Stephen Somerstein (b. 1941, New York City) – is a documentary photographer and former physicist whose vision has been shaped by the complexity and richness of the urban-cultural landscape. Beginning in the 1960s, while a student in New York City, he photographed events like the Greenwich Village cultural scene, Berkeley anti-war movement, and the civil rights movement.
In 1965, with the rise in public consciousness of the urgency and importance of the civil and voting rights movements in the South and Dr. Martin Luther King's pursuit of equal opportunity and voting rights, as Editor-in-Chief and Photo-Editor of the City College of New York evening newspaper MAIN EVENTS, Steve journeyed to Alabama to cover the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march.
In 2014, he received a New York Emmy Award for his video about the 1965 Selma March.
During his wide-ranging career in physics, he has built space satellites at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and Lockheed Martin, as well as pioneering work in nuclear fusion. His last satellite instrument is on the James Webb Space Telescope. Now retired from physics, he has returned full-time to photography.
Over 40 of Stephen's photographs were exhibited for the first time at our Rosa Sat, Martin Walked, and Barak Ran exhibition in February 2010. A selection of his 1965 Selma March images are in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, and in the permanent collection of the New York Historical Society.