Ralph Steiner (1899-1986) was an American photographer and film-maker. After his 1921 graduation from Dartmouth College, where he learned photography, Steiner moved to New York and studied at the Clarence H. White School of Photography. Though he subsequently criticized its curriculum as too reliant on ‘design, design, design’, Steiner's 1920s commercial photography echoed its emphasis on clean modernist composition. Increasingly socially engaged, Steiner turned to a more realist documentary style.