In 1936, a group of young New York photographers established the Photo League under the premise that “photography has tremendous social value,” which could edify the photographer as much as the eventual viewer. In an in-depth exhibition of the League’s work, The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951, organized by the Jewish Museum of New York and the Columbus Museum of Art, fills a long narrow space on the second floor of the Contemporary Jewish Museum with over 150 black and white photographs.
Founded by Sid Grossman and Sol Libsohn, the League was a school, darkroom, gallery, and salon. It offered classes in the mechanics of photography, coinciding perfectly with the emergence of portable 35mm cameras. In addition to those just learning the craft, the Photo League boasted a hearty membership of professional photojournalists and freelance photographers. In fact, the Photo League’s member list reads like a who’s-who of 20th-century photographers: Aaron Siskind, Berenice Abbot, Weegee, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, Lucy Ashjian, Arthur Leipzig, the list goes on and on. In the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s installation, well-known and unknown names mingle in a chronological display of the League’s interests, accomplishments, and ultimate downfall.
Arthur Leipzig, Chalk Games, Prospect Place, Brooklyn, 1950, The Jewish Museum, New York.The photographs cover every imaginable slice of urban (and sometimes rural) life, shifting over the years from “bearing witness to questioning one’s own bearings” behind the lens. Repeated imagery includes eerily unaccompanied children, isolated people dwarfed by architecture, and crowds intent on escaping their conditions — whether by sunbathing at Coney Island or holding protest posters in a rally to end slum living.
One grouping devoted to Great Depression-era photographs includes two intimate interior shots that stand out beside the streets, storefronts, and other outdoor spaces depicted around them. Eliot Elisofon’s Child Bride, Age 15, Memphis, Tennessee and Jack Delano’s Interior of New FSA Client Edward Gont’s Home, Dameron, Maryland both exemplify the Photo League edict of getting close to one’s subject, heightening the perceived loneliness of their impoverished lives.
Eliot Elisofon, Child Bride, Age 15, Memphis, Tennessee, c. 1940; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection.In “The War Years,” a vitrine contains documentation of Weegee’s first gallery exhibition, Murder Is My Business, hosted by the Photo League in 1941. This view into the League’s interior shows wrinkly prints pinned to dingy boards below hand-lettered headings reading “MURDER” and “MORE MURDER.” Weegee’s exhibition is surprisingly low-budget — a far cry from his 2012 show at the International Center of Photography. Suddenly Photo League members are in front of the camera themselves, humanizing them, adding a personal dimension to their surrounding photographs. In images from Photo Hunt parties and Crazy Camera Balls, the camaraderie between League members is evident. The parties look tremendously fun.
