Gordon Coster (1906-1988) was an American modernist photographer and photojournalist, known for his dynamic abstracted views of industrial scenes in the American Midwest and his important coverage of labour and civil-rights issues.
Coster began a career in commercial photography, working first in New York and later in Chicago, where he relocated in 1930. Six years later, he established his own studio in Chicago. In Chicago, Coster developed his unique artistic style while taking pictures of the city at night. Images from this period show impressions of the city through an abstracted perspective, with tilted angles and unfocused lenses. In 1946, Coster was invited by photographer and Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy to lecture in his course “The New Vision in Photography” at the Institute of Design in Chicago, alongside photographic luminaries like Berenice Abbott, Erwin Blumenfeld, and Paul Strand. Through the 1950’s and early 60’s New York’s Museum of Modern Art featured his work in two prominent exhibitions, “The Family of Man” and “Memorable Life Photographs”.