Melvin Sokolsky is an American photographer and film director.
Born in New York City in 1933, Sokolsky was raised on the Lower East Side. He had no formal training in photography, but started to use his father's box camera at about the age of ten. Always analytical, he started to realize the role that emulsion played as he compared his own photographs with those his father had kept in albums through the years. "I could never make my photographs of Butch the dog look like the pearly finish of my father's prints, and it was then that I realized the importance of the emulsion of the day."
Around 1954, Sokolsky met Robert Denning, who at the time worked with photographer Edgar de Evia, at an East Side gym. "I discovered that Edgar was paid $4000 for a Jell-O ad, and the idea of escaping from my tenement dwelling became an incredible dream and inspiration.
Though he is best known for his editorial fashion photographs for publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and The New York Times, Sokolsky's work is not limited to that field. Three quarters of his print photography has been for advertising, which does not usually carry a byline.