Peter Sekaer
Peter Sekaer (1901-1950) was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and immigrated to the United States in 1918. After successfully operating a printing business in New York City producing posters, advertisements and window displays, he enrolled in the Art Students League in 1929 to study painting. He soon became involved in the New York art scene, befriending, among others, the artist Ben Shahn and the photographer Walker Evans.
By 1934 Sekaer had left painting behind to study photography with Berenice Abbott at the New School for Social Research. Through his friendship with Walker Evans he secured contracts from 1936 to 1943 to work on assignment as a photographer for various government agencies that were created as part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal program. In 1945 Sekaer started his own commercial photography business, shooting advertisements and human interest stories for magazines.
In 1950, at age forty-nine, Sekaer suffered a fatal heart attack. His life’s work has been preserved by his wife, Elisabeth Sekaer Rothschild, and their younger daughter, Christina Sekaer.
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One Third of a Nation
The Photographs of the Farm Security Administration 15 Mar - 18 Nov 2020NEW YORK—A tale of America, told through iconic photographs from the 1930s, is the subject of One Third of a Nation: The Photographs of the Farm Security Administration , which...Read more -
Staff Picks VI
13 Jul - 25 Aug 2017Read more -
Scenes from the South 1936 - 2012
3 May - 1 Jun 2013Scenes from the South, 1936-2012 , an exhibition of thirty photographs interweaving historical and contemporary images made in the American South over more than 75 years, will be on view...Read more -
Peter Sekaer
An Untold Story 14 Sep - 23 Oct 2010Howard Greenberg Gallery is pleased to present Peter Sekaer: An Untold Story , a poignant photographic record of Depression-era America. Sekaer belongs to the generation of social documentary photographers of...Read more
