Canvas Ruth Orkin Wall Art

Photographer Ruth Orkin grew up in Hollywood, California, the only child of Mary Ruby, a silent-movie actress, and Samuel Orkin, a mechanical wizard. She was given a camera when she was ten and began developing her own photographs at twelve. Orkin moved to New York in 1943, and by the mid-1940s she was a photojournalist for major magazines including Life, Look, and Ladies' Home Journal. Orkin married photographer Morris Engel in 1952 while they were making the film "Little Fugitive," which was nominated for an Academy Award. (Francois Truffaut has credited the film with initiating the New Wave in film.) In 1959 the Professional Photographers of America named Orkin one of "The Ten Top Women Photographers in the U.S." Orkin's energies turned to raising her family. For the next 30 years, Orkin also documented what she saw from her Central Park West apartment. These photographs became the subject of two books, A World Through My Window (Harper and Row, 1978) and More Pictures From My Window (Rizzoli, 1983). Her monograph, A Photo Journal, was published by Viking in 1981, and exhibitions and lecture tours followed. Orkin died in New York City.