NYAB Event - “PM New York Daily: 1940-48” Exhibition

“PM New York Daily: 1940-48” Exhibition

Steven Kasher Gallery

This event has ended.

Steven Kasher Gallery announces PM New York Daily: 1940-48, the first exhibition about the iconic progressive newspaper. The exhibition features over 75 black and white vintage photographs from staff and freelance photographers including Weegee, Helen Levitt, Morris Engel, Margaret Bourke-White, Lisette Model, Mary Morris, Irving Haberman, and Arthur Leipzig. Published from June 18, 1940 to June 22, 1948, PM Daily and its Sunday version PM Weekly were platforms for cutting edge photojournalism and became instruments for socially progressive thought. PM was richly illustrated with photographs depicting themes of politics, crime, war, labor, and, above all, images celebrating the everyday life of everyday people. PM published what have become some of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century. Also included in the exhibition will be vintage copies of the newspaper itself.

The paper made its mission clear in its first issue: “PM is against people who push other people around. PM accepts no advertising. PM belongs to no political party. PM is absolutely free and uncensored. PM’s sole source of income is its readers — to whom it alone is responsible. PM is one newspaper that can and dares to tell the truth.” PM considered photography a foremost instrument for communicating truth as opposed to objectivity, in the same vein as leftist illustrated periodicals from interwar Europe, such as Arbeiten Illustrierte Zeitung, Vu, and Ce Soir. PM declared that photographers “are a vital and integral part of the very idea of PM — that they would write stories with photographs, as reporters wrote them in words.” PM sought to emulate the visual punch of Life magazine, and to that end used the most expensive printing and paper ever used for a daily tabloid.

Weegee (originally Arthur Fellig) was one of the great photographers of New York – some would say the greatest. He began his six-year relationship with PM with the publication of a car-wreck image in the second issue, June 19, 1940. The picture bore the crusading caption “PM hears that there has been persistent agitation to correct this dangerous curve, responsible for many accidents; will try to find out if anything is being done to eliminate the hazard.” The three most famous of all Weegee’s images were shot for PM and are featured in our show with their original captions: “Coney Island… Temperature 89 … They Came Early, Stayed Late,” “The Critic,” and “Their First Murder” (with the accompanying “Here He is as He Was Left in the Gutter… He Got a DOA Tied to His Arm, That Means Dead on Arrival”).

Margaret Bourke-White was also part of the first-year staff, but she soon quit because she could not handle daily newspaper deadlines. Bourke-White and Mary Morris were the first female press photographers on staff at any daily newspaper in the U.S. The PM staff included photographers Morris Engel, Irving Haberman, and Arthur Leipzig, as well as Gene Badger, Wilbert Blanche, John DeBiase, Steven Derry, Morris Engel, Alan Fischer, Morris Gordon, Martin Harris, and Ray Platnick. Focusing mainly on New York, the show features their photographs of city’s daily routine. Prominent in our exhibition are works by Morris Engel depicting an integrated school, children on New York streets, Coney Island scenes, and pictures of workers organizing to strike.

Founded by Ralph Ingersoll, the former managing editor of Time-Life publications, PM’s bold mission attracted important writers I.F. Stone, Ernest Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Erskine Caldwell, and future Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. Also engaged were cartoonists Theodore Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Al Hirschfeld, Crockett Johnson, and future Abstract Expressionist Ad Reinhardt. The Sunday issue, PM Weekly, featured a groundbreaking, extremely influential photographic portfolio edited by renowned photographer Ralph Steiner.

At a time when most New York publications were staunchly conservative, PM was “a fighting liberal crusader”. Every day PM devoted approximately six of its pages to news of the American labor front. No advertising was ever published in PM, in order to sustain its status as free from business interests. The editorial staff was a great supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s presidency. PM ardently supported U.S. intervention against Hitler, took stands against racial and religious discrimination, and fought for the rights of labor unions.

In 1942, on the second anniversary of PM’s launch, the average circulation was around 165,000. Despite the devotion of its readers the paper never managed to sell the 225,000 issues needed to break even. In June 1948, PM Daily published its final issue. Its influence continues. Marshall Field, the publisher of PM took note of how the weekend photographic supplement increased readership. He imported it first to his Chicago Sun and then had it syndicated nationally as Parade, which is still to this day the most widely read periodical in America.