Who Am I? February 2024
I was born in Hoboken, N.J. to German-Jewish parents a few months before William T. Sherman’s “march to the sea.” Later that year President Lincoln would be reelected to a second term in office. My dad, Edward was a wool and clothing merchant. He served in the Union army in the “War Between the States.” Our family spent summers at Lake George.
I attended Charlier School, a Christian school in NYC ; however, dad decided to move our family back to Europe because he thought it was a better place to educate me and my 5 siblings. I enrolled in the Real Gymnasium in Karlsruhe and later studied mechanical engineering at the Polytechnikun in Berlin. It was there that I found a mentor, a photo chemist professor named Vogel, who was working on a chemical process for developing photos.
My family returned to the States but I bought a plate film camera and traveled throughout the Netherlands, Italy and Germany photographing landscapes and workers. I sent some of my photos to “Holiday Work,” a photo competition promoted by the British journal, “Amateur Photographer,” and snagged first place. Soon I began winning other prizes for my photos in German and British photo magazines.
I returned from overseas to N.Y.C. during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison. My dad set me up in a small photography business. I became a co-editor of ‘The American Amateur Photographer’ where I promoted artistic photography in the U.S. I also became the V.P. of The Camera Club of N.Y. which published a newsletter which later evolved into a magazine called ‘Camera Notes,’ one of the world’s finest photographic magazines.
During my heyday I took thousands of photographs of a changing N.Y.C. to include horse-drawn vehicles, skyscrapers, trains, trolleys, ferry boats and, of course people. I was also enamored with the beauty of clouds and photographed them extensively.
I supported and exhibited photographers and artists and updated them on 20th century modernism and avant-garde artists such as Picasso, Rodin and Matisse. I worked hard in promoting photography because I thought it had equal validity to painting and sculpture as a medium of artistic expression. I’m quoted as saying, “There are many schools of painting. Why should there not be many schools of photographic art?There is hardly a right or wrong in these matters, but there is truth, and that should be the basis of all works of art.”
In 1916 I became intrigued by the charcoal drawings of a young artist who was born in Wisconsin. She became my muse, my lover, and later on, my second wife. She too became an influential figure in modernism and became known for her paintings of flowers, and skyscrapers as well as for painting the landscapes and architecture of the American southwest especially in area of Santa Fe, N.M. I spent almost 20 years
photographing her in multiple poses and venues.
That’s me, the hirsute fellow in the photograph below alongside one of my well known photos depicting steerage.
(1a)Who am I? (1b)What year was I born? (2)What significance did the number ‘291’ have in my career? (3) Post my ‘291’ years I opened 2 more galleries, one from 1925-1929 and one from 1929-1946. What were their names? (4a)Who was the muse who became my second wife? (4b) We got married in Bergen County. At whose home and in what borough did our wedding take place? (5a)What was my last residential address in Manhattan? I was cremated but where were my ashes laid to rest? (5b)Who was the executor of my estate? Name 2 places where a lot of my photos ended up?
