Walter A. Rosenblum (1919–2006) was an American photographer. He photographed the

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 ...

D-Day landing at

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

in 1944. He was the first Allied photographer to enter the liberated Dachau concentration camp. He received several military decorations including a

Purple Heart The Purple Heart (PH) is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those wounded or killed while serving, on or after 5 April 1917, with the U.S. military. With its forerunner, the Badge of Military Merit, ...

. His photography is on display in museums around the world.

Biography

Rosenblum was born on October 1, 1919, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. Rosenblum was a member of the New York

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 ...

where he was mentored by

Paul Strand Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. ...

and

Lewis Hine Lewis Wickes Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940) was an American sociologist and muckraker photographer. His photographs were instrumental in bringing about the passage of the first child labor laws in the United States. Early life ...

. He became president of the League in 1941. He taught photography at Brooklyn College for 40 years. During the McCarthy years, he and the rest of the members of the New York Photo League were blacklisted. From 1952 to 1976, he spent summers in Norfolk, CT, as a professor at the Yale Summer School of Music and Art, where he taught photography. His wife was photographic historian

Naomi Rosenblum Naomi Rosenblum, PhD, (January 26, 1925 – February 19, 2021) was the author "of two landmark histories of photography, ''A World History of Photography'' (1984) and ''A History of Women Photographers'' (1994), and dozens of seminal articles and ...

. They had two daughters, Lisa and documentary filmmaker Nina. Rosenblum died January 23, 2006.

Collections

* The J. Paul Getty Museum *

The Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of th ...

The Museum of Modern Art

Awards and honors

*Lifetime achievement award -

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...

(1998)

Decorations

References

1919 births 2006 deaths 20th-century American photographers Brooklyn College faculty Recipients of the Silver Star {{US-photographer-stub