Born 1915, Manhattan, New York
Died 1985

While a student at Columbia University (1932–35), Rothstein founded a camera club and was photography editor for the yearbook. In 1935 Roy Stryker hired him to manage the photographic operations of the Resettlement Association, which later became the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Along with Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and others, Rothstein photographed Depression-era subjects for the FSA from 1937 to 1940, and his photographs were featured in two FSA exhibitions at the Photo League (1939, 1940). He officially joined the League in 1940; there he worked on a photomural designed by Edwin Rosskam to promote the sale of war bonds. The mural was displayed in Grand Central Station in 1942. During World War II, Rothstein worked for the Office of War Information (1941–43) before joining the Army Signal Corps, being stationed first in Long Island and later in China, Burma, and India. At the war's end he served for a time as chief photographer for the United Nations Relief and Resettlement Administration (UNRRA) in China. In that capacity, in 1946 he visited Shanghai's Hongkew Ghetto, where he photographed the living conditions of the twenty thousand Eastern European and Russian Jewish refugees there. These photographs appeared in several books and films. A staff photographer at Look in 1940–41, Rothstein later became the magazine's technical director of photography (1946–71). He was subsequently editor of Infinity (1971–72) and director of photography at Parade magazine. Rothstein published nine books, including Photojournalism: Pictures for Magazines and Newspapers (1956) and Look at Us: Words by William Saroyan, Photographs by Arthur Rothstein, with William Saroyan (1967).