'My mother said that when I was young I was constantly saying, ‘Look at this - Look at that.’ I think that taking pictures must be my way of asking people to ‘Look at this - Look at that.’ If my photographs make the viewer feel what I did when I first took them - ‘Isn’t this funny... terrible... moving... beautiful?’ - then I’ve accomplished my purpose.'
Ruth Orkin

Last year was the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of American street photographer and filmmaker Ruth Orkin.

Orkin was a pioneer. A photographer who recorded ordinary people at work and play, who celebrated the complex rhythms of city life, who recognised the poetry of the everyday.  A hard working, resourceful woman, determined to make a mark in a business dominated by men.

‘Maybe because my primary interest was in movies, I wanted to tell stories with pictures, even if they didn’t move.’

Orkin was born in Boston and raised in Hollywood, the only child of a silent-film actress and a manufacturer of toy boats. Aged 10 she was given her first camera, a 39-cent Univex.

In her unpublished autobiography, written in 1984, Orkin described how she taught herself to use her camera by referring to a short 25-cent book ‘Photography for Fun’ by William M Strong. 

‘In Strong’s chapter on How To Learn Photography there were just six items: 

1. Look at good pictures. > I did that automatically because they attracted me.
2. Read the photographic mags. > I did.
3. Look at the camera club in your city. > There wasn’t any in Eagle Rock.
4. Get some more books on photography. > I looked at everything I could at the Los Angeles public library.
5. Look up photographic courses. > I wouldn’t have had the money. I gave my own course in photographic chemistry in chemistry class.
6. Take a lot of pictures. > I did.’

Orkin clearly had remarkable application. When she was 17 she embarked on an epic bike trip across America, from Los Angeles to the 1939 World's Fair in New York, taking pictures along the way. After briefly studying photojournalism at Los Angeles City College, she became a messenger girl at MGM Studios and during World War II she served with the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps. 

In 1943 Orkin moved to New York. By night she took pictures in the city’s clubs, and by day she shot baby photos. She saved enough money to buy her first professional camera, and eventually, in 1945, her first picture was published in the Macy’s employee magazine: an image of V-E Day celebrations on Times Square. 

In time Orkin found freelance work at most of the major magazines: Life, Look, Ladies' Home Journal, and many others. Viewed together her images provide a portrait of New York street life in the 1940s and early ‘50s.

A suited man walks along West 88th Street with only a trilby to shelter him from the rain. Middle-aged women in smart hats jostle to find a bargain at the Department Store. Tired travellers sit on their suitcases at Penn Station. Courting couples cuddle up close on Coney Island. 

There are people milling around the barbershops, cinemas and soda stands, at busy street corners, past neon signs and insistent advertising hoardings. You can buy watermelons, malted milk, ‘red hot frankfurters and ice cold drinks.’

The kids in the West Village are engrossed in their comic books. Teenage girls recline on top of a Ford Shipping Container at Gansevoort Pier, and a brave boy jumps into the Hudson in his trunks. With extravagant gestures and animated expressions, young Jimmy tells his friends a story. 

In 1950 Orkin won a competition set by the editor of Ladies’ Home Journal to find an image that reflected the more liberated post-war American woman.

‘I had not only just photographed a beautiful girl who was not a model, but she was doing something that all his female readers could identify with.’ 

New York housewife Geraldine Dent stands outside a greengrocer with a bursting bag of fruit in one arm. She seems animated, caught in conversation. There’s a pleasing echo of red, from her stylish beret, to her lipstick and scarf, to the half eaten-strawberry she clasps in her hand. It was the first time a 35mm colour slide had been used on the front of such a magazine and the issue sold out its 4 million print run.

‘In order to make a living as a photographer I had to make contacts, get jobs, and try to sell pictures. Some days I felt that I was forever going up and down elevators, riding subways or buses, walking on sidewalks, and waiting in offices.’

Orkin had to be determined to succeed in a male-dominated profession. There was a significant gender pay gap (‘You don’t have a family to support.’) and permanent staff reporter roles were reserved for men. 

In time Orkin learned to cherish the independence of a freelancer: her freedom from editorial control; her license to follow her own instincts and judgement to find the best stories.

‘It gives you all kinds of excuses to be where you’re not supposed to be.’

Orkin clearly thought deeply about her craft. She recognised that, as in all creative professions, her success or failure resided in the choices she made.

‘It means MAKING DECISIONS
Deciding when to push the shutter
Deciding whether to sacrifice speed for depth of focus or vice versa
Deciding whether to keep my presence secret and get a picture that would not be as good as if I allowed my presence to be known
Deciding which BW proofs to blow up
Deciding how to lay out a caption and a picture story
Deciding which magazine to show it to first’

As a freelancer Orkin also needed to be a master of multi-tasking.

‘To be a photographer you had to know how to splice wires, clean a battery
Contact, load your own film (to save money)
Develop and print… Spot (darkroom technician)
Keep a record of all business expenses (accountant)
Type letters and bills (secretary)
Research pic stories in recent magazines (research)
Make dates with editors and show or discuss ideals (salesperson)
File clerk: file negs and prints
Keep files folder on each customer: mags publ, book publ, miscel (secretary)
Selling ideas
How to gate crash – or get into places you weren’t supposed to be.
Gallery chores’

In the early 1950s Orkin was given assignments in Israel and Italy. She was also commissioned to take celebrity portraits: Leonard Bernstein and Lucille Ball, Tennessee Williams and Montgomery Clift; Einstein, Hitchcock, Brando and Bacall. In 1952 she married photographer and filmmaker Morris Engel and they collaborated on two independent films, the first of which ‘Little Fugitive’ was Oscar nominated.

Orkin returned to photography. Ever resourceful, she dealt with the constraints of caring for two small children by taking shots from her apartment window. This led to the publication of two ‘Through My Window’ books. 

'To be a photojournalist takes experience, skill, endurance, energy, salesmanship, organization, wheedling, climbing, gatecrashing, etc. – plus an eye and patience.’

In 1985 Ruth Orkin died of cancer at her New York apartment. She left behind a record of the American city experience in the mid 20th century. She told stories in pictures - stories that communicated a love of life, of ordinary people and the theatre of the street. She made us ‘Look at this - Look at that.’ And she taught us that success in any creative profession requires more than just talent.

'I always felt that being a photographer was 90 percent being a salesperson. Then and today.'

[You can see a record of Ruth Orkin’s work in the excellent book ‘Ruth Orkin:  A Photo Spirit’]

'I play the street life
Because there's no place I can go.
Street life,
It's the only life I know.
Street life,
And there's a thousand cards to play.
Street life,
Until you play your life away.
You never let people see
Just who you wanna be.
And every night you shine
Just like a superstar.
The type of life that's played
Attempts at masquerade.
You dress, you walk, you talk,
You're who you think you are.’

Randy Crawford, ’Street Life’ (W Jennings / J Sample)

No. 361