Max Yavno (1911–1985) was a photographer who specialized in street scenes, especially in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

and

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, California.

Personal life

The son of Russian immigrants, Louis and "Lizzie" (Rudnick) Yavno, Max was born in New York City on 26 April 1911. He had a brother, Emil, and a sister, Ethel. Yavno was married to Annie Abramsky at age 19 and divorced three years later. He died in Los Angeles on 4 April 1985 of complications resulting from a fall in a shower.

Professional life

Yavno worked as a

Wall Street Wall Street is a street in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs eight city blocks between Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway in the west and South Street (Manhattan), South Str ...

messenger while attending

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a Public university, public research university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York ...

at night. He attended the graduate school of political economics at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

and worked in the

Stock Exchange A stock exchange, securities exchange, or bourse is an exchange where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock, bonds and other financial instruments. Stock exchanges may also provide facilities for ...

before becoming a social worker in 1935. He did photography for the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

from 1936 to 1942. He was president of the

Photo League The Photo League was a cooperative of photographers in New York City, 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-20 ...

in 1938 and 1939. Yavno was in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1945, after which he moved to San Francisco and began specializing in urban-landscape photography. History professor Constance B. SchulzSchulz biography
/ref> said of him:

For financial reasons he worked as a commercial advertising photographer for the next twenty years (1954–75), creating finely crafted
still life A still life (: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, human-m ...
s that appeared in ''
Vogue Vogue may refer to: Business * ''Vogue'' (magazine), a US fashion magazine ** British ''Vogue'', a British fashion magazine ** '' Vogue Adria'', a fashion magazine for former Yugoslav countries ** ''Vogue Arabia'', an Arab fashion magazine ** ' ...
'' and ''
Harper's Bazaar ''Harper's Bazaar'' (stylized as ''Harper's BAZAAR'') is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. Bazaar has been published in New York City since November 2, 1867, originally as a weekly publication entitled ''Harper's Bazar''."Corporat ...
.'' He returned to artistic
landscape photography Landscape photography (often shortened to landscape photos) captures the world's outdoor spaces, sometimes vast and unending and other times microscopic. Landscape photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also focus on human-ma ...
in the 1970s, when his introspective approach found a more appreciative audience. Funding from the National Endowment for the Arts enabled him to travel to Egypt and Israel in 1979.

He also captured a pre-

Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West Division. Founded in 1883 in Brooklyn, New York, the ...

Chavez Ravine Chavez Ravine is a shallow canyon in Los Angeles, California. It sits in a large promontory of hills north of downtown Los Angeles, next to Major League Baseball's Dodger Stadium. Chavez Ravine was named for a 19th-century Los Angeles councilm ...

, a giant plaster leg on top of a building in

West Los Angeles West Los Angeles is an area within the city of Los Angeles, California, United States. The residential and commercial neighborhood is divided by the Interstate 405 freeway, and each side is sometimes treated as a distinct neighborhood, mapped ...

and a "nostalgic" shot of a cable car being turned around at Powell and Market streets in San Francisco.Jack Jones, "Max Yavno, Who Captured L.A. in His Photographs, Dies at 73," ''Los Angeles Times,'' April 6, 1985
/ref> His noted photograph of a crowd watching "sun-worshipping body builders at Muscle Beach in Venice" sold at auction in 1984 for almost $4,000. He said he had spent three Sundays at the beach before the subjects "stopped flexing for his camera and resumed posing for each other." His obituary in the ''Los Angeles Times'' said that:

Melrose Avenue Melrose Avenue (sometimes referred to simply as "Melrose") is a shopping, dining and entertainment destination in Los Angeles, California, starting at Santa Monica Boulevard at the border between Beverly Hills, California, Beverly Hills and W ...
photo gallery owner G. Ray Hawkins, who represented Yavno and exhibited his works, called him a "social documentarian" and noted that he had "a very special ability for combining composition and content while capturing his social vignettes."

Photographer

Edward Steichen Edward Jean Steichen (; March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter and curator and a pioneer of fashion photography. His gown images for the magazine ''Art et Décoration'' in 1911 were the first modern ...

selected twenty of Yavno's prints for the permanent collection at New York's

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

in 1950, and the next year Yavno won a

Guggenheim fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

Books

Yavno's photographs accompanied text by newspaper columnists

Herb Caen Herbert Eugene Caen (; April 3, 1916 February 1, 1997) was a San Francisco humorist and journalist whose daily columnist, column of local goings-on and insider gossip, social and political happenings, and offbeat puns and anecdotes—"A continuo ...

for ''The San Francisco Book'' in 1948 and

Lee Shippey Henry Lee Shippey (February 26, 1884 – December 30, 1969), who wrote under the name Lee Shippey, was an American author and journalist whose romance with a French woman during World War I caused a sensation in the United States as a "famous wa ...

for ''The Los Angeles Book'' in 1950, both published by

Houghton-Mifflin Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company ( ; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, and reference works. The company is based in the Boston Financial District. It was formerly known as the Houghto ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yavno, Max 20th-century American photographers 1911 births 1985 deaths American people of Russian descent