The Digital Age of Street Photography

The modern age of photography has seen major developments. Most notably, the change from traditional black and white photography developed in the darkroom to the use of digital cameras and digital programs such as Photoshop. The above clip of colour images provides a contrast to the black & white work of Leon Levinstein examined throughout this blog. However, New York and the same principles of street photography apply!

Photo of the Day!

What Leon Levinstein Means To Me

Leon Levinstein is something of a tragic figure. He was criminally underrated in his time and has become something of a Van Gogh-cliche. During my research of him, Leon comes across as a reserved and almost reclusive man. This is at odds with his art. He got into people's personal space and highlighted their most intimate moments. Some critics have said that his work is stereotypical of all street photographers. In my opinion, that's not correct. The reason some of his work seems that way is because the genre was being formed by him and others throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s. In fact, the 1970s saw an explosion in street photography - unfortunately, Levinstein wasn't overly active at this point.

His compassion for real people and social commentary is something I'd like to emulate in my own work. I love how unpretentious he was - all he cared about was photography. About looking, seeing and photographing.

Exhibition: The Met

From the 8th of June until the 17th October 2010, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York held a Leon Levinstein exhibition titled 'Hipster, Hustlers and Handball Players: Leon Levistein's New York Photographs, 1950-1980.' I happened to be visiting my sister in New York in August and got to go see this exhibition! The collection was donated to the Met in 2009 and this was its first time on display to the public. Below are some of my favourite images from the exhibition:

The top image of the two handball players in action is probably the most remarkable photograph of the collection. The black pants, their physique and posture make them look like ballet dancers. Taken just as the man in the foreground is throwing the ball and his feet are lifting off the ground, energy and movement is caught on camera. Composition and balance are perfected in this photograph and Henri-Cartier Bresson would have been envious of Levinstein's decisive moment!

Walking through the exhibition, the space was intimate yet the photographs stood tall. After reading a lot more about him since the exhibition, I can't help but think his photographs finally reached the place they belong - out in the open and viewed by thousands. 

Exhibitions and Critical Reception

Levinstein's work began to attract attention quickly. Several of his works were featured in Popular Photography and he won its International Photography Contest in 1952. He was also included in the U.S Camera Annual in 1951 and 1952 and he was one of six photographers featured in 1956.


Over the course of Levinstein's career, his photographs were featured in numerous exhibitions. He took part in several group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, including Edward Steichen's famous 1955 exhibition The Family of Man. Steichen, art director at MoMA, was a fan of Levinstein's work and did what he could to help promote his photographs. In January 1956 Levinstein held a solo exhibition at the Limelight Gallery. Helen Gee, founder of the gallery and another advocate of Levinstein's work, recalled that the show created a lot of excitement and several prints were sold. The exhibition was given complimentary reviews in several newspapers. The Village Voice reported that "the current exhibition at the Limelight really opens the year on a strong note. The selection of 80 photographs by Leon Levinstein is a powerful group of pictures by a photographer whose work is too rarely seen."

However, the Limelight Gallery closed in 1961 and in 1963 Steichen retired from his position in MoMA. With his two main supporters gone from the photography world, Levinstein began to struggle. Unable or, in some ways, unwilling to promote himself, Levinstein became disillusioned and the 50s were to be the highlight of his career.

In 1980, Gee managed to secure Levinstein in the Photography of the Fifties exhibition at the Centre for Creative Photography in Tuscon and in 1985 Levinstein's photographs were featured in two exhibitions; American Images at the Barbican Art Gallery and The New York School at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington.

Posthumous solo exhibitions were organized by The National Gallery, Ottawa, Canada, in 1995 and the Centre Photographic d'Île-de-France, Pontault-Combault, France, in 2000. Helen Gee once commented: "success will come to Levinstein only when he is no longer around to stand in its way." An all too true statement.

Interview

A soft spoken and intorverted man Leon Levinstein gave a rare interview in 1988.

Introduced by Jeff L. Rosenheim (Curator of Photographs at MoMA, New York) and Jem Cohen, who recorded the interview with Levinstein, the interview gives a great insight into Levinstein's personality and work. Cohen described Levisntein by saying: 'he was very unpretentious, deeply down to earth, and quite a loner. And this all fed into his work.'

I highly recommend taking the time to listen to this ten minute interview with a very talented and creative person that saw the world through an artist's eyes: 'a good photograph will prove to the viewer how little our eyes permit us to see. Most people, really, don’t see - see only what they have always seen and what they expect to see - where a photographer, if he’s good, will see everything. And better if he sees things he doesn’t expect to see.'

Photographers From The Same Period

• Garry Winogrand: 'I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.' A true New Yorker, Garry Winogrand photographed the streets and the people of New York. He documented American Life in the early 1960s and his best known work belongs in his The Animals (1969) collection. Shot in the Bronx Zoo, it contains images that play on the connections between humans and animals.The photograph below caused a lot of controversy when it was first unveiled to the public eye as racial issues were a serious problem in 1960s America.

Winogrand died in 1984 but left behind 300,000 unedited images and 2,500 undeveloped rolls evidence of his passion for photography and life.

• Diane Arbus was born in 1923 in New York. Arbus is known for her images of 'freaks'. Throughout her career, she photographed dwarfs, giants, circus performers and nudists. In 1955, she took part in the Family of Man exhibition and in 1963 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship where she was commissioned to document American rites, manners and customs.

Among her most famous images is the photograph titled: Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park (1962). Sadly, having suffered from depression throughout her life, Diane Arbus committed suicide in 1971 at the age of 48. If you wish to follow up reading about Arbus and her work, I recommend Susan Sontag's essay 'America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly' in her book On Photography (Penguin, 1977). However, it is necessary to keep in mind that Sontag's view is considered narrow and overly critical as many more praised Arbus for her work. In 1972, Robert Hughes congratulated Arbus for having 'altered our experience of the face.' 

Photo of the Day!

Leon Levinstein: Images

Above is a clip of Leon Levinstein's work. His photographs do not sentimentalise, but rather they document what it was like to live in New York at the time. He sees everything and captures everything while portraying a mixture of emotions such as amusement, sadness, compassion and sympathy. "I walk, I look, I see, I stop, I photograph." (Levinstein, 1955).

Background of Street Photography

• Eugene Atget: In the early years of photography street photography proved immensely difficult. The fast pace of modern life was hard to capture with the lack of fast shutter speeds. Instead of capturing the bustling streets of city life, we see ghost towns of buildings and empty streets e.g. the image below taken by Eugene Atget in the 1890s:

The lack of people make the locations seem almost set like. Even his shots including people are artfully staged:

• Andre Kertesz: Below, we start to see what we know now to be a street photography style - the moving train in the distance, the people on the streets. The photograph is candid and intriguing. Kertesz, a Hungarian born photographer, made some groundbreaking contributions to the form, style, tone and composition of street photography during the very early 20th Century. 

• Henri Cartier-Bresson: Known as the godfather of candid and street photography, Cartier-Bresson remains one of the most influential photographers of all time. In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book The Decisive Moment. 'You must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.'

• Below is a link to a useful website for any further reading about some the masters mentioned above! http://photography-now.net/listings/index.php?option=com_alphacontent&section=29&cat=127&Itemid=293

My Favourite Photo

This shot of a couple holding hands behind their backs makes you the feel like you are witnessing a private, intimate moment between the two. The vertical and horizontal lines draw your eye to the right of the image and then back up to the centre. I love it because of its simplicity and humanistic meaning of companionship and love. In The Moment of Exposure Bob Shamis notes: "though many of his street portraits bear witness to a deep understanding of isolation and loneliness, his own solitariness did not deter him from portraying scenes of intimacy or the longing for human connection. On the contrary, it seems to have sensitized him to these moments and exchanges."

Biography

Leon Levinstein was born in Buckhannon in West Virginia in 1910. His parents, Simon and Ida Levinstein, originally from Lithuania, were the owners of Levinstein's Department Store. Leon was the second eldest of four children and although he had a number of friends and enjoyed sports, he remained shy and anti-social. During high school and after graduation in 1927, he attended evening classes in drawing at the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore. He then attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh to study graphic design. In 1933, he again enrolled in evening drawing classes at the Maryland Institute of Art while also working as an assistant art director doing layouts for newspaper advertisements. In 1937, he was self employed as a freelance graphic designer and in 1942 he enlisted in the army, primarily stationed in Panama serving as a mechanic with the Air Corps.

After being discharged in 1945, Levinstein moved to New York where he co-founded an advertising agency, Colby Advertising, with his cousin Theodore Schuchat and close friend Bernard Kramer. Working as the art director for the agency, Levinstein was in charge of all the design and layouts. In 1947 he studied as a part-time evening student at the New School taking classes in painting and design with Stuart Davis. He also studied photography under the watchful eye of Alexey Brodovitch. Brodovitch was a major influence on Levinstein and can certainly be referred to as his mentor at the time. In The Moment of Exposure Bob Shamis states: "studying with Brodovitch certainly provided a strong impetus to Levinstein's development as a photographer, and if we look at the graphic and emotionally expressive photographs he produced over the next thirty-five years, the influence of the Brodovitch philosophy is evident."

In 1948, Levinstein took a class with Sid Grossman at the Photo League School in New York. Grossman encouraged personal expression in photography and was undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in Levinstein's development as a photographer. Throughout the coming years, Levinstein took part in several group exhibitions and had a solo exhibition as the Limelight Gallery in 1956. He left Colby Advertising in 1953 to work as a self-employed photographer and freelance graphic designer. He did not return to a full time position until 1968 when he took a position as an art director with Brown & Gravenson, a catalogue merchandising firm based in New York.

Levinstein never married. His discomfort in social situations and his tendency to avoid emotional attachments fed into his work: "you have got to be alone and work alone, and it's a lonely occupation, if you want to call it that." (Levinstein, 1988).

During the late 70s and 80s, Levinstein travelled almost constantly to places such as North Africa, India and Europe. An aging man, he became bitter and resentful of his lack of appreciation after almost forty years dedication to photography. On his death bed, he told a friend not to let his son become a photographer. Leon Levinstein died of a stroke in December 1988.

• Helpful links:

Harper's Bazaar: http://www.harpersbazaar.com/
The New School, New York: http://www.newschool.edu/

Alexey Brodovitch: http://www.iconofgraphics.com/Alexey-Brodovitch/

Sid Grossman: http://www.artfacts.net/en/artist/sid-grossman-16603/profile.html

New York Photo League: http://www.martinelkort.com/photoleague.html

Introduction

Leon Levinstein is remembered for his ability to capture people in a raw and unsentimental fashion. His photography captured a wide range of subjects from high society women and businessmen, to prostitutes and the homeless. Although greatly respected within the world of photography, Levinstein remained under the radar for much of his life. While still exhibiting work and having work published in a variety of publications, he remained what many would come to call him 'the lonely photographer.'

This blog sets out to investigate and explore Leon Levinstein the man, the artist and the photographer. It will include his biography, work, critical reception, audio and visual material and much more!