Judith Michelman Gefter was a photographer, experiments in non-image color and storytelling as well as illustrative abstractions.
Background
Judith Michelman Gefter was born on April 4, 1922 in Gloversville, New York, United States, the first-generation daughter of Lena Alperin and Harry Michelman, who emigrated to the United States from Lithuania in 1920. Her father, an engineer, was involved in the construction of the Empire State Building.
Education
Judith Gefter earned a certificate from the Art School at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, in 1943. Since 1953 she has attended courses at the New York University School of Education, University of Florida, University of Miami, and the Wilson Hicks Conferences on the Communication Arts.
Career
A freelance photographer since 1958, Judith Gefter was a studio photographer from 1948 to 1958. She was an artist/illustrator at the Office of War Information, Film Strip Division, in New York from 1943 to 1945, working with the Farm Security Administration files and with those of Edward Steichen from World War II.
In the 1960s and ’70s, Judith Gefter worked on contract for a variety of national weekly magazines, most notably Time and Life. Her assignments varied from covering the Democratic and Republican national conventions to photographing heads of state, from Jimmy Carter to Anwar Sadat to Menachim Begin. She photographed artists, actors and performers over the years, leaving a treasure of iconic black-and-white portraits.
Judith Gefter also worked commercially, shooting photos for corporate annual reports throughout the United States. She was a proud member of the American Society of Media Photographers and listed in "Who’s Who of American Women Artists" for more than 50 years.
As an artist, Judith Gefter was always experimenting with different mediums and techniques: she perfected the photographic image in the darkroom; she attended Pendland School of Crafts in North Carolina in the 1980s to become a wood sculptor, eventually receiving a Florida state commission to create a public sculpture for a park in Jacksonville; she began exploring computer imagery in the early ’90s, working in Photoshop long before it became an industry standard. She leaves a legacy of photographs, as well as sculpture and furniture that she built as a wood worker.
In 2006, Judith Gefter moved to Davis and lived at the University Retirement Community, a diverse and welcoming environment where she made many friends. She transformed her photographs of her many trips to Paris and Venice into digital collages that were exhibited in New York and Florida. Her achievements as an artist and photographer inspired several young women artists over the years.
Judith Michelman Gefter, an artist and accomplished photojournalist, died Nov. 20, 2011, surrounded by family at the University Retirement Community in Davis. She was 89.
Membership
American Society of Media Photographers
1958
Connections
In 1941, New York, New York, United States married Robert "Bob" Gefter in New York City. They were married almost 60 years until his death in 2000. They settled in Jacksonville, Fla., where they raised three children, who survive her: Susan, an attorney, of Davis; Jeffrey and his wife, Monique, both physicians, of Chattanooga, Tenn.; and Philip, a writer, and his husband Richard, a filmmaker, of New York City.
Her sister, Miriam Bernstein, of New York City, also survives her, as well as four grandchildren, their spouses, three great-grandchildren, her niece and nephews and their families, and many cousins. Judith’s beloved brother, Samuel Michelman of New York, died in 1995.