I just read an obituary in "The New York Times," of a noted photojournalist who died last Tuesday in Buffalo at the age of 101. You can read the obituary here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/arts/design/19rogovin.html?hpw
Here's a bit of what the Times had to say about Rogovin: "Mr. Rogovin chronicled the lives of the urban poor and working classes in Buffalo, Appalachia, and elsewhere in the world for over 50 years. His direct photographic style in stark black and white evokes that of the socially minded work that Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks produced for the Farm Security Administration during the Depression. Today his entire archive resides in the Library of Congress."
What I particularly liked in reading about Rogovin's life is that he was an optometrist while he was establishing himself as a photographer. In fact, he didn't even have his own camera until he was 33.
So many of us in the advertising business forget along the way that our non-advertising work will probably never make us a dime. We have to keep our "optometry" businesses going. But that doesn't mean we should give up that which enriches us emotionally.
W. E. B. DuBois, described Rogovin's Church front photos as “astonishingly human and appealing.” Unfortunately, sometimes our paying work doesn't allow us to act that way.
