7th Biennial Photography Art Auction

Market Arcade Atrium, 617 Main Street, Buffalo, NY
Saturday, May 8, 2004


CEPA's 7th Biennial Auction was a great sucess. If you missed the event or would like to remember it, view the slide show to the right.
Milton Rogovin
Rogovin named Honorary Artist Chair of CEPA's 7th Biennial Photography Art Auction
“This is a new position for our Biennial Auction” said Lawrence Brose, Executive Director at CEPA “We wanted to do something to honor the many artists who really make the auction possible.” The CEPA Biennial Benefit Auction is known as the best fine art professional auction held in Buffalo, featuring many nationally known artists, and a Sotheby’s auctioneer who is flown in for the special event. Brose said “The auction is made possible by a strong and dynamic committee, many volunteers and most importantly by the art. We feel that Milton Rogovin represents what is special about our auction. The high caliber of the art, and the auction artists’ commitment to CEPA Gallery’s mission is it’s greatest strength. We are very honored that Milton Rogovin will be working with us on this next auction”


Milton Rogovin
Born 1909
Photographer
American
Raised during the Great Depression, Milton Rogovin became politically active as a result of his impoverished childhood. He called himself a "social documentary photographer" and eventually devoted himself to photographing the segment of society he designated "the forgotten ones." Rogovin studied optometry at Columbia University, then opened a shop in Buffalo, New York, in 1938. He purchased his first camera in 1942, the same year that he was drafted and got married. He initially made snapshots. In 1958, a collaboration with a professor of music to document music at storefront churches set Rogovin on his photographic path. Some of the photographs that Rogovin made in the churches were published in 1962 in Aperture magazine, edited by Minor White, with an introduction by W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). That same year Rogovin began to photograph coal miners, a project that took him to France, Scotland, Spain, China, and Mexico. Many of these images were published in his first book, The Forgotten Ones.

For the CEPA Auction, Milton has donated a signed print, Johnny and Zeke Dancing, 1973. This is the image that is featured on the cover of his new book Milton Rogovin: The Forgotten Ones, 2003