Ruth-Marion Baruch (1922 – October 11, 1997), was a German-born American photographer, remembered for her pictures of the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

in the 1960s.

Early life and education

Baruch was born into a Jewish family in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

on June 15, 1922. She and her family migrated in 1927 to the United States. She was raised in New York City, her father Max Baruch was a

neurosurgeon Neurosurgery or neurological surgery, known in common parlance as brain surgery, is the medical specialty that focuses on the surgical treatment or rehabilitation of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, ...

. She received a BA degree in 1944 in English and journalism from the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Univers ...

. She studied photography at

Ohio University Ohio University (Ohio or OU) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus in Athens, Ohio, United States. The university was first conceived in the 1787 contract between the United States Department of the Treasury#Re ...

, and received an MFA degree in 1946; and she attended classes from 1946 to 1949 at the

California School of Fine Arts San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...

(now San Francisco Art Institute) in

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, in the first class of students taught by

Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his Monochrome photography, black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association ...

Minor White Minor Martin White (July 9, 1908 – June 24, 1976) was an American photographer, theoretician, critic, and educator. White made photographs of landscapes, people, and abstract subject matter. They showed technical mastery and a strong sense o ...

Dorothea Lange Dorothea Lange (born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn; May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange' ...

Homer Page Homer Page (1918–1985) was an American documentary photographer whose most famous photographs were taken in New York City in 1949–1950, after he received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation. Page was born in Oakland, California, and s ...

, and

Edward Weston Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958) was an American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course ...

after World War II.

Photography

Baruch's works, in collaboration with photographer and husband

Pirkle Jones Pirkle Jones (January 2, 1914 – March 15, 2009) was an American documentary photographer and educator. Biography Pirkle Jones was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. His first experience with photography was when he bought a Kodak Brownie at th ...

, including ''Illusion For Sale'', and a series on the

Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist and Black Power movement, black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newto ...

taken from July to October 1968, and a series on the

hippies A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, counterculture of the mid-1960s to early 1970s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States and spread to dif ...

Haight-Ashbury Haight-Ashbury () is a district of San Francisco, California, named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. It is also called the Haight and the Upper Haight. The neighborhood is known as one of the main centers of the countercultu ...

. Baruch's photographs were exhibited in ''Perceptions'' at the

San Francisco Museum of Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art, and has b ...

in 1954, as well as

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 ...

's New York

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 ...

exhibition, ''

The Family of Man ''The Family of Man'' was an ambitious exhibition of 503 photographs from 68 countries curated by Edward Steichen, the director of the New York City Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA) department of photography. According to Steichen, the exhibitio ...

'' in 1955. Donated by the Marin Community Foundation, The Pirkle Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch Collection, an archive of photographs documenting the people, landscape, and politics of California in the mid-20th century, is the largest single gift in history, to U.C. Santa Cruz, with an estimated value of $32 million.

Exhibitions

* “Walnut Grove: Portrait of a Town," collaboration with Pirkle Jones, exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Art, 1964. * “Illusion For Sale,” San Francisco Museum of Art, 1965. * ''Haight Ashbury'', San Francisco's M.H. de Young Museum, 1968 * ''A Photographic Essay on the Black Panthers'', collaboration with Pirkle Jones, exhibited de Young Museum, December 1968 through February 1969. This exhibition travels to the Studio Museum of Harlem in 1969. ''The Vanguard: A Photographic Essay on the Black Panthers'', (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970).

References

External links

*
Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones Photographs

calisphere The California Digital Library (CDL) was founded by the University of California in 1997. Under the leadership of then UC President Richard C. Atkinson, the CDL's original mission was to forge a better system for scholarly information management ...

All Ruth-Marion Baruch Images Online
released by

Center for Creative Photography The Center for Creative Photography (CCP), established in 1975 and located on the University of Arizona's Tucson campus, is a research facility and archival repository containing the full archives of over sixty of the most famous American ph ...

(CCP),

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...

. * * Catalogue description of Baruch's book of poetry, , featuring a short biographical note (postapollopress.com) {{DEFAULTSORT:Baruch, Ruth-Marion 1922 births 1997 deaths 20th-century American photographers 20th-century American women photographers American people of German-Jewish descent Photographers from San Francisco German emigrants to the United States Ohio University alumni Jewish German artists San Francisco Art Institute alumni University of Missouri alumni Photographers from Berlin