An elegant Harlem audience listening to a performance by W.C. Handy at an art gallery in 1936. Photo by Lucien Aigner.
Worshippers leave St. Philip’s Church in Harlem in 1936. Photo by Lucien Aigner.
Newark Eagles baseball team in 1936. Photo by Lucien Aigner.
Chorus girls from “Swingin’ the Dream,” a swing version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 1939. Photo by Lucien Aigner.
Reporters for the New York Amsterdam News at work in the newsroom, 1936. Photo by Lucien Aigner.
An elegant Harlem audience listening to a performance by W.C. Handy at an art gallery in 1936. Photo by Lucien Aigner.
Chorus girls at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, photographed in 1936 by Lucien Aigner. Aigner, who photographed everyone from Hitler and Mussolini to Gandhi and Haile Selassie, was originally from Hungary. He emigrated to the United States to avoid Nazi persecution. Technically an “enemy alien,” he was prohibited from photographing war-related subjects. He noted that he “photographed black people when it was not good manners.” He was also the brother of designer Etienne Aigner.
