Lou Bernstein

Lou Bernstein (born Judah Leon Bernstein; February 28, 1911 – August 2, 2005) was an American photographer and teacher. His career began during the Great Depression and the Photo League and ended shortly before he died.

Early life Bernstein grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City, the oldest son of Jewish immigrants from Romania. Like many of his contemporaries, Bernstein was forced to leave school—in his case, Seward Park H.S.—to help support his family after his father was injured. After selling candy and men's clothing accessories on the streets of New York City for two years, he joined Borrah Minevitch's original Harmonica Rascals (Bernstein had taught himself to play the harmonica when he was seven), a group that toured the country, playing one-night stands wherever they could find work.

After two years on the road, he returned to New York City, where he met Mildred Marder and married her a year later, in 1931. Needing to find a way of supporting himself and his wife, he began studying iron drafting and received a diploma on April 14, 1933, from The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York. Because of the Depression, he was never able to find employment in this field. Instead, he began working in the Brooklyn shipyards, which he did for over ten years. He sought out Sid Grossman and the Photo League in 1940. This approach served him well. As far as he was concerned, "...there's as much variety in my own back yard as there is in a thousand miles of travel."

Unwilling to turn "professional," i.e., make his living from paid assignments, yet feeling the need to become more involved in the photographic community, Bernstein began working in the darkroom department at Peerless Camera, then one of the largest photographic supply emporiums in New York City. Over a lifetime a work, Bernstein created a series of projects, all taken in close proximity to where he lived.

Student and teacher Sid Grossman's approach to photography was critical to Bernstein's development both as an artist and as a mentor to others. Grossman "forced his students to discover not only what constituted a good photograph but, more importantly, their emotional relationship to it." However the latter statement came, not as something he learned from his first teacher. Four years after Grossman's death in 1954, one of Bernstein's colleagues urged him to study with the American poet, critic, and philosopher Eli Siegel. Bernstein began studying Aesthetic Realism in 1962 and continued to do so until 1973. The photographer remained openly grateful to Siegel, writing that "...new doors have been opened up for me. I have become more aware of my own possibilities..." Bernstein had long nurtured a desire to teach photography but felt inhibited. In his own words, "The trouble was, I simply didn't know enough." What his association with Aesthetic Realism gave him was a methodology and a vocabulary to transmit what he had learned to his students. He resumed teaching in 1970 and kept at it for three decades.

Bernstein had benefited greatly from his participation in Sid Grossman's workshops and sought to emulate his teacher's approach. The first thing was for his students to enjoy themselves when they were out photographing. However, Bernstein made some important refinements to the workshop methodology. Students were expected to bring in their work for criticism. But whereas Grossman could be sarcastic and biting in his approach, ("Sid never told me what was good. He only told me what was bad...") By talking about other photographers' work, each student was developing his own critical facility—essential to his own development as a photographer. Just as Grossman continued to teach privately after he left The Photo League in 1949, so too, Bernstein conducted weekly sessions from his home for many years. In 1992, Bernstein estimated that he had worked with over 600 students.

In addition to the informal workshops he conducted, Bernstein also taught formally at various institutions. In 1971, when W. Eugene Smith took a sabbatical from his teaching position at Cooper Union, he recommended that Bernstein take his place. Smith had previously recommended him for a Guggenheim grant in a "Confidential Report on Candidate for Fellowship" from December 1969, as had Wynn Bullock in a letter dated November 17, 1966. The following year, Bernstein taught a similar class, "Creative Approach to Photography," at the Phoenix School for Art and Design. After he had spent years photographing at the New York Aquarium at Coney Island, he was asked to share some of what he had learned in a course entitled "Aquatic Awareness," which he conducted from 1980 to 1985. In 1992, the same ICP honored him with a second exhibition, Five Decades of Photography.

By the time of his death, Bernstein's work had been shown in almost seventy exhibitions, and were part of the collections of, among other institutions, The Museum of Modern Art (New York), the University of Arizona, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, the International Center of Photography (NYC), the Columbus Museum of Art (Ohio), the Jewish Museum (Manhattan).

Final years Shortly after the death of his wife, Mildred, in 2001, Bernstein agreed to relocate to Florida to be with his family. He had been photographing at the New York Aquarium until that time, arriving there almost every day in the early morning before the official opening hour. Once he arrived in Florida, his active career as a photographer came to an end Spencer Museum of Art The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Museum of Modern Art Center For Creative Photography