This page location is:
Home
QC Profiles
Alumni Profile
pages
default
Sign In
Quick Links
Academic Advising Center
Academic Support
Admissions
AV/Media Solutions Group
Bookstore
Bursar
Calendar
Campus Events and Commencement
Campus Map
Careers at QC
Center for Career Engagement and Internships
Center for Teaching and Learning
Centers and Institutes
Consumer Information for Students
Counseling
CUNYfirst at QC
Digital Video Services
Directions
Financial Aid / QC Hub
First Year Experience
General Counsel(Legal)
General Education
Global Education
Human Resources
Information Technology
Majors
New Students
News & Media
Office of Compliance and Diversity Programs
One Stop Service Center
Online Student Services
Parking on Campus
President
Programs (Academic)
Public Safety
QCard
QC Hub
QC Mobile
QC Shuttle
Rankings
Registrar / QC Hub
Schedule of Classes
Strategic Plan
Student Affairs
Study Abroad
Summer Session
Testing
Title IX
Transfer Honors
Venue Rentals
Winter Session
Writing at Queens
A
Accounting & Information Systems
Africana Studies
American Studies
Anthropology
Art
B
Biology
Business Administration
Business & Liberal Arts (BALA)
Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies
C
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Classical, Middle Eastern & Asian Languages & Cultures
Comparative Literature
Computer Science
D
Drama, Theatre & Dance
E
Earth & Environmental Sciences
Economics
Educational & Community Programs
Elementary & Early Childhood Education
English
European Languages & Literatures
F
Family, Nutrition & Exercise Sciences
Film Studies
H
Hispanic Languages & Literatures
Hispanic Languages & Literatures
History
Honors in Mathematical & Natural Sciences
Honors in the Humanities
Honors in the Social Sciences
I
Interdisciplinary Studies
Irish Studies
J
Jewish Studies
Journalism
L
Labor Studies
Latin American & Latino Studies
Library
Library & Information Studies
Linguistics & Communication Disorders
M
Mathematics
Media Studies
Music (Aaron Copland School of Music)
N
Neuroscience
P
Philosophy
Physics
Political Science
Psychology
R
Religious Studies
Risk Management
S
School Psychology
Secondary Education & Youth Services
Sociology
Special Education
U
Urban Studies
W
Women and Gender Studies
Adult Education
Adult Collegiate Education
Center for Academic and Communication Skills
Professional & Continuing Studies
Healthcare
Professional Tennis
Management(PTM)
Arts
Aaron Copland School of Music
Art Department
Center for Jewish Studies
Center for Preparatory Studies in Music
CUNY Arts
Drama, Theatre & Dance
English Department
Events Calendar
Godwin-Ternbach Museum
Kupferberg Center for the Arts
Louis Armstrong House Museum
Media Studies
Musical Theatre Summer Workshop
Queens College Art Center
Queens College Evening Readings
Login to ...
Blackboard
Bookstore
Budget Request System
CAMS - Get your QC Username
Course Evaluation
CUNYfirst
CUNY Portal
Email
Faculty/Staff - MyMail
Student - Office 365
ePAF
Help Desk
Interfolio
MyQC
Parking on Campus
Printshop
QC Navigate Staff
QC Navigate Student
Submit a Report Request
Time and Leave
HRAssist (full-time)
PRAssist (part-time)
Quick Links
|
Departments
Adult Education
|
Arts
|
Athletics
|
ESL
|
Libraries
|
Directory
Login to...
This Site: Alumni Profile
All Sites
People
QC Website
A-Z Index
QC at a Glance
Administration
Institutional
Research
Strategic Plan
Doing Business
with QC
Sustainability
Careers at QC
Undergraduate
Graduate
International
Scholarships
Financial Aid
Tuition / Bursar
Campus Tours
Why QC
Provost
General Education
Divisions
Support Programs
Certificates
Honors
Special Programs
Research
Global Education
Student Services
Clubs and
Organizations
Housing, The Summit
QC Neighborhood
Student Facilities
Study Abroad
New Students
College Preparatory
Programs
New York Deaf
Blind Collaborative
Summer in the City
Upward Bound
Women and Work
Ways to Give
Why Give
Your Gift's Impact
Alumni Info
Name:
Sonia Handelman Meyer
Major:
English
Graduation Year:
1941
Company:
Title:
Just being able to see with a camera opened up new worlds for me.
Sonia Handelman Meyer
Photo: Children, Harlem, © 2016 Sonia Handelman Meyer. See more of Sonia’s photography at
soniahandelmanmeyer.com.
Equipped with a second-hand, twin-lens Rolleicord, Sonia Handelman Meyer developed a keen eye for the candid as she photographed postwar New York’s 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 “such a happy surprise” 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.
“Just being able to see with a camera opened up new worlds for me,” recalls Meyer, who took up photography through New York’s Photo League, two years after graduating with 197 classmates in Queens College’s first class. “What 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—instinctively, intuitively, instantly.” In documenting scenes such as an anti-lynching rally or a Jehovah’s Witness convention, she framed the feelings about social justice that had been evident as well when she was a student at QC. “Interested in social issues,” the English major became active in the American Student Union.
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’s school and using its darkroom—“for 25 cents.” The League’s 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, “had to go out of business,” 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.
For decades Meyer’s 1940s negatives and prints remained packed away. “Every now and again, I’d take something out” to show to friends, she says. “I never had much confidence in showing my work to other people. It was always very personal.”
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’t 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 “Photographer Unknown.” Not quite: It was Meyer’s, taken without compensation to help folk-singing friends who later became famous. Together, mother and son began a journey to ensure that the “mission and history of the Photo League be remembered,” he notes.
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 “an absolute blockbuster,” Joe Meyer exclaims. In 2012 she went by herself to an opening of her work at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, where “They treated her like a rock star,” her son notes.
Book everyone should read:
Anything by Dr. Seuss
Favorite Music:
Mostly Mozart
Surprising Fact:
“I dance when no one is looking.”
Page Content
Past Profiles
Gail Marquis
Max Roll
Sharon and Frances Tran
Cory Tischbein
Steven Appel
Frances Rose
Matt Higgins
Andrea Shapiro Davis
Harold Rosenbaum
Nashwa El-Sayed
Jin-Xiang “JX” Yu
Natalie Harnett
Sonia Handelman Meyer
Charlotte Meyrowitz Shapiro
Olivier Noel
Steven Friedman
Naomi Ducat
Charles Swarns
Jason Sand
Roy Paul
Josephine Cooke
Lauren Comito
Constantia Constantinou
Student Profiles
Faculty Profiles
Staff Profiles
Click each division to view a complete list of its departments
Adult Collegiate Education
|
English Language Institute
|
Professional & Continuing Studies
Summer Session
|
Weekend College
|
Winter Session
Resources for Combating Sexual Harassment/Sexual Assault (Title IX)
Map/Directions
|
Emergency Preparedness
|
Working at QC
|
Student Consumer Info
|
A-Z Index
|
Queens College, CUNY | 65-30 Kissena Blvd. | Queens, NY 11367-1597 | Phone: (718) 997-5000 Copyright © 2004-
MyQC is the Queens College intranet site. A college username and password is required to login to the site.