Photographer Milton Rogovin dies at age 101

BUFFALO, New York (AP) - His first project was a documentary series on Buffalo's black churches...

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BUFFALO, New York (AP) — Milton Rogovin, a social documentary photographer who built a life’s work by looking through a lens at people who were invisible to others, has died in upstate New York. He was 101.

Mark Rogovin says his father died at home in Buffalo Tuesday morning.

Rogovin’s pictures documented the lives of the poor, the dispossessed, the working class — in particular those living in a six-square-block neighborhood in Buffalo near his optometry practice.

His first project was a documentary series on Buffalo’s black churches. Living on his wife’s schoolteacher salary, he traveled to Appalachia, Chile and Mexico to take portraits of working people — always using an old Rolleiflex, a bare bulb flash and occasionally a tripod.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.

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