Art: Man with a Camera

Sanford Harrison Roth is a short, cocky, square-jawed man who has made a career of taking candid photographs of artists and musicians. This week, after nearly 80,000 people had trooped past a showing of his photos in Chicago's Art Institute, Roth was in an understandably satisfied mood. Said he: "Even if everybody else did not like my pictures, there is always one person who does — me."

Next to Roth himself, his biggest fans are his subjects. Most of them—Picasso, Utrillo, Giacometti, Cocteau, Dufy, Leger, Milhaud—gave Roth nearly all the time he needed to...