Boys on East River Pier, Manhattan Bridge, 1948

Boys on East River Pier, Manhattan Bridge, 1948

Harold Roth

Harold Roth (1918-2001) was a self-taught photographer. He received his first camera in 1930, as a gift from Kodak to half a million children who turned twelve in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of George Eastman's first patent. By the late 1930s, Roth had graduated to a Graflex camera and begun to extensively document the city around him. He is best known for his photographs of 1940s and 1950s New York City street life.