DM VETERAN RALPH Ginzburg was never one to shoot blanks. He took on the U.S. government in the Supreme Court case Ginzburg vs. United States after his magazine, Eros, was banned as obscene. And he went to jail for his beliefs.
He’s still standing tall against censorship. Ginzburg has published a book of photographs, “I Shot New York”-a chronicle of 365 days in the life of New York in 1995-that captures “a higher degree of truthfulness…than the daily newspaper reader sees in the daily pictures,” says Ginzburg.
For example, he snapped the first patient on the opening day of the first high school maternity clinic, her belly being measured by a health worker, beneath a poster promoting condoms. The opening “was announced to everyone. It was news. I was the only one there. The New York Post bought that picture from me. They never used it,” Ginzburg recalls.
He speaks from experience. His first job was as a copy boy at a now-defunct New York daily, but he switched to advertising. A career publishing magazines-Avant-Garde and Moneysworth followed Eros in the ’60s and ’70s-and peddling mailing lists was followed by a four-year stint as a news photographer for the Post.
Ginzburg’s wife Shoshana, a novelist, wrote the captions for the book, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York.
Is there a direct marketing legacy here?
Sure, Ginzburg chuckles, “I’d like to thank direct marketers for using the mailing lists of my publications, which provided me with the capital to support this project.”-KO
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