Melvin Sokolsky

Melvin Sokolsky (U.S.A. 1938) was  born and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side during the lean years of the pre-war era.  He witnessed the entire spectrum of the human condition played out across a tough and tight-knit community, his experience was countered by a universe of visual riches found in the museums and books he regularly devoured. Melvin spent his days framing and logging precise mental and emotional images long before he had a camera to capture them. At twenty-one these efforts paid off when he was invited to join the photo staff of Harper’s Bazaar by Henry Wolf, the magazine’s visionary art director. Though he was learning on his feet, Sokolsky was rebellious by nature and would couple his street smarts with his deeply vivid imagination; Melvin Sokolsky is one of the great pioneers in the creation of visual imagery. Admired, awarded, and relentlessly copied, he remains steadfastly ahead of the curve and thoroughly ignited in his seventies. His legacy cemented, Sokolsky is left with a seemingly limitless well of creative energy.