The passage of time isn’t immediately relevant to those who work hard lives, and this even includes photographer Milton Rogovin. Rogovin is known for his photography of the working class people of the Lower West Side of Buffalo. However, not only did he never intend to continue his portraits throughout the years—effectively documenting their lives—he also never intended to become a photographer. Milton Rogovin started out as an optometrist in the Queen City of New York, two blocks away from the Lower West Side. However, do to his communist beliefs, but he lost income, leading him to begin photographing the impoverished people in his own neighborhood, saying, “I like to photograph people with problems” (Klinkenborg). These photographs capture the motivations and lives spontaneously of the hard working people.
Rogovin’s excursion into photography gave each person he photographed a sense of community. After his…show more content… He’s sitting on concrete steps with a worn down building behind him. Between the man’s lets is a young toddler sitting with him, not even paying attention to Rogovin’s camera. The next photograph in the quartet is taken roughly ten years later, and hauntingly, it only shows the young boy. He is sitting on some steps in a different location entirely. The unspoken disappearance of the man leaves an impact on the viewer because not only is there a physical absence, but an emotional one as well. The following two images follow Rogovin’s formula of every ten years later, and shows the boy grow into a man at the same front steps from the second image. The story being told by Rogovin is an accidental one, and although the words aren’t there, the photos display the strength and growth in the young boy through time. The boy, Jimmy Webster, vocalizes his
