Reading an elevator TV news blurb — that’s how I learned that one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century had passed. I was somewhat shocked that the Jewish press seems to have missed the death of one of America’s most innovative and socially conscious artists — Milton Rogovin. An optometrist, he developed a photo bug in the 1950s and began to document the social conditions of those who live on the edge in Buffalo, New York. He was a “social documentary” photographer and his triptychs are masterpieces that were replicated by numerous photographers after him.

My friend Ezra Bookstein directed a film about Rogovin in 2007. You can see a clip here as well as many photos and a wonderfully written biography.