Sid Grossman (June 25, 1913 in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
– December 31, 1955 in
Provincetown
Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Province ...
) was an American photographer, teacher, and social activist.
Life
Sid Grossman was the younger son of Morris and Ethel Grossman. He attended the
City College of New York and worked on a WPA street crew.
[Grossman, Sid and Lampell, Millard. Journey to the Cape] In 1934, he started what would become the
Photo League
The Photo League was a cooperative of photographers in New York who banded together around a range of common social and creative causes. Founded in 1936, the League included some of the most noted American photographers of the mid-20th century amon ...
with co-founder
Sol Libsohn Sol Libsohn (February 5, 1914 - January 21, 2001) was a self-taught, documentary photographer.
Biography
After graduating from City College of New York, he joined the Film and Photo League where he earned his living documenting paintings. In 193 ...
. Grossman played numerous roles throughout the Photo League's existence (1936–1951) including educator, administrator, reviewer, editor of ''Photo Notes'' and founder of ''Chelsea Document (1938-1940),'' an indictment of obsolete buildings and substandard living conditions in a New York neighborhood. He enlisted on March 6, 1943 and served in the
Sixth Army in Panama during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. Grossman's 1940 photographs of labor union activity led to FBI investigations and the blacklisting of the Photo League as a communist front in 1947. In 1949, he opened a photography school in Provincetown, Massachusetts, although he continued to live and teach in NYC part of every year.
Grossman was married twice: to Marion Hille and then to Miriam Grossman.
Grossman died from a heart attack in 1955. His book, ''Journey to the Cape'', coauthored with
Millard Lampell, was published posthumously, in 1959.
Politics and aesthetics
Even though the actual date of his joining the Communist Party is not known, his membership in it was never in doubt. In 1936, his nickname at the Photo League was “Commissar” for his dogmatic opposition to the aestheticism of some of the members. Prior to his enlistment in the Armed Forces, he was investigated by the FBI, U.S. Army Intelligence, and the NYC Police Department for his political affiliations.
However, by 1946 and his discharge from the armed forces, Grossman was ready to break from Stalinism and the Communist Party. As Mason Klein observed, “Grossman's major formal breakthrough occurred when he was in the air force, stationed in Panama...” There he was away from the Party and the day-to-day affairs of The Photo League, and he used the opportunity “to experiment and move on.” He “began to challenge the honest and straight documentary approach that he had long espoused.”
[Klein, Mason. “Of Politics and Poetry: The Dilemma of the Photo League" p. 24] He began using a Speed Graphic 4x5 camera and changed his technique. He started to photograph at night and worked to achieve startling effects by moving his camera and manipulating his prints.
Grossman's photographic point of view and the images he created in the late 1940s bore little if any resemblance to those of the “Commissar” of the early 1930s. None of which had any bearing on the decisions of U.S. Attorney General Tom C. Clark and House Un-American Activities Committee to deem the photographer and the organization he helped to create as “subversive.” Grossman resigned from the Photo League in 1949; the Photo League disbanded on October 30, 1951.
Photography
Grossman conducted workshops at the Photo League, the Henry St. Settlement, the Harlem Art Center, and privately in NYC and Provincetown, for almost twenty years.
The photographers he taught were many – including
Lou Bernstein,
Lisette Model
Lisette Model (born Elise Amelie Felicie Stern; November 10, 1901 – March 30, 1983) was an Austrian-born American photographer primarily known for the frank humanism of her street photography.
A prolific photographer in the 1940s and a member ...
,
Walter Rosenblum,
Louis Stettner,
Helen Gee,
Arthur Leipzig
Arthur Leipzig (October 25, 1918 – December 5, 2014) was an American photographer who specialized in street photography and was known for his photographs of New York City.
Career
Leipzig was born in Brooklyn. After sustaining a serious injury to ...
(who is on record as calling Grossman “probably the most fantastic teacher I ever knew”)
and
Leon Levinstein. Yet Grossman himself said, “I am not an instructor in any classical sense.”
He insisted that his students take on the responsibility for making something of themselves. According to Jewish Museum curator Mason Klein, “Grossman increasingly insisted on the idea of being in the world in a particular manner, engaging with a certain consciousness as a photographer, and connecting to the camera in ways that made photographers question who they were.”
[Klein, Mason. “Of Politics and Poetry: The Dilemma of the Photo League” p. 22] One had to “live for photography,” in effect transforming and liberating oneself – in order to become a good photographer.
One description of Grossman's “impassioned, often aggressive workshop critiques”
has been provided by one of his students, N. Jay Jaffee, who studied with him in 1948. On the one hand, “He was almost contemptuous; each of us got a taste of his anger and hostility during the course.” Yet, “His genius was in expounding a philosophy of photography that was unique. I had never heard anyone speak on a subject with such depth and enthusiasm. I still recall a phrase he repeated several times: 'The world is a picture.' This simple statement was a profound insight into the method and meaning of photography.” “To Sid, photography was serious, not sacred.” Grossman's first wife, Marion Hille, remarked that he “encouraged his students 'to enjoy themselves right away, to get a feel of taking pictures without technique getting in the way.'”
Jaffee reflected that, “Perhaps, if Sid had lived long enough, he would have also mellowed. Hopefully, he would have received the honor and respect for his brilliance and his work that he so justly deserves.” Today, almost all of the important photographers and educators he influenced and who continued his legacy are also deceased. All that is left are the photographs he and they made – a considerable contribution."
Publication
*''The Life and Work of Sid Grossman.'' By
Keith F. Davis. New York City: Howard Greenberg Library; Göttingen:
Steidl
Steidl is a German-language publisher, an international publisher of photobooks, and a printing company, based in Göttingen, Germany. It was started in 1968 by Gerhard Steidl and is still run by him.
Overview
The company was started by Ger ...
, 2017. .
Notes
References
* Grossman, Sid - Major Projects. Creative Camera. July/August 1983.
* Grossman, Sid and Lampert, Millard, "Journey to the Cape". Grove Press, 1959
* Klein, Mason and Evans, Catherine, "The Radical Camera:New York's Photo League, 1936-1951". Yale University Press, 2011
* Tucker, Anne Wilkes., "This Was the Photo League: Compassion and the Camera from the Depression to the Cold War". Stephen Daitry Gallery, 2001
External links
Sid Grossman: Harlem, New York (1936); Coney Island (1947); and Mulberry Street (1948)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grossman, Sid
1913 births
1955 deaths
Photographers from New York (state)
Street photographers