Life and Labor: The Photographs of Milton Rogovin

For more than three decades, Milton Rogovin photographed people primarily in the Lower West Side of Buffalo, New York. His images recall the photographs produced by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression. Rogovin also photographed in places such as Appalachian towns in Alabama, Kentucky, and West Virginia; Isla Negra, Chile; and later in China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Greece, Mexico, Scotland, Spain, and Zimbabwe. He believed deeply in photography’s ability to be an agent of social change.

Today, his photographs are important social documents of working-class neighborhoods and multi-ethnic societies. Drawn entirely from the permanent collection of the San Jose Museum of Art, Milton Rogovin presents thirty-eight photographs from three series: “Lower West Side, Buffalo” (1972–84), “Working People” (1976–87), and “Family of Miners” (1988–89). The exhibition marks the debut of these photographs in the galleries since they entered the collection as gifts from three separate collectors in 2011.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website