Ginzburg, Ralph

▪ 2007

      American publisher, author, and photojournalist (b. Oct. 28, 1929, New York, N.Y.—d. July 6, 2006, New York City), was at the centre of two highly publicized 1960s court cases involving freedom of speech rights. As the publisher of Eros, a hardcover erotic-art quarterly magazine, Ginzburg was convicted on obscenity charges in 1963, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his conviction three years later. Ginzburg, who had won the support of many First Amendment advocates, eventually served eight months in prison. In 1964—after another of Ginzburg's publications, the political journal Fact, claimed that Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was psychologically unfit to hold office—Goldwater sued Ginzburg for libel, winning $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages. The Supreme Court again upheld the decision in the case. Ginzburg retired from publishing in the mid-1980s and spent much of his later career as a freelance photojournalist. His several books included Castrated: My Eight Months in Prison (1973) and I Shot New York (1999), a collection of his photographs.

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