Sam Falk


Sam Falk was an early- and mid-twentieth-century American photojournalist who worked for The New York Times from 1925 to 1969, and wrote and photographed for other publications.

Life and career

Born in 1901 in Vienna and emigrating early in life to America, Sam Falk was a self-taught photographer who at 16 years old sold his first photo, of lightning taken with a simple box camera, to the New York Morning World for $10. Two years later he left school to work for a commercial photographer, and for him covered the Shamrock IV-Resolute yacht race.
He joined the staff of The New York Times in 1925 and remained for more than 40 years. In the 1940s he pioneered the use of 35-mm photography at the Times finding the usual press camera cumbersome, like the Anniversary Speed Graphic with 5-inch Graflex Optar f4.7 telephoto that he used to record a stumbling steeplechase horse throwing its rider at the Far Hills Races, N.J. He had to purchase his own 35mm camera, such was the prejudice against them at the newspaper, though editor Lester Markel liked his 'miniature' format pictures and often gave him 35mm assignments. The smaller camera became accepted after the Herald Tribune announced that their photographers were switching to the compact camera. Falk also used a Rolleiflex medium-format camera.

Portraiture

Falk toured with President Calvin Coolidge and covered the Lindbergh kidnapping trial, but after being switched from straight news in 1951, much of his photography for the Times was for features on well-known personalities, amongst whom were Edward Albee; Bernard Baruch: Albert Einstein; Dag Hammarskjöld; Julie Harris; Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia of New York City; John D. Rockefeller; Eleanor Roosevelt: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr.; Arthur Rubenstein; Beverly Sills; Arturo Toscanini; the United Nations General Assembly; and Andy Warhol.

Street photography

Falk documented street life in the United States and in Austria ; England; Paris, France; and Italy from the 1940s to the 1960s. Falk photographed landmarks of New York City, such as Central Park; Chinatown; Grand Central Station; Greenwich Village; Harlem; John F. Kennedy International Airport; and Times Square. On April 2, 1951 Falk made black-and-white pictures for The New York Times Magazine of amateur photographers photographic landmarks in the metropolis. These images were the subject of a rephotography exercise carried out 68 years later, in digital colour, over April 1–3, 2019 by Tony Cenicola, a Times staff photographer, and paired with Falk's originals for an installment of the newspaper's 'Past Tense', an archival storytelling project.

Magazines

Later in his career, Falk retired from the newspaper in 1969 and went to San Francisco to work for the Sunday The New York Times Magazine and was President of the New York Institute of Photography. He regularly did photographic materials and equipment tests and reviews for magazines and published technical articles in Popular Photography and other mass-circulation magazines, and in books and manuals.

Recognition

Falk's photograph of striking longshoremen was selected by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art's world-touring exhibition The Family of Man that was seen by 9 million visitors. Falk was only able to make the photograph after buying the strikers beers all round.
He died May 1991 of heart failure at the Sunrise Health Center in Sunrise, Florida, survived by his wife, Anne.

Exhibitions