Ralph Ginzburg

Ralph Ginzburg died of multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bones in 2006. He was 76.

After the loss of his last plea to vacate his conviction (an appeals court earlier reduce his sentence from five to three), Ginzburg started his time in prison in 1972, and was released on parole eight months later, probably thanks to the effort of his supporters including novelist Sloan Wilson.

From 1968 to 1971, Ginzburg published Avant Garde, an art and culture magazine with graphic and logogram designed by Herb Lubalin, and the logo font of the magazine later gave birth to a well-known typeface of the same name. Avant Garde focused on radical politics and stopped publication when Ginzburg started serving his sentence in 1972. (He wrote "Castrated: My Eight Months in a Federal Prison" to describe his time in prison.) Although he tried to revive it as a tabloid newspaper with his wife after his release from prison, his attempt failed and the new Avant Garde lasted only one issue.

Apart from publishing and editing, Ginzburg continued to be an activist. In 1968, Ginzburg signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. Ginzburg's interest in activism also extended to opposing circumcision. In 1986, he founded Outlaw Unnecessary Circumcision in Hospitals (O.U.C.H.), a non-profit organisation against circumcision, striving to stop health insurance companies from funding circumcision surgery and therefore lowering the rate of American baby boys being circumcised.

From January, 1968 through July, 1971, Ginzburg published Avant Garde, a handsome softbound periodical. Ginzburg's age and federal conviction had calmed him down some by this time: Avant Garde could not be termed obscene, but was filled with creative imagery often caustically critical of American society and government, as well as sexual themes and (for the time) crude language. One cover featured a naked pregnant woman; another had a parody of Willard's famous patriotic painting, "The Spirit of '76", with a white woman and a black man.

The final decision of Ginzburg's fate was reached on March 21, 1966, after a five to four majority affirmed Ginzburg's conviction for violating a federal statute and found him guilty of "commercial exploitation," of "pandering," and of "titillation", crimes he was in fact not charged with. It is noticeable that the court made it clear that though the publications of Ginzburg themselves were protected by First Amendment, Ginzburg's conduct, attitude, motives were not, and he was in fact found guilty because of his sexually-exciting advertising methods, where First Amendment could not apply according to the court.

Ginzburg appealed, and a year later the Third Circuit easily affirmed the decision of the lower court. He appealed again and his case got to the Supreme Court in 1965.

Ginzburg's next publication was Fact, a political journal with a muckraking bent, published between January 1964 and August 1967. The magazine cost him another famous lawsuit after he published a special issue claiming that Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate that year, was psychologically unfit for the office. He lost the lawsuit again and had to pay $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages to Senator Goldwater.

From January 1964 to August 1967, Ginzburg published a quarterly magazine named fact:, which could be characterized as a humorous, scathingly satiric journal of comment on current society and politics. fact: had surprisingly little erotic content. Rather, it contained articles such as 1189 Psychiatrists Say Barry Goldwater is Unfit for the Presidency. The Goldwater article purported to find the senator paranoid, sexually insecure, suicidal, and "grossly psychotic." Goldwater later sued and won the suit.

Ginzburg was first put into charge in racially polarised Philadelphia in 1963 and was indicted for Eros, Liaison and the Housewife's Handbook. Those publications were deemed obscene by the court and Ginzburg was found guilty of 28 violations, sentenced to serve five years and fined totalling $42,000. The Trial Judge, Ralph Body, explained the finding of the court as:

After he finally saved enough money to rent his own office—a fifth-floor walk-up in an old Manhattan office building, Ginzburg published his first self-published book, 100 Years of Lynchings in 1962, a collection of newspaper accounts that directly exposed the history and the status quo of American racism. The book was a sign that Ginzburg had wed his business to his interest in social activism, and it was regularly adapted by African American studies as one of the primary pedagogical materials to show the harsh nature of pre-civil-rights race relations in America. During this period Ginzburg also published Liaison, a biweekly newsletter, and "The Housewife's Handbook on Selective Promiscuity" by Lillian Maxine Serett, writing as Rey Anthony.

Ginzburg's most famous publication, Eros, a high-priced magazine of classy erotica, was launched in 1962 too, and only four issues were published before he was indicted on charges of violating federal obscenity laws and had to stop publishing the quarterly. He was found guilty by the Supreme Court eventually and sentenced to five years in prison. (He was released after eight months.)

In 1962, Ginzburg began publication of his first major work, Eros, which was a quarterly hardbound periodical containing articles and photo-essays on love and sex. Herb Lubalin was the art director and second on the masthead. It was named after the Greek god of love and desire, Eros. The publication was bound in cardboard in a 13" x 10" format, averaging about 90 pages in length. Only four issues of Eros were published. Ginzburg attempted to get mailing privileges from postmasters at Blue Ball and Intercourse, Pennsylvania, but was declined because the anticipated volume was more than what the post office of these two small towns could handle, and therefore at last Ginzburg settled to send his magazines from Middlesex, New Jersey.

In August 1961, Ginzburg managed to conduct an extensive interview of 18-year-old Bobby Fischer. Ginzburg said he got in touch with Fischer by simply giving Fischer's older sister Joan a call, and he "got along well" with Fischer. He sold the interview, entitled "Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master" to Harper's Magazine, which published it in January 1962. The interview of the reclusive chess genius became one of the most famous interviews in history, especially among chess players, and has gained great popularity ever since, partly as the first public indication of Fischer's paranoia and critical behaviours. However, Bobby Fischer himself hated the article and denied most of it, claiming that it was not even a remotely accurate representation of his actual statements or his life, while Ralph Ginzburg destroyed all of the research materials that would have backed his interview. The interview made young Fischer furious and "created a distrust of reporters", and therefore it became practically the last formal interview Fischer ever gave, which ironically added to its popularity.

Eros magazine is significant in American publishing history as it covered and helped to incite the sexual revolution, while it also contributed to the formation of counter-culture in the late 1960s.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy was offended by the Eros after the second issue was published, which contained a photo-essay of the phenomenon of female reaction to President John F. Kennedy (brother of Robert Kennedy), in the run-up to the 1960 election. He held off his instinct to prosecute, however, afraid that "it would hurt politically by solidifying Kennedy's image as a puritanical Catholic". Meanwhile, while Ginzburg sent out millions of flyers to promote his magazines, both local and federal prosecutors received complaints from recipients of Ginzburg's mailing, and organisations like The National Office for Decent Literature even encouraged their members to send complaints to post offices. At last, the fourth final issue of Eros, with the eight pages of colour photos showing a naked muscular black man and a naked white woman embracing each other, finally convinced Kennedy to authorise prosecution. He was supported by Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and Solicitor General Archibald Cox, and Katzenbach believed that they would eventually prosecute Ginzburg because of his continual testing of boundaries of obscenity in his magazine, "so why wait".

First Amendment advocates including IF Stone, Sloan Wilson and Arthur Miller protested Ginzburg's conviction. Commenting on the case and Ginzburg's conviction, Arthur Miller had concluded in the late 1960s:

After graduating in 1949, Ginzburg found a job at The New York Daily Compass as a copy boy and cub reporter. He had to leave his job and join the army for the Korean War two years later, and was assigned to Fort Myer, Va, to work for the Public Information Office, where he both edited the post newspaper and took wedding photos for base marriages. Meanwhile, he worked full-time at night as a copy editor for the Times-Herald in nearby Washington, DC. One of his colleagues, an inquiring photographer for the newspaper, was Jackie Lee Bouvier (later Kennedy Onassis).

Ralph Ginzburg (October 28, 1929 – July 6, 2006) was an American author, editor, publisher and photo-journalist. He was best known for publishing books and magazines on erotica and art and for his conviction in 1963 for violating federal obscenity laws.

Ralph Ginzburg was born in Brooklyn on October 28, 1929, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. He went to New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn and was president of his class. Since his parents hoped that he could be an accountant, when he first enrolled in City College of New York after high school, he majored in accounting. While Ginzburg was taking a journalism class at CCNY, his professor, Irving Rosenthal, realised his talent in journalism and encouraged him to accept an editorial job on the school newspaper, The Ticker. Ginzburg later became editor-in-chief of it, which further fostered his passion for journalism.

Avant Garde had a modest circulation but was extremely popular in certain circles, including New York's advertising and editorial art directors. Herbert F. Lubalin (1918–1981), a post-modern design guru, was Ginzburg's collaborator on his four best-known magazines, including Avant Garde, which in turn gave birth to a well-known typeface of the same name. It was originally intended primarily for use as in logos, with the first version consisting solely of 26 capital letters. Inspired by Ginzburg and his wife, Lubalin's design was rendered by his assistants and Tom Carnase, one of Lubalin's partners. It is characterized by geometrically perfect round strokes and short, straight lines, with an extremely large number of ligatures and negative kerning. The International Typeface Corporation (ITC), of which Lubalin was a founder, subsequently released a full version in 1970.

The cover of No. 2 pictured a young couple in swimsuits, kissing passionately; it was printed in two colours, black and greenish-yellow, with a red-orange logo. The inside covers repeated the theme in red (front) and blue (back). It featured photo essays about John F Kennedy, French prostitutes and erotic statues in India, the first publication in a magazine of Mark Twain's short story "1601" and "an antique patent submission for a male chastity belt".