Ericka Stone
Born in Germany in 1924, Erika Stone came to New York in 1936 at age 12. She joined the Photo League in 1940 and, by the age of 17, she created the Bowery series, one of her first bodies of work. While she considers herself self-taught, Stone studied with Berenice Abbott and George Tice at the New School for Social Research.
Erika Stone's documentary photographs reflect her long, active career as a photo journalist and magazine photographer. In the 40's, Stone was a member of the legendary Photo League, an organization of photo documentarians which she feels most influenced her approach to her personal photographic work. It was during the years as a League member that she developed her interest in documenting people and at the age of seventeen, produced her Bowery series.
Although she considers herself mostly self-taught, she studied at the New School of Social Research with Bereniece Abbott and George Tice.
Stone was a stringer for both Time and Der Spiegel magazines and worked as a general photojournalist until 1960. After the birth of her two sons, she made photographing children and family her specialty. Her photographs have been and are widely published in magazines and textbooks around the world.
Her own books include Pro Techniques of Photographing Children, HP Publishing 1986, Tot Shots, a four book series published by Modern Publishing Company 1987, three books in the Walden Publishing Company's Open Family series: On Divorce, Fears and Phobias, The Adopted One. Nicole Visits an Amish Farm, Walker Publishing and Learning for Little Kids, Houghton Mifflin, as well as The Whole Child by Putnam, were other of her titles.
Stone was one of twenty women photographers whose work was published in an anthology Women of Vision in 1982. Her pictures appeared in the US Camera Annuals 1952, 1954, 1955, and 1956. Her fine art and documentary work is in the collections of the Museum of the City of New York, The International Center of Photography, George Eastman House in Rochester, The Portland, Maine Fine Arts Museum, The New York Public Library, and The National Gallery of Ottawa, Canada.
She has had one-woman shows at the New York City's Tanglewood Gallery in 1979, and the Neikrug Photographica in 1982. She had shows at Princeton's Nassau Gallery in 1980, at Photographics Unlimited in 1983 and in 1985 an exhibition called Serendipity at the Howland Center of Cultural Exchange in Beacon, NY. She also exhibited under the title Children of the World at the New York's Overseas Press Club in 1986. More recent shows include The Streets and Beyond at the Museum of the City of New York, Women of the Photo League at the Light Factory, Charlotte, NC and three exhibitions in Germany in 2001 at The Centralistitut fuer Kunstgeschiche in Munich, The Augustiner Museum in Freiburg and the Potomuseum Burghausen. During May/June 2001, her work was exhibited at the Lee Gallery in Winchester, MA. Recent exhibitions were Especially the People , National Arts Club, N. Y. C. May 18 - June 2. 2004 and an exhibition at the Soho Photo Gallery, Guest Gallery, N.Y.C. October 5 - 30, 2004. Also Icebox Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota exhibition ESPECIALLY THE PEOPLE from May 14, 2006 through Aug. 2005. She was included in the exhibition WOMEN OF THE PHOTO LEAGUE at Higher Pictures Gallery, NYC in April 2009 Her work was also in an exhibtion FUNNY PICTURES at New York´s Zabriskie Gallery from July 6- Sept. 4, 2009. In addition, her photographs are in the exhibition PHOTOGRAPHY AND IMAGING which was shown at the Weill-Cornell Medical Library in New York City from July 20 - Sept. 25, 2009. From November 5 through November 21, 2009, Erika shares an exhibition, New York Vision 1940s-50s, with Fred Stein (deceased) at the Farmani Gallery in Dumbo, Brooklyn. She is also featured in a two page spread in the coffee table book 100 NEW YORK PHOTOGRAPHERS by Cynthia Dantzic and published by Schiffer Publishing Co. Participant in panel on THE PHOTO LEAGUE at AIPAD on March 21, 2010. Three of Erika's pictures of New York were published in the large coffee table book NEW YORK, PORTRAIT OF A CITY, published by Taschen in three languages. Stone also has two large exhibition posters included in the PAI exhibition, January 2011 at the National Arts Club in New York.
She has won many awards for her work. She was one of the prize winners in Life magazine's Contest for Young Photographers in 1951. Her work is with a number of galleries here and abroad. Postcards of a number of her images were published by Photo Chronicals, Inc. and Fotofolio. The monograph Mostly People was published in 2001. Her monograph Especially the People self-published in 2003, and a digital book was published by Gryphon Verlag, Germany Especially People/Einfach Menschen.
Retrieved from http://erikastone.com/biography.htm (Accessed Feb. 26, 2012)
