Panoramic Photographer Jerry Dantzic Has Passed Away at 81;
Freelancer for New York Times for 50 Years

Brooklyn, N.Y. – Photojournalist and artist Jerry Dantzic, whose work over 50 years has been seen in prominent publications like The New York Times and Life magazine, as well as in august museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney, has died at the age of 81. He had been suffering from a long illness, according to his son Grayson, when he died on December 14 at the Palm Gardens Nursing Center in Brooklyn.

A prolific photographer, Dantzic also spent more than 25 years as an educator. From 1968 to 1996, he was an adjunct professor of media arts at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus and he also taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and other institutions.

Dantzic served in Europe during World War II as a combat infantryman for the 30th Division of Ohio and then as a reporter for the Stars and Stripes. He attended Kent State University on the GI Bill, graduating in 1949 with a B.A. in journalism and English. From 1951, Dantzic worked in New York as a publicity writer by day and took night courses at Columbia University. Joining the Columbia Camera Club, he shared a darkroom with Garry Winogrand, George Zimbel and other aspiring photographers.

A member of the American Society of Magazine Photographers since 1956, Dantzic worked for numerous publications, including the Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times and Look and Life magazines. In 1958, he moved to Manhattan, opening a studio on West 31st Street. The same year, he married Cynthia Maris.

As a photojournalist in the 1970s and 1980s, Dantzic developed a unique specialty, panoramic photography, using the Cirkut camera with image capability up to and beyond 360 degrees. Assisted by his wife and son, Dantzic traveled to all fifty states and abroad for eight summers to pursue his monumental panoramic project. His pioneering color panoramic work won him two Guggenheim Fellowships and a solo exhibition at MoMA in 1978.

His early black-and-white photographs were part of a major career resurgence that culminated in numerous shows and the publication of his book, “Jerry Dantzic’s New York: The Fifties in Focus.” In his foreword to the book, photography critic Ben Lifson wrote, “Dantzic was neither ironic nor sentimental. [His photographs] are conversational prose hymns to the ordinary.” Dantzic dedicated the book to his wife, Cynthia: “the love of my life…my finest engine…providing me with the energy to do the kind of thing I have been doing for the past forty-five years.”

Dantzic's photographs are in the permanent New York collections of Chase Manhattan Bank; International Center of Photography; John Simon Guggenheim Foundation; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art; New York Public Library; and Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and Springs Mills Industries in Fort Mill, S.C. His work includes documentary photo-essays of New York scenes, sports, theatre, dance, jazz, celebrities and children, in addition to general illustration, industrial, corporate annual reports and album covers. From the 1970s to the early 1990s Dantzic created more than 500 color panoramic negatives with his Cirkut camera shooting in America, Australia and England.

Dantzic was born to Rose and Albert Dantzic on June 3, 1925, in Baltimore, Maryland. At age six, he moved with his parents and sister, Anita, to the Bronx and graduated from Evander Childs High School in 1942.

He is survived by Cynthia Maris Dantzic, his wife of 48 years, Grayson, his son and archivist, and his sister, Anita Rehbock of Atlanta. Services will be held at Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery on Wednesday, December 20 at 1:15 p.m. Contributions may be made to the Jerry Dantzic Photography Scholarship Fund at Brooklyn’s Long Island University.

Long Island University opened its Brooklyn Campus in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. Located at the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, the Campus is accessible to all major bus and subway routes and the Long Island Rail Road.

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