May 28th, 2019, Photography

Wonderful Photos Of Postwar New York City In 1946 By Todd Webb

View from Empire State Building

Todd Webb (1905-2000) was discharged from the US Navy in 1945. Before fighting in the war, Todd had worked as a stockbroker, a field in which he’d enjoyed notable success til losing all his money in the 1920s crash, prospected for gold in California and Panama, and worked as a forest ranger.

In the 1930s whilst working for Chrysler in his native Detroit he joined the Chrysler Camera Club. A workshop class with Ansel Adams stoked his interest in photography. And so it was that after the war he picked up his camera and in search of anew life headed to New York City.

There he “nurtured a friendship with Alfred Stieglitz”, whom he met in 1942, and his wife, the hymned artist Georgia O’Keeffe. She introduced Tood to Beaumont Newhall – in 1946 Newhall curated an exhibition of Todd’s photographs for The Museum of The City of New York: I See A City.

“Life goes on about me, and I am a living breathing part of it. I feel things, the people, the buildings, the streets, and I have something to say about them and my medium is photography,” he said.

More: MCNY h/t: flashbak

125th Street, Harlem