A Child Whose Home Is an Alley Dwelling near the Capitol

Esther Bubley was one of the most prolific photographers of her time. She was also one of the first women, in the US, to support herself as a freelance magazine photographer. Influenced by the documentary images taken for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Bubley left the Midwest at nineteen in search of a career in the nation’s capital. Unable to land a photography job, she moved to New York, briefly worked for Vogue, and then returned to Washington in the spring of 1942 to microfilm records for the National Archives. That year she met Roy Stryker, former FSA director and head of the photographic unit of the Office of War Information (OWI), a government agency that documented the US’s mobilization during World War II. He hired Bubley as his darkroom assistant.

Stryker encouraged Bubley to go out and take photographs of her surroundings. Using a handheld Rolleiflex camera and a quick point-and-shoot style,[1] Bubley photographed the rhythms of city life. She unobtrusively framed the private moments of sensitive subjects. Her first project acknowledged the wartime housing shortage in Washington, and it led to her promotion to OWI field photographer.[2] Bubley photographed A Child Whose Home Is an Alley Dwelling near the Capitol for her “Around Washington” series. This image depicts a young boy from one of the overcrowded settlements constructed in the DC alleys for poor and working-class families. These alley dwellings survived into the 1940s.

Bubley’s ability to capture an honest portrait of her subjects brought her several magazine commissions. For Pageant’s serial story “A Matter of Love,” Bubley detailed the life of Jackie Solomon, also known as “Tommy,” an eight-year-old boy in therapy at the Pittsburgh Children’s Guidance Clinic. Bubley spent a week in Jackie’s home and accompanied his family on outings. Untitled (Two Boys on a Bench) was featured in the December 1951 issue with the caption: “One day Tommy [shown speaking] stepped out of his shell…. On a picnic with his group from the Clinic, Tommy protests when kids tease a newcomer … he identifies himself with the rejected stranger.”

The Phillips holds the second largest collection of Bubley’s photographs in the Washington area after the Library of Congress. These images showcase Bubley’s extraordinary storytelling and her eye for the poignant details of everyday life.

1. Later Bubley used a 35-millimeter camera, which attracted less attention and required less light. See Bonnie Yochelson, Esther Bubley: On Assignment (New York: Aperture Foundation, 2005), 14.

2. Bubley contributed more than two thousand images to the OWI file. See Melissa Fay Greene, The Photographs of Esther Bubley (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2010), 7.

Text by Renée Maurer, adapted from Seeing Differently: The Phillips Collects for a New Century (The Phillips Collection in association with Giles, 2021)