Milton Rogovin Photograph Collection
Prints and Photographs
Division
Social documentary photographs,
ca. 1953-2002
Background
and Scope | The
Photographer | The
Photographs | Arrangement
and Access | Permissions
and Credits | Obtaining
Reproductions | Related
Resources | Selected
Bibliography
Background and Scope
The Milton Rogovin Collection
consists of approximately 30,000 images (shown in about 29,700 black-and-white negatives, 2,500 contact
sheets,
and 1,130 signed prints), reflecting the full
scope of Mr. Rogovin's six decades in
photography. The collection includes his
photographs of Buffalo's Lower
West Side and
the "Family
of Miners" series. It also
features thousands of images
that have never been
published--among them photographs
of the Yemeni, Chileans, steelworkers, and
Native American reservations in upstate New
York.
From the impoverished neighborhoods
around his optometry office
in Buffalo, New York, to
working class communities around the world, Rogovin's
photographs depict overlooked or exploited segments
of society with a dedication that expresses
his subject's dignity. Rogovin frequently
photographed his subjects both at work and at
home creating a broader look at their lives. For decades, Rogovin focused on
the people and the neighborhood of Buffalo's
Lower West Side, resulting in a deeply moving
portrait of people's lives over the course
of thirty years (1969-2002). The Lower West Side project
is an important social document of our multi-ethnic
society because of its depiction of the neighborhood's
environment and residents. The photographs'
far-ranging reach takes in stores, streets,
houses, graffiti, and especially the people--from
children to the elderly.
In 1969 the Library began to purchase individual
prints from Milton Rogovin, and had acquired
a group of approximately 30 photographs by the
late 1990s. In 1999 Milton Rogovin donated much of his
photographic archive to the Library.
The Photographer
Born in 1909, Milton Rogovin grew up in New York
City and attended Columbia University where he
earned a degree in optometry. In 1938, Rogovin
moved to Buffalo, New York, to work in an optometry
practice, opening his own office the
following year. Alongside his practice, Rogovin
was socially active in the optometrist union,
worked on voter registration drives in African-American
communities, and volunteered as the literature
director for the local Communist Party.
In 1957 when
the House Committee on Un-American Activities
came
to
Buffalo, Rogovin was called to testify before
them. Rogovin
pled the Fifth Amendment, and his trial was widely
covered by the Buffalo media, which named him
the "Top
Red in Buffalo." The adverse publicity damaged
his optometry practice.
Early Photographs
A year later, Rogovin found a new outlet to
express his political concerns. William H. Tallmadge,
a professor of music at the State University
College at Buffalo, approached Rogovin to take
pictures of services at storefront churches
in Buffalo's African American neighborhoods.
While the professor made sound recordings of
church services, Rogovin documented the preachers,
musicians, and congregants in these make-shift
houses of worship. His photographs were used
on a record album cover and liner notes produced
by Tallmadge. Rogovin had purchased his first
camera in 1942 and had taken snapshots
and travel photographs over the years, including
images of Mexico in the 1950s that have become
some of his better known work. In many ways,
however, Rogovin's storefront churches
series was his photographic education, as he
learned how to interact with both the camera
and with the people he wanted to photograph.
During the storefront churches project, Rogovin
met and corresponded with photographer and educator
Minor White, who greatly influenced Rogovin's
ideas about method and practice. In 1962 it
was Minor White who first published photographs
from this project in the influential photography
magazine Aperture, accompanied
by an essay by noted historian W.E.B. DuBois.
Forging a Vision
After the completion of the storefront churches
project, Rogovin continued to photograph
in Buffalo's East Side neighborhood where
the churches were, often photographing congregants
in
their
homes. With his wife Anne, who encouraged
and assisted him throughout his career,
Rogovin went to Appalachia visiting towns
in Alabama,
Kentucky, and West Virginia. Photographing
everything from religious services, deep
mines, and strip miners at work, Rogovin's
images depict work and family life in a
moving portrait of rural poverty. In 1967
Rogovin
traveled to Chile, photographing in
small towns. He visited poet Pablo Neruda,
who he had corresponded with, and photographed
Neruda's home
in Isla Negra. The result of the collaboration
was the book, Windows that Open Inward,
by White Pine Press.
Lower West Side
In the early 1970s, after focusing on other localities,
Rogovin turned his attention to the six-block
Lower West Side neighborhood of Buffalo near
his optometry office. Originally populated
by Italians, by the 1960s the Lower West
Side was
an impoverished, ethnically diverse neighborhood
made up of African Americans, Native Americans,
Puerto Ricans, and poor whites. Rogovin gained
the trust of the people he wished to photograph by not asking
people many questions,
by returning regularly to the area, and by
giving people copies of the photographs
he made of them. Photographing
people on a stoop or in the street, and inside
their homes, Rogovin depicts both the public
and private lives of the neighborhood residents.
There are pictures of work, weddings, family
gatherings, and street festivals. Rogovin
spent nearly five years in the Lower West
Side of Buffalo and
the result is an intricate and far-reaching
portrait of a working class neighborhood. These photographs are the basis of a series which continued for thirty years.
Working People
While work and images of workers had always
been a thread running through Rogovin's
photographs, in the late 1970s his work became
intensely focused on documenting workers in
heavy industry. For his Working People series,
Rogovin photographed workers in a variety
of factories in and around Buffalo, and then
subsequently photographed the same workers
at home. Through these diptychs, Rogovin documented
the often overlooked or ignored effort and
danger of industrial labor, and created a
sociological portrait of Buffalo's working
class. Working in the same vein of capturing
people at work and home, Rogovin traveled
extensively in the 1980s, photographing
working people around the world. Rogovin won
the W. Eugene Smith Award for Documentary
Photography and was able to continue the
Family of Miners series. By then in his
seventies, Rogovin kept up a
vigorous
pace, traveling to China, Cuba, the former
Czechoslovakia, France,
Germany,
Greece, Mexico, Scotland, Spain, and Zimbabwe.
In many of these places, Rogovin
photographed miners, creating a series he
called a "Family
of Miners."
Triptychs and Quartets
In the early 1980s, Rogovin also revisited
the Lower West Side in an attempt to document
the changes to the neighborhood and to find
and re-photograph people whom he had first
photographed in the 1970s. In 1992, Rogovin
returned to
document those same individuals again, and
these pictures, along with those from the
1970s
and 80s, were
published in the book Triptychs: Buffalo's
Lower West Side Revisited (New
York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994). As a
picture of time's inevitable changes, a sociological
record of three decades of changing culture,
and as a portrait of people growing up and
families forming and some breaking apart,
these triptychs succeed beautifully. They
have become
Rogovin's most famous work, and have been
widely published and exhibited.
In 2000, after having surgery to heal debilitating
cataracts, Rogovin returned to the Lower West
Side once again to photograph people for a
fourth time. Sixteen of these quartets, along
with brief interviews with the subjects, were
published in Milton Rogovin: the Forgotten
Ones (New York: Quantuck Lane Press,
2003).
For Rogovin, his all-encompassing photographic
project was to document "the Forgotten
Ones," a term which Rogovin uses to signify
the overlooked and exploited segments of society. "I
have concentrated on the poor," Rogovin
has said, "the rich ones have their own
photographers." His photographs are the
product of respect for people and are deeply
expressive
of his subject's strength and dignity.
The Photographs
Except in photographing his storefront series, Milton Rogovin used a twin-lens Rolleiflex
camera on a tripod. He used a bare-bulb flash
when making indoor portraits. His prints were
made on various Kodak papers. Most of his photographs
are printed on 8x10" paper.
Prints & Photographs Division staff have
selected for individual cataloging and digitization
a variety of images to give a flavor for the
contents of the collection. The following
groupings
include
some of Rogovin's best-known work and
also some of the notable but less well known
photographs he created.
Popular Images
A
selection of Milton Rogovin's best-known
images.
Triptychs
Selections from Buffalo's Lower West Side,
1972-2002.
Workers
Throughout his career, Milton Rogovin photographed
workers.
Women Workers
Milton Rogovin photographed women working
in traditional and non-traditional fields,
from miners in the U.S. and other nations
to
heavy
industry
in the Buffalo area.
Workers at the Workplace and at Home
In particular, Milton Rogovin photographed
miners and steel workers both on the job
and with their families at home.
Arrangement and Access
Milton and Anne Rogovin organized his photographs
by geographic areas and themes. In processing
the
collection,
the Library has maintained the integrity of
Rogovin's original organization of the
negatives and contact sheets. Each
LOT is organized chronologically.
The processing
of the collection has further refined Rogovin's
organization, consolidating information from
various sources onto contact sheets, and
updating Rogovin's reporting of place
names. Furthermore, contact sheets have been
made for negatives that did not have this ready reference viewing tool. Rogovin's original negative sleeves
contain detailed notes used when making prints.
Arranged in
the same manner as the negatives for easy
cross-reference, these negative sleeves are
stored offsite and are served by special arrangement.
Rogovin's logbook
with
additional caption information for selected
prints is in the Prints & Photographs Division's Supplementary Archives.
In general, the collection has not been digitized.
Researchers who wish to view the material must
request it in the Prints & Photographs Reading
Room. The photographs are arranged in two series:
-
The majority of the photographs are
grouped by project into LOTs. Within each
LOT, the first section consists of signed
8 x 10" prints.
The second section is made up of contact
sheets. Some LOTs, however, contain exclusively
contact
sheets or exclusively prints. The signed
prints for each LOT have been arranged
in the order they appear in on the
contact sheets thus facilitating quick access
to the information needed for photoduplication
and easy cross-referencing between the prints
and negatives. When available, information from
the photographer's logbook that offers additional
caption information has
been included in the LOT. A small selection of
photographs from the LOTs has been digitized
and individually cataloged to give an online
sample of the collection.
-
About thirty photographs are available
in the Prints & Photographs Division's
individually cataloged "PH" series.
All of the prints in the PH filing series
have individual
online catalog records. [View
catalog records]
LOT Summaries
LOT 13523 - Storefront Churches, East
Side, Buffalo, N.Y., 1958-1963
Photographs of religious services,
interiors, exteriors, congregations, and ministers.
Images
depict baptism, praise and worship, preaching,
trances, music, and members of the congregation,
including children. [view
catalog record]
[view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13524 - "Home" East
Side, Buffalo, N.Y., 1959-1987
African American community on Buffalo's
East Side. Photographs show adults and children
at home, inside a barbershop, children outside,
the surrounding neighborhood, including storefronts,
shops, and dwellings. Some photographs made
in August 1987 on Jefferson Avenue. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13525 - Family of Miners, Appalachia
Photographs, 1963-1987
Portraits of workers and the unemployed in West
Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama. Photographs
document workers at the mines and at home, religious
services, schools, architecture, roads, and
the landscape, especially the effects of strip
mining. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13526 - Lower West Side, Buffalo,
N.Y., 1972-1977
Portraits of African American, Italian American,
Native American, Puerto Rican, and White families
at home, inside stores and restaurants, and
on the street. Includes
photographs of festivals, weddings, and religious
services. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13527 - Lower West Side, Buffalo,
N.Y., Revisited, 1984-1986
Rogovin returned to the Lower West Side twelve
years after he began documenting the neighborhood.
He rephotographed many of the same subjects.
He also photographed homeless
people outside a shelter. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13528 - Lower West Side, Buffalo,
N.Y., Revisited, 1992-1994
Rogovin re-photographed the same people he met
on earlier visits to the neighborhood. Includes
single portraits, group portraits with extended
families, or photographs of family members.
[view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13529 - Lower West Side, Buffalo,
N.Y., Diptychs and Triptychs,
1972-2002
Selections from the Lower West
Side series. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13530 - Yemenite Community, Lackawanna,
N.Y., 1978-1979
Photographs of a Yemenite community in
Lackawanna,
New York, including images taken at services
marking the end of Ramadan. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13531 - Working People, Buffalo,
N.Y., 1978-1988
Photographs show employees of various industries,
focusing on steel mills in Buffalo, New York.
In addition to portraits in the workplace, Rogovin
photographed workers in their homes. Rogovin
rephotographed some workers ten years later.
[view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13532 - Photographs of People and
Towns in Chile, 1967
Includes portraits, street scenes, houses, architectural
details, food, and restaurant interiors. Also
includes images of Pablo Neruda and his home
on Isla Negra. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13533 - Family of Miners. Scotland
Photographs, 1982
Individual and group portraits of miners at
work and in their homes. Photographs also show
the social life of the miners, at stock car
races, dances, pubs, and playing darts. Also
includes images of businesses and residential
streets. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13534 - Family of Miners, France Photographs, 1981
Individual and group portraits of miners at
work and at home with their families. Also includes images of pets,
street vendors, people socializing at a bar,
and residential streets. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13535 - Family of Miners, Spain Photographs, 1983
Portraits of people at work and at home with
their families. Images show industrial
and agricultural workplaces, including factories,
machine shops,
construction sites, mines, and farms. Other
images depict potters, cobblers, basket weavers,
and stone carvers. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13536 - Family of Miners, Germany Photographs, 1984
Mine and coke industry workers in Ruhr, Germany.
Images depict people before and after work,
and at home with their families. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13537 - Family of Miners, Cuba
Photographs, 1984-1989
Portraits of people at work and at home with
their families. Photographs show industrial and agricultural
workplaces, such as factories, sugar mills,
processing plants, machine shops, construction
sites, and farms. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13538 - Photographs of People and
Sites in Mexico and Family of Miners Series
Photographs, ca. 1953-1956 and 1988
Photographs from the 1950s include workers,
street scenes, landscapes, social activities,
and Mayan ruins. Work activities include tile
making, stone cutting, sisal processing, pottery
making, weaving, and boat building and repair.
Photographs from 1988 document miners preparing
for work, in the mines, and in social settings
after work. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13539 - Family of Miners, China
Photographs, October 1986
Photographs show miners at work or outside the
mines, and workers at a construction site and
factory in China. Series also includes workers
at home with their families. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13540 - Family of Miners, Zimbabwe
Photographs, 1989
Portraits of miners at work and at home. Also
includes images of religious services and the
exteriors and interiors of homes. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13541 - Family of Miners, Czechoslaovakia
Photographs, 1990
Photographs include portraits of men and women
at work in the mines, workers playing chess,
socializing at a bar, and at home with their
families. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13542 - Street Scenes and People
in Greece, 1978
Primarily street scenes and individual and group
portraits. Photographs show street vendor kiosks,
shops, storefronts, and people, including
children outside and at home.
[view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13543 - Children having Children,
Photographs of Young Mothers with their
Children, Buffalo, N.Y., 1991-1993
Photographs of teenage mothers with their children.
[view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13544 - Photographs of the Punk
subculture in Buffalo, N.Y., 1991
Portraits documenting members of the Punk subculture,
often in domestic settings. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13545 - Iroquois Indians in Western
New York and Ontario, Canada,
1963-1993
Individual and group portraits of Iroquois Indians
on reservations in western New York and
Canada. Also photographs of students at school,
a Native
American protest march, a ceremony in a longhouse,
and Native American crafts. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13546 - Photographs of poeple
and sites, primarily in New York and areas
of Québec and Ontario, Canada,
1953-1995
Primarily made in the Buffalo area, some made
in Canada. A wide variety of topics are represented
including a fire in a residential area of Niagara
Falls, a theater troupe, apple pickers, Vietnam
veterans, nuns and portraits of cellist Mischa
Schneider and Rogovin family members. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13547 - Head Start Program, Buffalo,
N.Y., ca. 1965-ca. 1973
Head Start Program at Jefferson School. Children
at home and at school, on a field trip, and
playing. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13548 - Harlem, New York City,
N.Y., 1982
Portraits of women workers, particularly seamstresses,
in a clothing factory. Also includes portraits
of workers at home, school children and hot
dog vendors. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13561 - Buffalo, N.Y., Cooperatives,
1971 and 1980
Photographs document the October Graphics cooperative
and Yeast-West Bakery. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
LOT 13572 - Photographs of photographer
Milton Rogovin's home and family, 1992-1994
Photographs of the photographer's home
and family. [view
catalog record] [view
any images cataloged online]
Permissions and Credits
Researchers may make photocopies of contact
sheets for purposes of reference use and
ordering copies. Individual larger format photographic
prints may not be photocopied. Publication and
other forms of distribution of the images are
restricted. Permission from The Rogovin Collection,
LLC, is required. For contact information, see
the full rights statement available online at:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/162_rogo.html.
Privacy and publicity rights may also apply.
Obtaining Reproductions
Researchers can buy photographic copies of
items in the collection through the Library
of Congress Photoduplication Service. Orders
must include the reproduction number of the
desired image. When ordering an image found
on a contact sheet, researchers should include
a photocopy of the contact sheet with the desired
image highlighted or circled in order to assist
the Photoduplication Service in accurately completing
the order.
Related Resources Outside
the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress does not maintain these sites. Users should direct concerns about these links to their respective site administrators or webmasters.
Burchfield-Penney Art Center
Buffalo, NY 14222
http://www.burchfield-penney.org
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center's
collection includes 225 photographs by Milton
Rogovin.
J. Paul Getty Museum
Department of Photographs
Los Angeles, California
90049-1681
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=3637&page=1
The J. Paul Getty Museum has more
than 200 photographs by Milton Rogovin. This
website provides a brief biography and displays
a
few
of his images.
Milton Rogovin, Social Documentary Photographer
http://www.miltonrogovin.com
Website developed by Milton Rogovin's
family. Includes an overview of many of Milton
Rogovin's photographic series, a comprehensive
bibliography and list of one man and group
shows in which he has participated, etc.
Milwaukee Art Museum
Milwaukee, WI 53202
http://www.mam.org/collections/rogovin.htm
The Milwaukee Art Museum collection
includes seventy photographs by Milton Rogovin.
Their web site has a presentation
on Milton Rogovin's triptychs, as well as a
curriculum
for teachers.
Selected Bibliography
Rogovin, Milton. Milton Rogovin, the
Forgotten Ones. Interview by Cheryl
Brutvan. Seattle: University of Washington
Press; Buffalo: Albright-Knox
Art Gallery, 1985. Call number: TR647.R62 1985
P&P Ref [view
catalog record]
Catalog for an exhibition held at the Albright-Knox
Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y., and the Brooklyn
Museum, Brooklyn, NY, in 1985. This publication
contains a broad range of work by the photographer.
The images were made between 1952 and 1983,
and include work from the following series:
Mexico, Storefront Churches, Chile, Appalachia,
Lower West Side, Yemeni, Working People, and
portraits of working class people in France,
Scotland, and Spain.
Rogovin, Milton. Milton Rogovin: The
Forgotten Ones. New York: Quantuck
Lane Press, 2003. Call number: TR681 .P6
R64 2003 P&P Ref [view
catalog record]
Includes photographs made in Buffalo, New
York, between 1958-1985 and a series of sixteen
quartets documenting individuals and families
between 1972 and 2002, with oral histories
by the portrait sitters.
Rogovin, Milton. Portraits in Steel. Photographs
by Milton Rogovin; interviews by Michael
Frisch. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1993. Call number: HD8039 .I52
U575 1993 P&P
Ref [view
catalog record]
Interviews with 17 iron and steel
workers in the Buffalo area accompanied
by photographs of the workers. In
1976 Rogovin photographed workers
in Buffalo-area steel plants and at
home with their families. He returned
in the mid 1980s, after many of the
plants had closed to rephotograph
the same families.
Rogovin, Milton. Triptychs: Buffalo's
Lower West Side Revisited. New York:
W.W. Norton, 1994. Call number: F129.B843
L697 1994 P&P
Ref [view
catalog record]
Fifty triptychs made between 1972 and 1992
in Buffalo's ethnically diverse Lower
West Side neighborhood. An essay by Joann
Wypijewski discusses the neighborhood and
quotes from some of the sitters.
Prepared by: Mike Yates and Amber
Revoir, Junior Fellows; Carol Johnson,
Curator; and Cary McStay, Processing
Technician and Processing Project Leader.
Last updated: October 2004
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