Martin J. Fumo, progressive photographer, common musician, and retired college band director, has died at 82

Martin J. Fumo, 82, of Philadelphia, progressive photographer, lifelong musician, retired band director for the School District of Philadelphia, and DIY dwelling restore knowledgeable, died Monday, July 21, of issues from Alzheimer’s illness at Wyncote Place assisted residing heart.

Born and reared in West Philadelphia, Mr. Fumo discovered the saxophone and clarinet as a boy, and went on to play sax within the North Catholic High School band and for many years in native teams and jazz trios. He started educating instrumental music and directing bands at Kensington High School in 1969, left in 1974 to pursue his different love, industrial pictures, and returned to the varsity district about 30 years later to steer center college bands till 2013.

Over 5 a long time, Mr. Fumo experimented with pictures and movie, and his distinctive photos had been printed in The Inquirer, New York Times, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. A pure innovator, he pioneered the manipulation of movie from a Polaroid SX-70 digicam to create what he known as “dreamlike or surreal” photos of actual life.

“I like to extend my photographs to go beyond what the camera has done,” Mr. Fumo said in an online profile.

He known as his pictures “Window in Wildwood,” “Backroad in Blackwood,” “Mummer,” and “Art Museum Fountains.” His celebrated 1975 photo “Master Street playground” exhibits a bare-chested younger boy standing in entrance of a brick wall at a Philadelphia playground, and it resides within the Library of Congress in Washington.

His surrealistic black-and-white pictures appeared in The Inquirer’s Sunday Magazine in 1982 about metropolis life, 1983 a couple of faculty campus rape case, and 1984 about Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations.

“I have no explanations about the meanings of my photographs, and I don’t think it’s really necessary,” he mentioned in his online profile. “What is important is that the viewer experiences something positive from them.”

He headlined exhibitions at galleries and museums in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Maryland, and Massachusetts. In 1989, his photograph known as “Four Level Parking” was one in all a number of highlighted at The Extended Image exhibition on the Pennsylvania State University gallery in Abington, and the present director known as his work “little jewels.”

He was featured within the Abington Art Center’s Photography ‘98 exhibit, and Inquirer art critic Victoria Donohue said: “Marty Fumo is a tease with his digital camera, making a mockery of our expectations of a photograph.”

Stephen Perloff, editor of the Philadelphia-based Photo Review, said Mr. Fumo had a “keen eye” and a “gregariousness and playful spirit.” He said: “Marty was an essential part of the founding of the Philadelphia photography community in the mid-1970s.”

Mr. Fumo majored in classical flute at the old Philadelphia Musical Academy after high school, earned bachelor’s levels in music and music training in 1969, and performed within the academy’s first jazz group. One of his early bands performed on American Bandstand within the Nineteen Fifties, and his Marty Fumo Trio and Midi Trio performed jazz gigs round city for years.

He met English instructor Mimi Barton on a picket line throughout a instructor’s strike in 1974, they usually married in 1979, and had a daughter, Margaret. They purchased a giant previous home in Fairmount in 1984, and Mr. Fumo, utilizing do-it-yourself movies and books, taught himself plumbing, carpentry, tile work, and electrical wiring, and refurbished the place himself.

“He was very hardworking,” his spouse mentioned. “When he was on a project, he could stay up all night.”

Martin John Fumo was born June 24, 1943. He preferred to swim, go to the films, and cling round museums as a boy.

He received a music award in highschool, and his teenage bands performed nights and weekends at native bars, weddings, and birthday events. Much later, he and the center college musicians he directed specialised in Motown music.

Mr. Fumo collected work and sculptures, was concerned about horticulture, and particularly liked roses. His mother and father had been from Italy, and he discovered Italian and visited Europe together with his spouse a number of instances.

He spent many mornings together with his daughter earlier than college when she was younger and took her usually to his studio at 915 Spring Garden St. He loved cats, his spouse mentioned, and his household was distraught when a home hearth in 2021 destroyed almost all of his pictures and their possessions.

In 1984, a portrait of Mr. Fumo and his father, Leon, was printed in The Inquirer with a narrative about Father’s Day. “He was easygoing with a good sense of humor,” his spouse mentioned. “He was a great father.”

In addition to his spouse and daughter, Mr. Fumo is survived by a sister and different kinfolk. A sister died earlier.

A personal celebration of his life was held earlier.

Donations in his identify could also be made to Play on Philly, Box 8662, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101.