"All my life I’ve focused on the poor. The rich ones have their own photographers."
Social documentary photographer
Milton Rogovin's '
life was about seeing. In the literal sense, he was an optometrist. In a more figurative sense, through the lens of his camera, he saw things and people that were often ignored — the poor, the oppressed, the "
forgotten ones," as he called them.' "A librarian in Buffalo's Communist Party, he was called before the
House Un-American Activities Committee in 1957, and was named "Buffalo's Top Red" in the Buffalo Evening News. Losing business and facing intense social persecution, Rogovin turned to photography
in order to create images that conveyed his desire for a more equal and just society, and to give voice to others who were persecuted, who were invisible to most." Mr. Rogovin
died on January 18th at his home in Buffalo at the
age of 101.
Previously on Metafilter [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jan 21, 2011 -
9 comments
His photographs recorded life along the
Scotswood Road, the working class district in the West End of Newcastle made
famous in Geordie song.
James (Jimmy) Forsyth had come to make his home there having volunteered for war work as a fitter in one of the local factories, moving up to Newcastle from his native South Wales. In 1954, aware that
change was coming and no longer working having lost an eye in an industrial accident,
Forsyth began to document his community and surroundings. A self-taught photographer, Jimmy "picked up a cheap folding camera in one of the pawn shops. There wasn’t much to adjust, just as well, because I’ve never known what to do...I’m just an amateur...just capturing what I knew was going to disappear." Jimmy
died last Saturday, aged 95.
posted by Abiezer
on Jul 14, 2009 -
11 comments
Jørn Utzon, the architect who designed
Sydney Opera House despite the project being plagued by controversy and scandal, died today.
While the rest of us are posting photographs of our drunken friends or the poetry of a plastic bag caught in the wind,
one Flickr user is busy with pithy, insightful, considered and often witty architectural commentary supplementing exquisite architectural photography.
This obituary for Utzon captures the cost of that project to the man himself and to the world.
[more inside]
posted by carbide
on Nov 29, 2008 -
21 comments
Goodbye Galen and Barbara. World-renowned wilderness photographer and writer Galen Rowell, and his wife and business partner Barbara Cushman Rowell, a photographer and writer in her own right, died early Sunday morning in an airplane crash outside of Bishop, Calif.
posted by faithnomore
on Aug 12, 2002 -
6 comments
