Fantastic, spacially amazing black and white, light-filled *and filtered places of awe.
(via: tih)
Elliott Erwitt (b. 26 July 1928 Paris, France) is an advertising and documentary photographer known for his black and white candid shots of ironic and absurd situations within everyday settings— a master of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment”.
New York City, 1948. ‘I don’t know what it is that gives some pictures their magic, although the test is whether it really hits you and gives you a strong emotion’
Reds. Oranges. Yellows.
Pizza slices, barber shops, taxis, training home. Stunning. A touch Mad Men. A touch Revolutionary Road.
Saul Leiter started shooting color and black-and-white street photography in New York in the 1940s. He had no formal training in photography, but the genius of his early work was quickly acknowledged by Edward Steichen, who included Leiter in two important MoMA shows in the 1950s. MoMA’s 1957 conference “Experimental Photography in Color” featured 20 color photographs by Leiter.
More: lensculture
I was blown away finding these photos by Charles Greenwood. The composition, shadows and architectural precision of lines — its almost like studying Orson Wells or Hitchcock cinematic stills.
Between 1972 and 1976 Gatewood made frequent trips to New York’s financial district…these images are ethereal, formal and emotionally void with an underlying theme of capitalism and control. This work was supported by two fellowships from the NY State Council for the Arts, and when the book Wall Street was published in 1984, Gatewood was awarded the Leica Medal of Excellence for Humanistic Photojournalism. This classic photographic essay currently out of print represents some of Gatewood’s finest work.
Excerpt from introduction to “Wall Street” by A.D Coleman:
A mutual friend claims that money is the real obscenity of our age: people will detail their most intimate sex acts before they’ll reveal their salaries or net worth. If there’s truth in that, then what Gatewood has delivered up here is a set of visual metaphors for that most secret perversion, high finance.
Since 1964, Gatewood has documented such diverse subjects as social protest, alternative culture, celebrity portraits, rock and roll, body modification, and the Wall Street area of lower Manhattan.
Source: Charles Gatewood
Via: Apartment Therapy
Glorious, gritty New York via the lens of Steven Siegel. Subway, Brooklyn Bridge, West Side Highway. If you just owned a piece of real estate back then…lottery style winnings.
Coney Island shots are stellar.
Some real still beauties.
From Wiki: On the Bowery is a 1956 American documentary film directed by Lionel Rogosin. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[1]
After the Second World War Lionel Rogosin made a vow to fight fascism and racism wherever he found it. In 1954 he left the family business (Beaunit Mills-American Rayon Corp.) in order to make films in accordance with his ideals. As he needed experience, he looked around for a subject and was struck by the men on the Bowery and decided that this would make a strong film. Thus On the Bowery was to be Rogosin’s provocative film school that would prepare him for the filming of his anti apartheid film: Come Back, Africa (1960).
In 2008, On the Bowery was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
All these photos, so unmistakeably New York City. Circa 1938.
Diners, drinks, food, the clinks and clanks. The stands. The markets. The customers. Magic.
A look back to a different time.
From his New York Times obit:
Sol Libsohn, an early documentary photographer whose images of ordinary Americans appeared in many national publications, died on Sunday in Princeton, N.J. He was 86.
A New Yorker by birth, Mr. Libsohn taught himself how to take pictures after a neighbor gave him a Kodak Brownie. After attending City College, he went to work for the Works Progress Administration, the New Deal program that enlisted thousands of unemployed artists and artisans in the depths of the Depression.
Starting out as an artists’ model for some W.P.A. muralists, he was soon drafted to record images of New Yorkers coping with hard times. In 1936 his experiences in the W.P.A. led him and others to found the Photo League, an organization of photographers committed to the documentary style and in-depth examinations of contemporary urban subjects.
via: vintage.es
