Starting February 5th and running through May 20th, the Queens Museum of Art will be showing off the work of photographer Frank Oscar Larson, who documented the streets of New York in the 1950s. They're in possession of "several thousand historic negatives hidden from sight for 55 years," and will bring 65 of them in print form to their "1950s New York Street Stories" installation. Larson was a Queens banker who had a "lifelong passion for photography" and yielded a tremendous images of everyday life in 1950s New York.
NYC Street Photographer's 1950s Photos Found, Headed To Queens Museum Of Art
Is It Cool to Take Pictures of Someone's Dog Without Asking?
A contributor named Melissa says she was walking across 59th Street between Seventh and Broadway in Midtown today when she spotted an adorable dog, so cute that she decided to snap a picture of it to share with her sister. But Melissa, who does some freelance photography work for magazines, says that as soon as the dog's owner spotted her with her camera out, he began screaming at her. She tells us that he called her "a bitch (among other things)" and writes that his verbal assault was "a maniacal tirade so big that people passing were telling him to shut up."
Celebrated Street Photographer Helen Levitt Dies
Last night at her home in Manhattan, the Brooklyn-born and celebrated NYC street photographer Helen Levitt died at the age of 95. The NY Times remembers Levitt, saying she "captured instances of a cinematic and delightfully guileless form of street choreography that held at its heart, as William Butler Yeats put it, 'the ceremony of innocence'.” In the 1930s and 40s, the photographer focused on "the city’s poorer neighborhoods, like Spanish Harlem and the Lower East Side, where people treated their streets as their living rooms and where she showed an unerring instinct for a street drama’s perfect pitch." By 1943 she had her first solo show at MoMA, and starting in 1949 (for a period lasting around ten years) Levitt was a full-time film editor and director. She went back to still photography, this time in color, in 1959 upon receiving two Guggenheim Foundation grants.
Video of the Day: WNYC Shoots Street Shots
While simultaneously seeking out new talent, WNYC is exploring the art of street photography through the eyes of six diverse photographers in their Street Shots series. One of them, 61-year-old Bruce Gilden, is more of a character than some of his subjects. He's been taking photos of strangers on the streets of Manhattan for decades, and he's becoming a little bored with the homogeneity of the passersby. See how his "in your face" approach goes over with his subjects:
WNYC's Street Shots Challenge
WNYC explores street photography through the eyes of six New Yorkers (including our own Jake Dobkin); they call the medium "a uniquely New York art form" that dates back to the days of Weegee the Famous. Weegee's site holds a quote from Naked City that sums it all up pretty well: "He will take his camera and ride off in search of new evidence that his city, even in her most drunken and disorderly and pathetic moments, is beautiful."

