Voices Silenced, Faces Preserved

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galleryluisotti at Bergamot Station 2525 Michigan Ave. number a2 Santa Monica California 90404 tel. 310 453 0043 fax 310 264 4888 [email protected] Voices Silenced, Faces Preserved August 9, 2009 By RANDY KENNEDY BUFFALO ON the wall above the kitchen table in Milton Rogovin’s modest home here hangs a handwritten sign listing some of the notable events of 1909: Geronimo’s death in prison; the first full year of production for Ford’s Model T; the founding of what was to become the N.A.A.C.P.; the birth in New York City of Milton Rogovin, who, approaching 100, is one of the country’s most revered social-documentary photographers. 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. Visiting Mr. Rogovin has long been a rite for photographers, curators, historians, activists and writers. These days, in tenuous health, he no longer actively photographs. His wife of 61 years, Anne, an educator and writer who was an active partner in his projects, died in 2003. And his basement darkroom is now mostly empty, his negatives, contacts and prints having moved to institutions like the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Library of Congress. (He has been nominated to receive this year’s National Medal of Arts, the kind of establishment recognition a former card-carrying Communist never expected.) Over lunch recently with his daughter, Ellen Rogovin Hart, Mr. Rogovin opened his picture notebooks as if they were family albums, to take another visitor through an exceptional half-century record of struggle, suffering, determination and hope. “I made a lot of use of that darkroom down there, oh boy,” he said, adding with a smile, “Well, enough is enough.” .

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PR Milton Rogovin.Pages
! SAN JOSE MUSEUM OF ART TO PRESENT MILTON ROGOVIN’S PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE WORKING CLASS AUGUST 18 ‒ MARCH 19 SAN JOSE, California (August 2016)— The San Jose Museum of Art will showcase the work of American photographer Milton Rogovin in an exhibition on view August 18, 2016 – March 19, 2017. Life and Labor: The Photographs of Milton Rogovin comprises thirty-eight black-and-white photographs by the self-proclaimed social documentary photographer. Rogovin photographed “the forgotten ones,” as he called them, including people from working class neighborhoods and multi-ethnic communities. Drawn entirely from the permanent collection of the San Jose Museum of Art, this exhibition presents photographs from three series: “Lower West Side, Buffalo” “Working People” and “Family of Miners” Life and Labor marks the public debut of these photographs, which were given to the Museum’s collection in 2011. Rogovin shed light on important social issues of the time: the plight of miners, the decline of the steel industry in upstate New York, and the everyday struggles of the poor and working class in Buffalo, New York, where he lived. While working as an optometrist in the 1930s, he was distressed by the widespread poverty caused by the Great Depression and became increasingly involved in leftist political causes. He began attending classes at the New York Workers School and reading the Communist newspaper The Daily Worker. He was inﬂuenced by the social- documentary photographs of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine. In 1957, with the prevalence of cold war anti-Communism in the United States, Rogovin was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, but refused to testify.
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Finding Aid for the Milton Rogovin Collection, 1988-2007 AG 210
Center for Creative Photography The University of Arizona 1030 N. Olive Rd. P.O. Box 210103 Tucson, AZ 85721 Phone: 520-621-6273 Fax: 520-621-9444 Email: [email protected] URL: http://creativephotography.org Finding aid for the Milton Rogovin Collection, 1988-2007 AG 210 Finding aid updated by Meghan Jordan, June 2016 AG 210: Milton Rogovin Collection, 1988-2007 - page 2 Milton Rogovin Collection, 1988-2007 AG 210 Creator Rogovin, Milton (1909-2011) Abstract This collection contains miscellaneous materials documenting the life and career of Milton Rogovin (1909 - ), photographer and social activist. The collection is active. Quantity/ Extent 1 linear foot Language of Materials English Biographical Note Milton Rogovin was born in New York City in 1909 where he graduated from Columbia University in 1931 with a degree in optometry. He soon after moved to Buffalo, New York. Rogovin purchased his first camera in 1942 and later taught documentary photography at the University of Buffalo from 1972-1974, where he also received an MA in American Studies in 1972. His photographic work focused on social activism, and in 1983 he won the prestigious W. Eugene Smith Award for Documentary photography, which allowed him to travel internationally to continue his “Family of Miners” series. Rogovin died in 2011. Scope and Content Note There are three boxes that have not yet been arranged and described at the series level. Materials include correspondence, publications, transcripts, and a wide variety of audiovisual materials, including mostly U-matic tapes and audiotapes. Names and Subject Terms Rogovin, Milton, 1909-2011 Photography Restrictions Conditions Governing Access Access to this collection requires an appointment with the Volkerding Study Center.
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Michael Peña March 21, 2017 Commodities, Traders: Ron
galleryluisotti at Bergamot Station 2525 Michigan Ave. number a2 Santa Monica California 90404 tel. 310 453 0043 fax 310 264 4888 [email protected] FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Michael Peña March 21, 2017 Commodities, Traders: Ron Jude and Milton Rogovin April 8–May 13, 2017 Gallery Luisotti is pleased to announce Commodities, Traders, a two-person exhibition of photographs by Ron Jude and Milton Rogovin. Jude’s series of color photographs Executive Model, which depicts closely cropped views of men’s backs in formal business attire in several financial districts, is paired with Rogovin’s highly specific black and white photographs of coal miners and their families from around the world. For this unlikely presentation of artists from different generations, Rogovin’s photographs will be arranged around the main part of the gallery primarily by region and Jude’s photographs will be placed in a borderline claustrophobic line along the back wall of the gallery behind the front desk. This spatial arrangement heightens the readings of the individuals on view—visible and engaged as opposed to turned away and mysterious. The exhibition comes at a turbulent and unpredictable time in American life when the workers of shrinking industries are being made questionable promises by the president while financial markets are performing at record highs. Rogovin started making photographs of miners in Appalachia in the 1960s, in the tradition of Lewis Hine, Jacob Riis and Walker Evans and with strong Photo League influences. He continued that work, and by the end of the 1980s expanded his interest in miners internationally. Rogovin’s travels reflect the currents of globalization that intensified in the 1980s.
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Biography Milton Rogovin Milton Rogovin Was Born in New York City in 1909
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Timeline Continues Overleaf…
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NGA | the Serial Portrait
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For Rogovin, a Bittersweet 'Harvest Time'
The Buffalo News Sunday, July 27, 2003, Page A1 FOR ROGOVIN, A BITTERSWEET 'HARVEST TIME' By MARK SOMMER - News Staff Reporter "The seeds we planted were the photographs I took, and now they are being recognized not only in the U.S., but all over the world," says Buffalo photographer Milton Rogovin. The photographer is surrounded by his images during the opening of "Milton Rogovin: The Forgotten Ones" in the New-York Historical Society in upper Manhattan. His life's work has been photographing the working-class people of Buffalo; but life in the city has not always been easy, including attacks by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s "Red Scare." Milton Rogovin, Buffalo's renowned social documentary photographer, is accustomed to training his trusty Rolleiflex camera on others. Now the focus is on him.A five-decade retrospective of the 93-year-old Rogovin's portraits of poor and working-class people from Buffalo's Lower West Side is on exhibition through mid-October in the New- York Historical Society in upper Manhattan. Rogovin has had major shows before, but this one has prompted significant media attention, including most of a recent arts cover in the New York Times, as well as stories by the Washington Post and National Public Radio. A segment on the "Today" show is airing Monday, and one on "CBS Sunday Morning" is scheduled for Aug. 17. "As Anne and I were saying recently," he said of his wife, "this is 'harvest time' for us. The seeds we planted were the photographs I took, and now they are being recognized not only in the U.S., but all over the world." Rogovin sat at the kitchen table in the brown stucco and wood house on Chatham Avenue that he and the former Anne Setters moved into in 1948.
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Milton Rogovin: an Activist Photographer By: Robert Hirsch, Afterimage, September 1, 2004
galleryluisotti at Bergamot Station 2525 Michigan Ave. number a2 Santa Monica California 90404 tel. 310 453 0043 fax 310 264 4888 [email protected] Milton Rogovin: An Activist Photographer by: Robert Hirsch, Afterimage, September 1, 2004 What was your family background? Milton Rogovin: My parents, Jacob and Dora, came to America as immigrants and set up a store that sold household goods in New York City, where I was born in December 1909. In 1931 the Great Depression forced the store into bankruptcy. Why did you move to Buffalo, New York? I graduated from Columbia University as an optometrist in 1931 just four months after my father died. Work was very scarce and sporadic. I came to Buffalo for a job in 1938 and established my own practice the following year. How were you politicized by the 1930s Depression and the rise of fascism? The loss of my father's business, his following death, and the concrete events I witnessed of people suffering everyday during the Depression completely changed my thinking, and as a result I became politically active. I felt that it was not enough just to feel these things, and that I had to do something to help change the situation. I could no longer be indifferent and like many others at the time I worked for a better future through socialism. I read books by political activists, such as Michael Gold's Jews Without Money (1930) and Change the World (1937), and numerous essays by Emma Goldman, which confirmed my feeling that changes were necessary and we had to do it ourselves.
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