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Arthur Rothstein | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Rothstein in 1938 | |
| Born | (1915-07-17)July 17, 1915 New York City, US |
| Died | November 11, 1985(1985-11-11) (aged 70) |
| Alma mater | Columbia University (B.A.) |
| Occupation(s) | Photojournalist and teacher |
| Known for | Photography |
Arthur Rothstein (July 17, 1915 – November 11, 1985) was an Americanphotographer. His career spanned five decades, and he received recognition as one of America's premierphotojournalists.
The son ofJewish immigrants,[1] Rothstein was born in Manhattan,New York City, and he grew up in the Bronx. He was a 1935 graduate ofColumbia University,[2] where he was a founder of the University Camera Club and photography editor ofThe Columbian, the undergraduate yearbook.[3] He was a classmate of abstract painterAd Reinhardt.[2] Following his graduation from Columbia during theGreat Depression, Rothstein was invited to Washington DC by one of his professors at Columbia,Roy Stryker. Rothstein had been Stryker's student at Columbia University in the early 1930s.[4]
In 1935, as a college senior, Rothstein prepared a set of copy photographs for a picture source book on American agriculture that Stryker and another professor,Rexford Tugwell were assembling. The book was never published, but before the year was out, Tugwell, who had left Columbia to be part of FDR's New Deal brain trust, hired Stryker. Stryker hired Rothstein to set up the darkroom for Stryker's Photo Unit of the Historical Section of theResettlement Administration (RA).
Arthur Rothstein became the first photographer sent out by Roy Stryker, the head of the Photo Unit. During the next five years he shot photographs of rural America. He and other FSA photographers, includingEsther Bubley,Marjory Collins,Marion Post Wolcott,Walker Evans,Russell Lee,Gordon Parks,Jack Delano,John Vachon,Carl Mydans,Dorothea Lange andBen Shahn, were employed to document the living conditions of therural poor in theUnited States. The Resettlement Administration became theFarm Security Administration (FSA) in 1937. Later, when the country geared up forWorld War II, the FSA became part of theOffice of War Information (OWI).
The photographs made during Rothstein's five-year stint with the Photo Unit form a catalog of the agency's initiatives. One of his first assignments was to document the lives of someVirginia farmers who were being evicted to make way for theShenandoah National Park and about to be relocated by the Resettlement Administration, and subsequent trips took him to theDust Bowl and tocattle ranches inMontana.
The immediate incentive for his February 1937 assignment came from the interest generated by congressional consideration of farm tenant legislation sponsored in the Senate byJohn H. Bankhead II, aDemocrat fromAlabama with a strong interest in agriculture. Enacted in July, theBankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act gave the agency its new lease on life as the Farm Security Administration.
On February 18, 1937, Stryker wrote Rothstein that the journalistBeverly Smith had told him about a tenant community atGee's Bend, Alabama, and was preparing an article on tenancy for the July issue ofThe American Magazine, but Stryker sensed bigger possibilities, telling Rothstein, "We could do a swell story; one thatLife [magazine] will grab." Stryker planned to visit Alabama and asked Rothstein to wait for him, but he was never able to make the trip, and Rothstein went to Gee's Bend alone.
The residents of Gee's Bend symbolized two different things to the Resettlement Administration. On the one hand, reports about the community prepared by the agency describe the residents as isolated and primitive, people whose speech, habits, and material culture reflected anAfrican origin and an older way of life. On the other hand, the agency's agenda for rehabilitation implied a view of the residents as the victims ofslavery and the farm-tenant system on a formerplantation. The two perceptions may be seen as related: if these tenants — despite their primitive culture— could benefit from training and financial assistance, their success would demonstrate the efficacy of the programs.
Unlike the subjects of many Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration photographs, the people of Gee's Bend are not portrayed as victims. The photographs do not show the back-breaking work of cultivation and harvest, but only offer a glimpse of spring plowing. At home, the residents do not merely inhabit substandard housing but are engaged in a variety of domestic activities. The dwellings at Gee's Bend must have been as uncomfortable as the frame shacks thrown up for farm workers everywhere, but Rothstein's photographs emphasize the log cabins' picturesque qualities. This affirming image of life in Gee's Bend is reinforced by Rothstein's deliberate, balanced compositions which lend dignity to the people being pictured.
There does not seem to have been aLife magazine story about Gee's Bend, but a long article ran in theNew York Times Magazine of August 22, 1937. It is illustrated by eleven of Rothstein's pictures, with a text that draws heavily upon a Resettlement Administration report dated in May. The story extols the agency's regional director as intelligent and sympathetic and describes the Gee's Bend project in glowing terms. ReporterJohn Temple Graves II perceived the project as retaining agrarian—and African—values.
In 1940, Rothstein became a staff photographer forLook magazine but left shortly thereafter to join theOWI and then the US Army as a photographer in the Signal Corps. His military assignment took him to the China-Burma-India theatre and he remained in China following his discharge from the military in 1945, working as chief photographer for theUnited Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, documenting the Great Famine and the plight of displaced survivors of the Holocaust in theHongkew ghetto of Shanghai.
In 1947, Rothstein rejoinedLook as Director of Photography. He remained atLook until 1971 when the magazine ceased publication. Rothstein joinedParade magazine in 1972 and remained there until his death.
He was the author of numerous magazine articles and a staff columnist forUS Camera andModern Photography magazines and theNew York Times, Rothstein wrote and published nine books.
Rothstein's photographs are in permanent collections throughout the world and have appeared in numerous exhibitions. A selection of these one-man shows include shows at theInternational Museum of Photography at George Eastman House; theSmithsonian Institution;Photokina;Corcoran Gallery of Art;Royal Photographic Society, as well as traveling exhibitions for theUnited States Information Service and forParade magazine.
He was a member of the faculty of theColumbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a Spencer Chair Professor atS. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications,Syracuse University. Rothstein was also on the faculties ofMercy College, and theParsons School of Design in New York City, and he took great pride in mentoring young photographers includingStanley Kubrick,Douglas Kirkland, andChester Higgins, Jr.
A recipient of more than 35 awards in photojournalism and a former juror for thePulitzer Prize, Rothstein was also a founder and former officer of theAmerican Society of Magazine Photographers (ASMP). Arthur Rothstein died on November 11, 1985, inNew Rochelle, New York.
Rothstein's parents were Isadore Rothstein and Nettie Rothstein (née Perlstein).[6] In 1947, he married Grace Goodman, and the couple went on to have four children: Robert Rothstein (Rob Stoner), Ann Segan, Eve Roth Lindsay and Daniel Rothstein.[7][8]
