Join Professors Sara Blair and Daniel Hurwitz as they discuss Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York with author Deborah Dash Moore. Drawing on the experiences of and photographs by a generation of young Jewish photographers many of whom belonged to the New York Photo League, Walkers in the City offers a new perspective on New York as seen through their eyes—a cityscape of working-class people and democratizing public transit. With their cameras, they pictured Gotham’s abrasive social milieu and its evanescent textures and light, creating an archive of vernacular images of city life and a distinctive tradition of street photography that would be widely imitated.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Deborah Dash Moore is a Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. An historian of American Jews, she specializes in twentieth century urban history. Her new book, Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Mid-Century New York (2023) extends her interest in urban Jewish history to photography. Currently, she serves as editor in chief of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, a ten-volume anthology of original sources translated into English from the biblical period to 2005, selected by leading scholars.