Irving Haberman
Back from Sing Sing. William Panaro, a Murder Inc. Member of Abe Reles, Return by Train to New York for a New Trial, January 1940
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed January 1940
10 x 12.5 in
(25.4h x 31.75w cm)
 

Irving Haberman
Off to Sing Sing: The Beginning of the End. Pittburg Phil Strauss And Buggsy Goldstein, Ertswhile Pals of Abe Reles in Murder, Inc., Caught The Noon Train Today for Sing Sing Prison, Doomed to Die in The Electric Chair, September 1940
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed November 1941
7.5 x 9.25 in
(19.05h x 23.5w cm)
 

Alan Fisher
Off to Sing Sing: The Beginning of the End. Pittburg Phil Strauss And Buggsy Goldstein, Ertswhile Pals of Abe Reles in Murder, Inc., Caught The Noon Train Today for Sing Sing Prison, Doomed to Die in The Electric Chair, September 1940
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed September 1940
7.5 x 9.25 in
(19.05h x 23.5w cm)
 

Weegee
Their First Murder, October 9, 1941
Vintage gelatin silver, printed ca. 1945
8.13 x 10 in
(20.65h x 25.4w cm)
 

Anonymous
Adam Clayton Powell, Running for the U.S. Congress, at the Negro Freedom Rally, Madison Square Garden, June 26, 1944
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed June 1944
8 x 10 in
(20.32h x 25.4w cm)
 

Weegee
Frank Sinatra Fans at Paramount, November 1944
Vintage gelatin print, printed November 1944
11 x 14 in
(27.94h x 35.56w cm)
 

Bernie Aumuller
More Coming, Pearl Reep, Belle Dodds, and Ruth Hassen, all of Flushing, Covering Their Heads as They Walk Along Chambers St., February 1946
Vintage gelatin silver, printed February 1946
8 x 10 in
(20.32h x 25.4w cm)
 

Irving Haberman
Political Handbills Litter Southern Blvd., February 1948
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed February 1948
8 x 10 in
(20.32h x 25.4w cm)
 

Weegee
The Critic, Opening Night at the Metropolitan Opera , November 22, 1943
Vintage gelatin silver
8 x 10 in
(20.32h x 25.4w cm)
 

Morris Engel
Mrs. Peggy Johnson Dresses Daughter Antoinette, Four. Other Children Are Rose, One, and Sandra, Two. All Four, and an Infant, Sleep in One Room, May 1946
Vintage gelatin silver print mounted on cardboard, printed ca. May 1946
10.5 x 13.38 in
(26.67h x 33.99w cm)
 

Irving Haberman
Out After 6 Years. Standing Miserably Amid Their Furniture Outside Their Three-Room Apartment at 2650 E. 7th St., Brooklyn, March 1948
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed March 1948
8 x 10 in
(20.32h x 25.4w cm)
 

Gene Badger
On May 13 The Day, Yiddish Newspaper, Where 42 Employes Are On Strike, May 1941
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed May 1941
8 x 10 in
(20.32h x 25.4w cm)
 

Max Peter Haas
The Esposito Episode. Heroitic Taxi Driver, Leonard Weisberg, Lying Dead at Deadly "Mad Dog" Shoot-Out in Manhattan, January 14, 1941
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed April 1941
6.5 x 8.5 in
 

Morris Engel
Bosun of U.S. Lines' American Importer Tells his Men, Most of Them in Their 20s, How Much Liberty They'll Rate in London, March 1946
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed ca. March 1946
11 x 14 in
(27.94h x 35.56w cm)
MoEn020
 

Weegee
Phillip J. Stazzone is on WPA and Enjoys his Favorite Food as He's Heard that the Army Doesn't Go In Very Strong for Serving Spaghetti, October 1940
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed October 1940
10 x 8 in
(25.4h x 20.32w cm)
 

Margaret Bourke-White
Men Searched the Job Boards on Sixth Avenue as Unemployment is Rising Again, June 1940
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed June 1940
10 x 8 in
(25.4h x 20.32w cm)
 

Helen Levitt
Third Ave., Upper East Side, Offers no Trees or Cliffs for Kids to Climb, but Porch of Abandoned Building is Excellent Substitute, July-August 1940
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed August 1940
 

Morris Engel
Coney Island Embrace, 1938
Gelatin silver print, printed ca. 1995
14 x 11 in
(35.56h x 27.94w cm)
 

Lisette Model
Promenade des Anglais (Woman in Flowered Dress, Nice, French Rivera), 1937
Gelatin silver print, printed 1977
20 x 16 in
(50.8h x 40.64w cm)
 

Al Taylor
Camille Dumas After Standing in Line for 15 Minutes, Finally Emerges From the Dairy Store With Her Daughter's Milk Ration-About Half a Pint, July 1946
Vintage gelatin silver print, printed July 1946
10 x 8 in
(25.4h x 20.32w cm)
 

Press Release

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

PM New York Daily: 1940-48

Photographs for a progressive newspaper by Weegee, Helen Levitt, Morris Engel, Margaret Bourke-White, Lisette Model, Irving Haberman, Mary Morris, and others

 

Exhibition: January 14th – February 20th, 2016

Opening Reception: January 14th, 2016, 6 – 8 PM

 

Steven Kasher Gallery is proud to announce PM New York Daily: 1940-48, the first exhibition about the upstart New York tabloid that challenged the entrenched conservatism of every other newspaper of its day. PM featured a unique no-advertising policy, innovative graphics, Weegee as star photographer, and a stable of the most engaged writers. PM crusaded for racial justice, for union power, for entry into the war against Hitler, and for the New Deal policies of Roosevelt. Way ahead of its time, PM fought against income inequality, racist violence, Republican demagoguery, political corruption funded by oligarchs, foreign ideologies seeking world domination. Sound familiar?

 

The exhibition features over 75 black and white vintage photographs from staff and freelance photographers including Weegee, Helen Levitt, Morris Engel, Margaret Bourke-White, Lisette Model, Mary Morris, Irving Haberman, and Arthur Leipzig. PM published what have become some of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century. Also included in the exhibition will be vintage copies of the newspaper itself.

 

The paper made its mission clear in its first issue: “PM is against people who push other people around. PM accepts no advertising. PM belongs to no political party. PM is absolutely free and uncensored. PM's sole source of income is its readers -- to whom it alone is responsible. PM is one newspaper that can and dares to tell the truth.” Photography was crucial to this mission. PM sought to emulate the visual punch of Life magazine, publishing full-page photographs by important photographers with the most expensive printing and paper ever used for a daily tabloid.

 

Founded by Ralph Ingersoll, the former managing editor of Time-Life publications, the man who built Fortune, PM's bold mission attracted important writers I.F. Stone, Ernest Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Erskine Caldwell, and future Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill. Also engaged were cartoonists Theodore Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Al Hirschfeld, Crockett

 

Johnson, and future Abstract Expressionist Ad Reinhardt. The Sunday issue, PM Weekly, featured a groundbreaking, extremely influential photographic portfolio edited by renowned photographer Ralph Steiner.

 

Weegee was one of the great photographers of New York – some would say the greatest. He began his six-year relationship with PM with the publication of a car-wreck image in the second issue, June 19, 1940. The picture bore the crusading caption “PM hears that there has been persistent agitation to correct this dangerous curve, responsible for many accidents; will try to find out if anything is being done to eliminate the hazard.” The three most famous of all Weegee’s images were shot for PM and are featured in our show with their original captions: “Coney Island… Temperature 89 … They Came Early, Stayed Late,” “The Critic,” and “Their First Murder” (with the accompanying “Here He is as He Was Left in the Gutter… He Got a DOA Tied to His Arm, That Means Dead on Arrival”).

 

Margaret Bourke-White was also part of the first-year staff, but she soon quit because she could not handle daily newspaper deadlines. Bourke-White and Mary Morris were the first female press photographers on staff at any daily newspaper in the U.S.  Prominent in our exhibition are works by Morris Engel depicting an integrated school, children on New York streets, Coney Island scenes, and pictures of workers organizing to strike.

 

Despite the devotion of its readers the paper never managed to sell the 225,000 issues needed to break even. In June 1948, PM Daily published its final issue. But its influence continues. PM is considered the model for the counterculture independent journals of the 60s. Many of its unique features and stylistic innovations can be found in today’s press, including the New York Times. Marshall Field, the publisher of PM took note of how the weekend photographic supplement increased readership. He copied it for a magazine he syndicated nationally as Parade, which remains to this day the most widely read periodical in America, though one very different in politics.

 

I.F. Stone summed it up: “[He] would say we were a bunch of do-gooders, bleeding hearts and worse. The paper was often sloppy, screwy and exasperating. But it wasn’t dull. It got people mad, sometimes mad enough to get results.”

 

The gallery will host a panel discussion on PM on Saturday, February 6th from 3-5pm. Panelists include Brian Wallis, Curator of the Walther Collection and former Chief Curator of the ICP; Paul Milkman, scholar and author of PM: A New Deal in Journalism 1940-1948; Jason Hill, Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture at the University of Delaware and author of the forthcoming book Artist as Reporter: Weegee, Ad Reinhardt, and the PM News Picture and Laetitia Barrere, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The panel will be moderated by our Curatorial Director Anais Feyeux.

 

 

PM New York Daily: 1940-48 will be on view January 14th – February 20th, 2016. Steven Kasher Gallery is located at 515 W. 26th St., New York, NY 10001. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 AM to 6 PM. For more information about the exhibition and all other general inquiries, please contact Cassandra Johnson, 212 966 3978, cassandra@stevenkasher.com