Joe Schwartz Photographer

Photographer

Joe Schwartz

"Joe Schwartz speaks and writes with an unabashed sense of nostalgia for the past particularly about the streets of urban Brooklyn that he once knew and the vibrant world of public housing as he experienced it in the Kingsborough Housing Project, where he lived worked and organized in the years following World War II...what makes his images so compelling is his clear- eyed and clear- headed insistance upon the inherent dignity of human beings in spite of their dire economic conditions; upon the possibilities of human communities based upon shared values and aspirations that cut across racial lines; and upon the values of living in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic American society." Professor James A. Miller, Director, African Studies Programs, George Washington University, Washington DC.

Born in 1913 in Brooklyn New York, Joe served in the Marines in World War II as a combat photographer. In the 1930s, he joined the Photo League along with Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange and Margaret Bourke-White. For over 70 years, he has documented the greats, the near- greats and the common man. Now 91 years old, Joe lives in Atascadero, CA. His photographs have been exhibited at Barnsdall Park, Los Angeles CA; Scripps College, Claremont CA; Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford Conn; Karpeles Manuscript Library, Santa Barbara CA; Radiant Light Gallery, Portland Mi; Shapiro Gallery, San Francisco CA; and Stephen Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. His photographs have appeared in Black and White and Black Art Quarterly. They have also been auctioned at Christie's in New York, and purchased by the Getty Museum, Los Angeles CA and are also in a number of private collections. He was recently featured in a Los Angeles Times Magazine interview on December 19, 2004. He published a book "FOLK PHOTOGRAPHY" containing one hundred and fifty photographs with the help of the Cal Poly Graphics Department, San Luis Obispo in 2000. It is available for $60.00.

To order a poster or book, email:tinahandy@hotmail.com or call 310-883-8385 and 805-466-6303