Results tagged “streetphotography”

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."

       

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.

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 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."