This exhibition of 21 vintage photographs drawn from the museum’s collection of works by Ruth Orkin (b. 1921, Boston; d. 1985, New York City), explores women’s lives in the mid-20th century. The daughter of a film star, Orkin took glamour shots of Hollywood celebrities and also brought her camera into classrooms, homes, parks, and urban neighborhoods to capture a rich perspective on women who were forging new paths in postwar America.

Orkin had a passion for capturing people as they were. Her photographs of tourists in Europe, Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps members, stars on Broadway, and a family in an Israeli kibbutz capture confident women in public and private spaces. The artist’s affirming images, often developed in collaboration with her subjects, reflect her purposeful inversion of the conventional “male gaze.”

As a young artist, Orkin had hoped to pursue filmmaking, but she was barred from becoming a member of the cinematographers’ union, which did not allow women to join. Although she eventually worked in filmmaking alongside her husband, Orkin applied her narrative vision to photography throughout her career. Whether documenting children at play, celebrities at work, or daily life around her home in New York, Ruth Orkin always found and shared the stories all around her.