AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Walter Rosenblum by Walter Rosenblum ISBN: 3-8170-2508-4 Publisher: Verlag der Kunst Pub. Date: 1990 Format: Unknown Binding

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Photography of a passionate humanist
Comment: Walter Rosenblum was born in New York City in 1919 and grew up on the Lower East Side. A part-time job at the Boys Club (thanks to the WPA) in the early 'thirties enabled him to meet photographer Lewis Hine, take his photography class, and acquire Hine as teacher, mentor, and friend for life. Rosenblum joined the Photo League in New York, a national locus for photographers and the burgeoning field of photojournalism. According to Shelley Rice's great introductory essay, in several rooms it offered photographers "a place to go, a focus for creative energies, and a chance to become part of a positive and dedicated community." In addition, the League, largely motivated by photographer and teacher Sid Grossman, "offered Rosenblum an education in the arts that was lacking in his family background and formal education, and the opportunity to write about photographs as well as to make them." It is this ability to articulate his passions in order to allow his photography to reflect and magnify his humanism and unwavering sense of ethics that both distinguishes Walter Rosenblum, and places him squarely among the world's best documentary photographers.

Rosenblum joined Life Magazine in the late '30s. After the US joined the war he enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the Army Signal Corps, where he was trained in filmmaking. He was the first photographer to film the liberation of the camp at Dachau, and was highly decorated, receiving the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and more. Awards aside, Rice asserts that "the motivating force of his life has been his interest in people and his inner need to communicate with them, whether in the classroom or through his camera." He became a member the faculties of several colleges and art schools, and is Professor Emeritus of Photography at Brooklyn College, among many other honors.

This is a beautiful book of 140 black and white photographs and able, perceptive commentaries that discuss Rosenblum biographically and, later, in a larger context in "The Camera Image in Social Action," a careful and lengthy essay by photography historian Naomi Rosenblum. The series of black and white photos are of Pitt Street (1938), War (1944), Spanish Refugees (1946), Gaspe (1949), 105th St. (1952), Hospitals (1962), Haiti (1958-59), Europe (1973), Long Island City (1979), and the South Bronx (1980) They are arresting and emotional. They have historic value, too - as documentary. Street life, families, interiors, lovers, fun and suffering and a lot that lies in between, along with the detritus and disastrous artifacts of war and displacement - are here. The photos have been chosen and arranged sensitively. There is compassion without bathos. Open the book at any page, and the pair of facing photos that you see are complementary in mood and meaning. In addition there are remarks by photographers who worked with Rosenblum.

This is a terrific and well thought-out compilation with great accompanying writing and high-quality production. There is a bibliography and a list of Rosenblum's writings. This book is definitely worth the effort it takes to find it.