Halley Erskine Photography

Vintage Silver Gelatin print. (possibly from Vogue Magazine). This appears to be Wolfgang Roth and cast of possibly The Littlest Circus. Performers have horse heads. The photo is stamped on the back Halley Erskine of New York City. Halley Erskine, Vogue photographer. The New York Times announced Halley’s marriage to Graham Erskine of Wilton, Connecticut October 18, 1940 at the bridegroom’s home at 212 East 48th Street in New York. Divorced six years later, Halley seemed to finally come into her own. She had started her career “pre-Graham” as a fashion editor for Vogue and Glamour magazines, often working on photo shoot sites with literary personalities, dancers, artists and actors. The writing and editing morphed into a love of photography which led to doing work for the Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and House & Garden. Impulsive and fearless, Halley was also known to do anything to capture the shot. Halley did some teaching at The Famous Photographer’s School. Halley was intensely curious, always learning and had a penchant for high technology gadgets. Halley Erskine worked with the sculptor Seymour Lipton, Lee Krasner, Charles Ives, Horst, Diane Arbus and John Steinbeck/ art director at Vogue magazine she shot for Time and Life and Frank Lloyd Wright. Wolfgang Roth fled Nazi Germany in 1933, arriving in New York by 1938. He apprenticed with Bertolt Brecht and Edwin Piscator in the underground Theatre and Opera of Pre War Nazi germany and studied at the Academy of Art in Berlin under Cesar Klein, a Member of the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists where he befriended George Grosz who also ended up emigrating to the USA. Roth worked with Lazlo Moholy-Nagy in bringing to life his theater designs. He was an Instructor of Design at New York University (NYU) School of the Arts for many years A great Mid-century Modern screenprint...