a BFA with honors and met her photographer husband, Moshe. Together, they collaborate on all people shoots and support one another in their separate artistic endeavors.
Rivka’s photographs have been widely celebrated throughout New York’s theatrical and artistic communities. She was for many years the only fine-art photographer allowed to shoot backstage on Broadway and during the Tony Awards. Her work is regularly exhibited in New York at Gallery 138 and has also been shown at the International Center of Photography, the Museum of the City of New York, and the Museum of Television and Radio. She has been featured in numerous publications and online blogs, including Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, The Guardian Weekend Magazine, kodak.com, Lancia Trend Visions, Blind Magazine.
I first encountered Rivka’s work when I edited her book of photographs titled Backstage: Broadway Behind the Curtain (Abrams, 2001). I immediately fell in love with the images, which provide a glimpse into the theatrical world of backstage on (and off) Broadway, where countless actors transform themselves into other beings, not only with costumes and makeup but also by an emotional process that is virtually impossible to describe in words. Yet by becoming, as Rivka puts it, “like a fly on the wall,” she managed to capture the quiet moments of that transformation as well as lively, often humorous scenes of backstage action before, during, and after the performances: Elizabeth Taylor prepares for her entrance as Regina in The Little Foxes; Alan Cumming has a quiet smoke in the garden he created outside his Cabaret dressing room; Gregory Hines greets family and friends after a performance of Coming Uptown; two chorus members from Barnum practice their juggling routine in an alleyway outside the theater. Natasha Richardson, Liam Neeson, Angela Lansbury, Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, and Hugh Jackman are just a few of the many actors, both famous and not, caught by her lens.
Rivka began taking backstage photographs in 1978 as her degree thesis for the School for Visual Arts, and she continues to exhibit and publish them widely. Yet, although she still photographs backstage occasionally, she has not let these well-known images define her narrowly as an artist. She carries her camera with her everywhere, capturing vignettes and moments that speak to her. Such vignettes include haunting views of Brooklyn Bridge in the fog, scenes of daily life in a tiny Catskills village and a working-class boxing gym, and inmates in New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility rehearsing a prison production of Oedipus Rex. My favorites among her photographs include the series Reflections, moody images of store mannequins reflected in the windows they inhabit. The result is a surrealist quality reminiscent of Man Ray or René Magritte. Despite the amazing effects she achieves in these works, Rivka does not alter them digitally; rather, she uses only traditional photographic techniques such as dodging and burning. In the Coney Island series, she follows two men dressed as from another era as they wander among other, very contemporary, visitors to the famous amusement park, creating a lyrical sense of unreality. In the most recent series, Abstracts, seemingly random chips of paint are greatly magnified to create colorful “found” abstractions.
As Katvan explains her artistic process, “My heart and my eyes are interchangeable. I refuse to be boxed in by subject matter when I am surrounded by such a variety of sites and internal ideas. I must respond to what speaks to me at any given moment in my life.” I look forward to seeing what comes next.
EDUCATION:
1979 School of Visual Arts, New York, NY. BFA with Honors.
AWARDS
2008 – International Photography Awards – First Place – category – Bridges.
2008 – B&W Special Issue Magazine – two awards – Bronze and Merit (23rd st Project).
2004 – International Photography awards – second place – category – life style.
GALLERY AND MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS:
2019 Group show Soho Photo Gallery StoneWall/50
2019 Solo Exhibition Cus D’amatos Boxing Gym,. Progressif gallery, Catskill NY
2018 Bill Cunningham photo at the NYC Historical Museum exhibit (now in the permanent collection)
2017 Group show “The Lady Vanishes” at Soho Photo Gallery
2013 Group show “4th of July-Small Town Parade” at SPAF Saugerties Performing Arts Factory.
2012 Solo Exhibition “Backstage on Broadway”, Soho Photo Gallery (guest photographer)
2011 Solo Exhibition – “Double Focus: Reflections and Abstractions”, Gallery One Eleven, Kingston, NY.
2010 Solo Exhibition “Reflections”, Gallery 138, NYC
2008 Solo Exhibition “Catskill: An American Village” & “Cus D’amatos Boxing Gym”, Union Mills Gallery, Catskill, NY
2007 Solo Exhibition, “Coney Island Baby”, Gallery 138, NYC
2007 Special Exhibition for Eastman Kodak, “Selections from Backstage on Broadway”, Dolby screening room.
2006 Solo Exhibition, “Bare Exposures: Behind the Scenes on Broadway”, Gallery 138, NYC
2005 “RAPSIDA”, Exhibition and Silent Auction Benefiting AIDS Education in Rwanda, Gallery 138, NYC Solo Exhibition, Dodger’s Stages, NYC
Solo Exhibition, “Streetcar Named Desire”, Studio 54, NYC
2003 Solo Exhibition, “Transformations: Backstage on Broadway”, Gallery 138, NYC
2000 Solo Exhibition, Celebrating Sondheim, The Museum of Television and Radio, NYC
1999 Apex Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA
1993 “100 Years of Broadway: a Photographic View”, International Center of Photography, NYC
1982 Solo Exhibition, An Actor’s Life, The Museum of the City of New York Theater Museum, NYC Solo Exhibition, The Art Directors Club, NYC
1979 School of Visual Arts Tribeca Gallery, NYC
1978 School of Visual Arts 21st Street Gallery, NYC
PUBLICATIONS:
2019 Almanac Weekly – “Photographs of Cus D’Amato’s Boxing Gym”
2016 “A Mural Fades From a City Canvas” By John Leland, The New York Times
2008 Broadway Bares: Backstage Pass, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
2007 Oedipus in Sing Sing Prison, American Theatre Magazine
2003 Sondheim on Music, Cover Photo, by Mark Eden Horowitz, Scarecrow Press
2001 The Guardian Weekend Magazine – Smoke and Mirrors – Simon Callow
2001 Backstage: Broadway Behind the Curtain, Photographs by Rivka Shifman Katvan, Harry Abrams Pub.
2000 Hedwig and the Angry Inch, text by John Cameron Mitchell, Overlook Press
1999 “A Broadway Love Story,” CD Booklet, Christiane Noll
“Duets,” CD Booklet, Emily Skiner and Alice Ripley
“Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” CD Booklet, Entire Cast
Cabaret, Introduction by Linda Sunshine, New Marketplace Press
1987 Theater in America, Mary C. Henderson, Harry Abrams Publisher
1983 Scene Design, Stage Lighting, Sound, Costume & Makeup, Willard F. Bellman, Harper & Row Sondheim, Gottfried, Harry Abrams Publisher Photo Portfolio, School of Visual Arts Publication
1978 Behold the Great Image, Sharon Strassfeld & Arthur Kurzweil, The Jewish Publication of America.
PARTIAL LISTING OF SHOWS PHOTOGRAPHED:
Jelly’s Last Jam starring Gregory Hines, Barnum starring Jim Dale and Glenn Close, A Taste of Honey starring Amanda Plummer, Merrily We Roll Along rehearsal with Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim, The Little Foxes starring Elizabeth Taylor, The Diary of Ann Frank, Peter Pan starring Sandy Duncan, Sweeney Todd starring Angela Lansbury, Judas Kiss starring Liam Neeson, Cabaret starring Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson, Hedwig and the Angry Inch starring John Cameron Mitchell, Putting it Together starring Carol Burnett and The Donkey Show.
PARTIAL LISTING OF MAGAZINE PUBLICATIONS:
News Paper
NYT – 7/ 2016 – ALBUM – A Mural Fades from a City Canvas – by John Leland
PDN 5/2016 – Rivka Katvan Documents NYC Vanishing Street Art
Wochenende – German News Paper July 29/30 2006 (weekend)
New York Post – 6/5/2003
Los Angeles Times – Westside – 4/11/1999
Gay City News – June 2003
Daily Freeman-Life-Newspaper – 5/25/2001
Chicago Tribune-Arts-Sunday – 6/3/2001
Times Union – Travel & Books 6/10/2001
New York Times
Magazines
The Guardian Weekend Magazine – Simon Callow-5/12/01
Film Maker Magazine Cover – Spring 2001
Out Magazine – June 2001
Your Life Magazine – June 11, 200
Online blog
7/15/2016 – NYT A Fading Mural. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/nyregion/the-lady-vanishes.htm
I/10/2021 Blind Magazine – exploring-the-magical-world-of-broadways-backstage www.blind-magazine.com/stories/exploring-the-magical-world-of-broadways-backstage/
4/12/21 Blind Magazine – When-broadway-does-its-striptease-for-a-good-cause www.blind-magazine.com/stories/when-broadway-does-its-striptease-for-a-good-cause/
5/19/2021 Blind Magazine – Timeless New-York. www.blind-magazine.com/stories/rivka-katvan-timeless-new-york/
Art Un Embassies – US Department of State www.art.state.gov/personnel/rivka_katvan/
2009 Wise Elephant – Making it Happen – Rivka Katvan Editorial Photographer
http://www.wiseelephant.com/blog/2009/02/17/rivka-katvan-editorial-photographer/
2007 The Morning News – Coney Island Baby
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/galleries/coney_island_baby/