![\"\"](\"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/is\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2011\/01\/RogovinCropped.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n1998 photo by Howard Zehr<\/p>\n
As NPR noted in his obituary<\/a>, Rogovin\u2019s life was about seeing, though the methods changed.\u00a0 He began his professional life helping others to see, as an optometrist in Buffalo, New York.\u00a0 Because of his activist involvements for the poor, he was more or less forced out of his occupation by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s.\u00a0 As his patient base shrank, he began making photographs in the hopes of helping us to see the injustices around us and the people impacted by them.<\/p>\n Rogovin\u2019s photographs were always about people, always about the rural and urban underclass.\u00a0 One of his most important projects was close to home, in the economically depressed areas of Buffalo, though he also photographed in Chile, Yemeni and other countries.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cAll my life, I\u2019ve focused on the poor,\u201d he said in a Washington Post<\/em><\/a> <\/em>quote.\u00a0 “The rich ones have their own photographers.\u201d He allowed people to pose themselves, always portraying them with dignity and individuality, not as victims.\u00a0 His subjects were photographed straightforwardly, in their own environments.<\/p>\n Two of his books have had an especially significant influence on me.\u00a0 The Forgotten Ones<\/em> contains a variety of series of working people from around the world. My favorite, though, is \u201cWorking People, 1977-80.\u201d\u00a0 This photo essay is made of a series of diptychs.\u00a0 On one page is a portrait of\u00a0 individual workers in heavy industry, often mining, posed in their work environments.\u00a0 On the facing page is a portrait of the same person at home.\u00a0 The contrast is often dramatic; sometimes it takes a second look to realize they are the same people.\u00a0 The pairing of these photos creates a much richer portrait than a single image.<\/p>\n Rogovin took the concept of paired images further in his book Triptychs:\u00a0 Buffalo\u2019s Lower West Side Revisited<\/em>, expanding each grouping to three images made over several decades plus years.\u00a0 After initially doing portraits in the 1970s, he returned to the community in the 1980s and again in the 1990\u2019s, locating the same people and re-photographing them.\u00a0 It is fascinating to see how people change, and don\u2019t change, over the years.\u00a0 This inspired my own small series of portraits over time, some of which can be seen on my photo website www.howardzehr.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n In my interview with him, Rogovin said something that I identified with:\u00a0 \u201cGoing from one series to another is a very difficult thing for me, and especially my wife.\u00a0 I get kind of grumpy and worried that I\u2019ll find another series that\u2019s important.\u201d\u00a0 I too feel at lose ends when I don\u2019t have a focus for my photography.<\/p>\n After finding that fancy equipment generated too much attention in his working environments, Rogovin adopted a simple, non-intrusive approach:\u00a0 a Rolliflex medium format camera, often on a tripod, and a bare-bulb flash.<\/p>\n Do photographs change the world?\u00a0 In The Forgotten Ones<\/em> Rogovin says, \u201c\u2026I used to think that photography would do everything, but now I don\u2019t think so.\u00a0 It takes photography, it takes sociology, it takes working people, it takes teachers \u2013 and a lot of different people to help make the change. See, it isn\u2019t just the photographs.\u201d<\/p>\n He cites the early documentary photographer Jacob Riis: \u201cJacob Riis, when he was very despondent at the results he was getting, said he would go to a friend of his who was a stonecutter and he would watch him work.\u00a0 The stonecutter would hammer that stone once, twice, ten times and nothing happened.\u00a0 Fifty, a hundred times and nothing happened.\u00a0 Then, after the hundred and first blow, the stone would split, and Riis said it was obvious that it wasn\u2019t\u2019 the last blow that did it.\u00a0 It was all the blows together.\u00a0 That\u2019s my feeling.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t the photographer \u2013 his or her photographs \u2013 that\u2019s going to do it, but all the hundred and one different blows added together to make a change.\u201d<\/p>\n This image has inspired my work in justice as well as photography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Milton Rogovin died this month at the age of 101.\u00a0 Although I only met him once, through his photographs and writing he has been one of my mentors. 1998 photo by Howard Zehr As NPR noted in his obituary, Rogovin\u2019s life was about seeing, though the methods changed.\u00a0 He began his professional life helping others....<\/p>