Helen Gee (curator)
[1] After finding work as a photo restorer in the late 1940s,[4] Gee taught herself specialist transparency retouching for commercial and advertising photographers and was able to establish herself in a good apartment and to send Li-lan to private school.
[1] Helen Gee bought a Rolleiflex at the suggestion of client Paul Radkai,[8] and enrolled in photography classes with Alexey Brodovitch, then Lisette Model and finally Sid Grossman.
[8] With initial assistance of her sister Ella and brother in-law,[citation needed] she took a ten-year lease at a very low $225 a month on a building on Seventh Avenue South and Barrow Street.
[2] The café and gallery was a popular meeting place for commercial, press, freelance, magazine and street photographers of the era, not only the exhibitors, but also other big names of the period; Diane Arbus,[13] Philippe Halsman, Cornell Capa, Weegee (whom Gee banned),[14][4] Lew Parrella, Morris Jaffe, Jerry Danzig, David Heath, Suzy Harris, Lee Friedlander, Sid Kaplan, John Cohen, Morris Engel, Walt Silver, Harold Feinstein, Paul Seligman, Martin Dain, Leo Stashin, Norman Rothschild, and Victor Obsatz.
During the showing of The Family of Man at MoMA (1955), several who were included congregated at Limelight; Arthur Lavine, May Mirin, Hella Hammid, Simpson Kalisher, Ray Jacobs, Ruth Orkin, and Ed Wallowitch.
Covering mostly her creation and running of Limelight Gallery, the book provides contemporary insights—and gossip—about the society of Greenwich Village of the period, into the lives and personalities of a number of important photographers including Lisette Model and Robert Frank, notes the effect of McCarthyism on artists' output,[23] and provides a balanced appraisal of Edward Steichen's The Family of Man which launched at the Museum of Modern Art the year following Limelight's opening, and increased attention to the medium.
In 1983, Gee was invited by Michael Spano, director of the Midtown Y Photography Gallery, onto its newly formed board of advisors made up of significant members of the photographic community, including Aaron Siskind, Arthur Leipzig, Larry Fink, and Jeffrey Hoone.
