Raymond Jacobs

Raymond Jacobs (April 26, 1923 – March 17, 1993 ) was an American photographer, filmmaker, and businessman.

Raymond Jacobs is primarily known for his iconic reportage photographs of New York City street scenes from the late 1940s through the mid 1960s, his portraits of celebrities and notable figures of the era such as Louis Armstrong, Salvador Dalí and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as his in-depth photographic studies of subjects like the American circus and female impersonators. Jacobs also had a successful career as a commercial advertising photographer during the 1950s- 1970s.

In the 1970s Jacobs took a pause from his photographic career and, with his wife Eleanor, popularized the countercultural footwear brand Earth Shoes through their New York based “Earth Shoe Company”.

Raymond Jacobs’ photographic archive is represented by The J. Blatt Agency LLC, New York. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he photographed the 1939 New York World's Fair with a Brownie box camera for the student newspaper.

Career Photographer With an interest in photography since high school, Jacobs applied to a photography class conducted by Lisette Model at The New School. Model reviewed his portfolio and asked his profession. He replied, "I am a furrier." She told him, "You are not— you are a photographer." Jacobs’ editorial photographs were regularly published in magazines such as Fortune, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, McCall's, and Eros. Jacobs received over 50 Art Directors' Awards for his advertising work during this time.

The seminal Museum of Modern Art photography curator Edward Steichen included Jacobs’ work in the groundbreaking photographic exhibition The Family of Man (January 24 – May 8, 1955) as well as in 70 Photographers Look at New York (November 27, 1957 – April 15, 1958). John Swarkowski thereafter acquired a number of Jacobs’ works for MoMA’s permanent photography collection.

Jacobs was one of ten photographers featured in Style in Photography in Photography Annual 1963, edited by Bruce Downes. According to Deschin, "Jacobs' portfolio of poster-like effects in manipulated images of unrealistic color provides an excitingly novel example of a successful stylistic device."

Jacobs went on to have solo exhibitions at The Limelight Gallery (1961, Greenwich Village), The Walker Art Center (1963, Minneapolis), The Washington Irving Gallery (1978, New York City), The Oliver Wolcott Library (1990, Litchfield, Connecticut), The National Arts Club (1990, New York City), The Hotchkiss School’s Tremaine Art Gallery (2006, Lakeville, Connecticut), and The Litchfield Historical Society (2016, Litchfield, Connecticut). Jacobs' work was also included in the 2007 exhibition "Lisette Model and Her Successors” at the Aperture Gallery in New York.

In 2006, Pointed Leaf Press published My New York, a monograph of Jacobs' New York City street photographs.

In 2019, one of Jacobs' iconic 1950s advertising photographs was included in the exhibition "Women on View: Aesthetics of Desire in Advertising" at Galerie 36 in Berlin.

A solo exhibition featuring almost 40 never-before-seen photographs that Jacobs made during a 1954 trip to Gaspésie, Canada opened at Musée de la Gaspésie in October 2019 and will remain on view through the end of 2021.

Filmmaking In the 1960s, Jacobs branched into filmmaking.

Both films were financially successful, but he left the business to concentrate on Earth Shoes. but the company dissolved in 1977.

Personal life Jacobs married his wife Eleanor ("Ellie") in 1955. They had two daughters, Susan and Laura.