The New York School: Photographs, 1936-1963

The New York School of Photography refers to a loosely defined group of photographers who lived and worked in New York City from the late 1930s to the early 1960s. In this volume, author Jane Livingston, former chief curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, defines this seminal episode in American photography by examining sixteen photographers and their influences, subjects, and stylistic earmarks. Included are Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Alexey Brodovitch, Ted Croner, Bruce Davidson, Don Donaghy, Louis Faurer, Robert Frank, Sid Grossman, William Klein, Saul Leiter, Leon Levinstein, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, David Vestal, and Weegee. Many of these photographers worked for the magazines of the day but stretched the boundaries of their medium in their personal work as street photographers. Their subject was most often New York itself: the random choreography of the city's sidewalks, the crush of bodies on Coney Island's beaches, the glow of street lights, and the glare of Times Square. To some degree they all assimilated or transformed the photographic concerns of Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose positions set the stage for the emergence of the New York School. Many of them identified with the look and values embodied in film noir. In The New York School, each photographer's work is represented in a portfolio of approximately twelve images printed on one of four kinds of paper; varying shades and tones among the portfolios are achieved by the use of different duotone inks. Through an electrifying selection of both classic and rediscovered photographs and an irresistibly engaging text full of quotes from the photographers themselves, Jane Livingston shows thedistinctive stylistic nature, of this newly understood group.