Arthur Rothstein photographs, 1848-2000, bulk 1932-1985

A prominent American photographer and photojournalist of the twentieth century, Arthur Rothstein was born on July 17, 1915 in New York, New York. The youngest son of Latvian immigrants, he grew up in the Bronx and attended Stuyvesant High School. He took his undergraduate degree at Columbia College (BA, Chemistry, 1935), where he developed an interest in the technical aspects of photography and was a founding member of the Columbia University Camera Club. Upon graduation Rothstein was hired as a lab assistant and photographer by Roy Stryker, a Columbia economist and head of the Resettlement Administration's Historical Section. Stryker had been asked by colleagues in the Roosevelt administration to form a group of documentary photographers to work within what became known as the Farm Security Administration. In addition to Rothstein, FSA photographers included Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Gordon Parks, John Vachon, and Marion Post Wolcott, among others. The work of these photographers was circulated nationally, and did much to crystallize public attention on impoverished conditions in both rural and urban America.

In October 1935, Rothstein completed his first field assignment, photographing evicted farmers in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The following year, he traveled to the Midwest to document the large-scale human and environmental devastation of the Dust Bowl, producing what would soon become iconic photographs of tenant farm families and drought-stricken land. Subsequent FSA projects resulted in a diverse and prolific body of work, including images of Pittsburgh steel workers, African-American tenant farmers at Gee's Bend, Alabama, Western ranchers and cowhands, rural schoolchildren, Manhattan skyscrapers, and snow-covered New England landscapes.

Speaking about his tenure with the FSA in a 1964 interview, Rothstein likened his photographic approach to "the unobtrusive camera," or "the idea of becoming a part of the environment that people are in to such an extent that they're not even aware that pictures are being taken."

In 1940, Rothstein joined the staff of the popular periodical Look, and also traveled internationally under the auspices of various organizations and institutions over the course of the decade. During World War II, he served as a photo officer for the United States Army Signal Corps in China, Burma, and India. In 1946, he worked in China as a photographer for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, documenting primarily conditions of famine as well as Jewish refugee camps.

Over the following decades, Rothstein continued his career with LOOK magazine, having been named its director of photography in 1946. After LOOK ceased publication in 1971, Rothstein worked as an editor and director of photography at Parade magazine.

Rothstein was an active writer, researcher, and teacher, holding positions on the faculties of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, the School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, Mercy College, and Parsons School of Design. In the 1960s and 1970s, he dedicated considerable professional energies to researching color and three-dimensional photography, helping develop the Xograph printing process for three-dimensional images.

Among his publications include: Photojournalism (American Photographic Book Co., 1956), Creative Color in Photography (Clifton Books, 1963), Look at Us, Let's See; Here We Are… (with William Saroyan, Cowles, 1967), Color Photography Now (American Photographic Book Co., 1970), The Depression Years (Dover, 1978), Arthur Rothstein: Words and Pictures (Amphoto/Billboard Publications, 1979), American West in the Thirties (Dover, 1981), Arthur Rothstein's America in Photographs, 1930-1980 (Dover, 1984), and Documentary Photography (posthumously, Focal Press, 1986).

Rothstein died on November 11, 1985 in New Rochelle, New York.

Sources:

Arthur Rothstein and Richard Doud, "Arthur Rothstein Talks with Richard Doud [original transcript, 1964]," Archives of American Art Journal 17, no. 1 (1977): 19-23.

The Photographs of Arthur Rothstein, with an introduction by George Packer. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2011. Pages viii-xiii.