Background
Irene Shwachman was born on July 30, 1915, in New York, United States. She was the first of four daughters of clothing manufacturer Oscar Quinto and Eva Rosenberg Quinto.
2009
The Calhoun School is a progressive, co-educational, independent school on New York City's Upper West Side. Founded in 1896.
Irene Shwachman was born on July 30, 1915, in New York, United States. She was the first of four daughters of clothing manufacturer Oscar Quinto and Eva Rosenberg Quinto.
Irene Shwachman, who grew up in Manhattan, graduated in 1932 from the Calhoun School, an independent, coeducational, college preparatory school located in New York City's Upper West Side. She also attended New College, Columbia University for three years studying theatrical production and education. Upon leaving New College, Shwachman worked at B. Altman and Company, a New York City-based department store while pursuing theater work.
Irene Shwachman first picked up a camera in 1927, when, at age 12, she borrowed her father’s Kodak No. 3A Autographic Folding Camera and entered an Eastman Kodak photo contest.
In 1937 Irene Shwachman married Arnold Dreyfuss and, that same year, she began photographing again, this time using a twin-lens reflex Voiglander camera. In 1938-1939 she spent time in Puerto Rico and Tucson, Arizona, before attending secretarial school in southern California in 1940 where she lived until she moved back to New York City after Arnold Dreyfuss died of rheumatic heart disease in 1942.
In 1944 Irene Shwachman met and married Harry Shwachman, M.D., a Boston physician with whom she would eventually have three children. In 1945, the same year their daughter Elizabeth was born, the family moved to Puerto Rico where Irene Shwachman began photographing using 35mm color film. By 1946 the Shwachmans had settled in Massachusetts where Harry Shwachman was director of the Children’s Hospital’s clinical laboratories in Boston.
In May 1951, two of her photos were included in a Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibit Abstraction in Photography. From the time of the MoMA exhibit until 1968 Irene Shwachman worked as a freelance photographer while taking photography courses, teaching photography courses, and working for the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
In the 1980s, Irene Shwachman was an honorary curator of photographs at Brockton Art Museum, Massachusetts. She taught photography from 1966 to 1979 at the School of the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. Irene Shwachman was a consultant in photography for the Wellesley (Massachusetts) Public Schools (1966-1968) and for Carl Siembab Gallery in Boston (1959-1961).
Irene Schwachman continued to photograph and teach photography until her death in 1988.
In 1937 Irene Shwachman married Arnold Dreyfuss. He died of rheumatic heart disease in 1942. In 1944 she met and married Harry Shwachman, M.D., a Boston physician with whom she would eventually have three children.
(b. 1945)
In 1959 Irene Shwachman met Berenice Abbott eventually working for Abbott for eight years.