Arthur Rothstein
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Arthur Rothstein | |
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Born | New York City, US | July 17, 1915
Died | November 11, 1985 | (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 American photographer. Rothstein is recognized as one of America's premier photojournalists. During a career that spanned five decades, he provoked, entertained and informed the American people.
Life and career
The son of
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 the Resettlement 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, including
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 some Virginia farmers who were being evicted to make way for the Shenandoah National Park and about to be relocated by the Resettlement Administration, and subsequent trips took him to the Dust Bowl and to cattle ranches in Montana.
The immediate incentive for his February 1937 assignment came from the interest generated by congressional consideration of farm tenant legislation sponsored in the Senate by
Gee's Bend
On February 18, 1937, Stryker wrote Rothstein that the journalist
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 an
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 a Life magazine story about Gee's Bend, but a long article ran in the
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Annie Pettway Bendolph carrying water.Gee's Bend, Alabama. April 1937. Photographed by Arthur Rothstein.
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The former home of the Pettways. Gee's Bend, Alabama. April 1937. Photographed by Arthur Rothstein.
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Woman on the Pettway Plantation
In 1940, Rothstein became a staff photographer for
In 1947, Rothstein rejoined Look as Director of Photography. He remained at Look until 1971 when the magazine ceased publication. Rothstein joined Parade magazine in 1972 and remained there until his death.
He was the author of numerous magazine articles and a staff columnist for
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 the
He was a member of the faculty of the
A recipient of more than 35 awards in photojournalism and a former juror for the
Personal life
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]
Gallery
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Family in a wagon, Lee County, Mississippi, August 1935
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Newsboy,Iowa City, 1940, photographed by Rothstein while driving through town.
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Night photo of Rays Hill Tunnel on Pennsylvania Turnpike by Rothstein in 1942
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Early color photograph of a guide at Little Norway, Wisconsin. Taken 1943, digitally restored.
References
- ^ Arthur Rothstein: Photographer (1915–1985)
- ^ a b "Columbia College Today". Internet Archive. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
- ^ arthurrothstein.org. "About Arthur Rothstein". Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
- ^ "Arthur Rothstein (American, 1915 - 1985) (Getty Museum)". The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
- ^ Oklahoma's True Grit Dust Bowl Family, 77 Years Later; 405 Magazine.
- ^ Arthur Rothstein, ancestry.com
- ^ Dust Bowl chronicler Arthur Rothstein dies, Reading Eagle, 11 November 1985, p45
- ^ About Eve, Savvystyle Archived 2014-10-14 at the Wayback Machine
- "TENANT FARMERS : Photographer: Arthur Rothstein : Gee's Bend, Alabama, February and April 1937", Resettlement Administration, Lot 1616 Library of Congress