Ruth Orkin / Morris Engel

Ruth Orkin was an award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker. Orkin was the only child of Mary Ruby, a silent-film actress, and Samuel Orkin, a manufacturer of toy boats called Orkin Craft. She grew up in Hollywood in the heyday of the 1920s and 1930s. At the age of 10, she received her first camera, a 39 cent Univex. She began by photographing her friends and teachers at school. At 17 years old she took a monumental bicycle trip across the United States from Los Angeles to New York City to see the 1939 World’s Fair, and she photographed along the way.

Morris Engel was an American photographer, cinematographer, and filmmaker, perhaps best known for his early documentary photos. A member of The Photo League beginning in 1936, Engel would go on to work on the staff of PM, a tabloid daily newspaper, and serve as a photographer in the Navy during WWII under Edward Steichen.

Engel is known internationally as an innovator for his ground-breaking classic independent film “Little Fugitive” (1953) shot with a hand-held 35mm camera that he helped build. The film won a silver Lion at Venice, and Francois Truffaut said “Our New Wave would never have come into being, if it hadn’t been for the young American Morris Engel, who showed us the way with his production of “Little Fugitive”

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