Howard Zieff
The Optometrist (New York Daily News ad campaign)

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Artist Howard ZieffAmerican, 1927–2009

CultureAmerican

Titles

The Optometrist (New York Daily News ad campaign)

Date1953

Place depictedNew York City, New York, United States

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 14 × 19 in. (35.6 × 48.3 cm)
Sheet: 14 × 19 in. (35.6 × 48.3 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Dr. and Mrs. Malcolm L. Mazow in honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker on the occasion of her retirement

Object number2014.96

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionSome advertising photographers employed humor to make their products stand out. Howard Zieff was an icon of the New York ad world in the 1950s and 60s. He made his name with a series of ads for the New York Daily News, which presented average news consumers in everyday situations so absorbed in reading the paper that they become inattentive to their surroundings, performing gaffes that range from the amusing to the ridiculous. Their inattention is akin to that depicted in today’s viral “epic fail” Internet videos and memes mocking people’s misfortunes and blunders.
ProvenancePrivate collection, Los Angeles; [G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Beverly Hills, California, 2002]; purchased by MFAH, 2013.
Exhibition History“Made for Magazines: Iconic 20th-Century Photographs,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, February 9–May 4, 2014.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Artist's stamp on verso: photograph by / HOWARD ZIEFF

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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