The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
In 1936 a group of young, idealistic photographers, most of them first-generation Jewish
Americans, formed an organization in Manhattan called the Photo League. Their solidarity
centered on a belief in the expressive power of the documentary photograph and on a
progressive alliance of socialist ideas and art. Members rejected the prevailing style of
modernism in order to engage the gritty realities of urban life. Leaguers focused on the
urban environment, and this meant looking closely at ordinary people. That impulse spurred
them to explore New York neighborhoods, street by street, camera at the ready.
A unique composite of school, darkroom, gallery, and salon, the League was also a place
where one learned about oneself. One of its leading members and teachers, Sid Grossman,
pushed students to discover not only the meaning of their work but also their relationship to
it. This transformative approach was one of the League’s most innovative and influential
contributions to the medium of photography.
The backstory of The Radical Camera is the contested path of the documentary photograph
during a tumultuous period that spanned the Depression era with its New Deal reforms,
World War II, and the Cold War. By its demise in 1951 the League had propelled
documentary photography from factual images to more ambiguous ones—from bearing
witness to questioning one’s own bearings in the world.
Mason Klein, Curator • The Jewish Museum, New York
Catherine Evans, Curator • Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Precursors
[PANEL TEXT]
Before the Photo League, a number of American photographers working in the early
decades of the twentieth century were motivated by social and political concerns. Chief
among them were Lewis Hine and Paul Strand. Hine, who had trained as a sociologist, used
photography as a tool for social reform. His empathetic pictures of workers, especially
children, were instrumental in changing labor laws in America.
Strand studied photography under Hine at the Ethical Culture School, a progressive college
preparatory school in New York City with strong ties to the Jewish community. Both artists
achieved a balance of social and aesthetic values in their work and later became influential
figures at the Photo League. Hine lectured there periodically and bequeathed his negatives to
the League, which preserved his legacy by exhibiting his photographs and printing portfolios
of his work. Strand was one of the League’s staunchest supporters throughout its
tumultuous history, teaching there and serving on its advisory board.
[OBJECT LABELS]
Workers Film and Photo League
Excerpts from Workers Newsreel Unemployment Special, 1931
Running time: 1 min. 48 sec.
Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art Circulating Film and Video Library
Founded in 1930 as an offshoot of Workers International Relief (a leftist German and
Russian aid organization), the Film and Photo League produced some of the first social
documentary films in America. Over time, quarrels arose among the group’s filmmakers over
the relative importance of aesthetic and political values. The still photographers, for their
part, did not want their images merely to serve as illustrations to written accounts. These
differences proved insurmountable, and in 1936 the photographers broke away to form the
Photo League.
Paul Strand (1890–1976, born Manhattan, New York)
Truckman’s House, New York, 1920, printed later
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of Melissa Harris
2008-146
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
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Paul Strand (1890–1976, born Manhattan, New York)
Wall Street, 1915
Photogravure, from Camera Work
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith
Foundation Fund
2011-15
This photograph was originally called “Pedestrians Raked by Morning Light in a Canyon of
Commerce,” and is as elemental and poetic as that title. Strand deliberately contrasts the
imposing design of the new J. P. Morgan Co. building at 23 Wall Street with the dwarfed
figures of men and women on the street and their vivid shadows.
Lewis Wickes Hine (1874–1940, born Oshkosh, Wisconsin)
Steamfitter, 1920, printed later
Gelatin silver print
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, Gift of Baroness Jeane von Oppenheim
98.283
This portrait of a steamfitter at a powerhouse was one of hundreds Hine made of men and
machines, a project that became a book called Men at Work. Elevating the worker to the
status of an unsung “hero of industry,” Hine suggests a harmony between the mechanic’s
physical prowess and the formidable machine.
Lewis Wickes Hine (1874–1940, born Oshkosh, Wisconsin)
Young Doffers in the Elk Cotton Mills, Fayetteville, Tennessee, 1910
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia
Stevens Gift
2008-66
Until child labor was abolished in the United States in 1938, many children worked long
hours in hazardous factory jobs. Doffers had the dangerous task of replacing spools of
thread in a textile mill.
Lewis Wickes Hine (1874–1940, born Oshkosh, Wisconsin)
Danny Mercurio, Newsie, Washington, DC, 1912, printed later
Digital reproduction print from scanned glass negative
George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, New
York. Gift of the Photo League: ex-collection Lewis Wickes Hine
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
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Much of Hine’s fame today rests on the documentary photographs he made for the National
Child Labor Committee. This image of a typical “newsie” presents the disconnected
relationship between the child, spiritedly hawking the news, and a stern bourgeois woman,
whose imminent exit from the picture becomes a metaphor for public indifference that
frames the problem of child labor.
The Great Depression
[WALL QUOTE]
“The thing that shocks me and which I really try to change is the lukewarmness, the
indifference, the kind of taking pictures that really doesn’t matter.”—Lisette Model
[PANEL TEXT]
The economic turmoil of the 1930s brought enormous social and political upheaval. In
response, the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted massive relief
programs known as the New Deal and funded unprecedented art projects that employed
artists, making their work accessible to a broad public.
Small hand-held 35mm cameras, introduced in the 1920s, enabled a new kind of chance
photography, at once casual and purposeful. In this context, Leaguers were inspired to make
inequity and discrimination tangible in their work. But they also championed a photography
that was as much aesthetic as social-minded, and this dual identity defines the League’s
progressivism in a unique way.
Both impulses were fostered by a picture-hungry world of illustrated magazines, such as Life
and Look, as well as newspapers and books. Suddenly, photographs were ubiquitous in daily
life. While the documentary image was still not generally thought of as art, by the end of the
decade photography was beginning to be embraced as a form with aesthetic potential.
[OBJECT LABELS]
Walter Rosenblum (1919–2006, born Manhattan, New York)
Girl on a Swing, New York, 1938
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of the Rosenblum Family
2009-12
In 1938 Rosenblum led a group project on New York’s Lower East Side where he had
grown up. For six months he and fellow League members documented the daily lives of the
neighborhood’s inhabitants, including this young girl playing in a park at the foot of the
Manhattan Bridge.
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
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Walter Rosenblum (1919–2006, born Manhattan, New York)
Group in Front of Fence, Pitt Street, New York, 1938
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of the Rosenblum Family
2009-13
Sidney Kerner (born 1920, Brooklyn, New York)
Pitt Street, New York, 1938
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.079
Pitt Street is in the heart of what was once a heavily Jewish immigrant neighborhood, as
evidenced by the kosher storefront in the upper right corner of this bird’s-eye view.
Lucy Ashjian (1907–1993, born Indianapolis, Indiana)
Bowery Triplets, c. 1938
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of Christine Tate
2011-24
Morris Engel (1918–2005, born Manhattan, New York)
Shopping, Ninth Avenue, New York, 1938
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.044
Eliot Elisofon (1911–1973, born Manhattan, New York)
Untitled (Iodent Toothpaste Ads), c. 1937
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Mimi and Barry J. Alperin Fund
2008-53
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
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Lucy Ashjian (1907–1993, born Indianapolis, Indiana)
Untitled (Steps), c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of Christine Tate
2011-23
Berenice Abbott (1898–1991, born Springfield, Ohio)
Zito’s Bakery, 259 Bleecker Street, 1937, from Changing New York, 1935–39
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Mimi and Barry J. Alperin Fund
2008-38
The influence of the French documentary photographer Eugène Atget may be seen in this
image of Zito’s, a famous Italian bakery in New York’s Greenwich Village, one of many
storefronts that Abbott photographed in the late 1930s. Sponsored by the Federal Art
Project, a New Deal program, Abbott produced over three hundred documents of New
York’s urban landscape. Her project culminated in the book Changing New York (in a case
nearby), which was published to coincide with the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
Berenice Abbott (1898–1991, born Springfield, Ohio)
Gunsmith, 6 Centre Market Place, 1937, from Changing New York, 1935–39
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.001
Lucy Ashjian (1907–1993, born Indianapolis, Indiana)
Untitled (Relief Tickets Accepted), c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Gift of Gregor Ashjian Preston
2005.022.007
This closely cropped photograph conveys the experimental formalism that was practiced at
the League even in its early years. Yet Ashjian’s image is infused with social content as well:
Epstein’s Clothing was a discount store on New York’s Bowery that survived the
Depression by accepting government-relief tickets as payment from customers for new and
used clothes.
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Alexander Alland (1902–1989, born Sevastopol, Ukraine)
The Old Bridge, 1938
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.003
Alexander Alland (1902–1989, born Sevastopol, Ukraine)
Untitled (Brooklyn Bridge), 1938
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: William and Jane Schloss Family Foundation
Fund
2008-40
Alland’s views of the Brooklyn Bridge demonstrate two different approaches to
documentary photography. The view in Untitled (Brooklyn Bridge), taken from the Brooklyn
side, focuses on the formal qualities of the bridge itself, while the straightforward depiction
in The Old Bridge, taken from the Manhattan side, foregrounds the bridge as a site of labor
and construction.
Consuelo Kanaga (1894–1978, born Astoria, Oregon)
Untitled (Tenements, New York), c. 1937
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia
Stevens Gift
2008-69
Leftist political activism was a strong element in Kanaga’s work, beginning with her
photographs of a labor strike in San Francisco in 1934. She provided photographs for
progressive publications such as New Masses, Labor Defender, and Sunday Worker. Underlying
this formal study of tenement laundry lines (a common motif in League imagery) is Kanaga’s
empathy for the living conditions of the working class.
Rebecca Lepkoff (born 1916, Manhattan, New York)
Under the El, c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Esther Leah Ritz Bequest
2008-83
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
John Vachon (1914–1975, born St. Paul, Minnesota)
Freight Car and Grain Elevators, Omaha, Nebraska, 1938
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.148
Arnold Newman (1918–2006, born Manhattan, New York)
Untitled, c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund
2008-97
Dan Weiner (1919–1959, born Manhattan, New York)
Brooklyn, New York, c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Gift of David Kluger, by exchange
1993-113
Morris Engel (1918–2005, born Manhattan, New York)
Women on the Beach, Coney Island, 1938
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.041
Brooklyn’s Coney Island, with its great public beach and amusement park, was a favorite
spot for Photo Leaguers, and especially for Engel, who was also a filmmaker. His animated,
cinematic sensibility is visible in the multiple vantages that converge in this frieze of figures.
Lisette Model (1906–1983, born Vienna, Austria)
Lower East Side, c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of Howard Greenberg
2008-181
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
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Robert Disraeli (1905–1988, born Cologne, Germany)
Untitled (German Street Band), 1934
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia
Stevens Gift
2008-49
The street yielded many images that could cheer as well as dismay, such as this witty picture
of a brass band with the musicians uniformly capped and grouped together at different
heights like notes on a page of music, framed by two trees and their protective bases that
open like a curtain.
Lee Sievan (1907–1990, born Manhattan, New York)
Salvation Army Lassie in Front of a Woolworth Store, c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund
2008-113
Alexander Alland (1902–1989, born Sevastopol, Ukraine)
Break the Grip of Exploitation, 1938
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia
Stevens Gift
2001.020.127
Joe Schwartz (born 1913, Brooklyn, New York)
Slums Must Go! May Day Parade, New York, c. 1936
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.127
Sid Grossman (1913–1955, born Manhattan, New York)
Henry Modgilin, Community Camp, Oklahoma, 1940
Gelatin silver print
Howard Greenberg Gallery
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
In 1940 farming communities were still suffering from the long drought and violent dust
storms that had swept through the Great Plains during the Depression. Grossman traveled
in the Dust Bowl states to photograph homesteader life and union activities. Although he
believed in straight photography (images made without extensive manipulation), Grossman,
like many documentary photographers, altered prints in the darkroom. In this portrait of a
farmer and union organizer he accentuated the tones in order to dramatize the man’s
eloquent face, gaunt body, and gesturing hand.
Arthur Rothstein (1915–1985, born Manhattan, New York)
Wife and Child of a Sharecropper, Washington County, Arkansas, 1935
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.123
Rosalie Gwathmey (1908–2001, born Charlotte, North Carolina)
Untitled (Kids Playing in Rural South), c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia
Stevens Gift
2008-65
Rolf Tietgens (1911–1984, born Hamburg, Germany)
Untitled (Broome and Bowery), c. 1938
Gelatin silver print
2001.020.147
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
Jack Delano (1914–1997, born Voroshilovka, Ukraine)
Interior of New FSA Client Edward Gont’s Home, Dameron, Maryland, 1940
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.019
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Jack Delano was hired by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1940 to document
living conditions across rural America. This photograph of a small boy, one of eleven
siblings, asleep in his home, was later used as an illustration in Richard Wright’s 12 Million
Black Voices (in a case nearby).
Eliot Elisofon (1911–1973, born Manhattan, New York)
Child Bride, Age 15, Memphis, Tennessee, c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.033
Eliot Elisofon (1911–1973, born Manhattan, New York)
WPA Cleaned This Area . . . Keep It Clean, c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.036
The Work Projects Administration (WPA) was one of many programs initiated by the
federal government to combat the devastating effects of the Great Depression. It offered
work to the unemployed on an unprecedented scale with a wide variety of programs,
including highway and building construction and rural and urban renewal. Elisofon’s classic
documentary approach is offset by the wry humor of the cautionary sign.
Joe Schwartz (born 1913, Brooklyn, New York)
Sullivan Midgets 1, Greenwich Village, c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.126
The Sullivan Midgets were an Italian youth gang.
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
[EPHEMERA]
Photo Notes, August 1938
Private collection
Photo League syllabus and readings, summer 1938
Collection of Anne Wilkes Tucker
Daily Worker, October 27, 1941
“Behind the Candid Cameramen: How the Job Is Learned at the Photo League,” by Milton
Meltzer, photographs by Walter Rosenblum (top) and Sid Grossman (bottom)
Facsimile of original in the Tamiment Library, New York University
The Daily Worker was a New York City newspaper published by the Communist Party USA.
Fred Stein’s Photo League membership card, 1941
Estate of Fred Stein
---Changing New York, 1939
Photographs by Berenice Abbott, text by Elizabeth McCausland
Courtesy of Stephen Daiter Gallery
U.S. Camera Annual, 1939
Edward Steichen, The F.S.A. Photographers, photographs by Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, and
Russell Lee
The Jewish Museum, New York
Edward Steichen organized an exhibition of Farm Security Administration photographs in
New York in 1939. A selection was reprinted in U.S. Camera Annual magazine, along with
visitors’ comments.
12 Million Black Voices, 1941
Text by Richard Wright, photo-direction by Edwin Rosskam, Farm Security Administration,
photographs by Dorothea Lange (left) and Jack Delano (right)
The William Oxley Thompson Library, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
The War Years
Photo Hunts and Crazy Camera Balls
[PANEL TEXT]
The early 1940s witnessed the country’s rapid transition from New Deal recovery to war
mobilization. The League rallied around war-related projects and half the membership
enlisted. More women now became members.
The organization’s newsletter, Photo Notes, provided a forum for an ongoing discussion of
the role of photography in a changing political climate. A growing interest in the subjective
image, expressing a more personal, even idiosyncratic point of view, gradually tested the
League’s dogmatic conception of the function of documentary photography.
Meanwhile, at League headquarters, Crazy Camera Balls raised funds and fostered a sense of
community. Photo Hunts—competitions in which Leaguers scoured the city to complete
random, sometimes ludicrous assignments—became legendary. The sense of purpose and
energy was palpable. League members were becoming more photographically literate and
many were beginning to assert their own styles—as in Lisette Model’s charged and
unsentimental portraits, Weegee’s sensationalistic crime scenes, and Rosalie Gwathmey’s
empowering civil rights images.
[OBJECT LABELS]
Lisette Model (1906–1983, born Vienna, Austria)
They Honor Their Sons, New York, c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.105
This photograph was taken at a win-the-war rally on the Lower East Side. Model, one of the
most innovative members of the League, challenged the idea that the photograph was merely
a factual record, seeking instead to produce images that transformed her subjects, allowing
her photographs to gain their “own independent life.”
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Walter Rosenblum (1919–2006, born Manhattan, New York)
D-Day Rescue, Omaha Beach, 1944
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum
Purchase with funds provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine
Chapin Kobacker, and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.120
As a US Army combat photographer, Rosenblum landed in Normandy on D-Day morning.
There he joined an antitank battalion that drove through France, Germany, and Austria.
Rosenblum was one of the most decorated World War II photographers.
Walter Rosenblum (1919–2006, born Manhattan, New York)
German Prisoners of War, Normandy, 1944
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.121
Paul Strand (1890–1976, born Manhattan, New York)
Swastika (a.k.a. Hitlerism), 1938
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund
2008-30
This rare explicitly political photograph by Strand was published in the journal Theatre Arts
Committee in January 1939, accompanied by a text by Dashiell Hammett that declared,
“Humanity must not be crucified on a swastika!” The iconography may have been inspired
by John Heartfield’s antifascist photomontages, which were regularly featured in the German
newspaper Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (Workers’ Illustrated Newspaper) and were exhibited in
New York in 1938. An example of the newspaper, with a work by Heartfield, is in the case
nearby.
Fred Stein (1909–1967, born Dresden, Germany)
42nd Street Subway Exit, 1945
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2011-40
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
David Robbins (1912–1981, born United States)
Subway Station, c. 1944
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund
2008-106
George Gilbert (born 1922, Brooklyn, New York)
Untitled, from American Faces, 1942
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.047
This political rally in Madison Square Park was organized to urge President Roosevelt to
begin a second European front in the war in aid of the Soviet Union after it was invaded by
Nazi Germany in 1941.
David Robbins (1912–1981, born United States)
Antiwar Demonstration, c. 1941
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.117
Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (1899–1968, born Zloczów, Galicia, now Ukraine)
Max Is Rushing In the Bagels to a Restaurant on Second Avenue for the Morning Trade, c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Joan B. and Richard L. Barovick Family
Foundation and Bunny and Jim Weinberg Gifts
2000-72
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Sonia Handelman Meyer (born 1920, Lakewood, New Jersey)
Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, c. 1946
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Mimi and Barry J. Alperin in memory of Max
Alperin
2009-38
The efforts of the New York-based Hebrew Immigration Aid Society (HIAS) to rescue
European Jews during the war were severely hampered by US immigration laws. After the
war it aided in the resettlement of some 150,000 displaced persons, including, presumably,
these three, whom Handelman Meyer has chosen to photograph in close-up. She conveys
both their common suffering and their individuality, emphasizing differences in body
language and dress.
Louis Stettner (born 1922, Brooklyn, New York)
Coming to America, c. 1951
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2003-10
Bernard Cole (1911–1982, born London, England)
Shoemaker’s Lunch, 1944
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia
Stevens Gift
2008-43
Ida Wyman (born 1926, Malden, Massachusetts)
Spaghetti 25 Cents, New York, 1945
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2009-29
This Italian restaurant was near the offices of Acme Newspictures, where Wyman became
the company’s first female photo printer in 1943. After the war she lost her job at the
agency. The “Ladies Invited” sign on the window is a reminder of a time when unescorted
women were not always welcome in public dining establishments.
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Lou Stoumen (1917–1991, born Springtown, Pennsylvania)
Sailors, Times Square, c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.144
Lisette Model (1906–1983, born Vienna, Austria)
Nick’s, c. 1942
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.104
Model and Weegee frequented nightclubs like Nick’s Jazz Joint in New York’s Greenwich
Village to photograph the lively performers and equally exuberant clientele.
Sid Grossman (1913–1955, born Manhattan, New York)
Black Christ Festival, Portobelo, Panama, 1945
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.055
Grossman photographed the ritual nighttime parade of the annual Black Christ Festival
while stationed in Panama with the Air Force Public Relations Section. He was beginning to
break some of the accepted rules of photography and to challenge a straight documentary
approach—here, intentionally blurring the image. He was thus more concerned with
communicating his experience of the event than capturing the spectacle objectively.
Sid Grossman (1913–1955, born Manhattan, New York)
Jumping Girl, Aguadulce, Panama, c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.052
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (1899–1968, born Zloczów, Galicia, now Ukraine)
Empire State Building, c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and
Photography Acquisitions Committee Funds
2009-30
Lou Stoumen (1917–1991, born Springtown, Pennsylvania)
Sitting in Front of the Strand, Times Square, 1940
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: B. Gerald Cantor, Lady Kathleen Epstein, Louis
E. and Rosalyn M. Shecter Gifts, by exchange
2008-122
Morris Huberland (1909–2003, born Warsaw, Poland)
Union Square, New York, c. 1942
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Mimi and Barry J. Alperin Fund
2008-67
Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (1899–1968, born Zloczów, Galicia, now Ukraine)
Woman at the Met, 1943
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2008-128
Lou Bernstein (1911–2005, born Manhattan, New York)
Dancers in Shadows, 1947
Gelatin silver print
2001.020.009
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Louis Stettner (born 1922, Brooklyn, New York)
Untitled (Young Man with Bicycle), c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2008-121
Arthur Leipzig (born 1918, Brooklyn, New York)
Ideal Laundry, 1946
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Esther Leah Ritz Bequest
2008-79
Helen Levitt (1913–2009, born Brooklyn, New York)
New York, c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Lillian Gordon Bequest
2000-56
Though Levitt never joined the League as an official member, she attended meetings and
twice exhibited her work there in the 1940s. Photo Notes said of her images of children
playing in the streets that she “detects, with radar sensitivity, the heartbeat of the child’s
world.”
Arthur Rothstein (1915–1985, born Manhattan, New York)
Refugees Looking at List of Survivors, Shanghai, China, 1946
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of Arthur Rothstein Family
1999-51
During the war more than 18,000 Jews from Iraq, Russia, Germany, Austria, and Poland fled
to China, one of the few countries that did not limit immigration or require visas or
passports for entry. From 1943 to 1945 most refugees were restricted to a one-square-mile
area known as the Shanghai Ghetto, where this photograph was taken after the war.
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Godfrey Frankel (1912–1995, born Cleveland, Ohio)
Heart Mountain War Relocation Authority, Cody, Wyoming, 1945
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.045
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the forcible
removal of Japanese Americans from the Pacific coast to designated military zones. Nearly
fifteen thousand American citizens were interned in this camp in Wyoming between 1942
and 1945.
Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (1899–1968, born Zloczów, Galicia, now Ukraine)
New York Patrolman George Scharnikow Who Saved Little Baby, New York, 1938
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2008-127
Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (1899–1968, born Zloczów, Galicia, now Ukraine)
Manuel Jiminez Lies Wounded in the Lap of Manuelda Hernandez, 1941
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.152
Weegee most likely earned his nickname from his uncanny ability to arrive quickly at the
scene of a crime—conjuring the notion of a Ouija board. This picture of a sailor who had
been shot by a rival at a West Village bar was published, along with the lurid details of the
crime, in the newspaper PM. It was included in Weegee’s first gallery exhibition, Murder Is My
Business, presented at the Photo League in the fall of 1941 (see photograph in the case
nearby).
Elizabeth Timberman (1908–1988, born Columbus, Ohio)
Easter Sunday, 1944
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2008-124
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Lisette Model (1906–1983, born Vienna, Austria)
Albert-Alberta, Hubert’s Forty-second Street Flea Circus, New York, c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2001-50
Model was often drawn to subjects on the margins of society, such as this gender-bending
performer. Albert-Alberta’s bawdy burlesque was one of many eccentric acts that drew
crowds to Hubert’s Flea Circus in Times Square.
Sol Libsohn (1914–2001, born Manhattan, New York)
Hester Street, 1945
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.091
Hester Street, with its bustling open-air market, was once the center of a close-knit Jewish
community on New York’s Lower East Side. The grocery store and optometrist’s shop seen
here have since become a car service and a hair salon in what is now part of Chinatown.
Rosalie Gwathmey (1908–2001, born Charlotte, North Carolina)
Untitled (Sunday Dress), c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.059
Edwin Rosskam (1903–1985, born Munich, Germany)
Stock Room Porter, Esso Laboratory, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1944
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: William and Jane Schloss Family Foundation
Fund
2008-110
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Harold Feinstein (born 1931, Coney Island, New York)
Rocky Beach, c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Gay Block and Malka Drucker Fund of the
Houston Jewish Community Foundation
2008-58
Lou Bernstein (1911–2005, born Manhattan, New York)
Father and Children, Coney Island, 1943
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.007
[EPHEMERA]
Yank, August 20, 1944
Photograph by Morris Engel
Orkin/Engel Film and Photo Archive
Life, April 9, 1945
Photograph by W. Eugene Smith
The Jewish Museum, New York
AIZ (Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung/Workers’ Illustrated Newspaper), July 8, 1936
Photogravure by John Heartfield
International Center of Photography, Purchase, with funds provided by the ICP Acquisitions
Committee, 2005
---Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (1899–1968, born Zloczów, Galicia, now Ukraine)
Lisette Model at Nick’s Jazz Joint, c. 1946
Gelatin silver print
International Center of Photography, Bequest of Wilma Wilcox, 1993
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Installation view of Weegee’s Murder Is My Business exhibition at the Photo League, 1941
International Center of Photography, Bequest of Wilma Wilcox, 1993
Naked City, 1945
Photographs and text by Weegee
Courtesy of Stephen Daiter Gallery
---Photo League School brochures, spring 1942 and fall 1944
Collection of Anne Wilkes Tucker
Weegee speaking at a Photo League fundraiser at Café Society, December 7, 1947
Collection of George Gilbert
Popular Photography, February 1943
“Flash! Camera Club Carries Out Program,” by Jacob Deschin
The Jewish Museum, New York
---Facsimile of a Photo Hunt advertisement from Photo Notes, June 1942
Morris Huberland, Elizabeth Timberman, and Ed Schwartz choose the best negative at a
Photo Hunt competition, 1947
Photograph by George Gilbert
The Jewish Museum, New York
Weegee, Berenice Abbott, and W. Eugene Smith judge a Photo Hunt contest, at 2am, 1947
Collection of George Gilbert
---Facsimiles of two Crazy Camera Ball advertisements from Photo Notes, January and February
1941
---Sid Grossman, Jacqueline Judge, Jacob Deschin, and Arnold Eagle at a Photo Hunt party,
1947
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
The Jewish Museum, New York
W. Eugene Smith, Weegee, and Elizabeth Timberman at a Photo Hunt party, 1947
The Jewish Museum, New York
Crazy Camera Ball flyer, 1948
Collection of Anne Wilkes Tucker
Harlem Document (1936–1940)
[PANEL TEXT]
The Harlem Document project was a group effort led by Aaron Siskind. Its goal was to provide
evidence of an impoverished community in peril and advocate for improvement of residents’
living conditions. Ten photographers took part over a four-year period, producing dozens of
photographs, which were then shown in a series of exhibitions around New York.
The political agenda, though well meaning, ultimately produced a stereotypical view of
Harlem. While some of the images were uplifting, most portrayed the African American
community in a negative light. Siskind later admitted: “Our study was definitely distorted.
We didn’t give a complete picture of Harlem. There were a lot of wonderful things going on
in Harlem. And we never showed most of those.”
[OBJECT LABELS]
Max Yavno (1911–1985, born Manhattan, New York)
Harlem, c. 1940, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2008-135
Aaron Siskind (1903–1991, born Manhattan, New York)
Street Market, 1937, printed later, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Lillian Gordon Bequest
2000-59
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Siskind’s overhead view of the street market below the elevated subway at 145th Street is
similar to that in Corsini’s Playing Football. Siskind, who was somewhat older than his
colleagues, was inclined by the late 1930s to give equal merit to both social narrative and
aesthetics.
Lucy Ashjian (1907–1993, born Indianapolis, Indiana)
Untitled (Group in Front of Ambulance), c. 1938, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.133
Sol Prom (Solomon Fabricant) (1906–1989, born Brooklyn, New York)
Untitled (Dancing School), 1938, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund
2008-105
Mary Bruce opened a dancing school in Harlem in 1937. For fifty years she taught ballet and
tap, giving free lessons to those who could not afford them. Her illustrious pupils included
Katherine Dunham, Nat King Cole, Ruby Dee, and Marlon Brando.
Sid Grossman (1913–1955, born Manhattan, New York)
Harlem, New York, c. 1936, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia
Stevens Gift
2008-63
Richard Lyon (1914–1994, born Manhattan, New York)
Cabaret Dancer Going on the Stage, 1937, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.097
25
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Aaron Siskind (1903–1991, born Manhattan, New York)
Untitled (Kitchen Scene), c. 1937, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.134
Jack Manning (1920–2001, born Manhattan, New York)
Violet Greene Cleaning House, c. 1939, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.103
Aaron Siskind (1903–1991, born Manhattan, New York)
Untitled, c. 1940, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.132
Harold Corsini (1919–2008, born Manhattan, New York)
Playing Football, c. 1939, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, New
York, Gift of Aaron Siskind
In its early years the League was committed to the idea of photography as honest and
unmediated. A “true” and “good” picture was one in which aesthetic qualities did not
overwhelm the content or subvert its message. Playing Football—one of Corsini’s most
famous and iconic works—was considered too aestheticized by some members because of
its emphasis on composition, rather than narrative.
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Aaron Siskind (1903–1991, born Manhattan, New York)
The Wishing Tree, 1937, printed later, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Lillian Gordon Bequest
2000-58
Harlem’s legendary Wishing Tree, bringer of good fortune, was once a tall elm that stood
outside a theater at 132nd Street and Seventh Avenue. When it was cut down in 1934 Bill
“Bojangles” Robinson, the celebrated tap dancer, moved the stump to a nearby block and
planted a new Tree of Hope beside it to assume wish-granting duties. A piece of the original
trunk is preserved in the Apollo Theater on 125th Street, where performers still touch it for
luck before going onstage.
Aaron Siskind (1903–1991, born Manhattan, New York)
Crazy Quilt (Jones Barber Shop), 1938, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.135
Morris Engel (1918–2005, born Manhattan, New York)
Harlem Merchant, New York, 1937, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.039
Jack Manning (1920–2001, born Manhattan, New York)
Elks Parade, 1939, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.100
27
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
The Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks of the World promotes
leadership and advancement for African Americans. In 1939 the fraternal order celebrated its
40th anniversary in New York with weeklong festivities, including this parade through
Harlem, which drew thousands of participants and spectators from across the country.
[EPHEMERA]
Look, May 21, 1940
“244,000 Native Sons,” by Michael Carter, photographs by Jack Manning, Aaron Siskind,
and others
The Jewish Museum, New York
After being exhibited in New York, the Harlem Document photographs appeared in Look
magazine. The article was remarkable for its unwillingness to sugarcoat the interrelated
effects of poverty and racism and for its crusading effort to use photography as an
instrument of social change. Yet it portrays Harlem as a failing neighborhood, ignoring the
many achievements and triumphs of the community.
The Red Scare
[WALL QUOTE]
“I was a natural for a Communist because I was Jewish. I looked like a Jew and I lived in
New York. I was always taken for a Communist.”—Aaron Siskind
[PANEL TEXT]
Postwar prosperity replaced economic hardship and the threat of global fascism as the
turbulent 1940s drew to a close. But in the midst of this new upward mobility, the League
was forced to confront its political past. With the advent of the Cold War, leftist politics
became suspect in America. On December 5, 1947, the US Attorney General blacklisted the
Photo League as an organization considered “totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive.”
Being blacklisted meant more than a damaged reputation: members faced loss of work,
criminal investigation, and even imprisonment.
Shocked, the League responded immediately with an open letter: “The Photo League
repudiates this irresponsible and reckless smearing of its purposes and its membership . . .
spearheaded by the [House] Un-American Activities Committee to stifle progressive thought
in every walk of life and to intimidate by threat cultural workers in every field.”
The situation deteriorated further in 1949. During a conspiracy trial of Communist officials,
Angela Calomiris, a paid informant of the FBI and a League member, named Sid Grossman
as a Communist and the League as a front organization. That the League’s loose association
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
with the radical left was now being exploited revealed how thoroughly political and social
attitudes in America had changed since the New Deal. While progressive issues of class and
civil rights still mattered at the League, such subject matter was seen as dangerous in the new
conservative climate of a triumphant post–World War II America.
[OBJECT LABELS]
Jerome Liebling (1924–2011, born Manhattan, New York)
Butterfly Boy, New York, 1949
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.094
This portrait of a young boy was taken near Knickerbocker Village, a public-housing
complex on New York’s Lower East Side that had replaced substandard tenements.
Liebling’s empathy and respect for his subject may be seen in the direct connection he
establishes with the child, who stares stone-faced into the camera.
Sandra Weiner (born 1921, Drohiczyn, Poland)
East 26th Street, 1948, printed later
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.159
Rae Russel (1925–2008, born Brooklyn, New York)
Young Boy and Fire Hydrant, 1947
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase, Derby Fund
2010.003.003
29
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Robert Disraeli (1905–1988, born Cologne, Germany)
Two Girls Looking in Cutlery Shop, New York, c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.022
Arthur Leipzig (born 1918, Brooklyn, New York)
Doll Factory, 1949
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Esther Leah Ritz Bequest
2008-78
Rebecca Lepkoff (born 1916, Manhattan, New York)
Lower East Side, 1947
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.085
An advertisement for the film Gentleman’s Agreement appears in this image of Lepkoff’s
childhood neighborhood. The film addressed the persistence of anti-Semitism in America
and won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1947. Its political message was scrutinized
by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and two of its Jewish actors were placed
on the Hollywood blacklist.
Tosh Matsumoto (1920–2010, born Vacaville, California)
Untitled, c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of Howard Greenberg
2008-180
Ruth Orkin (1921–1985, born Boston, Massachusetts)
Boy Jumping into Hudson River, 1948
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund
2008-98
30
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
David Vestal (born 1924, Menlo Park, California)
77 East 10th Street, New York, 1949
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: B. Gerald Cantor, Lady Kathleen Epstein, Louis
E. and Rosalyn M. Shecter Gifts, by exchange
2008-125
Ida Wyman (born 1926, Malden, Massachusetts)
Sidewalk Clock, New York, 1947
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase, Derby Fund
2001.003.004
This unique sidewalk clock, embedded by Barthman Jewelers on the corner of Broadway and
Maiden Lane in 1898, is a hidden gem of New York’s former jewelry district. In 1946 it was
estimated that fifty-one thousand people unwittingly stepped on the clock between 11am
and 2pm each day. The clock, which was given a new face shortly after this picture was
taken, still works today.
Marion Palfi (1907–1978, born Berlin, Germany)
In the Shadow of the Capitol, 1948
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2009-31
Arthur Leipzig (born 1918, Brooklyn, New York)
Chalk Games, Prospect Place, Brooklyn, 1950
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Rictavia Schiff Bequest
1993-116
Vivian Cherry (born 1920, Manhattan, New York)
Game of Lynching, East Harlem, 1947
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase, Derby Fund
2010.004
31
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
In the late 1940s Cherry documented violence in children’s games—cops and robbers,
cowboys and Indians, and these disturbing images of boys playing at lynching. The series
was published by ’48 Magazine of the Year; Photography republished them in 1952, commenting,
“The pictures are not pretty, but they do represent an attempt to . . . use a camera as a tool
for social research.” Cherry had also submitted them to McCall’s, a women’s magazine, which
rejected them as “a little too real for magazine use.”
Vivian Cherry (born 1920, Manhattan, New York)
Playing Lynched, East Harlem, 1947, printed later
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2011-12
Sonia Handelman Meyer (born 1920, Lakewood, New Jersey)
Boy in Mask, Harlem, 1945
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase, Derby Fund
2009.001
Marion Palfi (1907–1978, born Berlin, Germany)
Wife of the Lynch Victim, from There Is No More Time, 1949
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.114
The first reported lynching of 1949 occurred in Irwinton, Georgia, when Caleb Hill, Jr. was
taken from his jail cell and murdered by two local men. Both were acquitted of all charges
after a one-day trial. Palfi traveled to the town to take pictures of the racially divided
community, from Ku Klux Klan members to the victim’s wife, seen here. Her project
culminated in the book There Is No More Time, which remains unpublished.
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Rosalie Gwathmey (1908–2001, born Charlotte, North Carolina)
Shout Freedom, Charlotte, North Carolina, c. 1948
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.060
Shout Freedom! was a celebratory musical about the American Revolution. Gwathmey captures
the irony of the advertisement for black citizens in the Jim Crow South. She herself was
familiar with civil rights problems; her husband, the painter Robert Gwathmey, was
subjected to surveillance and harassment by the FBI for his political activism. The
blacklisting of the League in 1951 was the last straw: she destroyed many of her negatives
and stopped making photographs.
Sonia Handelman Meyer (born 1920, Lakewood, New Jersey)
Anti-Lynching Rally, Madison Square Park, 1946
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Gift of the Artist
2009.012.001
N. Jay Jaffee (1921–1999, born Brooklyn, New York)
Fight for Peace, May Day, New York, 1948
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2011-28
May 1 is International Workers’ Day, traditionally celebrated by labor unions and left-wing
groups. Parades in New York marched down Eighth Avenue from Columbus Circle to
Union Square and drew thousands of participants in the 1940s. The May Day parade of 1948
called for peace in opposition to the involvement of the United States in the Cold War.
Jerome Liebling (1924–2011, born Manhattan, New York)
May Day, New York, 1948
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.095
33
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Here Liebling forgoes the traditional documentary approach seen in the adjacent view of the
May Day parade by Jaffee. Liebling’s close cropping and emphasis on the individual rather
than the group stresses the active participant’s perspective. The camera becomes a surrogate
presence within the assembly, signaling a shift toward a greater subjectivity in documentary
photography.
Edward Schwartz (1906–2005, born Brooklyn, New York)
Seeking Clemency for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Ossining, New York, 1952
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Gift of Stephen Daiter Gallery,
Chicago
2003.024.010
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were American Jewish Communists convicted in 1951 of passing
atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Their trial and death sentence became a lightning rod for
Cold War debates about left- and right-wing politics in the United States, with undertones of
anti-Semitism. On a rainy day in 1952 a thousand people traveled to Ossining to show their
support of the Rosenbergs, who were imprisoned at Sing Sing. Despite public protests, the
couple was electrocuted in 1953.
Morris Engel (1918–2005, born Manhattan, New York)
Shoeshine Boy with Cop, 14th Street, New York, 1947
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2000-63
Erika Stone (born 1924, Frankfurt, Germany)
Lower Eastside Facade, 1947
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.142
Stone’s adroit cropping of this image emphasizes the coy upward gaze of the woman in the
advertisement, away from the laundry line (emblem of poverty), and suggests the social
mobility of the postwar era.
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
[EPHEMERA]
New York Times, December 5, 1947
Front page and page 18, announcing the blacklisting of the Photo League
The Jewish Museum, New York
---Statement of the Executive Committee of the Photo League in response to the blacklist,
December 1947
Collection of Hyman Kaufman
Letter from Sid Grossman’s students attesting to the apolitical nature of his classes, May
1949
Collection of Hyman Kaufman
---George Gilbert (born 1922, Manhattan, New York)
Jacob Deschin, photography critic for the New York Times, and Angela Calomiris at the Photo League,
1946
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Gift of Stephen Daiter Gallery,
Chicago
Photo League meeting minutes, July 14, 1949
Collection of Hyman Kaufman
Red Masquerade: Undercover for the F.B.I., 1950
By Angela Calomiris
Collection of Stephen Daiter
In 1942 a Photo League member, Angela Calomiris, was recruited by the FBI to become an
undercover agent within the Communist Party. For seven years she produced reports that
named members as Communists or sympathizers. Calomiris’s accusations hastened the
organization’s collapse. In 1950 she published this self-aggrandizing memoir about her life as
a spy.
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
A Center for American Photography
[PANEL TEXT]
At the time of the blacklisting, the League was already moving away from its narrowly
political perspective. In 1947 it began to professionalize: Photo Notes was printed rather than
mimeographed and aimed to become a serious journal. The League had begun to raise
money for a new space and was reshaping itself as a “Center for American Photography,”
with the goal of fostering documentary photography as a fine art. Although the documentary
impulse continued, the group’s more creative approach to photography was undeniable.
Aesthetic concerns now became more central.
In response to the blacklisting the group mounted an exhibition entitled This Is the Photo
League, which showcased the diversity and quality of its members’ work. The retrospective
opened in December 1948 with photographs by more than ninety past and present
members. While it achieved a measure of critical attention, the effort came too late, and the
political atmosphere was by now far too toxic. Membership and revenues dwindled and the
group was ostracized. By 1951 the Photo League could no longer sustain itself, and it
officially closed its doors, a casualty of the Cold War.
[OBJECT LABELS]
N. Jay Jaffee (1921–1999, born Brooklyn, New York)
Chair with Sign, Livonia Avenue, Brooklyn, 1950
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.072
Jack Lessinger (1911–1987, born Manhattan, New York)
Untitled (Rooftop), c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Esther Leah Ritz Bequest
2008-85
Phyllis Dearborn Massar (1916–2011, born Seattle, Washington)
New York, c. 1948
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia
Stevens Gift
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
2008-48
Rebecca Lepkoff (born 1916, Manhattan, New York)
Broken Window on South Street, New York, 1948
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.084
W. Eugene Smith (1918–1978, born Wichita, Kansas)
Untitled (Nurse Midwife), 1951
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2008-119
This photograph of Maude Callen, a nurse midwife who served a poverty-stricken
community in rural South Carolina, appeared in a photo-essay for Life magazine in 1951.
Smith’s images of her remarkable efforts produced an outpouring of support. Life readers
sent $27,000 to Callen, which she used to open the first permanent health clinic in her
county.
Ida Wyman (born 1926, Malden, Massachusetts)
Francesca's Earring, c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York
Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2010-1
Ann Cooper (born 1912, Manhattan, New York)
Girl Along a Parade Sideline, New York, 1950
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia
Stevens Gift
2008-46
Dan Weiner (1919–1959, born Manhattan, New York)
East End Avenue, 1950
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
37
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
2008-130
Bill Witt (born 1921, Newark, New Jersey)
The Eye, Lower East Side, 1948
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.163
George S. Zimbel (born 1929, Woburn, Massachusetts)
Dead Man under Third Avenue El, 1951
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund
2008-138
Arnold Eagle (1909–1992, born Budapest, Hungary)
Car Passing Car, c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.023
Marvin E. Newman (born 1927, Bronx, New York)
Halloween, South Side, 1951
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Gift of Steven Nordman, New
York
2004.031.004
This eerie image of children on Halloween hints at racial tensions at the dawn of the civil
rights struggle. The effect is heightened by the tight cropping, the children’s anxious
expressions, and the close juxtaposition of masked and unmasked faces.
Dan Weiner (1919–1959, born Manhattan, New York)
Autorama Top Hats, c. 1950
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.154
General Motors began putting on spectacular car shows at New York’s Waldorf Astoria
Hotel in 1949. The following year the event, called the “Midcentury Motorama,” generated
close to $1 million in sales, an achievement Life magazine called a “happy omen for 50s
business.”
Louis Stettner (born 1922, Brooklyn, New York)
Men Looking at Concentric Circles, New York, c. 1951
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.141
Dan Weiner (1919–1959, born Manhattan, New York)
Women at Perfume Counter, c. 1948
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.158
By 1948 the social subject had changed and had begun to include the well-to-do. Women at
Perfume Counter embodies the self-absorption, as well as the voyeurism, of the new culture of
consumerism, a result of postwar prosperity.
Sid Grossman (1913–1955, born Manhattan, New York)
Coney Island, c. 1947
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.050
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Excerpts from Little Fugitive, 1953
Written and directed by Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, and Ruth Orkin
Running time: 2 min. 40 sec.
Little Fugitive is the first of three films that Photo Leaguers (and husband and wife) Engel and
Orkin created together. The movie, about a seven-year-old boy who escapes to Brooklyn’s
Coney Island for a day, was shot by Engel with a concealed 35mm camera. The awardwinning independent film was hailed for its naturalism, spontaneous production style, and
uncommon use of nonprofessional actors in lead roles.
Morris Engel (1918–2005, born Manhattan, New York)
Water Fountain, Coney Island, 1938
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia
Stevens Gift
2008-56
Max Yavno (1911–1985, born Manhattan, New York)
Muscle Beach, Santa Monica, California, 1949
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.166
Sy Kattelson (born 1923, Manhattan, New York)
Republican Convention, 1948
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, The Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.076
Dan Weiner (1919–1959, born Manhattan, New York)
At the Ceremonies for the Laying of the United Nations Building’s Cornerstone, 1949
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Photography Acquisitions Committee Fund
2008-129
Nancy Bulkeley (born United States)
Madison Avenue, c. 1946
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia
Stevens Gift
2008-42
Sy Kattelson (born 1923, Manhattan, New York)
Untitled (Subway Car), 1949
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia
Stevens Gift
2008-71
Sid Grossman (1913–1955, born Manhattan, New York)
Mulberry Street, 1948
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Lillian Gordon Bequest
2000-78
Mulberry Street is from Grossman’s series on the Feast of San Gennaro in New York’s Little
Italy. Already a popular subject for photographers, the festival was the perfect setting in
which to continue to experiment. Here, through various innovative formal techniques, he
renders the experience on a visceral, personal level, drawing the viewer into the energized
street scene.
Leon Levinstein (1910–1988, born Buckhannon, West Virginia)
Brooding Man, undated
Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds
provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker,
and the Friends of the Photo League
2001.020.087
Leon Levinstein (1910–1988, born Buckhannon, West Virginia)
Untitled (Hands in Pockets), undated
Gelatin silver print
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Esther Leah Ritz Bequest
2008-88
Levinstein, one of Grossman’s students, adopted an extremely candid style. His
characteristically fragmented subjects project an unsettling ambiguity.
Sam Mahl (1913–1992, born Manhattan, New York)
Untitled, 1949
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Esther Leah Ritz Bequest
2008-93
This photograph was taken outside the Federal Reserve building in lower Manhattan, just
two blocks north of where Paul Strand made his iconic image of Wall Street (seen at the
beginning of the exhibition). This updated image of alienation reflects the League’s shift to a
more existential tone.
Ruth Orkin (1921–1985, born Boston, Massachusetts)
Times Square, from Astor Hotel, 1950
Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund
2008-100
[EPHEMERA]
Photo Notes began as a modest broadsheet. Over time it became an impressive and influential
publication, with essays and illustrations by eminent figures in photography. Edward Weston
once described it as “the best photo magazine published in America.” Ansel Adams called it
“the best publication concerned with creative photography.” The last issue was published in
spring 1950.
Photo Notes, June 1948, front and back cover
Photograph by Édouard Boubat
Collection of Hyman Kaufman
Photo Notes, fall 1948
Photograph by Eugène Atget
Collection of Hyman Kaufman
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Photo Notes, spring 1949
Collection of Hyman Kaufman
Photo Notes, spring 1950
Collection of Hyman Kaufman
---This Is the Photo League, exhibition catalog, 1948
Collection of Hyman Kaufman
Photo League promotional booklet, c. 1948
Private collection
---In December 1948, in response to increasing government attacks, the League mounted a
major retrospective exhibition, This Is the Photo League. The show asserted the artistic, rather
than political, aims of the organization. The catalog proclaimed, “The driving force of the
League has always been its hunger and thirst after photography.”
This Is the Photo League exhibition installation view, 1948
Photograph by John Ebstel, printed later by Marvin E. Newman
---The Photo League’s original headquarters were located at 31 East 21st Street, an address it
had inherited from the Film and Photo League. In 1946 the group moved to the penthouse
of 30 East 29th Street. After it was blacklisted, the League relocated to the basement of the
Hotel Albert at 23 East 10th Street, where it remained until its closing in 1951.
Walter Rosenblum (on ladder) and Ed Schwartz remodel the League’s quarters in the Hotel
Albert, c. 1948
Collection of George Gilbert
In the basement of the Hotel Albert during construction of the new League headquarters,
Walter Rosenblum (left) and Ed Schwartz (laying brick), 1948
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Collection of George Gilbert
---Life, December 3, 1951
Excerpts from “Nurse Midwife Maude Callen Eases Pain of Birth, Life, and Death,”
photographs by W. Eugene Smith
The Jewish Museum, New York
Coda
[WALL QUOTE]
“A photograph is as personal as a name, a fingerprint, a kiss. It concerns me intimately and
passionately.”—Sid Grossman
[PANEL TEXT]
Sid Grossman, the League’s great teacher and mentor who led passionate debates about the
role of the personal and subjective in the documentary image, was particularly victimized and
disillusioned by the blacklist. He resigned in 1949 and retreated from the polemics of
Manhattan to the quiet of Provincetown, Massachusetts. There he continued to teach
photography and to make art, but his reputation faded. Shortly before he died in 1955, at age
forty-three, he commented with some irony on a late series of “pictures of birds” he had
made in Cape Cod. They were, he acknowledged, scarcely the kind of documentary subject
that he would have pursued earlier in life. “Yet this material,” he said, “was quite
harmonious with my past history as a photographer, visually and emotionally.” Grossman
perhaps felt obliged to explain that these photographs, with their allover pattern of flickering
light and agitated movement, drew upon the contemporary language of abstract
expressionism. More poignantly, the birds’ feeding frenzy suggests the poisonous
atmosphere that had finally forced him out of the League.
Too rarely is the League credited for its early, pivotal role in redefining documentary
photography. The transmutation of the documentary mode into an experimental, personal
vision sees its blossoming in Grossman’s late Provincetown work. It reaches its
transcendence in the League’s legacy: the subjective, poetic renderings of social themes that
would characterize the next generation of street photographers.
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The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
[OBJECT LABELS]
Sid Grossman (1913–1955, born Manhattan, New York)
Seagulls, 1949
Gelatin silver print
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Gift of Miriam Grossman Cohen
82.20
Excerpts from Ordinary Miracles: The Photo League’s New York, 2011
Documentary film, produced and directed by Daniel Allentuck and Nina Rosenblum,
contributing producer Mary Engel
Running time: 7 min. 42 sec.
45
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951
October 11, 2012–January 21, 2013
Complete Wall Text
[EPHEMERA]
Sid Grossman teaching in Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1954
Photograph by Morris Huberland
Private collection
Journey to the Cape, 1959
Photographs by Sid Grossman, text by Millard Lampell
The Jewish Museum, New York
46