Ivan Massar is one of America's premier photo journalists.  In a career that began during WW II aboard the US Carrier Franklin and continued through the post-war years into the turbulent '60s and beyond, Massar built a distinguished image portfolio that reflected the many faces and moods of American and European life.  From the streets of Paris to the cities of a nascent Communist Europe, from the steel mills of Pittsburg to the southern battle ground of the Civil Rights movement, from Washington D.C. to Saigon and Hanoi, Massar's unsparing but deeply compassionate lens has chronicled both the famous and the ordinary.

Massar's work appeared regularly in such publications as Life, Look, National Geographic, and Paris Match, to name only a few. A lifelong passion for the works of Henry David Thoreau and Edna St. Vincent Millay led to the publication of two books: The Illustrated World of Thoreau and Take Up the Song, both works featuring Massar's images carefully matched to selected texts.  His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and is part of the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian Institute.

The viewing galleries on this site cover major periods of a long career, and showcase Massar's singular ability to create a perfect visual moment with each of his subjects.  All images are available both for publication and as prints individually crafted under Massar's guidance and signed by the photographer.

Credits:
Top - Joan Baez, March on Washington, 1963
Middle - Sammy Davis Jr., March on Washington, 1963
Bottom - Robert Frost, Studio appearance, 1955
All images copyright Ivan Massar