Art News

Photographer Milton Rogovin Dies at Age 101 in New York

BUFFALO (AP).- Milton Rogovin, a social documentary photographer who built a life’s work by looking through a lens at people who were invisible to others, died Tuesday at age 101. Rogovin was in hospice care after a brief illness and died at his home in Buffalo surrounded by family, said his son, Mark. After being blacklisted in the communist scare of the 1950s, Rogovin dedicated his life to photography. His pictures documented the lives of the poor, the dispossessed, the working class — in particular those living in a six-square-block neighborhood in Buffalo near his optometry practice. “He referred to these people as the ‘forgotten ones,'” his son said. “These were poor and working people who were not ever in the limelight.” Rogovin found “forgotten ones” on New York Indian reservations and in far-flung corners of China, Zimbabwe, France, Scotland and Spain. His first project was a documentary series on Buffalo’s black churches. Living on his wife’s schoolteacher salary,