leipzig

Arthur Leipzig

Soulcatcher Studio is proud to offer Arthur Leipzig’s iconic photographs to our clientele. Leipzig’s photographs illustrate the grand tradition of the classic street photographer. In particular, he created a body of work that focused on the activities of people in New York City from the 1940s through the 1950s.

Arthur Leipzig was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 25, 1918. After studying photography at the Photo League in 1942, he became a staff photographer for the Newspaper PM, where he worked for the next four years. During this period, he completed his first photo essay, on children’s street games.

In 1946, he left PM. After a short stint at International News Photos, he became a freelance photojournalist, traveling on assignments around the world, contributing work to such periodicals as The Sunday New York Times, This Week, Fortune, Look, and Parade. Edward Steichen encouraged him to teach, which he did for twenty-eight years at Long Island University, where he is now Professor Emeritus.

Arthur Leipzig’s career as a photographer fulfills the ideals of the great era of American photo-journalism. His start with the Photo League of the 1940’s, his freelance work in the 1950’s and 60’s, and his years of full-time teaching with more freedom to choose his assignments in the 1970’s and 80’s, illustrate the opportunities and hardships of a life in photography. The photographs in this catalogue celebrate Leipzig’s art – a life work that has been a sustained creative response to the challenge of photography as a means for expressing fundamental human experience.”
– Bonnie Yochelson, from Arthur Leipzig: A Retrospective

Leipzig has been included in many museum group exhibitions, most notably “New Faces” (1946) and Edward Steichen’s landmark “Family of Man” at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Photography as a Fine Art” in 1961 and 1962. His work is also represented in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The National Portrait Gallery, The Jewish Museum, and The Bibliothèque Nationale, among others. Leipzig has received the National Urban League Photography Award, several annual Art Directors Awards, and two Long Island University Trustees Awards for Scholarly Achievement

Arthur Leipzig died on December 5, 2014 at his home in Sea Cliff, N.Y. He was 96 years old.

Print Information: All photographic prints are archivally processed gelatin silver prints made from original photographic negatives, printed by Arthur Leipzig or under his direct supervision. Prints are unmounted. No digital manipulation is used at any stage of the process.

Prints are available in two standard paper sizes: 11×14″ and 16×20″. For both technical and aesthetic reasons, not all images are available in all sizes (please inquire). Actual image sizes vary from that of the standard paper size. All prints are signed in pencil by the artist au verso.

Prints were produced in an open, unnumbered edition.

Click here to view Arthur Leipzig: Growing Up In New York, our special exhibition of Arthur Leipzig’s fine art photographs.

All artwork is copyright © of the respective artist or estate.
All other material copyright © Soulcatcher Studio. All rights reserved.
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