Ben Shahn was a Lithuanian-born American artist and member of the Social Realist movement. His expressive figurative paintings, murals, and posters were inexorably tied to his pursuit of social justice and lifelong activism within leftist political beliefs. Shahn unflinchingly critiqued the government and society, as seen in his The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (1931–1932), a painting which condemned the controversial conviction of two Italian-American immigrants who were sentenced to death in 1927. “The artist must operate on the assumption that the public consists in the highest order of individual—that he is civilised, cultured, and highly sensitive both to emotional and intellectual contexts,” he once stated. “And while the whole public most certainly does not consist in that sort of individual, still the tendency of art is to create such a public—to lift the level of perceptivity, to increase and enrich the average individual's store of values.”
Born in 1898 in Kaunas, Lithuania into an Orthodox Jewish family, he and his family emigrated to New York in 1906. Shahn went on to study at the National Academy of Design in New York and travelled throughout Europe during the 1920s. Upon his return to the United States, he assisted Diego Rivera in 1933 for the painting of his Man at the Crossroads fresco in Rockefeller Center. During the latter part of his career, the artist’s paintings became more symbolic of his own emotional state rather than a description of social injustices.
He died in March 1969 in New York City. Today, Shahn’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among others.
For earlier works by Ben Shahn see parts 1 - 7 also.
This is part 8 of a 12-part series on the works of Ben Shahn which features Shahn's photography:
In the early 1930s, Shahn shared a Greenwich studio with photographer, Walker Evans, from whom he learned much of the technical craft of photography. It was not long after that Shahn began to discover that taking a photograph brought a certain amount of creative satisfaction and he began to split his time between taking photographs and working on his paintings and drawings.
He attended street demonstrations and picket lines regularly and photographed the unemployed and homeless. As in his paintings and drawings from the period, and later in his photographs for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Shahn was drawn to scenes of human interest. Shahn sought out spontaneous expressions in his subjects in striking, thoughtful compositions. Utilising unusual perspectives, Shahn often used a right-angle viewfinder attached to his camera which allowed him to look down while taking photographs of subjects unaware to his right. The result was candid, humanistic views of Americans in the depression era.
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| 1930s Untitled gelatin silver print 26.6 x 33.9 cm Collection SFMoMA |
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| 1932-34 New York City (Two Men in Hats) gelatin silver print 15.2 x 22.8 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1932-35 Pushcart for Paper, NY gelatin silver print 16.8 x 24.1 cm |
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| 1932-35 Untitled, New York City gelatin silver print 16.5 x 24.8 cm Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC |
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| c1932-35 New York gelatin silver print 16.4 x 23.7 cm Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| c1932 Four Boys Playing on the Streets of New York gelatin silver print 17.9 x 23.6 cm Collection SFMoMA |
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| 1933 Two Women at Shop Window gelatin silver print 17.8 x 24.1 cm |
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| 1934 Men with Hats, Listening gelatin silver print 24.3 x 19.5 cm |
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| 1934 Three Men with Iron Pilaster, New York gelatin silver print 15.2 x 23.5 cm Collection SFMoMA |
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| 1935 A Deputy with a gun on his hip during the September 1935 strike in Morgantown, West Virginia gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Abandoned mine, Dobra, West Virginia gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Amite City, Louisiana gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Amite City, Louisiana gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Arkansas squatter's home gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Barber Shop, New Orleans gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Barn in Tennessee, built by veteran pension gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Blind beggar, Morgantown, West Virginia gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Blind Musicians, Arkansas gelatin silver print 27.7 x 35.3 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1935 Bringing in cotton for weighing, Pulaski County, Arkansas gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Camden, Tennessee gelatin silver print 22.9 x 27.9 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Cattle dealer in western West Virginia gelatin silver print 12.4 x 18.1 cm The New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Child of Fortuna Family, Hammond, Louisiana, October gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.2 cm © President and Fellows of Harvard College |
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| 1935 Children of coal miners, Sunbeam Mines, (Morgantown?) Scotts Run, West Virginia gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm |
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| 1935 Children of Destitute Mountaineer, Arkansas gelatin silver print 16.5 x 24.4 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1935 Children of Sam Nichols, (Boone County,) Arkansas tenant farmer gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Church in Louisiana gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Circus Poster, Smithland, Kentucky gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1935 Citizens of Omar, West Virginia gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Citizens of Zinc, Arkansas, a deserted mining Town gelatin silver print 20.3 x 24.9 cm © President and Fellows of Harvard College |
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| 1935 Coal Miner, Kentucky gelatin silver print 16.5 x 24.4 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1935 Coal miners, Jenkins, Kentucky gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Coloured Inhabitant of Scott's Run, West Virginia, who has just received Relief Check gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1935 Company houses at Pursglove Mines, Scotts Run, West Virginia gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Cotton pickers, Pulaski County, Arkansas gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Cotton pickers, Pulaski County, Arkansas gelatin silver print 20.4 x 25.3 cm © President and Fellows of Harvard College |
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| 1935 Cotton Pickers, Pulaski, Arkansas gelatin silver print 24.5 x 32 cm |
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| 1935 Daughter of Negro sharecropper, Arkansas gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Deckhand aboard the Queen of Dycusburg, Memphis, Tennessee gelatin silver print 17.8 x 23.5 cm |
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| 1935 Destitute Ozark Resident, Arkansas gelatin silver print 15.9 x 22.9 cm |
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| 1935 Destitute Ozark resident, Arkansas gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Family of a striking miner, Pennsylvania gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Farmers at Maynardville, Tennessee gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1935 Freeze Fork, West Virginia gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Hernshaw, West Virginia gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Home of sharecroppers, Arkansas gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Home of tenant farmer, Arkansas gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Hungarian miner, Calumet, Pennsylvania. Worked in the mines for thirty-four years, now sixty-three with no pension and no work gelatin silver print 16 x 24.8 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Interior of Ozark School, Arkansas gelatin silver print 19 x 24.7 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1935 Interior of strawberry grower's house, Hammond, Louisiana gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Maynardville, Tennessee gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Maynardville, Tennessee gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Maynardville, Tennessee gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Members of the Musgrove family, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |
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| 1935 Men Inside a Cafe, Murfreesboro, Tennessee gelatin silver print 12.2 x 17.7 cm Collection SFMoMA |
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| 1935 Middlesboro, Kentucky gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm |
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| 1935 Miner in the anthracite district. Pleasant Unity, Pennsylvania gelatin silver print 20.3 x 25.4 cm New York Public Library Digital Collections |