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Photographer Milton Rogovin passes away

Photographer Milton Rogovin passes away

The American photographer Milton Rogovin has died. He was 101.

Mr. Rogovin’s work featured black and white images of what he called “the poorest of the poor”.

He explained his work: “I wanted to make sympathetic portraits of the poorest of the poor in our community that showed them as decent humans struggling to get by.”

The son of Lithuanian immigrants, Mr. Rogovin became a victim of the communist ‘witch-hunts’ of the 1950s. 

He had been a librarian for the local Communist party in Buffalo, New York, where he was an optometrist.

After being ordered to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1957, Rogovin refused to answer questions and was blacklisted.

While he continued to work as an optometrist, his blacklisting did have an adverse upon his business. He began to concentrate more on his photography and developed his interest in social documentary.

Some of his projects took years to complete. He spent three years documenting storefront churches in Buffalo; ten years photographing  Appalachian miners and decades producing work in the impoverished Lower West Side area of Buffalo. 

He also produced work outside the United States.

Among his many awards was the Cornell Capa Award which he received from the International Centre of Photography in New York in 2007.

 

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