PRESSED: IMAGES FROM THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD

For more than 120 years, the Forward  has given an eager American Jewish audience a unique mix of news, culture and opinion. Published on the Lower East Side beginning in 1897, this Yiddish-language newspaper had a circulation of more than 275,000 in its heyday. The publication had a decidedly progressive bent, extolling the virtues of labor strikes and fights for equal rights of new immigrants. Photos were especially popular; the Forward sourced images from their readers’ daily lives, printing photos of leading intellectuals alongside everyday Jewish families around the globe.

Today, the Forward is a digital-only publication appearing in both English and Yiddish.  Its archives are vast, tracing the history of the printed publication and the stories it covered. Pressed: Images from the Jewish Daily Forward dives into this archive, presenting a selection of metal plates that were used to print photos in the paper. 

In many cases, the photos from which these plates were made no longer exist, making them the only remaining artifact of their historic images. The plates are accompanied by contemporary prints made on traditional equipment at the South Street Seaport Museum’s Bowne & Co. Stationers, which have rendered the images with more clarity than they ever appeared in the newspaper. For some, the pages of the Forward on which the images once appeared are also displayed.

Together these pictures of strikes and activists, Yiddish theater stars and baseball players, daily life and historic moments, present the history of this singular publication, its audience and Jewish life in America and around the world.

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Experience Pressed on Urban Archive!

Urban Archive has helped us literally put the Forward‘s fabulous exhibition photos on the map. Click through the stories to see how, and where, the historic newspaper brought readers news of athletics, politics, activism, and entertainment.