Talk and Short Film Screening: Mary Engel, Director of Orkin/Engel Film and Photo Archive and Founder of the American Photography Archives Group (APAG)

Mary Engel, who is the Director of the Orkin/Engel Film and Photo Archive, and the Founder and President of the American Photography Archives Group (APAG),  will be at the Griffin on Monday September 9, 2019. She will share some personal stories about what it was like to be the daughter of Ruth Orkin and Morris Engel, photographers and filmmakers.  She will give a brief overview of their careers, and will discuss the beginnings of APAG and how the organization has  grown over the past 20 years!

Mary will also screen the short film she made about her mother, “Ruth Orkin: Frames of Life,” which premiered at the Sundance Festival and was selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as “Outstanding Documentary of 1996. It is narrated by Julie Harris and includes interviews with Mary Ellen Mark, Cornell Capa, Ninalee Craig, Morris Engel and Evelyne Daitz.

Join us for an inspiring and informative evening.

Mary Engel is an award winning filmmaker, the director of the Orkin/Engel Film and Photo Archive, and the founder and president of the American Photography Archives Group.

Engel has been the director of the Ruth Orkin Photo Archive since its inception in 1985. Engel is responsible for all aspects of running the archiving including sales, licensing, marketing, legal issues, and many other areas. She works with photography galleries, museums and auction houses throughout the United States and abroad. She has published four catalogs of photography.

Engel’s first film “Ruth Orkin: Frames of Life” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1996, and went on to screen at many other festivals. The film was selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as one of the “Outstanding Documentaries of 1996.” Her film “Morris Engel: The Independent” premiered on Turner Classic Movies in 2009. Engel is a contributing producer on the feature length documentary, “Ordinary Miracles: The Photo League’s New York” 2011.

She has been published in The New York Times, the American Society of Media Photographers magazine, Photo District News and Film Comment. She has lectured at Harvard University, New York University, Brooklyn Historical Society, St. Louis Art Museum, Central Park Conservancy, and has appeared at the Avon Theater, (Stamford, CT), Loews Jersey (Jersey City, NJ) Film Forum (New York, NY) and the Egyptian Theater (Park City, Utah) and others.

In 2017 American Photography Archive Group received a Focus Award from the Griffin Museum of Photography.