Arthur Leipzig

Arthur Leipzig was born on 25th October 1918 in Brooklyn, New York. He dropped out of high school to help his family financially, and earned a living working both as a truck driver and in factories working on assembly lines.

After sustaining an injury to his hand at the factory he left work and enrolled in a class at The Photo League in 1941, studying under the group’s founder Sid Grossman. It was here that Leipzig began learning how to take photographs for the first time. He was inspired by the work of significant members of the Photo League including Paul Strand and W. Eugene Smith, whose work combined both rigorously and beautifully composed images with socially concerned photography. Leipzig would remain a member of the Photo League until 1949.

Just one year after first enrolling at the Photo League, Leipzig was offered his first job as a staff photographer for PM newspaper. The liberal publication relied heavily on photographic content and allowed its photographers free reign on how best to create their pictures. The newspaper folded in 1946 after which time Leipzig worked briefly at International News Photos before making the decision to become a freelance photographer.

The freedom of his freelance work allowed Leipzig to focus on subject matter that interested him most, with the same consideration of composition and content that he had learnt from photographers at the Photo League. He was particularly fond of capturing the streets of New York with their dynamic energy, and produced numerous essays on children’s street games, Coney Island and city workers atop Brooklyn Bridge. Leipzig’s work was published in many of the leading publications of the day including The Sunday New York Times, This Week, Fortune, Look, LIFE and Parade. Though New York was a constant inspiration, Leipzig took on assignments abroad for which he travelled to Peru, Sudan and the Sahara among other destinations. Above all his photographs reveal a deep fascination for the human condition which led to his work being included in the groundbreaking exhibition The Family of Man, curated by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1955.

Alongside his photographic career, Leipzig taught for almost three decades at Long Island University. His work is held in the collections of leading international museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Art Institute of Chicago and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. In 2004, he was awarded the Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Fine Art Photography. Leipzig died on 5th November 2014.