Raymond Jacobs was an American photographer, filmmaker, and businessman. Jacobs is known for his 1950's and 1960's reportage photographs of New York Citystreet scenes and for his portraits of celebrities and other notable personalities. He also had a successful career as a freelance commercial photographer. In the 1970s, he and his wife Eleanor popularized Earth Shoes, a countercultural symbol of the decade, through their Earth Shoe company.
With an interest in photography since high school, Jacobs applied to a photography class conducted by Lisette Model at The New School. Model reviewed his black-and-white portfolio and asked his profession. He replied, "I am a furrier." She told him, "You are not. You are a photographer." After studying with Model, Jacobs joined a class taught by Sid Grossman in 1953. In 1960, he studied carbon print color processing with Sy Kattelson and installed color lab equipment into his own darkroom. At the age of 30, Jacobs began a career as a freelance commercial photographer. Through his work with advertising agencies, he photographed campaigns for Campbell's Soup, Tareyton Cigarettes, IBM, Pan Am, Johnson & Johnson, and others. His editorial photographs were published in magazines including Fortune, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, McCall's, and Eros. Jacobs received more than 50 Art Directors' awards for his advertising work. Jacobs was one of ten photographers featured in Style in Photography in Photography Annual 1963, edited by Bruce Downes. According to Deschin, "Jacobs' portfolio of posterlike effects in manipulated images of unrealistic color provides an excitingly novel example of a successful stylistic device." Jacobs is most well known for his 1950's and 1960's reportage photographs of New York City street scenes and for his portraits of notable subjects including Louis Armstrong, Gloria Swanson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Salvador Dali, Eartha Kitt, Robert F. Kennedy, Sammy Davis Jr., and Billie Holiday. Jacobs' photographs are in the permanent collection of New York City's Museum of Modern Art and were included in the iconic Edward Steichen curated MoMA photography exhibitions The Family of Man and 70 Photographers Look at New York. Jacobs first one-man photography exhibition was held in 1955 at Roy DeCarava's A Photographer's Gallery in the Upper West Side of New York City. According to New York Times photography critic Jacob Deschin, the exhibition primarily focused on "close-up characterizations of people in varied situations of ordinary living" but Jacobs also added "a new element, represented in a group of vacation landscapes and seascapes that reveal a fresh, unsuspected side to this photographer's talents." Jacobs had solo and retrospective exhibitions at the Limelight Gallery, Walker Art Center, Washington Irving Gallery, Oliver Wolcott Library, National Arts Club, Hotchkiss School Tremaine Art Gallery, and the Litchfield Historical Society. Jacobs' work was also included in the 2007 exhibition, "Lisette Model and Her Successors," at the Aperture Gallery in New York City. In 2006, Pointed Leaf Press published My New York, a monograph of Jacobs' New York City street photographs. One of Jacobs' photographs is currently on view in the exhibition "Women on View: Aesthetics of Desire in Advertising" at Galerie 36 in Berlin.
Filmmaking
In the 1960s, Jacobs branched into filmmaking. He co-wrote and co-produced Aroused, directed by Anton Holden. Jacobs directed, co-wrote, and co-produced his second film, The Minx, which starred Jan Sterling and featured an original soundtrack by The Cyrkle. Both films were financially successful, but he left the business to concentrate on Earth Shoes.
Earth Shoes
In 1970, Jacobs and his wife Eleanor founded the Earth Shoe company to sell a negative heel shoe designed by Anna Kalsø they had discovered while traveling in Copenhagen, Denmark the previous year. Officially opening on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day, the Jacobs' dubbed the footwear Earth Shoes. The shoes quickly became a popular countercultural symbol of the 1970s. The company expanded to 123 stores to sell the shoes, boots, and sandals, all with the negative heel design, across the United States, Canada, and Europe. By 1976 sales had grown to $14 million, but the company dissolved in 1977.
