Steven W. Plattner (born 1953) is an American photographic historian, author, curator, and printing manager.

Life

Born in Cincinnati, he enrolled at Macalester College and majored in American studies and geography, with an emphasis on American social documentary photography. In 1975, he received a $3883 Youthgrant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to curate a traveling exhibition of 126 photographs from the renowned

Farm Security Administration The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a New Deal agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression in the United States. It succeeded the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937). The FSA is famous for its small but ...

(FSA) project directed by Roy E. Stryker. From 1935 to 1942, the FSA employed photographers Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein,

John Vachon John Felix Vachon (May 19, 1914 – April 20, 1975) was a world traveling American photographer. Vachon is remembered most for his photography working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) as part of the New Deal and for contributions to ' ...

John Collier, Jr. John Collier Jr. (May 22, 1913 – February 25, 1992) was an American anthropologist and an early leader in the fields of visual anthropology and applied anthropology. His emphasis on analysis and use of still photographs in ethnography led him ...

and

Jack Delano Jack Delano (born Jacob Ovcharov; August 1, 1914 – August 12, 1997) was a Ukrainian immigrant who became an accomplished photographer for the Works Progress Administration, United Fund, and most notably, the Farm Security Administration (FSA). ...

to document rural America and help acquaint more affluent Americans with the severity of the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

. The exhibition was shown at Macalester from March 8–28, 1976. NEH funded a second grant allowing the exhibition to travel widely throughout Minnesota, Texas, and several other states over the next four years. Plattner was the Acting Chief Photographer for the

Minnesota Historical Society The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) is a nonprofit educational and cultural institution dedicated to preserving the history of the U.S. state of Minnesota. It was founded by the territorial legislature in 1849, almost a decade before statehoo ...

in 1978, and many of his early photographs reside there. Later that year, he enrolled in the M.A. program in American Studies at George Washington University. In the process of writing his M.A. thesis on Roy Stryker's second major project—the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) photography project—he persuaded

Exxon Corporation ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30 ...

to fund a major traveling exhibition of SONJ photographs, opening at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York in May, 1983. The exhibit featured works by photographers Edwin and

Louise Rosskam Louise Rosskam (born Louise Rosenbaum) (March 27, 1910 – April 1, 2003) was a photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Standard Oil Company during the mid-20th century. Together with her husband, Edwin Rosskam (1903� ...

, Sol Libsohn, Harold Corsini,

Esther Bubley Esther Bubley (February 16, 1921 – March 16, 1998) was an American photographer who specialized in expressive photos of ordinary people in everyday lives. She worked for several agencies of the American government and her work also featured in s ...

, Russell Lee,

, Charlotte Brooks,

Todd Webb Todd Webb (September 5, 1905 – April 15, 2000) was an American photographer notable for documenting everyday life and architecture in cities such as New York City, Paris as well as from the American west. He traveled extensively during his l ...

, Martha Roberts, and Gordon Parks. The exhibition—and Plattner's book of the same name—received wide publicity in the New York Times, Forbes Magazine and was the subject of an in-depth profile on Charles Kuralt's CBS Sunday Morning Program. In 1983 Plattner went on to study Stryker's

Pittsburgh Photographic Library The Pittsburgh Photographic Library (PPL) is a photography repository held by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh of over 50,000 prints and negatives relating to history of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is also the name of the core coll ...

project, which followed the Standard Oil project from 1950 to 1953. Plattner conducted oral history interviews with the project's key photographers—Clyde Hare, Harold Corsini, Esther Bubley, Russell Lee, James P. Blair, Richard Saunders, Elliott Erwitt, Sol Libsohn, and

Arnold S. Eagle Arnold Eagle (1909 - October 25, 1992) was a Hungarian-American photographer and cinematographer, known for his socially concerned documentary photographs of the 1930s and 1940s. Life Eagle emigrated from Hungary to Brooklyn with his family in 1 ...

—and co-authored and edited Witness to the Fifties, published in 1999 with the help of a grant from the Howard Heinz Endowment. Plattner served as the Curator of Photographs for the Cincinnati Historical Society from 1981 to 1984. He continued his studies on the Standard Oil project, and contributed two photo-essays to the Wharton Annual in 1984 (concerning the Standard Oil photographs) and 1985 (on a later Stryker-led project for Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation). In 1985, he left the non-profit world, taking a position with a leading commercial printing company in Cincinnati, and has remained in the commercial printing field for 25 years. Over the past decade, he has become a photographer himself, and has self-published several digital photographic books. Influenced by the FSA and Standard Oil photographers, and more recently by Tom Arndt, William Christenberry, Edward Burtynsky, George Tice, and Jerome Liebling, he takes a straight and direct approach to photographing popular culture, roadside Americana, folk and outsider art environments, monuments, and landscapes.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Plattner, Steven W 1953 births Living people American art historians American curators Writers from Cincinnati Macalester College alumni Columbian College of Arts and Sciences alumni American male non-fiction writers Historians from Ohio