Dan Miller Photographs
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Creator
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General Physical Description note
Language of Materials
Abstract
24,544 35mm, 120mm, and 4x5 black and white negatives documenting the activities of New York City labor unions from between 1964 and 1997.
Historical/Biographical Note
Dan Miller's career as a New York union photographer has spanned more than four decades, and is distinguished, among other things, as being the longest career of any photographer in New York labor history. Since 1959, Dan Miller has photographed the activities of numerous labor unions. Every year since 1962, Miller has photographed the annual Labor Day parade in New York City. Dan Miller's company, Miller Photography, which he shares with his son Jack Miller, continues to photograph numerous New York City labor union events and is the sole photographer for the United Federation of Teachers.
Dan Miller was born on February 2, 1922, in the Bronx, New York City. He became interested in photography at age nine, obtaining his first camera (one that developed its photographs by exposing its film to the sun) from coupons in a cereal box. Later, he began using a box camera, which he took with him wherever he went, shooting photographs for himself. Almost entirely self-taught (his only formal instruction was a two-week photography course at the New York Institute of Photography that he took as a teenager), he began his career as a freelance photographer while still in high school, working for the Parkchester Press, a Bronx newspaper. After graduating from high school he also did freelance work for The Villager, another New York City newspaper. In 1940, he took a full-time civilian job photographing weapons parts at the United States Army's Raritan Arsenal, in New Jersey. He joined the Army during World War II, enlisting in September 1942, and was almost immediately assigned to the Signal Corps in the China-Burma-India theater, where he served for three years, attaining the rank of technical sergeant. In the Signal Corps he worked in a special unit, consisting of only 35 men (most were from Hollywood, California, where they worked in motion picture studios). Headquartered in New Delhi, but traveling throughout the area, the unit's work was intelligence-related; it worked closely with the CIA's forerunner agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), photographing captured documents and performing aerial photography of bomb targets. One of the unit's members was Lieutenant Arthur Rubenstein, in his civilian life head photographer for Lookmagazine, one of the premiere American illustrated publications. After the war, Rubenstein offered Miller a job at Look. Miller worked for Lookas a laboratory technician and occasional photographer from 1951 until 1959, when he bought a house and built a darkroom and began his own freelance photography business, Dan Miller Photographer (now Miller Photographers). Miller's first client was Local 342 of the Amalgamated Meatcutters Union. Through word of mouth his business grew to include a long list of other labor unions-both national and local unions--and labor organizations, such as the New York City Central Labor Council. Labor photographer Sam Reiss was Miller's colleague and main competition.
Miller also shot for advertising agencies, liquor companies, and hospitals, and photographed social activists and politicians, including Dr. Martin Luther King, jr.,President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller.
Not only was Miller a photographer of labor union activities, he was--almost certainly unique among freelance photographers for labor unions---a union member himself, first joining Local 966 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and later the Newspaper Guild.
Trade unionism and photography have held an important place not only in Miller's own life, but also in the life of his family. His daughter, Madeline, worked as a picture editor and photographer for Peoplemagazine for 26 years before retiring, and his two sons, Jack and Steve, joined Dan Miller as Miller Photography photographers. Jack Miller left Miller Photography to work for the Hotel and Restaurant Employees International Union. Steve Miller continues his career as a photographer, alongside his father. Their major clients are New York City-based trade unions, liquor companies, and hospitals.
Arrangement
Series are arranged alphabetically by client (that is, the name of the organization or individual that engaged the photographer to cover a particular event) and then chronologically within clients. The Unions series is further divided by district councils and then locals following their parent bodies. The Labor Organizations series encompasses umbrella labor bodies, as well as labor union-related or –founded organizations.
Organized into 2 series:
Missing Title
- I, Unions
- II, Labor Organizations.
Scope and Content Note
The collection consists of 24,544 35mm, 120mm, and 4x5 black and white negatives that span the years between 1964 and 1997 and capture New York City area organized labor at the near-peak of its influence during the mid-twentieth century and also during the era of decline in the 1980s and 1990s. Unions most heavily represented include the Amalgamated Meatcutters and Retail Food Store Employees-Local 342, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers-Local 3, Fur, Leather, and Machine Workers Union, Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union, and United Food and Commercial Workers.
Each series is comprised of "shoots." A shoot is a group of photographic images shot by the photographer of one event--usually, but not always, on the same day. Each shoot has a unique identifying number (selected individual images within shoots have also been assigned individual numbers). The container list for this finding aid includes a complete list of shoot-level descriptions for all the images in the Collection; note that shoot numbers are listed in the column for "item." Shoot descriptions include Miller's original captions, as well as clarifications, corrections, identifications, and additional visual details provided by the processing archivists. These additions are enclosed within square brackets, so that they may be distinguished from the original caption information. The total number of negatives in a given shoot is also indicated in brackets following each shoot description in the container list: [Total negs: #].
Selected shoots or portions of shoots have been microfilmed (R-7850) to provide reference access and must be viewed in this format; original negatives not microfilmed may also be viewed by researchers. To see a complete list of shoots from this collection that have been microfilmed, with reel and frame numbers, please contact Tamiment staff, special.collections@nyu.edu.
You can also click on the link within the shoot record itself in the container list below. Those shoots in which some (or occasionally all) negatives have been microfilmed are indicated in the Container List by: Microfilm. Researchers wishing to know if a complete shoot has been microfilmed can compare the number of images in a given shoot with the number of images from that shoot they find microfilmed.
The number of organizations and clients included in the Collection is so numerous that the following table of contents has been compiled, to provide a convenient overview (in contrast to the detailed, shoot-level descriptions in the Container List) of Collection contents:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SERIES: UNIONS
American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)
AFSCME, District 37 ; date: 1973 ; # of negs: 221
AFSCME, Local 375 ; date: 1989 ; # of negs: 277
AFSCME, Local 444 ; date: 1975 - 1988 ; # of negs: 162
AFSCME, Local 879 ; date: 1985 ; # of negs: 99
Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union ; date: 1992 ; # of negs: 61
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America ; date: 1980 ; # of negs: 75
Amalgamated Meatcutters and Retail Food Store Employees ; date: 1967 - 1989 ; # of negs: 947
Amalgamated Meatcutters and Retail Food Store Employees, Local 342 ; date: 1964 - 1969 ; # of negs: 6912
Amalgamated Meatcutters and Retail Food Store Employees, Local 888 ; date: 1971 ; # of negs: 8
American Federation of Musicians ; date: 1989 ; # of negs: 86
American Federation of Musicians, Local 132 ; date: 1977 ; # of negs: 92
American Federation of Musicians, Local 802 ; date: 1980 ; # of negs: 23
American Federation of Teachers ; date: 1974 - 1984 ; # of negs: 187
American Postal Union ; date: 1989 ; # of negs: 80
Bakery, Confectionery and Tobacco Workers International Union, Local 50 ; date: 1970 - 1975 ; # of negs: 375
Building Service Employees International Union, Local 307 ; date: 1970 - 1972 ; # of negs: 43
Carpenters & Joiners of America, Local 45 ; date: 1974 ; # of negs: 138
Civil Service Employees Union ; date: 1996 ; # of negs: 210
Communications Workers of America, Local 6 ; date: 1995 ; # of negs: 1421
Federation of Catholic Teachers ; date: 1980 - 1983 ; # of negs: 26
Fur, Leather, and Machine Workers Union ; date: 1964 - 1975 ; # of negs: 2724
Fur, Leather, and Machine Workers Union, Local 27 ; date: 1969 ; # of negs: 20
Glaziers, Local 1087 ; date: 1968 - 1969 ; # of negs: 42
Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union - Cafeteria Employees, Local 15 ; date: 1964 - 1967 ; # of negs: 916
Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union - Cafeteria Employees, Local 302 ; date: 1964 - 1974 ; # of negs: 477
International Airline Pilots Association ; date: 1989 ; # of negs: 189
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 220 ; date: 1969 - 1974 ; # of negs: 189
International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers, Local 12 ; date: 1994 ; # of negs: 122
International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Local 627 ; date: 1967 - 1980 ; # of negs: 321
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 3 ; date: 1973 - 1983 ; # of negs: 4959
International Ladies' Garment Workers Union ; date: 1975 ; # of negs: 9
International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, Local 32 ; date: 1970s ; # of negs: 3
International Machinists Union ; date: 1997 ; # of negs: 111
International Printing and Graphic Communications Union, Local 51 ; date: 1971 - 1989 ; # of negs: 736
Textile Workers Union of America ; date: 1968 - 1973 ; # of negs: 6
United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 342 ; date: 1967 - 1970 ; # of negs: 2136
SERIES: LABOR ORGANIZATIONS
Building and Construction Trades Council ; date: 1970 - 1988
Subjects
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Donors
Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Any rights (including copyright and related rights to publicity and privacy) held by Dan Miller were transferred to New York University in 1996 by Dan Miller. Permission to publish or reproduce materials in this collection must be secured from repository. Please contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu.
Preferred Citation
Published citations should take the following form:
Identification of item, date; Collection name; Collection number; box number; folder number;
Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012, New York University Libraries.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Dan Miller sent a gift of circa 194,000 black and white photographic negatives, mostly 35 mm, from between 1960-1989 in 1996; additional materials were donated in 2007. In 2009, Dan Miller sent a gift of a compact disc containing photographs shot at the 2008 Commerford Awards. The accession numbers associated with this gift are 1997.028, NPA.1996.004, NPA.2005.040, NPA.2009.005, and 2018.006.
Audiovisual Access Policies and Procedures
Audiovisual materials have not been preserved and may not be available to researchers. Materials not yet digitized will need to have access copies made before they can be used. To request an access copy, or if you are unsure if an item has been digitized, please contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. A staff member will respond to you with further information.
