Milton Rogovin was born in New York in 1909 to a Russian-Jewish immigrant family. The widespread deprivations he witnessed and experienced during the Depression stimulated a lifelong commitment to justice. Like Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis, Rogovin used photography as a way to communicate his point of view about social inequities and advocate for social reform. In particular, he devoted himself to chronicling the lives of working-class people—especially miners—in New York, Appalachia, Scotland, Cuba, Mexico, South Africa, Zimbabwe, China, and a host of other countries.