GROSSMAN, Sid

About the American photographer, Sid GROSSMAN (1913-1955).

Sid GROSSMAN was a photojournalist and co-founder of the Photo League with Sol LIBSOHN, with whom he worked on a project documenting the changes in Chelseas in 1938-1939; this was followed in 1939 by a documentary on street life in Harlem. In 1940 he traveled through the Dust Bowl areas photographing union activities as well as rural life. During World War II, he recorded Red Cross activities, civil defense, volunteer farm work by students, and the care of young children. His most productive period as a photographer occurred shortly after World War II. He photographed Coney Island in the summers of 1947 and 1948 and the San Gennaro Festival on Mulberry Street in Manhattan's Little Italy in 1948. In 1949, he and the Photo League came into conflict with the FBI. He had already been under surveillance since 1940, on suspicion of Communist machinations; after suspicion was extended to the Photo League, it was unjustly disbanded in 1951. After that he gave private lessons in New York, but died shortly after... Among his students was Lisette MODEL, who enrolled in his classes as a gesture of support. His later work focused on the landscape and people of Cape Cod and was published posthumously in 1959 in the book 'Journey to the Cape'.

Photo books about the work of Sid GROSSMAN

'Journey to the Cape' (1959); 'The Photo League: Views of Urban Life in the 1930s and 1940s' (2009); 'The Life and Work of Sid Grossman' (2016)