Leonard Nones: Essential Workers features photographer Leonard Nones’s portraits of staff on RiverSpring Living’s Riverdale campus. The series of eighteen archival inkjet prints are tributes to the strength, resilience, and compassion of all the people who work with the Hebrew Home’s residents. It was inspired by the influential Vogue photographer Irving Penn’s Small Trades (1950–51). Like Penn, who invited tradesmen and women into his studio and photographed them against a simple cloth backdrop, Nones welcomed staff into the makeshift studio he set up in the dining room of RiverWalk, an independent living community he lives in that is part of RiverSpring Living in Riverdale.

Penn’s subjects brought with them “the tools of their trades” just as RiverSpring Living’s staff members have. Penn’s pastry chefs wear their white aprons and hold their rolling pins; his fireman carries a hose. Among a few examples of Nones’s subjects: A Hebrew Home registered nurse wears scrubs, with her I.D. badge prominently displayed and a stethoscope draped around her neck; a resident engagement coordinator holds a legal pad, her glasses, and a ring of keys, while wearing her phone on a chain like a cross-body purse; an assistant engineer is seated next to one of the oxygen tanks he is charged with safely loading and unloading from weekly deliveries; a lawyer displays an award recognizing an early achievement before she began the lifesaving work she does as part of the team at RiverSpring Living’s Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Center for Elder Justice; occupational and physical therapists in their uniforms carry the training balls they use to help patients and residents regain and maintain their strength and physical abilities; several Therapeutic Arts and Enrichment Program staff pose with puppies and a dog—the “tools” of the pet therapy program. 

The portraits reflect the originality of Nones’s eye combined with compositional and conceptual elements from Penn’s series. All the images are narrow and vertical, and the subjects photographed from a somewhat low vantage point, which adds to their sculptural monumentality. They look out at the camera with direct and arresting gazes and are animated, active, often posed with their weight resting on one leg, their knee bent. Their readiness and confidence are marks of the professionalism, dedication, and skill they bring to their positions.

Nones joins the generations of esteemed artists and photographers interested in producing pictures of working people that recognize them and the work they do. Jeff L. Rosenheim, the curator in charge of photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has observed of Penn’s Small Trades portraits: “Collectively, they reveal how a true master who knew what he wanted from a portrait could use a neutral space, careful side lighting, and exquisite photographic materials to celebrate and honor the daily lives of working men and women.” RiverSpring Living’s collaboration with Nones similarly honors all of its employees for their commitment to the older adults they serve.

All images © Leonard Nones 2024.