Ruth Orkin (Photofile)

Ruth Orkin (1921–1985) always dreamed of becoming a filmmaker, and although that ambition was thwarted until later in her career, she quickly found other ways of engaging with the world of images. She was given her first camera at the age of ten, and by the age of seventeen, she was cycling across the United States from Los Angeles to New York, documenting her trip in albums of annotated photographs. In the early 1940s, she settled in New York, joining the Photo League and making her name with photo stories for major magazines such as Life, Look, and This Week.