When she was in her 80s, Ida Wyman (1926-2019) shopped a proposal for her memoir, Girl Photographer: From the Bronx to Hollywood and Back. It was the story of her career as one of the few women photojournalists working for picture magazines like Life and Look. Unfortunately, at the time, the publishing industry failed to recognise Wyman’s extraordinary gift, pluck and verve.
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Though Wyman flew under the radar her entire life, it never got her down. She was driven to chart her own path from an early age, becoming the first “girl mailroom boy” at Acme Newspictures in the 1940s. After three years she realised she wanted to make features rather than report news, and in 1945 she sold her first photograph to Look. That same year she lost her job at Acme – they let her go to hire men returning home from the war.
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Still, Wyman persevered. She joined the New York Photo League, recognising a shared commitment to documentary photography. The Photo League’s progressive politics made them a target for McCarthyists; they were blacklisted in 1947 and forced to disband in 1951. But Wyman pressed on and made her way out to Hollywood to photograph movie sets on assignment for Life.
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