Edwin Rosskam documented life in Provincetown, Massachusetts, from 1937 to 1940, a seaside resort at the tip of the Cape. Edwin arrived in the US in 1919 from Munich, Germany, where he was born to American parents. He studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts before becoming interested in photography and joining the Farm Security Administration.
The summer wasn’t all beaches and sun. He worked for Life and Look magazines in Puerto Rico in the late 1930s. As a photographer for the Standard Oil Company in the early 1940s, he captured images of refineries and river scenes. In 1941, he collaborated with novelist Richard Wright on 12 million Black Voices, a folk history of Blacks in America. In 1948, he published Towboat River with his wife, Louise, a book of pictures and text detailing life on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. In later years, he worked for the Government of Puerto Rico in a rural education program.
