Born in 1921, Ruth Orkin grew up on set. Her mother, Mary Ruby Orkin, was an actress in silent films, and actors, directors, and journalists populated Orkin’s childhood in Hollywood. Ruth received her first camera—a 39-cent Univex—as a gift when she was 10. In 1939, at 17, she set off cross-country with her bicycle, camera in tow, to see the World’s Fair in New York City. The journey would take three weeks; on the way she hitchhiked some distances, cycled others, and was even featured in the pages of The Washington Post and the Evening Public Ledger.
Despite Orkin’s panache, upon her return to Los Angeles she found it difficult to break into photography. She began work as a messenger for MGM with the hope of becoming a cinematographer, only to learn that the union didn’t accept female members. A two-year stint in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps ended in 1943, at which point Orkin moved to New York City.
Orkin barely stayed afloat during her early days in wartime Manhattan. She did the occasional odd job at local nightclubs, then would traipse around photographing what she saw—swimmers at the pier, the dim glowing lights at Penn Station.
Her big break came in 1950, when John Godfrey Morris, the editor of Ladies’ Home Journal, sent out an open call for photographs of liberated postwar women. Orkin submitted a color photograph of a young lady at a fruit stand, clutching a bag of apples and a strawberry that matched her lipstick. “I had not only just photographed a beautiful girl who was not a model,” Orkin later mused, “but she was doing something that all his female readers could identify with.” The shot landed on the magazine’s cover.
As perceptions of gender evolved in America, Orkin captured modern women navigating the city—working, meeting with friends, cooking and cleaning with a baby under one arm. In 1950, she met Lauren Bacall at the St. Regis hotel and photographed her in the lobby with characteristic grace. Marlon Brando, Woody Allen, and Doris Day soon followed.
“If my photographs make the viewer feel what I did when I first took them,” Orkin once said, “then I’ve accomplished my purpose.” Her most well-known series, “American Girl in Italy,” shot in Florence and featuring the art student Ninalee Craig, won her much acclaim. Orkin died in 1985, after a quiet battle with cancer.
In this book, the images span Orkin’s entire career. What emerges is a woman of uncompromising style. —Elena Clavarino
Elena Clavarino is a Senior Editor at AIR MAIL