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The vibrant street life and people of New York City’s Lower East Side and Upper West Side in the 1950s and 1960s are presented in this book of black-and-white photographs by Jonathan Brand titled Lower East and Upper West: New York City Photographs 1957-1968.
A census taker and later an advertising copywriter, Brand chronicled life as he encountered it on his walks through the city. The book offers 104 striking images of New Yorkers engaged in everyday pursuits, from the Bowery to Riverside Park, juice stands and barbershops to Theatre in the Streets. With an introduction by Julia Dolan, The Minor White Curator of Photography at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, this is the first book from a photographer who developed his art alongside many of the best-known in his discipline. Brand’s photographs capture the energy, odd juxtapositions and intimate moments of life in mid-century New York City.
Below is a video with an inside look at Lower East and Upper West: New York City Photographs 1957-1968:
Jonathan Brand has been photographing daily life since 1956. A native New Yorker and Vermonter, he has also lived and worked in Scandinavia and Portland, Oregon. He developed his photography through study with some of the most accomplished photographers of our day: Richard Avedon, Garry Winogrand, David Vestal and Bruce Davidson. An acute observer of street life as well as everyday family rhythms, Brand has captured public and private moments in arresting images. Brand’s work and friendship with Winogrand was the subject of a 2014 exhibition, “Two-Way Street: The Photographs of Garry Winogrand and Jonathan Brand”, at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. Other solo and group exhibitions have been presented from Maine, to Oregon, to Sweden, including at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon; White Gallery at Portland State University and the Bennington Museum in Vermont. Brand’s photographs are in public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Portland Museum of Art (Maine), the Portland Art Museum (Oregon), and the Bennington Museum.
Julia Dolan is The Minor White Curator of Photography at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from Boston University, and has worked at institutions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University. She has curated and co-curated more than twenty-five exhibitions at the Portland Art Museum including Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy, Force of Nature: Emmet Gowin in the American West, and Two-Way Street: The Photographs of Garry Winogrand and Jonathan Brand. Recent publications include The Question of Hope: Robert Adams in Western Oregon.
