Thesis and Background

I choose to explore Growing Up in New York by Arthur Leipzig. He specialized in street photography and was known for his photographs of New York City. Leipzig was a member of the Photo League. He was a staff photographer for PM while studying under Paul Strand. After, he quit the League to pursue a career as a freelance photojournalist.

He mainly photographed New York children in the early 1940s and continued, off and on, into the mid-1960s. His inspiration was “Children’s Games,” a 1560 painting by the Flemish master Pieter Bruegel, the Elder. Leipzig was intrigued, he said, “that the games played in Renaissance-era Flanders were similar to the ones he observed outside his window.”

Amid WWII and after, he photographed some of his most famous photos of children playing chalk games (1950), Hide and Seek (1943), Association Football (1943), etc. His assignment and project goal was to search ”for the human face of New York” (Arthur Leipzig, from the preface of Growing Up in New York). His work reflects an era of tremendous change and growth in New York City. Historians said his work perfectly captured the spirit of the best city in the world.

I included a video of Arthur Leipzig talking about his involvement in the American Society of Media Photographers and how he viewed himself and many other photographers involved.
Leipzig explained the similarities and differences between photographs from his early days to modern photography.

Leipzig sorts his pictures into different categories and covers his interpretation of New York City. From “Children’s Games” to “Subway,” Leipzig covers his understanding of New York City. His theme is finding the “human face of New York” Leipzig highlights the high-spirited expressions of his subjects. These theses appear in every section of his photograph of New York City residents.

I want to explore the following images:

In this photograph of children playing, Leipzig captures the excitement and raw emotion. The joy and determination on the kid’s faces are precisely the types of expressions Leipzig tries to capture.

“Commuters 1962”:
In this photograph, Leipzig captures the subjects’ individuality and lack of interaction. They are all commuting to or from work and have more severe and stern looks on their faces.

“TWU Rally, 1947”:
This photograph captures the group as a whole rather than the individuality in the other photographs. It captures the uniting motivation of the rally behind the mass of people.

Methodology

Leipzig sought to capture a story with his photographs. Rather than capturing just a moment, Leipzig tried to capture the human experience and energy of the moment. Leipzig’s roamed the city and photographed his experience, both positive and negative. As Leipzig quotes at the beginning of the photobook, the ultimate goal was to leave “nostalgic memories swimming in your head.”

Arthur Leipzig took his photographs without staging or tampering with the surroundings. As a result, he captured the natural reactions of the individuals in his images. While some of the subjects in Leipzig’s pictures noticed he was photographing them, they did not acknowledge or change their behavior and, therefore, did not take away from the emotion and significance of the moment. Some examples that stood out to me are the intimate photos of people kissing on the subway. He captured the natural beauty without staging or interfering with his environment. Additionally, when shoots his photos straight on with the subject noticing him, he still captures the untampered emotions of the scene.

Arthur Leipzig photographed his subjects with incredible clarity in his action shots. This technique enhances Leipzig’s ability to capture a single moment in time and space. Below I included two photos that illustrate this idea. The subjects are in perpetual motion, but the pictures are crisp and clear.

I went about my photographic journey in a similar vein as Leipzig. I brought my camera around Ann Arbor to photograph the humanistic aspect of the city. Specifically, Leipzig was keenly interested in how similar games played hundreds of years earlier are still played outside. These games can be seen on a warm weekend in Ann Arbor. For example, my fraternity participated in Mudbowl football. Mudbowl is a football tournament in Ann Arbor between fraternities with a philanthropic of raising money for Motts Children’s hospital. I took photos of this event and modeled it after Leipzig’s pictures of “Children’s Games.” 

Lastly, there is another section of the photobook dedicated to the Subway. He photographs the people and how they sink into their private worlds on the Subway. I paired this section with the Ann Arbor tradition of walking down state street for the football game. I captured the University of Michigan’s students commuting toward the Big House, similar to New Yorkers commuting to work. I attempted to photograph people in their own worlds with little interaction with each other.

Photo Analysis

My Selected Photos:

I selected the following pictures because I felt these two best encapsulated what Leipzig’s photography was about: the raw emotion of people.  This first photo is during Mudbowl, a football tournament. I took this photo in black and white to try and encapsulate and recreate Leipzig’s images. His work on child’s play inspired this photo. With more accessible access to college-aged “kids,” I focused my photography on that age group rather than the elementary school-aged children Leipzig photographed.

Similarly, the second picture tries to capture Leipzig’s attention to his subject’s emotions.  This picture mimics Leipzig’s “Divers, East River 1948” with my friend “diving” through the table. With Leipzig’s photography style in mind, I wanted to capture the motion of my friend through the air. I selected this photo because of the emotion and excitement that it captures.

Slideshow 1: Leipzig’s Photos

Slideshow 2: My Photos

Slideshow 1: As a Gallery (the slideshow crops the photos)

In reflecting on Leipzig’s work, I brainstormed how to infuse his photojournalistic approach into my college landscape. I thought this series would be full of iconic Ann Arbor events and buildings (the clocktower, the diag, etc.). However, this series turned to focus on the people and students. I aimed to capture what it is like living in Michigan’s college environment. This photographic journey gave me a new perspective on Ann Arbor, my city.

When taking my photos, I learned that Leipzig was intrusive during his process. Leipzig takes pictures of many personal moments that others might not have liked. He gets very up close and personal to capture the moment. Two images emphasize this idea: “Watching Santa, 1944” and “Coney Island, 1952”. I included both photos at the conclusion of my photo analysis section. In “Watching Santa, 1944”, he goes face-to-face with the little girls to capture this photo and must be lying down to take the below-angle photograph he takes. Although his subjects are sleeping in “Coney Island, 1952”, he gets extremely close and stands over them to take this photo. This intrusive photography is challenging in today’s age. People dislike photos being taken of them when they do not know where it is going. People have an online image they want to maintain, and photographing these personal moments can go against what types of photos they want on the internet. Additionally, one of the consequences of COVID-19 is people respect their privacy and space. I found it extremely difficult to photograph strangers because people sometimes had metaphorical boundaries they set up around themselves.

I admired my photographer’s ability to find beauty in ordinary occurrences. I became acutely aware of this fact when attempting to take photos of people commuting. In New York City, people take the subway to and from work without looking back and admiring the situation. Similarly, I take the bus to North Campus most days for my computer science classes. I never considered photographing this everyday occurrence before studying Arthur Leipzig’s work. I appreciated the photo I included of people on the bus commuting to North Campus. Although I admittedly think this photograph was not one of my best, I liked the similarity in message between my commuter photo and Leipzig’s commuter photo. In both images, there is the theme of strangers isolated in group settings. There is little interaction between the subjects, even though they all share that they are engineering students on their way to class. With modern technology, most individuals are in their own worlds with AirPods in, looking at their phones.

One characteristic I became acutely aware of in Leipzig’s photos was his focus on lighting and shadows. In many of his photographs, the different lighting techniques enhance his photography. In particular, the “TWU Rally, 1947” photo significantly influenced me. I included this photo in my “Thesis and Background” page. The shading and lighting of all the individual hats in the picture are highly pronounced in this photo. It is further enhanced because all the images are in black and white. In my color photos, I focused more on the color content than the lighting as compared to the pictures I took in black and white.

I understand how difficult it is to arrange the photographs in an orderly and logical way. Leipzig claimed that for him, “New York, with its diverse cultures and varied topography, presented a new challenge every day.” I believe that Arthur Leipzig did indeed attack New York’s daily challenges as he worked to present the city in a way that allowed outsiders to feel as if they knew the city themselves. The different sections from Children’s Game, Assignment Brooklyn Bridge, Garbage, etc., framed the NYC rather than just the “photogenic” spots. 

Leipzig’s photos present certain aspects and settings in his photograph. While taking my pictures, I found the opposite to be true. When I was just taking photos of my environment and not finding the right setting, my pictures were more genuine and similar to Leipzig’s.

My approach to taking pictures did evolve from my original idea. Originally I wanted to take more photos of strangers and children at Burns Park or Angel Elementary School. Once I began photographing, I realized I needed to modify this. The colder weather caused fewer people to be outside, and harder to capture kids playing at the park. Additionally, I took many photos over Thanksgiving Break when kids have off school and could not take pictures of that. Therefore, I switched to taking pictures of my friends and college-aged kids. This switch of taking photos of collaged-aged kids better encapsulated the eps and flows of Ann Arbor since Ann Arbor is a college town at its core. 

This process was incredibly liberating for me. Leipzig claimed that “the city was my home.” Leipzig photographed an environment he was familiar with and grew up in. Similarly, having that personal connection to Ann Arbor, the setting where I have been taking my pictures, has made the experience much more meaningful.  In addition, I have been able to learn and appreciate the beauty of my “home” due to this process. I enjoyed walking around the city and taking photos of things that captured what growing up and living in Ann Arbor is all about.

Examples of Intrusive Photography:

My Gallery:

Conclusion

Through this process of analyzing Arthur Leipzig’s work, I am more in awe of how spectacular his work is. In refusing to manipulate or stage his shots, his ability to capture emotion in still photographs is genuinely an art form. This is especially true in the 20th century, where mess-ups in timing or lighting did not just have to click the photo button on your iPhone again. Having one chance and one chance only to record some of the most iconic images of his time, Leipzig had to be highly focused on every minor detail. His motion shots are most impressive. To capture the movement of the divers or people on the roller coaster is incredibly impressive. In taking my photos, I found this to be the most challenging: taking photos of movement without blur.

I also enjoy the similarities between the 20th century and the 21st century. Leipzig was keenly interested in how similar games played hundreds of years earlier are still played outside. I found it interesting that still, to this day, I know and play this same children’s game. This similarity from generation to generation is a very Jewish idea. In Hebrew, there is a saying, “L’dor v’dor,” which translates from generation to generation. Typically, it means the transmission of the culture’s values, traditions, and history to the next generation. In this aspect, the universal idea of play and games is being passed down. Two games that he photographed that I played growing up are hide and seek and playing with chalk on the sidewalk and street. Although these games are not Jewish by any means, I like this connection between passing down traditions and culture and passing down games.

Sources

“Arthur Leipzig (35 03).” YouTube, World of Photography, 27 June 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVagou0GV2s. Accessed 8 December 2022.

“Arthur Leipzig – Soulcatcher Studio.” Soulcatcher Studio, https://soulcatcherstudio.com/arthur-leipzig/. Accessed 8 December 2022.

Leipzig, Arthur. Growing up in New York: photographs. D.R. Godine, 1995.