User:Dorevabelfiore/sandbox/Philip Taylor (photographer)

Philip Taylor (1926 - October 29, 2021 ) was an American documentary photographer and lithographer known for his work documenting the daily lives of people in Philadelphia neighborhoods from the 1950's to the 1990's. Much of his work focused on the homeless community around Philadelphia's Skid Row. He also documented aspects of the Philadelphia Jewish community, of which he was a member.

Early life
As the son of first-generation Ukrainian immigrants Herman and Gussie Taylor, Taylor grew up in a large and vibrant Jewish community in South Philadelphia during the 1920's and 30's. Later in his life, he would recount the history of this community in interviews for the 1988 documentary film Echoes of a Ghost Minyan.

In 1943, after his father's unexpected death, his mother was left to care for him and his brother Jerome. Taylor dropped out of high school and began working in the mailroom of the United States Navy Department in Center City, Philadelphia. In 1944 he was drafted into the United States Army, and although he was denied from active service for medical reasons, Taylor served at multiple stateside army bases. While serving as a military police officer in Texas, he guarded members of Hitler's Afrika Korps that were imprisoned at Camp Hearne.

Career


After the war, Taylor attended college with the assistance of the GI Bill and became a lithographer for Mid-City Press, one of the largest commercial printers in Philadelphia. He was a master lithographic cameraman and member of Local 14L of the Amalgamated Lithographers of America. For years, he taught lithography at the Philadelphia Lithographic Institute, now known as the Andrew J. Gress Graphic Arts Institute. He invented two devices related to lithographic printing, and held two United States Government patents for medical and lithographic equipment.

Taylor taught himself black and white photography and roamed the neighborhoods of South Philadelphia for familiar subjects. He used a Rolleiflex 3.5F TLR camera and a Leica 35mm camera to document his environment, and developed his own black and white negatives and prints.

Speaking about his craft in 2016, the artist explained:"The camera was the way I perceived the world, so I was able to capture it, lock it in. It's as if you could steal a piece of time and freeze it."In the mid-1950's, he documented in photographs the construction of the Walt Whitman Bridge. As part of that project, he focused on the daily lives of people living along Stonehouse Lane, a primitive marshland community next to the bridge construction, in an area known locally as "The Neck", which dated from the Revolutionary War and lacked sanitation and running water.

Also in the 1950's, the Friends Neighborhood Guild, a Quaker settlement house and social service agency, contracted Taylor to document tuberculosis among the members of a homeless community living on the streets of the Skid Row and Tenderloin neighborhoods adjacent to Philadelphia's Chinatown. Due to the anti-Communist sentiment and artistic sensibilities of the era, Taylor could not find a mainstream publisher for these photos, and received rejections from various periodicals, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, Collier's Magazine, and the Saturday Evening Post. Taylor continued to focus upon the homeless as a frequent subject of his photography, from 1950 to 1990 and beyond. Reflecting on homelessness and the transformation of his city, the photographer stated that after growing up during the Great Depression, "I was always saddened when I saw hardship around me." and that many of his photographs share a theme of alienation.

Taylor documented his travels in multiple foreign countries such as the Canary Islands and Israel, but most notably to Cuba before and after the Cuban Revolution. Closer to his Philadelphia home, he also focused on the Jersey Shore, specifically Atlantic City, in the period prior to casino development.

Throughout is career, another frequent subject of his photographs was his long-time romantic partner Arlene Treegoob, until her death in 2008.

In 2016, Taylor donated his archive of over 1200 photographs and personal papers to Temple University Libraries' Special Collections Research Center.

Exhibitions

 * 2016: Hand-Made Mirrors - The Photography of Philip Taylor (Temple University Library, Philadelphia)
 * 2022: Gravy Studio 10-Year Anniversary Show (Unique Photo Philadelphia)

Patents
In 1959, Philip Taylor and Elwood Bowers filed a patent for a halftone visual film scanner (inspection device) that would allow lithographers to inspect the developed film without causing streaking or mottling, which frequently occurred as a result of the developing liquid (usually paraformaldehyde) flowing over the film from the heat of one's hands. By allowing the film to be inspected using a negative tray illuminated with a special light and magnifier, the film could safely be reviewed in detail without fear of damage. This patent was approved in 1962.

In 1969, Taylor filed his second patent for an intravenous therapy bottle with a sterile expandable receptacle which that inflate as liquid was dispensed by the bottle via gravity, thus preventing the contact of liquid with the outside atmosphere, helping to prohibit contamination. This patent was approved in 1971.