George Pickow

George Pickow (February 11, 1922 – December 10, 2010) was an American photographer and filmmaker who chronicled the folk and jazz music scenes in the United States, United Kingdom, and other countries. He was married to the well-known Kentucky folk musician Jean Ritchie.

Early life Pickow was born in Los Angeles but grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In the early 1940s, he was introduced to folk music when he heard Cisco Houston and Woody Guthrie jamming every night in a tiny cabin at the left-wing Camp Unity in upstate New York. Pickow studied painting at Cooper Union and made training films for the Navy in World War II.

Work In 1952, Pickow accompanied his wife Jean Ritchie on a Fulbright Scholarship to collect folk songs in Britain and Ireland. When Alan Lomax, then working out of London for the BBC, and his collaborator Peter Kennedy of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, decided to document the unique May Eve and May Day Festivals at Padstow in Cornwall, they selected Pickow to be their cameraman. The result was the 16-minute color film Oss Oss Wee Oss (1953). of performances by Clarence Ashley, Guy Carawan, Willie Dixon, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Roscoe Holcomb, Peter La Farge, Ernie Marrs, The New Lost City Ramblers, Memphis Slim, and the first known footage of a very young Doc Watson. In the audience are Maria Muldaur and Bob Dylan. Despite apocryphal tales, John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers affirms that Bob Dylan is not the male clog dancer at the beginning of the film.

In 1967, he helped film the Newport Folk Festival. He marketed his imagery through the international agency Three Lions Inc. for which he was the principal photographer, then partner. They married in 1950 and had two sons, Peter and Jon.

Death Pickow, who had been in declining health for some time, died December 10, 2010, two days after his wife Jean Ritchie's 88th birthday.