Ken Ratner
American, 1953 -
Ken Ratner was born in New York City in 1953 and lived in Texas and California before returning to the city
in the mid-90s. From an early age, he began to draw, focusing on portraits, but later street life and the urban
poor would become his primary subject matter in both his drawing and photography. He took evening sketch
classes at the Art Students League* in New York City in the 1980s, and would regularly study artwork and
photography in museums, galleries, and books.
Ratner is a self-taught photographer whose principal field of interest is the urban city, particularly its derelict
aspects that one often shuns, ignores, fails to notice or avoids. Yet in these out-of-the-way places, he
discovers a rich humanity in keeping with his long-time interest in the work of the Ashcan School* artists
from the turn of the last century.
Like many of those artists (John Sloan, Jerome Myers), Ratner is similarly inspired to go onto the streets to
seek out an inherent beauty in commonplace subjects. Ratner also draws inspiration from the work of
photographers Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, Walter Rosenblum, Helen Levitt, and Manuel
Alvarez Bravo.
Of his work, Ratner said: "In photographing street scenes, black and white is my medium of choice. The
medium allows for clearly defined and dramatic effects and is well-suited for emphasizing light and shadow.
Balance is a critical aspect. One of the first things I do is to look at the four corners in the viewfinder. It is
vital to me that a photograph be properly balanced. I am keenly interested in documenting the lives of the
less fortunate and their environment. I find that these residents tend to reveal themselves in a more natural
way than those living in affluent sections. I constantly strive to create photographs that are meaningful and
evocative. The modern city is also of great interest to me. Above all, it is my hope that people viewing my
photographs will find them interesting and humanistic. I have tried to express this in my work."
In 2009, Ratner was selected to exhibit his photographs with 6 other photographers at the Cahoon Museum
of American Art. He showed several of his street scenes of New York, Los Angeles and Tijuana. In 2015,
the Housatonic Museum of Art included one of Ratner's photographs in the exhibit "50 Objects/50 Years:
Highlights from the Collection." In 2019, Ratner's photograph "Doormen Gesturing" won the Vice
President's Award at the Salmagundi Club's 2019 Open Photography Exhibition, Jan. 7 • 24, 2019.
Ratner's photographs can be found in the permanent collections of 44 museums including the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, the New York Historical Society (25 photos), Bibliotheque Nationale de France (3 photos), Musee Juif de Belgique, Musee de la Photographie, Belgium (2 photos), Hunter Museum of American Art, New Britain Museum of American Art (6 photos), Rockwell Museum (10 photos), Columbus Museum of Art, El Paso Museum of Art, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Museum of Chinese in America, Museum of the Big Bend, Museum of the Southwest, Haifa Museum of Art (6 photos), Lithuanian Art Museum, and Tokyo Photographic Art Museum(4 photos).
Ratner enjoys spontaneity in drawing, as well as portraiture. The work of the Old Masters, in particular,
Rembrandt has been a source of inspiration to him. The Delaware Art Museum has in its permanent
collection a portrait drawing that Ratner did of Helen Farr Sloan and one of his photographs.
Recently, the work of Western artists Gary Ernest Smith, Tony Eubanks, Logan Hagege, and Phil Epp, who,
like the Ashcan artists before them, are also drawn to humanity, have become an additional source of
inspiration to him. Of primary importance, humanity in art, in whatever form it takes, remains Ratner's
primary interest.
