Ruth Orkin

Ruth Orkin is born in Boston in 1921 and grows up in Hollywood, where her mother acts in silent films. She works as a messenger at MGM, hoping to become a cinematographer, but the union there does not admit women.

In 1943 she moves to New York. She photographs nightclubs, then freelances for Life, Look, Ladies’ Home Journal, and other magazines. Her 1951 photograph American Girl in Italy, from a series first titled Don’t Be Afraid to Travel Alone, becomes one of her best-known images.

With her husband, the photographer Morris Engel, she makes two independent feature films, Little Fugitive and Lovers and Lollipops. Little Fugitive wins the Silver Lion at Venice and is nominated for an Academy Award.

From her apartment on Central Park West, she photographs the park below through the seasons and the years. The pictures fill two books, A World Through My Window in 1978 and More Pictures from My Window in 1983.