OBSERVATIONS Jews and Photography William Meyers JEWS HAVE played an indispens- taken by Jews, moving the show's and it was there that he both able role in the history of Amer- curator, Max Kozloff, to contribute learned photography and absorbed ican photography, at least as im- an essay to the catalog pondering a romantic devotion to art with a portant a role as blacks in the the issue of a "Jewish sensibility" in capital A. On his return to the U.S. development of jazz. It is a bit of a photography. The other two shows, in 1890, he quickly came to domi- puzzle why this should be so, if only occupying rather disparate points nate art photography, remaining in because, well into the modern era, on the photographic spectrum, were this position by dint of the brilliant Jews were not notable for their Shekhina, an exhibit of religion- pictures he took, the magazines he work in the plastic arts. Although it related pictures by the actor Leo- edited, his involvement in photo- is true that a number of Jews in nard Nimoy, and (if less pertinent graphic organizations, and the in- Eastern Europe were active in pho- to our theme) the retrospective of fluential galleries he ran. In the ear- tography during the period of its portraits by Richard Avedon at the ly part of the 20th century, Stieglitz first growth in the 19th century, it Metropolitan Museum of Art. did more than any other single in- was only in the 20th century and in To see the connecting links among dividual to have photography rec- America that the numbers involved these events requires some history. ognized as an art, worthy of serious in every facet of the art became attention to the same degree as large, and their talents very con- ALFRED STIEGLITZ (1864-1946) painting, drawing, and sculpture. spicuous. was the first American Jew to affect The body of Stieglitz's pho- Several recent exhibitions help to the larger culture with a camera. In tographs puts him, however, outside focus the question. The first was contrast to most of those who would the arc of development of most of New York: Capital of Photography, come after him, Stieglitz's parents the Jewish photographers who suc- which ran at the Jewish Museum were German (rather than Eastern ceeded him. True, he was noted for last fall and is now on tour. Of its European) in origin, and they were pictures of New York, but what in- several hundred pictures of New rich. His father had abandoned his terested him most was the city's York City, a startlingly high pro- religion upon coming to America, buildings, seen as abstract blocks in portion-about 85 percent-were and Alfred seems to have become artful arrangements; the citizens of WILLIAM MEYERS is a New York City most vividly aware of his family's the city did not much figure in his photographer whose work will be in the Jewishness only when his father was work. For most later Jewish pho- Jews of Brooklyn exhibit at the NYU refused membership in the exclusive tographers, it was to be the other Bronfman Center this spring. His essay, Jockey Club. way around. Also atypical was his "Cheering 'Metamorphoses,"' appeared in In his young manhood, Stieglitz interest both in the nude and in na- the 7ulv-August 2002 COMMENTARY. spent time studying in Germany, I I -D - ture; the former is exemplified in [45] COMMENTARY JANUARY 2003 the series of pictures he took of his blocks. Blind Woman is without pity and Walker Evans; Joe Rosenthal, wife, the painter Georgia O'Keefe, in its scrutiny, but that very absence who took the picture of the Marines the latter in Equivalents, the series of sentimentality is what made it raising the U.S. flag on Mt. Surib- of shots of clouds that he made at his modern and made it effective. achi during the battle for Iwo Jima, country estate near Lake George. In later years Strand taught at the the single most reproduced photo- The differences may have been Photo League, an important train- graph ever; Leonard Freed and Dan simply a matter of temperament, or ing ground in the 1930's and 1940's Wiener, who covered the violent may have had something to do with for a large number of photogra- confrontations of the early civil- socioeconomic background. In ei- phers. Many who studied and rights movement; Irving Penn, Mil- ther case, Stieglitz's example was not taught there came to be identified ton Greene, and Arnold Newman, so much emulated as defied. The with what critics came to call the famous for their fashion and celebri- movement away from his brand of New York School. This group exer- ty photography; sports photogra- refined aesthetics was recently well cised a sustained influence on many pher Nat Fein, who took the fa- captured by the photographer branches of photography-photo- mous picture from behind of Babe William Klein, who first made his journalism, art photography, fash- Ruth leaning on his bat at his reputation in the 1 950's with the ion photography, and portraiture. farewell appearance at Yankee Sta- publication of Life Is Good and Good Its members changed the way dium; Ezra Stoller, the country's for You in New York: Trance Witness Americans looked at their country preeminent architectural photogra- Reveals. Interviewed last year on the and at themselves. Although each pher; and Ben Ross, born Rosen- occasion of the book's reissuance- photographer had his own idiosyn- blatt, who was the best known avi- two exhibitions of his work were crasies and his own favored subject ation photographer in the post- held simultaneously-Klein wise- matter, certain shared tendencies World War II era. cracked: "There are two kinds of made it reasonable to refer to them In The Tumultuous Fifties: A View photography, Jewish photography as a school. from the New York Times Photo and goyish photography. If you look There was, first of all, an obses- Archives (2001), there is a picture of at modern photography, you find, sion with gritty realism, which fre- the twelve men who were the news- on the one hand, the Weegees, the quently meant pictures that were paper's staff photographers in No- Diane Arbuses, the Robert Franks- blurred or grainy or slightly out of vember 1951. To judge by their funky photographs. And then you focus. The rules of formal compo- names, at least half were Jewish, and have the people who go out in the sition were often violated, even Jews were similarly overrepresent- woods. Ansel Adams, Weston." flouted. And there was something ed on the staffs of many other pub- tough, occasionally brutal in the lications. At Life, for example, the STIEGLITZ WAS nobody's idea of work of the New York School: pic- first cover was by Margaret Bourke- funky. His protege Paul Strand, tures might be beautiful, but they White, and the most covers-101- however, produced work with were never merely pretty. were by Phillipe Halsman; Life enough elements of edginess to be The final thing New York School employed Alfred Eisenstaedt, Carl included in Klein's aphoristic defi- photographers had in common was Mydans, Robert Capa, and many nition. Born Paul Stranzky on the that nearly all of them were Jew- more. Upper West Side of Manhattan in ish-thirteen of the sixteen select- The list goes on through the 1890, he was taught photography at ed for inclusion in Jane Livingston's decades. Today it would include the Ethical Culture School by the standard text, The New York School: Annie Liebovitz and Mary Ellen great social documentarian Lewis Photographs 1936-1963 (1992): Sid Mark, Jeff Mermelstein and Joel Hine. At the same time he was im- Grossman, Lisette Model, Helen Meyerowitz, Joel Sternfeld and bued with attitudes that would take Levitt, William Klein, Weegee Cindy Sherman and Michael Ack- him ever more leftward, until poli- (Arthur Felig), Robert Frank, Louis erman. tics vitiated his art. Faurer, Ted Croner, Saul Leiter, Strand's early photograph Blind Leon Levinstein, Bruce Davidson, IN CONTEMPLATING the overwhelm- Woman (1917) had an enormous im- Diane Arbus, and Richard Avedon. ing presence of Jews among those pact. The picture is a close-up por- This is not to mention influen- represented in New York: Capital of trait of a woman wearing a peddler's tial Jewish photographers of the Photography, the critic Richard license and a placard that says, time who were not associated with Woodward remarked that "the Jew- "BLIND." One eye is mostly shut the New York School: Ben Shahn ish imprint on 20th-century pho- and cloudy, the other open but wan- and Arthur Rothstein, for example, tography... would seem to be too dering to the side; the grim, oval who worked for the New Deal's remarkable and contentious a topic face is framed by a black shawl and Farm Security Administration along to be ignored by scholars much backed by massive granite building with (the non-Jews) Dorothea Lange longer." I agree. Before the scholars [46] OBSERVATIONS arrive, though, let me take a stab at at lyric poetry. Within photography, ists," but that is a pallid epithet for it by offering something less than a and leaving aside Stieglitz and one the strong and often very particular full-fledged etiology but, I hope, or two others, they have pursued hu- passions that were at play. more than just a list of pertinent man-interest subjects, frequently A brief interchange ten years ago contributing factors.