Barney Stein (1908-1993)

Barney Stein's photographic career began with the Brooklyn Times Union in 1929 and continued for over 50 years in which he developed into an award-winning photojournalist covering sports, celebrities, royalty and the major events of the day.
A chance meeting and subsequent photographic session with Dearie McKeeverMulvey (daughter of one of the Dodgers' owners) led to Barney's hiring as Official Brooklyn Dodgers Photographer in the Spring of 1937. Thus began a lifelong relationship with the family, the team and baseball. His photographs taken from the during the season and at Spring training, captured the joys, disappointments, heart-wrenching losses and jubilant victories of the unpredictable Brooklyn "Bums".
While he had an impish sense of humor and an uncanny ability to convince the great and famous to pose in dramatic and amusing ways, he was also a master of the "moment in time". One second before and one second after the action were not good enough for Barney. He was never one to hesitate and had an instinctive feeling for when to snap the shutter.
First prize in the New York Press Photographers' Sports Class and the prestigious Izzy Kaplan Memorial Trophy were awarded to Barney for his famous shot of Dodgers' pitcher Ralph Branca, sobbing on the clubhouse steps of the Polo Grounds in 1951. He had pitched that never-to-be-forgotten homerun ball to the New York Giants' outfielder Bobby Thomson in the ninth inning of the seventh and final game of the National League pennant playoffs.

Besides sports, Barney Stein photographed eight sitting presidents, crowned heads of Europe and celebrities from the world over.

Barney Stein is symbolic of the dedicated photographers whose work form important pictorial histories of their generations.

Bonnie (Stein) Crosby and Stephen Crosby
Wall text for 2001"The Object Show" exhibition for the American Society of Media Photographers