Arthur Rothstein
1915 – 1985
website: http://arthurrothsteinarchive.com

Arthur Rothstein grew up in New York City. He had been a student at Columbia University when he met Roy Stryker, an academic who was hired by the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to manage the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration. The Historical Section was created to use photography to document and publicize the large-scale economic dislocations caused by the Great Depression and the widespread displacement and disruption of agricultural communities during Dust Bowl of the 1930s, as well as the government programs designed to assist the displaced. It was subsequently known as the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photography project.

Stryker initially hired Arthur to design and construct the darkroom for the project in Washington, D.C., and he was sent into the field as a photojournalist the following year, 1935, when he was twenty years old. For more than five years he and other FSA photographers traveled the country on assignment for the U.S. government, documenting the plight of displaced farmers, workers, their families and their communities. Today, the public archive of FSA photographs maintained by the Library of Congress contains more than 11,000 photographs taken by Arthur Rothstein.

As the country began to mobilize for World War II, the FSA photography project was transformed into the Office of War Information (OWI). Rothstein left the OWI and had just started working for Look magazine when the United States entered World War II. During the war he covered Europe, India and Burma as a Signal Corps photographer. Rothstein then documented the day-to-day lives of displaced persons (Holocaust survivors) struggling to subsist in the Shanghai Hongkew ghetto, as well as the consequences of the Great Famine in China as Chief Photographer for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in 1946 and 1947.

He returned to the U.S. and Look magazine, where he served as Director of Photography until its demise in 1971. When Look folded Arthur became Director of Photography at Parade Magazine and spent more time writing and teaching photojournalism and documentary photography until his death in 1985. Throughout his career Rothstein was also an innovator. For example, he was instrumental in the invention of the Xograph, which was the first printing process that enabled mass reproduction of a photograph that appeared, to the unaided eye, to be three-dimensional.

The common thread throughout Arthur’s career, beyond the promotion of technical innovation, was his passion for the use and perpetuation of photojournalism and documentary photography toward the betterment of society. During the 1930s and 1940s he had been an active member of the Photo League, which was dedicated to the use of documentary photography to effect social change.

He loved to share his craft. He loved to mentor young photographers. He authored columns in photography magazines, and produced nine books on photography. Arthur Rothstein, died in 1985 leaving a magnificent historical legacy. His photographs, and those of many of the photographers he mentored, continue to be printed in the media and hung in museums.

Philippe Halsman   1906 – 1979

Archive contact: Irene Halsman (halsman.irene@gmail.com)

Philippe Halsman (b. May 2, 1906 – d. June 25, 1979) was born in Riga, Latvia.  He became one of the great portrait photographers of our time.  He started by studying engineering in Germany, but began his photographic career in Paris, where he designed his own 4 x 5 twin lens reflex camera.

Part of the great exodus of artists and intellectuals who fled the Nazis, Halsman arrived in the United States with his young family in 1940, having obtained an emergency visa through the intervention of Albert Einstein.

Halsman’s prolific career in America over the next 30 years included reportage and covers for every major American magazine.  He had more Life magazine covers (101) to his credit than any other photographer, and three of his well-loved portraits – of Albert Einstein, Adlai Stevenson, and John Steinbeck – were used on United States Postage Stamps.

His colleagues elected him as the first president of the American Society of Magazine Photographers (ASMP) in 1944, and in 1958, he was chosen as one of the world’s Ten Greatest Photographers in an international poll.   He was the recipient of the ASMP Life Achievement in Photography Award in 1975.   Beginning in 1986, the ASMP instituted an annual Philippe Halsman Award for Photojournalism.

His work is represented in the permanent collections of numerous museums in the United States and abroad.  Among his many one-man exhibitions was a retrospective that began at the International Center of Photography in New York in 1979 and continued to tour the United States until 1988.

He was on the faculty of the Famous Photographers School, and from 1970-1979, he taught a seminar on Psychological Portraiture at the New School in New York City.

Halsman Portraits, published in 1983, is a survey of his contribution to the art of portraiture.  Philippe Halsman’s Jump Book, is a collection of portraits of famous people jumping, first published in 1959 and reissued in 1986.  Both books were published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

With the publication of Halsman, a Retrospective, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery mounted a huge exhibition which toured the United States in 1998 and also went to the Tate Gallery in London and the Hotel de Sully in Paris.

1935-

Home Page: http://www.philiptrager.com/

Contact: phtr@earthlink.net

Active as a photographer for more than forty years, Philip Trager is a preeminent photographer of dance and architecture. His photographs of contemporary dancers and performance artists have expanded the genre of dance photography. His book, The Villas of Palladio, has become a standard document for architects and architectural historians. His most recent books are Philip Trager, a retrospective book, and Faces, both published by Steidl.

Four of his ten books have been chosen for the annual books selection of The New York Times Annual Review of Books. Among other book awards are Finalist for the Grand Prix Award at Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, Book of the Year for the American Institute of Graphic Arts and Best Books selections of Interview, Vanity Fair, The Times (London), New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times Book Review and others.

Trager’s photographs are in international private, corporate and institutional collections. In New York, they are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of the City of New York, New York Historical Society, and the New York Public Library (which recently acquired eighty photographs). The Library of Congress has acquired the definitive collection of his photographs and will house his archive as part of its core collections.

There have been numerous exhibitions of Trager’s photographs internationally, including a traveling retrospective exhibition of his work presented at several venues, including  The National Building Museum in cooperation with the Library of Congress. The New York Public Library recently mounted a major exhibition of his work.

Home Page: www.margaretmccarthy.com

Contact: artist@margaretmccarthy.com

Inspired and indebted to mythology, photographer  Margaret McCarthy brings the eye of a poet to her photography, exploring the archetypes of myth and dream in her imagery.

“I want to reach the viewer on an intuitive level, with photographs that are visually, psychologically and spiritually compelling,” she says. “My goal:  to make images that bridge past and future, inner and outer worlds, art and commerce. My philosophy: Beauty in an ugly age is revolutionary.”

Her techniques include working with B&W infrared film, using images in sequences, and collage in order to create a sense of “otherworldliness” and a transcendent vision of the human imagination. Her landscapes capture a sense of the fecund creativity of the natural world.

She has exhibited her photographs extensively, including the Fogg Art Museum, the Overseas Press Club and The Hudson River Museum, as well as numerous galleries, universities and public exhibition spaces. Her “Divine Feminine” series is now part of the Kinsey Institute Art Collection.

A few of the fine art publications where her work has appeared in include: MUSEÈ Magazine, aCURATOR,  LE JOURNAL de la PHOTOGRAPHIE,  Elizabeth Avedon’s Photography BlogSpot, ARTS AND LETTERS JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE,  WRITING ON WATER  (MIT Press), PARABOLA Magazine, IN PRAISE OF THE MUSE: Women Artists Datebook, and COMBINATIONS: A JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY.  Her work was the subject of an Adams-Russell Cable TV documentary, MARGARET McCARTHY PHOTOGRAPHS IRELAND.   McCarthy’s images have garnered clients as diverse as BMG Classics (the Bertelsmann Music Group), Narada World Music, Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co., Westchester Gannett Newspapers and the New York Times Travel Section.  She has also documented the peace and social justice movements of the last two decades with her camera.  She is a member of ASMP, the American Society of Media Photographers and its Fine Art Brain trust, and APA, American Photographic Artists.

McCarthy has been awarded fellowship grants from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Ragdale Foundation and The Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences.   The National Tourist Office of Spain, The Irish Tourist Board, The Council on International Education Exchange (CIEE) and The Aegean Institute have supported her independent photographic projects all over the world.

A graduate of New York City’s School of Visual Arts, she has taught and mentored art students through The Great Lakes Colleges New York Arts Program.

An accomplished writer as well, McCarthy’s poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines and journals; her play about John Lennon, THE SACRIFICIAL KING, was given a New York City production by the World 3 Theatre Company.

DEIRDRE was presented at La Mama Theatre’s Experiments, NYC.

Her latest venture A VISION AND A VERSE www.avisionandaverse.com

combines her imagery and poetry as an electronic broadside.

CONTACT: Annekingmanpage@gmail.com

Charlotte Brooks is a photojournalist who worked for LOOK magazine
from 1951 until 1971 and was the only long-term woman staff photographer during LOOK’s 35 year history. As a “sociologist with a camera” Brooks’ thoughtful photographs document the changing face of America in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Brooks was born charlotte Finkelstein on September 16, 1918 in Brooklyn, New York where she grew up graduating from Erasmus Hall, Brooklyn College and later attended University of Minnesota.

Charlotte returned to New York to further pursue her childhood interests in photography and dance. She studied with Bernice Abbott at the New School for Social Research and in 1942 got a job combining both her
passions assisting photographer Barbara Morgan, famous for her images of modern dance pioneer Martha Graham. In 1943 she became Gjon Mili’s assistant and became well versed in his Modernist style. She branched out on her own in 1944 and after her images were brought to the attention of Roy Stryker she joined his project at Standard Oil of New Jersey documenting in photographs the story of oil during World War II. The job ended in 1946 when Stryker’s FSA team returned from war.

After freelancing for the next three years, her friend Arthur Rothstein
introduced her to the people at LOOK magazine in 1951 where she remained until its demise in 1971. As a female magazine staff
photographer at that time, Brooks broke ground and changed the workplace for future women photojournalists. When she joined
the American Society for Magazine Photographers she was only one of three female members. In 1953 she served as its secretary and
vice-president in 1955 and negotiated hard to change the gender differential in pay.

In the years following LOOK Charlotte conducted photography workshops for the U.S. State Department in Romania and Soviet Georgia in the mid-1970’s and held classes for teenagers at a local community center.

Albert Dixon Simmons, naturalist, outdoors photographer, author, and guide

Archive Representative: John W. Flynn, Jr. adsimphoto@gmail.com https://www.fastcatchpress.com

Albert Dixon Simmons (1891-1972) was a pioneer in nature action photography and film making, their uses in studying avian flight mechanics, and the uses of early Kodachrome color films. He authored two photography books in association with noted sporting genre publisher and editor Eugene V. Connett III.

A native of Prince Edward Island and 1916 MIT graduate (Architecture), the Great Depression forced a focus shift to his passion for the outdoors, at first using motion picture cameras to reveal the technical nuances of avian wing motion. Soon after, by adapting a Leica 35mm camera mount to a simulated rifle stock with open gun sights, Simmons “shot” fast-moving birds in flight, with revealing and elegant still images collectively published as Wing Shots (1936, Derrydale Press, NY). With its release noted by Time magazine, each of the 83 Wing Shots images was a gravure print made from a corresponding mounted, titled and signed black & white photograph. The images spoke for themselves, with no accompanying text beyond the dust jacket notes, Foreword, and List of Illustrations.

Selected images were included in E. Leitz’s promotional Leica touring exhibits, the 1937 Leica Annual, 1938 Leica Manual, print ads, and articles Simmons published in Nature and Field & Stream magazines. Also in 1936, he became involved with the first generation of Kodachrome 16mm motion picture and 35mm transparency films, traveling to the US Gulf Coast and Bird Rock (Rocher aux Oiseaux) in Canada to document migratory species with some of the first color images and films of birds in the wild.

Wing Shots mounted black and white prints comprise nearly all of Simmons’s signed works. He made only a few personal prints from Bird Rock images and a handful of prints after the 1930s, preferring transparencies for slide show presentations. He wrote and photographed commercially for wartime and sporting publications and equipment manufacturers, was Outdoors editor for the Cleveland News, provided radio commentary, and maintained long-term relationships with the Cleveland Zoo and Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He contracted as guide/photographer for hunting and fishing expeditions, with his experiences from Alaska to Africa culminating in Photography for Sportsmen (1951, D. van Nostrand, NY), a detailed how-to guide for nature and outdoors photographers and filmmakers.

Each year, Simmons and his wife summered in her native Nova Scotia, combining family, friends, and work, until his death there in 1972. His cameras and extensive library, many negatives, transparencies, prints, and motion pictures, were sold, given away, or misplaced in the ensuing years. However, the majority of original Wing Shots negatives, many early Kodachromes, and unpublished medium format images depicting Maritime province life in the 1950’s and early ‘60s, were kept by his daughter but remained idle for decades.

In 2011, the chance internet discovery of a misidentified manuscript about Bird Rock, hand-assembled by Simmons and begun over 70 years earlier, resolved a family mystery that he was attempting to complete a third book in his last years, though nothing was found after his passing. Early in 1972 and in failing health, Simmons had sent the manuscript to the colleague who accompanied him to Bird Rock thirty-five years earlier, in 1937, as a gesture of friendship and thanks. Against extreme odds, it rejoined the Simmons archive, which is managed by his grandson.

The George Eastman House keeps a small number of Simmons’s transparencies in its permanent collection as examples of first-generation Kodachrome and glass slide mounting technique. Princeton University’s Firestone library houses Eugene Connett’s papers, which include correspondences between his Derrydale Press, E. Leitz, Inc. (Leica), and Simmons.

Sweetie and Sonya on Borinquen,Brooklyn, New York, 1999

Contact: regina.monfort@icloud.com / www.reginamonfort.com

Born in 1958 in Saint-Brieuc, France, Regina Monfort left home at a young age, compelled to expand her horizons. Her love for black-and-white cinematography drove her to study photography. In 1984, after graduating from L’Ecole de Photographie de la Ville de Bruxelles, Monfort left Europe for the United States. Not interested in pursuing a career in commercial photography, she worked as an assistant photographer at the Dallas Museum of Art and later as a museum photographer for the Yale University Art Gallery. On her time off, Monfort pursued her own work with the nude figure and experimental portraiture. In 1990, shortly after moving to New York she became employed at the Irving Penn Studio where she spent seven years working closely with the photographer’s print archive.

In 1994, Monfort began photographing young people from the Puerto Rican and Dominican communities of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg section. It is then that she recognized a passion for working in the documentary mode. In 1997, an essay titled, “Growing up in Brooklyn,” appeared in CultureFront Magazine. Later that year, Monfort received a prize from the Columbia School of Art resulting in an exhibition in the New York City subway. In 1998, her work was nominated for the Human Spirit Essay category as part as the annual Alfred Eisenstaedt Award in Magazine Photography. That same year, with grants from the Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts, Monfort produced outdoor slide shows in the communities she documented.

Monfort’s photographs have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Public Library, the Columbia University School of Social Work, Fotoseptiembre, Kansas State University, Lianzhou International Photo Festival, the Museum of the City of New York, The New York Public Library, PhotoEspana, Soros Open Society Institute and in the New York City Subway among other venues. Selected works are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Library of Congress, the Museum of the City of New York, the New York Public Library and the Yale Art Gallery. Her work has appeared in DoubleTake, French Elle, El Diario, the Children’s Beat, Mixt(e), Newsday, Photo District News, The Source, The Village Voice and a number of cultural and scholarly publications.

Monfort has taught at CUNY La Guardia Community College, Pratt Institute and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her interest in the preservation of photographic legacies has brought her to work with a number of archives. From 1997 to 2003 she was assistant director on Contacts -a French documentary film series exploring the work methods of established photographers. Monfort’s other documentary projects include North High School, Iowa, 1999: Revisiting notions of identity, alienation and belonging in America at the turn of the century; Methamphetamine Addiction in the American Heartland, Kansas, 2004 and the Bronx Riviera: a cultural love affair.

Bedrich Grunzweig
American, b. Prague, 1910 – 2009
Archive contact: Ruth Grunzweig Roth 212.838.9368 GrunzweigPhotography@Ymail.com
Vintage prints: Margit Erb, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York City 212.334.0010 margit@howardgreenberg.com

Bedrich Grunzweig was born in 1910 in Prague and grew up in Brno, Czechoslovakia. Following university studies and service in the Czech army, he took an administrative post in a sugar mill. In 1939, he escaped from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia with his first wife, Judith Winterstein. His grandmother, parents and older brother, Hans, were all murdered by the Nazis. Bedrich’s first photograph, made in 1926, was a portrait of Hans.

Arriving in the U.S., he settled permanently in New York City, whose architectural forms, visual excitement and relentless pace would inform and inspire his photography throughout his life. Following a job at the Czech Pavilion of the 1939 World’s Fair and service with the wartime Czech government-in-exile, he joined the newly formed United Nations where he worked until his retirement in 1974. In each case, he worked in the field of communications, media and public information. In 1961, he served for nine months in a leadership role at the UN peace-keeping operation in the Congo.

Since the 1940s, Bedrich Grunzweig had been photographing life in a wide range of locations, with a particular interest in his adopted hometown, New York City. His best known images include “Between Heaven and Earth,” a spectacular shot of a window cleaner at the United Nations building which won U.S. Camera magazine’s first prize in 1951, as well as being published in Popular Photography’s 1952 Annual and in the 1952 Annual of American Photography.

In 1964, he won the Saturday Review first prize for his photograph of architect Eero Saarinen’s ground breaking TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport. In 1973 his work was exhibited at the solo show “Return to Prague: A Personal Sojourn” at the Jewish Museum in New York City and at the Koffler Centre for the Arts in Toronto.

After retirement from the UN, Grunzweig became adviser to International Center of Photography (ICP) founder and director, Cornell Capa, from 1974 to 1994. He worked with new photographers, curated photo exhibits and, in 1984, was invited by the ICP to exhibit a one-man show of his photos. Describing Grunzweig’s work, Cornell Capa said, “Through his life span, he has seen much. He has gentle humor, and great sensitivity to the human tragedy.”

Grunzweig returned to Prague, the city of his birth, three times between 1969 and 1983 and again in 1991 and in 1998. This last visit marked the opening of the one-man retrospective show “Between Heaven and Earth”, Grunzweig’s first exhibit in the city of his birth.

In his later years, Grunzweig had a solo show at New York’s Leica Gallery and a solo retrospective of his New York City photographs at John Stevenson Gallery. His photograph, “Home From Work” was featured on the exhibit poster for the 1998 retrospective “Eight Million Stories: 20th-Century New York Life in Prints and Photographs from the New York Public Library”. Grunzweig ‘s work continues to be represented by New York’s Howard Greenberg Gallery.

In addition to documenting life in New York City, Grunzweig traveled and photographed in diverse locations, including the American Rockies, Congo, Czech Republic, Israel, Vermont, Toronto, Mexico, and more.

His work can be found in the collections of numerous museums and institutions, including the New York Public Library, the United Nations Photography Archives, The Museum of Modem Art (New York-NYC), the Metropolitan Museum (NYC), the International Center of Photography (NYC), the Cooper-Hewitt Museum (NYC), the Seagram’s Photo Collection (NYC), the Library for the Performing Arts (NYC), the Jewish Museum (NYC), the Israel Museum (Jerusalem), the University of Haifa, the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora (Tel Aviv), and the Moravian Museum. He is listed in the Auer & Auer and George Eastman House databases.

Bedrich Grunzweig died on February 21, 2009, just short of his 99th birthday. He is survived by his wife Ann Roudebush Grunzweig, daughter Ruth Grunzweig Roth, grandsons S. Adam Roth and A. Daniel Roth and son-in-law, J. Lipa Roth.

Sol Prom is the photographer pen name of Solomon Fabricant (1906 – 1989). He joined the New York Photo League when he was in his early 30s while he was working on his doctorate in Economics at Columbia University. A serious amateur photographer, he was typical of most members of the Photo League–a first generation Jewish-American who had attended public school and City College before going on to graduate school.

Throughout his life, both early on in his photographs, and later as a prominent economist, he was concerned about the human condition and was committed to bringing about social reform. Starting as a research assistant, he rose to become Director of Research at the National Bureau of Economic Research where he did pioneering research on the measurement of productivity. He was also a Professor of Economics at New York University and served on many private and governmental commissions and boards.

He was a member of the Photo League between 1936 and 1939 and worked with the Feature group on three projects: “Park Avenue North and South”, “Dead End: the Bowery”, and “Harlem Document.” Having a life-long interest in photography, Prom remained an amateur photographer throughout the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s using his home darkroom. From then on, subject matter was primarily family and people and sights on travels throughout the world.

In the 30’s and early 40’s, his Harlem Document photos, as well as those of other members of Aaron Siskind’s Feature Group, were exhibited and published widely. More recent exhibits including his work have been at the National Gallery of Canada, the International Center of Photography in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Museum of Art of the University of Iowa, the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin, the Columbus Museum of Art, OH, and, at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York City. In addition, he was represented in “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951”, an exhibit cosponsored by the Jewish Museum and the Columbus Museum of Art. His work from the Photo League years is in private collections as well as in the permanent collections of the Columbus Museum of Art, OH, and the Jewish Museum, New York City. Prom is represented by the Howard Greenberg Gallery, and, a website devoted to his photography can be found at www.solpromphotography.com.

Harold Feinstein

1931 – 2015

Home page:  http://www.haroldfeinstein.com/

Harold Feinstein is best known for his mid-20^th century street photography,  particularly his six decades of photographing Coney Island.  He was born in Coney Island Hospital b. April 17, 1931)  to immigrant Russian and Austrian parents.  He began his career in photography in 1946 at the age of 15 and when he was only 19, Edward Steichen, an early supporter,  purchased his work for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).  He joined the Photo League at 17, was an early exhibitor at Helen Gee’s Limelight Gallery and had his first show at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in 1954.  He worked closely with W. Eugene Smith for many years.

While his Coney Island work has been much celebrated, Feinstein’s breadth and exposure is far greater.  His photographs from the Korean War, taken from the perspective of a draftee, offer an intimate look at the daily life of young conscripts from induction to  basic training to the front lines.  In addition, he has a large collection of classic street photography, nudes, portraits and still life.   His first black and white monograph,  Harold Feinstein: A Retrospective was published in 2012 by Nazraeli Press.  He also has a large body of color work, both 35mm and digital and seven books of large format color botanical and still life subjects.   His foray into digital earned him the Smithsonian Computerworld Award in 2000.

Feinstein is also renowned as a teacher.  In his early 20’s he began teaching in New York City, and developed a large following.  In addition to his private workshops held in his studio, he has taught at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications, Philadelphia Museum School, School of Visual Arts in NYC, the University of Massachusetts, Maryland Institute of Art, Windham College, and College of the Holy Cross.  Feinstein himself was fundamentally self-taught and never graduated from high school, though he did enjoy a class with Sid Grossman in the late 50’s.  His teaching style urged experimentation and emphasized seeing over technique.  Even though as a teacher he under-emphasized technique,  the editors of Modern Photography and later, Popular Photography utilized his work frequently to showcase technique and asked him to contribute his own articles explaining darkroom technique,  composition and printmaking.

Feinstein’s photographs have been exhibited in and are represented in the permanent collections of major museums around the globe including the Museum of Modern Art, International Center of Photography, George Eastman House, Museum of Photographic Arts, Center for Creative Photography,  Musée d’Art Moderne, the

Jewish Museum,  the Museum for the City of New York and many others.