Walkers in the City

Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York

Deborah Dash Moore

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English

Three Hills
15 September 2023

History of the Americas; Local history

In the middle of the twentieth century, good cameras became smaller and lighter, enabling street photographers to roam alleyways, ride elevated trains and subways, and stroll beaches in summertime to capture daily life with urgency and intimacy. Walkers in the City showcases the distinctive urban vision that working-class Jewish photographers produced with these new cameras on New York City's streets and in public spaces.

Drawing on the experiences of and photographs by a generation of young Jewish photographers who belonged to the New York Photo League, Deborah Dash Moore offers a new perspective on New York as seen through their eyes-a cityscape of working-class people and democratizing public transit. With their cameras, they pictured Gotham's abrasive social milieu and its evanescent textures and light, creating an archive of vernacular images of city life and a distinctive tradition of street photography that would be widely imitated.

Walkers in the City documents how these roving, imaginative New Yorkers, entranced by the medium of photography, transformed everyday sights into rousing, joyous, and poignant moments of time, creating visual poetry out of the fabric of social life.

By: Deborah Dash Moore
Imprint: Three Hills
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 254mm, Width: 203mm, Spine: 35mm
Weight: 1.361kg
ISBN: 9781501768477
ISBN 10: 1501768476
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 15 September 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Prologue: Reframing New York 1. Toward a New York Document 2. Looking 3. Letting Go 4. Going Out 5. Waiting 6. Talking 7. Selling Epilogue: A New York Family Album

Deborah Dash Moore is Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of GI Jews and coauthor of Jewish New York.

Reviews for Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York

In an homage to a space and time that have passed, but that remain as traces in the vivid depictions on display in this handsome and informative volume, Moore offers a love letter to photographers who looked past ideological doctrine (worker strikes and political protests are set aside) to teach viewers and to remind themselves how to regard their fellow New Yorkers with the dignity of concerned attentiveness. * Gotham Center * A stunningly perceptive narrative of the subject of Jewish street photographers. * Bill Aron * That this book has the potential to open up so many paths of investigation is evidence of its originality, depth, and richness. Deborah Dash Moore's Walkers in a City, simultaneously earthy and elegant, is a stupendous achievement. * H-Net *