Arnold S. Eagle
Arnold Eagle (1909 - October 25, 1992) was a Hungarian-American photographer and cinematographer, known for his socially concerned documentary photographs of the 1930s and 1940s.
Life
[edit]
Eagle emigrated from Hungary to Brooklyn with his family in 1929.
He joined the Workers Film and Photo League in 1932 to use his art to promote radical social change. In 1935, the Works Progress Administration hired him to photograph New York slums, the Second Avenue El district and the Lower East Side.[1] In 1936, he joined the Photo League as one of the earliest members and later formed the War Production Group within the Photo League in 1942.[2] Eagle freelanced for Fortune, The Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines.
Through the Federal Art Project in 1938, he photographed the Jewish community on the Lower East Side. These photographs were published in the 1992 book At Home Only With God: Believing Jews and Their Children, with an essay by Arthur Hertzberg.
Photo League photographers Eagle, Sol Libsohn and David Robbins exhibited a series of photographs of slum districts in New York at the Federal Art Gallery in New York in 1938.[3] The series was inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt's "one-third of a nation" (the ill-clothed, ill-housed and ill-nourished) strategy.[4]
Eagle was the director of the photography workshop of the National Youth Administration with his assistant, Harold Corsini, from 1939 to 1942.[5] He worked with Roy Stryker on the Standard Oil Project from 1943 to 1947. He was the still photographer for the 1948 film Louisiana Story by Robert J. Flaherty and the cinematographer for the 1947 film Dreams That Money Can Buy by Hans Richter, as well as several of his own documentary films.[6]
Eagle was a professor of photography at the New School for Social Research from 1955 until shortly before his death. He was interred at Mount Judah Cemetery in Queens, New York.[7]
Recent exhibitions (selection)
[edit]- November 4, 2011 – March 25, 2012 "The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951" at The Jewish Museum
References
[edit]- ^ "New York Times obituary: Arnold Eagle". The New York Times. 1992-10-27. Retrieved 2012-04-19.
- ^ "International Center of Photography bio: Arnold Eagle". Emuseum.icp.org. Archived from the original on 2019-10-24. Retrieved 2012-04-19.
- ^ "New Deal Network: Photo League Members Exhibit At Federal Art Gallery". Newdeal.feri.org. Retrieved 2012-04-19.
- ^ "The Jewish Museum Bio: Arnold Eagle". Thejewishmuseum.org. Archived from the original on 2012-09-13. Retrieved 2012-04-19.
- ^ "The Photographers: Harold Raymond Corsini". Clpgh.org. Archived from the original on 2012-01-10. Retrieved 2012-04-19.
- ^ "Interviews With ASMP Founders: Arnold Eagle". Asmp.org. Archived from the original on 2012-05-24. Retrieved 2012-04-19.
- ^ "Arnold Eagle (1909–1992) - Find A Grave Memorial". www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2021-07-17.
External links
[edit]
- Interviews With ASMP Founders: Arnold Eagle, American Society of Media Photographers
- One Third of a Nation, by Arnold Eagle and David Robbins
- Arnold Eagle dance photograph collection, 1934-1965 - Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
- Arnold Eagle papers and films related to Hans Richter, 1927-1990. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Accession No. 970021. This collection documents the film collaborations and friendship of German-born Dadaist, Hans Richter, and New York photographer and cinematographer, Arnold Eagle. It includes color film footage, out-takes and audiotracks for several of Richter's post-World War II films, as well as letters, notes, scripts, sketches, photographs, printed material and storyboards.
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