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

Jerome Liebling, Butterfly Boy, New York, 1949, gelatin silver print. The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Mimi and Barry J. Alperin Fund. © Estate of Jerome Liebling.

Norton Museum of Art – West Palm Beach

By Claire Fenton

This formidable survey of the history of New York’s Photo League is a testament to its undeniable cultural, social and political significance. Nearly 150 photos exhibited pertain to the collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, and The Jewish Museum in New York City, where the exhibition was previously held and was selected by the New Yorker as one of the best photography exhibitions in 2011.

The exposition shows that fascinating mixture of aesthetic exploration and social activism that characterized the members of the league. They were noted for capturing the beauty of daily life, mainly in the streets of New York, where its sphere of action was centered.

Born of the worker’s movement, the Photo League was an organization of young, idealistic, first-generation American photographers, most of them Jewish, who believed in documentary photography as an expressive medium and powerful tool for exposing social problems. It was also a school with teachers such as Sid Grossman, who encouraged students to take their cameras to the streets and discover the meaning of their work as well as their relationship to it. The Photo League helped validate photography as a fine art, presenting student work and guest exhibitions by established photographers such as Eugène Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Edward Weston, among others.

Through June 16, 2013.