ARTS REVIEW: "THE RADICAL CAMERA: NEW YORK'S PHOTO LEAGUE"

Through a Social Lens - Ironic Images from the 1930s Reflect Occupy Wall Street Today

By: Roslyn Bernstein

January 4, 2012

(The Jewish Museum New York, New York) It might as well be Occupy Wall Street, 2011.  Projected on the wall in the first room of The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951 exhibit at The Jewish Museum in New York is an excerpt from the Workers Newsreel Unemployment Special 1931: “In the richest country in the world, two billion dollars of relief for banks…But no help for unemployment.” On March 6, 1930, over 100,000 workers rallied in Union Square. Many held up signs that read: “We Demand Jobless Relief.”

The newsreel is a fitting introduction to the work of the New York Photo League photographers whose passionate interest in documentary photography was closely aligned with their progressive political views. Rejecting the prevailing style of modernism, New York Photo League photographers preferred “the gritty reality of urban life.”

The exhibit of over 145 vintage photographs has a single subject: the human condition. Through their manipulation of light, composition, and focus, we understand the photographer’s point of view. Among the many things we learn is that a photo, Wall Street, by Paul Strand, originally had a more pointed title, “Pedestrian Raked by Morning Light in a Canyon of Commerce." In the powerful black-and-white image from 1915, people walk on the sidewalk, dwarfed by the new JP Morgan Company building at 23 Wall Street.

Two advances -- the introduction of small hand-held 35mm cameras in the 1920s and the arrival of Life and Look in the 1930s -- transformed the aesthetic, feeding the public’s hunger for socially oriented photography. So many of the images in the exhibit illuminate major issues of the day. Eliot Elisofon’s 1940 photo is of an empty lot with the sign, “WPA Cleaned This Area for the Department of Sanitation. Keep it Clean.” A May Day Parade by Joe Schwartz (1936) depicts people with the sign, “Slums Must Go.”

Led by Aaron Siskind, a group of 10 league photographers -- including Jack Manning, Max Yavno, Morris Engel, and Siskind -- took pictures in Harlem over a four-year period. After being exhibited, the work appeared in a 1940 Look Magazine photo essay, "244,000 Native Sons.” The images were strong, but many critics contend that the series produced a rather negative and stereotypical view of Harlem.

The Cold War took its toll on The New York Photo League. On December 5, 1947, the U.S. Attorney General blacklisted the Photo League as an organization that was “totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive.” Two years later, Sid Grossman, one of its leading members, was named by an informant as a Communist and the League as a front organization. Ironically, the attack came at a time when its members were producing some of their most powerful work.

There was Rebecca Lepkoff’s image, Lower East Side, shot in 1947, which showed an ad for the film Gentleman’s Agreement. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1947, the film focused on anti-Semitism in America. Unfortunately, the House Un-American Activities Committee was unhappy with its message, and two of its Jewish actors were placed on the Hollywood Blacklist.

There was Eugene Smith’s photo essay, “Nurse Midwife Maude Callen Eases Pain of Birth, Life and Death,” which appeared in Life on December 3, 1951. Smith followed Callen around for her grueling 16-hour day to shoot the photo essay. In wall text, Smith’s words seem to echo the philosophy of many of his photo league comrades, “I am a compassionate cynic…I have tried to let the truth be my prejudice.”

Four years after the 1947 blacklisting from the Attorney General, the New York Photo League closed down -- a casualty of the Cold War.

"The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951" is showing at The Jewish Museum until March 25, 2012, traveling to Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus Ohio April 19, 2012-September 9, 2012, then the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco October 11, 2012-January 21, 2013, and the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida February 9, 2013-April 21, 2013.