Born in New York to immigrant parents, Arthur Rothstein began to photograph in college at Columbia University, where he founded the university's camera club. Roy Stryker hired him as the first photographer on the staff of the Farm Security Administration, which included Dorothea Lange, Ben Shan and Russell Lee. Rothstein became famous for his images of the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. In 1940 he became a staff photographer for Look magazine, later becoming the director of photography there, until the magazine's closing in 1971.
