Skip to main content Skip to main navigation

Alexander Alland photograph collection

Call Number

PR 110

Date

1885-1905, 1940, inclusive

Creator

Alland, Alexander

Extent

1 Linear feet (3 boxes, approximately 400 black and white, 8 x 10" photographs)

Language of Materials

This collection is primarily visual. Any text is likely to be in English.

Abstract

The collection primarily contains photographs of New York City and its inhabitants. Two series focus on Gypsies in the Lower East Side and African American Jews in Harlem. Other photographs detail New York City life at the turn of the 20th century.

Biographical Note

Alexander Alland was born in 1902 in Sebastopol, Crimea. During the Russian Revolution (and after the disappearance of his brother and the death of his mother) he illegally left Russia in 1920, bound for Turkey. He worked as a photographer's assistant in a portrait studio in Constantinople, and eventually set up his own studio. As political unrest gripped Turkey, Alland fled yet again, this time to New York. He arrived almost penniless at Ellis Island in 1923, and began to seek out a life and community with other Russian émigrés.

In 1930 Alland married Alexandra Mamlet, who was also Russian and Jewish. While expecting their first child, and with the economic uncertainty of the depression, the couple moved from Greenwich Village to Passaic, New Jersey, to live with Alexandra's parents. From 1933 to 1936 the Allands lived in the Mohegan Colony, a utopian community of political radicals and artists at the foot of Lake Mohegan in New York's Westchester County. In this creative atmosphere Alland was able to set up a darkroom and refine his photographic skills. When the family returned to Greenwich Village in 1936, Alland began to generate an income from his art.

Beginning in 1936, Alland supervised the Photo-Mural Section of the Federal Art Project. He installed photo-murals at the Newark Public Library (1936) and at the Riker's Island Penitentiary library (1937). The Newark mural, in particular, employed collage in order to present a multitude of images in each panel. Neither of these murals remain. This experience prepared him to work as a technical advisor for the National Youth Administration photo-mural at the 1939 World's Fair, a massive work of 16 by 56 feet. Alland was then invited by the American Artists' Congress to teach photography and photo-mural techniques at the American Artists' School in New York.

Also in 1939, Alland provided the photographs to accompany Felix Reisenberg's text in Portrait of New York (New York: The Macmillan Company), a documentary-style book meant to coincide with the opening of the World's Fair. The book purported to document the city's problems as well as its achievements. Alland's deep feeling for his subjects, residents from all over the city, was evident despite his much-lauded stylistic restraint. This photography assignment piqued his interest in New York City's ethnic groups and multitude of living conditions. The book also generated public interest in Alland's work and led to several exhibitions and purchases of his work. The Museum of Modern Art bought one photo from the book and exhibited several others in the 1941 exhibit "Images of Freedom." Several of the images were also exhibited at the New York Public Library.

Spurred on by his success, and convinced of the educational uses of photography, Alland set out to photograph several series of ethnic groups. He began by traveling to the Virgin Islands. Alland studied the history of the islands and befriended his subjects as much as possible. The result was considered to be an empathetic portrayal of the poverty of the island's residents. The photographs were exhibited as "The Social Scene in the Virgin Islands" at the New School and the Schomburg Collection in Harlem during 1940. While Alland never achieved his goal of publishing the Virgin Islands pictures, they at least led to a commission from Life magazine to photograph several ethnic groups in New York City. The resulting two series of photographs, of Russian Gypsies on the Lower East Side and of African American Jews in Harlem, (both included in this collection) cemented Alland's reputation as a documentary photographer sympathetic to the social life of immigrant, minority, and impoverished communities. These photographs were exhibited widely throughout 1941. "Royal Order of Ethiopian Hebrews of New York" was shown at the New School, the Lower East Side's Educational Alliance, and the Jewish Center in Forest Hills, Queens. "The Children of Romany" was seen at the Museum of the City of New York.

From 1941 to 1944, Alland served as photo editor of Common Ground , a new publication of the Common Council of American Unity. Common Ground emphasized issues of immigration and acculturation, as well as social justice and equality, thought to be especially important during the years of World War II. Alland produced photo montages for the magazine with his own images, as well as those from other photographers, including those of the Farm Security Administration. In addition to this job, Alland had to take other work in order to keep his family solvent; he took commercial photographs and produced filmstrips for an advertising agency and an engineering firm throughout the 1940s. The Common Ground experience, however, led to Alland's first book as a sole author, American Counterpoint (New York: The John Day Company, 1943), which consisted solely of Alland's photographs of ethnic Americans. In the text of that book Alland claimed, "I have tried to show clearly and distinctly the differences and the similarity among Americans of many national and racial backgrounds: differences in the physical appearance, customs, and cultural backgrounds; similarity in the desire for happiness, prosperity, and liberty that we all hold as an American ideal" (p. 147). This statement would serve as his driving ideal for many years. American Counterpoint proved extremely popular; the first edition sold out within weeks. The book inspired another exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, entitled "Harlem's Children in Wartime: American Counterpoint."

Over the course of the war Alland's ideas about the social value of photography, as well as about the need and vehicles for social change, shifted away from those of the other editors of Common Ground . In addition, he felt their editorial stance was inadequately anti-fascist. There was luckily plenty of room in the world of leftist publications for Alland's work. After World War II, he became the director of Pictures for Democracy, a picture agency for the Council Against Intolerance in America. The Council was engaged in propagandistic products promoting tolerance and unity in America. In 1945, Alland collaborated with the Council's founder James Waterman Wise on The Springfield Plan (New York: The Viking Press), a book highlighting the benefits of school integration in Springfield, Massachusetts. Controversy surrounded the book; both segregationists and anti-Communists found reason to complain (one photo showed a class of children learning about Russia.) Alland and Wise planned a larger project focusing on integration efforts nationwide, but failed to find a publisher willing to undertake a controversial issue. Alland's next book project was much more sedate. He and his wife Alexandra collaborated on photographs to illustrate the children's book My Dog Rinty (New York: The Viking Press, 1946), a story about a Harlem boy and his mischievous dog. The dog photographed in the book actually belonged to Alland.

While active on his own as a photographer and editor, Alland began to collect the work of other photographers. He focused on acquiring older negatives (mainly glass plate) and reprinting them. In 1939, the Russell Sage Foundation hired Alland to print Lewis Hine's negatives of Ellis Island and child labor conditions. A few years later, Alland fortuitously acquired over 2000 negatives of Robert Bracklow (now PR 008, the Robert L. Bracklow Photograph Collection at the New-York Historical Society), thus effectively rescuing that photographer's work. He also bought many negative and prints from the heirs of Jessie Tarbox Beals, an early photo journalist (some of these are represented in the N-YHS' Jessie Tarbox Beals Photograph Collection, PR 004.) His interest in Beals' photographs of slums may have led Alland to study the work of Jacob Riis. In 1946, Alland tracked down glass negatives taken by Jacob Riis, and reprinted and publicized Riis' own photographic work. (Copy prints of these images form PR 059, the Jacob A. Riis Reference Photograph Collection at the New-York Historical Society.) In 1947, Alland's prints of Riis' work were exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York in "The Battle With the Slum 1887-1897."

In a changing political climate, Alexander Alland's left leaning political and professional activities increasingly became a hindrance. In 1949, he received an unsatisfactory background check at the military engineering firm at which he worked in order to pay the bills. The Alland family subsequently moved upstate to North Salem, where Alland eventually turned his love of collecting into a career, opening an antique shop he called the Emporium for Old Fashioned Things. He continued to be active in photography, mounting a solo show, "New York City and its People in the 30's," at the North Salem Gallery in 1981.

Later in his life, Alland also began to write about photography, specifically the collections he had salvaged from anonymity. In 1974, he published Jacob Riis, Photographer and Citizen (Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture), a critical study that viewed Riis' photography as important as his muckraking skills. In 1978, Alland wrote Jessie Tarbox Beals, First Woman News Photographer (New York: Camera/Graphic Press), the first biography of Beals. That same year saw the publication of Heinrich Tonnies, Cartes-de-visite Photographer Extraordinaire (New York: Camera/Graphic Press), in which Alland wrote an essay about the Danish photographer whose negatives he had discovered in the 1940s. Alland later contributed an essay on Robert Bracklow for the New-York Historical Society's exhibition of that photographer's work in 1983.

Alexander Alland died in 1989. A posthumous exhibit of his work entitled "The Committed Eye: Alexander Alland's Photography," was held at the Museum of the City of New York in 1991. "Points of View, New York in the 1930s," a 1994 exhibit at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York, also included Alland's photos.

Arrangement

Photos are filed by Alland's numbering system in two series:

Series I. Photographs by Alland
Series II. Photographs by Unidentified Photographers

Scope and Contents

The Alexander Alland Photograph Collection spans the period from 1885 to 1940 and primarily contains photographs of New York City and its inhabitants. The collection is divided into two series: Photographs by Alland and Photographs by Unidentified Photographers. Alland's titles and descriptions of the images are attached to this finding aid. Alland's essays about his own photographs can be found in the Collection File.

Series I. Photography by Alland is made up of 136 black and white, 8 x 10" photographs. The series is divided into two subseries, which are based on Alland's own titles for each group of photos: Gypsies in New York City and Black Jews in New York City. Both groups of photographs were taken in 1940. Each of the subseries is an excellent example of the kind of documentary photography work that interested Alland: in-depth studies of ethnic communities over a controlled period of time. The photographs show the seriousness of each community, as well as its capacity for playfulness. Alland was interested in showing the quotidian as well as the unique in order to gain a fuller understanding of the lives and culture of each group. His accompanying introductions combine historical information with economic facts and tales of the difficult lives of the two ethnic groups.

Subseries I. Gypsies in New York City. These photographs document a group of Gypsies residing in Manhattan's Lower East Side. In his introduction to the series of photos Alland claims that, "these people are the least known and most misunderstood group in this country." The Gypsies in New York City numbered about 2,500 in 1940, according to Alland. The leader of the group, Steve Kaslov, was known as "the gypsy king" (a newspaper article about his opposition to child marriage is in the Collection File.) He features prominently in these photos, as do children, musicians, and fortune tellers.

Alland showed concern for the economic situation of the Gypsies in the modern urban environment. He noted, "When factory-made wares of cast aluminum replaced the heavier and more expensive copper vessels, and the horse gave way to motor vehicles, the Gypsies were deprived of work in the only trades they knew. Woman [sic] may still tell fortunes, but the stringent laws prohibiting this practice, cut deeply into their purse. . . Now these people, with wanderlust their heritage, always free to roam, are confined within the limits of a city, where a majority of them are on home-relief." Several photos document an adult education literacy class initiated by Kaslov.

Many of the photos show the poor conditions of most Gypsy homes, but often highlight a spirit of perseverance. "Fond of children, and unhampered by the most primitive conditions, Gypsy mothers give their infants the best care they are capable of" Alland comments about a photo showing a mother washing her child in a ceramic tub on the floor. Several photos of children playing call attention to their plight. "Ramshackle condemned houses are usually the only kind rented to Gypsies" Alland captioned a photo of children at the top of a rickety wooden staircase above a yard full of trash. The gypsies are also shown at an Easter Mass at a Russian Greek Orthodox Church, at a party, and at a funereal meal. Alland's captions call attention to the continuation of these traditional forms of socialization among the community in New York.

Included in the series is a March 1941 copy of the magazine Pic, in which some of these photos were published.

Subseries II. Black Jews in New York City. In his introduction to this photographic group, Alland claims "the origin of Black Jews goes back to the reign of Menilek I, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. For centuries before and since 333 A.D., the year in which Christianity was adopted in Ethiopia, a large part of the population followed the Jewish religion." He continues, "[a] census taken three years ago reveals that there are about 10,000 Black Jews in New York City, out of a possible quarter-million in the Western Hemisphere. . . Through membership in Masonic Lodges affiliated with the Royal Order of Ethiopian Hebrews, they are in constant touch with each other. The biggest lodge is in Harlem." In this Harlem congregation, located at 128th Street and Lenox Avenue, Alland found his subjects.

Most of the photographs show religious services, highlighting the faces of the congregation, rabbi, and cantor, and traditional Jewish rituals. The majority of the photos were taken during Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday celebrating the year-long cycle of reading the Torah, and include images of rabbis blowing the ram's horn and displaying the Torah before the congregation. Typically, Alland was interested in both the commonality and the individual attributes of his group subjects. A caption for photograph number 32 reads, "[I]ndependent of all other Jewish religious organizations, the congregation of Black Jews is orthodox, but some ceremonies are peculiarly their own, such as the raising of the hands while receiving the blessing." Also shown in this vein are members of the choir and junior choir, all of whom are female. Other views show meetings of a "Young Judea" group led by the Rabbi's daughter, and of a "Talmud-Torah" Hebrew school for younger children.

Series II. Photographs by Unidentified Photographers is made up of approximately 261 black and white, 8 x 10" photographs, which are mainly of New York City. The prints were made by Alland from negatives whose provenance was unknown to him. They were previously considered part of the Robert Bracklow Photograph Collection, but were removed in November 2001. The photographs are numbered from 2250-2511, which is an extension of the numbering system Alland devised for the Robert L. Bracklow Photograph Collection. Prints are filed by number. Alland titled approximately 125 of these photographs. A list of his titles, as well as a photocopy of each photo, is available at the Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections.

These photographs document quotidian elements of turn of the century New York City life, including crowds of people in the street, elevated trains, schoolchildren, houses, streetcars, churches, and graveyards. Other views show police parades, political rallies, street banners in Hebrew (photograph # 2277), men (seemingly homeless) sleeping on park benches, crowds ice skating in a park (perhaps Central Park), women buying newspapers on the street, photographers, a public market, and ships in New York Harbor.

Streetscapes of downtown Manhattan are shown, including several of Baxter Street, both with and without celebratory bunting. Architectural events such as the construction of the Washington Bridge are present, as are photos showing more specific events. Madison Square is photographed filled with columns for the Dewey Arch construction, as is an illuminated sign bearing the greeting "Welcome Dewey." One photograph documents a banner and street celebration on April 21, 1909; the banner's message, "We believe in you," refers to Frederick Cook's controversial arctic expedition of 1908-1909. Photos of Coney Island include general beach scenes as well as the elephant hotel and the Streets of Cairo exhibit. Images also highlight Union Square, the People's Baths (photograph # 2474) and the Qbata Company baby incubator (photograph #2502).

While most of these photographs were taken in New York City, there are some views of a more rural nature. The majority of these involve portraits of houses or landscape views. Three photographs show the interior of Sing Sing prison in Ossining, New York. A photograph titled "Japanese proxy brides" shows a group of Japanese women on board a ship. Several photographs may be the work of A. F. Sherman, the Chief Clerk of the Immigration Service. New immigrants are photographed with their luggage on Ellis Island. Alland was known to have acquired Sherman's work, but there are no markings on these prints to suggest their provenance.

Access Restrictions

Materials in this collection may be stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.

Use Restrictions

Taking images of documents from the library collections for reference purposes by using hand-held cameras and in accordance with the library's photography guidelines is encouraged. As an alternative, patrons may request up to 20 images per day from staff.

Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.

Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions

Preferred Citation

This collection should be cited as Alexander Alland Photograph Collection, PR 110, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, The New-York Historical Society.

Location of Materials

Materials in this collection may be stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Purchase, May 23, 1941, Wilbur Fund. October 23, 1952, Feb. 26 1953, Sep. 15, 1952.

Related Materials

Alexander Alland is also the source of parts of the Jessie Tarbox Beals Photograph Collection (PR 004), the Robert L. Bracklow Photograph Collection (PR 008), and the Jacob A. Riis Reference Photograph Collection (PR 059) held at the New-York Historical Society in the Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections. Most of Alland's books are held in the New-York Historical Society Library. The Museum of the City of New York, New York Public Library, National Museum of American History, Yale University Library, and The Museum of Modern Art hold collections of Alland's photographs.

Bibliography

Alland, Alexander. American Counterpoint. (New York: The John Day Company, 1943.)

Reisenberg, Felix and Alexander Alland. Portrait of New York. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1939.)

Yochelson, Bonnie. The Committed Eye: Alexander Alland's Photography. (New York: Museum of the City of New York, 1991.)

Collection processed by

Jenny Gotwals

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-21 15:47:36 -0400.
Language: Description is in English.

Edition of this Guide

This version was derived from [alland.xml]

Repository

New-York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024