Background

Jack Delano was born on August 1, 1914 in Vorošýlivka, Ukraine to Jacob Ovcharov. He moved with his parents and younger brother, to the United States in 1923. The family arrived at New York on July 5, 1923 on the boat SS Homeric.

Education

Between 1924 and 1932 Jack Delano studied graphic arts/photography and music (viola and composition) at the Settlement Music School and solfeggio with a professor from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After being awarded an art scholarship for his talents, he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) where, from 1928 until 1932, he studied illustration and continued his musical training. While there, he was awarded the Cresson Traveling Scholarship, on which he chose to travel to Europe, where he bought a camera that got him interested in photography.

Career

After graduating from the PAFA, Jack Delano proposed a photographic project to the Federal Art Project: a study of mining conditions in the Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania anthracite coal area. He sent sample pictures to Roy Stryker and applied for a job at the Farm Security Administration Photography program FSA. Through the help of Edwin Rosskam and Marion Post Wolcott, Stryker offered Jack Delano a job at $2,300/year. As a condition of the job, he had to have his own car and driver's license, both of which he acquired before moving to Washington, D.C.

Before working at the FSA, Jack Delano had done his own processing and developing but did neither at the FSA. In 1943 FSA was eliminated as "budget waste" and subsumed into the Office of War Information (OWI).

He travelled to Puerto Rico in 1941 as a part of the FSA project. This trip had such a profound influence on him that he settled there permanently in 1946. Between 1943 and 1946 he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces.

With his wife Irene (a second cousin to fellow photographer Ben Shahn) Jack Delano worked in the Community Division of the Department of Public Education producing films, for many of which he composed the score. He also directed Los Peloteros, a Puerto Rican film about poor rural kids and their love for baseball. The film remains a classic in Puerto Rican cinema.

Jack Delano's musical compositions included works of every type: orchestral (many composed for the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra), ballets (composed for Ballet Infantil de Gilda Navarra and Ballets de San Juan), chamber, choral (including Pétalo de rosa, a commission for Coro de Niños de San Juan) and solo vocal. His vocal music often showcases Puerto Rican poetry, especially the words of friend and collaborator Tomás Blanco. Blanco, Jack Delano and his wife Irene collaborated on children's books.

In 1957, Jack Delano helped found Puerto Rico's first publicly funded educational television station, WIPR where he also acted as a station producer, composer, and program director.

Achievements

• Jack Delano received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 1979, a Guggenheim Photography Fellowship in 1946, a UNESCO Fellowship for Educational TV in 1961, and a Cresson Traveling Scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy of Art in 1937.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Puerto Rico Mio

    (Puerto Rico Mio is an extraordinary collection from two s...)

    1990
  • The Photographs of Jack Delano

    (The Library of Congress (Fields of Vision) )

    2011

• photography

  • One of Delano's most famous pictures of Chicago Union Station

    (One of Delano's most famous pictures of Chicago Union Sta...)

  • Chicago railyards

    1942

  • Malaria poster in small hotel, San Juan, Puerto Rico

    1941

  • Roundhouse wipers at lunch

    1943

  • At the bus station

    1940

  • Children in Utuado, Puerto Rico

    1942

  • Washing eggs to be sold at Tri-County Farmers Co-op Market at Du Bois, Pennsylvania

  • Employees leaving Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company, Providence, Rhode Island

    1940

  • photography

  • photography

Connections

Spouse:

Irene