Portraits of New York City, 1940s-1960s

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 1996 by Arthur Leipzig

I came to photography quite by accident. I had no idea what I wanted to be when I was growing up in a middle-class family living in a middle-class neighborhood of Brooklyn. I used to go to the library to read about occupations. I started with the A's - agriculture, Archaeology, Architecture - but never made it to the P's. In 1935, when I was 17, I left school and had an assortment of jobs - truck driver, salesman, office manager, assembly line worker. Finally, I worked in a wholesale glass plant, where I seriously injured my right hand and lost the use of it for 14 months. I began to search for a new way to make a living, A friend suggested that, if I studied photography at the Photo League in New York, I might be able to get a job as a darkroom technician. I registered for a beginning class at the League. Two weeks later, I knew that photography would be my life's work.

My life as a photographer began in the streets of the city. For me, New York, with its diverse cultures and varied topography, presented a new challenge every day. My days were spent shooting with my 9x12 cm Zeiss Ikon camera; my nights in the darkroom and in discussion with other students and photographers. It was in New York that I honed my skills and began to learn about the world and about myself.

In 1943, while working on the newspaper PM, I shot my first major photo essay, "Children's Games." The streets then were an extension of the home. They were the living rooms and the playgrounds, particularly for the poor whose crowded tenements left little room for play. The children occupied the streets, reluctantly allowing a car or truck to pass.

Over the years, I have worked as a staff and freelance photographer for a wide variety of publications. My assignments and independent projects took me all over and under the city, always searching for the human face of New York. I photographed people on the subways and on the beach in Coney Island, painters working on the Brooklyn Bridge, and kids swimming in the East River. I photographed the nightlife, the violence, and the working and upper classes. In those days, I traveled all around the city at any time of night or day and, except for rare instances, seldom felt in danger. The city was my home. As I look back at the work that I did during that period, I realize that I was witness to an era that no longer exists - a more innocent time.

While I know that the city has changed, that the streets are dirtier and meaner, the energy I love is still there. No matter where I go, I keep coming back to photograph New York. Of course, the "good old days" were not all sweetness and light. There was poverty, racism, corruption, and violence in those days, too, but somehow we believed in the possible. We believed in hope.

Mr. Leipzig was a staff photographer with the New York newspaper PM 1942-46. After a short stint with International News Photos, he became a free-lace photojournalist,, whose pictures have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, This Week, Fortune, Look, and Parade. he taught photography at Long Island University, Brookville, N.Y., from 1963 to 1991.

An exhibition, "Growing Up in New York: The Photography of Arthur Leipzig," is at the Museum of the City of New York through March 31.