Biography

Milton Rogovin was an American social documentary photographer. Born in New York, Rogovin had experienced the Great Depression of the 1930s. It left a profound impression on him which fuelled his empathy with the plight of working-class people. He practised as an optometrist in Buffalo, New York but his passion was photography and he began to document the communities around him. Working with a Rolleiflex camera and black and white film, Rogovin contributed to a distinctly American tradition of documentary photography. Hailed for his ‘deeply humanist’ approach by fellow photographer, Paul Strand (1890–1976), it is perhaps this concern which connected Rogovin to the men, women and children of the Scottish coalfields in 1982. He was genuinely curious about their lives and interested in depicting them in an authentic way.