Getty Museum

Michael and Pam

Date

1973–1992

Medium

Gelatin silver prints

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

Michael and Pam were one of the couples Milton Rogovin began photographing in Buffalo’s Lower West Side in 1972. He first photographed them on the street standing before a graffiti-marked wall. Defiant and proud in his Afro and turtleneck with his arm around Pam, Michael epitomizes the image of male bravado fashionable in the early 1970s. Eleven years later, Michael and Pam appear to have settled into domestic life together, seen in an interior with a babe in arms. The final image of the family shows the distinguished parents and their three children, surrounded by family photographs that have accumulated on the mantel and wall. Rogovin started this series at the age of 63 with his wife and collaborator Anne at his side. He had worked as an optometrist on Chippewa Street in Buffalo for many years, but his commitment to social issues made him politically suspect in the eyes of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was labeled “Buffalo’s Top Red” by the *Buffalo Evening News*, which impacted his career but did not deter him and Anne from continuing to make socially engaged photographs for the remainder of their time together. Seeking to capture the strength and resilience of residents of Buffalo’s Lower West Side, Rogovin photographed the same individuals and families over the course of three decades. They included families of diverse ethnicities such as Puerto Rican, African American, Native American, and Italian heritage. He was 92 years old when he finished his Lower West Side series in 2002. The resulting photographs are a remarkable record of the power and perseverance of these Buffalo families and of Rogovin and his wife’s thirty-plus-year commitment to celebrating these families. Adapted from getty.edu, Interpretive Content Department, 2008; with additions by Carolyn Peter, Department of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum, 2022.

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