Exhausted coal miners and shabby families hovering aimlessly on streets, in doorways, in bars – these are snapshots of New York's struggling working class in the mid-20th century.
But before photographer Milton Rogovin began documenting their lives, the government was documenting his, using a network of informants in an era of paranoia toward suspected communists.
The file contains memos from former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, chronologies of Rogovin's attendance and comments at Buffalo Communist Party meetings and samples of his handwriting.
In 1957 Rogovin realised he could raise awareness of social and economic inequities with his photography, his family told the AP.
He took photographs of people in poor neighborhoods, coal miners, steel workers and Native Americans, calling them 'the forgotten ones'.
The massive body of work earned him the New York State Governor's Arts Award in 2000.
Tens of thousands of the photographs now make up the Milton Rogovin Collection, including 29,700 black-and-white negatives, 2,500 contact sheets, and 1,130 signed prints.
They show the full scope of Rogovin's six decades in photography, documenting the lives of the Yemeni, Chileans, steelworkers, and Native American reservations in upstate New York
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083657/Milton-Rogovin-Photographer-dedicated-life-photographing-plight-poor-FBI-watch-list.html#ixzz1itqBYlDQ
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