Milton Rogovin

Milton Rogovin ( born December 30, 1909 in New York City; † January 18, 2011 in Buffalo, New York) was an American social documentary photographer, the other major photographers of this art movement, such as Lewis Hine, Jacob August Riis, Dorothea Long or Gordon Parks is called. His works are in the Library of Congress, issued the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Center for Creative Photography and other major museums and institutions.

Youth and Education

Milton Rogovin was born in 1909 as the youngest son of Jacob Rogovin and his wife Dora in Brooklyn, New York City. Jacob Rogovin had immigrated in 1904 from the time of the Russian Empire belonging Lithuania to the United States; his wife Dora followed him with her still born in 1904 in Lithuania son Sam in the following year to the U.S. after. 1907 Louis, the second son of the family was born. Milton Rogovins parents ran a small business for textiles and household goods, first in Manhattan on Park Avenue near 112th Street, in 1920 in Brooklyn in the Bay Ridge section. From 1920 Milton Rogovin attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, took subsequently at Columbia University to study optometry ( eye care ) to which he graduated in 1931 with a Bachelor of Science degree. Due to the effects of the Great Depression, the business of the parents got into difficulties. In 1931 the company was forced to declare bankruptcy. A few months later, his father died of a heart attack.

Early years professional

After his studies he worked as an optician in Manhattan. The loss of his parents' business and the realization that the economic bankruptcy of his parents was not a single fate, but large parts of American society as they suffered just below the desperate economic conditions that led Rogovin, to become politically active. In an interview in 2004 he said that his real education began only after the Columbia University. " I Could no longer be indifferent to the problems of people, Especially the poor, the forgotten ones. " ("The problems of the people could no longer be the same to me, especially not the problems of the poor, the, forgotten " ') " I was a product of the Great depression and what I saw and experienced myself made ​​me politically active. " ("I was a product of the Great Depression. What I saw and what happened to me yourself, let me be politically active. " ) He began to read the writings of left-wing political activists, such as the 1930, written by Mike Gold Bestseller "Jews without money ", or" Change the World " from 1937, also the work of the anarchist and peace activist Emma Goldman. They confirmed him in the opinion that a change in economic and political conditions had to be effected. He began attending classes run by the Communist Party New York Workers School and read communist newspapers such as The Daily Worker. At this time he was also the first time the social -documentary work of photographer Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine August in contact.

In 1938, Rogovin moved to Buffalo and opened his own optician's shop next year. In Buffalo Milton Rogovin met his future wife, Anne. ( Anne, Born Snetsky - later changed Setters / * August 4, 1918 in Buffalo, † 7 July 2003; Her parents, Rose and Chaim Snetsky, had immigrated from Ukraine to the USA). Milton Rogovin and Anne Snetsky married on April 7, 1942.

In November of the same year Rogovin was drafted into the U.S. Army and trained as an X -ray technician for the Air Force. While an X -ray Training school attended in Indiana in 1943, he won with a photo of a local waterfall the first prize in a photography competition organized by the school; he had just bought the year before his first camera. 1944, Rogovins first daughter Ellen was born. But because of its temporal displacement between the ground forces he had no way to see them before he was stationed in England. In England he worked until he retired in 1945 at a hospital in Cirencester as Optometrist; then he returned back to Buffalo in 1945 and helped to organize a local chapter of the Optical Workers Union in this city. He was a member of the local section of the Communist Party, and sat down in the American civil rights movement for the equality of African- Americans, as well as for the release of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. In 1946, his son, Mark, was then born in 1947 his second daughter Paula.

Work as a photographer

Rogovins union activities and his membership in the Communist Party led inevitably to the fact that he got into the tense atmosphere of the so-called Cold War and the concomitant anti-Communist hysteria of the McCarthy era targeted by the House Un - American Activities Committee ( HUAC ). On October 3, 1957 Milton Rogovin was loaded before the HUAC. Rogovin refused to make a statement, or " to name names" ( " naming names " - means: to denounce others) and invoked his right to remain silent ( 5th Amendment). "I was active in radical movements did at time, Especially in the African - American community, and of course I refused to answer questions Their. " ("I was at this time [ left ] radical movements active, especially in [ political groups ] of the African-American community. And of course, I refused to answer their [ HUAC ] questions." ) Said Rogovin 2000 relating to a Interview with Buffalo News.

However, the newspapers in Buffalo subtitled: " Buffalo's Number One Red, " ( " Buffalo Red Number 1" ), or " Rogovin, named as top red in Buffalo, Balks at Nearly all queries " ( " Rogovin, as a top Red in Buffalo referred, denied to almost all questions the answer is " ) ( Buffalo Evening News). As a result, Milton Rogovin and his wife Anne were repeatedly interrogated by the FBI. The FBI also interviewed neighbors who then called names or trademarks of cars that were parked outside the house of Rogovins etc. The impact of these witch hunts were devastating. The turnover of the business fell by more than half. When Anne Rogovin, which is granted to a public school education until then, refused to drop the so-called " Loyalty Oath" ( " loyalty oath " [ on the Constitution of the United States ] ) for the teaching staff in public schools, they had to leave school. She found a new job at Erie 1 BOCES ( Board of Cooperative Educational Services ) and taught for more than thirty years with great success mentally handicapped children; besides they also published numerous books about parenting. And not just the working life of Rogovin was concerned, the neighbors treated the whole family like lepers, imposed collective punishment. Numerous neighbors forbade their children to play with Rogovins children.

However, Rogovin was demonstrated by this stigma neither get nor swayed, but was looking for other ways to express his political concerns. "My voice Essentially what silenced, so I thought did photographing people ... I would be able to speak out about the problems of people, this time through my photography. " ( " My voice was indeed silenced, so I thought that I could speak through photographing people ... [ yet ] about the problems of these people. Time through my photographs. " )

His first project was the " Storefront Church " photo series. WEBDu Bois, a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had encouraged him to do so. Rogovin already had some of Burghardt's writings, such as " Souls of Black Folk" and "Dark Water: Voices from Within the Veil " read. His friend William H. Tallmadge, a professor of music at Buffalo State College, intended to make tape recordings of the songs and music in these churches, encouraged him to take photographs. Tallmadge finished his work from after three months. Rogovin but made 3 years shots of these little churches and these people before he completed his work. He met the renowned photographer Minor White know. White was a curator at the George Eastman House, taught photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology and was co-founder and publisher of the photo magazine Aperture. White published Rogovins " Storefront Church " series in Aperture and advised him in the advancement of his recording techniques. White suggested Rogovin also on to justify extensive photo sequences on a single subject, which in turn, durchzustrukturieren by smaller, self- produced series of images - a suggestion that further developed Rogovin in a row to their own art style. By linking cross-sectional photo sets with ( temporal ) longitudinal sections and his diptychs, triptychs in, finally converted to quartets, he allowed the viewer deeper insights about the impact of economic and social development over a longer period.

In 1972 he received his Master of Arts in American Studies at the University at Buffalo. He then taught there from 1972 to 1974 documentary photography. Rogovin 1975 held at the Albright -Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo its first major exhibition from. In the following years he published several books of his sequences and presented his work at other exhibitions. Many of his works are in the collections of museums such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles or the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to see.

In his later years his health deteriorated, and Rogovin was confined to a wheelchair, so he retired from photography. 2009 Rogovin was nominated for a National Medal of Arts, but not excellent.

Works ( photo series )

• Storefront Churches. in: Aperture, vol. 10:2, pp. 62-85, Rochester, NY, 1962.
• The Lower West Side. With an appreciation by Paul beach. Buffalo, NY: Albright - Knox Art Gallery, 1975.
• Dennis Maloney (ed). Windows That Open Inward: Images of Chile. Photographs by Milton Rogovin, Poems by Pablo Neruda. White Pine Press, Buffalo & New York 1985.
• Cheryl Brutvan et al, Milton Rogovin: . The Forgotten Ones. Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1985.
• Fresh, Michael: Portraits in Steel. Photographs by Milton Rogovin. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York 1993.
• Robert Coles et al. Triptychs: Buffalo's Lower West Side Revisited. Photographs by Milton Rogovin. With essay by JoAnn Wypijewski. W. W. Norton & Company, New York & London 1994.
• Dave Isay et al, Milton Rogovin: . The Forgotten Ones. The Quantuck Lane Press, New York 2003.
• Dennis Maloney (ed): . With Eyes and Soul: Images of Cuba. Poems by Nancy Morejon, Photographs by Milton Rogovin. White Pine Press, Buffalo & New York, 2004.
• The Mining Photographs. Essay by Judith Keller. Getty Publications, Los Angeles, California. 2005
• Nada Queda Atrás. Poems by Carlos Trujillo, Photographs by Milton Rogovin. Museo de Arte Moderno Ediciones Chiloe, Chile. 2008