/ Sid Grossman, Coney Island, 1940s

Apartment windows and washing lines, 1940's - by Sid Grossman (1913 - 1955), American

Around 1939 or '40 there was this lovely, ample-bosomed blonde girl who was my older brother's girlfriend. Her name was Natalie. She lived across the little side street on which we played stickball. The room that held my piano, my studio, if you will, faced her windows. We were up on the fifth floor, and Natalie was across the street on the second floor. There were a number of times in the summer when Ray, my brother, threw open the window, sat on the sill with his leg up, and Natalie would be like Juliet, except she was below, not above, at her window. The two would gaze and gesture to one another. It was quite a distance from the fifth floor to the second floor across the street, and, you know, with kids in between playing stickball, it wasn't quite the situation where they could converse. So they developed a kind of sign language. One afternoon, Ray must've been in the throes of some great wave of passion. He sat me down, literally grabbed me by the arm, and put me on the piano bench. He knew that I could play the piano version of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet. He pointed to the music and said, "Play!" Then he went and sat on the sill while I played as loudly as I could, with the appropriate feeling. I played this love music while my brother sat on the sill making these great swooping gestures as if he were sending the music out the window down across the street to Natalie's window. I was twelve or thirteen and Ray was close to eighteen at the time. I felt like Cyrano de Bergerac. A musical Cyrano de Bergerac.

     —Leon Fleisher, in Just Kids from the Bronx by Arlene Alda (ed.)

Photo: The Bronx, 1939, by Sid Grossman via MCNY

Sid Grossman.

Untitled, from the series «Chelsea Document», 1938-1939

Photo: Sid Grossman

Coney Island, NY by Sid Grossman 1947–48

New York, Photo by Sid Grossman, 1947-48

Sid Grossman "Sid Grossman (June 25, 1913 in Manhattan – December 31, 1955 in Provincetown) was an American photographer, teacher, and social activist. Grossman conducted workshops at the Photo League, the Henry St. Settlement, the Harlem Art Center, and privately in NYC and Provincetown, for almost twenty years.[1] The photographers he taught were many – including Lou Bernstein,[11] Lisette Model, Walter Rosenblum, Louis Stettner, Helen Gee, Arthur Leipzig (who is on record as calling Grossman “probably the most fantastic teacher I ever knew”)[9] and Leon Levinstein. Yet Grossman himself said, “I am not an instructor in any classical sense.” He insisted that his students take on the responsibility for making something of themselves. According to Jewish Museum curator Mason Klein, “Grossman increasingly insisted on the idea of being in the world in a particular manner, engaging with a certain consciousness as a photographer, and connecting to the camera in ways that made photographers question who they were.” One had to “live for photography,” in effect transforming and liberating oneself – in order to become a good photographer."

Monday Photography Inspiration - Sid Grossman

Sid Grossman was was an American photographer, teacher, and social activist. He was born in New York.  During his high school years in the Bronx he became an avid photographer and joined the Camera Club. In 1936, with the photographer, Sol Libsohn, he founded the Photo League whose purpose was to use and promote photography as a tool to effect social change. The League offered lectures and…

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Sid Grossman

Sid Grossman

Sid Grossman

Oklahoma, 1940 - by Sid Grossman (1913 - 1955), American

Two women in hats, 1947-48.

Photo: Sid Grossman via the Howard Greenberg Gallery

Woody Guthrie by Sid Grossman

Sid Grossman Jack's Grocery, Oklahoma 1940