Esther Bubley was an exceptionally talented photojournalist whose services were sought by the most prestigious clients in the era when illustrated magazines dominated the mass media, between the mid-1940s and the mid-1960s. During those years, there was very little gallery or museum activity in photography, and the greatest talents worked for illustrated magazines, which sent photographers far and wide on assignment and provided them with an audience of millions. These photographers also worked for corporations which, as part of their public relations efforts, produced stylish in-house magazines illustrated with photo-essays. The magazine that pioneered photojournalism was LIFE, and the corporation that developed the first and finest photographic archive and magazine was Standard Oil of New Jersey. Bubley was a mainstay of both, producing 40 articles for LIFE and working for Standard Oil for 20 years. She also worked prolifically for the Ladies’ Home Journal and for Pan American Airlines, which in its heyday (when it built the Pan Am building in midtown Manhattan) sent her around the world. Bubley was also recognized for her artistry. Edward Steichen often showed her work at the Museum of Modern Art, including the Family of Man exhibition. In 1956 Helen Gee gave Bubley a one-person show at her Greenwich Village coffee house, the Limelight, which was at the time the sole independent gallery devoted to photographic prints, and which showed the works of luminaries in the field of photography at a time when photography was not yet considered an art.
Bubley’s name is not as familiar as it should be for several reasons. The photography audience as it has developed since the 1970s has been slow to recognize the achievements of photojournalists because their end product was mass-produced magazines, not fine art prints. As a photography market developed in the 1970s and 1980s, many of Bubley’s contemporaries (Gordon Parks, for example) refashioned themselves as gallery artists, but Bubley did not. She was financially secure and contemptuous of the idea of fine art prints. She lived her last 30 years in semi-retirement, pursuing her own book projects.
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Esther Bubley was an exceptionally talented photojournalist whose services were sought by the most prestigious clients in the era when illustrated magazines dominated the mass media, between the mid-1940s and the mid-1960s. During those years, there was very little gallery or museum activity in photography, and the greatest talents worked for illustrated magazines, which sent photographers far and wide on assignment and provided them with an audience of millions. These photographers also worked for corporations which, as part of their public relations efforts, produced stylish in-house magazines illustrated with photo-essays. The magazine that pioneered photojournalism was LIFE, and the corporation that developed the first and finest photographic archive and magazine was Standard Oil of New Jersey. Bubley was a mainstay of both, producing 40 articles for LIFE and working for Standard Oil for 20 years. She also worked prolifically for the Ladies’ Home Journal and for Pan American Airlines, which in its heyday (when it built the Pan Am building in midtown Manhattan) sent her around the world. Bubley was also recognized for her artistry. Edward Steichen often showed her work at the Museum of Modern Art, including the Family of Man exhibition. In 1956 Helen Gee gave Bubley a one-person show at her Greenwich Village coffee house, the Limelight, which was at the time the sole independent gallery devoted to photographic prints, and which showed the works of luminaries in the field of photography at a time when photography was not yet considered an art.