New York, NY—Harold O. (Harry) Martin, longtime editorial contributor to Modern Photography as well as Popular Photography magazines, passed away peacefully in New York City on December 13, 2023. He was at 97.
Treasured by his colleagues for his warmth, empathy, charm and delightful sense of humor, Martin wrote the retrospective Time Exposure column. He also ran the magazines’ Consumer Protection programs. In addition, he was the author of Close-Up Photography; curator of the Nikon House Gallery; and editor of the influential Wolfman Report on the photographic industry. Moreover, as a freelancer, he produced PR for nearly every major photographic company.
Further, Harry Martin served in the Merchant Marine as a radio operator during World War II and as an Army combat photographer in the Korean war. A graduate of Dewitt Clinton High School and City College of New York, he studied economics at Columbia University on the G.I. Bill and subsequently worked at a Wall Street bond firm.
Then Martin shifted careers to his first love, photography. Ever humble, he tapped out countless articles, books, press releases, manuals, guides as well as columns on a Royal Manual typewriter, even well into the computer era.
Martin was born in 1926 in the Yorkville section of Manhattan to Hungarian and Lithuanian immigrants. He survived his wife of fifty years, Myrna Martin, an artist and acting director of Education for the Museum of Modern Art; then his companion Julia Scully, the longtime editor of Modern Photography. Martin leaves behind his daughters, Nancy and Jana Martin, their families as well as countless friends in the imaging industry and beyond. To know him was to love him, and probably to laugh out loud.
