Raymond Jacobs

Raymond Jacobs (April 26, 1923 – March 17, 1993) was an American photographer, filmmaker, and businessman.

Jacobs is known for his 1950's and 1960's reportage photographs of New York City street scenes and for his portraits of celebrities and other notable personalities. He also had a successful career as a freelance commercial photographer. In the 1970s, he and his wife Eleanor popularized Earth Shoes, a countercultural symbol of the decade, through their Earth Shoe company.

Jacobs began working as a mink-cutter at his father's fur business in Manhattan's Garment District at the age of 12. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. He photographed the 1939 New York World's Fair with a Brownie box camera for the student newspaper.

Jacobs enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in the Signal Corps in Europe during World War II.

Photographer

With an interest in photography since high school, Jacobs applied to a photography class conducted by Lisette Model at The New School. Model reviewed his black-and-white portfolio and asked his profession. He replied, "I am a furrier." She told him, "You are not. You are a photographer." After studying with Model, Jacobs joined a class taught by Sid Grossman in 1953. In 1960, he studied carbon print color processing with Sy Kattelson and installed color lab equipment into his own darkroom.

At the age of 30, Jacobs began a career as a freelance commercial photographer. Through his work with advertising agencies, he photographed campaigns for Campbell's Soup, Tareyton Cigarettes, IBM, Pan Am, Johnson & Johnson, and others. His editorial photographs were published in magazines including Fortune, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, McCall's, and Eros. Jacobs received more than 50 Art Directors' awards for his advertising work.

Jacobs was one of ten photographers featured in Style in Photography in Photography Annual 1963, edited by Bruce Downes. According to Deschin, "Jacobs' portfolio of posterlike effects in manipulated images of unrealistic color provides an excitingly novel example of a successful stylistic device."

Jacobs is most well known for his 1950's and 1960's reportage photographs of New York City street scenes and for his portraits of notable subjects including Louis Armstrong, Gloria Swanson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Salvador Dali, Eartha Kitt, Robert F. Kennedy, Sammy Davis Jr., and Billie Holiday. Jacobs' photographs are in the permanent collection of New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and were included in the iconic Edward Steichen curated MoMA photography exhibitions The Family of Man (January 24 – May 8, 1955) and 70 Photographers Look at New York (November 27, 1957 – April 15, 1958).

Jacobs first one-man photography exhibition was held in 1955 at Roy DeCarava's A Photographer's Gallery in the Upper West Side of New York City. According to New York Times photography critic Jacob Deschin, the exhibition primarily focused on "close-up characterizations of people in varied situations of ordinary living" but Jacobs also added "a new element, represented in a group of vacation landscapes and seascapes that reveal a fresh, unsuspected side to this photographer's talents."

Jacobs had solo and retrospective exhibitions at the Limelight Gallery (1961, Greenwich Village), Walker Art Center (1963, Minneapolis), Washington Irving Gallery (1978, New York City), Oliver Wolcott Library (1990, Litchfield, Connecticut), National Arts Club (1990, New York City), Hotchkiss School Tremaine Art Gallery (2006, Lakeville, Connecticut),and the Litchfield Historical Society (2016, Litchfield, Connecticut). Jacobs' work was also included in the 2007 exhibition, "Lisette Model and Her Successors," at the Aperture Gallery in New York City.

In 2006, Pointed Leaf Press published My New York, a monograph of Jacobs' New York City street photographs.

One of Jacobs' photographs is currently on view in the exhibition "Women on View: Aesthetics of Desire in Advertising" at Galerie 36 in Berlin.

Filmmaking

In the 1960s, Jacobs branched into filmmaking. He co-wrote and co-produced Aroused (1966), directed by Anton Holden. Jacobs directed, co-wrote, and co-produced his second film, The Minx (1969), which starred Jan Sterling and featured an original soundtrack by The Cyrkle.

Both films were financially successful, but he left the business to concentrate on Earth Shoes.

Earth Shoes

In 1970, Jacobs and his wife Eleanor founded the Earth Shoe company to sell a negative heel shoe (the heel was lower than the toe) designed by Anna Kalsø they had discovered while traveling in Copenhagen, Denmark the previous year. Officially opening on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day, the Jacobs' dubbed the footwear Earth Shoes. The shoes quickly became a popular countercultural symbol of the 1970s. The company expanded to 123 stores to sell the shoes, boots, and sandals, all with the negative heel design, across the United States, Canada, and Europe. By 1976 sales had grown to $14 million, but the company dissolved in 1977.

Later life

After the Earth Shoe company closed, Jacobs relocated with his family to Litchfield, Connecticut and taught photography at Litchfield's Forman School.

Jacobs died on March 17, 1993 in Torrington, Connecticut.

Jacobs married his wife Eleanor ("Ellie") in 1955. They had two daughters, Susan and Laura.