Photo Corners headlinesarchivemikepasini.com
A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Enhancing the enjoyment of taking pictures with news that matters, features that entertain and images that delight. Published frequently.
Remembering Flo Fox
10 March 2025
Flo Fox, who captured the "ironic reality" of New York City in 180,000 photos, died on March 2 from complications from pneumonia in her apartment in Manhattan. She was 79.
Florence Blossom Fox was born in Miami Beach, one of four children. Her father had moved the family to Florida from New York City to open a honey factory. When she was 2, he died and her mother took the family to Woodside, Queens. Twelve years later, her mother died, and Fox went to live with an aunt and uncle on Long Island, where she attended General Douglas MacArthur High School.
She was born blind in one eye but at 13 she was inspired by a Robert Frank street photo and asked her mother for a camera. She was obliged to wait until she finished high school. By then she was designing clothing for TV and the stage.
Only after 13 more years from when the idea first occurred to her did she acquire a camera. By then, she had been married at 18, given birth at the same age and been divorced.
So at age 26, she bought a Minolta with her first paycheck from a new design job, which she had to quit as multiple sclerosis, diagnosed when she was 30, made it hard for her to use her hands. Eventually the disease would rob her of her eyesight in her good eye and confine her to a wheelchair.
But that didn't stop her from photographing the streets of New York, publishing a book, contributing to a number of publications and exhibitingher work at the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian Institution and galleries around the world.
"I always felt I had one great advantage being born blind in one eye and never having to close that eye while taking a picture," she once said of her disabilities. "I also didn't have to convert a three-dimensional view to a flat plain, since that was the way I automatically saw. All I had to do was frame the image perfectly."
She was "totally disabled from the neck down since 1999," she said. But an autofocus camera helped. She also used a rubber bulb in her mouth to fire the shutter. And she avoided shooting when the sun was high and the glare on the streets too strong for her.
At 5'4" she was "a tough cookie," as she put it, never going anywhere without her camera. "You know my greatest loss when I became disabled? I can't even give people the finger anymore," she said.
She is survived by her son Ron Ridinger. You can see more of her work on her Web site.