Images

Bio

Ted Croner (American, b. December 5th, 1922 – d. August 15, 2005) was born in Baltimore, MD. and grew up in Charlotte, N.C. His interest in photography began as a boy and continued through college at University of North Carolina. After joining the army during World War II, he worked as an aerial photographer with the United States Army Air Corps stationed in the South Pacific. After the war, in 1946 , Croner went to New York where he and Bill Helburn, another former Air Corps photographer, used their G.I. Bill aid to open a small photography studio on West 57th street in Manhattan. Shortly after that, on a ski trip in Stowe, Vt., Croner met Fernand Fonssagrives, fashion photographer, who urged him to continue in this field and recommended that he enroll in Alexey Brodovitch’s photography class at the New School. Perhaps Croner’s best-known work , “Taxi – New York Night, 1947-48,” was taken while he was a student in Brodovitch’s legendary “design laboratory”. In producing this dazzling bold blur of an image, Croner took a leaf from his mentor’s book and went a few steps further. Brodovitch had created a book of photographs: “Ballet”, published in 1945, which captured the evanescent, elegant nature of dance.

In 1948 Edward Steichen , then director of photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, chose to include Croner in two exhibitions at the Museum: “In and Out of Focus” and “Four Photographers” which included three other photographers: Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan and Lisette Model. Other exhibitions of Croner’s work followed over the years. As he continued to accept commercial work at magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, Croner pursued his own photography, producing vigorously experimental, cinematic images of cafeterias, solitary diners and the city after dark.

In later years he accepted commissions from large corporate clients such as Chase Manhattan Bank and Coca-Cola as well as several New York Times Magazine covers and editorial work. Interest in his work was revived with the publication of “The New York School , Photographs” by Jane Livingston in 1992 which followed the 1985 exhibition of the same name at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC. For the cover of the book Ms. Livingston chose a picture by Croner “New York at Night, 1948” which shows a Manhattan skyline reduced to abstract slashes of white light among black tall buildings against a gun-metal gray sky. Ms. Livingston wrote that images such as that “most quintessentially defined the New York School”.

After the publication of the book, in 1995 the Howard Greenberg Gallery gave Croner a solo exhibition. This was followed by inclusion in the exhibition “By Night” at The Cartier Foundation in Paris in 1996 and the Whitney Museum’s 1999 exhibition “American Century Part II”. In 2002 he was included in the group show “New York Scene: Ted Croner, Sid Grossman, Saul Leiter and Leon Levinstein” at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, in 2005 in the exhibition “At The Crossroads of Time: A Times Square Centennial” at the Axa Gallery in New York, as well as “Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography 1940-1959” at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2010.

Please contact Catherine Croner for more information at cronerphoto@verizon.net

John G. Zimmerman
1927-2002
Archive contact: Linda Zimmerman: lindazimmerman1@me.com

In a career spanning over fifty years, John Gerald Zimmerman (b. Oct 30, 1927 – d. Aug 3, 2002) was one of the premier magazine photographers in an era when magazines set the visual agenda for the country. His hallmarks of technical precision and innovation produced groundbreaking photographs and influenced a generation of photographers.

Zimmerman’s formal training began with a three-year photography course at John C. Fremont High School in Los Angeles. Taught by Hollywood cinematographer C.A. Bach, the intensive program became famous for launching the careers of no less than six Life photographers. After graduating high school and a brief stint in the Navy, Zimmerman freelanced out of several Life bureaus. His first assignment as a Time staffer (Nov 1950) was a memorable one and presaged an instinct for capturing split-second action. Leaving the White House just as Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to assassinate President Truman, Zimmerman shot some of the first photos of the assault. Also noteworthy from this early period is a series of assignments for Ebony depicting the lives of African Americans in the Jim Crow South.

Zimmerman was hired as one of Sports Illustrated’s first staff photographers in 1956 and was instrumental in making the magazine a vanguard of innovative sports photography. His use of unique camera placements, remote controlled cameras, motor-driven camera sequences, slit cameras and double-shutter designs revolutionized the field.

Sports Illustrated photographer Walter Iooss Jr. recalled watching Zimmerman edit photographs of basketball star Wilt Chamberlain in 1961. “It was the first time a photojournalist had placed a camera above the rim of a basket. It was like looking at something from another planet. It had never been done before. No one had seen the game from there.”

Zimmerman left Sports Illustrated in 1963 to work for The Saturday Evening Post but would continue to freelance for SI throughout his career, amassing a remarkable 107 covers, including seven of the ever-popular SI Swimsuit issues. From the 1970s until his retirement in 1991, he combined editorial work for Time Inc. with commercial photography, shooting major advertising campaigns for Ford, Exxon, G.E. and Coca Cola, among others.

Summing up Zimmerman’s career in a Photo Magazine tribute in 2002, photographer Neil Leifer wrote: “John was a master of lighting, whether the subject was a 20,000 seat arena or Christie Brinkley on a beach. He was at ease shooting in 35mm or large format, as adept with wide-angle lenses as he was with telephotos. I put him up there with Avedon, Leibovitz, Penn, and Adams.”

An excellent description of Zimmerman’s early career can be found in The Masters of Contemporary Photography Series, Photographing Sports: John G. Zimmerman, Mark Kaufman & Neil Leifer (Alskog, 1975). He is included in The Great Life Photographers (Bulfinch, 2004).

Ruth Orkin (1921 – 1985)

Ruth Orkin was an award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker. Orkin was the only child of Mary Ruby, a silent-film actress, and Samuel Orkin, a manufacturer of toy boats called Orkin Craft. She grew up in Hollywood in the heyday of the 1920s and 1930s. At the age of 10, she received her first camera, a 39 cent Univex. She began by photographing her friends and teachers at school. At 17 years old she took a monumental bicycle trip across the United States from Los Angeles to New York City to see the 1939 World’s Fair, and she photographed along the way.

Orkin moved to New York in 1943, where she worked as a nightclub photographer and shot baby pictures by day to buy her first professional camera. She worked for all the major magazines in 1940s, and also went to Tanglewood during the summers to shoot rehearsals. She ended up with many of the worlds’ greatest musicians of the time including Leonard Bernstein, Isaac Stern, Aaron Copland, Jascha Heifitz, Serge Koussevitzky and many others.

In 1951, LIFE magazine sent her to Israel with the Israeli Philharmonic. Orkin then went to Italy, and it was in Florence where she met Nina Lee Craig, an art student and fellow American, who became the subject of “American Girl in Italy.” The photograph was part of a series originally titled “Don’t Be Afraid to Travel Alone” about what they encountered as women traveling alone in Europe after the war.

On her return to New York, Orkin married the photographer and filmmaker Morris Engel. Together they produced two feature films, including the classic “Little Fugitive” which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953. From their New York apartment overlooking Central Park, Orkin photographed marathons, parades, concerts, demonstrations, and the beauty of the changing seasons. These photographs were the subject of two widely acclaimed books, “A World Through My Window” and “More Pictures From My Window.” After a long struggle with cancer, Orkin passed away in her apartment, surrounded by her wonderful legacy of photographs with the view of Central Park outside her window.

Morris Engel
1918 – 2005
Home page: http://www.engelphoto.com
Archive contact: Mary Engel – orkinphoto@aol.com

Morris Engel (American, b. April 8, 1918 – d. March 5, 2005) was born in Brooklyn to immigrant parents from Lithuania. An early interest in photography led him to enroll in a class at New York’s Photo League, a group dedicated to raising social consciousness through modern photography. Some of the most influential photographers of the time were associated with the Photo League; Engel worked closely with Aaron Siskind on the project “Harlem Document” from 1936-40 and later assisted Paul Strand in filming Native Land.

Like many Photo League photographers, Engel documented life in New York City, producing and exhibiting photo essays on Coney Island, the Lower East Side and Harlem. In 1939 he had his first exhibition at New York’s New School. In 1940 he joined the staff of the newspaper PM, but he left the publication one year later to sign on with the U.S. Navy as a member of a combat photo unit. He participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

In 1951 Engel momentarily quit still photography to pursue a career in filmmaking. He made a series of low budget films with a custom 35 mm camera. His first feature film, Little Fugitive (made with his wife, the renowned photographer Ruth Orkin), earned an Academy Award nomination in 1953 for Best Original Screenplay and was screened in more than 5,000 theaters across the United States.

Engel’s photographs are widely exhibited and found in the collections of the International Center of Photography (New York), the Museum of the City of New York, the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.). His films continue to be screened at venues such as the Whitney Museum of Art (New York), the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of the Moving Image (New York).

Esther Bubley
1921 – 1998
Home page: http://www.estherbubley.com
Archive contact: Jean Bubley (jbb@kovitzsystems.net)

Esther Bubley (American, b. February 16, 1921 – d. March 16, 1998) was born in Phillips, Wisconsin to Jewish immigrant parents from Eastern Europe. Influenced by the new picture magazine LIFE and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographs of depression-era America, Bubley set her sights on a career in photography while she was still in high school. After a two-year diversion to teacher’s college, Bubley took a job in a photo lab. With her earnings and a scholarship, she attended the one-year photography program at the Minneapolis College of Art, and at age 20 moved to Washington, DC to make her mark as a photographer.

Bubley had difficulty finding work in the capital and moved to New York City where she had a series of short-lived jobs and continued to study photography. In December 1941, when the U.S. entered WWII, the job market suddenly opened up for women. Bubley was summoned to the National Archives to microfilm rare books, and she returned to Washington. There she was introduced to Roy Stryker, whose FSA photographic section had recently been transferred to the Office of War Information (OWI). Stryker hired Bubley to work in the lab, but soon promoted her to photographer.

When Stryker left to establish a photographic archive for the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), Bubley and several other FSA/OWI photographers followed him. Bubley freelanced for Standard Oil for the next twenty years. At the same time, she freelanced for LIFE magazine, Ladies’ Home Journal, the Children’s Bureau, the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, UNICEF, Pepsi-Cola International, and Pan American World Airways, among others. Her work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She won two top place awards in competitions sponsored jointly by the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the Encyclopedia Britannica, several awards from the Art Director’s Club, and in 1954 was the first woman to win a first place award in Photography Magazine’s International division.

Bubley’s work is still widely exhibited, and it is found in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the Standard Oil Collection at the University of Louisville, the Pittsburgh Photographic Library Collection at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, the National Portrait Gallery, the International Center of Photography, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego.