Milton Rogovin was born December 30, 1909, in Brooklyn, New York City, of ethnic Jewish parents who emigrated to America from Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire.
[2] Distressed by the rampant and worsening poverty resulting from the Great Depression, Rogovin began attending night classes at the New York Workers School, a radical educational institution sponsored by the Communist Party USA.
Like many other Americans who embraced Communism as a model for improving the quality of life for the working class, he became a subject of the Committee's attentions in the postwar period: He was discredited—without having been convicted of any offense—as someone whose views henceforth had to be discounted as dangerous and irresponsible.
The incident inspired Rogovin to turn to photography as a means of expression; it was a way to continue to speak to the worth and dignity of people who make their livings under modest or difficult circumstances, often in physically taxing occupations that usually receive little attention.
His most acclaimed project, though, has been The Forgotten Ones, sequential portraits taken over three decades of over a hundred families who resided on Buffalo's impoverished Lower West Side.
Rogovin's Rolleiflex camera, his FBI files and other resources are held by the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY.