The photographer Morris Engel was a New Yorker through and through. “He was just a city boy,” says his daughter, Mary Engel. “He didn’t drive. He never even went to California.” Born in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg in 1918, he grew up near the amusement park in Coney Island, then settled on the Upper West Side, where he lived for 50 years. His wife, the photographer Ruth Orkin, captured Central Park from their window.
Engel didn’t receive a formal college education, but at age 18 he met a distinguished group of artists who invited him to join the Photo League cooperative. “He graduated from high school in Brooklyn, which he was very proud of,” says Mary. “Then the league became his art school, so to speak.” Among its members were pioneers such as Aaron Siskind, Berenice Abbott, and Paul Strand.
