born July 16, 1883, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.
died May 7, 1965, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
U.S. painter and photographer.
Educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he initially earned a living as a photographer. His acclaimed series of photographs of the Ford automobile plant at River Rouge, Mich. (1927), was followed by a series on Chartres Cathedral (1929). In his paintings, early Cubist influences led to the Precisionism of his maturity. He treated industrial and architectural subjects in an abstract-realist style, emphasizing their formal qualities, as in his painting Rolling Power (1939), which revealed the abstract power of a locomotive's driving wheels.