Milton Rogovin

The Social Documentary Photography of Milton Rogovin

Milton Rogovin (1909–2011) dedicated his photographic career to capturing the humanity of working-class people around the world—coal miners, factory workers, the urban poor, the residents of Appalachia, and other marginalized groups. He worked to equalize the relationship between photographer and subject in the making of pictures and encouraged his subjects' agency by photographing them on their own terms. Rogovin's powerful insight and immense sympathy for his subjects distinguish him as one of the most original and important documentary photographers in American history. Edited by Christopher Fulton, The Social Documentary Photography of Milton Rogovin is a multi-disciplinary study of the photographer's historical achievement and continuing relevance. Inspired by a recent donation of his work to the University of Louisville, this compilation of essays examines Rogovin's work through multiple lenses. Contributors analyze his photographic career and political motivations, as well as his relationship to economic history and current academic interests. Most closely investigated are the Lower West Side series—a photographic portrait of a particular neighborhood of Buffalo—the Working People series—documenting blue-collar workers and their families over a span of years—and the Family of Miners series—a survey of mining communities in the United States and eight foreign countries. A collaborative effort by prominent scholars, The Social Documentary Photography of Milton Rogovin combines historical and biographical research with cultural and artistic criticism, offering a unique perspective on Rogovin's work in Appalachia and beyond.

Ineffably Urban: Imaging Buffalo

Buffalo, in New York state, is 'ineffable': a typical city in transition between its past and future. It is a classic example of one of many 'shrinking cities' in North America and elsewhere which once prospered because of heavy industrialization, but which now have to deal with various degrees of urban decay. Bringing together a range of scholars from the humanities, the social sciences, art and architecture, this volume looks at both the literal city image and urban representation generated by photographs, video, historical and contemporary narratives, and grass-root initiatives. It investigates the notion of agency of media in the city and, in return, what the city’s agency is. This agency matters particularly as it is both transforming - shrinking, fading, being redefined - and being shaped through its visual and spatial mediation. While illustrated by Buffalo in particular, the book examines a broader phenomenon: the identity of those cities that were built and blossomed during the late 19th and early 20th century and are now in different stages of decline and disintegration. However, while such cities are all confronted with complex issues of economic instability, social and racial segregation, urban sprawl and shrinking processes both in the inner city and more and more in their ex-urban belts, they are too often described through dramatically simplifying visual and linguistic tropes. In Buffalo such tropes refer dialectically either to the city’s past glory or its presumed current cultural, political and economical stasis and decline. This book takes such tired, and familiar tropes and questions them.

Communist Activities Hearings Before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-fifth Congress, First-second Sessions