Naomi Rosenblum, Historian of Photography, Dies at 96
Her seminal works brought scholarship to the field and helped develop appreciation for it as a creative art form.
The historian Naomi Rosenblum in an undated photo. Her work helped bring scholarship and recognition to photography as a creative art form.Credit...Paul Strand/Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation
March 5, 2021
Naomi Rosenblum, who wrote about the history of photography and helped elevate it as an art form, died on Feb. 19 at her home in Long Island City, Queens. She was 96.
The cause was congestive heart failure, her family said.
Dr. Rosenblum was the author of seminal works that helped bring scholarship and recognition to photography as a creative art form after practitioners, notably Alfred Stieglitz, had revolutionized the field by defying the conventions of subject matter and composition — creating images in the rain and snow, for example, or of a pattern that the sea cut in the sand.