Born 1907, Manhattan, New York
Died 1990, Manhattan, New York


Lee Sievan, a daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants, grew up on the Lower East Side of New York. She graduated with honors from Hunter College in 1929, and then from Hunter Teachers College, with concentrations in physics and mathematics. Sievan worked as a secretary in Hunter's Biological Sciences department for forty-two years, supporting herself and her husband, the painter Maurice Sievan (whom she married in 1934). She took her first course in photography in 1938 at the American Artists School, where she studied with Eliot Elisofon. She later worked with Berenice Abbott at the New School for Social Research and at the Photo League. At the League, Sievan met Weegee, who employed her part-time as a darkroom assistant. She used her photographic skills to document her husband's career, as well as such notables as the opera singer Marian Anderson, the painters Milton Avery and Mark Rothko, and the actor and activist Paul Robeson. Throughout her career she also photographed scenes of everyday city life. Starting in 1978, she worked as a librarian and archivist at the International Center of Photography, where an exhibition of her photographs was held in 1990. Her work also appeared in the exhibition "The Women of the Photo League" at Higher Pictures Gallery, New York (2009).