Walter Rosenblum

(b New York, 1 Oct 1919). American photographer. He was born into a poor immigrant family and attended City College, New York, from 1936 to 1938. He studied photography under Paul Strand and Lewis Hine at the Photo League between 1937 and 1940, working with other photographers to produce documentary projects. Rosenblum served as a combat photographer in US Army Signal Corps, mostly in Europe, from 1943 to 1945 and was decorated many times. He became a member of the PHOTO LEAGUE in 1938, where he was very active: he served as editor of Photo Notes (1939-41), as chair of the exhibition committee (1941-2) and as league officer from 1946, including President from 1947 until his resignation in 1952. While working at the Photo League, Rosenblum was instrumental in preserving and cataloguing the photographic collection of Lewis Hine, finally arranging to give it to the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. During these years with the Photo League he produced his photographic essay Pitt Street (e.g. Candy Store, Pitt Street, 1938; Los Angeles, CA, Co. Mus. A.).

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Rosenblum, Walter (1919-2006), American photographer, born in poverty on the Lower East Side of New York, who studied photography with Paul Strand and Lewis Hine at the Photo League (1937-40). He was closely associated with the League from 1938 until McCarthy-era blacklisting destroyed it in 1952. As a photographer with the US Army Signal Corps during the Second World War (1943-5), he was the first photographer to enter Dachau. Although an accomplished documentary photographer himself, he is best known as the cataloguer and preserver of the Lewis Hine collection, and as one of the first university-based teachers of photography. He joined the faculty of Brooklyn College, New York, in 1947, and taught there and for the Yale Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk, Connecticut, until his retirement in 1977. His approach to photography, of social concern linked to aesthetic control, had a profound impact on the generations of students he taught. A 1979 Guggenheim Fellowship funded his People of the South Bronx exhibition, which exemplified the best of that tradition.

— Constance B. Schulz