- Milton Rogovin (c) Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Via my favourite photo blog, The Online Photographer, I learnt today that the great socialist photographer, Milton Rogovin, has died. He was 101.
Rogovin took up photography after being persecuted during the McCarthy era. Says the New York Times,
Mr. Rogovin was an optometrist whose business was decimated and his children shunned after he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1958. An article published that year in The New York Times reported that friendly witnesses described him as “the chief Communist in the area.” He turned to photography because his “voice was essentially silenced,” as he once said. What followed was more than 40 years of powerfully straightforward pictures of others without voices: the poor and working class of Buffalo’s East Side and Lower West Side, Appalachia, Mexico, Chile and other countries.
A wonderful photographer, his last book was The Forgotten Ones, published in 2003.
A short film worth watching is available on youtube.
– Rory
cork analogue photographers 