JOE SCHWARTZ (1913-2013) St. Mark's Place * Union Square. 1930s & 40s; printed 1990s. Together, 2 silver prints, the first image measuring 7½x8¾ inches (19.1x22.2 cm.), the mount 10¾x13¾ inches (27.3x34.9 cm.), with Schwartz's signature and negative date in pencil on mount recto, and his address stamp with the initialed title and negative date also in pencil, on mount verso; the second image measuring 10⅜x12¼ inches (26.3x31.1 cm.), with Schwartz's signature, title, and negative date in pencil on verso.
Provenance Acquired directly from the Photographer; to a Private Collection in New Jersey
Like many eventual Photo League members, Joe Schwartz was born to immigrant parents in New York City. Engaged in politics and interested in social activism, Schwartz's interest in street and documentary photography led him to the Photo League.
The Photo League was a cooperative of amateur and professional photographers for whom socially conscious photography was a powerful and expressive tool to both document and explore the human condition. Without espousing a particular aesthetic, the Photo League's members created imagery that was informed by both interest in and interrogation of documentary techniques, as well as a sharp aesthetic perspective. Over the course of 15 short by intense years, which saw the end of the Great Depression, WWII, and political transformation, the leftist and radical Leage elevated and interrogated social realism, the role of the photographer, pushed street photography to new levels, while simultaneously contributing significantly to advocating for photography as an art form.
The group had its origins in the Film and Photo League, an offshoot of Workers International Relief, which was an organization that supplied the left-wing press with images of working-class life. The filmmakers, under Paul Strand, eventually formed the production company Frontier Films. The photographers, led by Sid Grossman and Sol Libsohn, founded the Photo League in 1936 (Berenice Abbott and Strand named the group). Initially operating out of a loft on East 21st Street, the Photo League provided members with low-cost darkroom facilities and technical instruction. The League also published a newsletter called Photo Notes, offered courses in photographic history, sponsored lectures, and organized social activities such as "Photo Hunts" and "Crazy Camera Balls." In addition to the photographs represented here, the group included or was supported by photographers such as Ruth Orkin, Louis Stettner, Margaret Bourke-White, Aaron Siskind, Arthur Leipzig, Ruth Orkin, W. Eugene Smith, Arthur Rothstein, Richard Avedon, Weegee, Robert Frank, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and many more.
In 1947, the League was blacklisted under McCarthyism, for its alleged involvement with the Communist Party. Despite support by prominent photographers, a passionate issue of Photo Notes, and an exhibition This is the Photo League, the group could not overcome the powerful sweep of the Red Scare and was forced to disband in 1951.
