The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951

An exhibition by The Jewish Museum, New York and The Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio

In 1936 a group of young, idealistic photographers, most of them Jewish, first-generation Americans, formed an organization in Manhattan called the Photo League. Their solidarity centered on a belief in the expressive power of the documentary photograph and on a progressive alliance in the 1930s of socialist ideas and art. The Radical Camera presents the contested path of the documentary photograph during a tumultuous period that spanned the New Deal reforms of the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.

The exhibition features more than 140 works by some of the most noted 20th-century photographers, including Berenice Abbott, Sid Grossman, Lisette Model, Aaron Siskind, Paul Strand, and Weegee.

The exhibition will be housed at the The Jewish Museum, 1109 5th Ave at 92nd St, New York, NY from November 04, 2011 – March 25, 2012; at the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Oh, from April 19 – September 9, 2012; at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA, from October 11, 2012 – January 21, 2013; and at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Fl from February 9 – April 21, 2013.

More information is here.

Photograph by Sid Grossman, Coney Island, c. 1947.