Rosenblum, Walter, 1919-2006

In the spring of 1946, the Unitarian Service Committee (USC) in Boston hired the American photographer Walter Rosenblum (b. 1919) to document its extensive refugee relief work in Europe. In France, Rosenblum visited the USC rest home at St. Goin (Aquitane); the Walter B. Cannon Memorial Hospital and recreation center in Toulouse; the Camp Clairac (Lot-et-Garonne) for underprivileged French and Spanish children; the Meillon Rest Home in Pau, which housed Spanish Nazi victims; and a summer camp and canteen in Les Andelys (Normandie). Starting in October, his photos began appearing regularly in the Unitarians’ monthly magazine, the Christian Register . Rosenblum had been a U.S. Army Signal Corp combat photographer, and took the first motion picture footage of the Dachau concentration camp. Born in 1919 into a poor Jewish immigrant family living on New York’s Lower East Side, in 1937 he joined the Film and Photo League, a Communist-associated popular front organization.

Photographer.

Walter Rosenblum (1919-2006) was a photographer, film maker, and teacher who documented the events of World War II, as well as the lives and experiences of immigrants in the United States and Spanish Civil War refugees. His work repeatedly features the privacy of individual families and the innocence of youth. Born in New York City, Rosenblum began photographing his Lower East Side neighborhood at the age of 16 using a borrowed camera. He took a photography class at the Boys' Club where he worked as part of the National Youth Administration, and in 1937 joined the Photo League, a vibrant community for New York photographers. There he met and studied with Lewis Hine, Berenice Abbott, Elizabeth McCausland, and Paul Strand. Rosenblum went on to edit the organization's Photo Notes and became the president in 1941.

Rosenblum served the United States Army as a combat photographer during World War II in the Western Front where he took the first motion picture footage of the Dachau concentration camp. He later received the Silver Star, Bronze Star, five battle stars, a Purple Heart, and a Presidential Unit Citation for his service. He later worked as an overseas staff photographer for the Unitarian Service Committee from May to October 1946, pursuing projects in France and Czechoslovakia, including documenting the lives of Spanish Civil War refugees displaced by conflict. Later projects focused on recording the experiences of people living in Haiti, East Harlem, and the South Bronx. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for "People of the South Bronx."

Beginning in 1947, Rosenblum taught photography at numerous institutions, including Brooklyn College, Cooper Union, the Yale Summer School, and the Rencontre de La Photographie in Arles France. With his wife, photographic historian Naomi Rosenblum, he curated international exhibitions. His photographs are represented in numerous international institutions, including, the Library of Congress, Museum of Modern Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

Sources:

"Walter Rosenblum," The J. Paul Getty Museum. http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=3511&page=1

"Walter Rosenblum," Rosenblum Photo. http://www.rosenblumphoto.org/wr_bio.html