Ruth Orkin (1921–1985)

Ruth Orkin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Mary Ruby, a silent-film actress, and Samuel Orkin, a toy manufacturer. She grew up in Hollywood, because of her mother's career and took an early interest in film and photography. She received her first camera at age 10. At 17, she decided to go to New York City to see the 1939 World's Fair, and rode her bicycle all the way across America. She completed the trip in three weeks, taking photographs along the way. She returned to Los Angeles the following year and attended LA City College briefly. During World War II, she joined the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps and after being discharged in 1943, moved to New York City permanently. She got work as a nightclub photographer and joined the Photo League, whose members documented working-class and poor neighborhoods in the city as a method of social reform. There she met her future husband, fellow photographer Morris Engel. Her freelance career grew and she broke into the heavily male-dominated field of photojournalism. She traveled internationally on assignments for media outlets including Life, Look, Ladies' Home Journal, and The New York Times. One of her most famous images is An American Girl in Italy (1951), part of a series originally entitled "Don't Be Afraid to Travel Alone." ]In 1952, Orkin married Morris Engel, and the couple collaborated on two independent feature films, Little Fugitive (1953), which won the Silver Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, and Lovers and Lollipops (1955). After the success of these two films, Orkin decided to concentrate again on still photography, taking color shots of Central Park as seen through her apartment window. She published the images in two acclaimed books, A World Through My Window (1978) and More Pictures from My Window (1983). Orkin taught photography at the School of Visual Arts in the late 1970s, and at the International Center of Photography in 1980.