Pursuing a career as a filmmaker in the United States during the first half of the 20th century was an obstacle course for women. Women were engaged in feeding the factory of dreams, but not in making them, which meant that all careers behind the camera were unquestionably earmarked for men. Ruth Orkin (Boston, September 3, 1921 – New York, January 16, 1985) had to renounce her vocation, or at least redirect and transform it, and this setback would perhaps lead to definitively shaping her photographic work.
Orkin was the only child of Mary Ruby, a silent-film actress, and Samuel Orkin, a manufacturer of toy boats called Orkin Craft, and she grew up in Hollywood in the heyday of the 1920s and 1930s. She received her first camera, a 39-cent Univex, at the age of ten. Though she did start to take photos, Ruth Orkin’s real passion was for the moving image, for filmmaking.
