[im] Photograph: Shunk-Kender

[János Sugár]

Harry Shunk, born Schunke, was a mysterious 
figure in the art world who invented a biography 
for himself and spent many of his last years 
refusing contact with the outside world. Born in 
1924 in Germany, he migrated to Paris in the 
1950s, where he and his partner, János Kender, 
became the court photographers for members of the 
avant-garde New Realist movement, including 
Klein, Christo, Claes Oldenburg and Niki de Saint 
Phalle. Their 1960 photo collage of Klein 
apparently diving from a second-storey window, 
Leap into the Void, is part of the Metropolitan 
Museum's permanent collection. But in the 1970s, 
after Kender left him, Shunk began to unravel, 
severing ties with many old friends and refusing 
work that could have helped him, Christo said in 
a phone interview. 'He became very, very lonely, 
very strange. There was a madness. He was very 
annoyed that we couldn't keep Kender together 
with him.'
http://hyperallergic.com/99460/two-photographers-emerge-from-the-shadows-with-over-400-artist-portraits/