Book Review: Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York

Prof Michael Berkowitz reviews Deborah Dash Moore's 2023 book 'Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York'

"Before the Digital Age", Review of Moore, Deborah Dash, Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York

Author

Prof Michael Berkowitz

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 anyone 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 particular 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 appropriate contexts—with reference to the photographers 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" sections 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.

Reference

Michael Berkowitz. Review of Moore, Deborah Dash, Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. July, 2024.

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