Sam Reiss Photographs
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Abstract
Samuel Reiss was among the most prominent and prolific photographers of the labor movement in New York City from the late 1940s until his death in 1975. During the three decades that Reiss earned a living with his camera, he documented a changing work force in a changing city, building a reputation as "Labor's photographer." Week by week, throughout his career, Reiss made photographs that document New York's labor movement during its most active, influential, and progressive years. The Sam Reiss Photographs Collection - Part II: Photographic Prints is comprised of approximately 8,400 overwhelmingly black and white 8"x 10" photographic prints from ca. the 1930s to 1975, although the bulk were shot between the 1950s and 1970s. Most of these images document the activities and leadership of many of the major labor unions in New York City and the metropolitan area during this period, including those representing workers in the garment, retail, communications, transportation and entertainment industries, and teachers. Many of these images are portraits and group photographs. A small but rich selection of images shows people engaged in various kinds of work, and the collection also includes small numbers of images of sports and recreation, school children, building construction, apartment housing, voter registration drives, and picnics.
Historical/Biographical Note
Samuel Reiss was among the most prominent and prolific photographers of the labor movement in New York City from the late 1940s until his death in 1975. During the three decades that Reiss earned a living with his camera, he documented a changing work force in a changing city, building a reputation as "Labor's photographer." Week by week, throughout his career, Reiss made photographs that document New York's labor movement during its most active, influential, and progressive years.
Born in New York City in 1910, Reiss was the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants.He grew up in the city, where his father worked as a tailor. Like many children of New Yorkers who worked in the garment industry, Reiss hoped to escape having to make a living in an economic sector beleaguered by difficult working conditions and low pay. After graduating from Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School in 1929, Reiss enrolled at New York University as a pre-dental major, intending to join the ranks of professionals by becoming a dentist. At the University he attended only night classes to allow him to work a garment-industry job during the day. By January of 1933, after four years, Reiss had managed to accrue two years of college credits. It was then that his father suffered a stroke that left him disabled; Reiss dropped out of school to help support his family and found full-time employment as a shipping clerk at a clothing factory in the men's garment district.
In 1936, Reiss enrolled in evening photography classes at the Brooklyn Museum's Art School, where he remembered that his first instructor was Tom O'Scheckel, a pictorialist photographer who had served as president of the Pictorial Photographers of America. Using a simple wooden box camera, Reiss began photographing during his lunch hour; he photographed co-workers as well as other laborers on the streets of New York City. In 1938 he wed Helen Handwerger; two daughters, Jessie and Harriet, were born to them.
During World War II, Reiss found work as a machinist, but when his shop struck in 1946, he used the enforced hiatus to take the opportunity to attempt to earn his living with photography. He started by shooting baby pictures, weddings, and bar mitvah celebrations, but did not meet with success until he started to specialize as a press photographer for labor union publications. He received his first labor news assignment in 1947, when he was hired to shoot some photographs for the RWDSU Record,the newspaper of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Workers Union. Throughout his nearly thirty-year career, the RWDSU, as well as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, the Transport Workers Union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union remained among Reiss' major clients, employing him regularly to document the activities of their organizations, although he also shot for dozens of other labor unions and locals.
In addition to his labor union and other organizational clients, Reiss continued to do private commercial photography. However, it is worth noting that the subjects of many of these photographs were labor figures and their families; Reiss was frequently a union official's choice of photographer for photographing personal family events such as weddings and birthdays, or children's portraits.
Reiss continued to work until only a few months before his death from cancer in December 1975. That same year, a retrospective exhibit of his work was mounted by his daughter, Jessie, and displayed at the gallery of the labor union, District Council 37.
Arrangement
The collection consists of nine series: Series I. Unions; Series II. Labor Organizations; Series III. Demonstrations, Rallies and Parades; Series IV. Personalities and Portraits; Series V. Labor Education; Series VI. Other Clients; Series VII. Worksites; Series VIII. Miscellaneous Topics; and Series IX. Oversized Photographs.
Within each series, folders are arranged alphabetically by name, organization or event.
Scope and Content Note
The Sam Reiss Photographs Collection - Part II: Photographic Prints is comprised of approximately 8,400 overwhelmingly black and white 8"x 10" photographic prints from ca. the 1930s to 1975, although the bulk were shot between the 1950s and 1970s. Most of these images document the activities and leadership of many of the major labor unions in New York City and the metropolitan area during this period, including those representing workers in the garment, retail, communications, transportation and entertainment industries, and teachers. Many of these images are portraits and group photographs. A small but rich selection of images shows people engaged in various kinds of work, and the collection also includes small numbers of images of sports and recreation, school children, building construction, apartment housing, voter registration drives, and picnics.
Series I. Unions, 1950-1975. Reiss documented many of the major labor unions active in New York City and the metropolitan area. These included unions from the garment industry (Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, International Ladies Garment Workers Union, Textile Workers of America), retail and distributive industries (Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Workers Union, and Retail Clerks International Association); the entertainment industry (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, American Federation of Musicians and the Associated Actors and Artists of America); communication and transportation industries (the Transport Workers Union, Communication Workers of America, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters); electrical and construction-related trades such as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), Local 3; International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, District Council #9, and International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers; education workers including the United Federation of Teachers (a highlight of this collection are photos of the official merger between the UFT and the National Education Association in 1972), Professional Staff Congress, and the Catholic Teachers of America. Reiss photographed the leadership and membership of unions in a variety of activities and locations such as conventions, dinners, retreats (e.g. IBEW gatherings at Bayberry Land on Long Island), dedication ceremonies for labor union facilities, professional development, and retirement.
Series II. Labor Organizations, 1951-1975. Reiss' clients included federated and "umbrella" labor union and labor-related organizations such as the AFL-CIO, the New York City Labor Council (and its affiliated ethnic committees such as the Hispanic Labor Committee, the Black Trade Unionists Committee, and the United Italian American Labor Committee), the Union Label and Trades Council, the Jewish Labor Committee, and the League for Industrial Democracy. Of particular note in this series are images documenting the historic merger of the CIO and AFL in New York City in 1955.
Series III. Demonstrations/Rallies/Parades, 1957-1975. This series documents a variety of political actions and events by organized labor and progressive organizations, including strike picket lines, strike support demonstrations, and rallies supporting mainstream political candidates. Of particular note are the photographs at the funeral procession(s) for Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis and Atlanta in 1968; the actions and participants during the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America's strike against the Farah Clothing Company (1973-74); as well as photographs of the crippling New York City transit strike of 1966, the Taxi Drivers Local 3036 strike in 1965, and a bitter strike by white collar workers against the Metropolitan Life Company in 1968. Also documented are public actions spanning a broader spectrum of political issues, ranging from protests on behalf of Soviet Jewry, to a march supporting the war in Vietnam, led by Peter Brennan and other leaders and members of New York City's Building Construction and Trades Council, to an early protest against atomic weapons. A "Demonstrations – Miscellaneous" folder contains images of various demonstrations that include some identifying information; a "Demonstrations – Unidentified" folder contains various images of demonstrations that do not have accompanying caption information.
Series IV. Portraits and Personalities, 1930s-1975. Reiss began his career as a portrait photographer. This series contains a small number of these early, non-union portraits such as a set of photographs of Jack Solomon, a health food advocate and restaurateur in New York City and an image of Fred Allen, the radio personality. But the bulk of these images are of union leaders and members such as Harry Van Arsdale, Jr., William Bowe, Peter Brennan, A. Philip Randolph, Dr. Annie Martin, Bessie Hillman, Jacob Potofsky, Matthew Guinan, Walter Reuther, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, Cesar Chavez, Harry Avrutin, Frederick O'Neal, and Roosevelt Watts. Other groups represented are: politicians (often associated or shown with labor leaders), including New York State Governors Hugh Carey, Nelson A. Rockefeller, and Malcolm Wilson, New York State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz, John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy; entertainers and artists including Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Ruby Dee, Leopold Stokowski, and photographer Roman Vishniac; social and political activists including Eleanor Roosevelt, Andrew Young, Bayard Rustin, Ralph Nader, and Dorothy I. Height; journalists and writers Victor Riesel and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and international leaders including Abba Eban, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and U Thant.
Series V. Labor Education, 1960s-1975. Images in this series document two organizations providing ongoing professional development for labor union members and leadership: the Center for Labor Studies at Empire State College (now called the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies in Manhattan) and Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Extension Division in Manhattan. Included are photographs of the dedication ceremony for the Center in 1971, certificate award ceremonies and classroom scenes.
Series VI. Other Clients, 1960s-1975. While Reiss spent most of his time photographing events related to organized labor, he also photographed other organizations (some, but not all of which included an organized labor presence), including the City of Hope, Labor Theater, Inc., Consumer Assembly of New York, Boys Club, Boy Scouts, Boys Town, European Jewish Congress, Allied Education Foundation, American Arbitration Association, United Housing Foundation.
Series VII. Worksites, 1950s-1970s. People working at various locations and in different industries, ranging from large and crowded work spaces of garment shops to a small stringed instrument workshop, are included in this series. Of particular interest is a set of photographs of workers at New York City's Museum of Natural History cleaning a dinosaur skeleton and a small number of images of Chinese immigrant workers' children in a garment-manufacturing shop with their parents.
Series VIII. Miscellaneous Topics, 1950s-1975. This series represents a combination of the work Reiss did for various labor organizations as well as his own personal interests. The images cover a wide spectrum of topics ranging from sports and recreation, school children at various levels, architectural photography, including buildings under construction (such the United Nations headquarters and the World Trade Center), cooperative housing and crumbling tenements, swearing-in ceremonies, formal portraits of children from his early years as a photographer, voter registration drives, picnics and a boat trip around Manhattan, to unidentified union and labor meetings, musical performers in a sound studio, commencement ceremonies for nurses, and people looking at art in galleries and museums.
Series IX. Oversized, 1950s-1970s. These large-format prints include portraits of leaders of locals of the Communications Workers of America, the Golden Jubilee dinner Local 54 of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, the 12th constitutional convention of the Transport Workers Union of America, a group photograph of the leadership of Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and President Lyndon Johnson addressing a convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union in the 1960s.
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Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Any rights (including copyright and related rights to publicity and privacy) held by Sam Reiss were transferred to New York University in 2002 by Helen Reiss and in 2007 by Jessie Reiss. Permission to publish or reproduce materials in this collection must be secured from Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Please contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu.
Preferred Citation
Identification of item, date; Sam Reiss Photographs; PHOTOS 021.001; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Helen Reiss sent a gift of her husband's photographs and negatives in 1980 and 1988. Prints from these donations were created as the collection: Sam Reiss Photographs, PHOTOS 021.001. The accession number associated with these images is 1980.001. In 2005 several prints related to unions including the Transport Workers Union and the Allied Educational Foundation were incorporated into the collection. The accession number associated with these images is NPA.2005.063. Tamiment received and additional donation of six boxes of Sam Reiss's prints and negatives from Jessie Reiss in 2007. The accession number associated with this gift is NPA.2007.033. In 2009, Jessie Reiss donated an additional two boxes of her father's photographs along with several assorted black and white prints. The accession numbers associated with these gifts are NPA.2009.015 and NPA.2009.020. Additional materials were found in the repository; the accession numbers associated with these materials are NPA.2000.326 and NPA.2005.031.
