Ruth Orkin
b. 1921 — d. 1985
<p>Ruth Orkin, a leading photojournalist in the mid-20th century, was inventive and adventurous. At age 17, she left her native Hollywood for New York City, traveling cross-country by bicycle and hitchhiking to see the New York World’s Fair. Orkin funded her trip in part by selling her travelogue to newspapers; she also took photographs to illustrate the story, including several pictures <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/214267/chicago-skyline" target="_blank">made in and around Chicago</a>. </p><p>In the 1940s, Orkin photographed regularly for major US magazines, including <em>LIFE</em>, where she became a staff photographer. It was on assignment for <em>LIFE</em> in 1951 that she created her most famous photograph—an image of an equally independent young woman named Nina Lee Craig traveling by herself in Italy. Soon after, Orkin and her husband <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artists/111212/morris-engel" target="_blank">Morris Engel</a> co-directed <em>Little Fugitive </em>(1953), a film about yet one more free-spirited young person escaping to Coney Island, but just for a summer afternoon. Coney Island was often the subject of <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/214019/coney-island-crowd-scene-with-screaming-boy-nyc" target="_blank">Engel’s photographs</a>—and was also a favorite of the New York Photo League, a group of street photographers who concentrated on working-class subjects and urban daily life and with whom Orkin was close.</p>
