The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, located in the heart of downtown Storrs, Conn., hosted famed photographer and legendary puppeteer Richard Termine for a puppet forum discussion this past Thursday, April 2.
Termine, a Connecticut native, graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Connecticut’s well-known and highly regarded Puppetry Art program in 1978. His art is currently on display at the Ballard Institute in an exhibition titled “American Puppet Theatre Today: The Photography of Richard Termine,” which is running from Jan. 31 to May 11. His work has appeared in several well-known and revered publications, including USA Today, the Washington Post, Time Magazine, Newsweek and other publications around the world.
Termine’s career began in 1980 as a puppet designer and builder for a variety of puppet productions at Sesame Workshop under the supervision of Caroly Wilcox. He’s also photographed several renowned Broadway productions, including “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Chicago,” “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Sesame Street Magazine,” and remains one of the few art photographers in New York City specializing in performing arts.
His film work includes “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” “A Muppet Family Christmas” and “Fraggle Rock.” For his work on Sesame Street, Termine received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design in 1987. Termine has been the leading performing arts photographer for the New York Times and the in-house photographer for Sesame Street since 1988. He also serves on the board of the Jim Henson Foundation as the organization’s vice president.
Throughout the event, Termine showed several of his notable photographs throughout his career. This included extensive behind-the-scenes work he did during his time at Sesame Workshop, as well as other projects he has done. Termine’s work has a dramatic range, with many of his photos being funny, scary, sad and surprising. He went into detail and explained how he was able to make the subjects come to life in his work in each and every one of his photographs. Additionally, Termine shared powerful insights on the strong connection between photography and puppetry, and how these two art forms can be combined to create stunning still images which evoke the powerful movement potential of the material world in performance.
Termine has continued to document the world of puppetry throughout his career, including compiling portfolios on how the puppetry industry was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although Termine has over 30 years of experience in the field, in a February article with UConn Today, he says he still marvels at others in the field. “I’m standing on their shoulders in terms of my art form, and I’m the interpreter of what’s in front of me,” Termine said. “What I love about this is I’m transformed when I’m working…When I’m in the moment, it’s exhilarating.”
Termine ended the discussion by remarking on his nostalgia for being back at his alma mater again and expressed his desire for the connection between photography and puppetry to remain strong in the coming decades.