Born 1913, Manhattan, New York
Died 1955, Provincetown, Massachusetts

Grossman joined the Film and Photo League, along with his friend Sol Libsohn, in 1934, a year before graduating from City College. Together, they left the organization in 1936 to found the Photo League. Grossman performed a number of roles at the Photo League, including educator, administrator, reviewer, and editor of Photo Notes. With Libsohn, in 1938 he established the Documentary Group, at the League; its first project was the Chelsea Document (1938–40), an indictment of obsolete buildings and substandard living conditions in a New York neighborhood. In 1940 Grossman visited the Dust Bowl of the American Southwest, taking photographs of rural living conditions and documenting the work of labor unions there. During World War II he served in the Sixth Army in Panama; in 1945 he traveled in Central America, continuing to make photographs. After the war Grossman returned to New York, where he produced his famous Coney Island and Mulberry Street series (1946–48). He was denounced as a Communist during a 1947 trial of Communist Party leaders. In 1949 Grossman left New York to open a photography school in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he continued to teach summer courses until his death. His book, Journey to the Cape, coauthored with Millard Lampell, was published posthumously, in 1959.