Berkowitz, Michael;
(2024)
"Before the Digital Age", Review of Moore, Deborah Dash, Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. July, 2024.
H-Judaic
Preview |
Text
Berkowitz_review_60994.pdf Download (121kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Walkers in the City is a gorgeous book. It is well designed and delightful to the touch. It fulfills every requirement of a monograph issued by a first-rate university press and then some. For any‐ one who loves New York it also may serve as an exquisite gift. Reasonably priced at $36.95, the lion's share of university presses would be wise to take notice. Walkers in the City might proudly be displayed on an urbane, educated person's coffee table. Yet it also should be closely read for its fresh perspectives and interventions in the history of photography, as well as the historiography of New York and American Jewry. Its focus is the streets of the city, a means of "reframing New York" (p. 1), as captured by a band belonging largely to a particu‐ lar time and place. The writing is sparkling. This book has so many superb photographs that it is impossible to specify one, or a dozen, which are exceptional. One of the great strengths of this book is that it sets each of the photos in its appro‐ priate contexts—with reference to the photo‐ graphers as women, men, and the sorts of Jews they were—as well as their relationship(s) to the city streets and people they photographed. More often than not, the photos they executed extended beyond Jewishness. In other words, this book is much more than reflections on the "Jewish" sec‐ tions of New York. Moore shows how these (mainly) working-class Jews, (mainly) associated with the New York Photo League, sought to em‐ brace and genuinely portray the humankind, overall, and materiality that comprised New York.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | "Before the Digital Age", Review of Moore, Deborah Dash, Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. July, 2024 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=60994 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2024. This is an Open Access article. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Hebrew and Jewish Studies |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10194503 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
