Blogfinger

John Albok stayed in his neighborhood to photograph street life.    2023.

By Paul Goldfinger, MD,  Editor @Blogfinger.net

When I was working in Manhattan at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, that part of town, at around 100th St and 5th/Madison Avenue was still an old fashioned neighborhood.   I would walk up Madison Avenue to get there, and on the way I passed  diner style restaurants, a bakery, a flower shop, a newsstand and other similar mom and pop businesses.

One shop that always captured my attention was a tailor shop at 96th St. and Madison Ave.    I could see the tailor working in the back, but mostly my gaze went to his front window where he displayed, one at a time, a changing exhibit of black and white photographs shown mounted on a board and sitting on an easel.

These images were mostly about his neighborhood.   They had warmth, emotion, and beauty.  He signed his name “John Albok.”  His photographs had an effect on me and stimulated me to buy a Pentax Spotmatic camera and to begin my love of traditional photography.  Strangely enough, I never went into the shop to speak to him because I lacked the vocabulary then to say much more than how much I liked his work.   I wish I had.

Albok immigrated from Hungary. There he apprenticed as a tailor from age 13-18  and he began photographing there.   He served time in the Hungarian army.

John Albok emigrated in 1921 to America at age 26 and immediately opened his own tailor shop at that same location on the Upper East Side. He lived upstairs with his wife and daughter, and he photographed in that neighborhood for over 60 years beginning during the depression.

John Albok in his tailor shop. Photographer unknown.

He was mainly a street photographer and is best known for his  down-home scenes near his shop.  His work was noticed by important people in photography, and in 1938 he had a show at the Museum of the City of New York where his archives now live.  There was a book published about his work.  His papers are in the Guggenheim Museum collection.  And his images are also kept at the NY Historical Society

John Albok. (1894-1982) never gave up his tailor shop, but he did become known in the world of fine art photography.

John Albok c. 1930-1940.

For some reason, many famous early 20th century photographers were immigrants from Hungary including Pulitzer Prize war photographer Robert Capa. And also his brother Cornell Capa who founded the International Center for Photography in New York.  Others included André Kertesz, Laszlo Maholy-Nagy, Brassai and others from that same era. (late 1800’s into the 1900’s).    Robert Capa said that to be a talented photographer you had to be Hungarian.

The Royal Academy had an exhibit in 2011 of famous immigrant photographers from the early 20th century.  They said, “The show is a revelation from beginning to end. It presents nothing less than the dark and convulsive story of Hungary during the 20th century as experienced by its citizens, and viewed by its artists, who happen to include five of the world’s greatest photographers – Brassaï, Capa, Kertész, Moholy-Nagy and Munkácsi.

They said,   “Nobody could fail to be struck by that fact, in room after room of famous images that they were all Hungarians; that may even come as news. Each was Jewish and each changed his name at some stage, either at home or in exile.”

John Albok managed to be himself, to pursue his love of photography without any vanity; and yet he did achieve some measure of fame.

JOHN BARRY.  Theme from  the soundtrack of the film  “Somewhere in Time.”