%0 Journal Article
%T ¡®We Cover New York¡¯: Protest, Neighborhood, and Street Photography in the (Workers Film and) Photo League
%J Arts | An Open Access Journal from MDPI
%D 2019
%R https://doi.org/10.3390/arts8020061
%X This article considers photographs of New York by two American radical groups, the revolutionary Workers Film and Photo League (WFPL) (1931¨C1936) and the ensuing Photo League (PL) (1936¨C1951), a less explicitly political concern, in relation to the adjacent historiographical contexts of street photography and documentary. I contest a historiographical tendency to invoke street photography as a recuperative model from the political basis of the groups, because such accounts tend to reduce WFPL¡¯s work to ideologically motivated propaganda and obscure continuities between the two leagues. Using extensive primary sources, in particular the PL¡¯s magazine Photo Notes, I propose that greater commonalities exist than the literature suggests. I argue that WFPL photographs are a specific form of street photography that engages with urban protest, and accordingly I examine the formal attributes of photographs by its principle photographer Leo Seltzer. Conversely, the PL¡¯s ¡®document¡¯ projects, which examined areas such as Chelsea, the Lower East Side, and Harlem in depth, involved collaboration with community organizations that resulted in a form of neighborhood protest. I conclude that a museological framing of ¡®street photography¡¯ as the work of an individual artist does not satisfactorily encompass the radicalism of the PL¡¯s complex documents about city neighborhoods. View Full-Tex
%U https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/8/2/61