Photographer Milton Rogovin deemed dangerous by FBI
An over 600-page FBI document containing collected data on photographer Milton Rogovin has recently come to light, revealing that the bureau identified Rogovin as "...dangerous to the internal security because of his strong adherence to Marxist-Leninist principles"- consequently (and troublingly) Rogovin and his family were carefully monitored for about thirty years from the 1940s to the 1970s.
It's certainly no secret that Rogovin's work reflected a concern with the inequities in American society-his subjects were almost always the working poor whom he called "the forgotten ones", and the whole reason he got into photography was because he'd been fired from an optometrist position after registering African American voters. In fact, most of his reported "suspicious activities" were civil rights-related: a telling indication of what was considered to be "deviant" at the time. Though 1950s McCarthy-era hysteria has been well documented, it's still very troubling to know that Rogovin and his family's privacy was invaded and maligned for such a long time by the federal government , well past the height of the Red Scare era.
| Film Trailer for Milton Rogovin Documentary, “The Rich Have Their Own Photographers”: | |
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