Arthur Leipzig

Sleeping Child, 1950

Arthur Leipzig Biography Photographer Arthur Leipzig, an acclaimed documentary photographer, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1918. Nowhere in the world will you find a better collection of photographs about the City That Never Sleeps than in Leipzig’s collected works. Leipzig produced thousands of rolls of film over five decades, most of which depicted street life in New York. Most famous are his photo essays of children’s street games, like hopscotch, stickball, and basketball. Other powerful photos showed city workers atop the Brooklyn Bridge performing maintenance, Coney Island in its heyday, and V-Day. Leipzig candidly captured New York’s favorite personalities, like Louis Prima, W.C. Handy and Mayor La Guardia. His career took him to places like Peru, Sudan, and the Sahara, as well as places in America like West Virginia, Kansas and Jones Beach. Known for his sensitivity as an impassioned documentarian and photographer, Arthur Leipzig has always pointed his cameras toward the human condition and his deep love of people. He captured his subjects with ease, never forcing a moment, but allowing a human story to unfold before him, transforming it simply and spontaneously while capturing the essence of the moment. The moment was a universe unto itself. New Yorkers celebrating the end of World War II. Schoolchildren in Africa sitting at crowded wooden desks eager to learn with pencil and paper in hand. Exhausted traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. People asleep in subway cars on the way home from work. Two kids standing in the storefront display window of their parent’s dry cleaners. A crowded boat carrying immigrants to their new land of liberty. These everyday images teach us to slow down and take in everyday life for what it is. As a result of his style, Leipzig’s photographs depict the human community with great intimacy and dynamic energy. Arthur Leipzig's photography is 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. His solo exhibitions include Arthur Leipzig: a World View at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, Growing Up in New York at the Museum of the City of New York, Jewish Life Around the World at the Nassau County Museum of Fine Art. Leipzig’s honors include the National Urban League Photography Award, several annual Art Directors Awards, and two Long Island University Trustees Awards for Scholarly Achievement. He was also the recipient of the Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Fine Art Photography in 2004, an award that was long overdue and a crowning achievement for a young man in his late 80s. Additionally, Leipzig shared his talent and passion for photography by teaching at Long Island University for nearly three decades, where he became Professor Emeritus. Leipzig passed away in 2014 in his favorite state, New York.