Esther Bubley

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An instructor of the Capital transit company ... , photograph of a female bus driver, during World War II; a job usually done by men, Esther Bubley, June 1943.
Esther Bubley: Cedule Colored Waiting Room , A waiting room at the bus station, 1943
Esther Bubley: Woman Listening to the Radio on Bed in Home , Washington DC, 1943
Esther Bubley: Two Couples Kissing , Arlington, Virginia, 1943
Soldiers with girls in front of a Greyhound bus , Indianapolis, 1943
Bus washes , Greyhound Garage , Pittsburg, 1943
A student at Woodrow Wilson High School, Washington DC, 1943

Esther Bubley (born February 16, 1921 in Phillips , Wisconsin , † March 16, 1998 in New York City ) was an American photographer . Her specializations were expressive photography and the everyday life of ordinary people.

life and career

Esther Bubley was born in Philips on February 16, 1921. She was the fourth child of Russian Jewish immigrants Louis and Ida Bubley. The Central High School in 1936 when Bubley in Superior (Wisconsin) visited, which was Life magazine first published. It was through this, and especially the images of the Great Depression of the Farm Security Administration, that she developed her passion for photojournalism and documentary photography . As editor-in-chief of her college yearbook, she tried to mimic the style of Life magazine. After high school, Bubley spent two years at what is now the University of Wisconsin-Superior before enrolling in the year-long photography program at what is now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design .

In 1941, after completing the collage, Bubley moved to Washington, DC , where she was looking for work as a photographer. Since she couldn't find anything at first, she moved to New York City, where she got a job with Vogue magazine . Not liking the work, she moved back to Washington in 1942, where she was offered a position as a microfilmer at the National Archives and Records Administration .

In the fall of 1942, she hired Roy Striker as a darkroom assistant at the Office of War Information (OWI). With the help of Stryker and other superiors, Bubley got a job as a photographer to document life on the home front during the war. Her most challenging job was a series about the bus system in the Midwest and South.

In late 1943, Bubley left the OWI with Stryker and other photographers and worked with them on projects for Standard Oil . Her series "Bus Story" for the company won the prize for the best picture sequence at the Contest of the Encyclopædia Britannica and the University of Missouri in the category "News Pictures of the Year" in 1948. During this time she married Edwin Locke, Strykers Head of administration, but divorced him shortly afterwards.

From 1947 onwards, Bubley no longer worked only for Stryker and Standard Oil. She began working on the side for the Children's Bureau , a children's charity. In the following years she contributed thousands of pictures to the work of the organization. Her photos have appeared on more than thirty front pages of The Child magazine.

In 1949, Bubley won the Encyclopædia Britannica and University of Missouri School of Journalism's second photo contest with a report on mental illness in the Ladies' Home Journal . She continued to work for the journal and produced several articles for the "How America Lives" series, which was published between 1948 and 1060.

In 1951 she started working as a freelancer for Life magazine. She contributed about forty articles and two cover stories during her collaboration. She was one of the first women who was successfully employed as a freelancer for a large magazine. Bubley also produced a notable series that year on the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh for Stryker, who was in charge of the Pittsburgh Photo Library at the time. Edward Steichen , at that time director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, used thirteen photos from the series about the Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh for the exhibition "Diogenese with a Camera" in 1952. This series of photos also led her to cover medical topics more often in her projects. In 1953 she was commissioned by UNICEF and the French government to travel to Morocco and record a documentary there on trachomas . Bubley submitted one of the photos taken there to "Photography Magazine" in 1954, where she became the first woman to win the competition.

In 1955, Steichen included her work in the exhibition The Family of Man .

A year later, she was hired by Pepsi Cola to represent Latin America for the company's Panorama magazine .

In the mid-1960s, Bubley was twice sent around the world by Pan American World Airways to take pictures for their photo collection.

In the late 1960s, when sales of photo magazines fell, Bubley cut back on her activities and stopped traveling the world as much. Instead, she spent more time at home in New York City, where she pursued projects of personal interest and published two children's books on animals and a book on macro photography of plants. In the mornings she was always out with her dog in Central Park , taking photos and taking notes with which she wanted to write a book about the park. In 1991 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design . In 1998, Bubley died of cancer in New York City.

In 2001 an exhibition of Bubley's work was shown at the UBS Art Gallery in New York City. In 2005 the Aperture Foundation published a monograph on Bubley, Esther Bubley. On assignment by Bonnie Yochelson and Tracy A. Schmid, archivist of the Bubley estate. In 2010, the Library of Congress published another monograph on Bubley: Fields of Vision. The Photographs of Esther Bubley .

Awards

Selected exhibitions

literature

Movie

Web links

Commons : Esther Bubley  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Bubley, Esther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Phillips, Wisconsin
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 1998
Place of death New York City