Photo League

The Photo League was a cooperative of amateur and professional photographers in New York who banded together around a range of common social and creative causes. The League was active from 1936 to 1951 and included among its members many of the most famous photographers of the 20th century.

The League’s origins can be traced back to a project of the Workers International Relief (WIR), which was a socialist-type association based in Berlin. In 1930 the WIR established the Worker’s Camera League in New York City, which soon came to be known as the Film and Photo League. The goals of the Film and Photo League were to “ struggle against and expose reactionary film; to produce documentary films reflecting the lives and struggles of the American workers; and to spread and popularize the great artistic and revolutionary Soviet productions.”.cite book|author=Anne Tucker|title=The Photo League: Photography as a Social Force|publisher="Modern Photography"|date=September 1979|pages=90]

In 1934 the still photographers and the filmmakers in the League began having differences of opinion over social and production interests, and by 1936 they had formed separate groups. Paul Strand and Ralph Steiner established Frontier Films, to continue promoting the original goals, while at the same time Strand and Bernice Abbott renamed the original group to simply “The Photo League”. The two organizations remained friendly, with members from one group often participating in activities of the other. The goal of the newly reformed Photo League was to “put the camera back into the hands of honest photographers who…use it to photograph America.”The League quickly became a major force in the newly arising field of socially conscious photography. One of the reasons that it gained strength so rapidly is that, unlike most other photography organizations of the time, it did not espouse a particular visual style but instead focused on “integrating formal elements of design and visual aesthetics with the powerful and sympathetic evidence of the human condition.” [cite book|author=Betsi Meissner|title=Original Sources: Art and Archives at the Center for Creative Photography|publisher=Center for Creative Photography|date=2002|pages=161] It also offered basic and advanced classes in photography at a time when there were no such courses in colleges or trade schools. A newsletter, called "Photo Notes", was printed on a somewhat random schedule depending upon who was available to do the work and if they the could afford the printing costs. More than anything else, though, the League was a gathering place for photographers to share and experience their common artistic and social interests.

At its height in the early 1940s the list of notable photographers who were active in the League included Bernice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Richard Avedon, Weegee, Walter Rosenblum, Robert Frank, Aaron Siskind, and, even though they did not live in New York, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Minor White. The League was also active as the caretaker of the Lewis Hine Memorial Collection, which Hine's son had given the the League in recognition of their role in fostering social activism through photography as his father had done.

Most of the members who joined before the end of World War II were first-generation Americans who strongly believed in progressive political and social causes. Few were aware of the League’s origin in Berlin, which, although it had little to do with the organization as it evolved, eventually led to its downfall. After the war the United States Congress, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, became obsessed with finding and persecuting individuals with possible Communist Party ties, and the Photo League fell directly within its crosshairs because of its German connection and its promotion of social justice. In 1947 the League was formally declared subversive and placed on the U.S. Department of Justice blacklist by Attorney General Tom C. Clark.

Disregarding the actual photographs produced by the League's members, the FBI emphasized the organization's commitment to social causes in order to allege subversive activities and social alliances. Despite the fact that claims of subversion were never substantiated, the Photo League was forced to disband in 1951 after an informant testified that it was a front organization for the Communist Party. [ [http://www.nypl.org/press/2006/league.cfm The New York Library Commemorates the 70th Anniversary of Legendary Photographic Society] ]

Over the course of its fifteen-year existence, the Photo League attracted the participation of every major photographer who lived in or traveled to New York. It served as a significant cultural and social center at a critical time in U.S. society, and it remains as a reminder that the political climate of the nation can have real consequences on its cultural life.

Notes

References

Anne Tucker. "This Was the Photo League" Chicago: Stephen Daiter Gallery, 2001

History of Photography 18:2 (Summer 1994). Special issue devoted to the Photo League.

Links

[http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/photo/league/index.html Where Do We Go from Here? The Photo League and Its Legacy 1936-2006]