The selected images in this book reflect the East Harlem community in the postwar years, which would later grow into a centre of Puerto Rican culture and life in the US. From the families portrayed gathering on stoops, to the kids at their shoeshine stations, to youths playing ball, to anti-war posters on neighbourhood walls, Goldstein's images of East Harlem provide windows into the socio-economic, cultural and political landscapes of the time. His East Harlem photographs are gathered for the first time in this book edited by Regina Monfort. Until 2016, when the prints were catalogued, this body of work remained mostly untouched and unseen. There are no negatives in existence. A small number of Leo's images from the East Harlem corpus have appeared in exhibits and publications of Photo League work, beginning with the seminal exhibit 'This Is the Photo League' (1948-1949) and later in the book, This Was the Photo League, published in 2000. His work was included in 'The Photo League, 1936-1951,' an exhibition organized by Howard Greenberg at the Photofind Gallery in Woodstock, NY in 1985. One of Leo's images was also included in the 2011-12 exhibit at the Jewish Museum entitled 'The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951.' The publication of this book was made possible in part by a grant from the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation.
LEO GOLDSTEIN was born in 1901 in Kishinev in the Bessarabian region (now Moldova) of Czarist Russia. Fleeing the pogroms, his family settled in New York City in 1906. He was the fourth child of 13 and went to work at a young age to help support the family. Leo was a talented amateur sculptor and artist, taking up photography when he joined the Photo League in the late 1940s. Goldstein embraced the social documentary tradition of the League and was influenced by legendary members Paul Strand, Lewis Hine, and Berenice Abbott, among others. He died in New York City in 1972. A small number of Goldstein's images have appeared in exhibits and publications of Photo League work, beginning with the seminal exhibit "This Is the Photo League" (1948-1949) and later in the book, This Was the Photo League, published in 2000. His work was included in "The Photo League, 1936-1951," an exhibition organized by Howard Greenberg at the Photofind Gallery in Woodstock, New York in 1985. One of Goldstein's images was also included in the 2011-12 exhibit at the Jewish Museum entitled "The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951." Leo Goldstein's work is represented by the Howard Greenberg Gallery. JUAN GONZÁLEZ is an award-winning broadcast journalist and investigative reporter. A two-time winner of the George Polk Award, he is co-host of Democracy Now!, author of Harvest ofEmpire: A History of Latinos in America, and a founder and pastpresident of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. He spent 29 years as a columnist for the New York Daily Newsfrom 1987 to 2016. He is currently the Richard D. Heffner Professor in Communications and Public Policy at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information. González was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1947 and lived as a child in East Harlem during the period when the photographs in this book were taken. A. D. COLEMAN has published eight books and more than 2,500 essays on photography and related subjects. Formerly a columnist for the Village Voice, the New York Times, and theNew York Observer, Coleman has contributed to such periodicalsas ARTnews, Art On Paper, and Technology Review. His syndicatedessays on mass media, new communication technologies, art, and photography have been featured in such periodicals as Juliet Art Magazine (Italy), European Photography (Germany), and ArtToday (China). His work has been translated into 21 languages and published in 31 countries. Since 1995, Coleman has served as Publisher and Executive Director of The Nearby Cafe (nearbycafe.com), a multi-subject electronic magazine where his widely read blog on photography, "Photocritic International," appears.
A. D. Coleman is an internationally known critic of photography and photo-based art, and a widely published commentator on new digital technologies. In 2002 he received the Culture Prize of the German Photographic Society -- the first critic of photography ever so honored. In 2010 he received the J Dudley Johnston Award from the Royal Photographic Society (U.K.) for "sustained excellence in writing about photography." In 2014 he received the Society for Photographic Education's Insight Award for lifetime contribution to the field, and in 2015 both the Society of Professional Journalists SDX Award for Research About Journalism and The Photo Review Award "for outstanding contributions to photography, including the investigation of Robert Capa's D-Day photographs."
Coleman has published 8 books and more than 2500 essays on photography and related subjects. Formerly a columnist for the Village Voice, the New York Times, and the New York Observer, Coleman has contributed to ARTnews, Art On Paper, Technology Review, Ag (England), European Photography (Germany), La Fotografia (Spain), and Art Today (China). His work has been translated into 22 languages and published in 32 countries.
Coleman's widely read blog "Photocritic International" appears at photocritic.com. Since 2005, exhibitions that he has curated have opened at museums, galleries, and festivals in Canada, China, Finland, Italy, Rumania, Slovakia, and the U.S.
