Remembering George Pickow

This year’s Family Folk Week is dedicated to the memory of photographer and filmmaker George Pickow, who passed away December 10, 2010 at the age of 88. George and his wife, folk singer Jean Ritchie, have been an important part of Family Folk Week since its inception.

Originally trained as a painter, George photographed artists and musicians including folk singers like Josh White, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and, of course, Jean Ritchie, as well as jazz and pop artists like Little Richard, Dizzy Gillespie, Tony Bennett, Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong and Lena Horne. His photos graced the covers of many albums.

Some of his most striking photographs, in stark black and white, depict an array of artisans and ordinary people around the world plying their trades. You can see a gallery of some of George's photos of Hindman Settlement in the 1950s that Jon Pickow posted recently. George and Jean spent more than a year in Britain and Ireland in 1952-53 collecting original folk songs and documenting folk culture.

George produced films about the Newport folk festival and the American folk revival. His “Oss Oss Wee Oss,” which documented a Cornish folk custom, remains an important ethnographic record. Excerpts were shown recently on a BBC television documentary Still Folk Dancing After All These Years. George also started a small-scale dulcimer making business that supplied the burgeoning folk market and ran Greenhays Recordings.

Jean and their sons, Jon and Peter, survive George.