07/20/2019
It's with great sadness that I report the passing of photographer, Ida Wyman on July 13th. I represented Ida's work for twenty years at the Stephen Cohen Gallery and more recently, as a private dealer. It was an honor to know her and to share a friendship.
The daughter of Jewish immigrants from Riga, Latvia, Wyman was born March 7, 1926, in Malden, Massachusetts. She soon moved to New York, where her parents ran a small grocery store in the Bronx.
"Details of the daily life of children and adults, at work, at play, have always gripped me,” she wrote. “My lively curiosity to see and know was a strong motivator in my shooting a well as for assignments. The camera has been the door through which I entered the lives of people I met. Despite the technical wonders of photography, I believe that a single camera, coupled to heart and mind, can still reveal the beauty of our fellow humans on their daily rounds."
Always curious about people and how things work, she obtained her first camera at age fourteen and joined the Walton High School Camera Club. There she met Life magazine photographer Bernard Hoffman, who encouraged her to pursue a career in photography. She credits him for helping her become a nationally published photographer in a time when few women did this work.
She became ACME Newspictures first "girl mailroom boy." She soon was promoted to the position of printer joining
the all-male printing staff.
She decided to pursue picture magazine photography rather than news photography. She would assign herself photographic narratives and soon sold her first story to Look magazine. When men returned from the war in 1945, Wyman lost her ACME job and started her career as a professional photographer
In 1946, she married Simon Nathan, an ACME photographer. She joined the Photo League, an influential cooperative of New York photographers who believed, in Wyman’s words, “photos could be used to effect change.”
"I considered myself a documentary photographer, and the league's philosophy of honest photography appealed to me," Wyman wrote.
Melanie Herzog, author of "Ida Wyman: Chords of Memory," stated that Wyman’s photography is "eloquently composed and visually compelling.” She writes: “While people within their social environment are most often the focus of Wyman's photographs, she attended as well to details — architectural embellishments, commercial signs, utilitarian objects — that balance a composition, provide visual interest, and ground these images in their time and place."
Taking the advice of Life editor Ruth Lester, 23-year-old Ida traveled to Los Angeles, where fewer photographers were competing for assignments. In 1948, she travelled alone by bus. She organized her trip around assignments stopping at places because she liked the name and was curious to explore them. She travelled from New York City to Mexico City selling work to Business Week, Fortune, Colliers, the Saturday Evening Post and Life.
In Los Angeles, she became known as "the girl photographer who worked for Life magazine." She photographed a range of subjects from tea parties to rummage sales along with movies stars such as James Cagney, Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Ronald Reagan, and Bonzo the chimpanzee. In 1950, she covered the famous Senate race between Helen Gahagan Douglas and Richard Nixon. From 1947 through 1951, Wyman completed nearly 100 assignments for Life.
After the birth of her first child, her career was put on hold. After a decade of homemaking she returned to work as a photographer of scientific research projects and later as chief photographer for the Department of Pathology at Columbia until 1983. She continued to freelance until the 1990s, but years of carrying heavy equipment took its toll on her back, and she turned to stock photography. In 2006 Wyman moved to Madison to be near family. In 2008, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art ran an exhibition "Individual Experience: The Photographs of Ida Wyman." This September, the University of Wisconsin's - Whitewater will present a collection of her work.
Wyman's work is in the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center for Photography (ICP), the Jewish Museum (NYC), the New York Public Library Photography Collection, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and many private collections. Stephen Cohen Gallery, now Stephen Cohen, has represented Ida’s work for twenty years.
