Check out the fantastic photography of then-boy wonder photographer Larry Silver who was living in NYC at the time and shot these photos between 1949 and 1954. He didn’t know it at the time, but Silver’s work (specifically those shot among the hustle and bustle of the city streets in New York) was right in line with other members of the “New York School of Photography,” which refers to a loosely defined group of photographers who lived and worked in New York City during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s sharing influences, subjects and stylistic earmarks.
These were the photographers like Ruth Orkin, Saul Leiter, Ernst Haas , Ted Croner, Vivian Maier, and Esther Bubley, who would capture life in New York not as “the big city,” but as a collection of neighborhoods, people, and emotions that would later define what we now consider top of mind when thinking about the nostalgic way New York used to be. It’s the bright lights of Coney Island, the hustle and bustle on the Manhattan sidewalk, and the stroll in Central Park that interested these photographers. The men and women of this movement are artists. Silver was among those men and women thanks to both his eye, and to the city he was living in.
[All images belong to Larry Silver. The Wall Breakers own none of the rights to these photos.]