3/28/2023 0 Comments Social scene pictures![]() ![]() The history of the Photo League is the history of its members. Historians of the future will be grateful indeed to such League film makers as Leo Hurwitz, Sidney Meyers and Julian Roffman. The commercial newsreels weren’t interested in recording that kind of reality. Practically the only movie footage available today which documents the turmoil of those times is that made by the Film section of the League. The film section of the League acquitted itself well. But the pictures in our files are a constant reminder. What more fitting material for the photographer who wanted to honestly reflect the world he lived in? Our war years and the prosperity engendered by full production have perhaps made us forget. Millions of people unemployed, two thirds of a nation ill clothed, ill housed and ill fed. Certainly the Film and Photo League of that day seemed to concern itself greatly with the social scene.īut is this so difficult to understand? The period between 19 was one of the most turbulent in American history. Our files for that period contain pictures of strikes, picket lines, and demonstrations of the unemployed. What have we done in the past to be so labeled? Almost immediately one begins to think of the old Film and Photo League. ![]() It is interesting to speculate as to why we were placed on Clark’s list. Shades of Tom Paine ! Who ever thought the day would come when the Photo League would be called upon to defend the Bill of Rights? A membership, united in indignation, rejected the smear technique he used as being completely unfounded in fact and certainly in violation of the basic law of the land. Tom Clark’s bolt of lightning was certainly blunted if our membership meeting on Tuesday night was any indication. The text of Rosenblum’s article, reprinted with the kind permission of Naomi Rosenblum, follows. The idea of a retrospective exhibition, which became This Is the Photo League, was also born at this meeting, the notes of which were gathered and printed, along with Walter Rosenblum’s article “Where Do We Go from Here?” in a special issue of Photo Notes in January 1948. Nancy Newhall and Edward Weston drafted a telegram, which was unanimously approved, to Attorney General Clark repudiating the allegations of disloyalty. ![]() On December 16 at the Hotel Diplomat in New York, Rosenblum and Paul Strand addressed the League members and read telegrams from Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and others in support of the League. The League issued a press release denying the charges, and a membership meeting was called to discuss the group’s response to the blacklisting. Walter Rosenblum, who was president of the Photo League at the time, received the news when it was reported by the media the following day. On December 4, 1947, the Photo League appeared on the official list of “totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive” groups submitted by U.S. Exhibition Brochure (PDF) A Text by Walter Rosenblum ![]()
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