George Kufrin 

George Kufrin (American, b. 1926)

George Kufrin was born on Christmas day in Chicago. Growing up in the city’s infamous 22nd ward (home of murdered Mayor Anton Cermak) he began his career at the age of 14 working as a photo-journalist for the neighborhood’s West Side News. Two years later Kufrin had his first big success when the Chicago Herald American bought his photograph of a huge lumber yard fire, running it full page and putting it on the I.N.P. Hearst wire service. Other than serving as a Merchant seaman in WWII and two years as an Army photographer during the Korean war, Kufrin has spent his sixty plus year career traveling all over America photographing politicians, movie stars, titans of industry, musicians and artists; from Adlai Stevenson to Studs Terkel, Marshall Field, Alice Neel, Nat King Cole, Maria Tallchief, Burt Lancaster, Barry Goldwater, Lena Horne and John F. Kennedy, among many others. Kufrin’s photos have appeared in the New York Times, Fortune, Parade, New York, Finance, the Chicago Tribune Magazine, New York News magazine, Chicago, Downbeat, Science, Chicago Sun Times, and countless Fortune 500 annual reports. In 1981, Kufrin and his wife, writer Joan Kufrin, co-authored Uncommon Women published by New Century Publishers, Piscataway, NJ. His photographs illustrate the book.