It’s hard to have any conversation about Cincinnati’s past without someone bemoaning the impact of I-75 construction in the 1950s.
The West End neighborhood was torn asunder, much of its architecture destroyed and many of its residents uprooted. The urban fabric of the inner city was torn in half, and for what? Trucks and travelers, many of them participants in suburban sprawl, roar through the city day and night — when they’re not stuck in traffic.
When you think about this now, you ask, “Didn’t anybody see it coming? Didn’t anybody know what would be lost?”
As it turns out, someone did: the late George S. Rosenthal. And starting with a reception Wednesday and continuing through Dec. 21, you can see his photographs of the old West End in the FotoFocus Biennial-connected Documenting Cincinnati’s Neighborhoods show at Hebrew Union College’s Skirball Museum and Jacob Rader Marcus Center.
This show features two other photographers besides Rosenthal. One, the late Daniel Ransohoff, is a Cincinnati legend — a social worker who for decades documented the city’s disadvantaged as part of rallying the community to the their needs. The other, Ben Rosen, also deceased, had a long and productive career as a photographer for American Israelite and Catholic Telegraph.
The opening reception takes place 5:30-7 p.m. Wednesday at the museum (3101 Clifton Ave., Clifton). The show is up through Dec. 21. For more information, visit fotofocusbiennial.org.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2014.
