Nathan Lerner (1913 – February 8, 1997) was an American

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs. Duties and types of photograp ...

and

industrial designer Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advance of the manufactu ...

involved in the New Bauhaus (later the

IIT Institute of Design The Institute of Design (ID) is a graduate school of the Illinois Institute of Technology, a private university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The Institute of Design was founded in 1937 as "The New Bauhaus" by László Moholy-Nagy, a Ba ...

). ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' wrote that his work "was inextricably bound up in the history of visual culture in Chicago," where he documented the vibrant immigrant neighborhood of

Maxwell Street Maxwell Street is an east–west street in Chicago, Illinois, that intersects with Halsted Street just south of Roosevelt Road. It runs at 1330 South in the numbering system running from 500 West to 1126 West.Hayner, Don and Tom McNamee (1988). ...

in the 1930s and later enrolled in the New Bauhaus under

László Moholy-Nagy László Moholy-Nagy (; ; born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by Constructivism (art), con ...

's tutelage. He stayed on as faculty after the school became the Institute of Design, and eventually was made educational director. While at the school he developed a light box technique which was a significant contribution to abstract photography, as well as a plywood-bending machine used in many of the school's furniture designs. After leaving the school in 1949 he started an industrial design practice best known for thermo-formed plastic products, including the now-ubiquitous bear-shaped honey bottle. He was

Henry Darger Henry Joseph Darger Jr. ( ; April 12, 1892 – April 13, 1973) was an American writer, novelist and artist who worked as a hospital janitor, custodian in Chicago, Illinois. He has become famous for his posthumously recovered 15,145-page manuscri ...

's landlord and discovered Darger's work shortly before the artist's death.

References

1913 births 1997 deaths American landlords People from Chicago {{US-photographer-stub