Harry C. Dorer Photograph Collection

Harry C. Dorer was born in East Orange, NJ in 1895, the eldest child of George A. and Phoebe C. Dorer. He began work as an apprentice in the New York firm of Underwood and Underwood, photographers, in 1909 and then served in World War I. He married Anne Grimsey. Dorer was already an experienced photographer when he joined the staff of the Newark Sunday Call in 1918, and when the paper started its lavish rotogravure section in 1920 he was initially its only photographer. In addition to documenting the growth of Newark, including Port Newark and Newark Airport, between 1920 and the 1940s, he traveled widely throughout the state on assignments or indulging his own boundless curiosity about the byways of the state.

He became a staff photographer for the Newark News in 1946, and in 1947 he joined forces with the young journalist John Cunningham (later a distinguished historian of Newark and New Jersey) to create the series "Let's Explore" for the News's Sunday Magazine (the successor to the Sunday Call). The two men drove to every corner of the state, Cunningham with his files of research notes and Dorer armed with his beloved Speed Graphic camera. As he recorded the byways of New Jersey, Dorer continued to photograph Newark scenes. He also took every opportunity to make portraits of celebrated figures who visited the state, and solicited autographed copies of his prints from many of them. These autographed portraits are now housed in the Special Collections Division of the Newark Public library.

Dorer was a member of both the New York and the National Press Photographers Associations, and of the 312th Infantry Association (Newark). He retired from the Newark News in 1954 because of ill health. After living for more than forty years in Livingston, NJ, he died at the East Orange Veterans Hospital on January 26, 1962.