Sol Worth
Sol Worth | |
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Born | Sol Wishnepolsky August 19, 1922 New York City |
Died | August 29, 1977 Andover, Massachusetts | (aged 55)
Academic background | |
Education | State University of Iowa |
Academic work | |
Discipline | |
Sub-discipline | Visual communication |
Institutions | Annenberg School of Communications |
Part of a series on the |
Anthropology of art, media, music, dance and film |
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Social and cultural anthropology |
Sol Worth (August 19, 1922 in New York City – August 29, 1977) was a painter, photography and visual communication scholar.
Biography
Worth's parents, Ida and Jacob Wishnepolsky, were Russian immigrants who worked in the garment industry and were active members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. His first language was
In October 1945, Worth returned to New York City to marry Tobia Lessler, his college sweetheart. Their daughter, Debora M. Worth, was born in May, 1950. Worth remained in New York City on inactive duty with the Navy until 1946, when he received an honorable discharge from the service. Deciding not to accept a graduate assistantship in painting at Iowa, he instead accepted a position as photographer and filmmaker at a commercial art studio, Goold Studios, in Manhattan. In the same year, Sol Wishnepolsky officially changed his name to Sol Worth. Worth worked in the same firm for over seventeen years, eventually becoming vice-president and creative director. From 1948 to 1950 he studied at the
In 1956 Worth was awarded a one-year Fulbright Lecturership as visiting professor of documentary film and photography at the
In 1964, Worth decided to devote himself entirely to teaching and research in visual communication, and moved to Philadelphia to take a full-time position as assistant professor of Communications at the Annenberg School. In 1966, Worth was promoted to associate professor and director of the Media Laboratories, and in 1973 he was named professor of communication and education. In 1971 Penn awarded him an M.A. Honoris Causa. In 1976, Worth created the Undergraduate Major in Communications in the College at Penn, and was appointed the first chair of the new major.
Worth's promotions recognized the outstanding research and scholarship that he had undertaken while at Penn. In 1966 he received a
As the author of over two dozen scholarly papers, Worth was recognized in the fields of anthropology and communications well beyond his own sub-field of visual communication. He was actively involved with the American Anthropological Association, the American Film Institute, and the International Film Seminars, as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution. In 1970, along with the anthropologist Margaret Mead and others, he founded the Anthropological Film Research Institute to support the Smithsonian's development of an anthropological film archive. He was chair of the Research Division of the University Film Association, and served as the senior member of the board of directors for the Society of Cinematologists from 1967 through 1970. Worth also served on the founding board of directors of the Semiotic Society of America and on the editorial board of the Journal of Communication.
Worth was attending the Flaherty Film Seminar in Andover, Massachusetts, when he died peacefully in his sleep of a heart attack on August 29, 1977, at the age of fifty-five. In the weeks before his death, Worth had been preparing a proposal to the Guggenheim Foundation and other granting agencies for support for a year of research and thought in which to articulate fully a theory of visual communication as applied to visual events, and to produce the first reader in visual communication. This theoretical effort was to serve as foundation for his next large empirical project, a collaborative effort with Jay Ruby and several of his students: a visual ethnography of an entire community.
References
Notable students
Further reading
- Worth, Sol, Adair John. "Through Navajo Eyes". Indiana University Press; 1972.
- Larry Gross & Jay Rudy (Eds.). "The Complete Sol Worth." USC Annenberg Press, 2013.
External links
- Sol Worth's Home Page
- Sol Worth Papers Inventory
- Studying Visual Communication - Book (PDF Format)