The Lost Photographs Of Isaac Bashevis Singer
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Editor’s Note
In the summer of 2016, the Brooklyn Historical Society’s exhibit “Truman Capote’s Brooklyn” brought new attention to the late photographer David Attie. Attie, who died in 1982, was perhaps best known for his portraits of such luminaries as Capote, Lorraine Hansberry, Leonard Bernstein, Bobby Fischer and Ralph Ellison.
Attie had been a commercial illustrator in the 1950s — working on advertisement and book cover designs — before he made the switch to photography.
Recently, Attie’s son Eli — a TV writer and former Washington speechwriter who wrote for “The West Wing” and worked for Al Gore — discovered a trove of unpublished photos of Isaac Bashevis Singer. The photos, which feature Singer on the Lower East Side and, in one case, in front of a Forward delivery truck, were taken in 1968 for Amerika (aka America Illustrated), a U.S. government publication distributed in the former Soviet Union. To our knowledge, most of these photographs have never been published before.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
