Plaza in the Snow

Born in Hollywood to a toy manufacturer and a silent-film actress, Ruth Orkin was a photographer and filmmaker. Her first major project was her documentation of a bicycle trip from Los Angeles to New York to the 1939 World’s Fair, when she was seventeen. Later a professional photojournalist, Orkin achieved renown in 1951 for her photograph An American Girl in Italy, from a series chronicling the experiences of women traveling alone. The following year, she and her husband, Morris Engel, produced Little Fugitive, a feature film that was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953. In the 1970s and 1980s, she took a series of photographs of Central Park from the window of her apartment; it was published in two acclaimed books, A World through My Window, and More Pictures from My Window.