Noted photographer probed in misuse of Buffalo State cameras

By Phil Fairbanks NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: April 09, 2010, 7:45 am
Published: April 09, 2010, 12:30 am

Leslie Krims is known across the world as a surrealist photographer with a dark, satirical style.

Unfortunately for Krims, a longtime professor at Buffalo State College, there’s a new unwanted wrinkle on his international resume: allegations that he took two school cameras worth $45,000 and used them solely for personal and private business use.

Krims, a professor for 41 years, could face disciplinary action as a result of the state investigation into his use of school equipment.

“Krims used both cameras to create photographs for sale and used a Buffalo State College printer to print these pictures,” according to a new report by State Inspector General Joseph Fisch.

The inspector general goes on to claim that “these cameras, to date, have been used exclusively for Krims’ personal purposes, and neither camera has ever been used in teaching a class at Buffalo State College or for any school-sanctioned purpose.”

Krims declined to comment Thursday when contacted by The Buffalo News.

The New York Times in 2004 described Krims as “the bad boy of photography in the late 1960s and ’70s.”

The paper also suggested that Krims was a major influence on photography during the Modernist era and cited his photo of a “screaming, legless man on a small table in a windowed alcove” and the “image of his naked mother seated at a distance on the sofa in her dimly lighted, busily decorated living room.”

The Times credited the 67-year-old Brooklyn-born artist with opening photography to “possibilities of imaginative, formal and technical invention that countless artists continue to explore today.”

In 1993, then-Buffalo News Art Critic Richard Huntington described Krims as “something of a surrealist with an absurdist bent.”

Buffalo State College officials declined to comment on the possibility of disciplinary action against Krims, although the inspector general’s report indicates the school has initiated an investigation.

In addition, school officials are reviewing the inspector general’s recommendations on how it can improve its monitoring of college-owned equipment and property.

“We are reviewing our processes,” Stanley Kardonsky, vice president for finance and management at Buffalo State, said Thursday.

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