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Photo League
The Photo League was a cooperative of photographers in New York who banded together around a range of common social and creative causes. Founded in 1936, the League included some of the most noted American photographers of the mid-20th century among its members. It ceased operations in 1951 following its placement in 1947 on the U.S. Department of Justice blacklist with accusations that it was a communist, anti-American organization. Origins The League's origins traced back to a project of the Workers International Relief (WIR), a Communist association based in Berlin. In 1930, the WIR established the Workers Camera League in New York City, which soon came to be known as the Film and Photo League. Its goals were to “struggle against and expose reactionary film; to produce documentary films reflecting the lives and struggles of the American workers; and to spread and popularize the great artistic and revolutionary Soviet productions”. Ethos In 1934, the still photographe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blacklist
Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, they are seen by a government or other organization as being one of a number of people who cannot be trusted or who is considered to have done something wrong. As a verb, blacklist can mean to put an individual or entity on such a list. Origins of the term The English dramatist Philip Massinger used the phrase "black list" in his 1639 tragedy ''The Unnatural Combat''. After the restoration of the English monarchy brought Charles II of England to the throne in 1660, a list of regicides named those to be punished for the execution of his father. The state papers of Charles II say "If any innocent soul be found in this black list, let him not be offended at me, but consider whether some mistaken principle or interest may not have misle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dan Weiner
Dan Weiner (1919–1959) was an American photojournalist, working largely for '' Fortune'' magazine. Weiner specialized in photographs of America at work. Life and work He was born in New York City. He studied painting at the Art Students League and the Pratt Institute, and eventually turned to photography, becoming a member of the Photo League. Weiner served in the Army Air Forces during World War II, and became a professional photojournalist after the war, working largely for '' Fortune'' magazine. He made street photographs of mid-20th-century New York City. He died in a plane crash in Kentucky, aged 39. The plane, piloted by the subject of one of his stories, collided with the side of a mountain during a freak snowstorm. He was married to Sandra Weiner, who he met through the Photo League as her teacher. Publications * Capa, Cornell, ed. (1968). ''The Concerned Photographer.'' New York: Grossman. With photographs by Weiner, Werner Bischof, André Kertész, Robert Capa, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Frank
Robert Frank (November 9, 1924 – September 9, 2019) was a Swiss photographer and documentary filmmaker, who became an American binational. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled ''The Americans'', earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of American society. Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in ''The Guardian'' in 2014, said ''The Americans'' "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. nbsp;... it remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century." Frank later expanded into film and video and experimented with manipulating photographs and photomontage. Background and early photography career Frank was born in Zürich, Switzerland, the son of Rosa (Zucker) and Hermann Frank. His family was Jewish. Robert states in Gerald Fox's 2004 documentary ''Leaving Home, Coming Home'' that his mother, Rosa (other sources state her name as Regina), had a Swiss passpo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weegee
Arthur (Usher) Fellig (June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968), known by his pseudonym Weegee, was a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography in New York City. Weegee worked in Manhattan's Lower East Side as a press photographer during the 1930s and 1940s and developed his signature style by following the city's emergency services and documenting their activity. Much of his work depicted unflinchingly realistic scenes of urban life, crime, injury and death. Weegee published photographic books and also worked in cinema, initially making his own short films and later collaborating with film directors such as Jack Donohue and Stanley Kubrick. Weegee was born Ascher (later modified to Usher) Fellig in Złoczów (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), near Lemberg in Austrian Galicia. His given name was changed to Arthur after he emigrated with his family to New York in 1909. The father of the family, Bernard Fellig, emigrated in 1908, followed in 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004) was an American fashion and portrait photographer. He worked for ''Harper's Bazaar'', ''Vogue'' and ''Elle'' specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and dance. An obituary published in ''The New York Times'' said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century"."Richard Avedon, the Eye of Fashion, Dies at 81" Andy Grundberg, '''', October 1, 2004. Early life and education Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish family. His father, Jacob Israel ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nancy Newhall
Nancy Wynne Newhall (May 9, 1908 – July 7, 1974) was an American photography critic. She is best known for writing the text to accompany photographs by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, but was also a widely published writer on photography, conservation, and American culture. Biography Newhall was born Nancy Wynne in Lynn, Massachusetts, and attended Smith College in that state. She married Beaumont Newhall, the curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and substituted for him in that role during his military service in World War II. During the 1940s she wrote essays on popular art and culture for small magazines and journals, in which she called for a society more attuned to art, and particularly to visual art. Newhall was always more interested in a popular audience than an academic one; in a 1940 essay, she explores the possibilities of the new medium of television for popularizing the visual arts, suggesting techniques for teaching art and photogra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beaumont Newhall
Beaumont Newhall (June 22, 1908 – February 26, 1993) was an American curator, art historian, writer, photographer, and the second director of the George Eastman Museum. His book ''The History of Photography'' remains one of the most significant accounts in the field and has become a classic photographic history textbook. Newhall was the recipient of numerous awards and accolades for his accomplishments in the study of photo history. Childhood and education Beaumont Newhall was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, United States, on June 22, 1908. He was the son of Herbert W. Newhall and Alice Lillia Davis. Some of his earliest childhood memories revolved around photography. He recalled watching his mother in her darkroom as she developed her own glass plate images as well as dipping his fingers into the chemical trays to see what they tasted like. Although Newhall wanted to study film and photography in college, the subjects were not being taught as separate disciplines when he enro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Rothstein
Arthur Rothstein (July 17, 1915 – November 11, 1985) was an American photographer. Rothstein is recognized as one of America's premier photojournalists. During a career that spanned five decades, he provoked, entertained and informed the American people. His photographs ranged from a hometown baseball game to the drama of war, from struggling rural farmers to US Presidents. Life and career The son of Jewish immigrants, Rothstein was born in Manhattan, New York City, and he grew up in the Bronx. He was a 1935 graduate of Columbia University, where he was a founder of the University Camera Club and photography editor of ''The Columbian'', the undergraduate yearbook. He was a classmate of abstract painter Ad Reinhardt. Following his graduation from Columbia during the Great Depression, Rothstein was invited to Washington DC by one of his professors at Columbia, Roy Stryker. Rothstein had been Stryker's student at Columbia University in the early 1930s. In 1935, as a college senior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helen Levitt
Helen Levitt (August 31, 1913 – March 29, 2009) was an American photographer and cinematographer. She was particularly noted for her street photography around New York City. David Levi Strauss described her as "the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time." A retrospective exhibition of Levitt's work, ''In the Street'', is showing at The Photographers' Gallery in London from October 2021 to February 2022. Early life and education Levitt was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of May (Kane), and Sam Levitt. Her father and maternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants. She went to New Utrecht High School but dropped out in 1931. Work in photography She began taking photography when she was eighteen and in 1931 she learned how to develop photos in the darkroom when she began working for J. Florian Mitchell, a commercial portrait photographer in the Bronx. She also attended many classes and events hosted by the Manhattan Film and Phot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White (; June 14, 1904 – August 27, 1971), an American photographer and documentary photographer, became arguably best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry under the Soviets' five-year plan, as the first American female war photojournalist, and for taking the photograph (of the construction of Fort Peck Dam) that became the cover of the first issue of ''Life'' magazine. She died of Parkinson's disease at age 67, about eighteen years after developing symptoms. Early life Margaret Bourke-White, born Margaret White in the Bronx, New York, was the daughter of Joseph White, a non-practicing Jew whose father came from Poland, and Minnie Bourke, who was of Irish Catholic descent. She grew up near Bound Brook, New Jersey (the Joseph and Minnie White House in Middlesex), and graduated from Plainfield High School in Union County. From her naturalist father, an engineer and inventor, she claimed to have learned pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lisette Model
Lisette Model (born Elise Amelie Felicie Stern; November 10, 1901 – March 30, 1983) was an Austrian-born American photographer primarily known for the frank humanism of her street photography. A prolific photographer in the 1940s and a member of the New-York cooperative Photo League, she was published in ''PM's Weekly'', ''Harper's Bazaar'', and ''US Camera'' before taking up teaching in 1949 through the intermediary of Ansel Adams. She continued to photograph and taught at the New School for Social Research in New York from 1951 until her death in 1983 with many notable students, the most famous of whom was Diane Arbus. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and still resides in several permanent collections, including that of the National Gallery of Canada and the J. Paul Getty Museum. Early life and education Lisette Model was born Elise Amelie Felicie Stern in the family home in the 8th district of Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Her father, Victor, was an Italian/Austr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Stettner
Louis Stettner (November 7, 1922 – October 13, 2016) was an American photographer of the 20th century whose work included streetscapes, portraits and architectural images of New York and Paris. His work has been highly regarded because of its humanity and capturing the life and reality of the people and streets. Starting in 1947, Stettner photographed the changes in the people, culture, and architecture of both cities. He continued to photograph New York and Paris up until his death. Louis Stettner’s works are posthumously managed by the Louis Stettner Estate. Early life Louis Stettner was born in Brooklyn, New York, where he was one of four children. His father was a cabinet maker, and Louis learned the trade when young, using the money he earned to support his growing love of photography. He was given a box camera as a child, and his love affair with photography began. His family went on trips to Manhattan and visited museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
