Born 1922, Brooklyn, New York
Lives in Coconut Creek, Florida

After dropping out of Brooklyn College to apprentice at a commercial photography studio, Gilbert joined the Photo League in 1941. A student in Sid Grossman's documentary photography class, he later taught the basic technique class and wrote reviews for the League's publication Photo Notes (1946). He served in the Air Corps in World War II, using aerial photography to map the South Pacific. After the war he formed a public relations firm called Editorial Photos and worked as a freelance photographer for the New York Times, Newsweek, Variety, and other publications (1948–50). He also worked in photography for the advertising industry. He has published fifteen books, including Collecting Photographica: The Images and Equipment of the First Hundred Years of Photography (1976) and The Illustrated Worldwide Who's Who of Jews in Photography (1996). He is author of more than three hundred articles on photography, and was founding president of the American Photographic Historical Society (1970).