Jonathan Green (photographer)

Aperture had begun to publish books as well as the Quarterly, and they suggested Green prepare a careful study of Stieglitz’s magazine, Camera Work, 1903–1917.

Green spent many hours in the Boston Public Library reviewing original issues of Camera Work and conceived of a sumptuous book that would translate the spirt of the original format into contemporary terms.

He goal was to reveal how Stieglitz’s periodical “helped transformed he artistic sensibility of the nineteenth century into the artistic awareness of the present day.” Green and Hoffman worked with designer Stephen Korbet and typographer Herb Lubalin to achieve the final look.

The publication was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florence V. Burden Foundation.

Green's mother, Frances, was a social worker who while in Palestine in the mid 1930s worked with Henrietta Szold in Youth Aliya.

Green grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and attended Shaker Heights public schools.

Jonathan Green (born September 26, 1939) is an American writer, historian of photography, curator, teacher, museum administrator, photographer, filmmaker and the founding Project Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts.

"Born in 1939 in Troy, New York; now living in Galena, Ohio. Background: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1958 — 1960; Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1960 — 1961; Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, B.A., 1963; (doctoral study to 1967) Harvard University, Cambridge, M.A., 1967. National Endowment for the Arts Photographer's Fellowship, 1977; Photographer with Ezra Stoller, Mamaroneck, New York, 1967 — 1969. Instructor of Photography, MIT, 1968 — 1969; Assistant Professor, MIT, 1969— 1973; Associate Professor MIT, 1973 — 1975; Editorial Consultant, Aperture, 1972— 1973; Associate Editor, Aperture, 1974— 1976; Acting Director, Creative Photography Laboratory, MIT, Cambridge, 1974—1976; Proposal Reviewer for National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Research Grants, 1975 — 1976; Review Panelist and Consultant, National Endowment for the Arts, 1975—1976; Consultant, Polaroid Corporation; 1976 Associate Professor of Photography, Ohio State University, Columbus, 1976— present.

He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1958–1960; Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1960–61; Brandeis University, Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and English Literature, BA, Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude 1963; Harvard University, English Literature, as a Danforth Fellow, AM, 1967.

As a freshman at MIT in May 1960, Green was awarded third place in the MIT-wide Boit Essay Prize competition for a study of three poems by Dylan Thomas.

In Spring 1964 his translation from the Hebrew of Fahrenheim by Shmuel Yosef Agnon was published in the Harvard-Radcliffe literary magazine Mosiac.

In 1965 based on a series of high contrast photographs Green had made in Israel and Europe, Peter Chermayeff and Lou Bakanowsky of the architectural firm Cambridge Seven Associates commissioned Green along with photographer Len Gittleman to take photographs to be installed as large-scale silkscreen, porcelain enamel, black and white murals for Cambridge Seven Associates’ newly renovated 1967 Boston MBTA stations at Copley, Arlington, and Park.

These murals showed iconic buildings and landscapes surrounding each station such as the Arlington Street Church and the Boston Public Gardens.

They were on view for over 20 years.

Selected Group Exhibitions: 1967 'New Group' exhibition, Hayden Gallery, MIT, Cambridge; 1970: Paul Rudolph exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York; 'Metropolitan Middle Class,' Hayden Gallery, MIT, Cambridge; 'The Innermost House,' Hayden Gallery, MIT, Cambridge (traveling exhibition); 1971: 'Photography '72,' J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville; 1973: 'Photo Vision '72 ,' Boston Center for the Arts (traveling exhibition); 'Photography Maine 1973 Maine State Museum, Augusta; 1974: 'Four Contemporary Photographers,' Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge; 'Celebrations,' Hayden Gallery, MIT, Cambridge; 'Twentieth-Century Photography from the Collection,' Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 1975: 'National Photography Invitational,' Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond; 'Photographs from the United States,' Fotogratiska Museet, Stockholm; 'New England Architecture,' DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts; Opening group show, Cronin Gallery, Houston; 1977: Color Exhibition, Columbus Institute for Contemporary Art (Ohio); Color Exhibition, Enjay Gallery, Boston; 1978 'Year in Review,' Cleveland Museum of Art; 'Tusen och en bild' (one thousand and one), Moderna Museet, Stockholm; '130 Years of Ohio Photography,' Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, (Ohio)."American Images: New Work by Twenty Contemporary Photographers, Edited by Renato Danese, p. 139 ISBN 0070152950

After taking a workshop with Minor White he began to write for Aperture Quarterly, publishing commentaries on the Daybooks of Edward Weston, 1967; Harry Callahan’s El Mochuelo and MOMA monographs, 1968; and Bruce Davidson’s East 100th Street, 1971.

In 1967 Green moved to Mamaroneck, New York, to work with architectural photographer Ezra Stoller.

During his time with Stoller and then later on-his-own in Boston, Green photographed projects for a range of noteworthy architects and firms including Acorn Structures; Benjamin Thompson; Cambridge 7 Associates; Donlyn Lyndon; Edward Larrabee Barnes; Haines, Lundberg & Waehler; Hugh Stubbins; J. Timothy Anderson; Paul Rudolf; Richard Meier; and The Architects Collaborative.

Green was also commissioned in the early 70s by the Philadelphia Museum of Art to document installations of their photography exhibitions, including exhibitions by Paul Strand, Minor White, and Jerry Uelsmann.

Green’s architectural photographs were published in many books and journals including 25 Years of Record Houses, Progressive Architecture, A Field Guide to Modern American Architecture, Architectural Record, Architecture and Urbanism (Japan), Baumeister (Germany), Bay State Architect, Better Homes and Gardens, House Beautiful, New England Architect, Record Houses of the Year.

Green's photographs were used as covers for issues of Progressive Architecture and Architectural Record.

When Green was at Harvard a classmate introduced him to Minor White who had recently been invited by MIT to start a new photography program.

While working for Ezra Stoller in Mamaroneck, Green began to submit articles for White’s Quarterly journal of photography, Aperture.

He taught with photographer Minor White at MIT from 1968–1976, becoming acting director of the MIT Creative Photography Laboratory and Gallery at White’s retirement; then Professor of Photography and Cinema and Founding Project Director Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, 1976–1990; followed by Professor of the History of Art and Photography, and director of the California Museum of Photography and executive director, UCR ARTSblock, University of California, Riverside, 1990–2015.

In 1968 White learned that he could add another teacher to the Creative Photo Laboratory, which was a division of MIT’s School of Architecture on the condition that the new instructor could teach architectural photography.

White invited Green to apply and in fall 1968 Green was hired at MIT.

White and Aperture managing editor and publisher Michael Hoffman encouraged Green to consider a larger project than the short articles he had previously submitted.

Selected Individual Exhibitions: 1972 Carl Siembab Gallery, Boston; 1976: Carl Siembab Gallery, Boston; Hayden Gallery, MIT, Cambridge; 1977: Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio.

A recognized authority on the history of American photography, Green’s books Camera Work: A Critical Anthology (1973) and American Photography: A Critical History 1945–1980 (1984) are two notable commentaries and frequently referenced and republished accounts in the field of photography.

At the same time Green’s acquisitions, exhibitions and publications consistently drew from the edges of established photographic practice rather than from its traditional center.

Camera Work: A Critical Anthology was awarded the Art Librarians Society of North America’s Publishing Award for Best Art Book of 1973. They called it, “A perfect book… based on quality of binding, typography and paper, excellence of bibliographical apparatus such as indices and bibliography, and the quality and placement of illustrations.” Hilton Kramer in the New York Times Book Review wrote, “The volume which Jonathan Green has now assembled is exemplary in every respect.

His introductory essay and his lengthy notes, together with his painstaking indexes and other editorial apparatus, are a model of what a book of this sort should be—a prefect guide not only to a crucial publication but to a career and a period.” And Peter Bunnell, in the Print Collector’s Newsletter wrote, “Green clarifies the vision behind the publication and the virtues and failings of the movement it documented.

His period breakdown of the magazine’s contents is insightful…The format is superb…With the publication of Green’s book, one major area of study in the field is in book form.”

Biographical Data on Jonathan Green as of 1978:

He supported acquisitions by socially activist artists like Adrian Piper and graffiti artist Furtura 2000, and hosted exhibitions on Rape, AIDS, new feminist art, and the work of photographer, choreographer and dancer Arnie Zane, the Diana camera images of Nancy Rexroth, the Polaroids and imitation biplanes of folk artist Leslie Payne, and the digital photographic work of Mexican photographer Pedro Meyer.

This alternative focus help prime Green and the competition jury to choose an unconventional, deconstructive architect, Peter Eisenman, previously known primarily as a teacher and theorist, as the architect for the Wexner Center for the Arts.

Green has held professorial and directorial positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, and University of California, Riverside.

Jonathan Green was born to Jewish parents in Troy, New York, where his father held his first rabbinical pulpit.

His father, Rabbi Alan.

S. Green was a prominent reform rabbi active in the reform leadership organization known for his contributions to the reform movement’s liturgy, and for his popularization of rabbinical thought in such books as Sex, God, and the Sabbath, The Mystery of Jewish Marriage.