Milton Rogovin

Milton Rogovin Pronounced "ruh-GO-vin" (December 30, 1909 – January 18, 2011) was an American social documentary photographer. His photographs are in the Library of Congress, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Center for Creative Photography.

Biography

Early years

Milton Rogovin was born December 30, 1909, in Brooklyn, New York City, of ethnic Jewish parents who emigrated to America from Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. He attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City and enrolled in Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1931 with a degree in optometry.

Rogovin was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1957. Like many other Americans who embraced Communism as a model for improving the quality of life for the working class, he became a subject of the Committee's attentions in the postwar period: He was discredited—without having been convicted of any offense—as someone whose views henceforth had to be discounted as dangerous and irresponsible.

Photographer

The incident inspired Rogovin to turn to photography as a means of expression; it was a way to continue to speak to the worth and dignity of people who make their livings under modest or difficult circumstances, often in physically taxing occupations that usually receive little attention.

In 1957, a collaboration with William Tallmadge, a professor of music, to document music at storefront churches set Rogovin on his photographic path. Some of the photographs that Rogovin made in the churches were published in 1962 in Aperture magazine, edited by Minor White, with an introduction by W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Rogovin traveled throughout the world, taking portraits of workers and their families. His most acclaimed project, though, has been The Forgotten Ones, sequential portraits taken over three decades of over a hundred families who resided on Buffalo's impoverished Lower West Side. The project was begun in 1972 and completed in 2002.

Personal life In 1942, he married Anne Snetsky (later changed to Setters). After his discharge from the Army, Milton and Anne had three children: two daughters (Ellen and Paula) and a son (Mark).

Publications Milton Rogovin, Lower West Side, Buffalo, New York. Buffalo, NY: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1975. Milton Rogovin: The Forgotten Ones. Buffalo, NY: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1985. . Windows that Open inward: Images of Chile. Buffalo, NY: White Pine, 1985. , (paper). Buffalo, NY: White Pine, 1999. . Portraits in Steel. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.. Triptychs: Buffalo's Lower West Side Revisited. New York: Norton, 1994. . The Bonds between Us: A Celebration of Family. Buffalo, NY: White Pine, 2001. . Milton Rogovin: The Forgotten Ones. New York: Quantuck Lane, 2003.. With Eyes and Soul: Images of Cuba. Buffalo, NY: White Pine, 2004. . Milton Rogovin: The Mining Photographs. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005. . The Lens and the Pen: Photographs and Poems. Arroyo Seco, NM: Palisade, 2009. . From the Western Door to the Lower West Side. Buffalo, NY: White Pine, 2010. . Before and After Coal: Images and Voices from Scotland's Mining Communities, Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2024. .