SELECTIONS > OWI/FSA STANDARD OIL COLLECTION

Harold Corsini (1919 - 2008)
The son of northern Italian immigrants, Corsini developed a passion for photography as an adolescent. At Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan he and Jack Manning ran the student camera club. In 1937 Corsini joined the Photo League. He was also a member of the group that produced the Harlem Document, an extended photo-documentation of Harlem made by a group of ten photographers between 1936 and 1940, and was Arnold Eagle's teaching assistant at the National Youth Administration (1939–42). He worked briefly as a photographer for Life magazine and served as a war correspondent in the Pacific during World War II. From 1943 to 1950 he was one of many illustrious photographers who worked for Roy Stryker on Standard Oil's landmark documentary photography project. He then worked with Stryker directing the Pittsburgh Photographic Library. In the late 1970s Corsini taught photography and design at Carnegie Mellon University.