Born in 1901 in Vienna and emigrating early in life to America, Sam Falk was a self-taught photographer who at 16 years old sold his first photo of lightning taken with a simple box camera, to the New York Morning World for $10.
[2] In the 1940s he pioneered the use of 35-mm photography at the Times finding the usual press camera cumbersome, like the Anniversary Speed Graphic with 5-inch Graflex Optar f4.7 telephoto that he used to record a stumbling steeplechase horse throwing its rider at the Far Hills Races, N.J.[3] He had to purchase his own 35mm camera, such was the prejudice against them at the newspaper, though editor Lester Markel liked his 'miniature' format pictures and often gave him 35mm assignments.
[4] Falk toured with President Calvin Coolidge and covered the Lindbergh kidnapping trial, but after being switched from straight news in 1951, much of his photography for the Times was for features on well-known personalities, amongst whom were Edward Albee; Bernard Baruch: Albert Einstein; Dag Hammarskjöld; Julie Harris; Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia of New York City; John D. Rockefeller; Eleanor Roosevelt: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr.; Arthur Rubenstein; Beverly Sills; Arturo Toscanini; the United Nations General Assembly; and Andy Warhol.
These images were the subject of a rephotography exercise carried out 68 years later, in digital colour, over April 1–3, 2019 by Tony Cenicola, a Times staff photographer, and paired with Falk's originals for an installment of the newspaper's 'Past Tense', an archival storytelling project.
[13] Falk's photograph of striking longshoremen was selected by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art's world-touring exhibition The Family of Man that was seen by 9 million visitors.