American Realist Photography

Lucille Brown takes control of the Vespa scooter as her husband Louis Armstrong (1898 - 1971) displays his musical appreciation of the ancient Colosseum ...

A group of young boys sailing model sailboats at Harlem Meer, Central Park, New York City, New York, 1948. Crouching on rocks at the side of the lake, three children enjoy a pleasant afternoon with their vintage toy...

Todd Webb created "Under The El, Third Avenue 1946" in New York City during the Mid 20 Century in the WPA era. The sight image is 9 1/2 x 12, and 11 x 14 including the margin. This print was squired directly from the Todd Webb Archive. Housed in a stunning rough steel frame. In 1905, Charles Clayton ("Todd") Webb III was born in Detroit, Michigan. Having been a successful stockbroker in the 1920’s, he lost all of his earnings, and then some, in The Crash. During the Depression, Webb prospected for gold, worked as a forest ranger, and wrote short stories that have gone unpublished. It was during this exploratory period in the 1930s that he first picked up a camera. His interest and love for photography soon crowded out his writing ambitions, and he was able to do the two things he loved the most: travel, meet people, and photograph them. In 1938 Webb joined the Chrysler Camera Club in Detroit, where he met aspiring photographer Harry Callahan. Through a workshop from Ansel Adams, Webb's interest in the sharp focus technique of "straight photography" was confirmed. After serving in World War II, Todd Webb moved to New York where he nurtured a friendship with Alfred Stieglitz and his wife Georgia O’Keeffe who introduced him to Beaumont Newhall, and later Newhall curated the first major exhibition of Webb's photographs for The Museum of The City of New York. Also during this time, Todd worked for Roy Stryker and the Standard Oil Company. In 1949 Todd Webb returned to Paris, and met his wife Lucille, remaining in France for the next four years. In both 1955 and 1956, Todd Webb was awarded two successive John Simon Guggenheim fellowships to photograph the pioneer trails that early America settlers followed to Oregon and California. While his contemporary, Robert Frank drove across the country during these years, Todd walked and photographed as he moved from East to West. Up until the 1980's, Todd Webb photographed...

Photo is 9X13.5 (image size), 16X20 is the mat. Mounted to original mat. Vintage photograph. Marion Post (June 7, 1910 – November 24, 1990), later Marion Post Wolcott, was a noted American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression documenting poverty and deprivation. Marion Post was born in New Jersey on June 7, 1910. Her parents split up and she was sent to boarding school, spending time at home with her mother in Greenwich Village when not at school. Here she met many artists and musicians and became interested in dance. She studied at The New School. Post trained as a teacher, and went to work in a small town in Massachusetts. Here she saw the reality of the Depression and the problems of the poor. When the school closed she went to Europe to study with her sister Helen. Helen was studying with Trude Fleischmann, a Viennese photographer. Marion Post showed Fleischmann some of her photographs and was told to stick to photography. Marion Post Wolcott with Rolleiflex and Speed Graphic in hand in Montgomery County, Maryland. While in Vienna she saw some of the Nazi attacks on the Jewish population and was horrified. Soon she and her sister had to return to America for safety. She went back to teaching but also continued her photography and became involved in the anti-fascist movement. At the New York Photo League she met Ralph Steiner and Paul Strand who encouraged her. When she found that the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin kept sending her to do "ladies' stories," Ralph Steiner took her portfolio to show Roy Stryker, head of the Farm Security Administration, and Paul Strand wrote a letter of recommendation. Stryker was impressed by her work and hired her immediately. Post's photographs for the FSA often explore the political aspects of poverty and deprivation. They also often find humour in the situations she encountered. In 1941 she met Leon Oliver Wolcott, deputy director of war relations for the U. S. Department of Agriculture under Franklin Roosevelt. They married, and she continued her assignments for the FSA, but resigned shortly thereafter in February 1942. She found it difficult to fit in her photography around raising a family and a great deal of traveling and living overseas. In the 1970s, a renewed interest in Wolcott's images among scholars rekindled her own interest in photography. In 1978, Wolcott mounted her first solo exhibition in California, and by the 1980s the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art began to collect her photographs. The first monograph on her work was published in 1983. She was an advocate for women's rights; in 1986, Wolcott said: "Women have come a long way, but not far enough. . . . Speak with your images from your heart and soul" (Women in Photography Conference, Syracuse, N.Y.) She and other FSA WPA photographers, including Esther Bubley...

photo is 9X13.5 (image size), 16X20 is the mat. Mounted to original mat. Vintage photograph. Main Street, Winchester, Virginia. February, 1940. Arthur Rothstein ( 1915 – 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. His photographs ranged from a hometown baseball game to the drama of war, from struggling rural farmers to US Presidents. Rothstein was born in Manhattan, New York City, and he grew up in the Bronx. He was a graduate of Columbia University, where he was a founder of the University Camera Club and photography editor of the Columbian. Following his graduation from Columbia during the Great Depression, Rothstein was invited to Washington DC by one of his professors at Columbia, Roy Stryker. Rothstein had been Stryker's student at Columbia University in the early 1930s. Stryker hired Rothstein to set up the darkroom for Stryker's Photo Unit of the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration (RA). Perhaps Rothstein's most famous photo, and an icon of the Dust Bowl: a farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936 Arthur Rothstein became the first photographer sent out by Roy Stryker, the head of the Photo Unit. During the next five years he shot some of the most significant photographs ever taken of rural and small-town America. He and other FSA WPA New Deal photographers, including Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Marion Post Wolcott, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, Jack Delano, John Vachon, Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn, were employed to publicize the living conditions of the rural poor in the United States. The Resettlement Administration became the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1937. Later, when the country geared up for World War II, the FSA became part of the Office of War Information (OWI). 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 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 African origin and an older way of life. 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. In 1940 Mr. Rothstein became a staff photographer for Look magazine but left shortly thereafter to join the OWI and then the US Army as a photographer in the Signal Corps. He remained at Look until 1971 when the magazine ceased publication. Mr. 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 US Camera and Modern Photography magazines and the New York Times, Mr. Rothstein wrote and published nine books. Mr. Rothstein’s photographs are in permanent collections throughout the world and have appeared in numerous exhibitions. A selection of this one-man shows include shows at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester NY the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Photokina, Cologne, Germany; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Royal Photographic Society, London, England, as well as traveling exhibitions for the United States Information Service and for Parade magazine. He was a member of the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a Spencer...

photo is 9X13.5 (image size), 16X20 is the mat. Mounted to original mat. Vintage photograph. Three young Grange members represent Flora, Ceres and Pamona in Fairfax, 1940. Arthur Rothstein ( 1915 – 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. His photographs ranged from a hometown baseball game to the drama of war, from struggling rural farmers to US Presidents. Rothstein was born in Manhattan, New York City, and he grew up in the Bronx. He was a graduate of Columbia University, where he was a founder of the University Camera Club and photography editor of the Columbian. Following his graduation from Columbia during the Great Depression, Rothstein was invited to Washington DC by one of his professors at Columbia, Roy Stryker. Rothstein had been Stryker's student at Columbia University in the early 1930s. Stryker hired Rothstein to set up the darkroom for Stryker's Photo Unit of the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration (RA). Perhaps Rothstein's most famous photo, and an icon of the Dust Bowl: a farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936 Arthur Rothstein became the first photographer sent out by Roy Stryker, the head of the Photo Unit. During the next five years he shot some of the most significant photographs ever taken of rural and small-town America. He and other FSA WPA photographers, including Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Marion Post Wolcott, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, Jack Delano, John Vachon, Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn, were employed to publicize the living conditions of the rural poor in the United States. The Resettlement Administration became the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1937. Later, when the country geared up for World War II, the FSA became part of the Office of War Information (OWI). 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 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 African origin and an older way of life. 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. In 1940 Mr. Rothstein became a staff photographer for Look magazine but left shortly thereafter to join the OWI and then the US Army as a photographer in the Signal Corps. He remained at Look until 1971 when the magazine ceased publication. Mr. 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 US Camera and Modern Photography magazines and the New York Times, Mr. Rothstein wrote and published nine books. Mr. Rothstein’s photographs are in permanent collections throughout the world and have appeared in numerous exhibitions. A selection of this one-man shows include shows at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester NY the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Photokina, Cologne, Germany; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Royal Photographic Society, London, England, as well as traveling exhibitions for the United States Information Service and for Parade magazine. He was a member of the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a Spencer...