esther bubley
Esther Bubley was a trailblazer who became a preeminent photojournalist during the “golden age” of American illustrated magazines from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. That was in post World War II America, when women were supposed to be homemakers and stay-at-home moms. Those who sought careers faced discrimination and limited opportunities. Gender based employment was so ingrained in the culture that newspapers had separate sections for “help wanted male” and “help wanted female.” Yet Bubley rose to the top of the highly competitive and overwhelmingly male field of photojournalism.
As a frequent contributor to the popular and influential magazines Life and the Ladies’ Home Journal, Bubley made images that helped shape a generation’s view of the nation and the world. She photographed close to home, and she traveled alone to far corners of the globe on assignments for Life, Standard Oil, Pepsi-Cola International, UNICEF, and Pan American World Airways.
“Put me down with people, and it’s just overwhelming,” Bubley exclaimed in an interview. Like most great photojournalists, she found her art in everyday life, and she successfully balanced her artistic ambitions with the demands of commercial publishing.
Bubley was recognized for both her superb ability to construct a visual narrative and for her artistic composition. Her photo stories on bus travel and on mental illness won top awards. Edward Steichen displayed her work at the Museum of Modern Art, including his monumental exhibition Family of Man. Helen Gee gave her a one-person show at her legendary Greenwich Village coffee house, the Limelight, which was at the time the sole independent gallery devoted to photographic prints, and which showed the works of luminaries in the field of photography at a time when photography was not yet considered an art.
With remarkable talent and determination to match, Bubley overcame the obstacles she faced as a woman in a man’s field and as a photographer in a time when photography was only just beginning to be recognized as an art. Nevertheless, she was first and foremost a photojournalist striving to create a visual record of the world around her for a contemporary audience and for generations to come.
This exhibition, drawn from Bubley’s estate, shows a cross-section of her work and provides a revealing glimpse into the post-war decades, seen not only through Bubley’s lens but through the pages of the picture magazines that dominated the mass media of the time.
