Arnold S. Eagle

Place: Brooklyn

Born: 1909

Death: 1992

Biography:

Arnold S. Eagle was a Hungarian-American photographer and cinematographer, known for his socially concerned documentary photographs of the 1930s and 1940s. He emigrated from Hungary to Brooklyn with his family in 1929 and joined the Workers Film and Photo League in 1932 to use his art to promote radical social change.

Early Career

In 1935, the Works Progress Administration hired him to photograph New York slums, the Second Avenue El district, and the Lower East Side. In 1936, he joined the Photo League as one of the earliest members and later formed the War Production Group within the Photo League in 1942. Eagle freelanced for Fortune and The Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines.

Notable Works

Through the Federal Art Project in 1938, he photographed the Jewish community on the Lower East Side. Photo League photographers Eagle, Sol Libsohn, and David Robbins exhibited a series of photographs of slum districts in New York at the Federal Art Gallery in New York in 1938. The series was inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt's "one-third of a nation" (the ill-clothed, ill-housed, and ill-nourished) strategy.

Museums and Collections

His work is part of the collection at the Norton Simon Museum of Art and the Payne Gallery. The Wikioo.org website features some of his notable works, including Arnold S. Eagle: Untitled.

Awards and Legacy

Eagle was the Director of the photography workshop of the National Youth Administration with his assistant, Harold Corsini, from 1939 to 1942. He worked with Roy Stryker on the Standard Oil Project from 1943 to 1947. His legacy as a photographer and cinematographer continues to inspire new generations of artists.

• He was a professor of photography at the New School for Social Research from 1955 until shortly before his death.
• His work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography and the Jewish Museum.
• He was a member of the Photo League and contributed to the development of documentary photography in the United States.

For more information about Arnold S. Eagle's life and work, visit the Arnold S. Eagle page on Wikioo.org. His biography is also available on Wikipedia.