Portraits
1972-2010
Sister Gertrude Morgan
New Orleans, Louisiana
1974
Sister Gertrude Morgan (April 7, 1900 – July 8, 1980) was a self-taught African-American artist, musician, poet and preacher. Born in LaFayette, Alabama, she relocated to New Orleans in 1939, where she lived and worked until her death in 1980. Sister Morgan achieved critical acclaim during her lifetime for her folk art paintings. Her work has been included in many groundbreaking exhibitions of visionary and folk art from the 1970s onwards.
Hugo Velazquez & Aurora Suarez
Cuernavaca, Morelos
2010
Hugo Velazquez and Aurora Suarez were two of the first people Sylvia de Swaan met when she moved to mexico in 1961, and have remained lifelong friends. This Photo was taken on a return trip in 2010 while celebrating Leo de Swaan’s 70th birthday.
Paula
Atlanta, Georgia
1975
Paula was a mother, grandmother, traveler, writer, and sister of Sylvia de Swaan
Pat O’Connor
Utica, New York
1974
Pat O’Connor was a lifelong seeker, yoga practitioner, and friend.
Steven Pippin
Utica, New York
1992
Steven Pippin (born 1960 at Redhill, Surrey) is an English artist. Pippin works with converted or improvised photographic equipment and kinetic sculptures. This portrait was taken while in residence at Sculpture Space.
Leonora Carrington
New Orleans, Louisiana
1975
Mary Leonora Carrington (6 April 1917 – 25 May 2011) was a British-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City and was one of the last surviving participants in the surrealist movement of the 1930s. Carrington was also a founding member of the women's liberation movement in Mexico during the 1970s. This portrait was taken in New Orleans, on a train heading back to Mexico City.
Paul & Linda McCartney
New Orleans, Louisiana
1975
Paul and Linda McCartney photographed in New Orleans at the launch of the “Venus & Mars” album.
Jeremy Steig & Daina
Manhattan
1996
Jeremy Steig (September 23, 1942 – April 13, 2016) was an acclaimed American jazz flutist. His portrait was taken at Sylvia de Swaans 30th class reunion of the High School of Music & Art.
Drago Yancar
Ljubljana, Slovenia
1989
Drago Yancar is the author of The Dark Side of the Moon: A short history of the totalitarianism in Slovenia, 1945-1990-
“Everything that took place in the forty-five years of communist dictatorship must be clearly imprinted into the Slovenian awareness, just like the memory, of the Holocaust. lest a nation not wanting to know its past be condemned to relive it again.”
Drago Yancar’s portrait was taken during a two month stay in Ljubljana, in which de Swaan was questioning the change in identity from having been yugoslavian to becoming Slovenian.
Gheorghe Marinca
Timișoara, Romania
1994
Gheorghe Marinca was Sylvia de Swaan’s host in her 1994 trip to romania. This portrait was taken while Gheorghe was describing the hardships during the communist rule.
Rene Rusjan, with her younger daughter.
Ljubljana, Slovenia
1989
Rene Rusjan (born 1962 at Ljubljana, Slovenia) is a visual artist and cofounder of the Famul Stuart School of Applied Arts, Ljubljana.
Rene Rusjan’s portrait was taken during a two month stay in Ljubljana, in which de Swaan was questioning the change in identity from having been yugoslavian to becoming Slovenian.
Marina Abramovic
Ljubljana, Slovenia
1989
Marina Abramović (Serbian Cyrillic: Марина Абрамовић, born November 30, 1946) is a Serbian conceptual and performance artist. Her work explores body art, endurance art, feminist art, the relationship between the performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Being active for over four decades, Abramović refers to herself as the "grandmother of performance art". She pioneered a new notion of identity by bringing in the participation of observers, focusing on "confronting pain, blood, and physical limits of the body". In 2007, she founded the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), a non-profit foundation for performance art.
Leo de Swaan
Amsterdam, Netherlands
2002
Leo de Swaan, Mexican rancher, Huapango singer, brother in law to Sylvia de Swaan.
Rodrigo Moya
Cuernavaca, Morelos
2010
Rodrigo Moya (born April 10, 1934) is a Mexican photojournalist, writer and publisher who is best known for his photographic work from 1955 to 1968. Moya began his photojournalism career after apprenticing with Colombian photojournalist Guillermo Angulo, taking over Angulo's job when he went to Italy to study cinema. For the next thirteen years, Moya worked for various news magazines covering stories in Mexico and Latin America, especially social and political upheavals such as guerrilla fighters in Venezuela and Guatemala. He also went in 1964 to Cuba to document the revolution there, and took a series of portraits of Che Guevara, including El Ché melancólico (Melancholy Che) one of two iconic images of Guevara. In 1968, Moya decided he could no longer make a living in photography and worked until the end of the decade as a magazine publisher and short story writer, leaving a large archived packed away. In the very late 1990s, a long illness forced him to move to open and reevaluate this archive and has since worked to promote these images.
Rodrigo Moya was Sylvia de Swaan’s neighbor, friend, and fellow photo instructor in 1968
Marcia Menuez
Utica, New York
2008
Marcia Menuez was a friend.