Ben Shahn
1898 – 1969
The social-realist painter who documented Depression-era America with a hidden camera
About Ben Shahn
Ben Shahn was born on September 12, 1898, in Kovno, then part of the Russian Empire and now the Lithuanian city of Kaunas, into a Jewish family. His father, suspected of revolutionary activity, was exiled to Siberia, and in 1906 the family emigrated to the United States, reuniting in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. As a teenager Shahn was apprenticed to a commercial lithographer, a trade that gave him a lifelong…
Read full biography →From the Collection
Scenes of the northern Shenandoah Valley, including the…
1941
Scenes of the northern Shenandoah Valley, including the…
1941
Scenes of the northern Shenandoah Valley, including the…
1941
Scenes of the northern Shenandoah Valley, including the…
1941
Scenes of the northern Shenandoah Valley, including the…
1941
Scenes of the northern Shenandoah Valley, including the…
1941
Notable Works
Cotton pickers, Pulaski County, Arkansas
Made on the Alexander plantation in Pulaski County, Arkansas, this is among the photographs Shahn added to the new Historical Section file in 1935. Shot candidly with his Leica, it shows field hands…
Browse the collection →Scott's Run, West Virginia (Miner's children)
One of Shahn's photographs of Scott's Run, a desperately poor coal-mining district near Morgantown, West Virginia, that became an emblem of Depression hardship. Shahn documented the miners and their…
Browse the collection →Medicine show, Huntingdon, Tennessee
Photographed in the small town of Huntingdon, Tennessee, in the autumn of 1935, this image captures spectators gathered at a traveling medicine show, the patent-medicine pitch wrapped in vaudeville…
Browse the collection →Timeline
Born in Kovno, Russian Empire (now Kaunas, Lithuania), on September 12
Emigrates with his family to the United States, settling in Brooklyn, New York
Exhibits "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti," his breakthrough series of social-realist gouaches
Assists Diego Rivera on the controversial Rockefeller Center mural in New York
Joins the Resettlement Administration (later the FSA) under Roy Stryker, recommended by Walker Evans, and photographs the South
"I hate injustice; I guess that's about the only thing I really do hate."
— Ben Shahn