| 1937 | North America • USA | The New Bauhaus is founded in Chicago by László Moholy-Nagy and in the 1950s it is merged into the Illinois Institute of Technology. The institution follows the spirit and curriculum of the Bauhaus in Germany that was closed down in 1933 due to political pressure as the Nazis gained dominance. It has an important place in photography with Gyorgy Kepes, Nathan Lerner, Arthur Siegal, Aaron Siskind and Harry Callaghan teaching there. |
| 1937 | North America • USA | First issue of Popular Photography published (May 1937) |
| 1937 | North America • USA | The retrospective exhibition Photography 1839-1937 opens in the spring at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and is the first comprehensive exhibition on the history of photography. The exhibition is organized by Beaumont Newhall and the catalogue Photography, 1839-1937 evolves into one of the standard histories of photography and greatly influences who has been included in the accepted history. |
| 1937 | North America • USA | Edward Weston receives the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship - the first awarded to a photographer. |
| 1937 | North America • USA
| As the USA is in the Great Depression of the 1930s the Farm Security Administration (FSA) is established by the Department of Agriculture. It employs many socially committed photographers to record the lives of everyday people. The archive they produce becomes one of the historical treasures of the USA. (September 1937)
Title | Lightbox | Checklist |
| 1937 | Europe • Great Britain | In the UK the Mass Observation project is founded to record the everyday lives of common people in minute detail. It does not produce the volume of photographs of the FSA in the USA but Humphrey Spender takes 900 photographs for his Worktown project.
Humphrey Spender's Humanist Landscapes: Photo-Documents, 1932-1942
Humphrey Spender (Photographer) |  |
| |
|
| 1937 | North America • USA
| The airship Hindenburg explodes at Lake Hurst, New Jersey with the loss of 36 lives. Black and white shots are by taken most of the press photographers present including a sequence of three in rapid succession by Murray Becker (Associated Press). 35mm color Kodachrome photographs are taken by Gerry Sheedy (New York Sunday Mirror). (6 May 1937) |
| 1938 | North America • USA
| Walker Evans publishes American Photographs.
Walker Evans: American Photographs
Lincoln Kirstein; & Walker Evans (Photographer) |  |
| |
|
| 1938 | Europe • Great Britain
| Stephan Lorant founds the photographically illustrated Picture Post in the UK. The first issue comes out on 1 October 1938 (1 October 1938) |
| 1939 | North America • USA | Retrospective of the documentary photography of Lewis Hine (1905 to 1938) at the Riverside Museum, N.Y. City (now the Nicholas Roerich Museum) organized by Elizabeth McCausland, Beaumont Newhall and Berenice Abbott with sponsors including Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Edward Steichen, Willard and Barbara Morgan. (January 1939) |
| 1939 | North America • USA
| Berenice Abbott publishes Changing New York.
|
| 1939 | North America • USA
| Dorothea Lange publishes An American Exodus with text by Paul Schuster Taylor (New York: Reynald Hitchcock, 1939). |
| 1941 | North America • USA
| Walker Evans and James Agee publish Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Three Tenant Families (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1941). |
| 1943 | North America • USA | Weegee (Arthur Fellig) takes his famous photograph The Critic outside the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Published in LIFE magazine on 6 December 1943 it pushes his career forward. |
| 1944 | Europe • France
| During the Allied invasion of Normandy (D-Day) Robert Capa photographs the landings at Omaha Beach. He exposes 106 frames of the heavily laden troops at they struggle past the steel landing craft obstructions before wading to an LCI (landing craft, infantry) to return to England with the first photographs of the invasion. All but eleven blurry images remain after the films are overheated when drying. (6 June 1944) [Read about] |
| 1945 | North America • USA
| Alexey Brodovitch publishes Ballet (New York: J.J. Augustin, 1945). |
| 1945 | North America • USA
| André Kertész publishes Day of Paris. |
| 1945 | Europe • Czechoslovakia
| Jindrich Styrsky and Jindrich Heisler publish Na jehlach techto dni [On the Needles of these Days]. |
| 1945 | North America • USA
| Weegee (Arthur Fellig) publishes Naked City.
Naked City (A Da Capo Paperback)
Weegee |  |
| |
|
| 1945 | Asia • Japan
| Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in Japan. The tail gunner of the Enola Gay, Sgt. George R. Caron, took a roll of film of the detonation. (6 August 1945) [Read about] |
LuminousLint 
@LuminousLint
