Brooks, Charlotte (1918—)
Brooks, Charlotte (1918—)
American photographer, specializing in documentation and photojournalism. Born in New York, New York, in 1918; Brooklyn College, New York, B.A., 1940; graduate work in psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1941.
Charlotte Brooks took a circuitous route to photography. In 1942, she was a social worker in a New York settlement house when she became interested in modern dance. Deciding to photograph instead of perform, Brooks assisted photographer Gjon Mili for a year before obtaining an apprenticeship with dance photographer Barbara Morgan around 1944. A stint as staff photographer for a chain of newspapers, and a 1,000-picture project for Standard Oil, followed. In 1951, Brooks became the first woman staff photographer for Look magazine, a position she held until the magazine folded in 1971. During her later career, she taught and freelanced, traveling to the Soviet Union in 1977. At the International Center of Photography in New York, Brooks participated in the group exhibition Roy Stryker: U.S.A. (1943–1950), which later toured. She also had a 1994 solo exhibition at New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, entitled A Poem of Portraits.