William Gale Gedney was an American documentary and street photographer, born in Greenville NY in 1932 and died in 1989. He is most remembered for his series of rural Kentucky, and series on India, San Francisco and New York shot in 1960s and 1970s. He studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. During his lifetime, Gedney received several fellowships and grants, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship for photography in India from 1969 to 1971, a New York State Creative Artists Public Service Program (C.A.P.S.) grant from 1972 to 1973; and a National Endowment for the Arts grant from 1975 to 1976. In a career spanning late 1950s to mid-1980s, he created a large body of work, including series documenting local communities during his travels to India, San Francisco, Brooklyn and New York shot in 1960s and 1970s. He is also noted for night photography. Gedney's work has been exhibited in numerous group shows, including Museum of Modern Art shows, Photography Current Report in 1968, Ben Schultz Memorial Collection in 1969, and Recent Acquisitions in 1971; as well as Vision and Expression, George Eastman House, and Rochester Institute of Technology, in 1972. However, he remained a recluse, had only one solo exhibition during his lifetime. Despite receiving appreciation from noted photographers of the time, he remained of most under-appreciated artist of the generation. William Gedney died of AIDS in 1989, aged 56, in New York City . A extensive collection of his work, including contact sheets, sketchbooks, notebooks, and photographs and now housed at the Duke University in North Carolina.
