soniahandelmanmeyer.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nEquipped with a second-hand, twin-lens Rolleicord, Sonia Handelman Meyer developed a keen eye for the candid as she photographed postwar New York\u2019s neighborhoods. A waif huddled in a Spanish Harlem doorway. A benchful of moms nestling their frilly-frocked offspring. Grade-schoolers hunkered at play in a Harlem dirt lot. Between 1945 and 1950 Meyer captured the history and humanity of daily life in the city. Now 96, she finds it \u201csuch a happy surprise\u201d that late in her life these b&w photographs are being recognized as art and are now part of the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many other museums.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust being able to see with a camera opened up new worlds for me,\u201d recalls Meyer, who took up photography through New York\u2019s Photo League, two years after graduating with 197 classmates in Queens College\u2019s first class. \u201cWhat I was thinking in my mind came alive when I walked through the streets. I saw a picture and it registered along with my thinking, my feeling\u2014instinctively, intuitively, instantly.\u201d In documenting scenes such as an anti-lynching rally or a Jehovah\u2019s Witness convention, she framed the feelings about social justice that had been evident as well when she was a student at QC. \u201cInterested in social issues,\u201d the English major became active in the American Student Union.<\/p>\n
Meyer first heard of the Photo League while with the U.S. Army Signal Corps in Puerto Rico following graduation. Returning to New York in 1943, she began taking classes in the League\u2019s school and using its darkroom\u2014\u201cfor 25 cents.\u201d The League\u2019s photographers advocated not only for their medium as fine art but also for enlisting it to bring about social change. In 1951 the League, a victim of McCarthyism, \u201chad to go out of business,\u201d Meyer laments. She then married, did medical and publicity photography, moved to New Jersey, was a crossword and college textbook editor, and raised two children.<\/p>\n
For decades Meyer\u2019s 1940s negatives and prints remained packed away. \u201cEvery now and again, I\u2019d take something out\u201d to show to friends, she says. \u201cI never had much confidence in showing my work to other people. It was always very personal.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2002 Meyer moved to an independent living facility in Charlotte, NC, nearer family. The story of how her photographs came to grace the walls of galleries and major museums doesn\u2019t really begin until she was 87. She and her son, architect Joe Meyer, in an independent bookstore saw an image of the Weavers, credited as \u201cPhotographer Unknown.\u201d Not quite: It was Meyer\u2019s, taken without compensation to help folk-singing friends who later became famous. Together, mother and son began a journey to ensure that the \u201cmission and history of the Photo League be remembered,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n
Since then, she has been traveling the country giving talks and attending exhibit openings of her work. Her 2007 exhibition at Hodges Taylor Gallery in Charlotte, Into the Light: Sonia Handelman Meyer: The Photo League Years, proved to be \u201can absolute blockbuster,\u201d Joe Meyer exclaims. In 2012 she went by herself to an opening of her work at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, where \u201cThey treated her like a rock star,\u201d her son notes.<\/p>\n
Book everyone should read:<\/strong> Anything by Dr. Seuss<\/p>\nFavorite Music:<\/strong> Mostly Mozart<\/p>\nSurprising Fact:<\/strong> \u201cI dance when no one is looking.\u201d<\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Name: Sonia Handelman MeyerMajor: EnglishGraduation Year: 1941 “Just being able to see with a camera opened up new worlds for me.”- Sonia Handelman Meyer Student Profiles Alumni Profiles Faculty Profiles Staff ProfilesPhoto: Children, Harlem, \u00a9 2016 Sonia Handelman Meyer. See more of Sonia\u2019s photography at soniahandelmanmeyer.com. Equipped with a second-hand, twin-lens Rolleicord, Sonia Handelman Meyer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"page_category":[],"wf_page_folders":[164,137],"class_list":["post-969","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1804,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/969\/revisions\/1804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"page_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/page_category?post=969"},{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}